So in going downtown, to an environment completely unfamiliar to us, one of the things we were going to make sure we did, was erase all agendas. We had seen the dangers of what agendas could do, so we wanted to steer clear of them. We were not moving downtown to “save” the downtown. We were not moving there so we could better understand their culture and then eventually hit them in the head with Bible verses. We didn’t grab beers with store owners, join the Artwalk committee or go to the concerts so we could get them to come to the events we ran or to church on Sundays. Our sole purpose was going to be to move somewhere that was abandoned and build relationships with the people that are there with no expectation on them at all. So that’s what we did.

We’ve been here for three years now. I would say we’ve done pretty well at successfully integrating ourselves into the fabric of what is happening downtown. Besides a few special circumstances, we get along with many of the people downtown and I would call most of them friends. At this point, any good Christian would see this as a great opportunity to present the gospel as we know it and share it with as many as possible. The only problem is, it sort of feels that would negate the whole non-agenda clause that we established when we first started. So we continue to build relationships, and genuinely care about the people downtown.

I think my problem with agendas are, that they feel inconsistent with what the gospel really is. When somebody has an agenda in a relationship, they are really only nice to you or want to be your friend because they want something from you, or want you to do something for them. If we wanted to have everyone that lives downtown, attend theStory’s service on Sundays, and so we started integrating ourselves into the downtown core so we could start bringing people out to the service, then that would be an agenda. That isn’t why we are there. People showing up at our service really has very little to do what is going on.

However, as Christians, I think it is still crucial that we have a mission. A mission is different than an agenda. Agenda’s can be checked off as completed when the work is done or when I get what I want. Mission is about a commitment to a way of life, something that you bring into whatever happens around you no matter how people respond, if they respond at all. As Christians, we believe that the way we should live our lives is by loving God and loving others. Part of our mission is to do that to the best ability wherever we are. Since we are downtown, our mission is played out daily in our relationships with whoever we run into. Agenda’s come with expectations for the other, mission comes with duty for yourself.

There is a purpose I’m downtown but it isn’t to complete or follow an agenda. I will not be able to wake up tomorrow morning either disappointed or excited because the agenda worked. Mission doesn’t give such a clear picture of what the future looks like. Rather, it gives you an arrow in which direction to head. The other beautiful thing about mission is that it gives purpose that is based on what you should contribute rather than what you need to accomplish or how people must respond. In other words, with mission you aren’t scored and ranked, where with an agenda, you almost get marked with how closely you followed it and how people react to you.

So after three years we are beginning to see what this looks like. If we were following an agenda, we would have been disappointed long ago, since really no one from downtown is attending our Sunday services. However, that was never our goal. Our goal was to move into downtown, and love on downtown people. End of story. Whatever comes from that was awesome, but there will never be any expectation to exactly how that will play out, who will join us or what it will look like. We are constantly accomplishing our mission every day, it will never full be accomplished and that’s what I like about mission. It just gives you daily purpose for how you should live your life rather than mandating what everyone else has to do around you to fit into how you think things should be.

For this, I am grateful. I think throwing out an agenda was a good thing for us. It has allowed us to face into whatever came our way and not pre-determined exactly what we were going to look like. We allow our mission to shape our day to day activities and how we interact and go from there. I don’t feel stuck, and I do not feel like I have failed at anything because there is nothing to fail at. I am here and I love people and I love God. Mission being accomplished.

I’m beginning to wonder if we started to think more like this post I wrote a few months ago, that we could start to have a different perspective on material possessions all together?

I think we have a major flaw in the way we look at the world. We see everything in the world as something that we can own. So over centuries we have mined and moved around and cut down and built things so that we could use the world for what we think it should be used for. We see the world through one lens, and that lens is dominantly selfish one. If everything, everywhere is meant to be owned and possessed by someone. If that someone gets to choose the fate of whatever they own, strictly because they own it based on whatever laws in their society. Then the world has become nothing more than a large shopping mall, that instead of cash, it’s first come, first served and people can take and do whatever they want. Ownership and possession become key to the language we use when we talk about material possessions.

May I suggest an alternative? What if instead seeing material things as something to be possessed and owned primarily we look at material things as something to be shared first? What if as soon as you found yourself with the responsibility of any item, your first instinct was how do I share this rather than how do I guarantee my ownership of it? This takes a completely different shift in the way that we look at everything, but I think it is possible.

If we truly see the earth as God’s and everything in it, then it is unnecessary to see these things inside the world as ours at all. We use ideas of stewardship and responsibility to help us spend what is ours more wisely but there is one flaw in this type of thinking. It presupposes there is anything that is ours in the first place. What if material possessions could only truly be experienced when shared, not when owned? What if we can only truly experience what God has for us in this world through sharing and giving away? I think that if we can move away from a type of thinking that tells us that to enjoy something we have to own it and use it up that we might be better off. The best things in life only become a reality when they are shared with others or given away. The kingdom works this way as well. Why should it be any different with material things?

Nathan Colquhoun All Roads Lead to Heaven? http://ff.im/-kmaGb

Instead of attacking systems, I used to attack people. I would make fun of them and mock the stupid things they say. I would say this was sort of the easy way to face into what I didn’t believe in and fight for what I did believe in. When Mark Driscoll would say something stupid that would give some fuel to the fire to launch into an attack to finally announce what I believe. I don’t think this is necessarily bad or wrong all the time, but it certainly does reduce the dialogue to mere insults and childish comebacks. There is very little original thought and everything is reactionary.

Chris Hedges fascinates me away whenever I read his articles. Direct and large attacks are taken at harmful and destructive systems that we all find ourselves caught in or observing. There is something deeply profound about those that can use words to describe realities as opposed to just having opinions about them.

So I am learning to scale back on attacking individuals as if they are the sole problem everything is going wrong. There is large systems at work that entangle us in their large reach. To simply attack the individuals who have lost their ability to think for themselves and allow the systems to do the thinking for them only perpetuates an attack on unknowing civilians.

I have realized though that when you attack systems, you do get just as much flack. People take offense when you attack systems that they find their identity in. People, who have been unable to discover value in who they are find it in what they are told to believe. So they get offended and launch attacks of their own. Very rarely will it be an attack on your system, it will almost usually be an attack on your person. Those that get offended easily by discussions and critiques on systemic realities tend to not be able to think abstractly about their lives. So they speak the only language they know, and attack individuals and hurl insults and accusations. They call people heretics, without having any reasons for what they believe themselves.

So it’s a fine balance to hold. We should stand up strong and fight and live against systems that oppress and threaten freedom of thought. Yet we should be loving and compassionate to all those that are tangled into the tight hold of these systems. Hurling insults at them about being brainwashed and indoctrinated will not change systems, it will just make these people hurl insults back. Then you have a dialogue about nothing. When people attack you, don’t get offended and stoop to the level of individuality. Attack their system without apology and in the same breath; love and spread compassion.

In response to this type of problem there is a t-shirt company called Joy Apparel and their mission is this:

Every face on a Joy T- Shirt has been inspired by a real person. When you wear your shirt you are encouraged to think about that person and how your everyday actions can affect others and the world we live in.

What a great idea.  So Rachel and her friends all got their faces on shirts and wear eachother’s faces around day to day, and keeps them close to their heart.  Here is Rachel’s face, you can buy it or pick from tons of others.

I just finished reading Is Porn Bad for You? by Wendy Maltz.  It was an excellent article about her journey through porn in seeing it as healthy to unhealthy.  I think it’s articles like this that anyone teaching or journeying with people on this subject should start with.  It is an honest article about why we look at porn, the role it may have in our relationships and how she eventually helps lead people away from it.   I love writing like this because it doesn’t instantly demonize the action or the people doing the action.  This is the approach that I think we as a church needs to take when dealing with everything that we deem as sin.

She wrote the article starting with her personal experience, explaining her academic experiences and findings, then her clinical ones and then slowly brought you with her as she explained why she came to the conclusion she did.  The issue in the end is about people, not about their problems.  How do we help people help themselves?  How do we better interact with people who have problems to help them instead of condemn them?  She ends the article like this.

As therapists, perhaps our most important role is in providing clients a safe place to discuss and examine their concerns. It’s best to analyze porn-related situations on a case-by-case basis, taking into consideration a client’s personal values, sexual experience, sexual orientation, and relationship status. I often rely on the following questions to help clients increase awareness and begin to evaluate their involvement with porn. Is porn increasing or decreasing your self-esteem and integrity? Is it upsetting or alienating your intimate partner (or harming your future chances of being in a healthy relationship)? Have you become preoccupied, out-of-control, dependent on, or compulsively engaged with porn? How is porn shaping your sexual thoughts, desires, and behaviors? What negative consequences could occur if you continue to use porn? Only when clients determine they want help quitting porn do we proceed in that direction, utilizing the dynamic strategies that exist for achieving sexual recovery and healing. As mental health professionals I believe we’re most helpful when we resist our tendencies to automatically condemn or advocate porn. Our effectiveness depends on our ability to join with clients in regularly evaluating porn’s impact on their lives. While I remain aware that porn use isn’t a problem for everyone, I keep in mind that, given its unprecedented power and accessibility, it can become a problem for anyone.

God speaking is a pretty big deal.  Some scholars are so amazed that God actually pipes up and speaks at all, so much so that they barely pay attention to what he says.  They say that just the very fact of him speaking satisfies the deepest desires of Job.  We won’t stop there.  We will assume that because it is in there that his actual words have something for us to understand.  God’s speeches are split up into two different ones with a small part by Job in the middle of the two.  The first speech emphasizes God’s plan and as it evolves it gives meaning to all of God’s creative work and then second speech shows of God’s justice in how he runs the world.  The author of Job saves his best writing for God’s speeches.  This is considered beautiful poetry in the Hebrew language.  In his two speeches, God doesn’t even respond to Job’s questions.  He doesn’t bring up his problems, or pity him, or acknowledge any of the brutal things that has happened to him.  God opens up his speech with:

Who is this that darkens my counsel
with words without knowledge?
Brace yourself like a man;
I will question you,
and you shall answer me.

God instantly accuses Job of having no knowledge and starts right in on the offensive.  God doesn’t respond to anything that Job asks.  Not a single thing.  So much for the idea of prayer or speaking to God, right?  We think that praying or begging God for an answer works, but we might not get anything in terms of what we are actually asking.  We might just get God showing up.  Are we happy with that?  Is Job happy with that?  When we pray, when we are suffering and we beg of God for answers, we beg that God tells us what is going on and especially why things are happening, are we ok when he changes the subject?  In this case, God gives no answer of sort.  The only thing remotes helpful is he actually shows up.  Sometimes this just isn’t good enough for us.  We don’t want God to just show up.  We want answers.  As if God knew what we were thinking.  He dives right into his assault:

Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation?
Tell me, if you understand.

Who marked off its dimensions? Surely you know!
Who stretched a measuring line across it?

On what were its footings set,
or who laid its cornerstone-

while the morning stars sang together
and all the angels shouted for joy?

Who shut up the sea behind doors
when it burst forth from the womb,

when I made the clouds its garment
and wrapped it in thick darkness,

when I fixed limits for it
and set its doors and bars in place,

when I said, ‘This far you may come and no farther;
here is where your proud waves halt’?

God, or Yahweh, starts going through the initial stages of creation giving us different pictures of what that would look like.  He starts to show Job through his questions that his troubles mean nothing in terms of the brilliant governance and creation of the world that he is in.  See Job doubted God.  He doubted that God was consistent in managing the world in righteousness.  So God asks him if he really knows what he is talking about.    He asks him as if Job was there at the beginning.  He reminds Job that his plan has its origin in the gratuitousness of creative love.  However, from the Hebrew Bible perspective, wisdom was God’s sole companion at the creation of the world.  So Job lacks useful knowledge of anything that God is talking about.  So he can’t really answer God at all.  God is full of beautiful imagery of how the world was created and how he keeps sustaining it.

Not only did God plan everything, the world, the skies, the water. He also made sure that everything was created and held into place according to that plan.  It certainly wasn’t Job that did all that.  Did Job even help with laying the cornerstone?  Did he cut the opening ceremonies ribbon?  Since no human was there, humankind as a whole is left in the dark about how the universe really works and was created.  Job is in no place to answer any of these questions by God.  So we have Job who has just suffered the most extraordinary of bad circumstances and then God finally shows up on scene, tells Job to give it his best shot, and using hyperbole launches into a full out show-off attack.  Here is God, who didn’t seem to have any problems with volunteering Job for the worst of circumstances and now he just wants to make a point about how great he is?

How do you feel about God’s response so far?  Is it cold and callous or does it speak to God’s bigness and supreme reign over humanity?

David Bazan thinks it is cold and callous, in his song “In Stitches” his final verse is:

When Job asked you the question
You responded who are you
To challenge your creator
Well if that one part is true
It makes you sound defensive
Like you had not thought it through
Enough to have an answer
Or you might have bit off more than you could chew.

I think that what was going on here isn’t so much God showing off without any care for Job or what he’s going for.  I also don’t think it’s simply God changing the subject completely ignoring what’s happening telling him to suck it up.  I don’t think Bazan is right in calling God defensive either.  What I think is going on here is God is setting people in their place.  He comes onto the scene after over 30 chapters of whining, accusations, complaining, questioning God’s wisdom and character and depression.  He just wants to set the record straight that none of them really have any clue what they are talking about.  The very fact that God comes in and speaks tells me that no one is really doing a good job in speaking on behalf of him at all. Job hadn’t sinned, and God was confirming that by not even once bringing anything up.  At the very least, Job hadn’t sinned nearly enough to elicit a response from God about it directly.  Job’s friends obviously didn’t get it either, because God doesn’t even acknowledge their existence at all yet.  The text says that God answered Job, no one else.

God is responding to this deep sense of selfishness and self-entitlement that Job and his friends all seem to have.  Job and his friends had this idea that the world was created for them and no one else.  If you have this belief, then you believe that everything around you is for your immediate use.  They thought that they knew the reason it was created and if they knew the reason then they assume they know the specific path it is supposed to take.  The problem lies with the fact that they did not understand how it all started, like they thought they did.  If they don’t know how and why it is all there, then they certainly have no idea what the path it is going to take will be.

Like we talked about in the first week.  They thought creation existed for them.  Since they thought they knew how it started they assumed that they way it worked was according to retribution theology, good things happen to good people, bad things happen to bad people.  God steps up and criticizes that entire way of thinking.  He says look, you have no idea how this all started, so you certainly don’t know how it’s going to end and you absolutely don’t know all the steps in between.

“What God is criticizing here is every theology that presumes to pigeonhole the divine action in history and gives the illusory impression of knowing it in advance.”
- Gustavo Gutierrez

This book, we can pressume from how God answers, is not a lesson in how to suffer and come out on top.  This isn’t facing into the problem of evil in the world.  For all the messages we’ve heard how Job is a book about the problem of evil, the problem of suffering, or why do bad things happen to good people I don’t know if they have done us much good in helping us understand what God is saying.  Here we are at the end of the book, God has spoken and he hasn’t dealt with any of these issues at all.  Instead he faces right into the idea that we can know anything at all about the ways that God works.  We don’t, so stop pretending.  We cannot lay hands on God and try to fit him into our narrow way of thinking.  We cannot imprison him into our ignorant theological concepts.  He asks, do we really want to make ourselves the judge of his actions?  In that kind of universe, where the creation can limit and constrain God’s action, God would not be God.  This is how they saw absolutely everything, everything had an answer, everything was reduced to cause and effect.

“The revelation of God’s plan, when received with good judgment, will show Job that the doctrine of retribution is not the key to understanding the universe; this doctrine can give rise only to a commonplace relationship of self interest with God and others.  The reason for believing “for nothing” — the theme set at the beginning of the book–is the free and gratuitous initiative taken by divine love.”
- Gustavo Gutierrez

For nothing.  This is the part of this quote we need to take apart for a little bit.  This is what God seems to be saying in his speeches.  So no matter what questions Job and his friends asked.  They didn’t get answers.  They were told instead that the world does not turn and move on their questions and it does not behave the way that they expected.  Instead, the world was created because God loves it, and God loves us.  That is the purpose of the entire creation.  God created it because he loves it and finds pleasure in it.  He doesn’t create it to enact retribution laws throughout it.  The world is not about laws and having to work and move in a certain way.  Can you even fathom a world where things happen in it and you aren’t there?  God can.

Who cuts a channel for the torrents of rain,
and a path for the thunderstorm,

to water a land where no man lives,
a desert with no one in it,

to satisfy a desolate wasteland
and make it sprout with grass?

In ancient culture, rain was directly related to being cursed or being blessed.  If you got rain you were being blessed.  If you didn’t you were getting cursed.  However, God is stomping all over this way of thinking.  The world doesn’t work that way.  To prove it he says why in the world would it rain where there is no one?  Why?  Cause God loves it.  God wants it to.  It has nothing to do with you.  You aren’t even in the picture.  How selfish you are to think that it only rains just to bless you.  It’s raining everywhere, all the time, and for no reason at that.  The world doesn’t revolve around humanity and what it’s needs are.  The world revolves around God’s never-ending, forever gracious love.

“Not everything that exists was made to be directly useful to human beings; therefore, they may not judge everything from their point of view.  The world of nature expresses the freedom and delight of God in creating.  It refuses to be limited to the narrow confines of the cause-effect relationship.”
- Gustavo Gutierrez

God starts listing example after example of things that have nothing to do with humans.  He gives examples of things that make no sense at all.

The wings of the ostrich flap joyfully,
but they cannot compare with the pinions and feathers of the stork.

She lays her eggs on the ground
and lets them warm in the sand,

unmindful that a foot may crush them,
that some wild animal may trample them.

She treats her young harshly, as if they were not hers;
she cares not that her labor was in vain,

for God did not endow her with wisdom
or give her a share of good sense.

Yet when she spreads her feathers to run,
she laughs at horse and rider.

He spends a bunch of verses here expounding on the stupidity of an ostrich.  The ostrich makes no sense.  God says it doesn’t have to.  He made it and he loves it and the ostrich loves it.  What else could you ask for.  Stop needing to make sense of everything.  God expresses full delight in the world because he made it.  It rains on no one and it rains on nothing; it doesn’t need necessity because it just pleases God.  Utility is not the primary reason for God’s action.  It doesn’t need to make any practical sense.  Yet we seem to try to fit all God’s actions into our theological constructs and refuse to seek him outside of them.  We want answers to our questions.  Why is their evil?  Why am I suffering?  Why did she turn into this?  Why did this happen?  We don’t think outside of that.  We think that because evil exists, there must be a reason for it, and that we must know what it is.  Our theology tells us that God is good, and if that is true, our theology also tells us that there are good reasons for all these things that have happened.  They don’t exist so we make them up.  We say that God must be teaching us a lesson.  Or God is trying to strengthen us for the next hardship.  Or God is building up our character to be a better person.  We have so many reasons as to why everything happens.  One thing we are unwilling to do, at any time though for some reason is to make the obvious observation that God just straight up caused all this grief for no reason.

Think about it.  Let’s just read this part of the story together.

Then the LORD said to Satan, “Have you considered my servant Job? There is no one on earth like him; he is blameless and upright, a man who fears God and shuns evil.”

“Does Job fear God for nothing?” Satan replied.  “Have you not put a hedge around him and his household and everything he has? You have blessed the work of his hands, so that his flocks and herds are spread throughout the land.  But stretch out your hand and strike everything he has, and he will surely curse you to your face.”

The LORD said to Satan, “Very well, then, everything he has is in your hands, but on the man himself do not lay a finger.”

Then Satan went out from the presence of the LORD.

God totally sets up on Job, and it doesn’t even look like he has a reason.  Then to top it all off, after Satan goes out and kills everyone the story happens all over again and this time Satan gets to attach his body.  Thanks God.  After all this, you don’t even have the decency to give some explanation why you did these things.

Why did God allow this?  Is God directly responsible for the evil in Job’s life?

If he is responsible, we want to give him a reason.  If he’s not responsible we have to explain why he is not.  It seems to me that God doesn’t want off the hook for the evil.

“The point is this: if God seems to be in no hurry to make the problem of evil go away, maybe we shouldn’t be, either.  Maybe our compulsion to wash God’s hands for him is a service he doesn’t appreciate.  Maybe–all theodicies and nearly all theologians to the contrary–evil is where we meet God.  Maybe he isn’t bothered by showing up dirty for his dates with creation.  Maybe–just maybe –if we ever solved the problem, we’d have talked ourselves out of a lover….God neither apologizes nor explains, and he certainly makes no effort to solve the problem of evil for them.  He just goes on arranging rendezvous after disreputable rendezvous, no matter how little anyone thing of his choice of trysting places.”
- Robert Capon

Are we ok with allowing God to be the source and the reason for evil like in this story without trying to make it something else? Should Job have been OK with everything that has happened?  I don’t think he had to be OK with it, but eventually, to be part of this world, we need to learn what it means to give up ourselves to something else.  To be in a relationship with a creator that we can’t understand, sometimes we have to give up on what we think we know, or what we want to know.

“And what is love if it is not the indulgence of the ultimate risk of giving one’s self to another over whom we have no control?”
- Robert Capon

God is really not interested in cleaning up our stories.  He seems ok with it all being put back on his plate.  He seems like he wants to take the blame.  This isn’t really something that we should avoid.  We need to give it to him and let it rest on his plate.  The problem of every evil thing that happens in the world isn’t our fault.  So back to God’s response.  What he does want us to know, is that he is interested in being in love with his creation.  He created it.  He holds it all together.  He wants Job to know that he is in absolute love and is completely pleased with everything he is done including creating Job.  He is not regretting his decisions.  This makes it difficult for us.  This means that we are kind of stuck in this weird paradox of wanting and crying out for justice and wanting what is right and knowing that God also wants justice and wants what is right and in the same breath realizing that God is seemingly doing nothing about it.

Eventually we will see.  If God tells enough stories, maybe then we will realize that he doesn’t work even remotely like we imagined or thought.  The entire story of the Bible is completely opposite to where we would like to land.  Capon tries to explain it a bit using 1 and 2 Kings.

If you look at the author of 1 and 2 Kings, we an see that there was a theologian at work here trying to make a statement.  He didn’t just want to tell you what happened, but he had a theological understanding that the reason the history of God’s people went so badly was because their kings constantly broke and transgressed the law.  The theory of the author worked for quite a while.  You start with Eli the priest and his disobedient sons, which then the Philistines defeated the people of Israel.  Next, God sent Samuel to clean things up but the people pushed their way into needing a King.  Neither God or Samuel wanted that to happen but let it happen anyway.  They get a King, and Saul disobeyed.  David on the other hand did pretty good, but then gave it to Solomon who royally screwed it up which eventually lead to the kingdom falling apart.

So the kingdom is split and both the northern and southern kingdoms are failing to listen to the law whatsoever.  Every king that he lists did exactly what they were not supposed to do, none of them were good.  So the author thinks, that if there was only one King that would come along and really keep the law, and do it well, then everything bad would stop happening and everything would be honky dory.  So finally, King Josiah, King of Judah steps into the mix.  He keeps every law that was ever made.  He purifies the temple and keeps the passover and kids out all the idols, laws that weren’t kept since before any king existed.

“Before him there was no king like him, who turned to the Lord with all his heart, with all his soul, and with all his might….nor did any like him arise after him.”
2 Kings 23:25

Then guess how the story ends?  Josiah dies in battle, slain by Pharaoh Neco of Egypt, who also takes over Jerusalem.  Then he gets taken over by Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon who then leads Israel into their time of exile.  Even the authors of the bible can’t wrap their heads around what is happening.  They are convinced God works one way.  Even when he doesn’t.  The author of Kings is at a lost, he hits a block in his writing for a little bit and then chooses to ignore it and goes right on writing again as if all it would take is a king to obey the law.  He’s desperately trying to make sense as to why in the world Israel would constantly find themselves getting destroyed, so he makes up a reason.

“Christian theologians who address themselves to the problem of evil should treat it as a mystery to be entered, not as a puzzle to be solved.”
-Robert Capon

We come to the same conclusion as a few weeks ago.  Instead of trying to answer and explain away everything that happens we need to be humbled.  This means that instead of trying to seek all the things that God does, why don’t we just seek God.  Job’s friends are determined to lay hands on God, instead of abandoning themselves to God’s embrace and God’s inconceivable way of doing things.

Jesus has a similar situation in Mark, where he seems to respond the same way as God does here.

Then James and John, the sons of Zebedee, came to him. “Teacher,” they said, “we want you to do for us whatever we ask.”

“What do you want me to do for you?” he asked.

They replied, “Let one of us sit at your right and the other at your left in your glory.”

“You don’t know what you are asking,” Jesus said. “Can you drink the cup I drink or be baptized with the baptism I am baptized with?”

“We can,” they answered. Jesus said to them, “You will drink the cup I drink and be baptized with the baptism I am baptized with, but to sit at my right or left is not for me to grant. These places belong to those for whom they have been prepared.”

Mark 10

James and John are even a little more forthright than Job’s friends are.  They just say straight up: do whatever we want.  Jesus takes the same response as God.  Who do you think you are?  Do you even know what your asking?  Can you do what I’m doing?  Can you handle what I’m going to handle?  Then he goes off into a rant about being great and becoming a servant.

James and John are making the same mistake.  They think they are the center of the universe.  They think that nothing else matters but them.  In Job, God speaks of all the wonders of creation and nature and makes the gap larger than Job could comprehend.  They are different.  Job has no idea what is going on whatsoever.  In Mark, Jesus makes the gap just as large and I don’t really think James and John know what they are talking about.  They can’t do what he is doing or going to do.

What I love about both these passages is that neither Jesus nor God punishes or gets angry at Job, James or John for their questions.  The questions are allowed.  The lamenting is allowed.  They are allowed to be in their ignorance.  Job finds some type of freedom in his complaints and rebellion.  God doesn’t correct him, he simply puts him in his place.

You and I are indeed free to cry out, to lament, to scream—if need be. The God to whom we call does not ignore his dearly beloved creature. It is just that God refuses to be confined within to a system of predictable rewards and punishments. Jesus reminds us that “he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous.” (Mt 5: 45)
- Gustavo Gutierrez

It is difficult, but we must resist simply becoming like Job’s friends and creating reasons that don’t exist and trying to put God into our box of explanations.  Remember that Job never finds out why he is suffering.  God never gives him an answer.  God is completely uninterested in why and it seems to be that he has no interest on whether or not we care about why either.  He doesn’t answer why but he does reassure that Job is not simply a prisoner of retribution theology or karma.  He reassures him, and puts Job’s friends into place, by reminding them that God doesn’t work in the ways we want him to.

God wants to move us to a place of admiration.  The best people that can teach theology are not those that try to argue for the faith or explain away every single detail of some systemic rant.  The best theologians just display what they know.  Remember the blind guy in John 9?  I don’t know any of the answers to the questions you are asking me.  But I do know this.  I once was blind, but now I see.  Look at God’s answers.  I am not going to give you any answers to the questions you are asking me but look at the waterfalls, and the animals and the seas and the beautiful creation which I keep in tact every day all day long.

(ht naked pastor)

We need to move from explanation to appreciation.  Admiration will truly set us free.  God knew this.  So he sets up the stage and performs and reminds Job of all the wonders of nature, which God created.  I can only show you this paradox that leaves you upset and wanting more.  I cannot give you anymore thing more than that.  This is what God leaves us with when we are presented with the problem of evil.  His wonderful and awe-inspiring image of creation and everything his hand can do, that ours can’t.  This isn’t to stop us from asking questions, this is to remind us that all the questions and answers we are dying for might not be as necessary to right now as we think.  We don’t stop asking questions, we just need to remember that we are no longer prisoner to the answers.

So when people are dying to know where you stand on the subject of secular music, or birth control, or abortion, or homosexuality.  You can exit that situation with having to worry about what the right answer or Christian answer is.  Your truths don’t rest in systemic theology of right and wrong answers.  Instead your truths are proclamations that once you were blind but now you see.

“We arrive in our several pulpits not as the bearers of proof but as the latest runners in a long relay race; not as savants with arguments to take away the doubts of the faithful but as breathless messengers.”
- Robert Capon

“The church has always had a problem of explaining its relationship to the world.  By far the commonest view is the Noah’s Ark theory: The human race is out there bobbing around in the drink.  Nobody can touch bottom; they all just tread water till they drown.  Up over the horizon sails the Ark of Salvation.  Much bustle.  Cries of “Man overboard!” and “Heave to!”  Apostles, Martyrs, Popes, Confessors, Bishops, Virgins and Widows lean over the sides with baptismal boat-hooks and haul the willing ones up over the gunwales.  Assorted purblind types, however, refuse to come aboard.  Sensible arguments are offered to them, but there are no takers.  After a just interval, the Captain orders full speed ahead and, swamping the finally impenitent in his wake, heads the church for the ultimate snug harbor.

The trouble with that view, and with many another more refined, is that it forces you to limit the Incarnate Word’s saving activity to the church.  No doubt the church is the only place where you can be sure (by means of easily recognized sacramental hats) that you have a firm grip on what he’s doing; but it doesn’t seem right to imply that he isn’t doing the same work everywhere else.  I, if I be lifted up, says Jesus, will draw all unto me.  God invented the ecumenical movement–and his version of it is not limited to Christians.  The relationship between the baptized and the unbaptized is not a case of us versus them.  The church is like the rest of the sacraments, an effective sign — a notable outcropping — of what all people already are by the Word’s work of creation and Incarnation.  The church is the mystical body because humanity is the mystical body.  The only difference is that in church the Mystery wears a hat on its head.”

This is in reference to when he says that sacraments are hats on invisible men.  I am going to make a prediction.  I am going to say that it is only a matter of time before Robert Capon’s books and writings blow up and become one of those top sellers, where he needs to die before anyone cares or talks about what he is saying.  He hasn’t passed away yet, but he is getting pretty old and its unfortunate that he was listened to so little.  It will come.  His voice is needed.