written by Dr. Laura Brenneman

To all of you interested, intrigued, or flat-out frustrated with the Apostle Paul, here is your opportunity to delve deeper into some of his most interesting writing. Sign up to take BI 605-190 Corinthian Correspondence, which runs June 3-20, 2013 (3 credit hours), with Dr. Laura Brenneman, specialist in Pauline studies. These letters offer a unique view into the life of the early church, a life in which a diverse people were working out their identities as people of God, the many-gifted church of Christ, in relation to the wider church movement. Sound familiar? If you think about how the Bible relates to matters of church conflict, leadership in the church, unity in the midst of diversity, and discipleship in Christ, this is the class for you! Class meets Monday-Thursday, 12:30-4:30 p.m.

written by Dr. Peter Spychalla, Assistant Professor of New Testament & Spiritual Formation

Contemporary Christians from diverse traditions—Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant—are showing increasing interest in spiritual direction, the ancient art of soul care in which one believer helps another prayerfully attend to God. I consider myself among the novices seeking to get acquainted with spiritual direction and take initial steps into its foothills. In official, formal, and hierarchical expressions of this ministry as practiced through the centuries, the human helper, usually experienced and gifted in guiding others, is referred to as a spiritual director. In less-official, less-formal, largely-mutual relationships pursued among contemporary believers, the human assistant may be referred to as a sacred companion, a soul friend, a spiritual companion, or a spiritual friend.

What is spiritual direction? What is its aim? How is it pursued? Spiritual direction is an ongoing process of reflection, prayer, and conversation in which two believers prayerfully attend together to the presence and workings of God in the contours and vicissitudes of the life of one of the believers (the directee) so that she or he might grow in awareness of God and intimacy with God and respond more fully to His invitations to live in grace, wholeness, and holiness. Let us consider five important elements of spiritual direction.

The Holy Spirit – The Holy Spirit, rather than the human helper, is the true Spiritual Director. It is the Holy Spirit who leads, guides, instructs, forms, and invites the directee into greater attunement, closeness, and responsiveness to the Loving, Living God. Prayerful attending to God is pursued in the presence of God, by the enablement of God, in communion with God, in dependence upon God, with openness to God, for the love of God, seeking the pleasure and glory of God, seeking greater intimacy with God, seeking greater response to God, seeking discernment from the Living God. Through and through this process of holy listening and discernment is a spiritual (Holy Spirit) activity.

Accompaniment or Companionship – Each of us can use help in attending to the presence and active work of God in our lives. The directee invites a soul friend (a spiritual director) to be a prayerful, discerning companion on the spiritual journey. This ministry may be called spiritual accompaniment or spiritual companionship. One joins with another to pay attention to God. The director shows love, acceptance, and affirmation by being fully present to the directee. The director helps the directee become more attuned to God’s presence and working by asking gentle and thoughtful questions, such as, “Where is God in this?”

Holy Listening – Prayerful attention is at the heart of spiritual direction. Without it, there simply is no spiritual direction. This is a posture of open, prayerful attentiveness to God which reflects the response to the Lord modeled by the young boy, Samuel, “Speak, for Thy servant is listening” (1 Samuel 3:10), and of Mary, “who was listening to the Lord’s word, seated at His feet” (Luke 10:39). The directee and director give themselves to holy listening, individually and jointly. The directee prayerfully pays careful attention to God’s presence and workings in the midst of life’s experiences, both within one’s own soul and all around through relationships, roles, callings, decisions, and circumstances. The director likewise prayerfully attends to all that the directee shares and reflects upon, as well as to the directee’s relationship with God, and their joint conversation about the directee’s life. Together, the two spiritual companions partner in prayerful listening to God during their time of reflection, prayer, and conversation.

Discernment – Spiritual, relational, and inner heart dynamics in the life of the directee are reflected upon in light of God’s heart, character, instructions, invitations, and promises revealed in His Holy Word. “Be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may discern and affirm what the will of God is, that which is good and pleasing and perfect” (Romans 12:2). Opportunities, choices, and decisions are discerned in keeping with the counsel of the ancient prophet: “Stand at the crossroads, and look, and ask for the ancient paths, where the good way lies; and walk in it, and find rest for your souls” (Jeremiah 6:16). The directee and director together seek to discern the presence of God, workings of God, and invitations of God in the life of the directee in order that he or she may live more completely in His grace, abide more deeply in Christ, and live out more fully God’s callings. Wise discernment often involves Ignatian reflection on consolations and desolations in the movements of the directee’s soul. Christ invites each one to true spiritual rest in Him: “Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For My yoke is easy and My load is light” (Matthew 11:28–30).

Transformation – The aim of the ministry of spiritual direction is for the directee to draw near to the Living God and be more fully transformed, inside and out, into all that God has called them to be in Christ. The directee seeks to grow in awareness of God and intimacy with God and respond more fully to His invitations to live in grace, wholeness, and holiness. This ministry of the care of the soul aims at the cure of the soul, nurturing it toward health, wholeness, and vitality. This is to be more fully conformed to the image of Christ.

In summary, spiritual direction crucially involves the Holy Spirit, accompaniment or companionship, holy listening, discernment, and transformation. If this ancient Christian art of soul care interests you, consider joining us this summer at Urbana Theological Seminary for a journey into the foothills of spiritual direction in the course “Spiritual Direction and Soul Care.” We will adopt the posture of young Samuel, “Speak, for Thy servant is listening” (1 Samuel 3:10). We will seek to learn how to prayerfully attend to God together.

written by Melody Green, adjunct professor

November 22, 2013 will mark the fiftieth anniversary of the death of C. S. Lewis, one of the most influential Christians of the twentieth century. The occasion will be marked by conferences around the globe, as well as the unveiling of a memorial to him in the Poet’s Corner of Westminster Abbey, where the most influential British writers are memorialized. And most importantly for our purposes here, Urbana Theological Seminary is offering a class on C. S. Lewis this summer.

C. S. Lewis has been described as one of the most influential Christians of the past century. Part of this is because of the wide variety of genres in which he worked: he wrote popular theology, fantasy, science fiction, essays, poetry, literary theory, memoir, allegory. Part of this is also because of his advocacy of what he called “mere Christianity,” or a non-partisan, non-sectarian view of the Christian faith. Some of his popularity is due to his ability to put difficult concepts into pithy, easily-remembered statements (take, for example, the quote from The Problem of Pain popularized by the movie Shadowlands: “God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: it is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world”), while some of his popularity is due to the fact that he was not afraid to address those difficult concepts in the first place.

A close reading of Lewis’s texts reveals that no matter what genre he was working in, a few themes frequently reoccur throughout his work. The relationship between faith and reason is one of his most important themes, and can be seen not only in books like Mere Christianity, where one would expect the apologist to be at work, but also in his children’s fiction. One of Lewis’s most frequently quoted statements is his argument that Jesus cannot be viewed as “just a good man,” but must be either “liar, lunatic or lord.” The same argument shows up in the children’s fantasy The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe when three children approach an elderly professor with a concern that their sister is talking about something that they don’t understand, and the professor responds by carefully explaining that there are only three options: either their sister is mad, or she is lying, or she is telling the truth. There is no other way out. This parallel use of argument is not accidental: Lewis frequently tackled the same topics, themes and concepts through various genres, grabbing the attention of different audiences as he did so.

Other important, recurring themes include the concept he called “Joy,” the relationship between love and suffering, what it means to be a created being in a world of created beings, and the importance of moral behavior in the Christian life. All of these themes, however, fall under one larger theme that is pervasive throughout everything Lewis wrote after his conversion: a deep and strong love for Christ.

One example of a place we can see this love at work is in an essay he wrote to answer a question he was frequently asked: why did an Oxford professor who wrote both literary theory and popular theology spend time writing a series of fairytale-like children’s books? His answer was this:

“I thought I saw how stories of this kind could steal past a certain inhibition which had paralysed much of my own religion in childhood. Why did one find it so hard to feel as one was told one ought to feel about God or about the sufferings of Christ? I thought the chief reason was that one was told one ought to. An obligation to feel can freeze feelings. And reverence itself did harm. The whole subject was associated with lowered voices; almost as if it were something medical. But supposing that by casting all these things into an imaginary world, stripping them of their stained-glass and Sunday School associations, one could make them for the first time appear in their real potency? Could one not thus steal past those watchful dragons?”

In this class, we will read several of Lewis’s books in various genres, exploring how these themes are developed and how the different genres reveal different aspects of the same concepts. We will also discuss Lewis’s popularity, we will read some of his well-known (and some of his lesser-known) texts, and we will spend some time looking at Lewis’s presence in popular culture: this includes movies, music, and recent books in which he appears as a fictional character.

By the end of the semester students in this class will have gained an understanding of who C. S. Lewis was, what his most important ideas were, what different genres he worked in, and why he still matters today. We will look at aspects of Lewis’s life that are important to understanding his writing, and we will discuss some of the writers who influenced Lewis, including George MacDonald and G. K. Chesterton. But most importantly, this class will provide us with the opportunity to see Christ in a fresh light.

 

written by Andrew Kamm, pastor at Christ Community Church in Champaign, Urbana Theological Seminary Alumnus

Let me open up with a bit of straight talk. This may surprise you, but carving out space in my day to read the Bible, pray, and relish the presence of God is not something that comes naturally for me. In fact, there are times when I am just bad at it. Inconsistency is likely as much a problem for me as it is for anyone else.

One reason for this inconsistency is the lack of perceived results from an hour spent in study and prayer and seeking God. Often I get to the end of an hour and I feel like nothing happened. Another reason for my inconsistency stems from the lack of a good plan. Finally, whenever I do get into a rhythm of devoting time to these ancient practices I find there is a rat’s nest of motivations, good and bad, all tied closely together. I begin to feel a sense of pride for my commitment. When this happens I want to run from it, so I leave good habits in the name of promoting grace over legalism.

Let’s face it. We’re all kind of a wreck when it comes to these things. On the one hand we believe it would be good for us, but because we rarely “feel” like making the space and when we don’t see the change we wanted, we often leave these good practices behind and end up feeling guilt-ridden.

So let me make this simple for you. The most explosive, dynamite attack on self-righteousness and pride is to honestly read the Bible, pray and seek after fellowship with God. Like any relationship, a good plan will help you stay the course. And when it comes to change, you have to remember that believing the gospel is momentary, but transformation is a long-distance run.

Over the summer, I read Colossians more days than I didn’t. Since August, I’ve read Mark on most days. I haven’t read it everyday. Some days I enjoyed it more than others. Once or twice I really sensed God guiding me by his Holy Spirit. I struggled dealing with my mixed motives, but looking back over the last few months I do see how God’s word is being implanted in my heart and it is chiseling away at my propensity toward self-justification.

Here’s the takeaway.

1. Make a plan. When and where will you be? What will you read? I’ve found it helpful to be alone and to read over the same scriptures regularly for a period of time.

2. Don’t let bad motives paralyze you. Inevitably you will often end up with a Bible in your lap more out of duty than delight. Who cares? God’s word and His presence has the power to blow up your superficial religion. Give it a try. See if he will.

3. Pursue God like a distance runner. A super-marathoner doesn’t get too high or too low at mile 5. After all, she still has 95 miles to go. A summer pursuing God might not do much, but what about a decade or 50 years? Just imagine how God might grow you.

At the end of the day, take heart because God is pursuing you and He wants you far more than you want him.

written by Nathan Lenstra, M.Div., pastor at Connexion Church in Danville, Urbana Theological Seminary Alumnus

My name is Nathan Lenstra and I’m a 2009 M.Div. graduate from Urbana Seminary. My education at Urbana Seminary helped me develop a solid biblical framework and foundation for thinking about ministry, especially God’s mission in the world and how I could be a part of it. In what follows, I describe how my church and I have put into practice in our community what we’ve learned about God’s mission.

Children matter to God! Remember the gospel story about people bringing children to Jesus to have him bless them (Matthew 19:13-14; Mark 10:13-16; Luke 18:15-17)? The disciples tried to keep the children from Jesus, perhaps thinking that the Messiah was too busy or too important to spend time with children, but Jesus welcomed the children and then turned the disciples’ thinking on its head when he said that everyone needed to receive the kingdom of God like a child in order to enter it.

So God loves children and thinks that children are important. The Cape Town Commitment from The Lausanne Movement says, “Children and young people are the Church of today, not merely of tomorrow. Young people have great potential as active agents in God’s mission. They represent an enormous under-used pool of influencers with sensitivity to the voice of God and a willingness to respond to him.” About one-fourth of the world’s population is under 15 and research has shown that most people who make a commitment to Christ do so between the ages of 4 and 14, so what are we doing to invest in this key demographic to develop the leaders of today and tomorrow? And what are we doing to ensure that all children encounter God’s love?

For the last six years, my church has had a ministry with children, youth, and families in the Fair Oaks neighborhood in Danville, IL. Fair Oaks is part of public housing in Danville and is more than 90% African-American while my church used to be almost exclusively Caucasian. If you live in east central Illinois, periodically you may hear a news report about a shooting or some other criminal activity in Fair Oaks (in Danville the reputation of Fair Oaks is entirely negative and often condescending), but I’m here to tell you that God is present and at work in Fair Oaks.

Almost every Friday during the school year, we have an after school Bible Club for elementary students and for the past several years, we have done a weeklong Vacation Bible School in the summer for children. We do these (and other) activities in the Fair Oaks neighborhood where the people live for a few reasons. It’s easier for the children to attend (no transportation logistics to figure out), it eases the parents’ minds (Who are these people, where are they taking my children, and what are they doing with them?), and we think it’s biblical (Jesus didn’t just stay in the temple or in Jerusalem and ask people to come to him. He traveled throughout Palestine with the message of the kingdom of God.).

Through my ministry involvement in Fair Oaks, I have grown and have learned a lot, perhaps especially that children are children, regardless of the color of their skin or their socioeconomic background or any other way we might class people. They are energetic, curious, playful, and they often have a desire to learn about God and to follow him.

Some find it hard to believe that there are people in America (or at least the Midwest) who don’t know anything from the Bible, but I have interacted with several children who don’t know about Jesus, the 10 Commandments, Adam and Eve, etc. – stories that I think many Christians assume everyone in America knows about. I’ve found that these children as well as those who go to church regularly both want to know God. I’ve almost cried at times when children call out, “I want Jesus to be my king!” or they ask, “What are we going to learn about Jesus this week?”

I think about some of the children (and youth) I know and how God is at work in their lives, and then I think, “Where would they be if I wasn’t obedient? Would they have known about God and Jesus if my church and I didn’t go to Fair Oaks?” I don’t know the answer to those questions, but I do know that I’m grateful for what God has done. Things have been challenging and difficult at times and I’ve thought that I was in the midst of a wasteland at times, but God has proven faithful (cf. Isaiah 35; 41:17-20; Isaiah 43:16-21; Luke 4:18-19) to bring healing, hope, and life to those who may be overlooked by others.

Let me conclude by saying, “I love children!” I am a single, white, balding 32 year old man who is not especially energetic, enthusiastic, or dynamic. If you were going to pick someone to be involved in children’s ministry (especially ministry among minorities), I wouldn’t be the first choice, but a few years back when I was in a small church on a Native American reservation in the middle of nowhere in North Dakota, a pastor’s wife challenged me to lead a children’s ministry. I had no idea what I was doing and I often still don’t know what I’m doing. But I have come to love children and I especially love teaching them the Bible and talking with them about God and how God loves them.

If God can use me, he can use anybody. I encourage you to pray and ask God if he wants you to get involved in children’s ministry in some way, especially consider children that may be overlooked in some way in your community. Jesus loves them and he may want you and your church to be the ones who go to them with the message of his love.

If you want to learn more about our ministry or about how you could go about starting a similar ministry in your community, I’d love to talk with you. Please don’t hesitate to contact me at Lenstra80 at  yahoo.com or  474 1293. Thanks for reading!

Zack Eswine, senior pastor of Riverside Church in St. Louis and author of Preaching to a Post-Everything World, joins Urbana Seminary for our annual Preaching Forum on March 4.

Here he shares with us in a very honest, inviting and insightful way about his spiritual journey.

What pastor/preacher has had the greatest impact on your life? How so?

The pastor/preachers that have had the most impact on my life are local. Dr. Bob Smart has apprenticed me in life and ministry, love and forgiveness. He preaches and I taste a sweet sense of prayer and of God. Jerram Barrs has offered friendship, invitation, frightening gentleness and hospitable presence to those he serves. When he preaches I experience a tangeable expression of Jesus’ presence.  Dr. David Calhoun has preached quietly and steadily while living with cancer for years. With quiet exaltation he bids us to look up off of ourselves to the steadfast love and majesty of the Lord. I suppose, I hear the sermons of men such as these through the aid of their lives. I see something of both their sorrows and their rejoicing when the pulpit mic is turned off. This makes the moment of their preaching shine all the more to me.

As it relates to preaching I’ve also greatly valued the writings of Augustine, Charles Spurgeon, Martyn Lloyd Jones, Robert Smith Jr., Tim Keller, Calvin Miller and Bryan Chapell. The writings of Eugene Peterson have greatly aided my concept of the pastoral vocation.

Since those years ago when you transitioned from serving as professor to serving again as the pastor of a local congregation what has the Lord been teaching you?

Humorously I can say that I actually thought that it was a humble thing in Seminary to let someone call me “Zack” rather than “Dr. Eswine.” Being in the pastorate again reminds me that human beings often call each other by their first names. There is nothing uniquely humble about it! In the small church that I serve folks care very little whether I’ve written books or preached all over the place. What matters to them is that I pray for them, seek to live alongside of them, confess my own need of Jesus along with them, and point them to Him from the word in a way they can understand. Likewise, as a professor I could play to my strengths more. People almost always encountered me at my best–in a pulpit preaching, in a classroom teaching, in my study advising. In contrast, a church this size forces others to encounter my weaknesses, sins and limits much sooner.  We get to learn to do life together warts and all.

What first got you interested in writing a book on preaching to a “post-everything” world?

First, my life had changed so much that I began to wonder if I could reach who I once was with the gospel. Second, the cultural landscape of America continues to change rapidly. Many of us will preach in contexts with people who do not know, understand or have experience with the Bible. Third, I wanted to account for these realities in the context of the preaching curriculum at the Seminary in which I was teaching. These personal, cultural and curricular concerns forged a desire within me to write the book.

What has helped you most in faithfully preaching the gospel while still connecting with a post-modern, but ever-changing, audience?

Trying to get to know my neighbors, listening to my kids, being honest about my own human dilemmas and trying to pay attention to the local questions and answers that people are asking and offering. I also value access to other pastors and apologists who are actively trying to preach Jesus from the Scriptures while paying attention to our cultural moment.

Given your recent book, Sensing Jesus, what advice can you offer your fellow pastors that you yourself wish you had been given?

God heard your prayers before you went into the ministry. He walks with you, not because you are a pastor, but because of Jesus. Therefore, the greatest challenge you might face in ministry is to try to act like you are something other than a human being. In truth, you read the Bible with coffee breath and preach with toothpaste breath. This means paying attention to the power you lack. People will demand that you be God for them or praise you for trying. But only God can fix everything, know everything and be everywhere at once. You needn’t repent because you can’t fix it all, know it all or be everywhere for all. If there is any repenting to do it is for our attempts to try knowing everything, fixing everything and being everywhere for all–in other words, it is for our old edenic attempts to try and be like God. This also means paying attention to one’s place. There are no little places. In order to reach the world for Christ someone has to make it their great ambition to reach the folks on the corner of Kirkham and Rock Hill in Webster Groves Missouri or any and every other place–no matter how small or large.

Finally, almost anything we value in life requires a marathon not a sprint. But almost everything around you teaches you that success equals doing large things, in a notable way as fast as you can. This sprinting way of life values impatience and haste–two values that the Bible equates with folly. The pastorate requires us to learn how to cultivate small beauties slowly over a long period of time. This is Jesus’ way with each of us after all! Jesus possesses the grace to show us how to get somewhere by staying put. Pastors and congregations desperately need this grace.

 

written by Lin Warfel, friend of Urbana Seminary

 

Tides and Rivers

 

Taking two giant, sweeping steps back,

to think about the tides and rivers of mankind

and history, the currents across the face of earth

it strikes me how good and evil

rise and fall

 

Some strains are so obvious

with time, looking back

Like evil doomed, but nevertheless,

waiting with power, in the wings

to rise and twist in ugliness

 

Sure, Germany was a mess

paving a way for Hitler

to organize, motivate, energize

So we have pictures of soldiers,

rivers of them streaming

into parts of Europe

 

And Japan, too,

their soldiers, planes, ships

growing like a tide

rolling into China, Island after island

even Hawaii

 

Russian troops, unleashed,

binding neighbor nations

strangling them with communism

grinding them in poverty

 

June, 1944, Normandy,

the greatest tide of history

as the collected strength of Allies

poured onto the beaches

then surged inland

like a new Mississippi

of troops and tanks and artillary

of wave after wave of fighter planes

and bombers by the hundreds

 

Evil unleashed

or saviors

to push evil down

get the lid back on

we need to be careful

to step back

and see ourselves as others see us

ask ourselves what values we have

and how are we doing

 

No question both good and evil

can unleash energy

My favorite movie story

puts the anger of a poor Jewish athlete

up against a flying Scott, Harold.

Both run fast, motivated

by opposite extremes

of love and hate

 

Love doesn’t come easy

nor is it kept clean

since Adam and Eve

it’s been a struggle

 

What a contrast

to understand, that this is earth

and up there, out there, is heaven!

Here what’s normal is ‘all messed up’

To make it better

it’s gonna be work

hard work

step by step

three steps forward, two steps back

 

So we have a model

God in human form

who came, lived among us

spoke and ate and slept

 

A baby in a manager

a man nailed to a cross

Precious baby, nursed by his mother

a boy,taught by his father

a young man, who brought evil to focus

let it pour out on him

 

In Him we see answers

how to value each other

“Behold thy mother; behold thy son.”

Man, woman, each one valued

treated with respect

Little man, big man,

fisherman, scholar

tax collector, Roman

no matter

Here is the way, the truth, the life…

 

For a person or a nation

by Him we can measure

where we are

By Him we can set our goals

and find the paths to get there.

 

Selah,

Lin 2/2013

written by Bob Sievers, blogger and Urbana Seminary student

My favorite patristic author is St. Athanasius.  His work On the Incarnation is one of the best books I have ever read, and I highly recommend it to anyone. The fact that it was written in the 4^th century makes it all the more worthy of our attention.  Athanasius lived roughly two centuries before Muhammad, thus making the title of this article anachronistic.  Yet possibly one of the most astounding pieces of his work is how he dispels a common Muslim misperception.  As he deals with the paradox of how Jesus could be both all man and all God, he turns the upside-down Islamic view of Jesus completely right-side up. 

Muslims are constantly referring to aspects of Jesus’ humanity in an attempt to disprove His deity.  The Muslim theory goes that if Jesus engaged in human behavior, He could not be God.  Of course, since Jesus was both all man and all God, proving He was human does not in any way invalidate the fact that He was also God.  If you read various Christian and Muslim web sites, what you will find is article after article quoting the Qur’an and the Bible in attempts to refute and counter-refute each other’s arguments.  Is there a simple yet overarching theological truth buried here that can unravel this debate?

Consider one particular aspect of the Muslims’ assault on Jesus’ incarnation.  The argument goes that Jesus, as a man, was required to do a variety of humiliating bodily functions that normal humans do.  As such, He could not be God in the flesh, as God would not defile Himself by the baser aspects of human existence.  Here is a typical example of a Muslim’s perspective:

“The Quran says that Jesus and his mother, they both used to eat earthly food, like all other human beings; they were both servants who used to eat food (i.e. they used to defecate like any human being), and one who is such cannot be a god because of his compound being and fallible nature, and because of the [impurities such as] urine and excrement that he produces.”[i]

In other words, Jesus could not be God because being human means being impure, while God is pure and cannot be defiled. 

So what did Athanasius have to say on the subject?  While writing about God becoming human, he considers this exact question.  The two possibilities are as follows.  The first option is that an incorruptible God could be corrupted by humanity.  The second is that a corruptible humanity would be purified by God.  Muslims believe the former, while Christians believe the latter.  Consider what St. Athanasius said:

“Not even His birth from a virgin, therefore, changed Him in any way, nor was He defiled by being in the body.  Rather, He sanctified the body by being in it.”

A few sentences later, Athanasius says the same thing in another way,

“Just as the sun is not defiled by the contact of its rays with earthly objects, but rather enlightens and purifies them, so He Who made the sun is not defiled by being made known in a body, but rather the body is cleansed and quickened by His indwelling.”[ii]

Here we are faced with a simple choice.  Which force is stronger, the impure nature of humanity, or the incorruptible nature of God?  The answer seems straightforward to me.  How could being all man and all God degrade or contaminate God?  Rather, wouldn’t we expect the human nature of Jesus to be elevated and purified by His deity?  Physical acts notwithstanding, the conclusion is that God was not made impure by living life as a human, but rather that God the Son was the perfect sacrifice because of His unique make-up. 

Again, we see a diametrically opposite view of the God of the Bible and Allah of the Qur’an.  Christians recognize that a pure and holy God can overcome anything, including the potentially unclean aspects of being human.  Muslims believe these unclean aspects of the human existence would forever taint an all powerful creator.

Once again, Islam has a completely antithetical approach to who God is. 

 

[i]http://www.experiencefestival.com/wp/article/in-the-quran-jesus-used-to-defecate-and-urinate-like-any-man

[ii]Athanasius, St. On the Incarnation. Crestwood, NY: St. Vladamir’s Seminary Press, 1993, p45-46.

 

More of Bob’s writings can be found on his blog, unravelingislam.com.

written by Brent Dickman, Urbana Seminary Alum and Adjunct Professor

“A merry Christmas, uncle! God save you!” cried a cheerful voice. It was the voice of Scrooge’s nephew, who came upon him so quickly that this was the first intimation he had of his approach.

“Bah!” said Scrooge, “Humbug!”

He had so heated himself with rapid walking in the fog and frost, this nephew of Scrooge’s, that he was all in a glow; his face was ruddy and handsome; his eyes sparkled, and his breath smoked again.

“Christmas a humbug, uncle!” said Scrooge’s nephew. “You don’t mean that, I am sure.”

“I do,” said Scrooge. “Merry Christmas! What right have you to be merry? What reason have you to be merry? You’re poor enough.”

“Come, then,” returned the nephew gaily. “What right have you to be dismal? What reason have you to be morose? You’re rich enough.”

Scrooge having no better answer ready on the spur of the moment, said “Bah!” again; and followed it up with “Humbug.”

“Don’t be cross, uncle!” said the nephew.

“What else can I be,” returned the uncle, “when I live in such a world of fools as this? Merry Christmas! Out upon merry Christmas! What’s Christmas time to you but a time for paying bills without money; a time for finding yourself a year older, but not an hour richer; a time for balancing your books and having every item in ‘em through a round dozen of months presented dead against you? If I could work my will,” said Scrooge indignantly, “every idiot who goes about with ‘Merry Christmas’ on his lips, should be boiled with his own pudding, and buried with a stake of holly through his heart. He should!”

Truth be told, I imagine that sometimes we all feel a little bit like ol’ Ebeneezer. Perhaps we’ve heard that pop-rendition of a certain Christmas song one too many times on the radio. We tire of all the shopping, consumerism, and crowds. Sometimes all the festivity begins to wear on us. Or maybe it’s all the work that finds its way into December, from final exams to year-end tasks. We’ll struggle against the humbug-spirit. We’ll fight to find some good Christmas cheer – a good deed for a stranger, a dollar for the Salvation Army, our favorite movie, whether Linus or an elf named Buddy, little Kevin or Tiny Tim, a Grinch or a Griswold, or something else. And of course through it all, we stare face to face with the bigger question. What does it all have to do with Christ in the manger anyway?

This question, what does the celebration of Christmas have to do with the Nativity, was in some way, I think, upon the mind of Charles Dickens as he wrote A Christmas Carol. Dickens was a lifelong Christian and his work is not as secular as is often supposed. I have read scholars assert that A Christmas Carol must surely be secular, as it contains no scenes at church, no religious expounding on shepherds or magi, no pontifications on Incarnation or Blessed Virginity. But that, I think, misunderstands Dickens’s intention. His readers knew the story of Christ’s birth. They were looking, like us, for how it applied to their life and how it connected with the “spirit” of every present Christmas.

Like other great Christian writers, Dickens is not a theologian per say, but his work is laced with matters relevant to theology, especially to questions of ethics or to theological aesthetics (specifically in the latter’s concern for what might enable us to choose and live the moral Christian life). Dickens didn’t write religious fiction. To paraphrase G.K. Chesterton on the matter, they are prayers, not sermons – prayers offered through his literary imagination on behalf of our imagination (Chesterton 1906, 96).

Imagination is more than make-believe or daydreaming. It guides what thoughts and feelings come to mind as we go about our day. In this way our imagination influences, consciously and unconsciously, the way we live our lives. How do we conceive of, perceive, and understand the significance of what goes on in and around our lives, in this case, of all the Christmas merriment?

In A Christmas Carol, Dickens addresses his literary prayer on behalf of our Christmas imagination. Dickens’s hope is to reveal how the celebration of Christmas might be a means toward a Christian end. I venture to say that we are familiar enough with the tale to identify that end – the It’s-A-Wonderful-Life-related message of the worth of love of neighbor as oneself. It is the idea of Christian charity. “Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless,” says James, “is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress.” And we might imagine him adding, “to care for Tiny Tim.” We are familiar with the end, but what of the means?

Scrooge’s transformation is wrought by the ministrations of the Spirits of Christmas. These ghosts awaken memories and reveal moments that change the way he perceives the world. They work upon his imagination so that his heart might be redeemed. Scrooge’s journey with the Ghost of Christmas Past, of Scrooge’s Christmas Past, to be precise, awakens him to something once lost. Dickens tells us as much, as Scrooge gazes upon the first of his many visions – the countryside of his boyhood home:

“The Spirit gazed upon [Scrooge] mildly. Its gentle touch [upon his heart], though it had been light and instantaneous, appeared still present to the old man’s sense of feeling. He was conscious of a thousand odours floating in the air, each one connected with a thousand thoughts, and hopes, and joys, and cares long, long forgotten.”

As Scrooge visits memories of yesteryear, like the well-known Christmas celebration at Fezziwig’s, he re-imagines those moments of joy and happiness long forgotten. These moments are the so-called secular festivities of the Christmas season. Their significance is a motif recurring often through many of Dickens’s works surrounding Christmas. In The Pickwick Papers, finished just six years prior to Carol, Dickens makes an analogy between the festivities of Christmas with those of a wedding. For both, it is the celebration of the matter that makes clear the meaning. Celebrants are filled with joy and their hearts are opened to see clearly the peace and beauty of lives lived together in relationship, community, friendship, and love. Yet while a particular wedding might fill the hearts of only some with joy, Christmas festivities might do so for many more (Walder 1981, 27-28). The assertion made is a theological one: joy matters.

Joy matters because it makes room in the heart for hope. And if hope for the future is the beauty of a wedding, how much more so it is for Christmas! The ministry of the Ghost of Christmas Present is like the prayer offered by Paul to the Romans: “May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit” (Rm 15.13). This ministry, this prayer, is at its most evident and pronounced in dialogue not often depicted in adaptions for the screen. If we recognized that there are no scenes at church services in A Christmas Carol, this does not mean that its worshipful intent, its theological thrust, is not still felt. We find Bob Cratchit and Tiny Tim not at church, but returning from church. And we hear not from a vicar, but a feeble boy, ready to teach Scrooge how to enter the Kingdom. The lesson is for us, the reader, too:

“And how did little Tim behave?” asked Mrs. Cratchit….

“As good as gold,” said Bob, “and better. Somehow, he gets thoughtful, sitting by himself so much, and thinks the strangest things you ever heard. He told me, coming home, that he hoped the people saw him in the church, because he was a cripple, and it might be pleasant to them to remember upon Christmas-day Who made lame beggars walk and blind men see.”

Bob’s voice was tremulous when he told them this, and trembled more when he said that Tiny Tim was growing strong and hearty.”

Scrooge knew Him of whom Tiny Tim spoke. He just hadn’t thought of Him for a while, not in this way. He came to understand. A father’s toast becomes a son’s prayer, and leads Scrooge to repentance, to imagine life in a different way. We know the scene:

Then all the Cratchit family drew round the hearth in what Bob Cratchit called a circle, meaning half a one; and at Bob Cratchit’s elbow stood the family display of glass. Two tumblers and a custard cup without a handle. These held the hot stuff from the jug, however, as well as golden goblets would have done; and Bob served it out with beaming looks, while the chestnuts on the fire sputtered and cracked noisily.

Then Bob proposed: “A merry Christmas to us all, my dears. God bless us!”

Which all the family re-echoed. “God bless us every one!” said Tiny Tim, the last of all.

He sat very close to his father’s side, upon his little stool. Bob held his withered little hand in his, as if he loved the child, and wished to keep him by his side, and dreaded that he might be taken from him.

“Spirit,” said Scrooge with an interest he had never felt before, “tell me if Tiny Tim will live.”

“I see a vacant seat,” replied the Ghost, “in the poor chimney-corner, and a crutch without an owner, carefully preserved. If these shadows remain unaltered by the Future, the child will die.”

“No, no,” said Scrooge. “Oh, no, kind Spirit! say he will be spared.”

“If these shadows remain unaltered by the Future, none other of my race,” returned the Ghost, “will find him here. What then? If he be like to die, he had better do it, and decrease the surplus population.”

Scrooge hung his head to hear his own words quoted by the Spirit, and was overcome with penitence and grief.

We know the rest of the story too, either from reading the work itself or in its many variations on film, screen, or stage. But, I hope that in some small way, this blog can help you see it with different eyes, with a new imagination. For Scrooge’s transformation is, in truth, a rebirth. As he prances about his room on Christmas morning, filled with such joy, it suddenly occurs to him:

“I don’t know what day of the month it is,” said Scrooge. “I don’t know how long I have been among the Spirits. I don’t know anything. I’m quite a baby. Never mind. I don’t care. I’d rather be a baby.”

A baby? Dickens was no literary slouch; his references to scripture, when he makes them are deliberate, if subtle. He has learned the lesson of Tiny Tim, and now, finally like a little child, he is ready to receive the Kingdom of God (cf. Mt. 18.3, 19.14).

After Scrooge makes provisions for the day, he goes to church and then celebrates the Christmas traditions around him. They are not independent things. Christmas has reawakened his heart to joy and his imagination to hope, so that now, when faced with a plight like the suffering of Tiny Tim, he can hear and respond to the Christian call to stand against it in faith and love.

Dickens entitled his work a Christmas carol, that is to say, a religious hymn for Christmas – the joyous celebration of the Nativity. A few years later, he would write his thoughts on what images that Christmas music springs to his mind. They are memories of Christmas, moments to transform his imagination:

“Known before all the others [i.e. Christmas memories], keeping far apart from all the others, they [gathered] round my [childhood] bed. An angel, speaking to a group of shepherds in a field; some travellers, with eyes uplifted, following a star; a baby in a manger; a child in a spacious temple, talking with grave men; a solemn figure, with a mild and beautiful face, raising a dead girl by the hand; again, near a city gate, calling back the son of a widow, on his bier, to life; a crowd of people looking through the opened roof of a chamber where he sits, and letting down a sick person on a bed, with ropes; the same, in a tempest, walking on the water to a ship; again, on a sea-shore, teaching a great multitude; again, with a child upon his knee, and other children round; again, restoring sight to the blind, speech to the dumb, hearing to the deaf, health to the sick, strength to the lame, knowledge to the ignorant; again, dying upon a Cross, watched by armed soldiers, a thick darkness coming on, the earth beginning to shake, and only one voice heard, ‘Forgive them, for they know not what they do.’”

This Christmas, may the God of the Manger fill you with Christmas joy and peace as you trust in Him, so that you may overflow with the hope of the Nativity by the power of the Holy Spirit. God bless us every one! Amen.

 

All quotes taken from Dickens, Charles. 1843. A Christmas Carol: In Prose; Being a Ghost Story of Christmas. London: Chapman & Hall.

Other references:

Chesterton, G.K. (Gilbert Keith). 1906. Charles Dickens. London: Methuen.

Walder, Dennis. 1981. Dickens and Religion. London: George Allen & Unwin.

written by Dave Berry, pastor at Jacob’s Well  Community Church

In a hole in the ground there lived… millions of miserable men. The years were 1914 - 1918 and The War to End All Wars had devolved into a war of attrition, disease, and all the horror and killing effectiveness the technology of the day could bring. 2014 will bring many efforts to commemorate the centennial of “The Great War.” I encourage you to pay close attention, even to find out how your own family may have been involved. My grandfather, Scott Glaze, was one of those miserable men. Naturally, that matters much more to me than you; however, there are a couple of young men who spent months in the cold, wet, and inane slaughter whom, I can imagine, might matter to you: J.R.R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis.

Our inspiring literary friends, favorites of succeeding generations, served with some distinction in the fields of France. Both served as officers on the front lines, with the burden of leading 25 soldiers to carry out orders. Both had best friends killed in the fighting. Both suffered from lice-borne trench fever and had to be removed for rehabilitation. (Tolkien suffered lingering effects for years.) Lewis was severely wounded by “friendly fire” artillery.

Lt. J.R.R. Tolkien served as a signal officer in the Lancashire Fusiliers, interestingly, working in cryptography/codes/language creation. His initiation into the horror came at the Battle of the Somme. On the first day of the battle, 20,000 British soldiers were killed, more than 35,000 wounded. Tolkien endured the ongoing struggle at the Somme for months until he had to be removed due to the debilitating trench fever.

Lt. C.S. Lewis served as an infantry officer with the Somerset Light Infantry. He entered the front lines – as an officer – on his 19th birthday. Six months later he received his “blighty wound” and was shipped back to England. The blast that wounded him killed his second in command, a Sergeant Ayres.

What we have come to admire as the enduring “iron sharpens iron” friendship between Tolkien and Lewis was forged in the fire of academic excellence at Oxford in the 1930s. But, I think it safe to surmise that the providential fellowship of brilliance which, it can be argued, was necessary for the literary and spiritual refinement of both, certainly carried an appreciation of mutual respect and identification with each other’s “baptism” under fire. As war clouds loomed over England in 1939, one can imagine Tolkien and Lewis reflecting… and preparing… and hoping for good to triumph, light to prevail, and mankind to be spared a repeat of the crucible of their generation.

Although I have been reading their works for nearly 40 years, I know that I have begun to read them through a “new” filter: the “I experienced the unthinkable horrors of war first hand” filter. In so doing, the sometimes pervasive and seemingly impenetrable darkness each brings our various protagonists into and through carries a weightiness of context I’ve certainly not applied before. The struggle of good vs. evil in other realms has to have been deeply imbedded into the souls of our admired authors as very young men leading even younger men into battle in this realm. (Both men viewed the “good vs. evil” struggle more theologically than politically. The enemy German forces weren’t the embodiment of evil, nor the Brits the sterling standard of all things good. Each was to adjust this view in WWII as Nazi Germany became the scourge of western civilization.) And, maybe most tellingly, the power of friendship, indeed, “fellowship,” was certainly made manifest in the trenches of France.

When asked about the influence of his war experiences on the Lord of the Rings in particular, Tolkien typically said that such associations were more tangential than intentional. Lewis disagreed with his friend. In a review of LOTR, Lewis wrote:

This war has the very quality of the war my generation knew. 

It is all here: the endless, unintelligible movement, the sinister quiet of the front when “everything is now ready,” the flying civilians, the lively, vivid friendships, the background of something like despair and the merry foreground, and such heaven sent windfalls as a cache of tobacco “salvaged” from a ruin.

The author has told us elsewhere that his taste for fairy tale was wakened into maturity by active service; that, no doubt, is why we can say of his war scenes (quoting Gimli, the dwarf),

“There is good rock here. This country has tough bones.”

“Good rock” meant much to men cowering in trenches trying to escape seemingly endless attacks with artillery, poison gas, and charging infantry. Trenches had to have “tough bones” to protect the men who lived in a hole in the ground.