Archives For Wrestling with Doubts

The Village on the Hill

Nathan Aaberg —  November 5, 2019 — Leave a comment

There once was a village on a hill.

From the hill the people of the village enjoyed views of the lush meadows and thick forests all around. The spring on the side of the hill gave clear, fresh water.

Over time, some of the families of the village became dissatisfied. So they began to dig into the hill. Perhaps, they said to themselves, we will discover something.

And they did.

They discovered shiny stones. The families found the stones could be made into jewels and other beautiful things. Other people would trade for those jewels and beautiful things, Soon, many of the other families wanted to get their own shiny stones. They began to dig into the hill as well. Their village became known for its wealth.

A young girl asked her parents, “If we keep digging into the hill, what will our homes stand on?”

This made sense to her parents. Together they brought their concerns to the village council.

But the council members rejected these concerns. “You are wrong. There are only a few tunnels. The foundations of the hill are very strong. Besides, our village is thriving, and we are very smart. If there is a problem eventually, we can fix it with our cleverness.”

So many of the families continued to dig furiously, looking for the shiny stones. Then, in their digging, the villagers also found black rocks that would, when lit in a special way, burn hot for a long time. The villagers found many purposes for the fire’s heat. People from other villages wanted those rocks as well and would trade for them. The wealth of the village on the hill increased further.

The young girl told her parents, “I can now walk through tunnels from one side of the hill all the way to the other side. I’m very worried.”

Her family warned the village council again. The council retorted, “Don’t you want our village to prosper? You are jealous because you have not worked hard like us and dug your own tunnels. Our god gave us this hill to use. Our god is in control of everything. We have no reason to worry. You cannot tell us what to do.”

Digging intensified.

By now the the hill was honeycombed with tunnels. Villagers frequently ran into other families’ tunnels as they dug their own. Several homes suddenly collapsed into the ground. People and animals died. The spring no longer flowed from the side of the hill. It oozed muddy and dark through one of the tunnels.

The girl and her family were now in despair. They and a few other families appealed desperately to the council to stop the digging. “We have enough. Your digging is destroying our hill. We are destroying our home. You must stop.”

The families on the council who had dug the most and now had big homes made of stone angrily retorted. “You are lazy doubters. Digging under the hill has made our village strong and wealthy. People from all around envy us. Our lives are easy. And our god has promised that this hill would always be ours. Your faith is weak. Our god would not let something bad happen to us.”

So the girl and her family left the village, their eyes wet with tears.

A number of years later, the family was living in a home built of wood in a place where a forest and a meadow met. Fish danced and darted in the nearby stream.

During a time of famine, the family met a gaunt widow, her two sons, and their frail dog on the nearby road. The family took them in. After feeding the poor people and their dog, the daughter, who was now a young woman, asked the widow about her life.

While relating her sad fate, the widow mentioned that in their travels they had passed by the village on the hill. Her hosts eagerly asked for news of the village.

She shared that much of their village had now sunk into holes in the hill. Only a few large stone homes remained, protected by guards above and below ground. The people in the homes refused to give even a morsel of food to the mother, her children, and their dog.

The fate of the village mystified the poor widow.

Why could the villagers not see what they were doing? Why had the people not been content with their lives and the beauty around them? Did their god really want them to do what they had done to the hill?

The half-asleep widow looked around at the simple, comfortable home. She smiled as she saw her sons sleeping contentedly. She stroked the fur of the dog who lay at her feet and who had eaten so heartily of the food given to him.

And she asked the family, “Kind people, who is your god?”

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Back to Church for the Easter Weekend

Nathan Aaberg —  April 8, 2018 — Leave a comment

As I wrote earlier, I stopped going to church a while back for a variety of reasons. With my son back from college for spring break, however, my wife and I agreed that we should attend both a Good Friday service and a service on Easter Sunday.

Because of my conflicted feelings about church and my absence from services for a while, I had a heightened senstiviity to what I experienced at those two services. I want to share just a few of my feelings and perceptions.

We attended the Good Friday service at a church we had gone to in the past. I was struck by the power and creativity of the service. It brought together Scripture, music, poetry, and even physical sensation.

We had, for example, our hands washed ceremonially upon entering the sanctuary. And for most of the service we held a smooth stone in our hand as a reminder of our sins. As the service ended, we dropped it in a bucket before a large, rough-hewn cross near the altar.

There were a variety of sounds. Piano and organ music. We sang hymns. The sound of a whip snapping cruelly was heard at one point. We cried out, “Crucify Him!” at another point.

And the music, sounds, and words were offset by moments of silence for reflection on heart-challenging questions.

What struck me most were the gestures of warmth from a number of the congregation’s members, despite the fact that we had not attended regularly there in some time. Smiles from across the aisle. Strong handshakes. People making the effort to come over to us even though it was out of their way. Hugs.

Isn’t this a blessing of the highest order?

We went to the church of some friends on Easter Sunday. It, too, featured creativity and beauty. We first gathered outside on the lawn for opening prayers and words. As we moved into the narthex, we received candles, and these were then lit. We entered the sanctuary and used our candles to light the candles on the altar, on the window sills, and other places. This modestly-sized sanctuary became filled with nearly a hundred small flames giving out gentle, cheerful light. Holiness and hope.

There was great joy throughout the two-hour service in the songs and message. Songs. Clapping. A full-immersion baptism preceded by the singing of “Down to the River to Pray.”

There was one intriguing common element between the two services.  In both services, the beginning of Genesis was read and given prominence.

This was encouraging. By drawing our attention to the amazing goodness of the Creation and the tragedy of the Fall, the two churches drew attention to the full context of Good Friday and Easter. The story and truth of the Bible begins with all of creation in harmony and peace. In the Bible and in the world around us, we see what the Fall has brought – sin and brokeness causing pain to people and to all of Creation on an epic scale. Yet the Bible ends with a new heaven and a new earth where all of creation is again in harmony and peace with God.

Jesus – his life, his words, his death, and his resurrection – is at the heart of all this. God, our loving God, cares for people and all of Creation. Easter should remind all Christians of this. It is truly good news. Awesome news.

Was the note of all Creation being part of the salvation story part of your Holy Week? I hope so.

And I end this post admitting that there is a certain wistfulness in my heart after attending those services.

I long to have a community of faith where Creation matters and where worship and fellowship are part of the rhythm of our family’s life.

 

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I Couldn’t Go to Church on Sunday

Nathan Aaberg —  February 28, 2018 — Leave a comment

I couldn’t go to church this past Sunday. And I’m not sure when I will go back.

For many of you, this may seem extreme and even wrong, so I want to try to articulate why it has come to this.

It all starts with my conviction that a Christian theology that does not include Creation is fundamentally and significantly incomplete. The title of the book by theologians Howard Snyder and Joel Scandrett I am now rereading says it all – Salvation Means Creation Healed.

The back cover promotional text includes this summary statement: “The Bible promises the renewal of all creation – a new heaven and earth – based on the incarnation, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. For centuries this promise has been sidelined or misunderstood because of the church’s failure to grasp the full meaning of biblical teachings on creation and new creation.”

I am sensitive to the fact that Christians throughout the centuries have fallen into schism and division because of disagreements over fine points of theology that people outside of the Church would have found incomprehensible.

But this, to me, is different.

Church services tend to avoid even a passing reference to God’s Creation and its intrinsic value. Or, if it is referenced, the theological context is one of Creation being provided strictly for human needs and wishes.

I am tired, too, of churches not working proactively and systematically to build the character of Christians so that they live out the fruits of the spirit in every dimension of their lives. Christians will, of course, never be perfect but a systematic effort should be made to grow and to make ourselves vessels of God.

I am convinced that the way a church and its members interact with God’s earth on a daily and ongoing basis should be filtered through an ethic of restorative stewardship. We should be doing our best in every way to offer God’s love to people around us and also to promote the health and vitality of God’s earth. In how we use the land and in what we choose to eat, for example, we should be honoring God.

I am heartbroken by and furious at the diseased, degraded, and wounded condition of God’s earth.

Industrial chemicals are found in the breast milk of mothers and in newborn children. Plastic are filling the oceans. Factory farms are causing misery for people and animals in rural communities. Species, like the North-Atlantic right whale, are on the verge of being snuffed out forever. Disruption and devastation from climate change grows.

Where are the churches? Where are the churches that see all this as an affront to God and are working passionately to equip members to do something about it?

This is not politics. This is a question of our core values.

In Luke 14:5 we hear Jesus ask, “If one of you has a child or an ox that falls into a well on the Sabbath day, will you not immediately pull it out?”

A child or ox that had fallen into a well would cry out in distress. To block out those cries and to ignore the plight of the child or ox would be the height of callousness. To do so would contradict the character God calls us to have. To be able to ignore a child or ox’s plight would be the fruit that revealed a heart completely untouched by God.

All of Creation has fallen into extreme distress. But we don’t listen. We choose not to see.

Christians should be the leading edge of dedicated, energetic, innovative guardianship of God’s earth. They are, in fact, playing just this role when it comes to rotational grazing and regenerative farming. But this is largely the exception.

Churches are either blessing the forces that are depleting God’s world or avoiding the topic out of fear and lack of conviction.

I heard a story of a couple in a rural community who had to leave their church because they couldn’t handle the hypocrisy and trauma of being served communion by their neighbor who had built a factory farm on his land and then destroyed the stream running through their land by releasing liquid animal feces from the manure lagoon into that stream. Where was the church in teaching that such an action was a a harmful sin to his neighbors?

My wife, who has long shared my concerns for the state of God’s earth, does have concerns about the direction I’m headed. She calls attention to the fact that we may be letting our 16-year old son down by not taking him to church and giving him the experience of being in a community of believers. (Please see her comments at the end of this piece to get her perspective.)

That is a valid concern. I am committed, however, to continuing to ground him in the Bible. We have already read through Genesis and Exodus together and are now working our way through Leviticus.

Is it possible that I’ve become so focused on one issue that I am becoming a source of divisiveness and am ignoring a Christian’s wider obligations?

I have reflected on this, and I will continue to do so.

But I also have to ask where is the concern that Christian equanimity toward the destruction and diminishment of God’s earth might actually be turning people away from Jesus? Is God really our master or is the bounty that comes from a money-focused, corporate-dominated economy the actual focus of our lives? Maybe this is temptation at a systemic, cultural, epic scale?

A recent poll found that Christians are no more concerned for the environment than they were 20 years ago, and that concern may actually be declining.

It is hard to explain to a non-Christian why people who believe God created earth feel free to degrade it and to lift restraints on how it is treated. Perhaps this is one of the reasons why Christian numbers are declining, especially among Millennials?

My wife asks how churches will be more thoughtful about God’s earth if there aren’t voices within those churches calling for a change of direction. That’s also a good question.

On the other hand, I don’t sense much openness to this topic at all. What’s more, tacking on some token words in the occasional service is not enough. A different kind of Christian community is needed. New wineskins are needed.

I’m at a stage in my life where I’m listening to my heart and convictions more closely. Guilt will not overwhelm them. I need fellowship with others who share similar outlooks and who want to take action.

Have you wrestled with these same questions and feelings? Do you have advice for me?

I would very much like to hear from you.

 

Mayumi’s perspective:  I became a Christian 12 years into our marriage. Before that, I had been reluctant to become a Christian from our early years of courtship and into our marriage mainly because of how Christians disregarded and mistreated God’s Creation. Growing up in the Catholic church as a child in a small town in Wisconsin, I felt the presence of God in nature and not in any man-made church. Now the tables have turned. In the past, Nathan had encouraged me to go to church, and I was sometimes reluctant. Today, I am the one who believes we need to commit to a church community and be a voice within the church for whole faith living. I want our son to experience being among a community of believers, despite the fact that any church will share the good and bad aspects of our fallen humanity. I want our son to experience and be exposed to things that we can’t offer just at home with a Bible or with our own modeling: strong, healthy marriages and close family and friendship ties that support and encourage each other in the Christian walk. I want him to recognize that we can help to change and grow other Christians to include the care of God’s Creation. This is directly related to loving God and loving our neighbors. 

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Diving into John 3:16 (Part 1)

Nathan Aaberg —  March 22, 2017 — Leave a comment

You’ll find that Christians who make the case that being committed stewards of God’s earth is part and parcel of what it means to being a Christ follower rarely use verses from the Gospels for support of their conviction.

This is primarily because the Gospels have little directly to say about our responsibilities to and our relationship with God’s earth.

I won’t deny that at times that can feel like a problem.

Neverthless, if you read the Gospels with a wider and more whole vision of what is being communicated and if you seek to understand the Christian faith within the context of the whole Bible and the threads and frameworks you find in it, then I believe there is solid enough ground for our convictions.

Interestingly, the lack of explicit statements on almost any social issues by Jesus can be frustrating for anyone looking for clear guidance on those issues. For centuries, Chrisitan thinkers have had to extrapolate and conjecture, often with great creativity, about war, economic systems, slavery, democracy, abortion, and the other hot-button topics of any particular time.

So how are you and I to think about how the Good News and Jesus relate to how we relate to God’s earth?

In this and future posts to come, I’m going to tackle that question by diving into John 3:16. In the course of those posts I will tease out some threads that do relate to what a whole Christian faith is and do relate, at least indirectly, to what the Christian faith means for our relationship with God’s earth.

It’s an iconic verse that people know by heart and which appears at sporting events and many other venues, even under Tim Tebow’s eyes. There’s the assumption, in fact, that this single verse captures the very essence of the Gospel.

Max Lucado’s book of this title affirms the idea that John 3:16 presents the heart of the gospel.

When I actually began studying it a few weeks ago, however, things became more complicated. There is much more depth and nuance to the verse than is usually assumed. In fact, there’s a fair amount of disagreement about the meaning of the verse within some Christian circles. This all makes thinking about how the verse relates to our relationship with the rest of Creation challenging and intriguing.

I will begin the John 3:16 odyssey by calling your attention to the imperative at the center of the verse – “believe in.”

David Pawson has a different take than Lucado on what John 3:16 actually communicates.

David Pawson’s book, Is John 3:16 the Gospel?, has some insights that are very useful and other assertions which I would heartily disagree with. One of his useful insights is about these two critical words.

Too often the Christian faith is assumed to be about assenting to certain creeds and dctrines in an intellectual way. Pawson asserts this would be the right thing to think if we were called to “believe that.” “Believe that” conveys the acceptance of some sort of fact in an abstract, analytical way.

But what the verse asserts makes the difference between perishing and having life is whether you believe in Jesus. Here’s what Pawson says what that really entails:

“And believing in someone means two things: that you trust them and that you are willing to obey them.”

So I would assert that the essential calling of the Christian faith is to trust in the Jesus we find in the Gospels – his words, his actions, his death, his resurrection, and how that all fits within the context of the rest of the Bible – and to obey Jesus in how we live.

That means putting the whole weight of our convictions and the decisions we make and what we value on the God we experience and understand through Jesus with the guidance of what Christians call the Holy Spirit.

I don’t hear faith explained this way very often.

Nor do I hear enough churches helping their members in very tangible ways to translate trust in Jesus into obedience in the daily habits of their lives.

In The Divine Conspiracy, Dallas Willard articulates the state of affairs like this:

“Whatever the ultimate explanation of it, the most telling thing about the contemporary Christian is that he or she simply has no compelling sense that understanding of and conformity with the clear teachings of Christ is of any vital importance to his or her life, and certainly not that it is in any way essential.”

When the Christian faith is reduced to a static, dogmatic, theological affirmation that is seen primarily as the price of admission to the life we will enjoy AFTER our deaths, then it is easy to understand why Christians have been able to do crazy, cruel, violent things to people and to God’s earth throughout history.

When the Christian faith is understood as the dynamic foundation for the lives we live every moment beginning here and now on this earth, then the way Christians will relate with people and other living things around them can’t help but be very different.

John 3:16, I believe, is calling us to this second understanding.

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Pence and Kaine Struggle with Faith, Power

Nathan Aaberg —  October 12, 2016 — Leave a comment

One of the greatest temptations for a Christian is to give up one’s integrity as a Christian in the service or pursuit of power.

Sad to say, we saw two Christians do just during the vice presidential debate last week.

And the irony could not be deeper because both Indiana Governor Mike Pence and Virginia Senator Tim Kaine gave eloquent expressions of how their Christian faiths have formed their lives and character.

While Kaine incessantly interrupted Pence at every possible moment with criticisms of Donald Trump, Pence actually had no defense for Donald Trump’s character or behavior.

For all of Pence’s calm, reasoned, and sincere statements, you can’t read the Bible without coming to the conclusion that Donald Trump epitomizes an incredibly long list of attributes that are the exact opposite of those Christians are called to have. They are fruit of a heart turned away from a humble relationship with God.

To support a person like Trump in something minor would be problematic but to faithfully and energetically partner with a person like Trump who desires to be the leader of the United States is a whole different matter. I can only explain Pence’s decision this way – like any of us, he has his weaknesses and one of his is a commitment to the success and power of the Republican Party and its interests that enables him to rationalize his full partnership with Trump. I believe there is also a hypnotic quality to Trump’s comfort and confidence with power to which Pence and many others around the country unconsciously respond.

It would have said much more about Pence’s faith and about Christianity itself, however, if he had declined the invitation just as Daniel declined to bend his knee to the power of Nebuchadnezzar.

The worst thing is that the more Pence wears his Christian faith on his sleeve as he campaigns with Donald Trump, the more he taints Christianity for people who are not believers. If a Christian can ally himself with Trump and all that he stands for, then why would any rational person want to become a Christian? What exactly does the Christian faith stand for?

Kaine has some issues, too.

He has accepted the nomination with Hillary Clinton who cannot help herself from lying,untruths, and half truths. She also has a troubled relationship with power that can be seen in her history, her policies, and her tight Wall Street connections. While her issues may not be on the level of Trump and she’s clearly far more professional in her service and civic-minded in her policies, her failings are still serious.

Then there was Kaine’s response to Pence’s comments about partial-birth abortion.

For most of the debate Kaine used clear and concrete language, especially when criticizing Donald Trump. But you could hear the rhetorical shift when he began speaking about abortion.

Here is an excerpt of what he said:

“This is pretty important. Before Roe v. Wade, states could pass criminal laws to do just that, to punish women if they made the choice to terminate a pregnancy. I think you should live your moral values. But the last thing, the very last thing that government should do is have laws that would punish women who make reproductive choices.”

Do you hear the sudden shift to rationalization through abstraction?

“Terminate” is a Latin word that suggests something you do with a contract in its cool, antiseptic, abstract tone. “Pregnancy,” also Latin in origin, is pleasantly and rationally removed from the reality of what the word refers to – a developing human living inside the mother’s body in a world of intimacy, warmth, and shared fluids. When you use words like “terminate” and “pregnancy,” the actual violence of an abortion sounds so clinical and reasonable. Like the removal of a wart.

And there’s some rhetorical chicanery going on. The term “reproductive choices” is a contradiction. When there is an embryo/baby in the womb, reproduction is already an accomplished fact. Abortion has nothing to do with reproduction. Life, both human and nonhuman, is not a choice. It’s something we must seek to live with and make nuanced choices about.

Kaine should have had the guts to speak plainly.

In this context, reading Windows to the Womb by David Chamberlain is a revelation. Chamberlain shares findings of recent science that reveal how rapidly babies develop in the womb and how much evidence there is for their emotion and engagement with their environment

window-to-the-womb-image

Audible crying can be detected in the womb as early as 21 to 24 weeks gestational age. Evidence indicates babies in the womb can hear things outside of the mother’s body as early as 14 weeks. Spontaneous movements by the embryos, as opposed to reflexive movements, are happening before ten weeks.

This passage about the movements of young embryos was particularly paradigm-shifiting for me:

“Observers saw little embryos stretching in exactly the way people of other ages stretch – always at a slow speed, beginning with the head moving backward followed by trunk arching and arms lifting! One reclining ten-week fetus, legs semiflexed and body quite still for a few minutes, brought hands up and placed them behind the head as if relaxing in a hammock. Can you imagine these gestures with a sign of satisfaction following the explosive growth and mastery of new movements?”

I want to be clear. I am not saying there are not situations in which abortion is tragically justifiable.

Abortion can, like capital punishment, be the purposeful and nuanced use of power to do something that is normally abhorrent because there is a larger societal good at stake. Are there be situations where the tragic necessity of ending a baby’s life in the womb might be the relatively least awful thing to do? Yes. But the tragedy and awfulness of what must be done should not be ignored or evaded.

But absolute freedom to have an abortion at almost any phase of fetal development has become an issue where the Democrats have been seduced by the sirens of freedom and power.

In fact, both Republicans and Democrats have incoherent, contradictory positions around the question of abortion when you look at the larger framework of their thinking. Democrats have a long tradition of speaking up for the oppressed and those exploited by those with power. But when it comes to the baby in the womb who is the ultimate example of powerlessness and vulnerability, they suddenly embrace the Republican rhetoric of freedom and individual choice as absolutes.

Republicans, on other hand, passionately advocate for freedom, choice, property rights, and the power of corporations to do what prospers them without the hindrance of regulation. They do so, at their most extreme, no matter how profound and violent the impact of freedom, power, and corporate rights on the vulnerable, including the unborn, local communities, and the living things of which God has made us shepherds.

And yet the Republican Party selectively finds concern for the powerless and vulnerable when it comes to a baby in the womb and selectively wants to deny freedom and property rights to the people within which the babies exist – women.

I believe the world hungers for coherence, integrity, and goodness. This is why the choice between Trump and Clinton is so galling. This is why Pence and Kaine were also disappointing. As ambassadors for their Christian faiths they should be able to speak and act with whole truth, consistent love, and wise caution about power.

My sense is that people are ultimately hungry for a whole faith that will truly transform their hearts so that every fruit they bear is good and full of light. People are looking hard, too, for a whole faith whose followers hold onto it with integrity and coherence even when doing so puts them at odds with the powers and principalities of this world.

Why aren’t there more Christians whose lives point to the way that offers all that?

 

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