Rachel Held Evans's Blog, page 26
January 30, 2014
Comings and Goings (Winter/Spring 2014)
I've recently updated my schedule for Winter/Spring 2014. I'll update the schedule as more details come in. Let me know if I'll see you at any of these events!
Monday, February 3, 2014 - Wednesday, February 5, 2014
Midwinter Lecture Series at Austin Theological Seminary
Austin, TX
2 Lectures, Q&A
More info (MidWinter Lecture Series)
Thursday, February 6, 2014 - Friday, February 7, 2014
Greenville College
Greenville, IL
Vespers 9:30pm Thursday; Chapel 9:30am Friday
More info (www.greenville.edu)
Monday, February 17, 2014
Wright Lecture Series at Morningside College
Sioux City, IA
Evening Lecture 7:00pm
More info (www.morningside.edu)
Friday, February 21, 2014 - Saturday, February 22, 2014
Lake Junaluska Conference & Retreat Center
Lake Junaluska, NC
Signature Series 10:00am to 3:00pm
More info (http://www.lakejunaluska.com/signature-series/)
Monday, February 24, 2014
Buechner Institute at King College
Bristol, TN
2 Keynote Presentations
More info (http://buechnerinstitute.org/)
Tuesday, March 4, 2014
Hardin Simmons University
Abilene, TX
Chapel, Q&A
More info (www.hsutx.edu)
Friday, March 7, 2014
C3 Conference
St George’s Episcopal Church
Nashville, TN
More info (http://www.stgeorgesinstitute.org/C3)
Tuesday, March 11, 2014
Sienna Heights University
Adrian, MI
2 classes; 90 minute lecture
More info (www.siennaheights.edu)
Wednesday, March 19, 2014
Eastern Mennonite University
Harrisonburg, VA
Chapel; Q&A
More info (www.emu.edu)
Wednesday, March 26, 2014 - Thursday, March 27, 2014
Wingate College
Wingate, NC
More info (www.wingate.edu)
Friday, March 28, 2014
South Main Baptist
Houston, TX
Presentation; Q&A
More info (www.smbc.org)
Friday April 4, 2014
Change the World Conference
Ginghamsburg Church
Tipp City, OH
2 keynotes; book signing; Q&A
More info (www.ginhamsburg.org)
Thursday, April 10, 2014 - Saturday, April 12, 2014
Calvin College Festival of Faith and Writing
Grand Rapids, MI
2 keynotes; Q&A
More info (http://festival.calvin.edu/)
Wednesday, April 23 - Friday, April 25, 2014
Q Conference Nashville
Saturday, April 26, 2014 - Sunday, April 27, 2014
Seattle First Baptist Church
Seattle, WA
Lecture; Q&A; Sunday morning service
More info (www.seattlefirstbaptist.org)
Thursday, May 8, 2014
Hope College
Holland, MI
More info (www.hope.edu)
To book Rachel at your next event, contact:
Jim Chaffee
Chaffee Management
Phone: (615) 300.9699
January 28, 2014
Privilege and The Pill
In my relentless pursuit of scaring off as many readers as possible this year, I’m blogging today about contraception.
I try not to put too much pressure on myself to speak up as the token “Christian feminist” on issues like these, but after reading multiple blog posts and articles this week from Christian men about women and contraception, I decided to add my two cents as a pro-life woman of faith who supports affordable access to birth control for women. Just to offer another perspective.
(This is obviously an issue in which people of strong faith disagree, so let’s treat one another with respect as we engage, shall we?)
The topic has been in the news lately for a lot of reasons—from the anniversary of Roe vs. Wade last week, to Hobby Lobby’s challenge of the HHS mandate last year. Mike Huckabee made the news days ago for tackling the topic in a speech to the Republican Nation Committee, where he suggested that women who expect health insurance to cover birth control pills as it would any other prescription believe the Democrat-manufactured lie that they are “helpless without Uncle Sugar coming in and providing for them a prescription each month for birth control because they cannot control their libido or their reproductive system without the help of government.”
His comments may strike some as too outrageous to engage, but I think they reflect widely-held (thought not typically as crudely-stated) sentiments regarding birth control, sentiments I’ve seen expressed more and more often by fellow Christians in recent years. And I think they reflect a problem of privilege that plagues conversations around contraception, infusing them with misinformation and unhelpful assumptions.
Birth control should be an important topic to those of us who consider ourselves pro-life because the most effective way to curb the abortion rate in this country is to make birth control more affordable and accessible.
Abortions happen because of unwanted pregnancies, and often, unwanted pregnancies happen because of lack of contraception. Most women who choose to have abortions do so because they feel they cannot manage the financial burden of carrying out the pregnancy and raising another child. So understanding the economic and health concerns of women of childbearing age is critical to actually affecting change when it comes to abortion instead of just talking about it.
….Which brings me to the first problem of privilege around the contraception conversation: economic privilege.
Economic PrivilegeThe most effective forms of birth control are also the most expensive, which is why a lot of families welcomed the Affordable Care Act’s requirement that private health insurance plans begin to provide birth control without co-pays or deductibles.
But Huckabee and those who oppose this measure argue that unlike other prescriptions, prescriptions for birth control are luxuries that women should be able to pay for on their own, without help from their insurance companies.
But birth control costs an average of $600-$1,000 a year—and sometimes quite a bit more, depending on the type. Now, $1,000 a year might not be much for someone like Mike Huckabee, but for a lot of families in this economy, working minimum-wage jobs that barely cover the rent, it’s a steep enough price to sometimes put them in the position of having to choose between paying for contraception and paying the water bill.
And a woman who cannot afford birth control is more likely to consider herself unable to afford a pregnancy, which makes terminating that pregnancy seem like the best, most affordable option. And the cycle continues.
So those who oppose coverage of birth control based on their religious or pro-life convictions must take into consideration the fact that lack of coverage may actually lead to more abortions. And we must remember that shrugging off birth control as something people should be able to easily pay for on their own betrays some of our own economic privilege in this conversation.
(For an interesting global perspective on contraception, be sure to check out Rachel Marie Stone’s post on the topic, where she cites this powerful statistic from USAID: “Family planning could prevent up to 30 percent of the more than 287,000 maternal deaths that occur every year, by enabling women to delay their first pregnancy and space later pregnancies at the safest intervals. If all babies were born three years apart, the lives of 1.6 million children under the age of five would be saved each year.”)
Male PrivilegeI realize that phrase makes the hair stand up on some people’s arms. But bear with me for a moment.
When male politicians or pastors speak about women and contraception, they sometimes make generalizations that reflect a lack of experience.
For example, it is wrong to assume that the only reason a woman would be on the pill is because she has an "out-of-control libido" (what does that even mean?) or because she wants to sleep around without consequence. The fact is, married women are much more likely to be on the pill than unmarried women, and most say they are simply trying to space out their pregnancies or wait until they are more financially stable to start a family.
Furthermore, a man cannot possibly understand what it is like to suffer from endometriosis—an incredibly painful chronic condition that affects more than five million women in the U.S. and in some cases can be treated with birth control pills. (To learn more about this condition, check out R.A. Sovilla’s candid and informative guest post on the topic.)
A man cannot know what it is like to experience debilitating menstrual cramps once a month, or to be told by a doctor that, because of some other health condition, pregnancy is inadvisable—other common reasons women are prescribed oral contraception. He cannot fully understand what giving birth does to the body and why spacing out children may be so important to a mother.
Men don’t know what it means to be raped and to face the prospect of pregnancy as a result, a situation in which the morning after pill can prevent a pregnancy without causing an abortion. And while this is thankfully changing, the fact remains that women are the most likely to be forced out of work because of pregnancy, and to carry the heaviest load (literally!) in balancing work and family, so it is hard for men to fully comprehend what pregnancy means to a woman.
I would never go so far as to say that men should be forbidden from discussing contraception simply because they are men. But I think that if more women were given the opportunity to weigh in, the discussion would at least be a bit more nuanced and informed. (I have a feeling we’d hear a lot less about “Uncle Sugar,” “legitimate rape,” and these mysterious female powers that can “shut that whole thing down” if necessary.)
Most women in the U.S. have used a form of oral contraception at some point in their lives. It might be worth asking them why.
Misinformation About The PillFinally, a note about misinformation regarding birth control and abortion.
When I first got married, I never heard a word from my evangelical community against birth control pills. Not a word. It was just assumed that oral contraception was an acceptable form of family planning and in no way related to abortion. But about five years into my marriage, I started hearing rumors from other women, which they had heard from pastors and pro-life organizations, about how birth control pills cause abortions. I talked with more and more friends who were convinced oral contraception was immoral. Many of them stopped using birth control altogether. But these rumors were based on misinformation.
With most oral contraception, a woman takes a daily pill, usually a combination of estrogen and progestin. The hormones prevent ovulation and thicken a woman’s cervical mucus, blocking sperm from fertilizing an egg. (Of course, hypothetically, there’s the very remote chance that fertilization will somehow manage to occur. In this case the zygote will probably fail to implant on the uterine wall. But, as Libby Anne points out here, this happens naturally in women who are not on the pill far more often than it happens to women who are on the pill.)
Another popular rumor is that the so-called “morning after pill,” or Plan B, causes abortion. Christianity Today recently refuted this argument, citing multiple scientific studies that confirm Plan B does not inhibit implantation but instead blocks fertilization.
(Rabbit trail: The fact that a woman’s body naturally rejects hundreds of fertilized eggs in her lifetime raises some questions in my mind about where we draw the line regarding the personhood of a zygote. Do we count all those “natural abortions” as deaths? Did those zygotes have souls? Will I meet them in heaven? Honestly, the more I learn about the reproductive system, the harder it becomes for me to adamantly insist that I know for sure the exact moment when life begins. And it’s even harder for me to insist that everyone else agree.)
As we discuss contraception, Christians especially must be committed to telling the truth and getting our facts straight, or else we risk losing credibility in the conversation and leading the faithful astray.
ConclusionIn conclusion, let’s talk about contraception. But let’s talk about it accurately and with our privilege in check. Let’s avoid making generalizations about the millions of women and families who say they would benefit from affordable, accessible contraception. And when we are blessed with a podium or pulpit, let’s speak about our fellow human beings with love and care and without sloppy attempts to speak for them.
….Oh, and let’s agree to never, EVER use the phrase “Uncle Sugar” again.
January 27, 2014
Bootstraps and Safety Nets: Some thoughts on generational poverty in America
You all are in for a treat today because my brilliant, compassionate, and wise little sister, Amanda Opelt, has contributed a guest post about generational poverty in America that is both powerful and practical. The post materialized after a long phone conversation between us in the wake of my controversial post about Dave Ramsey and poverty, at which point I realized my sister knew way more about this topic than I did.
Amanda has spent most of her adult life working in the non-profit sector—first in India, then in inner-city Nashville, and now in Boone, North Carolina as a field support coordinator for Samaritan’s Purse. But more than that, Amanda embodies more than anyone I know the principle of loving one’s neighbor. No matter where she finds herself, she is present and loving to the people around her, whether it’s an orphan suffering from TB in a slum in Hyderabad, India, or an elderly neighbor down the street from her home in Boone. When it comes to following Jesus, she’s the real deal. She's faithful in the little things.
I hope you learn as much for this post as I did!
***
Immediately after college, I packed my bags and moved to India because at age 22 I thought I "had a heart" for the poor.
I figured India was probably a pretty good place to find poor people, and I was right. The poverty in that foreign land is pervasive, and in a country where corruption and ideological biases cultivate very little opportunity for upward mobility, it's not hard to see the orphans, beggars, and leprosy patients around you as one-dimensional victims of the sinful systems around them. It is a fair assessment in some ways, and I must say, loving the people of India came easy. Though their stories were gut-wrenching, my heart felt no complication in its compulsion to serve them.
But after 6 months, I realized that my educational emphasis in philosophy made the relief and development work to which I aspired demanding on my skill sets. I packed my bags again and came home to my moderately privileged lifestyle the US, confused about my calling and certain I was destined to live a life languishing apathetically in my middle-class routine
A job search led me to a position as a ministry-based social worker for an organization that provided job skills, mentoring, childcare and Bible study for low income women in the inner city of Nashville.
I'll admit I was skeptical at first. I didn't know the first thing about urban poverty. Like many Americans, I felt a certain sense of indifference towards poor in America, and there was maybe, buried deep in my subconscious, even a mild contempt. I had this sneaking suspicion that the poor in my own country couldn't possibly be like the poor I had encountered in India. This was the birthplace of the American Dream, a place where anyone who had a will to try and a strong work ethic could improve his or her lot in life.
Someone once told me that animal shelters have an easier time fundraising than homeless shelters, and sadly, I’m not surprised. Animals aren't too complicated, and they are one-dimensional in their in-culpability. There is a more complex emotional reaction to the homeless in America. There is the compulsion to wonder, "why can't they just get a job?!" When one is born in the Land of Opportunity, it is easy to assume that the birthright of every American is to have and equal opportunity and a decent shot at life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
What is opportunity? What does it mean to be poor?
Most middle class Americans are familiar with circumstantial poverty—one bad investment or the loss of a job leads to a period of financial difficulty. What I learned in the inner city is that to be caught in the cycle of generational poverty is to experience a bankruptcy of spirit, a deficit of hope. It is poverty of education, community, safety, health, and spiritual guidance.
I met a woman whose first memories were of being locked up in a closet while her mother, a prostitute, "entertained" her guests. I met a woman who, as a little girl, watched a cross burn in her front yard and endured teachers at her new school shouting racial slurs at her because the community around her was angry about integration. I cried with women who remember in excruciatingly vivid detail, sexual and physical abuse suffered at the hands of relatives and friends, abuse that would go on for years unstopped. These were children, many with developmental and learning disabilities due to instability during their earliest years, that were pushed through failing schools with burned out teachers and deteriorating textbooks and facilities.
Abuse, racism, corruption; we all experience these hardships to a varying degree. But for the low-income women I worked with, their lives were a perpetual house of cards. They had no resources, no safety nets to keep them from going under. One step forward, two steps back. A broken down car means you can't get to work, and missing even one day of work means you can’t make rent that month. A sick child means you can get fired from a job that keeps you at "part time" status because they don't want to pay you for sick days and holidays. Finally getting out of the welfare system means losing any childcare assistance, and childcare costs often break the bank. I knew a woman who wouldn't break up with her abusive boyfriend because he was her only ride to work. I'm not saying there is no such thing as bad decisions, but we all make bad decisions and only some of us have to face the full force of their consequences.
When we hear the term “safety net,” most of us think of social safety nets like food stamps or medicaid. When I think of safety nets in my own life, I think of parents who were willing to pitch in a bit to help me pay rent my first month in my own place. I think of a successful elementary school and several teachers who really cared and invested some extra time to make sure I didn't fail algebra. I think of a safe and secure community where I could run and play outside. I think of a caring doctor who helped when I was going through a difficult mental and physical health challenge (and health insurance that enabled me to pay him).
This month marks the 50th anniversary of President Johnson's Declaration of the War on Poverty. While we have come a long way since Johnson made that historic speech, in 2011, the U.S Bureau of Labor conducted a study and found that 46.2 million Americans (roughly 15% of the population) lived at or below the poverty line. Many of those individuals are children (Poverty defined is a family of four making $23,021). And for anyone who ever wondered "why can't they just get a job?" you'll be interested to know that 10.4 million of these Americans are considered the working poor. In fact, the working poor made up 7 % of the work force in the US. Most of these were workers stuck in part time jobs, and women were more likely to be among the working poor, as were blacks and Hispanics (www.bls.gov).
I did the math and found that someone working full time at the current minimum wage (assuming they had paid sick days) would only make $15,080 a year. This was the painful reality of so many of my students in the inner city of Nashville. Bottom line: it's just not as simple as "stop being lazy" or "just get a job."
I wish I could provide some clear-cut resolution, a silver bullet solution that churches across America could implement to serve the needy. A few women I really respect have showed me that the only way to cultivate effective change in the lives of those in need is to become, yourself, a sort of safety net for them. The resource, the friend, the positive voice, the math tutor, the spiritual mentor they never had. It's complicated, and it can be messy. But Jesus never seemed to mind a mess, and no one he ever healed or scolded or cried for or embraced had a simple story.
The complexity of the need of the human heart is something only God can know. But perhaps the first step is to begin the process of tweaking your understanding, to realize that the playing field is not always level and not everyone was born with bootstraps. Before you judge the circumstances of those around you, consider the humbling reality of a sovereign God who "sends poverty and wealth; He humbles and He exalts. He raises the poor from the dust and lifts the needy from the ash heap; he seats them with princes and has them inherit a throne of honor" (1 Samuel 2:7-8).
***
To learn more about the organization Amanda served in Nashville, check out the Christian Women’s Job Corps of Middle Tennessee. CWJC empowers individuals to break harmful cycles caused by poverty by providing education, mentoring and resources. Their vision is “to create a community where all individuals can experience transformation of body, mind, heart, and spirit.”
Oh, and for fun, here's a picture of the Held sisters circa 1988:
January 20, 2014
The Bible was ‘clear’…
In 1982:
“The Bible clearly teaches, starting in the tenth chapter of Genesis and going all the way through, that God has put differences among people on the earth to keep the earth divided.” - Bob Jones III, defending Bob Jones University’s policy banning interracial dating/marriage. The policy was changed in 2000.
In 1823:
"The right of holding slaves is clearly established by the Holy Scriptures, both by precept and example." - Rev. Richard Furman, first president of the South Carolina State Baptist Convention.
In the 16th Century:
“People gave ear to an upstart astrologer who strove to show that the earth revolves, not the heavens or the firmament, the sun and the moon. This fool…wishes to reverse the entire science of astronomy; but sacred Scripture tells us that Joshua commanded the sun to stand still, and not the earth.” - Martin Luther in "Table Talk" on a heliocentric solar system.
In 1637:
“Sometimes the Scripture declareth women and children must perish with their parents…We have sufficient light from the Word of God for our proceedings.” - Captain John Underhill, defending the Puritan decimation of the Pequot tribe.
In 1846:
“The evidence that there were both slaves and masters of slaves in churches founded and directed by the apostles, cannot be got rid of without resorting to methods of interpretation that will get rid of everything." - Rev. Leonard Bacon, in defense of American slavery. (Christian ministers wrote nearly half of all defenses of slavery, often citing Scripture to make their case.)
In 1869:
“The Bible is the revealed will of God, and it declares the God-given sphere of woman. The Bible is, then, our authority for saying woman must content herself with this sphere…Who demand the ballot for woman? They are not the lovers of God, nor are they believers in Christ, as a class. There may be exceptions, but the majority prefer an infidel’s cheer to the favor of God and the love of the Christian community.” - Rev. Justin Dewey Fulton in his treatise against women’s suffrage.
In 1960:
“Wherever we have the races mixed up in large numbers, we have trouble….These religious liberals are the worst infidels in many ways in the country; and some of them are filling pulpits down South. They do not believe the Bible any longer; so it does not do any good to quote it to them. They have gone over to modernism, and they are leading the white people astray at the same time; and they are leading colored Christians astray. But every good, substantial, Bible-believing, intelligent orthodox Christian can read what the Word of God and know that what is happening in the South now is not of God.” - Bob Jones Sr., in his treatise against integration entitled, 'Is Segregation Scriptural?'
***
Of course, for every Christian who appealed to Scripture to oppose abolition, integration, women’s suffrage, and the acceptance of a heliocentric solar system, there were Christians who appealed to Scripture to support those things too.
But these quotes should serve as a humbling reminder that rhetorical claims to the Bible’s clarity on a subject do not automatically make it so. One need not discount the inspiration and authority of Scripture to hold one’s interpretations of Scripture with an open hand.
It’s easy to look down our noses at the Christians who have come before us and discount them as unenlightened and uninformed. But to accept Galileo’s thesis, our 17th century forbearers would have had to reject 1600 years of traditional Christian interpretations of passages like Psalm 93:1, Ecclesiastes 1:5, and Joshua 10:12-14. And to accept the arguments of the abolitionist, our great-great-grandparents had to see beyond the “plain meaning” of proof texts like Ephesians 6:1-5, Colossians 3:18-25; 4:1, and I Timothy 6:1-2 and instead be compelled by the general sweep of Scripture toward justice and freedom . (I wrote more about this in my post, “Is abolition biblical?”)
We like to characterize the people in the quotes above as having used Scripture to their own advantage. But I find it both frightening and humbling to note that, often, the way we make the distinction between those who loved Scripture and those who used Scripture is hindsight.
So before you share that MLK quote on Facebook today, ask yourself: If your pastor told you that integration was "unbiblical" and MLK was a dangerous, anti-Christian communist, (which is what plenty of white pastors in the South did), which side would you have chosen? Would you have defied your own religious community to stand with MLK?
I wish I knew for sure what I would have done...but I don't. I'm humbled, and a little frightened, by how often true justice is only recognized as such in hindsight
***
See also:
"Everyone's a biblical literalist until you bring up gluttony"
"Loving the Bible for what it is, not what I want it to be"
January 19, 2014
Sunday Superlatives 1/19/13
Best Viral Video:
Jason Brown Free Skate 2014 US Figure Skating Competition
Best Photo...Like, Ever:
Courtney Perry with “Phyllis Tickle and Nadia Bolz-Weber switch bodies”
Best Quote:
Cheryl Strayed via Explore:
“The most important thing for aspiring writers is for them to give themselves permission to be brave on the page, to write in the presence of fear, to go to those places that you think you can’t write – really that’s exactly what you need to write.”
Best Review:
Amy Lepine Peterson with “Beware the Frozen Heart”
“Like Elsa, I spent many years more interested in self-control than in passion — or, to borrow some church words, more interested in self-righteousness than in love. Tragically, neither the church nor culture helped me out much: both emphasized goodness over grace for girls.”
Best Point:
Mike Skinner with “Read the Bible Like a Texan, Y’all”
“In recent months I’ve repeatedly found myself giving the following advice: to read the Bible faithfully, read it like a Texan. Why, you ask, would anyone ever want to do that? Because a deficiency in the English language, combined with an already-present tendency towards individualism, has created an unhealthy distortion of the Christian faith. Luckily, Texans have already solved this problem with one of our favorite words: y’all.”
Best Response:
Sarah Bessey with “In which I disagree with Candace Bure about ‘biblical marriage’”
“We think that we only have two options when it comes to our marriages: 1) Women submit to men, like in ancient secular patriarchal culture or, 2) Nobody submits to anyone and we’re out for Number One, like in our modern individualist secular culture. But instead here is the third way: Submit to one another, mutually, as in the Kingdom of God. This is a Kingdom of Love. Anyone who wants to be first must be last, and the greatest is the servant of all, said our Jesus (Mark 10:44). In the upside down Kingdom ushered in by Jesus, the least is the most honoured and the one who gives everything gains it all. The marriage relationship isn’t exempt from the words of Jesus – and the teachings of the Church – about how we are to interact with one another and love one another.”
Best Reporting:
Ruth Graham at the Boston Globe with “Can the evangelical church embrace gay couples?”
“But in the past several years, a new current has arisen in conservative evangelical thought: A small but significant number of theologians, psychologists, and other conservative Christians are beginning to develop moral arguments that it’s possible to affirm same-sex relationships not in spite of orthodox theology, but within it. In books, academic journals, magazines, blog posts, speeches, conferences, and campus clubs, they are steadily building a case that there is a place in the traditional evangelical church for sexually active gay people in committed, monogamous relationships. They argue that the Bible, read properly, doesn’t condemn such relationships at all—and neither should committed Christians.”
Best Advice:
Bruce Reyes-Chow with “10 Tips For Being a Good Ally”
“A good ally knows when and where their voice needs to be heard — or not heard. There will always be times when an ally must speak to his/her own family or community; but we must be careful that the ally voice does not become the default voice for the struggle when the realities of any struggle are best shared by those who experience the struggle in the first place. Allies must both speak for those who cannot speak for themselves while simultaneously working to create space where those voices can be heard in person.”
Wisest:
Lois Tverberg with “Mr. Spock’s God: The Mistake of Western Theology”
“The more you see God’s heart, the more you see the character of Christ from the very first pages of Genesis. Our dual images of God in the Testaments start to merge together when we see that the suffering of Christ began in his Father’s heart at the dawn of creation, when we see God our Father bearing the cross for our sins. It’s only when we focus the two images into one that we gain spiritual “depth perception” and begin to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of God.”
Truest:
John Blase with “Talk But Sound”
“The trick is to talk about the spiritual/ without sounding so divine.”
Most Encouraging:
Bill and Melinda Gates at the Wall Street Journal with “Three Myths on the World’s Poor”
“One common complaint about foreign aid is that some of it gets wasted on corruption—and of course, some of it does. But the horror stories you hear—where aid just helps a dictator build new palaces—mostly come from a time when aid was designed to win allies for the Cold War rather than to improve people's lives. The problem today is much smaller. Small-scale corruption, like a government official who puts in for phony travel expenses, is an inefficiency that amounts to a tax on aid. We should try to reduce it, but we can't eliminate it, any more than we can eliminate waste from every government program—or from every business, for that matter. Suppose small-scale corruption amounts to a 2% tax on the cost of saving a life. We should try to cut that. But if we can't, should we stop trying to save those lives?”
Most Thought-Provoking (nominated by Jonathan Storment)
Richard Beck at Joshua Graves’ blog with “Waking Up to Death, Part 3”
“Jesus asks us to become a “nobody” in the eyes of the world. In our own eyes. But because of our death-infected neurosis–the shamed-based fear of being ordinary–we can’t accept Jesus’s offer. We don’t want to take up the cross. It’s too embarrassing. We don’t want to be a servant. No one will applaud or like us on Facebook. And so we set out to gain the world but end up losing our soul.”
Most Helpful:
Gail Wallace at The Junia Project with “Defusing the 1 Timothy 2:12”
“Doctrine should not be built on a hapax legomenon (a word that occurs only once in an author’s writings or a text). When a word is only used once it is difficult, if not impossible, to infer the writer’s meaning, since there are no other examples of word usage to compare.”
Most Challenging:
Osheta Moore with “Oh Honey! Come here, I think your privilege is showing”
“Because you are white you need to reject the allure of avoiding the topic altogether to write about sexy husbands, deep calls from Jesus, oppressed women in third world countries, patriarchy in the western church, or tasty recipes. I don’t have that luxury. I engage with the world and my words as a black woman. I live with the reality that if you and I knew each other during the Jim Crow era, my son could be tortured and murdered for telling your daughter she’s beautiful. If you ignore this, then I’m sorry….but Honey, I think your privilege is showing.”
Most Powerful:
Krista Dalton with “The Privilege of a Subway Swipe”
“That moment I came face to face with my own privilege. On the one hand, as a young white girl, I’ve never had to worry that I wouldn’t be helped by a stranger at the subway. But at that moment, I realized I had never even been aware of the disparity studded in a subway swipe.”
Most Practical:
Olga Khazan at The Atlantic with “The Easiest Possible Way to Increase Female Speakers at Conferences”
Most Honest (nominated by April Fiet)
Nate Pyle with “The Disgrace of Infertility”
“Around church, having kids is talked about as if it is like scheduling a tune-up for your car. “Isn’t it time the two of you start having kids?” is one of the most painful questions a couple dealing with infertility can hear. Because that’s exactly how they feel! It is time for them to start having kids. They’ve been hoping and praying and wanting and waiting for a long time for God to respond to their request. So yes, it is time, but no, kids don’t show up on a timetable. “
Now on the shelves…
Young, Restless, No Longer Reformed by Austin Fischer
Here’s my blurb: “With this book, Austin Fischer brings fresh insights to a very old conversation with a perspective that is at times piercing, at times deeply personal, and always thoughtful and rooted in scripture. He invites readers to wrestle along with him with some tough questions--questions that, no matter where your theological journey takes you, are worth asking with this kind of humility and care.” - Rachel Held Evans, author of A Year of Biblical Womanhood and Evolving in Monkey Town
On the blog…
Most Popular Post:
Unstoppable Grace: Thoughts on the Gay Christian Network Conference
Most Popular Comment:
In response to the above post, Keith wrote:
“As a straight, white, southern, 57 year old, male, Baptist pastor who grew up believing the issue of homosexuality was a clear cut, right and wrong issue I find myself now questioning these long held beliefs. I am just becoming aware of your writing through one of my sons and it is through his sharing this post that I read this article. It is extremely thought provoking. I find myself wishing more of my brothers and sisters could be open minded and respectful of others, even though they might not agree with their perspectives. I wish there were more venues where honest dialogue could occur to enhance understanding even if we still disagree with one another. After all, Jesus did not say that it was by winning others over to our viewpoint that would show we are His disciples but by our love for one another. Thank you, Rachel, for giving me more information to continue my search for the heart of God on this issue.”
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So, what caught your eye online this week? What’s happening on your blog?
January 16, 2014
Ask an Open Theist (Greg Boyd)…Response
After I introduced our guest last week, you posed more than 200 questions about his views on open theism. This is quite the hot topic!
Greg is an internationally recognized theologian, preacher, teacher, apologist and author, who has authored or co-authored more than 18 books and numerous academic articles (among them Letters From a Skeptic, The Myth of a Christian Nation, and Repenting of Religion). Greg is the co-founder of Woodland Hills Church in St. Paul, Minnesota where he serves as Senior Pastor, speaking to thousands each week. He has been featured in The New York Times, The Charlie Rose Show, CNN, National Public Radio, the BBC and numerous other television and radio venues. Greg blogs at ReKnew.org.
I interviewed Greg last year about his most recent book, Benefit of the Doubt, but today I want to invite you to engage Greg around one of his most interesting (and controversial) beliefs—that of “open theism.”
For those unfamiliar with the term, here’s how Greg describes Open Theism:
If I had to define “Open Theism” in one sentence, I would say that it as the view that the future is partly comprised of possibilities and is therefore known by God as partly comprised of possibilities. (By the way, I prefer to refer to this view as “the open view of the future,” since the most distinctive aspect of Open Theism is not its understanding of the nature of God, but its understanding of the nature of the future).
To expound a bit on this definition, the open view of the future holds that God chose to create a cosmos that is populated with free agents – at least humans and angels (though some hold that there is a degree of freedom, however small, in all sentient beings). To have free will means that one has the ability to transition several possible courses of action into one actual course of action. This is precisely why Open Theists hold that the future is partly comprised of possibilities. While God can decide to pre-settle whatever aspects of the future he wishes, to the degree that he has given agents freedom, God has chosen to leave the future open, as a domain of possibilities, for agents to resolve with their free choices. This view obviously conflicts with the understanding of the future that has been espoused by classical theologians, for the traditional view is that God foreknows from all eternity the future exclusively as a domain of exhaustively definite facts.
Greg responded to your questions both thoroughly and personably and I hope you learn as much from this conversation as I did.
Enjoy!
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From Greg: Let me start by thanking your readers for their interest in open theism and for asking such excellent questions. I apologize up front if I “over-answered” some questions and/or if my responses are longer than was expected. I tried to be succinct, but such good questions require comparable answers. What can I say? In any case, here are my responses to seven excellent questions.
From Ben: Years ago I wrote my master's thesis trying to disprove open theism. (Apparently I didn't do a very good job, because my own views have shifted in the years since.) But I remember well the bitterness and vitriol that sometimes characterized the debate between open theists and classical theists (e.g. classical theists trying to have open theists kicked out of ETS). It seems like this kind of posture has only become more common among Christians of differing views today. So my question is: how did the backlash against open theism shape you, what did you learn from it, and what would you say to those who would dismiss you (and others) as heretics for your views? Thanks.
My first encounter with the “backlash” you mentioned took place in the mid-90’s when John Piper launched a public crusade to get me fired from Bethel University and to have my church kicked out of the Baptist General Conference on the grounds that I was a “heretic.” There were also attempts by some to force publishers to stop publishing my books and for Christians to boycott bookstores that sold them. Hundreds of pastors signed a petition to get me fired, with only one of them taking the time to ask me what I actually believed and why I believed it.
Being the sinner that I am, my initial response was anger mixed with a little fear. But it wasn’t too long before the Lord got my attention and helped me realize that this response was neither Christ-like nor healthy for me. I strongly sensed that the Lord gave me an assignment I was to carry out for a year to help me through this period: Every single day, I was to pray for the well-being of those who were leading this crusade! Initially, this was really hard, but I soon found that this exercise freed me from the cancer of bitterness and even empowered me to genuinely love my “enemy.” This deepened my conviction about the importance of obeying Jesus’ command to love, serve and pray for those who persecute us (Mt 5:44-45; Lk 6:27-35). I encourage anyone who is harboring anger toward someone to engage in this daily exercise.
What would I say to those who dismiss me as a “heretic” for holding to the open view? First, I’d encourage them to make sure they understand the view before they dismiss it. I’ve found that most who make this charge do so out of fear. They think the open view means that God can’t promise to bring good out of the tragedies of their life, and this prospect terrorizes them. But this is based on a caricature of the open view. I’ve found that once I can show people why the open view doesn’t entail this, their fear subsides and, while they may still not agree with the view, they are much less inclined to dismiss it as “heresy.”
I’d also point out that the open view of the future was espoused in the 5th century by a man named Calcidius and has been widely debated from the 17th century up to today. Yet, until the last several decades, no one ever slapped the label of “heresy” on people who espoused this view. I’d also point out that the orthodox Church has always embraced a wide variety of views on a number of topics, including the question of the nature and content of God’s foreknowledge. As Frank Viola and I hope to show in a forthcoming essay, the label of “heresy” was only applied to people who not only denied, but activity worked against the foundational doctrines of orthodoxy, viz. the doctrines espoused by the Nicene and Apostle’s creed. These creeds say nothing about the nature and content of God’s foreknowledge.
From Rachel: Are there passages of Scripture that seem to support an open view of the future? Which do you find most helpful to this discussion?
Greg: In my opinion, the Bible is saturated with passages that reflect the open view of the future. Rather than talk about a handful of verses, I think it might be more helpful to talk about seven themes that reflect the open view.
1) One of most powerful reflections of the open view of the future is found in passages that report God speaking, and even thinking, about the future in terms of what may or may not be. For example, Exodus 13:17 says the Lord didn’t want to lead the Israelites in a way where they might face opponents because he thought “if they face war, they might change their minds and return to Egypt.” So too, Yahweh told Moses to be prepared to demonstrate three miracles to the elders of the Israelites to convince them that Yahweh had sent him. He told him that if they don’t believe the first, they may believe the second, and if they don’t believe the second, they may believe the third (Ex. 3:18-4:8; cf. Ezek 12:3; 20:5-22; Jer 26:2-3; Matt 26:39). We’ve got to wonder how Yahweh can think and speak in terms of “if,” “might” and “may” if he’s eternally certain of everything that will transpire?
2) Closely related to this, the Lord frequently speaks to people in conditional terms. For example, he told Zedekiah that if he surrendered, the city and his family would be spared, but if he didn’t, both would be destroyed (Jer 38:17-18, 20-23; cf. Jer 7:5-7; 22:4-5; I Kg 9:4-6). Doesn’t this language imply that both options were genuinely open to Zedekiah and thus that the future is, to some degree, a domain of possibilities?
3) There are 39 passages that explicitly state that God changed his mind in response to a new development after he’d already announced his plan to go in a certain direction (e.g. Ex 32:14; Jer. 18:1-12; 1 Chr. 21:15). So too, there are over 200 places in the biblical narrative that reflects a change in God’s plan without explicitly stating it. The question is, how can God change his mind in response to new developments if his mind is eternally certain of all that shall come to pass?
4) God sometimes regrets the way some of his own decisions turn out (e.g. Gen 6:6; I Sam.15:10, 35). We have to wonder, how could God genuinely regret the way his decisions turn out if he was eternally certain that his decisions would turn out the way they did? It seems to me that God can only regret the way things turn out if he had hoped it would have turned out differently. And he could only have hoped things would have turned out differently if God knew it was at least possible that things would have turned out that way and possible they would turn out differently.
5) God is sometimes surprised by the way things unfold. For example, he expected Israel to be fruitful, but they were not (Isa 5:1-5). So too, he thought the Israelites would be faithful to him in response to his loving kindness, but they were not (Jer.3:6-7, 19-20). This doesn’t mean that God was completely caught off guard by the way things transpire, for if God is omniscient, he knows all reality exhaustively. He must therefore know and be prepared for all possibilities. But when events take place that God knew were improbable, it makes sense to say he experiences something like surprise. But we have to wonder, how is it possible for God to ever be surprised by an event he was eternally certain would take place?
6) The Lord sometimes seeks for things he doesn’t find. For example, he told Ezekiel that he “sought for anyone…who repair the wall…but I found no one” (Ez. 22:30-31). We have to wonder, how could God look for someone he was eternally certain was not there?
7) There are dozens of passages that report God testing people to find out what they will do (e.g. Gen 22:12; Ex 16:14; Deut 8:2; 13:1-3). But if God is eternally certain what people will do, how can he be said to test them for this reason? In fact, if God is eternally certain what people will do, isn’t testing them for any reason rather pointless?
There are a host of other passages that indicate a partially open future, but these 7 themes capture the most important ones. If you want a more exhaustive list and a fuller discuss, see my God of the Possible and/or Satan and the Problem of Evil.
From Christina: How do you interpret the Bible verses that are commonly cited to support the idea of a foreknown (or even foreordained) future (e.g. Proverbs 16:9)
Greg: I’ve found that every passage that people appeal to prove the classical view of divine foreknowledge is capable of being translated or interpreted in different ways and/or it fails to support all that these people try to make it support. To begin with the commonly cited passage that you mentioned (Prov 16:9), Calvinists argue that this passage supports their view that God determines everything because they interpret it as teaching that God determines the direction people take regardless of the plans that people come up with in their minds. Now, this is one possible interpretation – though notice, even this interpretation doesn’t fully support Calvinism, for it still grants humans the freedom to come up with their own plans! In any case, there are other interpretations of this passage that are, in my opinion, not only possible, but more probable.
For example, when the author says the Lord “directs” or “establishes” (kuwn) our steps, why should we assume that this means God determines the direction we take? There are several words in Hebrew that can be used to communicate causation or control, but kuwn isn’t one of them. This word rather has the connotation of someone helping another. I’m thus inclined to interpret this passage as teaching that, while God allows us to come up with plans on our own, we have no hope of carrying them out unless we trust God to direct and/or establish (confirm, strength) our steps as we carry them out.
At the same time, it’s important to always remember that Proverbs are frequently hyperbolic. Things are stated in extreme and unqualified ways to emphasize their importance. I thus think we are reading too much into the passage if we conclude that no one can ever succeed at carrying out any plans unless they are trusting God. Were that the case, the plans of evil people could never succeed, which obviously is not the case. There are other possible ways of interpreting this passage as well, but I trust I’ve said enough so you get my point.
A good example of a passage that is frequently appealed to as a way of supporting the classical view of foreknowledge but that falls short is Jesus’ prediction that Peter would deny him three times (Mt 26:36). In my view, its quite a leap to go from a prediction about how an individual will respond to a question over the next several hours to the conclusion that God knew every decision of every person who would ever exist before the creation of the world. For God to know how Peter would respond and then communicate this to Jesus, God would only need to know that the character Peter had freely acquired throughout his life had become solidified in a cowardly direction to the point that it was certain he would respond the way he did under these circumstances. Moreover, if God needed to intervene to influence three people to notice Peter and ask this question, that would obviously not be difficult for him to do – though, since Peter had been a very public figure, we have no reason to assume God needed to intervene even this much.
Finally, it’s important to ask: Why did Jesus make this prediction? This wasn’t some parlor trick Jesus was engaging it. There was a divine purpose for it. The answer, I submit, can be found in Jesus’ discussion with Peter after the resurrection in the Gospel of John (Jn 21:15-18). Whereas Peter had denied him three times, now Jesus had Peter tell him he loved him three times. Jesus then offered Peter another prediction. Whereas his earlier prediction was that Peter would deny him, Jesus now informed him that he would glorify God by dying the same way he had died (vs.19).
In this light, I think it’s clear why Jesus gave his first prediction. Throughout Jesus’ ministry Peter was the disciple who most clearly displayed the typical first century Jewish belief in a militant messiah. He was confident that this miracle-working messiah would soon use his power to overthrow the Romans and liberate Israel. This is why Peter always objected so strongly whenever Jesus talked about his need to suffer (e.g. Mt 16: 21-23). The fact that Peter later denied Jesus reveals that Peter was actually a coward whose false bravado was completely dependent on his false conception of the messiah. If Peter was to ever play the leadership role God wanted him to play in the kingdom community, Peter’s cowardly character and false view of the messiah had to be exposed and replaced with a Christ-like character and true view of the messiah. The fact that Peter’s three denials were replaced with three affirmations of love and followed by another prediction of Peter’s Christ-like death indicates that the lesson had been learned. Peter was now ready to be a Christ-like leader in the kingdom community.
I share all this to show how misguided it is to read the classical view of divine foreknowledge into Peter’s denial. Jesus’ prediction was about setting Peter up to learn an important lesson, not to make a point about what God knows about the future. I would argue along similar lines for all those passages that are used to support this view. You can find out my replies to all these verses in God of the Possible, Satan and the Problem of Evil or reknew.org (the Q & A section).
From Sonja: So if I'm understanding open theism right, it sounds like it's similar to--if not the same as--the idea that "omniscience" in God doesn't mean "knows exactly what will happen" but instead means "knows every single permutation of what could happen.” Is that far off?
Greg. No, it’s not off at all! You’re actually stating a philosophical truth that I believe is extremely important. The next few paragraphs might be a little heavy for some readers because I have to use a little bit of philosophical jargon. But its Sonja’s fault because she asked such an important question! I encourage you to hang in there because I believe the point I’ll be making hits on one of the most fundamental mistakes made in the church tradition regarding the nature of omniscience and offers one of the strongest philosophical arguments for the open view:
Philosophers and theologians have often defined “divine omniscience” as “God’s knowledge of the truth value of all meaningful propositions.” I completely agree with this. Unfortunately, they typically assumed that propositions about what “will” and “will not” occur exhaust the field of meaningful propositions about the future. They thus concluded that God eternal knows all that will and will not take place and that there is nothing else for God to know.
This is a mistake, however, because propositions about what “might and might not” take place are also meaningful, and God must therefore know the truth value of these. Moreover, the opposite of “might” is “will not,” and the opposite of “might not” is “will.” So, if a “might and might not” proposition is true, then the corresponding propositions about what “will” and “will not” take place are both false.
For example, if its true that “Greg might and might not buy a blue Honda in 2016,” then its false that “Greg will (certainly) buy a blue Honda in 2016” and false that “Greg will (certainly) not buy a blue Honda in 2016.” So too, if it ever becomes true that “Greg will (certainly) buy a blue Honda in 2016” or true that “Greg will (certainly) not buy a blue Honda in 2016,” then it will be false that “Greg might and might not buy a blue Honda in 2016.” And since God knows the truth value of all propositions, God would know precisely when it is true that I “might and might not” buy this car and when it becomes true that I either “will” or “will not.” God thus faces a partly open future.
The irony is that, while open theists are constantly accused of limiting God’s knowledge, if my analysis is correct, it was the classical tradition that limited God’s knowledge! They overlooked an entire class of propositions the truth value of which an omniscient God must know. And it was right under their noses, for as I just demonstrated, the truth value of “might and might not” propositions is logically entailed by the true value of “will” and “will not” propositions. Hence, if God knows the truth value of “will” and “will not,” he must also know the truth value of “might and might not” propositions.
Of course, God could have created the world such that everything was predetermined and thus all “might and might not” propositions were rendered false. This is precisely what Calvinism teaches. My conviction, however, is that God decided to create a much more interesting and exciting world that was populated by free agents. And insofar as God has given free will to agents, his knowledge of what their future activity can only be expressed in propositions about what “might and might not” come to pass.
And if you now have a headache, blame it on Sonja! ;-)
Stephen: How do you feel that open theism works in relation to the concept of the "Sovereignty" of God? If God has limited himself can he truly "sovereign" over everything? This is the most common area of contention I hear regarding open theism and I struggle with it myself. Thanks! Also (because you asked last time I saw you): I totally agree with your take on 'Gravity.'
I find that people often assume that “sovereignty” means “control.” So if you deny that God controls everything, they assume you’re denying God is “sovereign.” My question is: why attribute this kind of “sovereignty” to God? While this is the kind of sovereignty power-hungry people have always grasped after, it's not the kind of “sovereignty” we admire. In fact, most understand that leaders who lead by trying to control everyone instead of trusting their character and wisdom to win people over are leaders who lack character and wisdom – which is precisely why they try to control others. For my two cents, I think it is insulting to attribute this kind of “sovereignty” to God.
More importantly, I believe we need answer all our questions about God by centering our thinking on Jesus Christ, and even more specifically, on Jesus Christ crucified. (For my arguments to this effect, check out the last several weeks of blogs at Reknew.org). Paul says that the crucified Christ is both “the wisdom and power of God” (I Cor 1:18, 24). So the cross is what God’s power looks like! The cross is what it looks like when God flexes his omnipotent bicep! It means God’s power is synonymous with his love, for John tells us that God is love (1 Jn 4:8) while defining love by pointing us to the cross (I Jn 3:16, cf. Rom.5:8).
In this light, it seems to me that that a cross-centered concept of “sovereignty” is the exact opposite the control based concept. On the cross, God doesn’t control people. Out of his unfathomable love, he rather allows others to control him, to the point of crucifying him. On the cross, God reveals that he wisely rules by displaying the power of self-sacrificial love. It’s this self-giving love that draws people to himself (Jn 12:31). And its this love that has already, in principle, caused evil to self-implode (Col.2:14-15) and that will eventually redeem all creation.
Our task is to trust this kind of power. Fallen creatures that we are, our inclination is to instead trust the power of the sword to control others. This is why so few Christians take seriously Jesus’ instruction to swear off all violence and to instead love and do good to our enemies. Unfortunately, Jesus says we are to love like this “so that you may be called children of your Father in heaven" (Mt. 5:45). For Jesus, this is the precondition for being considered a child of the father. (And remember, when Jesus talks about “enemies,” his Jewish audience is thinking primarily about the Romans who oppress, abuse and sometimes kill innocent people). Precisely because our Father loves and rules like this, we who are his children are to reflect this same character and to trust this same kind of love as we lay down our swords. In other words, we are to submit to this kind of “sovereignty.”
From Karl: In open theism, does the possibility exist that God's ultimate purposes for creation might be thwarted? Why or why not?
God promises his ultimate purpose for creation and humanity will not be thwarted. So, even if I couldn’t explain how that is true, I have warrant for simply trusting that it is true. At the same time, I don’t think it’s terribly difficult to see how it could be true. Consider two things.
First, we can think of free will as a degree of “say so” that God gives agents to affect what comes to pass. By definition, every degree of “say so” that God gives away is a degree of “say so” that God himself no longer possesses. To this degree, God can’t guarantee that he will get all that he wants. Still, if God is all wise – or even just not stupid – he would not give away more “say so” than he retains. If we think of “say so” as a share in a corporation, I’m saying that a non-stupid God would not give away more shares than he owns, for this could result in a corporate takeover. So, while a God who gives away “say so” can no longer guarantee that he will get everything that he wants, he can guarantee that his over-all purposes for the corporation – the creation -- will be achieved.
Second, we must remember that, while the God who gives away “say so” no longer possesses unlimited “say so” over what comes to pass, he nevertheless still possesses unlimited intelligence. This means that God can anticipate each and every one of a virtually infinite number of possibilities as though each and every one was an absolute certainty. See, we humans lose anticipatory power when we face various possibilities rather than a single certainty only because we have a finite amount of intelligence. The more possibilities we have to anticipate, the thinner we have to spread our intelligence to cover them. And when people project this limitation onto God, they assume that a God who faced possibilities rather than a single certainty has much less control over things than the God who faces a single certainty. In his book God’s Lesser Glory, Bruce Ware went so far as to describe the open view of God as a God who “hand wringing deity” who “can do nothing more than hope for the best.” This tells us something about Bruce’s limited view of God, but nothing true about the open view.
The truth is that a God of unlimited intelligence would loses no providential advantage anticipating possibilities rather than a single certainty. To put it otherwise, only a God of limited intelligence would gain a providential advantage knowing a single certain rather than anticipating possibilities.
The God of unlimited intelligence can anticipate each possibility as effectively as if it was an absolute certainty. This is why open theists can say as confidently as any Arminian or Calvinist that God has a plan to bring good out of evil that he’s been preparing from the foundation of the world. It's just that open theists are so confident in God’s intelligence that we don’t think God would have to foreknow an event as a certainty to guarantee this. The God of unlimited intelligence has a virtually infinite amount of contingency plans that will be enacted just in case things unfold a certain way, and each and every one of these contingency plans are just as perfect as they’d have been if God had foreknown as a certainty that things would unfolded this particular way.
This is why I claim that open theists don’t think God knows less than the God of classical theism; he knows more! (And yes, this is related to my earlier point about how classical theism overlooked God’s knowledge of what “might and might not” come to pass). While critics say we deny God knows the future, the truth is we believe God over-knows the future.
In any event, once we understand the unlimited intelligence of God, its apparent that there is no more need to wonder how the God of open theism can promise to achieve his over all purposes for creation than there is to wonder this about the classical view of God.
From Joshua: As someone who has been impacted quite a bit by your work, most importantly, The Myth of a Christian Nation, I have to say, I'm a big fan. As for my question however, as an Open Theist myself, I have to ask: How do you reconcile your beliefs in Open Theism, with catholic Christianity? For the past fifteen hundred years, the majority of the Church Universal has taught and believed that God is omniscient. How do you feel Open Theism can be properly reconciled with orthodox, traditional Christianity?
Thanks for the kind words Joshua! I’ll say four things in response to your question.
First, open theists do not deny that God is omniscient. I grant that when the movement was first getting off the ground, certain open theists talked in ways that gave this impression – claiming, for example, that God “limited” his knowledge or that he “knows all that is knowable.” These were just misguided ways of speaking, for these speakers didn’t realize that they were presupposing the classical view of the future as a domain of settled facts and then denying God knew it. I think most public open theists now understand that the issue has never been about the scope or perfection of God’s knowledge. It’s rather always been about the nature of the future that God perfectly knows. While the classical view says that the future is exhaustively settled, we claim that its partly open. But we both affirm that, whatever the nature of the future is, God knows it exhaustively.
Second, it's important to know that there has always been a lot of debate among theologians about the nature of the future and God’s knowledge of it. Moreover, there have always been new proposals put forward in this on-going debate to rectify certain philosophical conundrums. For example, in the 17th century Molina put forth the proposal that God foreknew counterfactuals as a way to rectify the conundrum of how people can be free and yet God in complete control (a false conundrum if you ask me). So, while the particular view of the future that we espouse is somewhat new, what’s not at all new is that this is a new proposal to rectify a philosophical conundrum pertaining to the nature of the future and of God’s knowledge of it..
Third, open theism is not as novel as most seem to think. Over the last three decades my friend Tom Luckashow has been doing intensive research on this, and he has discovered widespread discussions surrounding open theism going back to 16th century. You can view a copy of a chart he made here: Reknew.org/2013/03/open-theism-timeline/. Plus, as I’ve already mentioned, a monk named Calcidius espoused this view in the 5th century and was not branded a heretic for doing so.
Finally, a foundational principle of Protestantism – and it arguably expresses a conviction that was latent in the earlier Catholic tradition as well -- has been that “the church is always reformed and always reforming” (ecclesia semper reformans, semper reformanda). Protestants have always believed the Spirit is continually working to reveal news things to the Church, whether they be about biblical truths that have been over looked or about new applications of old truths. Every distinctive aspect of all the variations within the Protestant tradition began as a novelty. So, even to the degree that the open view is novel, it is a novelty that stands in a long tradition of novelties. And for this reason, the question of whether this view is correct or not shouldn’t be argued on the basis of conformity with the church tradition but on the basis of Scripture, reason and experience.
Thanks again for your interest in open theism and for all the excellent questions. It’s been fun!
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Thanks, Greg, for making all our brains simultaneously explode.
Check out the other interviews in our “Ask a…” series here.
January 15, 2014
Unstoppable Grace: Thoughts on the Gay Christian Network Conference
We have a saying in Christianity that “you will know them by their fruit.” Drawn from Jesus’ teachings in Matthew 7, the expression means that the true test of faithfulness to Christ is not in simply believing or saying the right things, but in displaying the fruit of the spirit—love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, and self-control.
“A good tree cannot bear bad fruit,” said Jesus, “and a bad tree cannot bear good fruit.”
I spent this past weekend with Christians bearing very good fruit.
I went to the Gay Christian Network’s “Live It Out” conference in Chicago a little unsure of what to expect, a little perplexed that someone like me would be invited, and a little freaked out about what to say as a straight woman to a group of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender Christians—many of whom have been severely wounded by the Church.
But within a few hours of arriving, it became apparent to me that I had little to teach these brothers and sisters and everything to learn from them.
I speak at dozens of Christian conferences in a given year, and I can say without hesitation that I’ve never attended a Christian conference so energized by the Spirit, so devoid of empty showmanship or preoccupation with image, so grounded in love and abounding in grace.
As one attendee put it, “This is an unapologetically Christian conference.”
Indeed. There was communion, confession, powerful worship, and fellowship. There was deep concern for the Word. (The breakout sessions about the Bible and same sex relationships were by far the most popular, with Matthew Vines’ session so packed there wasn’t even standing room!) There was lots of hugging and praying and tears…and argyle.
I spoke with attendees from a multitude of denominational backgrounds—Catholic, Southern Baptist, Nazarene, Churches of Christ, Pentecostal, Mennonite, you name it. I met gay Christians who felt compelled by Scripture and tradition to commit their lives to celibacy (Side B) and gay Christians who felt fee in Christ to pursue same-sex relationships (Side A). And I heard story after story of getting kicked out of church, of being disowned by parents, of losing friends, of moving from despair to hope.
“I think we connect with your work because you write so much about Jesus,” a man who came all the way from Australia said. “For a lot of us, everything about religion has been taken away. All we have left is Jesus. So we love to talk about Jesus.”
The event wasn’t perfect, of course. As with any conference, there were tensions and disagreements, a few awkward moments and misunderstandings. But these were handled with such profound patience and grace I couldn’t believe what I was witnessing. Many of these folks have every right to walk around with permanent chips on their shoulders, but over and over again I encountered nothing but grace….big, wide, unstoppable, unexplainable grace.
I suppose this is what happens when a bunch of Christians get together an actually tell one another the truth.
About our pain.
About our sin.
About our fear.
About our questions.
About our sexuality.
About ourselves.
Telling the truth has a liberating effect on everyone else in the room, and this was evident in the final night of the conference when we listened to one another’s stories:
From the young woman who had been called vicious names since grade school and who told us that this was the first time in her life she felt safe among other Christians.
From the brave mom who, choking down tears, told us that before this weekend she had been ashamed of her son, afraid to tell her Christian friends and family that he was gay. Now she had the courage to tell the truth and love him better.
From the man who, after twenty years of trying desperately to force himself to speak differently, dress differently, move his hands differently, and love differently decided to finally tell himself the truth.
From the conservative pastor who used to be an apologist against homosexuality, but whose friendship with a lesbian woman slowly, over many years, changed his mind. “Her life was her greatest apologetic,” he said, before openly weeping. “I was wrong. And when I hear about the pain many of you have experienced, I know that I was the cause of some of that pain. I am so sorry. I am so, so sorry. Please forgive me.”
From the man in the wheelchair who, with words he struggled to form, declared, “I’m black. I’m disabled. I’m gay. And I live in Mississippi. What was God thinking?!”
From the lesbian couple whose conservative church chose to break with its denomination rather than deny them membership.
From the young man who said that when he finally worked up the courage to come out to his parents “it didn’t go as well as I hoped,” and in the painful silence that followed, far too many understood.
From the denominational leader whose peers wanted him to “see what these people are so angry about" and who choked up as he said, “I’m going to go back and tell them you’re not angry. You weren’t anything like I expected you to be. I’m going to go back and tell them you’ve been hurt and it’s our denomination that needs to change, not you.”
From the parents who said they learned, too late, to love their gay son “just because he breathes.”
It was church if I’ve ever experienced it. And as I wiped tears from my eyes, I became as convinced as ever that if the Church continues to marginalize and stigmatize LGBT Christians, then the Church as a whole will suffer. It will miss out on all this energy, all this wisdom, all this truth, all this fruit. It will miss out on these beautiful people, these beautiful families, these beautiful relationships.
I was in a conversation with someone the other day who said he wondered if perhaps LGBT Christians have a special role to play in teaching the Church how to engage thoughtfully around issues about sexuality.
I think he’s wrong. After this conference, I’m convinced LGBT Christians have a special role to play in teaching the Church what it means to be Christian.
After all, movements of the spirit have never started with the “right” people. The gospel has never made as much sense among the powerful and religious as it makes among the marginalized. As I said in my keynote, what makes the gospel offensive isn’t who it keeps out but who it lets in.
…And who it calls to lead.
I realize that standing with and affirming LGBT Christians—both those who identify as Side A and those who identify as Side B (though, for reasons I can explain later, I'm personally inclined toward A)— puts some of my work in jeopardy. I realize that this post will be used to discredit me and that I may lose readers and opportunities as a result. But here I stand—not to lead, but to follow; not as a mere “ally,” but as a sister; not because I have it all figured out or have all my questions answered, but because I know in my heart it’s the right thing to do.
I’m so grateful to GCN for welcoming me into your family last weekend. You told the truth. You extended grace. You let me ask dumb questions. You loved me well.
And as long as you are part of the Church, I think her future is bright.
***
If you want to support GCN financially, contribute here. They need all the support and love we can give them.
January 13, 2014
When evangelicals support Phil Robertson…
After “Duck Dynasty” star Phil Robertson made crude and controversial statements to GQ Magazine regarding homosexuality and race and was subsequently (and temporarily) suspended from A&E, it was disheartening to see so many evangelicals publicly defend him. On TV, Facebook, magazines and newspapers, Christians rallied to “stand with Phil,” sometimes hailing him as a sort of unofficial spokesperson for evangelical Christianity with little regard to the message this might send to the black people and gay people who were the targets of his remarks.
Rather than writing about this myself, I thought I’d open the floor to some Christian brothers and sisters who can explain what evangelical support of Phil Robertson communicates to them.
Brittney Cooper
"When Evangelicals support Phil Robertson, it tells me that they don’t think combatting homophobia and racism are significant issues for the Church or in building the Kingdom of God. As an African American Christian who grew up in Robertson’s neck of the woods with aunts and uncles who absolutely experienced racial discrimination in the 1950s and 60s, I find his comments about happy, singing Black people to be insensitive and unconscionable. His quip about “pre-entitlement, pre-welfare” Blacks is the worst kind of race-baiting and racial stereotyping. Yet, when (white) Evangelicals support him, I know it is because his invocation of entitlements and welfare resonates with many of their political views, which unfairly tie welfare programs to black bodies. I wonder how we worship the same God, when Phil Robertson’s God seems to hate gay folks and be perfectly fine with the subjugation of Black folks (and women). When Evangelicals support him and his offensive views, they make it clear that they don’t support me, a fellow Christian. They make me wonder if their Christianity is only for straight, middle-class, white people?"
Dr. Brittney Cooper is Assistant Professor of Women’s and Gender Studies and Africana Studies at Rutgers University. A scholar of Black women's intellectual history, Black feminist thought, and race and gender in popular culture, Dr. Cooper writes extensively about both historic and contemporary iterations of Black feminist theorizing. s co-founder along with Dr. Susana Morris of the Crunk Feminist Collective, a feminist of color scholar-activist group that runs a highly successful blog. Find Brittney at brittneycooper.com.
“When evangelicals support Phil Robertson, it tells me that they want me gone, that they'll do whatever it takes to scare me away. They will ‘stand with Phil’ in comparing me to alcoholics and terrorists and those who have sex with animals. They will whip social media into a storm I cannot outrun. When I tell them it's upsetting, they say I'm intolerant; when Phil's employer suspends him, they incite a mob overnight. And I am just so exhausted of this. I am tired of being the most galvanizing symbol for evangelical rage. I am tired of being told that my pain does not matter.”
Benjamin Moberg blogs at RegisteredRunaway.com.
"When evangelicals support Phil Robertson, it tells me that they have no interest in loving me or much of the universal Church. It tells me they have more interest in following the fashions of a segment of American Christian culture than in following Jesus’ command to love one another as he loves us.
And it tells me that, not only has their myopia caused them to have missed the point of Jesus entirely, it’s also regularly causing them to miss real crises in the Church. As evangelicals cried, “Persecution!” on behalf of a man who was not denied his freedom of speech but merely his freedom from reproach for freely speaking hatred, Syrian families were being murdered, Honduran children were falling ill from unclean water, and American citizens were being denied equality.
When evangelicals support Phil Robertson, they tell each of us—not just the gay us, the black us; but the fearful us, the harmed us—“I do not, will not love you as Jesus does.”
Tamára is a collector of fine tattoos, an imbiber of cheap wine, and a singer of eclectic music. She works out her thoughts on life and faith at Tamara Out Loud, occasionally with adult language, frequently with attempted humor, and hopefully with God’s blessing. Editor of What a Woman is Worth and copywriter for Feed The Children, she holds a BA in English and her five kids, when they let her; she almost never holds her tongue.
Osheta Moore
"When I finally tuned into what I call the Duck Dynasty Drama—the uproar and turmoil caused by Phil Roberson’s comments that African-Americans in Pre-Civil Rights Era Louisiana were somehow “happy” or “godlly,” I pushed my laptop away and cried. I felt the chasm forged by racism stretch wider. I felt the Shalom of God, his unity on earth as it is in heaven, slip away as believers took sides, rallied together in disgust, and used “rights” and “amendments” as justification for ignoring the suffering of their African-American sisters and brothers in Christ.
When evangelicals support Phil Roberston and his comments, it tells me we’ve grown to love our positions more than people. As an African American woman, it tells me that the Church is not interested in Calvary-like reconciliation; we’d rather stop short at empty words of “I’m with the blacks” and insensitive generalizations like “they were godly; they were happy” and uneducated assumptions that, because you have not heard, seen, or have been party to mistreatment, it doesn’t exist.
While I can prove Phil Roberston’s assessment wrong by opening up any book on the Jim Crow Era and the Civil Right Movement, I don’t think that would create space for Shalom. Shalom happens we take up our cross and follow Jesus. Shalom happens when we crucify our love for our rights and listen to the ones who are hurt by our misuse of those “rights”. Shalom happens when we take Paul’s words in Galatians to heart and authentically attempt to fulfill the law of Christ by, “carry (ing) each other's burdens.”
One of my favorite moments in Christian fiction is found in Neta Jackson’s The Yada Yada Sisters Get Down. This book is the second in a series about a diverse group of women who meet to pray weekly. Jackson faces the elephants in the room of whites and blacks having deep, meaningful relationships very quickly, especially in book two when one of the White main character’s husband, Denny, is mistaken by, MaDea, an aging African American woman who is suffering from dementia, as one of the men who brutally lynched her brother nearly 70 years ago. She flies into a rage when she sees him at her daughter’s beauty shop, throwing a brush at him and screaming hysterically. Denny is affected by the pain she suffers even after all these years, so much so that he can’t shake that experience, so he prays, talks about racism with a trusted black friend, acknowledges his own privilege as a white man, and finally accepts that as a follower of Jesus his calling is to seek Shalom, harmony and wholeness for MaDea. He goes to the beauty shop, kneels before her and asks for forgiveness. He accepts responsibility for the actions of her brother’s death at the hands of racist men—even though he had no active connections with white supremacists. Even though he knew and loved black people. Even though he never told a racist joke and respects Dr. Martin Luther King. I think there’s something holy and Christ-like about his action. I think this is the response evangelicals should have towards Phil Robertson’s words. Not indignant calls for “free speech” but impassioned movement towards reconciliation by first seeking to understand why those words hurt and then asking for forgiveness even though they may be innocent of the sin of racism. It looks a lot like Jesus taking on the sin of the world although he himself was sinless.”
Osheta Moore is an Assembly-of-God-Methodist-Southern-Baptist-a-teryn turned Anabaptist living in Boston. She has four children, two boys (Tyson and TJ), one girl (Trinity) and a church plant (New City Covenant Church). She writes on her blog, "Shalom in City" and at the top of her bucket list is to dance in a flash mob—all the better if it's to Michael Jackson's, "Thriller".
"When evangelicals support Phil Robertson, it tells me less about their attitudes toward sexual minorities than their ongoing interactions with me do. Robertson's comments about gay men were undoubtedly inaccurate with regard to the reality of my experience, but throughout the commotion that followed his interview, it became apparent he had come to symbolize vastly different things in the eyes of different people who supported him: cheeky defiance, or resolute faithfulness, or endearing political incorrectness, or something else. Though such controversies ostensibly offer me a simple test for identifying who is for me or against me based on who takes which side, the complexity of lived relationships seems to be frustratingly resistant to such a dichotomy."
Brent blogs at oddmanout.net.
You might also appreciate Wesley Hill’s words at “First Things”:
…Just because someone quotes 1 Corinthians 6:9-11 and is opposed to same-sex marriage doesn’t mean that they’re speaking up for a theologically informed, humane, pastorally sensitive view of what it means to be gay. Not by a long shot. And social conservatives should think twice before linking the concern for religious liberty to a vindication of Robertson.
…[Robertson] implies that if gay men could only open their eyes, it would dawn on them how myopic they’ve been. “I mean, come on, dudes! You know what I’m saying? But hey, sin: It’s not logical, my man. It’s just not logical.” The conclusion to draw from this comment, as Katelyn Beaty noted earlier today on Twitter, is “that gay men should just wake up to how awesome women’s body parts are.” But, of course, that’s just not how sexuality works. [Read the rest here.]
I would love to hear from more of you who were the targets of Robertson's comments. What message does the "Stand With Phil" movement send to you? What sort of response would be most healing and helpful from Christians? How can we move forward from this fraught and charged debate around a reality TV star into efforts at true reconciliation?
January 9, 2014
Ask an Open Theist (Greg Boyd)….
Today I am thrilled to introduce our first “Ask a…” guest of the year: Greg Boyd.
Greg is an internationally recognized theologian, preacher, teacher, apologist and author, who has authored or co-authored more than 18 books and numerous academic articles (among them Letters From a Skeptic, The Myth of a Christian Nation, and Repenting of Religion). Greg is the co-founder of Woodland Hills Church in St. Paul, Minnesota where he serves as Senior Pastor, speaking to thousands each week. He has been featured in The New York Times, The Charlie Rose Show, CNN, National Public Radio, the BBC and numerous other television and radio venues. Greg blogs at ReKnew.org.
I interviewed Greg last year about his most recent book, Benefit of the Doubt, but today I want to invite you to engage Greg around one of his most interesting (and controversial) beliefs—that of “open theism.”
For those unfamiliar with the term, here’s how Greg describes Open Theism:
If I had to define “Open Theism” in one sentence, I would say that it as the view that the future is partly comprised of possibilities and is therefore known by God as partly comprised of possibilities. (By the way, I prefer to refer to this view as “the open view of the future,” since the most distinctive aspect of Open Theism is not its understanding of the nature of God, but its understanding of the nature of the future).
To expound a bit on this definition, the open view of the future holds that God chose to create a cosmos that is populated with free agents – at least humans and angels (though some hold that there is a degree of freedom, however small, in all sentient beings). To have free will means that one has the ability to transition several possible courses of action into one actual course of action. This is precisely why Open Theists hold that the future is partly comprised of possibilities. While God can decide to pre-settle whatever aspects of the future he wishes, to the degree that he has given agents freedom, God has chosen to leave the future open, as a domain of possibilities, for agents to resolve with their free choices. This view obviously conflicts with the understanding of the future that has been espoused by classical theologians, for the traditional view is that God foreknows from all eternity the future exclusively as a domain of exhaustively definite facts.
I figured you might have questions about this! If you do, leave your question for Greg in the comment section. Please take advantage of the “like” feature so we know which questions are of most interest to readers. At the end of the day, I’ll choose 6-7 questions to send to Greg for response. You can look for the follow-up with his responses in about a week.
Check out the other interviews in our “Ask a…” series here.
January 7, 2014
The Fortress
Sometimes I think we sing “A Mighty Fortress” with such stern bravado because we are afraid
of how the hands that stretched out the heavens and ordered the stars curled into tight baby fists,
of how the Spirit that once hovered over the waters tucked into a teenager’s womb,
of how the voice that separated night from day cried out for the breast.
Sometimes I think we are less afraid of a powerful God than a vulnerable one.
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