In a comment to yesterday’s post, Tammy made this confession:

Until I was desperate for HIM, He was just Savior, not Lord.

“Just Savior, not Lord.” That’s a sad but accurate and common description of Jesus for many of us. It’s also a terrible distortion of Jesus’ message as recorded for us in the Bible.

Nowhere in the Bible will you hear Jesus giving instructions on how to get into heaven or avoid hell. You won’t hear much from him in the way of instructions for salvation — at least not salvation as it’s come to be understood today.

What you will hear him talk a lot about is our need to enter and live in the kingdom of God. He understood that it’s in our best interests to follow his lead, rather than be led by our own misguided passions or (worse) some other fallen person’s agenda.

In other words, Jesus’ command was “Follow Me!” Salvation was understood to be a byproduct of that — a means to that end but not the end in itself.

This is, in my opinion, where we got off track: Presenting salvation as the goal allowed us to bypass any notion of actually doing what Jesus would have us do.

So, if you could put yourself inside the skin of a Christian who trusts Jesus as their Savior but not their Leader, what would your life be like?

So, Pat Robertson has pretty much been hoisted on the petard of his own words. Suggesting the Haitians were somehow to blame for their current state because of some pact made with the devil more than two centuries ago was, regardless of its historicity, terribly timed and insensitive. I want to quickly applaud all the relief efforts of Operation Blessing (the humanitarian organization founded by Pat back in the late 70s). Through Operation Blessing, Robertson has distributed millions of dollars’ worth of medical supplies and other aid to Haiti in just the past couple of weeks.

The reason I mention Operation Blessing is because Pat Robertson gets skewered in the media for saying foolish things, but he doesn’t get much credit for the good he has done and continues to do.

Still, it was a pretty dumb thing to say. Not that he’s the only one to say dumb things in the aftermath of disasters. Actor and activist Danny Glover said this earthquake was the result of global warming. Actually, he said it was the response (from Mother Nature?) to global leaders’ failure to respond to global warming at the recent climate summit in Copenhagen.

European liberals suggested that Hurricane Katrina was God’s judgment on American foreign policy. Islamic fundamentalists believed it was Allah’s vengeance on the Great Satan that is American decadence.

I’ll admit that it’s hard not to wonder about this kind of thing sometimes. Voodoo and occultic practices are embedded in the Haitian culture. Political corruption is a way of life. Poverty and lack of education are certainly evils in their society that few seem overly concerned to eradicate. New Orleans is certainly known more for its vice than for its virtue. American foreign policy has sometimes been meddlesome and self-serving.

And yet….

In the midst of all this I find myself wondering if we really want to start playing this game.

We should exercise caution as we sit comfortably in our easy chairs in our air-conditioned, suburban castles. If God is ready to start handing out punishments, he might start with the obvious places: New Orleans, New York, Haiti.

But how long until he really gets rolling and tears through the suburbs with a holy fire unlike any other? How long until he decides to take on the real evils: pride, arrogance, complacency, apathy? If this is judgment, maybe he’s just getting warmed up. Maybe this is just a preview of what is to come.

Personally, I do not believe that’s what is going on. But if you’re going to start with the blaming and the passing of judgment, you better be consistent. Until you’re ready to be the target of his righteous anger, you don’t want to get him started!

As we continue to consider how to respond to the tragedy in Haiti, let’s remember that Christianity is less about what and why — and more about who. Christianity is an invitation to a relationship, and relationships are personal in nature — not merely propositional. Thus, Christianity is not about what you know — it’s about who you know, who you’re becoming and who you love.

Also, please think and pray about how you can give generously to an organization like World Vision. Better yet, explore options to get involved personally. Gifts of money are great and will help the victims. Gifts of time and personal involvement will help the victims and change you forever as well.

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The more I think about it, the more I realize that most of our false assumptions about God’s character and nature arise out of our imagining what we would be like if we were God and had access to his resources. It’s no wonder that we’re scared and confused by him; we’ve been so heavily influenced by the Greek philosophers that their assumptions have become ours.

Case in point: Most people today — if they believe in God at all — believe that his highest attribute is power. He is nothing if not all-powerful. And he uses that power to dominate others. It’s really Nietzsche’s Will to Power with a thin veneer of theology.

Love was a lower virtue than power, the Greeks thought, because love implies some sort of need. Power, on the other hand, could be absolute — not lacking anything. This kind of power made the one holding it perfect and invulnerable.

Thus the Greeks imagined Zeus as the ultimate god of power. He had to break the rules every now and then — he had to be capricious — had to break his word — had to smite someone periodically just because he could. Otherwise, if he submitted to some kind of code, he would be thought to be lower than that code.

Plato came along (stick with me here) and refused to believe that the gods would be arbitrarily violent. But he still maintained this idea that they were invulnerable. They could do anything they wanted to anyone they wanted and no one was allowed to take offense at that. No one could affect them or cause them pain.

Obviously, this painted Plato in an interesting corner. To get out of his dilemma, Plato argued that the gods must be emotionless beings. In fact, if they were tied emotionally in any sense to anyone or anything that would unravel all their power.

Aristotle further developed this idea and gave it a name: Divine Impassibility. This is the belief that the gods cannot be affected by any outside source. The gods are unaware of the joy and sadness experienced by mere mortals. The gods not only do not know how we feel, they don’t care. They have their agenda, and that’s all they’re focused on.

Is this an accurate reflection of the God we find in the Bible? If so, what do we do with passages like, “Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love” (1 John 4:8)? If not, why do we wonder whether or not God might actually hear us when we talk to him and do something in response?

As a systematic theologian (almost anathema in these postmodern days), I know it’s somewhat futile to consider a taxonomy of God’s attributes. None of them is more important than another. Still, is it possible that love is greater than power?

This morning a large aftershock again shook the city of Port-au-Prince, Haiti. As we all read the reports of damage and deprivation, I encourage you to think deeply about what you know about God’s character and nature. I also challenge you to sit down with friends and family and think about what you can do to reflect that character in your own lives.

I also encourage you to contribute financially to an organization like World Vision.

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A few years back I read a controversial, little book called The Lost Message of Jesus by Steve Chalke and Alan Mann. For the most part, it was just a restating of the central argument of Dallas Willard’s The Divine Conspiracy. (For the record, I think both books are worth reading, but Willard’s is vastly superior. I found Steve and Allen’s take on the atonement to be unnecessarily inflammatory.)

There is a story Steve tells that really made me stop and think. Years later now I believe it may have shifted something fundamentally in my thinking.

Like many of us who grew up going to Sunday school, Steve had an array of teachers who tried to make the hard parts of the Bible easy to understand for kids. One difficult portion is the story found in Exodus 33 where Moses is allowed to see God’s backside — seeing something of his glory. But Moses isn’t allowed to see God’s face because, as the text says, “Anyone who sees [God's] face will die” (v. 20).

What’s up with that?

Well, Steve’s Sunday school teacher did what a lot of our Sunday school teachers did. He took a kleenex and lit a candle. Moving that tissue slowly closer to the candle’s flame, it ignited before the two even touched. God is like that! God is an all-consuming fire, and we are thin and sinful — like tissue paper. No one can get close to God without being burned up. That’s why no one can see his face and live.

Well, that’s scary. That’s the premise behind Jonathan Edwards’ famous sermon: Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God. But is it accurate? I suppose in one sense it may be. And yet….

I remember a friend whose mother was gradually losing her battle with Alzheimer’s while his father was going blind. I saw how hard this was on my friend. He looked miserable sometimes and felt helpless. I have another friend who suffers chronic pain — everything he does hurts. There is no comfortable position for him to sit or stand. I am afraid the pain will drive him mad. I know a couple who cannot have children biologically. Sometimes I catch them watching me with my kids, and I see the confusion and sadness.

These are not the most horrific sights. Certainly, none of my friends would compare their situation with those who are suffering in Haiti or Rwanda or even the ghettos of Brazil — where it’s a miracle if you live to be my age. My friends live in relative comfort compared with those whose lives are wracked with the torture of AIDS and abject poverty. And yet the pain of my friends is most acutely felt because…well…because they’re my friends. I’m emotionally attached to them. The people in other parts of the world are easier for me to ignore. All I have to do is turn off the TV.

I sometimes look at the suffering of my friends, and it reminds me of just how deep the reservoir of pain is in this world. In those moments, when I stare deep into the well of human suffering, I just want to die. I don’t want to live with the pain of what I’ve seen. Going on with the knowledge that such suffering exists in the world is difficult.

Now, imagine how God feels.

If he is who the Bible would have us believe he is, he has witnessed every act of suffering, every time innocence has ever been lost, every example of depravity. He has heard every cry, every agonized silent scream.

Perhaps it is this, rather than our sinfulness, that explains why we cannot look at God’s face and live. If God is love — it says that in the Bible, you know — then it makes sense for the one who loves most to also be the one who suffers most. I imagine all that suffering etched on his face. I also imagine that no one could bear to see a face marked with that much pain and live.

If you want to help the Haitian relief efforts, please consider giving to World Vision. An independent audit showed that 87% of their funds actually get into the hands of people they’re helping. That’s a remarkably low overhead (13%), and they have my full support.

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When something like the earthquake in Haiti (or the tsunami in Sri Lanka or Hurricane Katrina) happens, it can be disorienting. We claim to serve a God of love and power. It only makes sense for us to believe that our God could have used some of his power to stop the disaster — if he really loves us. Some are claiming that God (who is also a God of justice) uses events like these to balance the books, to pay groups of people back for the way they’ve treated him and others. I do not believe them.

Now, let me go on record here and say that I disagree with Pat Robertson’s theological take on this situation (as I disagreed with him over Katrina and 911). However, Pat and his organization are doing a lot of good — raising lots of money and sending tons of medical supplies to Haiti. And he is not alone in his views. Actor Danny Glover said just the other day that this earthquake was payback (from Mother Earth?) for the way the governments of the world responded at the recent global climate change conference in Copenhagen. I remember hearing Muslim religious leaders say that Hurricane Katrina had been a soldier for Allah. Pat’s in the crosshairs now, but he’s far from the only one with wacky ideas about the cause-and-effect of natural disasters.

My goal here is for us to work towards understanding what has happened, how it happened and how we are to live in light of such tragic events.

Something too many Christians fail to acknowledge is that there must be a distinction made between what we can call God’s causative will and God’s permissive will. Not everything that happens was caused by God, though it was clearly allowed by God.

I hear a lot of people say things like, “Well, it happened, so, clearly, it was God’s will.” Let’s be clear about what we’re saying, okay? Just because something happened, that doesn’t mean God caused it to happen or desired it. He may have simply allowed it because of some principle he sovereingly established.

For example, God doesn’t cause temptation, but he allows it. And he doesn’t always block temptation from us (like an internet filter that won’t even allow you to visit a provocative website) because God established your freedom to choose and refuses to violate that freedom.

Likewise, we know that God doesn’t want anyone to live outside of a personal relationship with him, but billions of people do. We could ask, “If God wants everyone saved, why doesn’t he just save everyone?” Well, as Chuck Swindoll has written, “He predetermined the plan of salvation, knowing that many would refuse it. The plan is set. Fixed. Unchanged and unchanging. But some prefer darkness to light, so they willfully refuse to turn to Christ for salvation.”

And — get this — God allows them to do this. I do not believe he causes them to do this, though.

This is a knotty problem, and people smarter than I have spent years trying to untangle it. I don’t mean to give you the impression that this is a simple matter. Still, our faith seeks understanding — so, we grope around for answers.

If you want to help the Haitian relief efforts, you might want to consider World Vision. They were already in place in Haiti helping people, and they have my full support.

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I guess my biggest problem with the theology we hear about from guys like Pat Robertson is the notion that everything has a rational explanation. I used to believe that, but I’m less certain now. The Bible itself affirms that for now we only know in part — we can only see things dimly, like in a fogged-up mirror. None of us knows completely why things like the earthquake in Haiti happen. Sure, you can draw a direct line from a drunk driver to a fatal car accident. But connecting the dots between occult practices and this disaster is more than a little presumptuous.

In fact, to use the words of Jewish philosopher Abraham Heschel, “Religion begins with wonder and mystery.” I fear that the modern church’s attempt to dispel all the mystery from Christianity has robbed us of a way of dealing with evil. Whether it is “natural evil” like an earthquake or “personal evil” like genocide in the Sudan — saying, “Well, it must be God’s will” just doesn’t cut it. That is an insufficient answer for a suffering world.

The world (and the events of the world) is a mystery, a question, not an answer. Perhaps even a rhetorical question at that. Any attempt to answer a rhetorical question is really an exercise in both redundancy and futility. The mystery of a Creative Genius rather than the aloof concept of power — the God of mystery rather than the Master Mind who stands apart — in other words, the God of the Incarnation, the God who became the Suffering Servant, the God in relation to Whom the here-and-now world derives meaning — this is the only idea adequate.

Our admission that we do not completely understand this mystery is more honest and compelling than outlining the abstract concept of a Grand Designer. Our willingness to emulate this God by entering into the suffering of others with a firm commitment and resolve to roll up our sleeves and respond to evil with goodness (with holiness, even) — this is the righteous response.

May it be ours.

If you want to help the Haitian relief efforts, you might want to consider World Vision. They were already in place in Haiti helping people, and they have my full support.

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It’s almost impossible to get my mind around the death and destruction left in the wake of the earthquake. Red Cross officials say that at least 50,000 are dead in Port-au-Prince — a number that will continue to rise over the coming days, weeks and months.

In light of disasters like this, it is our natural inclination to look around for someone to blame. In a society that still has traces of a biblical heritage, the most natural response is to blame God. This happened in the aftermath of 9/11. It happened after Hurricane Katrina, too, so it’s not surprising that people are now asking if God had something to do with this.

Oddly, it seems some Christians are more than eager to place the blame squarely on the shoulders of God. Defending his sovereignty (what is known as a theodicy) has become all the rage among some of our Calvinist brethren. But I don’t buy it. I do not believe that God was “up there” and said, “Well, this is going to kill a bunch of people — probably consigning most of them to hell — but they weren’t elect anyway, so here goes.”

That doesn’t sound like the God I read about in the Bible. I know the passages in Job. I know what the psalmist said. I even believe those ideas are divinely inspired. But I can’t square the idea of a God who arbitrarily kills tens of thousands (many of whom are innocent children — original sin notwithstanding) with the biblical portrait of a compassionate, merciful God who is determined to set things right-side up.

There are others — Pat Robertson most notably — who want to blame the victims themselves. Pat claims that this is all the result of a pact the Haitian people made with the devil years ago. He also said Katrina was the pay-back for all the vice associated with the city of New Orleans, and he said 9/11 God’s way of punishing the United States for tolerating homosexuality among other things.

Somehow, that still makes God responsible for all this, and I just don’t buy it.

What about you? Do you think God’s to blame? If not, then who? Whom shall we blame? Is that even an appropriate question?

Just to start this whole conversation the right way, I want to push all of you towards World Vision’s website where you can donate to the ongoing relief efforts to aid the people of Haiti. Some of you know that my family sponsors three little girls through World Vision — each of them has the same birthday as one of our daughters. Anabel (my 10-year-old) shares a birthday with a little girl who lives in Port-au-Prince. We’re waiting to hear if she’s okay, and if we hear anything I’ll let you know. This morning as the girls were being paid their allowances, Anabel asked if she could send hers to help, so I’m challenging you to match her $5.00. Leave a comment if you choose to take me up on the challenge.

Like you, I’ve been thinking a lot about the devastation and chaos Haitians are experiencing now. It reminds me of the events of 2005 — and the events of September 11, 2001. I had personal friends — some of you reading this blog — lost everything they own in Katrina. I had other friends who were in NYC and watched the towers fall. Between those two events was the massive destruction that came in the form of a tsunami in the country of Sri Lanka. How quickly we forget disasters that don’t touch our own, eh?

I remember hearing an editorial on NPR after Katrina that said something like, “As the debate over Intelligent Design continues, Katrina makes me think: If there’s a Designer, he’s got a lot to answer for.”

Around then I received an email from a good friend. He wrote:

Hey John — I’d like to hear more of your thoughts about God’s sovereignty…. I’m struggling to understand how to keep the world functioning if God is completely in control but chooses not to exercise that control in all situation. It seems incongruent to say that God is gracious and then observe all the devastation in Louisiana and Mississippi. It seems incongruent to say that God is our Protector, when I got a phone call yesterday that an acquaintance from our early married years was struck and killed by a train yesteerday, leaving a wife and 14, 12, and 10 year old daughters.

Why does it seem so strange to me that someone in either of these situations could have the response of Job, “Though He slay me, yet will I praise Him”? Is it strange because I value this life too much? Is it strange because it seems weird to love and surrender your life to Someone who could take that love and give you something like death in response?

In all my growing up years and in all my adult years, no one has offered a real discussion about what the Bible says about all this, and I don’t know where to look for answers. Based on how I was raised, the answer to the dilemma is to just swallow down what I don’t know and accept it (some questions just don’t have answers in this life); not accepting this truism about God’s character could create a fissure in my faith that might result in me having major doubts, and doubts lead to falling away, and that’s really, really bad.

I could use some help in trying to put knowledge to my belief. God is good, all the time; all the time, God is good. I believe that, but it’s very challenging to know why in the face of these situations. Call it blind faith or emotional belief-ism, but I want to have some rationale for the truth that seems untrue right now.

How would you respond to my friend?

If you’ve read this blog for very long, it won’t be a surprise to hear that I’m a big fan of C.S. Lewis’ magnificent book, The Weight of Glory. Clive Staples knew a thing or two about enjoying life, reading all those Nordic myths, taking long, leisurely strolls through the garden and listening to those Wagnerian symphonies. He smoked a pipe and was known to hoist a pint or two. He liked art and theatre, but he knew that our longings for beauty were signposts pointing us to a fulfillment that differed not only in degree but in kind.

These moments of beauty, these flashes of pleasure and yearning, he said, “are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard.”

This weekend, I’m taking my wife to New York, where we will smell some flowers and hear some tunes. We’re hoping to discover some clues about what we’re missing on earth. We’re determined not to divide the world into “natural” and “supernatural” (which is really just code for “spiritual” and “unspiritual”). Instead, we’ll try to combine the two. We’ll walk through Central Park and eat at Bond 45. We’ll catch a musical (or two). We’ll laugh with some old cronies and have brunch with at least one new friend. We’ve planned a trip to the Ground Zero Museum. We’ll poke our heads into some old cathedrals and pray and hold hands and talk about architecture and prayer and trees and God.

We haven’t always been able to take trips like this. It wasn’t too long ago when we couldn’t afford a babysitter for a date night.

But God has been good.

Here’s what I’m trying to get my head around: God owns everything, right? Christians agree on that. He owns everything, and he distributes it all as he sees fit. He wants us to share. He wants us to cultivate generosity of spirit. He wants us to use what he’s given us to help alleviate poverty and suffering. But he decides who has a little (been there) and who has a lot (there now for the first time in a long time).

If he has chosen to give me more than I need right now, why should I feel guilty about that?

I’m going to use it wisely. I’m not going to live an outrageously extravagant lifestyle (though, as I mentioned already, extravagance is extremely subjective). Our family gives money away to help others. We’re going to spend some money on ourselves, and we’re going to feel good about it.

Alright…we’re going to feel okay about it.

The smell of a flower is a lovely thing, but it’s not as lovely as the flower itself. The sights and sounds and smells and tastes we’ll experience this weekend will be amazing. I have no doubt about that. But they won’t be as amazing as the thing they’ll point us to. They’ll point us beyond themselves to the God who loves to give good things to his children and the creative community he provides in a measure now but promises to provide in an ultimate sense one day — maybe soon (“Maranatha”).

So, what will you do this weekend? What will be your way of smelling the flowers?

I grew up in a religious tradition that wasn’t big on celebration or pleasure. We sang a lot of songs about how life wasn’t fair, and how we should just grit our teeth and bear it until Jesus comes back. There will be plenty of time for pleasure and celebration in heaven. There’s too much work to be done in the meantime, so suck it up, quit complaining and remember how hard Jesus had it when he was here on earth being crucified for your sins.

People who had nice things and took nice vacations were viewed with a little bit of suspicion, and all stories of enjoyable experiences were to be prefaced with the phrase, “I felt a little guilty about it…”.

We weren’t the first to do this. Mystics have fled into deserts and caves in a huff of self-denial for centuries. I know Christians who, in a show of solidarity for those who suffer persecution, refuse to enjoy simple creature comforts like good coffee or hair care products. After all, there are Christians in Chinese prisons who don’t have these things. Lots of people resign themselves to bland existence, some even actively pursue suffering in the hopes of having it all turned inside-out in the life to come. Perhaps those who enjoyed life here and now may not have it as good in eternity. Maybe their mansions won’t be as nice or as big as those who willingly went without. Maybe there’s only so much pleasure allotted to each of us, and if you use it all up on this side of eternity, you’ll have to do without once you get to the other side. Could this life be one big exercise in delayed gratification?

But I like big food. And I like to travel to fun and exotic locations. I like to look at the changing leaves or a craggy coastline. I like to hear soulful music. I like a fine Cabernet. I like a good, hoppy beer. I like walking around museums. I like nosing through used bookstores.

Extravagance, as we all know, is relative. I realize that my lifestyle is extravagant compared to people in other parts of the world. But there’s got to be a middle ground, right? I do not believe we earn ourselves brownie points for living austere, ascetic lifestyles. But I don’t believe we should we give in to hedonism, either.

I want to enjoy life, and I think I’ve got some decent theological underpinnings for going with that desire. I think.

How about you? How do you know when you’ve gone too far in one direction or the other? And what are some things you really enjoy in a healthy way?