John G. Stackhouse Jr.'s Blog, page 6

Fair Payment for Speakers

Or: "By Their Honoraria, Ye Shall Know Them"

[Note: This column originates in the North American Christian ambit, but I daresay it applies well beyond those geographical and cultural boundaries!]

The way some Christian churches and other organizations pay their speakers, it makes me embarrassed to be a member of the same faith.

A friend of mine is a gifted staff worker with a well-known Christian organization on a university campus. He is married, with three young children, and works hard and long at his job. Frequently he is asked to speak at churches’ youth retreats or special events sponsored by other groups. Rarely is he paid well for what is in fact overtime work—for audiences other than the one that pays his regular salary.

One weekend, he left his family to speak at a retreat for more than 100 young people, each of whom paid to go away to a well-furnished camp for three days. My friend gave four talks and participated in a question-and-answer session—a typical, and demanding, schedule. But his work didn’t end there, of course. Retreat speakers are “on call” all weekend: for impromptu counseling, offering advice over mealtimes, and modeling what they preach on the volleyball court or around the campfire. Make no mistake: There is very little relaxing in that role, however restful the retreat might be for everyone else.

So at the end of this tiring weekend, at the close of the Sunday luncheon, the leader of the group thanked him profusely at the front of the dining hall (he had gone over very well). Then he tossed the speaker a T-shirt emblazoned with the group’s logo while everyone clapped. It took my friend several minutes to realize that this shirt was his total payment for the weekend’s work. He got in his car, without even a check for gasoline, and headed back to his waiting family.

An isolated and extreme example? Not at all. Every professional Christian speaker has stories like these.

A widely-respected author was asked to headline a fundraising banquet for a women’s organization. She prepared a talk on the subject requested, left her husband and children at home, drove herself in the family car across the city to the site of the meal, chatted with her tablemates, and then delivered her speech. Again, it was apparent from the applause and the warm remarks that greeted her when she took her seat that she had done her job well.

\The evening ended, and the speaker was saying her goodbyes. The convenor then appeared in a gush of appreciation. “Your talk was just excellent,” she said. “Exactly what we wanted. Thank you so much for coming!” Then, by way of payment, she grandly swept her arm over the room and said, “Just help yourself to one of the table centerpieces.”

We Christians have two problems in this regard. One might be remedied by an article such as this one. The other can be fixed only by the Holy Spirit.

The Problem of Ignorance

The former problem is that most people who invite speakers are not themselves professional speakers and so honestly don’t know how much is involved in doing this work well. So let’s price it out straightforwardly, and consider whether we pay people properly in the light of this analysis.

A speaker first has to receive the invitation, work with the inviter to clarify and agree upon terms (usually this takes correspondence back and forth), and confirm the date. Then the speaker has to prepare the talk. Sometimes a speaker can pull a prepared text out of a file, but usually at least some fresh preparation is necessary to fit the talk to this particular group and its context. (And let’s remember that the speaker at some time did indeed have to prepare this talk from scratch, so the inviting group does have a share in the responsibility for that preparation since they will be benefiting from it.) The speaker concludes her preparation by printing out her notes, and perhaps also prepares a photocopied outline, or overhead slides, or PowerPoint presentation for the benefit of the group.

Next, the speaker must make her travel arrangements and then actually travel. Most of this time is not productive: Airports and airplanes are not designed to aid serious work (unless the inviting group springs for first-class seats and airport lounges—an uncommon practice), and driving one’s car is almost entirely useless time.

The speaker arrives, and then has to wait for her particular slot. She finally gives her presentation, waits for everything to conclude, and returns home. If she is out of town, normally she will have to spend at least one night in a hotel room, probably sleeping badly in a strange bed and, again, spending time in transit that is largely unproductive.

Count up all of those hours. Not just the forty minutes she actually spoke at the banquet, or the four hours she was actually in front of the microphone during a weekend conference, but the many, many hours spent in the service of the inviting group from start to finish. Divide those hours into the honorarium, assuming her costs are covered (as they sometimes aren’t–for shame!), and you have the true wage the group paid her.

One speaker I know was asked to speak at a weekend conference requiring of her three plenary talks plus a couple of panel sessions. She would have to travel by plane for several hours and leave her family behind. The honorarium she was offered? Expenses plus $300. Her husband heard of it and replied with a rueful smile, “I’ll pay you three hundred bucks to stay home with us.”

Here’s yet another way to look at it. A speaker was asked to give the four major speeches at the annual meeting of a national Christian organization. He was also asked to come two days earlier than the staff meeting in order to address the national board twice. In return, he was offered travel expenses and accommodation for himself and his wife at the group’s posh conference center—of which they were extremely proud.

So the speaker asked for an honorarium of $2000: for the five days he would be away plus all of the time he would spend in preparation for this large responsibility. The group’s president immediately withdrew the invitation, saying he was charging too much.

Now, let’s think about this. Transportation to this remote facility entailed the speaker and his wife driving their car part of the way, then taking a ferry, and then perhaps a float plane. The group clearly had no trouble covering considerable traveling expenses. The group also was covering similar expenses for two dozen board members and well over a hundred staff. The conference center was advertised in its glossy brochures as deluxe, and it looked that way in the photos.

So what would be the total budget for a weekend like this? Figure on, conservatively, 150 people with travelling expenses of an average of $600 each (allowing for airfare across the country for most) plus accommodation expenses of at least $200 each for the long weekend. This comes out to a total budget of at least $120,000. Let’s assume that the group would offer the speaker some sort of honorarium—surely at least $500. This means that on a total budget of $120,500, this group disinvited its speaker because of a difference of $1500—slightly more than one percent of its conference budget. Is this good stewardship by a Christian nonprofit corporation? Or is it something else?

One wonders about the “something else” when one looks closer to home and examines the typical honoraria given to preachers who fill pulpits when pastors are on vacation. Most churches now pay $100 or so, although I know of many, including both mainline and smaller evangelical congregations, who still pay less.

Let us ask ourselves, before God, how we can justify paying a guest preacher a mere hundred bucks. He has to accept the invitation and get clear on his various duties from the person who invites him. He has to prepare the sermon—again, even if he is going to preach one he has preached before, he still has to decide upon which one to preach and then prepare to preach it well on this occasion. He has to travel to our church and take his place with the other worship leaders. He has to preach the sermon, and greet people afterwards. Then he has to drive home.

Time it out, and it’s likely ten hours or more that he has invested in our church. We offer him a hundred dollars, and that works out to ten bucks an hour—a little more than minimum wage. He has to pay all of the taxes on that, so now he’s taking home between fifty and sixty dollars. Is that what we think our preachers are worth?

Let’s look at this from another angle. The average congregation isn’t large, so let’s suppose that about 200 people are to hear that sermon. By offering the preacher even $150 (which is more than most churches pay), we’re saying that his sermon is worth less than a dollar for each person who hears it.

Those who would invite speakers to their events should do this simple bit of division: Take the proposed honorarium and divide it by the number of talks, then divide it again by the number of people in the audience. The result is the price per talk per person.

So ask yourself: Is the talk you want your speaker to give worth less than an ice cream cone? Much less than a Starbucks coffee?

The Problem of Undervaluing “Spiritual” Work

Let’s look at it still another way. Many Christian speakers have expertise that is in demand from secular agencies as well. Invariably those agencies pay better, and sometimes a lot better. A Christian psychologist I know has told me that he is paid at least a thousand dollars per full day of consulting with government agencies. He counts himself blessed if he is offered even half that much by a Christian group. Flip it around, and we observe that even we cheap Christians routinely pay high wages to our physicians, lawyers, plumbers, airline pilots, and other skilled people whose work we want done for us in an excellent fashion. Why don’t we pay Christian speakers accordingly?

Some of us even self-righteously think that we shouldn’t pay such people at all because they’re doing “Christian” work or “spiritual” work and therefore shouldn’t charge for it. (I was once asked to speak to a national convention of Christian lawyers whose president inquired as to what was my fee–”if any.” In reply, I was sorely tempted to ask him to draw up my will, arrange for the sale of my house, and defend me on my next parking ticket, and then ask him what his fee would be–”if any.”)

The notion, however, that spiritual, or theological, or other “Christian” expertise should not be paid for is utterly foreign to the Bible. From the Old Testament requirements that generous provision be made for the priests to Paul’s commands in the New Testament that pastoral workers are worthy of their wages and should be paid such (I Corinthians 9), the Bible believes that people in such occupations are worthy of both esteem and financial support. Indeed, we show our esteem precisely in the financial support we give them. We think our physical health matters, so we pay good money for good physicians. How much does our spiritual health matter? Well, let’s see what we typically pay for it. We are, in fact, putting our money where our mouth is.

One speaker put it this way: “I’m not in this line of work for the money, but for the ministry. All I want is not to be insulted by the people I’m serving by them paying me less than they pay their kids’ piano teachers or their own hair stylists. They can say all the nice things they want when I’m finished. But when they hand me a paltry check, what are they really saying? What do they expect me to conclude about how much they value my work?”

Thus we encounter the latter problem, the one that only the Holy Spirit of God can address. It might be that we pay Christian speakers badly because we were unaware of all that is involved in preparing and delivering an excellent speech. Okay. But now that we know better, we should pay better. The latter problem of simply undervaluing such Christian service, however, is a problem in our hearts, not our heads. And the Bible is plain: We undervalue our spiritual teachers at the peril of undervaluing the divine truth they bring us. God frowns on such parsimony.

Indeed, God has threatened one day to mete out to each of us our appropriate wages for such behavior. And those wages will make even a T-shirt or a table centerpiece look pretty good.

This article was published in the Canadian journal ChristianWeek. An earlier version appears in the book Church: An Insider’s Look at How We Do It (reprint edition available from Regent College Publishing). This article may be forwarded or otherwise distributed as long as these credits are duly included. Copyright John G. Stackhouse, Jr., 2005.

The Science (and Non-Science) on Transitioning: The Cass Report

"The Science Is Settled," GLAAD and other groups have vehemently declared about gender transitioning. But it isn't—or, at least, not the way they think it is.

The Cass Report is out in Great Britain, a massive and authoritative literature review and policy paper. It is devastating in its implications for so many in our cultural elites: bien-pensant media, for sure, as well as school boards, medical colleges, and others who have run far ahead of the actual social and medical science on transitioning.

H/T to Andrew Sullivan (of all people) who, as a gay activist himself, bemoans what he sees as "conversion therapy" of a particularly extreme sort. Since 80 per cent of those transitioning are homosexual, he says, transitioning amounts to "normalizing" gay and lesbian youth by changing their bodies.

If it seems startling to hear such a critique from such a source, it shouldn't be. Once again, the easy progressivism of too many politicians, educational leaders, medical authorities and others collides with itself: not only a feminist (such as J. K. Rowling) but a gay champion (such as Andrew Sullivan) is asking for calm and deliberate good sense in a vexed field in which much is asserted and relatively little can be proven. And that won't sit well with many trans activists and their allies.

I myself am a casualty in this culture war. Not long ago, I was up for a major chair in a theological seminary you have heard of. I wrote a single op-ed (actually, an advisory piece for the Vancouver School Board) mildly suggesting that their policies not run ahead of the scientists who were arguing over the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, the Bible of psychotherapy. Best to care sensitively for everyone involved, trans kids alongside everyone else—not least because all kids have body and sex issues!—and await firm findings from the experts.

My inside sources at Big-Time Seminary reported to me that because of this one article, I was dropped from being the leading candidate for this chair. A single member of the search committee said, "So Stackhouse is saying, 'Go slow on my human rights,'" and the rest of the search committee apparently abandoned common sense and caved.

It hasn't been the only time I've experienced institutional stupidity and cravenness. But today let's focus on The Cass Report and on the judicious and charitable application of its findings to those who have suffered far more than I have: kids and their parents dealing with the struggles of same-sex attraction and, in rare cases, genuine gender dysphoria. We need all the wisdom and all the kindness we can muster to help such neighbours with the best policies and resources we can offer.Here's hoping the Church can be more wise and more kind than those campaigning so loudly on either end of the general debate. And such wisdom and kindness will start with knowing what we're talking about. (Prof. Mark Yarhouse of Wheaton College is a notably good resource for Christians on these issues.)

Here's the British Medical Journal's editorial about The Cass Report—and the dreadful non-science that has preceded it: https://www.bmj.com/content/385/bmj.q837

Evangelicalism: What Is It? And Who Cares?

[This is the first of five posts in a new Mini-Course now available in its entirety here.]

Another U.S. election prompts another round of analysis, commentary, and clever social media quips about evangelicals. Who are these people, really? And should anyone keep caring about that question?

Recent news brings us word that former U.S. president and current Republican candidate Donald Trump has changed his party’s position (he can do that by himself, it appears) on abortion to a “follow your heart” and states-rights posture. Trump is nothing if not cunning, and this attempt to blunt one of the key mobilizing issues for his Democratic opponents adds an interesting element to the contest.

 

It remains to be seen whether Trump’s change will cost him any votes from the white evangelicals that have heretofore been so conspicuously supportive.

 

In his first presidential race, white evangelicals typically told pollsters that the prospect of a pro-life president appointing a pro-life Supreme Court was crucial for them in overcoming any revulsion they might have felt toward Donald Trump. Now that they have such a Supreme Court, how will these white evangelicals feel about a president who has said he (currently) wants states to decide the issue?

 

Since the Democrats will offer them only worse options, maybe it doesn’t matter how they feel. In the binary world of two-party American politics, Trump’s GOP is still the better choice on that score. We’ll see whether ambivalence about Trump leads, perhaps, to lower turnout.

 

Opinion polls have shown, however, that abortion has not, in fact, ranked all that high in white evangelical priorities. Immigration, good jobs, progressive politics of sex and gender—these issues have fired up the white evangelical base more than has abortion. White Christian nationalism has emerged as the key explanation for evangelical support of Donald Trump and the Trumpified Republican Party.

 

I keep saying “white” because those priorities are not the priorities of even other American evangelicals. Black, Hispanic, and Asian evangelicals are more concerned, and variously among themselves, about matters of political and legal justice, economic opportunity, and various manifestations of enduring racism.

 

Poor evangelicals of any ethnicity naturally focus on economic concerns. Young evangelicals shake their heads at Boomer preoccupations. And keen evangelicals of all sorts mourn the co-option of evangelical churches by right-wing politics with the concomitant loss of evangelistic zeal, deep fellowship, generous care for the needy, and passionate worship.

 

Evangelicals beyond the U.S.A. care about politics, too. But their concern is mostly the politics of survival. At least, the millions of evangelicals in China are just trying to survive under President Xi’s steadily increasing pressure. Same with evangelicals in India, as Prime Minister Modi keeps stoking Hindu nationalistic prejudices.

 

Evangelicals in Nigeria, Rwanda, and elsewhere across the huge evangelical populations of Africa work to overcome the persistent problems of tribal divisions. Some of these divisions are exacerbated by Islamic/Christian antipathy, but sometimes they pit Christian against Christian.

 

Latin American evangelicals vary greatly in their political concerns. Evangelical minorities in some countries make their way against relentless pressure from Catholic establishments. Others dispute among themselves about their newfound prominence in regional and national elections as favored candidates once in office then embarrass evangelicals by strongarm tactics and widespread corruption.

 

Meanwhile, the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students and the Lausanne Movement, especially among younger people, resolutely seek to focus global evangelical attention on one key matter: not abortion, not nationalism, and not any sort of political program, but faithful and fruitful discipleship.

 

Who, then, are the evangelicals—both here in Canada and the United States, yes, but also globally considered? Does the term “evangelical” have any remaining usefulness, whether for historians and sociologists seeking to study a truly distinct population, for church leaders seeking to connect with a vital network, or for rank-and-file believers seeking a Christian identity beyond the denominational but not merely the generic?

 

This Mini-Course will sum up some findings from my many writings about evangelicalism, and especially those reported in Evangelicalism: A Very Short Introduction. The next post will provide a brief survey of the term “evangelical” in Christian history, followed by two posts setting out my suggestion for a useful definition of evangelicalism.

 

The concluding post will offer musings upon how evangelicals must be sought with two concerns in mind. All of the characteristics must be present. And all of them must be practiced.

The Next American Election: What It's About

There are lots of hard polarities in the Christian worldview. Light versus darkness. Good versus evil. Holiness versus wickedness. Life versus death. Truth versus falsehood. Love versus hate.

 

These are the stock categories of pastors, whose job it is to help the rest of us forsake sin and embrace sanctity, to flee the devil and follow the Lord. And since most Christians hear explicitly Christian discourse only from our pastors, we will tend to apply such binary categories to everything in our moral lives.

And that would be—sometimes, in some respects—sub-optimal.

 

(I write about the limited, if crucial, role pastors should play in politics here. Pastors can and should advise politicians. But pastoring and politics are so different that almost no one can practice both.)

 

In Christian ethics, to be sure, there remain hard polarities. “Jesus is Lord” is the fundamental confession of the early church, and it remains simply and utterly true. No one and nothing else rules, and should be allowed to rule, instead of, or even alongside of, Christ.

 

What it means to obey and follow our Lord, however, is often a matter of discretion and even of compromise.

 

I grew up thinking it wasn’t. I grew up thinking that in every moral moment, there was a way to respond that was simply good, entirely correct. The challenge was to discern that pure option and decide for it.

 

Further Bible reading, however, caused problems for that pristine view. So did life.

 

In the Old Testament, there are two figures who receive extended biographical treatment without any recorded sin: Joseph and Daniel. Paragons of virtue, these men are ordained by God to use their considerable talents to advance the regimes of Israel’s two notorious imperial enemies, respectively: Egypt and Babylon.

 

Moreover, God forces the nation of Israel itself to move into Egypt (in the persons of Jacob and his family) and into Babylon (in the Judean exile, hundreds of years later) in order to, among other things, prosper those nations—even as God later delivers Israel from them.

 

That pattern seems . . . strange.

 

In the New Testament, when it comes time to pay taxes to Rome, Jesus doesn’t balk. Instead, he seems to miraculously supply the payment and sends Peter off to make it (Matthew 17).

 

Nowadays, certain Anabaptists, among other Christians, like to calculate what portion of their taxes go to fund warfare and then withhold it as a matter of conscience. Jesus and Peter, however, paid the full tax to the Roman Empire. Why did they do so?

 

Perhaps because they were observing what I call a “Holy Spirit pragmatism” that governs so much of the early Christian movement: pick your battles, putting first things first.

 

Jesus and Paul said and did much that elevated the status of women—planting the seeds of feminism, I’d claim (and do here). But they didn’t push harder than their culture would tolerate so that the early church didn’t get crushed as a disturber of gender peace.

 

Paul taught much that would lead to the abolition of slavery. But he didn’t quite order Philemon to liberate Onesimus and he told slaves to do their jobs heartily as servants of the Lord, not their (unworthy) human masters—which was hardly a summons to class revolution (Colossians 3:23-24).

 

Jesus might also have paid the tax, however, because the alternatives to the Roman Empire were worse: barbarians who knew only how to invade and plunder, not how to unite and govern, as the Romans did. As Paul and Peter both wrote (Romans 12; I Peter 2), God ordains worldly authorities to resist evil and provide whatever peace and order they can.

Those pacifists today might well object to the sins of the Canadian or American or British governments whose militaries they refuse to sponsor. But without such armed forces, we will be invaded by the likes of Putin or Xi, not by some kinder, gentler regime. And how would that advance the Kingdom of God?

 

God works in the real world, and so must we. Until Jesus returns to assert his global lordship in full, we will be stuck with leaders who are definitely not-Jesus. And that has some implications for politics today.

 

The implication upon which I want to focus today is the normal business of democracy: compromise-finding and deal-making.

 

Many Christians, it seems, are just like so many of our neighbours in loudly and totally opposing those with whom we disagree. This “New Moralism,” as I call it, evidently feels good. Nothing, it seems, is more delicious than self-righteousness. But absolutist thinking in the wrong domain is unhelpful, and truly un-Christian.

 

You know who doesn’t compromise? Dictators.

Dictators can get things done, that’s for sure. One might think of Lee Kwan Yew in Singapore or Rafael Trujillo in the Dominican Republic—in many ways quite different (Trujillo was far more brutal) but also both effective in bringing stability, unity, and prosperity to their countries. Yet Singaporeans and Dominicans rejoice today in democracies: less efficient, but far more just and free.

 

Democracies are frustrating—and on purpose. Properly designed, they frustrate change by making it difficult for any one party, let alone any one class or individual, to wield power. The U.S. Constitution is particularly designed to prevent one bad outcome: tyranny.

 

Today, however, many Americans seem to want tyranny, so long as it’s their man on the throne. Not a few of them look to Hungary’s strongman ruler Viktor Orbán as a positive model.

 

Only thus can the rest of us understand why so many Americans continue to regard January 6, 2021, as a positive day for U.S. politics. In this attempt to set aside the results of the American election, the U.S. Capitol was attacked by a mob and the U.S. Congress put under siege by fellow citizens. This is no longer democracy, of course, but incipient civil war.

 

In this next election, therefore, Americans face a stark choice: between a politician possessed of no great statesmanship who is completing a long career of compromise, and a candidate who trades in absolutes (even as they can shift without notice), including locking up his opponents and staffing the government with personal loyalists.

 

Cards on the table? I can’t believe that one of the major parties of the richest, most powerful country in the world, a nation with most of the world’s top universities and leading companies, can produce no one better than Joe Biden to lead them. But Biden, at least—and this is today’s crucial point—is not just a Democrat, but a democrat. He subscribes to the rule of law, to the necessity of political compromise with one’s opponents, and (crucially) to the orderly succession of power when one loses elections to those opponents.

 

The person likely to become the Republican candidate has shown himself loudly impatient with democratic institutions and processes. He is not a democrat, but something else.

 

Unlike typical elections in the West, therefore, this next American election is not about differences in platforms or policies. It certainly features such differences, and many people will vote on the basis of those differences, as if it’s just another contest between progressive and conservative positions. (I discuss those general positions here.)

 

But this election is of another nature altogether.

 

It is about democracy, about commitment to a community covenant to work things out together: slowly, painfully, and carefully, according to mutually agreed procedures. It is about Americans choosing to carry on functioning as Americans, versus some Americans simply triumphing over and subduing other Americans—which, again, amounts to civil war.

 

Don't get me wrong. I disagree with President Biden and the Democratic Party deeply and broadly. I have no particular penchant for the progressive.

 

Here in Canada, I do appreciate Premier Eby and the NDP in British Columbia and I mourn the steady Texafication of Alberta under the UCP. (I love Texas, where my folks are buried, but I don’t love its political culture.)

 

But as hapless and feckless as have been Premier Higgs’s Conservatives here in New Brunswick (Have a surplus? How about reducing emergency room wait times to under twelve hours? Or getting family doctors for the thousands without one?), they’re ‘way better than the secularist administration of former Liberal premier Brian Gallant.

 

And federally? Don’t get me started on the prime minister. As impossible as it seems for the Conservatives to nominate a truly impressive leader, Mr. Trudeau needs to be shown the door.

 

In short, I have mixed feelings about the American and Canadian political options. But I don’t have mixed feelings about the defense of democracy and the necessity of working things out with our neighbours.

 

I used to despite Canada’s Liberal Party, in fact, for stealing good ideas from other parties in order to stay in power. But now I bless them for doing what politicians are supposed to do: compromise. (And the Liberals often stole from the best, notably Tommy Douglas’s NDP.)

 

The great Prussian general Carl von Clausewitz is often quoted as saying that “war is the continuation of politics by other means.” But he was wrong.

 

The outbreak of war is the end of politics. The mindset that we can no longer work with our neighbours, but must view them and attack them as enemies, is the end of politics. It’s the end of life together.

 

There is a coarse and violent mentality on the rise on both the left and the right in Western politics these days. This furious self-righteousness brooks no compromise, seeing opponents as odious obstacles and policy alternatives as despicable distractions on the way to utopia. And that utopia must be won by any means necessary.

 

People who are evidently very willing to accept compromise when it comes to the moral character of their leader ought to be willing to accept compromise when it comes to the moral character of their opponents. People who are evidently eager to make America great again ought to fear dismantling the glory of American civilization: its constitutional government. And what's good for the right ought to apply also to the left.

 

I doubt I will write any more here about the U.S. election this year. I want merely to make this one point.

 

As important as it is to want one’s preferences, even one’s virtues, enshrined and empowered in government, it is fundamentally important to preserve and defend the very life of that government, its constitutional order based on democratic respect for each citizen, each neighbour. The responsible Christian will insist on supporting that order of liberty and equality over the victory of his or her preferred party platform.

 

Why? Because no platform and no government are perfect. And democracy is the best means we have yet devised of both correcting each platform and holding accountable each government. The alternative is to grant too much power to those who cannot be trusted with it: people like us.

 

Only Jesus can rule as Lord. The rest of us badly need democracy, however imperfect, because we are badly imperfect. I pray my American cousins will compromise where they should and won’t where they shouldn’t, as I hope they will pray for us, too.

Salvation: What about Everything Else?

The first psalm in the Bible focuses on the holy individual. The last one issues a call to all of creation: “Let every thing that hath breath praise the Lord. Praise ye the Lord.”

 

The two Mini-Courses on Salvation so far have focused on God and the individual human being. But doesn’t much of the Bible speak of salvation in many, many other respects?

What about the ill, the disabled, the injured? What about the poor and the victims of prejudice? What about whole systems of injustice, entire regimes of domination?

 

And let’s widen our gaze still further. As my former colleague Loren Wilkinson wonders aloud in his new, fine book, Circles and the Cross (Cascade, 2023), “I knew the gospel was good news for me, but was it good news for the fir trees and the trilliums as well?” (5).

 

Mary’s Magnificat comes immediately to mind as she celebrates God the Saviour, God her Son:

 

He has shown strength with his arm;    

he has scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts.

He has brought down the powerful from their thrones    

and lifted up the lowly;

he has filled the hungry with good things    

and sent the rich away empty. (Luke 1:51-53)

 

Christians have long seen Isaiah 53 as prophesying the work of Jesus (whose name means “God saves”): “Surely he has borne our infirmities and carried our diseases” (Isaiah 53:4).

 

Luke likewise has Jesus reading from Isaiah (61:1-2) and applying the prophecy to himself:

 

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,    

because he has anointed me        

to bring good news to the poor.

He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives    

and recovery of sight to the blind,        

to set free those who are oppressed,

to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor. (Luke 4:18-19)

 

And the Apostle Paul speaks of the salvation of the whole earth:

 

For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God, for the creation was subjected to futility . . .  in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its enslavement to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. We know that the whole creation has been groaning together as it suffers together the pains of labor. (Romans 8:19-22)

 

Yes, God will make all things new: our bodies, our relationships, our institutions, our fellow creatures, our ecosystems, our planet. Shalom is God’s intended goal, and shalom means global flourishing.

God is already working to repair and renew the earth and all of its inhabitants—protecting us, salvaging us, restoring us, improving us—primarily through the human race fulfilling God’s commandments. Human beings obey God’s creation commandment as we cultivate the world (Genesis 1:28). The Church obeys God’s salvation commandment as we make disciples whose lives led in concert with the Spirit of God demonstrate the new life of the age to come. (For more on these themes, see here.)

 

Still, we all recognize that both sin and immaturity persist in the human race across the face of the whole earth and across every individual soul. Good, solid family companies get inherited by dissolute descendants, bought out by indifferent corporations, or simply sidelined by economic change. Successful pastors often get succeeded by unsuccessful hopefuls. A new political administration undoes the good of the previous one. We take steps forward, yes, but also sideways and often backwards.

 

The downward, darkward pull of sin means, as G. K. Chesterton said of smoggy London Town, that if you want to have a white post, you have to paint it white—and keep repainting it white. While the power of the Spirit draws us toward the virtues of the age to come, the spirit of this age fights back on behalf of its own values. And that ugly spirit is everywhere.

 

We all know that a good system cannot make up for bad components, and a good organization cannot fully compensate for bad people. Legislation and coercion and incentive can take us only so far in improving human beings, human groups, and human projects. Sin—along with our sheer immature ignorance and stupidity—keeps interfering with the good, and sometimes overwhelms it in wicked absurdity.

 

Some well-meaning Christians have been so impressed by the shadows of history and the cultural obstacles to positive change today that they counsel merely a “faithful presence.” Christians shouldn’t bother attempting large-scale structural change, because the structures will remain intransigent . . . at least until the Lord returns. Better to concentrate our energies on producing godly families and holy churches—like the New Testament believers seem to have done.

 

Such understandably restricted goals, furthermore, seem both good and challenging enough. Who has the perfect family? Where is the perfect church? Or even a sane, happy family and a healthy, effective church? Not many of either crowding the landscape today, it seems.

 

Still, God has not rescinded the creation mandate. Human beings are made to make shalom, and there is no reason not to continue to do so—with all the vigour we have. God values every good thing: every healed illness through our medicine, every good encouragement through our preaching, every influential lesson in our parenting, and every mutually beneficial transaction in our business—even as each is optimized by cooperating with the Spirit of God, as humans also were created to do.

 

Furthermore, the mission of the Church to witness to, and draw people into, the promised new life is crucially dependent on us actually living that new life. We must demonstrate its power to bring joy and effectiveness and harmony to the world, however partially and fitfully we can.

 

What, then, about the tug-of-war between seeking justice and seeking converts? Between cultivating the world and cultivating disciples?

 

The easy answer, and a correct one, is to just do both. Let’s do it all. And each of us, just do your job.

 

There’s plenty of good to accomplish in the world. So just assess your gifts and opportunities and throw yourself into whatever mode frees you to accomplish the most shalom.

 

Surely some sort of dialectic makes sense here. Creating better structures—better families and churches, yes, but also better neighbourhoods, better economic patterns, better democracies, better entertainment media—not only makes things simply better for everyone but also optimizes the production of better individuals. It is hard to become a saint. And it’s much harder if you’re desperately poor, or chronically ill, or constantly held back because of systemic prejudice. As World Vision used to remind us, “A hungry belly has no ears.”

 

God wants better individuals. God loves each one of us as each one of us. But God wants better everything. Striving for better structures is simply part of obeying the cultural commandments and of living out the new life of the Spirit given to us by Christ.

 

The arc of history in general and especially via the spread of Christian culture—for all the setbacks, and inconsistencies, and hypocrisies, and even outright moral catastrophes apparent along the way—has led to the overall improvement of the world (as noted by observers as different as Stephen Pinker and Tom Holland). And this improvement has come conspicuously to the poor, to women, to children, to ethnic minorities, to slaves, to the disabled—even to the high and mighty, who nonetheless should fear true Christianity and especially its God as finally and fatally subversive of their privilege.

 

It yet remains evident from Scripture that until Jesus returns to govern a human race that is fully sanctified, we cannot hope to realize our greatest aspirations. We won’t realize even relatively modest ones, such as universal peace (Just don’t treat each other badly) and general prosperity (Just don’t let anyone be poor).

 

The core problem is the problem in our core. We need to be deeply saved since we are deeply flawed. No program, no structure, no paradigm shift or revolution in government will make up for corrupt participants. For us.

 

At different times in my academic journey, I enjoyed studying the quite different careers and especially the distinctive utterances of Billy Graham and Reinhold Niebuhr. In the mid-twentieth century, Graham and Niebuhr were often set against each other as polar opposites with one or the other of whom many Christians felt obliged to line up.

 

Often the difference between them was put in terms of evangelism versus justice-seeking. Others saw it in terms of seeking individual conversion versus social change.

 

Graham was often cited as saying that social change would be of no thorough and lasting avail without individual change. And he was right, in the ultimate sense. “You all must be born again,” Jesus told Nicodemus (and, through John’s Gospel, all the rest of us; John 3:3). That’s how radical the change has to be. Your very life has to begin all over.

 

Billy Graham nonetheless wasn’t deaf to the cries of the oppressed, whether racism at home or communism abroad. And Reinhold Niebuhr didn’t dispute the need for the Spirit to do the necessary work of regeneration in each heart.

 

Until the Lord returns, then, let’s be clear that there is a kind of logical order to soteriology. First things first? Each human individual needs to come right with God. Only sanctified human beings can work with God to restore the rest of the world to full working order and go forward into a new era of continual well-being for everyone and everything. The Church must do its distinctive work, empowered by the Spirit, to make disciples of all nations for the good of all creation.

 

Still, most of us most of the time aren’t gifted, called, and positioned to focus on that work, on helping ourselves and others become mature disciples of Jesus Christ. Instead, we are to walk in the Spirit as human beings are supposed to do: in worship of God, in fellowship with each other, and in creative care for God’s beloved creation. Whatever each of us can do to improve worship, fellowship, and the rest of creation, we should do.

 

As Loren Wilkinson points out, the cross has at its centre a sharp focus on a single event: the saving work of Jesus. But as its arms extend infinitely, so its implications embrace the cosmos.

 

Likewise, the cross centres on my own heart. That’s where salvation has to occur fundamentally, sine qua non. But out of that redeemed heart should come a life that extends God’s grace as far and wide as I can share it.

 

Shalom cannot be realized without the conversion of the human heart. But salvation certainly doesn’t stop there. Nor should we.

Paradoxes in Passion Week

Thomas Cranmer's prayer (in the Anglican Book of Common Prayer) for Palm Sunday, just past, contains not just one, but two, paradoxes.

Almighty and everliving God, in your tender love for the human race you sent your Son our Saviour Jesus Christ to take upon him our nature, and to suffer death upon the cross, giving us the example of his great humility: Mercifully grant that we may walk in the way of his suffering, and also share in his resurrection; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, forever and ever. Amen.

Cranmer clearly has before him—perhaps literally open to the page—Philippians 2:5-11:

Let the same mind be in you that was even in Christ Jesus,

Who being in the form of God, thought it no robbery to be equal with God:

But he made himself of no reputation, and took on him the form of a servant, and was made like unto men, and was found in shape as a man.

He humbled himself, and became obedient unto the death, even the death of the cross.

Wherefore God hath also highly exalted him, and given him a name above every name.

That at the Name of Jesus should every knee bow, both of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth.

And that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is the Lord, unto the glory of God the Father.

(I don't have the text from the Great Bible at hand, so the Geneva Bible can substitute here.)

The first paradox I notice is Cranmer's ascribing to Jesus "great humility." "Great" seems an odd modifier for "humility," doesn't it?

Yet, as I have been learning from Prof. Eve-Marie Becker's fine study of Paul on Humility, when one construes humility as Paul does, it could indeed be called "great." Paul sees humility as a choice, as a posture one deliberately assumes in order to benefit the Church, preferring the interests of one's fellows to one's own.

Understood that way, Christ's humility is great indeed. He who enjoyed the very form of God condescended to take instead the form of a slave, to serve the Church to the uttermost—"even the death of the cross."

The Son of God thus traversed the greatest of social distances: from the highest to the lowest. He made the greatest of exchanges: from the bliss of heaven to the agony of atonement. He underwent the greatest of status changes: from the Lord adored by heavenly beings to the Crucified mocked by his own people and abandoned by his own friends.

He thus indeed sets us The Example, as Paul says: "let the same mind be in you that was even in Christ Jesus."

Nietzsche is dumbfounded by this transvaluation of values—until he explodes in eloquent rage against it. Worship a victim? Venerate a loser? Adore a slave? Christianity is lunacy—

—or it is the greatest story ever told, as God lifts up the poor in spirit and hauls down the pompous to vindicate righteousness and destroy oppression. And we therefore should be busy in the abject and enthusiastic service of that Supreme Slave, our Lord and Saviour, who models for us truly great humility.

So we come to Cranmer's second paradox, his prayer that God will "mercifully grant that we may walk in the way of his suffering."

Just a moment, please, Archbishop. That would not be my first choice of prayers to God's mercy.

My first choice would be, "Please don't hold my many sins against me." My second choice would be, "Please don't give up on me in my half-hearted attempt to walk in your Way." The third choice would be, "Please give me a more pleasant life than I deserve."

A long way down the list of prayers I might pray to God's mercy would be, "Please give me a life of suffering like Jesus' life was." Yet this is Cranmer's prayer, as it is the implication of Paul's inspired teaching.

Walking in the way of Jesus' suffering is the only way to follow Jesus. Jesus' way was the way of suffering, and he prophesied that all who followed him would have to take up a cross and walk a similar path (Matthew 16:34). Persecution comes as a matter of course. The world resisted Jesus; the world will resist Jesus people (John 15:20).

Christianity doesn't valorize suffering. Suffering isn't good in itself. One day all suffering will cease in God's new era.

In this era, however, suffering is the way, the only way, to get certain things done. Christian things. Christ-like things.

Like campaigning for justice. Like protecting the vulnerable. Like emancipating victims. Like sharing the gospel. Like building healthy families and churches and other institutions.

So if we are truly seeking the Kingdom of God and his righteousness, we are wanting the way of Christ, which is the way of suffering.

And as Cranmer says—echoing Paul and his Lord before him—suffering in Jesus' way is how we eventually arrive at the destination Christ has put at the end of that way: resurrection. A life properly spent is a life blessed with reward.

May God therefore kindly, graciously, mercifully grant us what we do not deserve: the great dignity of following his own Son on his royal way. May God mercifully grant us what we cannot choose in our own pathetic moral weakness: the great humility of following his own Son on his way to the Cross.

And may God mercifully grant us the most gloriously disproportionate outcome to our small strivings: resurrection into the unimaginable beauty of the world to come, where all suffering will cease and joy will reign.

My friend, may the way of Jesus be plain before you this Passion Week. May you be granted the strength to walk in it. And may you faithfully greet the dawn of Easter. Please pray the same for me.

Paul on Humility: Some Inconvenient Lessons from Recent Scholarship

Theologians and ethicists, like pastors and parents, ought to strive to make concepts as simple as possible and implications as clear as possible. University of Münster New Testament professor Eve-Marie Becker warns us, however, not to put the Apostle Paul’s understanding of humility too quickly into a convenient moral box.

I’ve recently finished a slow read through her short book (150pp.) on Paul on Humility (Baylor/Mohr Siebeck, 2020). Becker labours to make clear that humility in Paul, especially as seen in the first dozen verses of Philippians 2, must not be narrowed and solidified into an ethical virtue—such as “I practice being small”—nor a particular moral implication—such as asceticism or martyrdom—as was too often done in the teaching of the early church.

 

Instead, Paul’s genius is to set out humility as a governing idea, a concept, a mind-set—what she technically calls a dianoetic virtue. Humility—literally, “low-mindedness”—is an attitude the individual Christian should deliberately adopt toward others in the Christian community. And it is an attitude defined not in the abstract but by way of Christ’s own example—and Paul’s.

 

What is at stake in this intense little discussion? Quite a lot, both theologically and practically. And also…inconveniently.

 

Becker sees Paul commending humility as the “mind of Christ,” as exemplified in Jesus' willing adoption of the role of servant/slave. Humility therefore is virtually equivalent to to zōē Christos—the very life of Christ.

 

This mind-set Paul himself also exemplifies. As he has already made clear in this epistle, he, too, is a slave on behalf of the Philippians and he, too, is willing to serve them to the utmost, in the very shadow of death.

 

Humility is not, again, a splendid virtue one ought to cultivate in oneself alongside excellencies such as courage, or patience, or even love. Humility here instead is a considered choice of position relative to the rest of the community. It is “an ethical attitude that must be conceptualized from the standpoint of the individual and related to the fellowship in a polity” (148).

 

The point of humility is not one’s own aretē, one’s own moral excellence. Humility is for the community, to benefit the Church by fostering like-mindedness, cohesion, and mutual service. “The goal . . . is communitarian and political rather than individual: the goal of humility . . . is the unity of the community” (148).

 

Becker draws on early twentieth-century exegete Ernest Lohmeyer and even more on theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer to underline “lowly-mindedness” as “accepting responsibility for other human beings” and even “for entire communities or groups of communities” (Bonhoeffer, Ethics). Humility is “not . . . an ethical command or moral appeal but rather . . . an expression of a form of existence” (149) within and for the ekklēsia of God’s own people.  

 

This “continual mutual higher-regard” (148) aims at the welfare of the community, the establishment of justice, and the glory of God (so Phil. 2:11). We humble ourselves and prefer each other not to become somehow just “better people” in some abstract sense. We do so in order that the community will be better, so that koinōnia will be improved, and so that shalom will be realized.

 

Paul is teaching us an intensely practical concept. Take stock of yourselves, as Christ did; lower yourselves to the posture of service to others, as Christ did; and serve the community all you can, as Christ did.

 

Rather than simply affirming certain established—or eventual—modes of morality (such as “being not-proud” or seeking the life of a monk or martyr), Paul “opens up new paths of thought about communitarian life” (150). No wonder Becker points to Bonhoeffer as a reliable expositor of Paul's meaning, as one of Bonhoeffer’s key themes is following Jesus wherever Jesus may lead us, not simply reducing Jesus’ teaching to a code and then following that. (I muse upon Bonhoeffer at chapter-length here, if you’re interested.)

 

How, then, does this outlook, this deliberately adopted mind-set, make a difference? In so many ways as to be, as I suggested, truly inconvenient.

 

In this Christlike “mind,” I notice myself getting riled up in conversation and I then instead take myself in hand (with a prayer for help to the Spirit) to settle down and truly, patiently listen. Just that: honouring the other person enough to stifle my impulse to take control and to prefer instead that they continue. (Had to practice this with fair spouse just yesterday. Humility begins at home.)

 

In this emulation of Paul’s example, I refuse to envy someone shining in a spot in which I would prefer to be shining. Instead, I commend and pray for that brother or sister—to the blessing of the community, the furtherance of the gospel, and the increase of the glory of God.

In this attitude of the willing slave, I see an untidy kitchen and instead of cursing my housemates as irresponsible louts I just set to work on it. (I mention this as a strictly hypothetical situation.)

 

In this sharing of the outlook of Jesus, I tithe to my local church as generously as I can because I expect that someone in the community needs this money more than I do—and so ought to have it.

In this lowly-mindedness, I wait for a fellow churchmember to find his way toward a conclusion in a committee meeting rather than rushing him to it and embarrassing him in the process. (I might even find that he comes out differently than I thought he would—and with a better idea.)

 

In this servant posture, I gladly direct conversation to the encouragement and edification of others, rather than deftly keep drawing it back to me and my interests.

 

In this preference for others, I support styles of worship or mission that suit those others better than they do me. I want the community to thrive more than I want to do what I want.

 

Humility therefore isn’t best thought of as a particular ethical achievement. We can thus escape the old conundrum of it being a virtue one loses the instant one recognizes it in oneself. Humility instead is consistent “lowly-mindedness” (the literal translation of “humility” in Philippians 2), a willingly adopted outlook on the world and especially on one’s place in the Christian community that looks like Jesus serving the Church.

As such, and unlike humility-as-individual-virtue, we can stare at it in ourselves, consider how well we're doing in putting others' interests ahead of our own, and take deliberate steps to conform ourselves more fully to the examples of Jesus (and of Paul) in the life of our local church. With all humility, so to speak, I should frequently and soberly assess whether and how much I am truly seeking a lower place and elevating others.

Lowly-mindedness is the form of existence of the life of Christ, the very shape of the life of Paul. It’s just the correct and necessary way of being in the Church, if the Church is truly to be single-minded, loving, and effective in following our Lord. Without humility, the Church will be none of those things—and is today none of those things without it.

 

Humility isn’t an onerous code to follow, and then to check off in self-satisfaction at the end of a particularly glorious day of ethical heroism. Humility is just what Paul says it is, and just what Christ shows us: How can I lower myself and serve the community here and now?

 

That, my friends, will hurt.

 

That, my friends, is the only way to help.

And Now for Something Not All That Different: John Cleese on Religion

Let’s get clear right away that I am a fan of John Cleese’s. I loved Monty Python in the early 1970s, memorizing (as one did) whole sketches from LPs borrowed from older and discerning teenage friends. Fawlty Towers, to be sure, makes me cringe rather too often. But A Fish Called Wanda was original and amusing, and I’ve enjoyed Cleese in guest appearances here and there ever since. In short, Cleese makes me laugh as do few others, and I tip my hat to him.

 

Let’s also get clear that I admire his ability to speak well in public. In interviews, speeches, and the occasional column he has shown a commendable ability to communicate substantial ideas in plain and often winsome language. And not just humorous language, but sometimes poignant, and even powerful.

 

Cleese is a graduate of Cambridge University, a former rector of St Andrews University, and a former visiting professor at Cornell. Indeed, he was acclaimed as “fully a public intellectual” by Cornell’s provost.

 

Why, then, does such an evidently intelligent man insist on speaking about a subject he patently knows little about, and insist on speaking about it both frequently and dogmatically? And what might that tell us about engaging with thoughtful people about religion in a way that better comes to grips with the issues at stake?

Let me focus on his little book Professor at Large: The Cornell Years (2018), from which parenthetical page references will follow.

 

It’s a surprising book coming from someone who characterizes himself as primarily a writer, since almost all of it is transcriptions of interviews he either gave or conducted. It is also surprising in that it repeats themes and even particular stories and ideas, although it barely surpasses 200 pages in length. One might have hoped for a larger harvest from a decade spent teaching at an Ivy League school.

 

In fairness, perhaps Cleese and his editors humbly underestimated the appetite for Cleese’s actual lectures—on management, or group dynamics, or moviemaking. Perhaps I overestimate it.

 

So let’s take it as it is. And because it is constituted mainly by interviews and because it repeats a fair bit of content, it is striking what is addressed and how. And one of the main topics, to my great surprise, is religion.

 

By “religion” Cleese does mean to discuss “religion-in-general,” but his foil clearly is Christianity, and particularly the form of it dealt out to him by his English preparatory and grammar schools in the 1950s. This “Christianity” is the vacuous, repetitive, stultifying, pompous, and windy version so delightfully and frequently skewered by the Pythons—and by Peter Cook as the bishop in The Princess Bride (a role Cleese has publicly regretted turning down).

 

Who would want to champion that obnoxious nonsense? And Cleese, along with fellow Python Michael Palin, dignifiedly did televised battle with the same condescending cant as they defended The Life of Brian against an impossibly supercilious Anglican bishop (Mervyn Stockwood) and a disappointingly clueless Malcolm Muggeridge. Cleese and Palin averred that Life of Brian was not an attack on Christianity per se, let alone the New Testament, and least of all Jesus Christ. Instead, as is typical of Monty Python satire, it mows down all sorts of nonsense, from religious fanatics and power-mad clergy, yes, to overbearing Latin tutors.

 

Except: Cleese reveals in this much later book that he himself, at least, does have several bones to pick with orthodox Christianity, with the New Testament, and, I have to conclude, with Jesus Christ.

 

As a young man, Cleese testifies, he read an essay by Aldous Huxley that makes the commonsensical distinction between institutional religion—which is reduced pejoratively to rules and concepts as means of social control by powerful clergy—and mysticism, which is glorified as free and splendid and elevating and what-have-you (82, 218).

 

What-have-you, indeed—since mysticism of all sorts notoriously spends most of its energy denying and debunking and divesting and denuding institutional religion so that all that remains is an ineffable union of the self with the One. Cleese engages in that sort of thing, too, with the vigour, confidence, and ignorance of the all-too-typical convert.

 

For instance, Cleese trades in the canard that the New Testament documents aren’t historically reliable and weren’t even recognized as authoritative until the fourth century (151). If anything, however, the scholarly tide has been steadily turning toward earlier dates for New Testament books, greater appreciation for their historicity, and growing recognition of a strong first-century consensus about at least the main books of the canon.

 

A single course or book on Biblical introduction would have set him straight on that. Why didn’t a Cambridge/St Andrews/Cornell man consult such?

 

Cleese’s attempt to liberate Jesus from an authoritarian, fear-mongering Church then goes so far as to declare that Jesus didn’t talk about hell, when, in fact, he did—and quite a lot (137). Confirming that datum would have taken about four minutes on Google. Again, such a sweeping and easy-to-falsify claim is downright embarrassing for an educated person.

 

(Speaking of the shame of the learned, how can Cornell University Press allow slips such as “Thou seeing, they do not see. Thou hearing, they do not hear…” [86] and “Sir Thomas Aquinas” [145]? There are enough mistakes at this level in both typography and substance to make me wonder how Cleese could visit this Ivy League school for a decade and not be corrected on such elementary points. Where were the Cornell faculty members to help him?)

 

Very troubling is Cleese’s cluelessness about the literal interpretation of Scripture, which he reduces—in clever schoolboy fashion—to moronic misinterpretations of parables as news stories. “A certain man had two sons.” “What were their names?” Etc. Any elementary Bible study course deals with such matters.

 

More troubling is his throwaway comment about the Cross of Christ being an “odd choice” as the central symbol of Christianity. Instead of quoting any one of a hundred theologians who could tell him why it is and should be, he quotes instead a Buddhist who merely says, “How extraordinary to have an instrument of torture as the central symbol of your religion” (143).

 

Insidious here is Cleese’s insinuation that the Cross represents the Church’s insistence on acquiescence to its authority on pain of eternal damnation and the Church’s use of inquisitorial torture to police such belief. But to posit such a linkage is to completely misunderstand the function of the Cross in Christian doctrine and symbology, as even a cursory glance at a Wikipedia article on Christian theology would make plain.

 

Cleese’s ultimate celebration of the apogee of religion being mystical union with the divine—and the reduction of the divine to an impersonal force, or essence, or something (we all waited in vain for John Hick to give It its proper name)—is his to make, albeit at his peril. But he goes much too far in seeing one’s embrace of mysticism as a sign of (wait for it) mental health.

 

Cleese invokes his father-figure psychiatrist, Robyn Skinner, as authority for rendering religious beliefs onto a scale of psychological wellness and awarding top points for belief in Nirguna Brahman, T’ian, the Logos, and the like. Alas, he doesn’t give us any reason for preferring this religious option to, say, belief in a personal deity, which is the option taken by Christians, Muslims, and devotional Hindus, to name well over half the world’s population. The elitism of mysticism, a perennial element in “the perennial philosophy,” is thus again revealed as the ugly face behind the serene and smiling mask.

 

In matters small and great, therefore, Cleese looks wildly out of his depth, and yet he blithely splashes on. Why do smart people risk looking stupid by talking about religion when they demonstrate no adequate knowledge of the subject?

 

I think of Richard Dawkins, an accomplished biologist who has made himself look foolish—and nastily so—when yammering on about religion. The university audience at the speech of his I attended, which seemed from their laughter and applause to be largely fans of his, nonetheless gasped in dismay as he drew a straight line from the idiotic Gumbys of (I’m not making this up) Monty Python to . . . Hasidic Jews.

 

I think of the late Christopher Hitchens, a significant and entertaining literary critic, who set himself on fire in his raging against, of all people, Mother Teresa.

 

I’d now like to digress for a moment and make fun of those ridiculous, pinheaded physicists one hears so much about. You know, the ones who go on and on about “quantum this” and “quantum that”—as if they had a single clue what they’re saying.

 

I mean, look here: Is light a wave or a particle? You’ve had a century to argue about it, so let’s have it. Which is it?

 

And we’ve had enough of your “entanglement” and “action at a distance,” as if two electrons, light years apart, are somehow subject to each other’s state changes. As if! It’s just voodoo nonsense.

 

Just like your “charmed particles.” Subatomic entities subject to magic? Get serious!

 

And who among your learned ranks can give the rest of us a simple, clear, and coherent mental picture of the quantum world? Not one of you! You’re just playing with concepts and quantities—on the order of, one might say, speculating on the number of angels who could dance on the head of a pin. Get back to us when you have something useful to say!

 

Digression over. Point, I trust, made.

 

Here’s a helpful little rule: When someone clearly intelligent says something clearly not, something else is going on.

 

John Cleese helps us understand a bit of what’s going on when he talks not only about his suffocating religious teaching at school, but also of his mother. Muriel Cross (yes, that was her maiden name) was a woman so in thrall to fear that she subjected herself and her family to a rigid, smothering imperium of small-minded, stay-at-home, mind-your-business correctness. As Cleese says, his mother only ever wanted one thing: her way, all the time (144, 202). No wonder Cleese is in reaction to authoritarian, narcissistic, and mindless religion.

 

As a fan of John Cleese the comedian, I am grateful that he refused to succumb to the superficial and self-serving piety of his schooling or to the crushing control of his parentage. But to spiral off into mystical mist seems rather an overreaction. And to claim that you have Jesus, of all people, on your side, as well as mental health in general, is to overclaim at a breathtaking scale.

 

It would be easy to make fun of, if it weren’t so sad.

 

Yes, Cleese encountered a bad, brainless form of religion calling itself Christianity. But he’s had a few decades since then. Why not read good books on Christianity? The answers to his questions and the corrections to his mistakes are readily enough available in books by his countryman Alister McGrath, or Americans Tim Keller or Bill Craig, or even a Canadian author I like to recommend on occasion. (If you’re a Cleese friend, or even just a fan, send him a copy of Can I Believe?)

 

For that matter, why hasn’t John Cleese gotten out a bit more and met a few new people? A man of his celebrity likely could have gotten an audience with almost anyone in the world—if not the Pope, then surely the Archbishop of Canterbury, or even N.T. Wright! Now that would be a conversation (with Tom, I mean, or perhaps with Rowan Williams) worth watching.

 

Well, I myself likely will never meet John Cleese and neither will you. So is there anything personally and practically to take away from (be-)musing on this public figure’s foggy religiosity?

 

Yes, there is. First, pastors, youth leaders, and parents: please teach basic apologetics. Teach people why they can trust the historicity of the Bible, and especially the New Testament accounts of the life and teachings of Jesus. Teach people why the skepticism of John Cleese—or even someone as knowledgeable as Bart Ehrman—can be answered by solid evidence and argument. The counter-arguments are everywhere. Equip your people to answer them.

 

Second, pastors, youth leaders, and parents: teach good Christian doctrine. What is sin? What is salvation? What is prayer? What is the end for which God made the world? Why ought people to become Christians, really? Don’t assume most churchgoers know good answers to these questions.

 

Third, pastors, youth leaders, and parents: cultivate relationship with God among the people in your care, not mere compliance with your religion—or you! Cleese is importantly right that true religion must centre on experience. Evangelicals are forever telling people that “Christianity isn’t a religion: It’s a relationship!” And Cleese makes a powerful point when he says, “People are changed not by exhortations to do things, but by experience” (85).

 

True religion, however, is not just any spiritual experience, nor any experience I might prefer. The whole Old Testament is a warning, via the dark narrative of Israel’s cyclical dalliances with one alternative deity or another, that religion itself is not a good in Yhwh’s sight. Nor is mysticism in general.

 

What we humans are created to need is authentic and moving experience of the one true God. And a sustained relationship with God is possible only upon repentance and faith in God by way of Jesus Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit. So let’s not aim at making religious and ethical drones of our young people, but aim instead at fostering dynamic children of God and fervent disciples of Jesus who walk in the Spirit.

 

Fourth, pray for the famous, who influence so many. John Cleese has done us all a lot of good in his comic creativity and in a number of educational ventures as well. (I’ve enjoyed his video disquisition on wine, for instance.) But his confused ideas surely confuse many fans. Let’s pray for him and for any other influencers whose influence you fear—or whose influence, instead, you want God to extend.

 

Finally, pray for that religiously critical friend of yours, or family member, or acquaintance. At least he or she cares enough to be critical! The ones I worry about the most are those that blithely don’t care.

 

In that respect, I bless John Cleese for caring. I hope he finds his way yet through the mist to the Master.[For help in engaging in apologetics and teaching better about salvation, among other topics pertinent to this post, check out ThinkBetter Media's Mini-Courses, listed here.]

Salvation: Problem & Solution

We're reformatting our Signature Series as Mini-Courses. As before, they're included in Companion and Sustainer memberships, and available for purchase to everyone else. They're just set up more helpfully in an online-course format. Here's the first post in the new one.Salvation is the heart of the Christian Story as revealed in the Bible and celebrated in church every Sunday morning.

It is not, to be sure, the objective of the Christian religion. It is not enough to be saved, and it is not quite true to say that the point of Christianity is to get people saved.

 

It is a very great thing to be saved. But to be saved from something is also to be saved for something: for some normal or, even better, some desirable state.

 

The telos, the purpose, the outcome of the Christian Way is shalom. This rich Hebrew word means flourishing, and on a universal scale.

 

Each individual becomes his or her or its best self. Each relationship among individuals becomes healthy and joyful. Each cooperative venture and each community functions with competence, vision, and good fellowship.  We even enjoy fellowship with our competitors, with whom we compete as teammates push each other in practice to perform better—and we later go out together for celebratory conviviality.

 

All of these humans and all of these human relationships flourish in concert with the flourishing of the rest of creation, with each ecosystem now optimized for every inhabitant. Above and in all, everyone and everything relates well to God in adoration, thanksgiving, and companionship according to each kind. Shalom is global flourishing.

 

That is the vision of the era to come glimpsed by prophets in both Biblical testaments and sketched in just a little more detail in the last two chapters of Revelation. A revitalized and refreshed planet—a new earth—is crowned by a new capital city, the New Jerusalem, which comes down from heaven as a divine gift. It is the city of God, in which the Most High graciously deigns to dwell among God’s creatures in mutual love.

 

This new era of shalom is what the John the Evangelist calls “eternal life”—or, to translate that phrase, zōē aiōnion, the other way: the life of the age to come.

 

It is obvious, of course, that we do not enjoy global flourishing here and now. There are many reasons why we don’t, but the main Christian explanation for what’s wrong with the world is sin.

 

Our main problem is not primarily intellectual or technological: that we don’t know enough, or rightly. The problem is not primarily aesthetic: that we are polluted and corrupt our world into ugliness. The problem is not primarily motivational: that we are lazy, of frightened, or distracted. Our main problem is moral and relational: that we don’t want the good, or God, and prefer to go our own way.

 

The problem consists of three elements.

 

(Immediately, we encounter the meta-theme of this series—namely, that salvation is quite complex because the problem from which we need to be saved is neither single nor simple. Christian depictions of sin and salvation, therefore, must be appropriately complex or risk misdiagnosing the problem and thus administering solutions that are partial at best and harmful at worst.

 

Einstein is said to have said, “Simplify as far as possible—but no farther.” That wisdom will be our methodological guideline here, as it is throughout ThinkBetter Media. We dare not leave out anything important nor include anything merely secondary in discussing this great subject.)

 

The next posts, then, will deal with sins, sin, and immaturity, the three interconnected problems that keep us from enjoying shalom in the present age.

 

The following posts will take up the manifold of God’s salvation economy—that is, the many elements of God’s complete plan of salvation—and conclude with reflections on what we must do to enjoy and actualize all that God intends for us and our world.

 

Salvation is the great theme of the Bible. Let’s think better about it.

For the rest of this Mini-Course, please click here .

The Bible Project and Better Preaching

By now, you have probably heard and seen the work of BibleProject. Their website will do a better job introducing themselves than I will. So I’ll confine myself to commending them to you as the single best resource available to get more deeply and broadly into the study of the Bible.

 

And that means preachers, too.

 

In fact, that means especially preachers.

 

Considering also “The Chosen” TV project, we contemporary English speakers are extraordinarily blessed to have resources that speak the language of video so well. Evangelicals have long been in the forefront of using mass media to proclaim the gospel to the un- and under-evangelized—from publishing to broadcasting to Alpha programs. We have been less effective, however, in teaching disciples the Word of God.

 

Where is Beta and Gamma, to follow Alpha? BibleProject doesn’t provide (yet) a linear curriculum. But it offers a splendid library for Christians to teach themselves and others a lot of what is available in Scripture. And their BibleProject app, along with other resources on their website, provides guidance for new readers and for veterans.

(I’m a big fan, having been introduced to the BibleProject some time ago by my wife. It was a blast for us to meet Dr. Tim Mackie, the Bible brain behind BibleProject—and then to have Tim tell her that he had found one of my books helpful years ago. New respect from the spouse is always a good thing. But I digress.)

 

Preaching is always hard, and it’s no easier today in Canada—or wherever you are reading this. I urge preachers to spend lots of time in BibleProject, elementary as it may seem compared to the rows of commentaries you have shelved in your personal library going back to seminary days.

 

Here are several reasons why the BibleProject, and not the latest massive tome from your favourite Bible scholar, should be your own next (forgive me) Bible project.

 

1. Simple has to precede complicated in proper understanding. BibleProject uses vocabulary and syntax aimed at the intelligent and educated audience, the audience most preachers reading this post have in front of them on Sundays.

 

Folks without much schooling, whether adults or children, will find some of the BibleProject videos go by too quickly and with too many technical terms to grasp right away. But they can still learn a lot, while the rest of us can follow without strain.

 

Speaking as simply and accurately as does BibleProject is extraordinarily difficult. So observe how BibleProject says hard things more easily, clearly, and compellingly, and adjust your own expression accordingly.

 

2. Order is crucial in proper simplicity. And there is rarely enough order in contemporary sermons.

 

Too many preachers, including (and sometimes especially) seminary graduates show in their preaching that their minds are a storm of bits and pieces picked up here and there. They know a lot, but memorable phrases from favourite professors swirl around in their heads with clever bits from recent reading along with lines from a favourite streaming show plus proverbial sayings from Mom and Dad and that funny thing the kid did the other day and, yes, some Scripture, too—in a chaos that badly needs subduing to cosmos.

 

BibleProject admirably simplifies without oversimplification. (Honestly, they strike the best balance I’ve ever seen in this critical pedagogical—and homiletical—respect.) Even veteran preachers will find disparate and disjointed elements in their Bible knowledge suddenly click into place when attending carefully to BibleProject materials.

I can't emphasize this point enough. Too many pastors arrive at Sunday morning without having taken the time—even if it has to be Saturday night—to edit their sermons into shape: into a definite, pointed shape, like an aircraft that has every component aimed at maximum performance, no extra weight, but everything working smoothly on mission and nothing sticking out to drag on or divert the flight path.

The late, great preacher John R. W. Stott, whose sermons were models of lucidity, pleaded with pastors to work harder on simplicity and order, essential to clarity. To lightly paraphrase one of his proverbs, "A mist in the preacher's mind becomes a fog in the pew."

 

Without order in the preacher’s mind, the sermon cannot possibly be well ordered and come across to the layperson as anything other than, yes, foggy bits and pieces.  And not many people are educated, let alone edifyingly enthused and guided in the hard things of life, by foggy bits and pieces.

 

3. Graphics help make sense of words. The world of preaching is oral and aural, and that’s fine, since the Bible is a book of words. Speaking and listening are crucial to the reception of God’s Word.

 

Still, if illustrations are faithful to the text—and I rarely find fault with the BibleProject graphics, while I frequently smile in admiration at their aptness and power—they connect, reinforce, and delight. BibleProject’s careful artwork truly serves the Word and our words.

 

So watch and learn . . . and perhaps incorporate some visuals of like usefulness into your sermons.

 

4. Connect the Old Testament and the New. One of the most important heresies in church history keeps recurring even in evangelical pulpits: the pitting of the Old Testament against the New or, even worse, the championing of Jesus (the nice NT deity) against Yhwh (the bad OT deity).

 

Whenever you find someone glorying in the Sermon on the Mount and despising the Torah, or telling you that “Jesus’ way” is a repudiation of the “old religion” of Israel, you’re in the presence of this wicked untruth.

 

Jesus’ “Bible” was, yes, the Old Testament, as it was the Scripture for the writers of the New. The New Testament comes after the Old in Christian Bibles because Christians are supposed to know and reverence the Old Testament in intepreting the New Testament, as the early Christians did.

 

BibleProject properly connects the Testaments over and over again—as, indeed, the New Testament itself continually does. The Bible is, after all, ton biblion: “the Book,” one book, made up of sixty-six volumes, with one Author and one Story.

 

If your preaching isn’t constantly referring to both Testaments, BibleProject can help you avoid being such a heretic.

 

5. Keeping the main things the main things. BibleProject is now large enough to include some interesting byways for the curious to explore. But their videos typically recur to and focus on the big themes, as the Bible itself does, and as our preaching should.

 

Watching enough of the BibleProject, in fact, will construct crucially helpful frameworks in your Biblical interpretation so that you will see and grasp for yourself more quickly, even reflexively, such Biblical motifs as “lamb” and “wine” and “land” and “blood” and “light”; or such symbolic place names as Egypt and Sinai and Babylon and Jerusalem; or such themes as, yes, “chaos and cosmos,” and “slavery and deliverance,” and “exile and return,” and “old and new.”

 

I could say more, but go see for yourself. See a lot. And preach better.