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Some misunderstood my honesty as a tacit compromise with unbelief. That’s not what it is. It’s a repudiation of certitude masquerading as faith.
The Noah’s Ark hunters want to “prove” God so that faith will be unnecessary. But God does not traffic in the empirically verifiable.
Instead of being organized around an axis of power enforced by violence, at the cross the world was refounded around an axis of love expressed in forgiveness.
resurrection. Seen in the light of the Easter dawn, the cross is revealed to be the lost Tree of Life. In the middle of a world dominated by death, the Tree of Life is rediscovered in the form of a Roman cross. The cross is the act of radical forgiveness that gives sin, violence, and retribution a place to die in the body of Jesus. The world that was born when Adam and Eve in their shame began to blame, the world where violent Cain killed innocent Abel, the world of pride and power that tramples the meek and weak—at the cross that world sinned its sins into Jesus Christ. And what happens?
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Feeling intimidated by the Scientific Revolution, fundamentalism takes a “scientific” approach to the Bible—which is perhaps the worst of all ways to approach Scripture. The Bible is not interested in giving (or even competing with) scientific explanations. The Bible is working on a different project than scientific inquiry. What Scripture gives us is inspired glimpses into the divine mystery. The point is never to “prove” the Bible, but to enter into the mystery through the portal of Scripture.
In the search for certitude and a penchant for Bible-Answer-Man explanations, the intrinsically artistic nature of the Christian mystery is turned into gift shop trinkets. Fundamentalism is to Christianity what paint-by-numbers is to art.
Western Christianity has tried for too long to make the gospel a kind of scientific formula—a pseudo-science of biblical facts, atonement theories, and sinners’ prayers—when it’s more like a song, a symphony, a poem, a painting, a drama, a dance, and, yes, a mystery. The Industrial Revolution of the nineteenth
The revivalism of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries sought to “industrialize” evangelism. While Henry Ford was mass-producing cars, Billy Sunday was mass-producing converts.
As long as we control the agenda, prayer will be seen as a means of manipulating Omnipotence to our advantage—which is a fair description of idolatry. We make a huge mistake when we see prayer as a technique for getting God to do what we want him to do.
The primary purpose of prayer is not to get God to do what we think God ought to do, but to be properly formed. Prayer is not about advising or managing God; prayer is about being properly formed.
“How can I get God to do what I want God to do?” It’s the egocentric self deciding what it needs, but now, instead of just manipulating everybody else, it tries to manipulate God.
So clothe us in your Spirit that we, reaching forth our hands in love, may bring those who do not know you to
the knowledge and love of you; for
