Wednesday Link List

First, two strongly related links:

• Author Mike Breen guests at Verge Network with Obituary for the American Church.  He notes three factors responsible for killing the church, celebrity, consumerism and competition.
• Rachel Held Evans guests at Relevant Magazine with a particular focus on the celebrity mindset in the church, check out When Jesus Meets TMZ.

Other links this week:

• Christian authors facing the justice system in the UK win some and lose some.  Here’s a snapshot of just one day in a British courtroom.
  
• Cathy Cleaver Ruse of the Family Research Council guests at Washington Times, explaining why she won’t be buying Girl Scout cookies anymore, and why you might also want to reconsider your yearly purchase.
  
• Author Anne Jackson makes what is now a somewhat rare online appearance at Donald Miller’s blog, sharing her thoughts as she visited Manhattan’s Museum of Modern Art.
• Rebecca Trotter shares with her sons, and all of us, her radically different approach to why we have a moral obligation not to have sex outside of marriage.
  
• Here’s a new song from the band Caleb, fronted by Caleb Chapman, son of Steven Curtis Chapman.  Enjoy the music video, We Will Wait.
  
• From Sunday night’s Grammy Awards here are the winners in the gospel and contemporary Christian categories you didn’t see in the telecast.
  
• Carolyn Arends gets together with several other older brothers and older sisters, and concludes that for older siblings, pleasing God is often performance based.
  
• One day late for Valentine’s here’s a rerun of Biblical Ways a Man Finds a Wife; with some added commentary by myself this time around.
  
• Out of Toronto’s Eight Letter Conference, comes a book from InterVarsity Press releasing in April: Letters to a Future Church, including contributions from such diverse voices as Ron Sider, Peter Rollins, Tim Challies and Andy Crouch; and many others who participated in the event.
  
• Your pastor’s job description actually requires him to fulfill five different roles on a weekly basis. (And that doesn’t count about a dozen more things he does if your church is smaller in size.)
  
• Russell D. Moore notes that although the “worship wars” have abated, we still need to “seek the well-being of others in worship… resonate with worship through musical forms we previously never considered.” He makes it clear that choosing songs on the basis of nostalgia isn’t worship.
• Stand to Reason, an apologetics blog, offers some instruction to people who think that homosexuality is the worst sin.
  
• Closing graphic here was chosen mostly because I really enjoyed singing the song this week at church.  Click the image to see more.  Click here to listen to the song as recorded by Matt Redman.
  
• That’s it for this week; thanks for tuning in.

Peter Rollins Makes His Point Well, Despite My Earlier Misgivings

As you might remember, back in the summer I abandoned my reading of Peter Rollins’ The Orthodox Heretic. It was just too “out there” for me.  Or so I thought.  But last night I decided to read the final six or seven short essays and while I’m not sure if it was me or Peter Rollins, something changed in those final pages to the point where, while I’m still not 100% comfortable with a full endorsement, I have to give the author some measure of credit for really thinking through some popular Bible narratives.

I thought I’d look at this one, the story we call “The Prodigal Son” only because it reminds me of the Rob Bell Peter Walking on Water Controversy which is still getting comments.   This should drive some of the same people equally nuts.  But I don’t believe for a minute that there is a singular interpretation to everything that Jesus taught, nor do I believe that there are not some additional, deeper nuggets of truth lurking under the surface, awaiting discovery.

Rollins begins by re-telling the story, albeit somewhat abridged.   The younger son has claimed his share of the estate, left home and hit bottom.

There was no life for the young man so he thought to himself, I have had a good time in the last few years, but perhaps I should now return to my Father’s home.  For there it is warm, and while he will be angry, he may take pity on me and let me work as a hired hand. And so he began his return journey.

Rollins then narrates the son’s return, the father’s joy, the reinstatement of the son, the celebration.  And then,

Later that night, after the party, while he was alone, the younger son wept with sorrow and repented for the life he had led.

As with all 33 stories in the book, he then moves into a commentary section. And then…

…The question we must ask concerns how much of what he baptize with the name forgiveness is really worthy of that name.

…In politics…forgiveness is strategic and comes with conditions…

…In the world of work…forgiveness can be a great strategy for helpign to ensure return business and a good reputation…

…When it comes to religion…as John Caputo notes in What Would Jesus Deconstruct? forgiveness all too often comes after a set of criteria have been met, namely an expression of sorrow, a turning away from the act, a promise not to return to the act, and a willingness to do penance.  Forgiveness thus follows repentance and so cannot take place until repentance has occurred.

…But what if Jesus had an infinitely more radical message than this?  What if Jesus taught an impossible forgiveness, a forgiveness without conditions, a forgiveness that would forgive before some conditions were met?

…Is it not true that the conditional gift of forgiveness, without the need of repentance, houses within it the power to evoke repentance?  …It is impossible to change until we meet someone who says to us, “You don’t have to change, I love you just the way you are.”

What if a forgiveness that has conditions, that is wrapped up in economy, is not really forgiveness at all, but rather is nothing more than a prudent bet?

Rollins then quotes verses 17-20 of Luke 15:

¹⁷“When he came to his senses, he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired men have food to spare, and here I am starving to death! ¹⁸I will set out and go back to my father and say to him: Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. ¹⁹I am no longer worthy to be called your son; make me like one of your hired men.’ ²⁰So he got up and went to his father…

Rollins continues,

It would initially seem that the repentance in the story came before the forgiveness.  Yet is the younger son really repentant here?  The text says he came to his “senses,” that is, he started to make a sensible calculation.  One would expect the narrative to claim something like, “in repentance he returned to his father’s home,,” but the story describes the son’s internal monologue as a strategic decision rather than a change of heart.

But even if his repentance were genuine…the father’s response shows no economy is at work in the kingdom.   After all, we read these powerful words, “But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion…”

The father has no interest in whether or not his son is repentant.  All he cares about is the son’s return.

…The radical idea of forgiveness…is already embedded in the original story.   It adds a conclusion that imagines how such unconditional love may have actually provided the power needed to precipitate a change of heart in the son, rather than his experience of eating with the pigs.

There is a depth to this insight.   Perhaps I would have done better to simply leave the author unnamed, given the polarization that’s out there.   Maybe we all need to see on what personal level we need to take the story to heart.

Further Considering the Prodigal Son (and the Prodigal God)

Like many others, I have been quite taken with Timothy Keller’s new book The Prodigal God, which I considered briefly here a few weeks ago.   I am ever impressed at the ability of this story to challenge us in so many different ways.

So it was only fitting that we downloaded two of Greg Boyd’s sermons from Woodland Hills preached earlier in November which deal with the same topic.   As Greg points out, if the father in the story had simply pursued justice, no one would remember this story today.   (I would have added that no gospel writer would have included it then either.)

One thing I like about Greg’s preaching is that he doesn’t tell you all he knows.   This is a guy with such intellectual depth that I recently gave up trying to follow a particular discussion at his Christus Victor Ministries blog.   To adapt a term from television production, he leaves enough “intellectual headroom” that you know he’s done his homework, but doesn’t lose the common touch.   (The second part of the series includes a hilarious summer job story from Greg’s student days that is such a perfect fit to the parable under discussion.)

Anyway, all this to say, read Timothy’s book, and listen to Greg’s sermon.  To do the latter go to the Woodland Hills download page, and select the sermons for November 9 and November 16, 2008.  You can either listen to on streaming audio (allow 40 minutes of uninterrupted listening per sermon) or copy it to a disc as we did for those long car trips. You’re bound to read or hear things about this so-familiar Bible passage that you haven’t heard or read before.

Pictures: left: Greg Boyd; right: Timothy Keller book