Where is God these days? Is he paying any attention to my life and needs? Does he know what’s going on in our lives?  In our families, churches, and neighborhoods? We hear in church that God rules the universe and knows every thought we think, and every act we do. So why is it that he seems so uninvolved with our practical needs? We pray, yet he hardly ever answers—or, for many of us, he never answers—so it’s hard to take him seriously. 

I suspect this exposes an unstated question shared by many Christians—and one that also keeps many non-believers from taking Christianity seriously: “Why is God silent?” Some ask if he even exists. What makes the silence even more troubling is that Christians constantly link love to God, as if his love for us is a basis for faith. Do love and language not go together? So the rhetoric of Christianity seems not to be matched by God himself. What is more, most legitimate claims about God speaking are from the distant past—located in events of 2000 or more years ago. Did God lose his voice back then? Does he really care for us if he never talks to us? 

Let me ask another question.  What is God’s point of view? Everything written so far has been biased by our human point of view, a viewpoint that requires God to meet our expectations. Given that God is greater than we are—as creator to creation—the question we need to ask instead is whether we are meeting his expectations.

And with that comes another question: have we been listening to the ways in which he is speaking? Is it possible that he is a great communicator who longs for us to listen him? Could it be that our sinful disinterest is really the problem? That, while having ears, we don’t hear; and while having eyes, we still don’t see?

Listen to God, for instance, speaking to a group of spiritual skeptics centuries ago: “when I spoke to you persistently you did not listen and when I called you, you did not answer” [Jer. 7:13]. The people of that era were blaming God for not listening to them, but from God’s point of view they were actually ignoring him.  And God certainly did not quit trying to get through to humans after the era of Jeremiah. Later on he went so far as to send us his Son to express himself in terms humans could literally grasp. Consider, for instance, the Son’s title in John 1:1&14 where he was introduced as God’s “Word” made flesh.

Let me press that point. God made us to be communicators because it represented his own relational image. Our own ability to communicate is based in God’s eternal Triune relationality—a state of being in which the Son is the expression of all that the Father is. That is, he is the Word for God and the Word who is God. When he was transfigured on the mountain for the three apostles to see—fully exposed in his divine glory for a few moments—the Father underscored the point of the event by proclaiming aloud from heaven, “listen to him!” But the fact is, most people in his own day did not listen to him.

I suppose many of us would excuse ourselves from that crowd—I would!—by aligning ourselves with the disciples who did listen to him. We, after all, are on the side of Jesus. Our only complaint is that he no longer speaks to us as he did in the times he lived on earth. We would certainly listen to him if he came back today!

Or would we? Here’s my challenge. First, begin by considering what Jesus said to a group of his so-called “disciples” in John 8:30. “If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth and the truth will set you free.” The response of this group was remarkable: they immediately disagreed with Jesus! You can see for yourself how the event unfolded by reading the chapter. What I want to point to is an axiom Jesus expressed in this debate: “If God were your Father, you would love me, for I came from God and I am here” (8:42). The reason Jesus gave for their not listening is that they had the desires of a different “father”, namely the devil.

Is God really silent? No. We have the words of Jesus, who is God the Son, written in the gospels; and his teaching stands behind the entire New Testament as its guiding impulse.  Jesus also assured the listeners of his day that the Old Testament Scriptures reveal him as well. This Bible, with both the Old and New Testaments, is now readily available to us.

The critical question is whether the “love” for Jesus, as a product of our being children of God, is an active motivation for our listening to him.  That axiom of John 8 was cited more than once.  See, for instance, John 5:42, where Jesus confronted the Bible College and Seminary professors of his day for not seeing how the Old Testament pointed to him. Why were they blind? Jesus answered: “But I know that you do not have the love of God within you.” These were men who knew their Bibles, but not the God of the Bible.

The second part of my challenge is this: read your Bible. Read it boldly, as if it is the main way God intends to share himself with us in this day and age. As if it is the boldest, clearest, and most tangible expression of God’s heart to be found on earth. Read it all the way through in just a matter of a few weeks, as if God is offering his deep concerns and purposes to you. Read it as a love letter.

When we get to heaven I expect this to happen—just a guess, mind you, but an informed guess—that God will separate religious people in the same way he addresses the non-religious people. Those who love what Jesus says, what he stood for, and what was written about him under the Spirit’s direction (i.e. the Bible) will be asked to form one group. Then he will have those who may have held important positions in their church, and even those who held high degrees in theology, but who didn’t really treat the Bible as a relational resource—i.e. “abiding in his word”—to move into a group that is filled with those who ignored the Scriptures because of their more overt dissaffection. These are all the ‘non-lovers-of-God’ (both religious and non-religious versions) who are ever ready to defend themselves for not reading the Bible because they are too busy. Too many good television shows to watch, perhaps? Or church meetings to attend?

The final addendum to my challenge is this: if you are one who has complained that God is silent, despite our having constant access to a Bible that shares his heart with us in some of the most remarkable and effective ways possible, then consider doing this: ask him, in a brief prayer, to open the eyes of your heart to begin seeing what you may not have seen before—that he loves you. Then begin to read the Bible with the passion it deserves.

Here’s my prediction: with that passion every reader will begin to see God’s point of view, that he is a great communicator and he wants us to listen to all he has to offer. The heart of his message is that his Son is wonderful and that we should listen to him!

This weekend I’m in beautiful Hawai’i to teach Romans at the Bible Institute of Hawaii.  I’m refreshed, as always, to have renewed fellowship with its director, Clive Cowell and Maya his wife.  Clive has been gracious enough to supply me with a second guest entry for this site (see his earlier entry in the April 2009 archive).  He touches on the New Testament imagery that helps us understand our relationship with God in Christ: read and enjoy! 

Images dominate our world these days, whether film or footage, broadcast or blog, Netflicks or news.  These images are many times as obtuse as they are overwhelming (well, except the Spreading Goodness blog). 

When it comes to images of the Church, however, the New Testament provides us six beautifully encouraging images that are certainly different, but have a wonderful thread running through them.  The Church is seen as:  1) the body of Christ; 2) His building or temple; 3) His household or family; 4) His flock; 5) a plant or vine; and finally 6) the bride of Christ.  Whichever image grabs your attention most, each speaks of a relationship:  us in Him with love central and circulating throughout. 

A closer look reveals some insights:

As members of one body, we are members one of another.  There is connection (Rom 12:4-5).

As His building or temple, we are joined together growing into a holy temple in the Lord.  There is a bond (Eph 2:21-22).

As his household or family, we are encouraged that even though we were strangers we are now fellow citizens with saints (Eph 2:19), and as servants we are now set free (John 8:35-36).

As His flock, we have the good Shepherd.  He cares for us so much He lays down His life for us (John 10:14-16).

As a plant or vine, through Him we can bear much good fruit.  We work alongside Him as we are connected to Him (John 15:1-8).

As the bride of Christ, we have a spiritual union with Him (Ephesians 5:30-32).

I purposefully placed them in a particular sequence.  I hope you see the progressing connections from individual block, to building, to household, to servanthood under loving authority, to fruitful connection, to final union.  However, one image compels us like none of the others do. 

See, it’s one thing to be a member of a group or part of a building, even part of a household, but quite another that Christ picks us out to be His bride.  This means we are more than sheep – even when we act like it – and more than grapes – even when we whine (pun intended).  We are His bride! 

The imagery concerning His church as found in the Bible is such that there is a very real sense of order and beauty, but if we take away the imagery of the Bride of Christ, we might find ourselves lacking something, or worse unwittingly autonomous. 

How so?  We could just be sitting in our household, even with friends, might even call it church, be eating from the fruits of our labor and even following the commands of a shepherd, and as much as all these are indeed connected in Christ, there is the distinct possibility of no real union. 

While it is also true that we can be as adulterous as the nation of OT Israel, our union is confidently sealed with His love.  Christ who has picked us out from all other imagery determines to proclaim His love to us.  I don’t want to be just a building block, although I am; rather I desire to be His bride.

Every Easter we are reminded that because Christ died for us we have new life.  As Paul said, “We are members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones” (Eph 5:30), and because of this “shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall be joined unto his wife, and they two shall be one flesh” (Eph 5:31). 

Why does he connect these two verses?  According to Paul, the parallels are profound.  “This is a great mystery: but I speak concerning Christ and the church” (Eph 5:32).

Paul is showing us that we have an attachment to Him and a strength of affection greater than any union that exists in earthly marriages, or indeed any response to the other images of the church. We are His bride, we are His church.  In a real sense, we are in a dress rehearsal here on earth for our eternal marriage with Him in heaven. I’m encouraged that so many are participating in this “rehearsal” even on the Spreading Goodness blog.

Here in my neck of the woods, one friend put it to me this way in a class I am teaching, “I got to see [scripture] as something so much more than a guidebook, a textbook, a manual… I now see it as God’s love letter to us all.”  What a great way to continue as we get ready for our relationship in heaven.

Let’s continue to participate together as we all grow in our understanding and relationship with Him.  I am convinced that as we respond more fully in our devotion to Christ and His ministry, we will be even more passionate about Him, his love letters and the our desire to share Him.   I trust you find that an outstanding image.

Long ago I realized that I participate in a widespread form of relational abuse.  Why?  Because, like so many others, I realize that it makes life work.  We come to see it as an ordinary fact of life.  But it shames me and I can never be ”okay” with it.

The abuse is relational pragmatism. Or, more to the point, it views people as useful resources: nothing more, nothing less. If we know someone who has things we want or need—tools, appliances, money—or if they have special skills we appreciate, the pragmatists tend to give them time and attention. In fact it’s proverbial that people with unique skills and resources never lack for friends.

Every sphere of life is included.  Among those hardest hit are the relationships imposed on us by life events: our in-laws or fellow employees, for instance, are part of the social contracts of life—included in the fine print of a given contract. If someone has a less-than-stellar boss who, whatever their flaws, writes the job reviews and controls promotions, they tend to be treated as good friends. These are relationships of necessity—but not of desire. Call them “pretend-friendships.” They represent steps to success that need to be endured. Often, after success comes, and they’re no longer needed, they’re no longer endured. 

Every relationship has a purpose or set of purposes. I’ll expand on that below. And among those purposes is fellowship: each of us needs at least a few relationships that are more or less unconditional. Often we find such friends in shared circumstances such as school, work, or family; or in sharing common interests, as in clubs or small groups. Call this group our “true friends.” If we ever move from one locale to another the need to find some additional true friends is crucial to feeling at home. In looking back I now see that in my college days finding true friends was as important as finding a career pathway. 

But some mishaps can occur. I remember just settling into seminary life in Chicago years ago. I was as lonely as an old-time lighthouse keeper when a young couple, each gifted with winsome smiles, invited me to dinner at their place. I melted and started opening some heart space for them. Until after the meal when they asked, “Would you mind if we share a very special opportunity with you?” It was a marketing moment I hadn’t seen coming. Let me say right away that the opportunity certainly had some merits, but that wasn’t my hope for that night. I suspected I was mainly being viewed as a potential brick in the pyramid of their success. My worst fears came true when, after I very politely declined the offer, I never saw much of them again. 

Which brings me to a comment on social contracts by which we view people as objects of a contract or elements of a social system.  With this pragmatism in play we measure each person by the benefit they bring to the system. This is the stuff that formed unions as an attempt to defend against abuses. This pragmatism is often expressed through callous choices that come with staff reductions; or by offering unlivable wages and work conditions. People, in pragmatic and utilitarian work settings are reduced to machines. The financial bottom line is absolute.

The same pragmatism has slipped into the most fundamental of all relations: marriage. How many marriages, for instance, have broken up as one spouse tells the other, “you aren’t meeting my needs.” I recall one old ballad in which the crooner bemoans such a breakup: “you don’t bring me roses anymore.” This has spread into churches, too, as today marriages are often viewed by pastors and members as contractual events with certain contractual escape clauses. In the past a man and woman, when married, were held to be indivisibly one in a divine act of irreversible ontology. Theirs was a triune union [as husband, wife, & Spirit] as sacred as God’s own triune unity.

But let us be practical now. Most of us, if we are honest, have three types of relationships: the real, the potential, and the pragmatic. What defines a real friend is one who sees us, mutually, as one of their “real” friends—sharing common concerns and values. On the other end of the scale are our mutually-pragmatic friends—those we use and who use us. At the severely broken end of the spectrum these bonds have the weight of tissues during hayfever season: of very special value for a moment or two before being discarded. 

We should ask, then, how and where sin is in play here. Is it wrong, in God’s eyes, to arrange a pragmatic exchange of goods and services with others, yet without treating those we work with as real friends? Jesus, after all, did not give himself in such broad terms to everyone. He had three in his inner circle of friends, then twelve, and a few others such as Lazarus, Mary, Martha, and so on. 

Let me invite readers to read through the Bible as a whole with this question in mind. I promise: some huge insights will come of it. Let me offer, as a teaser, some highlights from my own readings. God made us to share, strictly, in real friendships. Why? Because that is how he exists eternally—in a mutual, eternal, glorious embrace of Father and Son, by the Spirit. He then created us in this, his relational image, to embrace him and each other from the heart and by the indwelling Spirit who pours out love to and through us. 

He also designed us to be inadequate so we need each other. So there must be ongoing commitments among us to exchange goods and services. But the Bible treats these as gifts to be exchanged out of mutual devotion. While he does not ask us to try to bond with every other person in the world—he made us as very limited people—he does call for us to be fully devoted to those we do bond with: to love them as we enjoy being loved. This has remarkable benefits: it gives us a basis to trust others, and to become fully authentic ourselves. What would it be like if each of us shared deeply with a dozen or so other friends who, in turn, were equally and unconditionally devoted to our personal welfare? We might find some security. Others might want to join us. 

This fits the Scriptures. As the head of our shared body, the church, Jesus told our forbearers: “By this all men will know you are my disciples: that you love each other.” How much love and for how long? He answered, “No greater love has any man than this: that he lay down his life for his friends.”

But, I hear some of us thinking, all of this theology is nice but it’s not very practical. Each of us has our own concerns that need to be met, programs to run, people to direct, and if we wait for some distant utopia to form, nothing will get done. So it is that many Christian communities—both churches and ministries—are famously practical but not famously devoted to each other in love.

How did Jesus do? Read the gospels again and see for yourself. I think, from my reading, of the way the disciples of Jesus treated the two blind men on the road from Jericho to Jerusalem. The two were shouting and making a nuisance of themselves, so the disciples told them to shut up. I suspect the sighted disciples were anxious to get on with the trip. Jesus, however, stopped and did the healing. Or the time when the apostles just returned from a missions trip, anxious to get to the retreat center to rest and to share their stories. Jesus, on the way, saw the crowds all around them who were hungry and needy. So he interrupted the retreat and fed them. Why? Because he had compassion.

So here is the question of the day. Which type of relationship do each of us have with Christ? Real, potential, or pragmatic? Let me confess where I am too much of the time: in my utilitarian ways I treat him as my great resource in the sky.

Others do the same. Consider many prayer meetings:

“God, will you please ______ us!” [fill in: bless, refresh, stir, encourage, heal, strengthen, etc., etc.] All of which set out our own benefits as front and center. It goes on from there: “And please be with ______, and help us to ______.” God is the giver; we are the perpetual takers.

Also, I think of sermons where very little is said about God—speaking about how great, attractive, and winsome he is in his triune reality—and great chunks of time are devoted to the “application” of the text. It’s as if the whole point of Scripture is to set up behavioral modification events with our welfare (and compliance) in view.

Finally, here’s a bottom line question: does God enjoy being in a “pretend-friendship” with so many of us? Does he like a contract-relationship where he supplies eternal fire insurance and we try to pay him his weekly premiums with a visit to church and the giving of a few bucks?

And, if not, what would a “real” friendship of mutual delight be like with God? I think he might like it. After all, it’s what the Father and Son, by the Spirit, have been sharing back and forth from eternity past. Lots of mutual love and glory going back and forth. Is anyone willing to try joining in that exchange, with a further openness to share it with still others? I’d like to. And—assuming we have the Spirit—he is ever active in pouring that love out from the font of the Godhead and into our hearts (Romans 5:5).

Recently I was visiting with a friend who was once a pastor. His marriage is broken—already into years of separation with no restoration in sight—yet he longs to be together with his wife again. In our conversation he touched on the promise of Romans 8:28—”for those who love God all thing work together for good”—as a confusing text. His frank prayer is familiar to many of us, even if our circumstances may differ: “My God, how can anything good come out of this?!” 

I won’t try to offer an answer here but I do want to probe the question he raised. To begin let me confess that I never feel so limited as in moments when a tender word or some wise counsel might soothe, heal, and restore. I tend, instead, to share the lessons of a professor and lecturer. By now I know that is not what is needed! So I sit silently, pondering the problem, aching with and for my friends. And I pray. 

So allow me to think aloud, still pondering our conversation. Maybe there’s a counselor who will read this and be stirred to help this dear couple, or others like them. This post will be very brief and simply suggestive. Other thoughts are invited by readers. 

I started my reflections by considering the broadest biblical frame possible—looking to the accounts in Genesis and in Revelation as the beginning and the end of the present age. In both books sin and pain are paired realities. Before the fall there was no pain or death. There was no distrust. There was no rejection or fear. Pain began with sin. Even ordinary illnesses—or any form of physical suffering—are linked in the Bible to Adam’s fall. Earthly catastrophes including cyclones, fires, earthquakes, and tsunamis, are all linked in the Bible to the fall: as the groaning of a cursed cosmos, cursed to a slow death because of Adam’s sin. Yet in the end, at the conclusion of the book of Revelation, we find that every tear will be dried. The curse will be lifted. Suffering and sorrow will flee away. A new heaven and earth will replace the old. 

Huge amounts are written in the balance of the Bible on the collective issues of pain, suffering, and God’s providence. Providence is the common label for the theme of Romans 8:28—addressing God’s successful oversight and interventions in a world filled with sin and pain. 

In the broadest consideration we turn to the hope of eternity: the answer offered by God’s final judgments and the restoration that Revelation promises us. A clear application of this answer is offered in the faith chapter of Hebrews, in 11:39-40. 

And all these, though commended through their faith, did not receive what was promised, since God had provided something better for us, that apart from us they should not be made perfect. 

The point here, in a context of those whose lives ended badly yet without their faith being lost—some killed, sawn in two, some destitute, some afflicted—seems to be that the fabric of God’s overall tapestry has yet to be completed, so the happy final viewing must wait until others, ourselves included, are woven into the whole and thus bring it to completion. What is assumed throughout is that for all who live by faith there is a happy ending that will make sense at last: the “promise” will be finally received. 

Another insight, using a narrower frame of reference, is that God is not as interested in our stability, security, and comfort as we are. As we live in the capsized, upside-down world of Adam’s fall, we are not meant to feel at home. But we are assured that God never fails to use sin as an unintended (by Satan, that is) source of benefit for his followers. The story of Joseph in Genesis is remarkable in that respect. Two lines of narrative run in tandem: God’s blessings and Joseph’s miseries! Read it and see. God gives Joseph dreams of a wonderful future and, as a result, his brothers hate him and consider how best to be rid of him. He becomes a slave to Potiphar. He is falsely charged of attempted rape and sent to prison. Years go by. And, with these misadventures the alternate narrative continues to report that “God blessed him in all he did”. Our impulse is to shout at the text, “Well, then, God, get him out of there!” In the end God does intervene, but only after more than a decade has gone by. Joseph, in the end, was satisfied with God’s care and able to separate the two narratives when he spoke to his brothers afterwards: “As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today” (Genesis 50:20). 

The same sort of double dimensions are found in the stories of Job and the man born blind in John’s gospel (chapter 9). Both Job and the blind man are forced to endure some very, very difficult experiences in life. Yet in both cases we discover the forces of good and evil are being distinguished in the process: Satan and the “friends” in Job are linked; and the skeptical leaders who harangued the newly-healed blind man in John 9, are exposed and diminished in the stories.  Job and the blind man are seen as faithful.

At other times we see God allowing the people he loves to experience harsh judgments in order for them to feel the weight of their sin—the book of Habakkuk is a gritty summary of God’s willingness to allow the sinful attitudes and activities of one group (the Chaldeans) to crush another group of sinful people (the people of Judah). The ultimate outcome is that, after the Babylonian exile, the persistent habit of whoring after foreign idols ended for God’s people after they were restored. This theme of moral repair is also captured in the New Testament: “whom the Lord loves, he disciplines.” 

I will end here. The triad of our title for this post—”pain, patience, and providence”—is as much as I can bring into some sort of focus for now. We suffer, but we need to be patient. Why? Because God is providentially ruling over all our circumstances so that, for those of us who are with him—”who love him”—everything is sure to be explained in ways that make sense. Even those things that are clearly wrong, broken, painful, and difficult to live with. That’s what it is to live by faith and not by sight. But, you can be sure, I’ll be more than curious when we get to heaven to see that final tapestry!

Years ago I was impressed by what I read about Helmut Thielicke as he toured the United States. When he was asked by a reporter what impressions he had of the American church as a whole he responded to this effect: the church is wide and lively but it seems not to understand the benefits of suffering. That from a German pastor and teacher who had remained faithful to the gospel even under the World War II regime of Adolph Hitler. Thielicke refused to conform to the Nazi effort to reshape the church to their own ends—and he was one of too few pastors in his day to stand firm even though his refusal might well have cost him his life. As it was he was sent off to internal exile until the Nazis were defeated. 

Since that first exposure I’ve read sections of a theology series he wrote called The Evangelical Faith. He has been dead for a couple of decades now—but the force of what he wrote still stirs my thinking. He was a man of remarkable courage and special insight: a model to follow. Let me share one of his central insights here. 

But first let me say why he caught my attention. As a teacher myself, with more than 20 years in college and seminary settings, one thing is certain: change happens! This is as true in longer stretches of time as in shorter stretches. My father, for instance, when he was a young man knew the daughter of a famous evangelist. Her father was concerned about the loss of many once sound seminaries—they had all turned to liberal theology and away from the Scriptures. So he helped launch a conservative evangelical seminary that would be as strong academically as any of the liberal schools, while remaining boldly conservative and fully devoted to the integrity of God’s word and to what it offers. His dream was fulfilled: the school is now a premier academic center. But the founder himself, were he still living, would certainly be devastated by what some teachers in that school now embrace and affirm. 

So, too, changes are taking place in the Bible college I attended in the 60’s, although not at the same pace nor with the same features. My lesson: change happens! And some changes, by any measure are needed and good. But what measures are used to make these decisions, whether good or bad?

One item is certain: there is a pattern of change in theological colleges. They seek to move from being less academic to being more academic; and with that shift they become less devoted to the Scriptures as an ultimate and authoritative resource. They also shift in their range of interests. Harvard College, launched in 1636 to train pastors, is now Harvard University and scarcely a bastion of evangelical biblicism today. Princeton became Princeton; Yale became Yale; and so on. Each began with an ambition to train students in the Word of God but that changed over time from a primary role to a marginal feature. Evangelicals can still be found in each setting, but the central thrust of each center has changed. And, dare I say, been reversed in some key aspects. Harvard, Princeton, and Yale are now great universities, but good Bible Colleges? Ah, well . . . no. 

Yet new Bible colleges keep springing up. People want what faithful, humble, face-value-reading-of-the-text teaching centers offer. That appetite, I’m sure, comes from the impact of real conversions birthed by Bible content shared by faithful believers. On the other hand, droves of people would do almost anything to have a child attend Princeton, or Harvard, or Yale. And, with that, Bible colleges continue to become universities. 

Before I go on let me address a suspicion that may be forming in some readers: am I opposed to education? Or am I anti-intellectual? Is this a diatribe against those who like to think? Do I see the past as always superior to the future? 

My response is conflicted: I love studies. I loved getting every degree I ever earned. My time at King’s College, University of London, was saturated with exposures to every value and viewpoint under the sun and I loved the entire exercise. And what I’m reading at coffee shops on most mornings causes most of my friends’ eyes to roll. But I don’t like the loss of faith and faithfulness that I see as a pattern in so many academic centers. I grieve over it and I pray for a reversal of those trends. 

That’s where Thielicke came into my life. I think he nailed the issue better than anyone else I’ve read or heard. In a nutshell, he held that the cause of the changes I’ve noted in theological training centers is not a battle of conservative values versus liberal values. Instead it is a battle between Cartesian and non-Cartesian approaches to the study of Bible and theology. 

So, what is Cartesianism? And how can it be that influential? 

It is the approach to learning conceived by Rene Descartes (1596-1650) and adopted by those who led the Enlightenment transition away from faith. Let me say right away that Descartes, a studied Roman Catholic, believed he was being helpful to the defense of the Catholic faith against radical skeptics. The key feature of his approach was expressed by his aphorism, “I think, therefore I am” (Latin: cogito ergo sum). 

What did that mean? It was the outcome of his doubts. He took the tool of skepticism that was then being used by some of his companions to dismiss prior orthodoxies, and tested everything with it. That is, he sat down and began to doubt. After doubting everything he could think of he concluded that the one thing he could not doubt was the fact that he was sitting by his fireplace doubting—that is, thinking. That truth, he concluded, was one thing that is beyond doubt. And with that starting point he then restored the rest of the world to some level of certainty. If he existed, Descartes concluded, so does God because someone (God) had to have made him in order for his presence to be explained (this, remember, was a pre-Darwinian event). 

Here’s the nub of the issue: he reversed roles. Before Descartes all of Christian Bible and theology started with God, not with Descartes (or some other Cartesian successor). So instead of “In the beginning was the Word” we now have, “In the beginning was cogito“. Revelation had been given a inferior standing to reason. Or, to underscore the reversal, reason had been made greater than revelation. Man was the new measure of all truth. God was now an object of doubt until human reason could find a way to restore his status. 

With that reversal came another tendency: accommodation. Reason, with its new Cartesian primacy, had to find a proper set of values for measuring what should be doubted and what should be affirmed among the pantheon of possibilities. 

The answer to that question came by returning to the starting point of the Cartesian process: with the self.

What, then, offers the greatest benefits to the self? Self had been raised (unwittingly, I suspect) to a god-like status by Descartes, so that revelation—including God’s words and even the Logos/Jesus himself—now needed to be measured by what reason finds useful and satisfying. All of knowledge needs to be accommodated to the needs of the Self, and each Cartesian thinker has that as an ultimate aspiration. The task is so challenging that universities took it on as their main order of business. Thus Thielicke’s complaint: the roles of God and man had been reversed. And with that, the purpose of education itself. 

I conclude by cheering Helmut Thielicke’s courage, both during World War II and as a German seminary professor: he was in favor of reversing faulty reversals, no matter what the social and personal consequences might be. May many of us follow in his footsteps.

At times I’ve been cheered on by others with a hearty “way to go!” The cheer celebrates a moment of progress or success. And there are other ways way is used.  In the Bible the term often serves as a moral metaphor. 

Listen, for instance, to Jesus: “I am the way, and the truth, and the life” (John 14:6). In what sense is he “the way”? For context Jesus was answering Thomas who had asked Jesus what he meant by a promise to go to “prepare a place” for them. The disciple, no doubt, wanted the name of a location where they could meet if they were separated. 

Jesus gave him a location, but it was expressed in moral and relational terms rather than as a spot on some map. The lesson? God himself is the real destination of a life in Christ; and no road leads to God except by knowing Jesus: “No one comes to the Father except through me.” 

Another intriguing use of ‘way’ is as a label for Christ’s followers. Paul, for instance, referred to the Christianity as the “Way” at times—”I persecuted this Way to the death” (Acts 22:4); and “I confess to you [Felix] that according to the Way, which [my foes] call a sect, I worship the God of our fathers . . .” (Acts 24:14). While that tag failed to stick it was a strong metaphor for the early church. 

But what of the moral metaphor? In the Old Testament we find way used regularly as a picture of living rightly—of staying on the straight path rather than the crooked. Just after giving the ten commandments in Deuteronomy, for instance, Moses used the imagery of a moral pathway in exhorting the Israelites to respond to their calling: 

You shall be careful therefore to do as the LORD your God has commanded you. You shall not turn aside to the right hand or to the left. You shall walk in all the way that the LORD your God has commanded you, that you may live, and that it may go well with you, and that you may live long in the land that you possess. (Deuteronomy 5:32-33) 

This translation of “way” in the singular here points to a collective and characteristic set of attitudes and behaviors that reveal God’s own character: he has a certain manner of living that his people are called to engage as their own. 

Later, in Deuteronomy 10:12-13, we find God’s own character set out as the touchstone for all moral conduct, now reinforced with the plural use of “ways”. 

And now, Israel, what does the LORD your God require of you, but to fear the LORD your God, to walk in all his ways, to love him, to serve the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul, and to keep the commandments and statutes of the LORD, which I am commanding your today for your good? 

This, too, became the basis for Israel’s reception of lasting security amid all the hostile nations around them. 

For if you will be careful to do all this commandment that I command you to do, loving the LORD your God, walking in all the ways, and holding fast to him, then the LORD will drive out all these nations before you . . .” (Deuteronomy 11:22-23). 

This sort of listing was not tied to a single era or writer. We find it throughout the Bible as it captures a practical and compelling reality: God offers clear and reliable patterns. He is loving, just, and righteous. All who belong to him will travel in the same directions that he travels. 

So how did the early church label, “Way”, emerge? Did it relate to God’s ”ways” as cited in Deuteronomy and elsewhere where his laws were in view? Perhaps, but I suspect the main linkage came from the Thomas episode that we noted a moment ago. The apostles realized that Jesus, alone, is the way to a relationship with God the Father. The church, then, is affiliated with Jesus as the way to God and as representatives of God on earth. 

But how strong is this connection? Very strong. In part because of an additional facet to this relational use of way. Just after Thomas asked his question Philip followed up with his own misunderstanding. Since Jesus would not offer a location as the destination of the “way” but made the Father their destination, Philip then followed-up: “show us the Father; and it is enough for us.” 

Jesus answered him: 

Have I been with you so long, and you still do not know me, Philip? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, “Show us the Father”? Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? (John 14:9-10) 

Just as Jesus had shifted the ground under Thomas’s question, he did the same with Philip’s question by ignoring the premise that the Father is accessible as a separate and tangible figure who can be seen. Instead he shifted to a relational ontology by speaking of his mutual indwelling with the Father. The Father and the Son are One even if they are eternally distinguished as the Father and the Son. 

This theme of the triune ontology continued in the conversation between Jesus and his apostles. In John 16:13-15 Jesus noted the communicating presence of the Spirit in their triune relationship. And later, in John 17, we find that the church is also united with Christ, and through Christ, with the Father. Paul also spoke of this union in organic terms: of the church as members of Christ’s body. The church, then, is both bonded to the Way and represents him as the Way on earth. As such the relational theme both precedes and explains the moral theme: that the God who is the Way then expresses his ways in calls for righteous conduct in the commandments. And those who are in the Way begin to live after his ways—thus fulfilling the commandments from the heart. 

Yet it is a common mistake to reverse this order. Many people see life as a progression of choices. All behaviors, they believe, are measured by a moral corollary that some behaviors are right and others are wrong. A “good” person is one who usually chooses “good” behaviors; and the “bad” person gets that status by making “bad” choices. Morality is the product of choices. 

Yet the Way is a heartfelt bond—not the activities of a morality play—as the church is characterized by her union with Christ. How does union make a difference? 1. Faith is a participation in Christ  2. As a believer now lives “in Christ” Christ’s righteousness establishes his or her standing before the Father, and, 3. The Spirit’s work in the believer’s heart begins to remake it after Christ’s heart—which is to love the Father and those the Father loves. 

The moralistic alternative—of religion as gathered individuals who are striving to meet God’s demands—misses the union of Christ and his church. That, in turn, confuses the function of the laws noted in the Deuteronomy texts. 

To restate the issue: the moralist takes God’s commandments to be ends in themselves. Each individual is a moral practitioner and user of God’s goodness so that God serves as a moral resource to be drawn upon for the enhanced moral standing of the actor. In the process the moralist looks at his or her own “goodness” as the destination of life, rather than God himself. Thus they slip into the errors of both Thomas and Philip: they miss the relational metaphor and as a result they set up a utilitarian destination—effort-based faith. 

So let me summarize the “way to go” for those who love God. His triune way is the pattern of mutual love and shared glory that he invites us to join. That way is holy, not because there are a set of prescribed behaviors that God has adopted because they are “good” or “holy” in themselves. Instead the relational being of the God who “is love” (John 4:8 & 16) shares himself in ways that are “good”. 

But that goodness is in God himself—as in his character of loving, of acting with justice, and in establishing righteous—and not in activities, spaces, or places . . . as if God somehow enacts or infuses goodness as free-standing qualities. Thus when religious but un-Spirited people embrace various behaviors as moral ends in themselves they do so in order to achieve their own goodness as a moral destination. But think of the rebuttal to that notion as Jesus answered the wealthy moralist: “No one is good except God alone” (Mark 10:18). 

So in Jesus we meet the “way” the “truth” and the “life” as a person and not as a place or discrete activity. He calls us to love him with all we are. And with that we begin to meet and surpass any calls to keep his commandments. See, for instance, Romans 13:8-10. Why and how? Because we now know and love the One who, alone, is God. And he makes us, collectively one with his Son—the bride of Christ. 

What a way to go!

The irony wasn’t lost on me. All my writing of the past three months evaporated in a keystroke. The subject of my writing? Sin. The cause of the lost file? A computer virus that wiped out both my back-up file and my hard drive. I hadn’t made any print copies of the project so I had no way to recover what was lost except to rewrite it from scratch. The broken condition of some computer savvy sinner had intruded in my life in a very painful way.

Minutes later I was walking through the city sidewalks of London praying. I knew that the Bible has a number of imprecatory psalms—psalms that ask God to bring judgment down on the heads of those who have given themselves over to evil. All the words I needed for a feisty psalm were roiling through my heart as I stormed ahead. But the actual words expressed were a simple repetition: “Thank you, Lord, thank you, thank you, thank you!” Again and again. For more than thirty minutes. 

Why the odd response? Because a number of years earlier I’d had another painful moment. I won’t go into the particulars here . . . only to say that it was another event where sin was ugly and active—and, in response, I was ready to write some vinegar-flavored psalms to memorialize the experience. But on that day there was another piece in play: Scripture memorization. I had a packet of verses to memorize with a new verse for each day. That day my verse was 1 Thessalonians 5:18, “In everything give thanks for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.” I was stunned by this pairing of a terrible moment and a blissful verse—it wasn’t an accident. The verse was meant for that day and that occasion. It was so startling that I responded by shouting at God. 

“Thank you, thank you, God! Are you happy now?! But for what? I don’t get it!” 

Still, I kept reciting the verse again and again—for most of a half-hour. And I become increasingly and genuinely thankful. Not through some self-stirred reformation of heart but by the dawning of a major insight: God was giving me a chance to grow! I could either live by faith or I could treat the world as a broken place where God operates as a peripheral figure who can only pick up the pieces after a crash. The verse-for-the-day was my chance to toss out that very lame version of God. 

Here’s what happened: the longer I gave thanks the more I had eyes to see the world—including my immediate situation—as God’s turf. He remains in control even in the face of sin and some badly damaged relations. So my prayers weren’t changing him but were changing me. I was learning to treat God as the only true God, an active God, and a caring God. 

That first exercise set me up for every personal tragedy that has since followed—including my lost writings about sin. Including the moment when my father’s death was reported to me. Including some painful moments among my professional relationships. Including a host of hurtful moments that come with life in a broken world. 

“Thank you, Lord, thank you, thank you, thank you! This hurts so much . . . but I know you love me! You’re God and I trust you. Thank you, thank you, thank you.” 

Since then I discovered that this insight is a foundation for living by faith. The apostle Paul, in Romans 1:21-22, summarized the pathway of Adam’s rebellion when he linked a refusal to give thanks to a refusal to treat God as God: “For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools . . .” 

Thanksgiving and wisdom, linked as inseparable companions in the Bible, are now paired in my heart. It doesn’t mean that sin doesn’t bring pain. It does! It doesn’t ensure a proper response every time a challenge comes. But it offers a different way of viewing life so that sin is never given an ultimate status. God is still in charge, always and in every way. 

And—to finish off where I started this testimony—my second effort in writing about sin was more informed than my first draft could ever be. And for that I’m eternally thankful! As for the computer savvy sinner, may God have mercy.

The Bible is a faith-producing book. As we read it boldly and regularly it generates a response: a growing confidence in God and, with that, a sense of entrustment. The Bible is also brutally honest. It tells stories of misguided faith and un-faith. For the faithful reader those stories help in navigating a dangerously skeptical world.  Yet for other readers the Bible stirs spiritual indigestion—what the Bible writers refer to as hardened hearts.

So there are two common paths in reading: either we find Scriptures more and more captivating; or we stagger through a page or two and then close the book in order to move on to things more useful to the real world we live in. Our hearts are either increasingly tender to God’s words or hardened by them.

What makes the difference? I can only guess at all that must be involved—heaven alone knows—but I do know that my own reading of the Bible on a given day is either vicarious or detached. That is, I find myself owning what the text reports as connected to my own life narrative; or I treat it as a story that has little more significance to me than the story of Hansel and Gretel. And if I own the narrative it begins to own me.

This morning in my reading I was drawn into the events of the narrative of Exodus. Never mind that I’ve read this section at least a hundred times by now. I was still instantly aligned with Moses in a special way. I just returned from a month in Rwanda a little over a week ago. In my time in Kigali I found my heart aching to see deeper transformation in my own life as I offered myself to others. I felt a keen sense of compassion for the Rwandans that only sharpened my sense of inadequacy. I wondered how God is working and how I might be part of that work.

“Their cry for rescue from slavery came up to God. And God heard their groaning, and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob. God saw the people of Israel—and God knew.” [2:23-25] 

“And God knew” caught my attention. This is not a detached and indifferent God but a God who hears and knows the human condition. His commitment to the Patriarchs was to bless the world with the Son who would finally resolve sin. And Rwanda knows about sin—not just the horrors of the recent genocide but the ongoing distortions of empty and hungry hearts. God knows. But how many Rwandans know that God’s great blessing is for them?

And the angel of the LORD appeared to him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush. [Moses] looked, and behold, the bush was burning, yet it was not consumed. . . . When the LORD saw that he turned aside to see, God called to him out of the bush, “Moses, Moses!” And he said, “Here I am.” [3:2-4]

To be honest this is a place in the narrative where my connection is lost. I’ve never seen a burning bush that signaled God’s immediate and overt presence. Yet, as I paused to think, I did have a moment many years ago when God called out to me from the Bible—in the Sermon on the Mount—that was as real to me as any voice speaking out of a fiery bush. But that was many years ago and seemed to be a thousand miles removed from my time in Rwanda. 

What did catch my attention is that God takes initiatives when he hears people cry out to him with real needs. I paused in my reading long enough to say in my heart, “Okay, Father, what about today? Are you still working? How about Rwanda today? How about us here in the States, Lord?”

As I continued reading I followed God’s stages in recruiting Moses to be his earthly representative. Moses was charged with meeting the Pharaoh, with offering miraculous signs, with rescuing Israel. Once again the narrative in the text was a million miles away from my own life narrative—it was becoming story rather than a captivating reality to me. Until I came to the next chapter. 

But Moses said to the LORD, “Oh, my Lord, I am not eloquent, either in the past or since you have spoken to your servant, but I am slow of speech and of tongue.” Then the LORD said to him, “Who has made man’s mouth? Who makes him mute, or deaf, or seeing, or blind? Is it not I, the LORD? Now therefore go , and I will be with your mouth and teach you what you shall speak.” [4:10-12]

That was where Moses and I became one in an instant. I’m deeply aware of two things in life: of the needs and opportunities all around me; and of my inadequacies. And God was speaking as certainly to me as to Moses: “Who designed you? Where is your focus? On your inadequacies; or on me?”

In that moment I became vicariously aligned with Moses through all the stages of confrontation that followed. It’s not that I view myself as dueling with some Pharaoh-like figure, but that I view myself as an instrument made by God for purposes that leave me feeling utterly inadequate yet with a continued calling for me to trust him. It had once again become a faith-producing book.

What I noticed as I continued to read was that the distinction between Moses and Pharaoh in the text was not so much their belief that God exists—Pharaoh was soon asking Moses to pray to the LORD on his behalf!—but in whether they entrusted themselves to God as to the one true God. For Pharaoh the LORD was just a new god who needed to be added to the pantheon of gods he already tried to placate and manipulate. For Moses the LORD is the God who hears, who speaks, and who knows: the only true God.  Moses, despite his doubts, entrusted himself to the LORD in a growing commitment. And by the end of the narrative the LORD had brought judgment on “all the Gods of Egypt” so that there was no doubt about who is really in charge of the universe. [12:12]

Readers will notice that Pharaoh’s heart was hardened—sometimes by God and sometimes by his own doing—so that it might sound as if he was simply a victim of God’s arbitrary rule. But that misses the point of all Genesis and Exodus (and the rest of the Bible) that human conduct, whether good or evil, is always heart-based: our hearts are free either to love God or to hate him. Some hold fast to Adam’s relative autonomy—of trying to negotiate a treaty with God while still holding on to a godlike independence in whatever space that can be carved out for self—while others repent and return to the reality that the LORD alone is God! 

So God started working in Exodus 2 with two men who lacked faith. As the events unfolded Moses responded hesitantly at first, yet with a tender heart; and Pharaoh tried to fend off God’s advances with less and less success. God simply created more and more circumstances that called for responses of faith. Or—to return to our starting point—either to a response of faith or to a response of arrogant opposition.

By the end of chapter 12 I found myself worshipping God. I don’t know how he might use me in my longings for Rwanda (and for the United States and more) to know his love, but I know this much: he made me as I am and I need both to trust him and to entrust my life to him. He can do whatever he wants with me and with others. I trust him wholeheartedly because “he knows” me and all our current realities. Praise God!

This is a new iteration of a story I’ve used in talks and in earlier informal compositions.

The Bible will strike most objective readers as odd, very odd.  Why?  Because it has so much gross content: sin, arrogance, murder, incompetence, hatred, brazen betrayals, and much more.  The startled reader who takes up the book without having a prior faith commitment is likely to ask, “Is this the best God can offer us as his own ‘Word’?”

It’s a fair question, given that evil erupts in just the third chapter of the whole and is finally resolved with just two chapters to spare at the end.  As those who take God to be the ultimate communicator and who treat the Bible as the written venue for his sharing his heart with us, what do we make of this downbeat approach?

The answer comes by reversing a single mistaken expectation that many readers bring to the Bible: the book does not intend to present a godly world.  Instead God let’s sin happen and then traces its outcomes.  In the Bible God lets the blame for sin rest on humans.  He allows sin but does not cause it.  He never perpetrates evil yet we find that in his remarkable mercy he often rescues sinners.  In fact he freely offers mercy and rescue from the beginning to the end—and his own son is the agent of rescue though it costs him his son’s life.

One insight is uniquely important: God confronts evil by letting evil expose itself as evil once and forever.  A better day will come.  In the meantime God allows every heart real freedom—even the freedom to hate him.  Only then are we truly free to love him.  The heart cannot be coerced to love: it is always free either to love or to hate.  The Bible is a story of these two options expressed as human history. 

Let me try to make the point with a parable.

The Strange Cruise

The builder of the greatest of all cruise ships, after the final work of fitting out, turned over command to the captain to begin her inaugural cruise.  The ship was crowded with cheering passengers who lined the railings as the crew threw off the mooring lines.  A harbor pilot was present to guide the great boat out of the harbor—a harbor with only one jagged shoal to avoid—to the open sea and on to the gala cruise.

The propellers stirred up a full wake and the ship began to make good headway when the pilot whispered something to the captain.  He nodded and then, to the amazement of all those on the bridge, ordered “full speed ahead.”  The ship’s heading was directly towards the shoal!  It took only a few minutes—with all protests stifled by the captain’s glare—for the ship to reach the terrible threat.  She shuddered as a massive gash was torn under the waterline, the rocks easily ripping through the double hull.  As the ship plunged forward her many bulkheads were breached one after another until the flooding waters caused her to list heavily.

Most of the startled passengers raced for their cabins, some for security and others to collect precious possessions.  But the damage was too severe for any delays.  The great liner shuddered, rolled suddenly and was fully capsized in just moments.  The harbor was deep enough that those who fled within the boat’s belly were now captives in the interior cabins, kept alive by air pockets and able to see only by means of their dim emergency lights.

Yet within minutes the terror felt by the passengers was replaced by new emotions.  Some wondered if this was some sort of “reality” experiment and began to smile as they looked for hidden cameras.  Others began to search for rooms that were less flooded and, once in place, restacked the furnishings so that the former decks became the new overheads, and vice versa.  Ceiling fans were draped with bedspreads to serve as tables of a sort.  The upside-down quickly became the right-side-up.  The idea that this was a grand game show grew stronger and stronger.  Yet as time passed some crew members appeared telling everyone to move to areas in the hull where rescue divers would be likely to arrive.  But they were not welcomed—“you’re lying!”

Some even formed a Cruise Committee made up of the most confident and imposing proponents of the extreme reality show theory.  Their first act was to round up and imprison crew members who were trying to ensure a fair and proper distribution of salvaged food and drinking water.  As days passed those who had better emergency lights began to offer their cabins as tanning booths—for a price.  Fights also broke out between those with dry rooms and those whose rooms were partly flooded. 

Those who wanted to take over the better rooms depended on the Committee for Security to help them drive out the former occupants—for a price.  Others who already had dry spaces soon realized they needed to guard their cabins by investing in the Security Committee.  Within a week of the capsizing all those who were aligned with the Committee were thriving and a special banquet was planned.  The Committee Director assumed that some of the reality show hidden cameras were certain to be in the Grand Room, so everyone gathered there, pushing aside soggy debris to provide a dance floor on the former ceiling.

As the party was well underway some shouting broke out.  A few crew members who had managed to avoid capture came into the great upside-down hall, accompanied by a man in an orange wetsuit.

“I’ve come from the surface!” he called out.  “We have a set of rescue chambers now attached to the hull ready to get you out of here.  On the surface we have a ship waiting to take you on board.  You’ll be safe if you follow me!”

Those passengers who had not joined the Committee for Security began to cheer, but only for a moment.

“Stop him” the Director thundered.  “He’s lying!  He’s a plant by the crew and he’s just trying to interrupt our cruise adventure!  Only true believers can win the jackpot!”

In just moments the man in orange and his crew member companions were all captured and dragged away.  Then the party resumed. 

But some passengers who believed that the capsizing was real—and not part of a strange reality game—began to look for a rescue capsule.  That group, a small minority, found the capsule and were rescued.  But the others preferred their cruise, even as the air turned toxic, the food and water ran out, and the battery-powered lights died.  So did the passengers.

For those who were rescued a remarkable banquet was held the following noonday in the brilliant sunshine of the beautiful harbor hotel.  It was sponsored by the builder of the capsized cruise ship.  His son had been lost during the rescue efforts, but he still gave himself freely to the survivors, delighted that they were alive and well.

Clive Cowell makes his debut on Spreading Goodness by offering a reflection stirred by a posting by Peter Mead on January 4 (a second offering by Peter was posted on February 15).  Clive is a dear friend who presently serves as the Executive Director of the Bible Institute of Hawaii.  Read and enjoy!

My brother in Christ and fellow Englishman Peter Mead recently communicated on the Spreading Goodness that “Preaching is at the center of the life of the church.”  Dr. Mead would no doubt agree that teaching likewise has a central role.  Are they the same?  Are they different?  Are they to be marked by separate venues?  I have not come to a complete conclusion but I do have some pieces for our conversation today. 

Both preaching and teaching are clearly used as ways of conversation.  By conversation I am not thinking of an informal exchange, rather intimate acquaintance and relational life.  Christoph Schwöbel leads us to a wonderful invitation in his Introduction to Colin Gunton’s  Theology Through Preaching by (p2) which I trust will delight your hearts regarding the beauty of divine conversation:

Luther was so bold as to suggest that communication is not only the paradigm for the relationship between God and his creation, but even more so the mode of the trinitarian life of God.   There is, he [Luther] says, in the divine Trinity a pulpit: as God the Father is an eternal speaker, so the Son is spoken in eternity, and the Holy Spirit is an eternal listener.  God’s triune being is an eternal conversation (my emphasis), and since the Holy Spirit tells us what he hears, we are taken into this conversation. 

This is not merely talking but intimate relational life.

Schwöbel continues,

The creation of the world and the story of God’s interaction with his creation in Israel and in Jesus Christ is, therefore, about God creating other conversation-partners who are drawn into the conversation of the divine life, distinguished by their created existence but nevertheless enabled in Christ, the uncreated Word of God who became a human speaker and listener, to participate in this conversation.

What a wonderful invitation!  Where once we were kept at a distance from the smoking mountain (Ex. 20:18), now we have confident access (Rom. 52; Eph. 2:18, 3:12) and stand and rejoice in the presence of our Lord.

Dr. Mead rightly gave to us readers a wonderful conversation as to the preaching process, that is, a study of the Scripture (a conversation with God), the message formation (another conversation with God) while keeping stoked in the heart our God-captivated love (sustained by conversation) so that He can be communicated to others (another conversation).  If this is preaching in process, then it is likewise teaching in process.

Biblical dictionaries and encyclopedias often present the premise that preaching is mainly for converting people and teaching for growing them and this is one way of presenting the distinction between preaching and teaching.  However, understanding this distinction might lead us into the trap of emphasizing one method over another and causing unnecessary divergence.  In the parish, most preaching is very application oriented, with parishioners in view as the targets of the applications.  Is it possible to both preach and teach given the Biblical idea that conversion and growing are part of the lovingly divine conversation?  Yes!  In fact it has to, because on any given Sunday events will transpire such that both non-believers and believers are called by God into the conversation. 

Some people are called who have yet to be converted, others come who have already tasted that the Lord is good and are growing in Him.  As much as the preacher and teacher, who is sometimes both, comes to the table to be fed, such persons have the privilege of passing on the good news they have received to these others.  While it is true that most Sunday morning sermons are application oriented, surely a great emphasis should be given to warming the hearts such that the announcement of good news, the exposition of God’s word and the proclamation of Jesus Christ is the centerpiece to allow for teaching in matters of faith, morality and indeed application. 

Observation of church life shows that on many Sunday mornings some level of divergence has occurred.  In extreme cases, preaching has swamped teaching to the detriment of those growing in faith, and in others, teaching has overtaken preaching such that the invited non-believer is overwhelmed.  The problems are further compounded by the fact that such unbalanced conversations only take place on Sunday morning and in some cases are purely monological—there is no conversation.

Friends, God is calling us in an eternal conversation and as the Holy Spirit tells us what he hears eternally, we are indeed eternally taken into this conversation.  This is both profoundly intimate and relational and preaching and teaching take us into the conversation.   Do we deserve to eat at such a table?  From our view, certainly we don’t.  But God is abundantly loving and desires for us to truly fellowship with Him.  I trust that is a good reminder, in short, of our conversion. Our part of the conversion is to continually express our confession, repentance and acknowledgement that there is no other God beside Him.  He is the centerpiece!  Now let’s grow in faith, morality and application.

A conversation on conversion (and a reminder of conversion) sets up well teaching to wholesomely pursue matters of faith, morality and indeed application.  It will take faith to cast aside our current living to be in such a conversation.  You might well posit the question: aren’t there times when it is only preaching?  I will grant that an evangelist would say so!  So be it, but as we have opportunity let us eternally respond to weave both.  Preaching and teaching have a common thread and as Dr. Mead conversed with us, “God is a God who speaks through His Word.  He is a God who speaks because He loves”.

Need more?  Be warmed by the attitude expressed in Malachi!  In the OT the priest communicated with the people and the prophet tells us how both speaker and listener can engage, “For the lips of a priest should guard knowledge, and people should seek instruction from his mouth, for he is the messenger of the Lord of hosts.” (Malachi 2:7).

Preaching today is often one-to-many, with the danger that it can be anemically monological.  However, it can, as Mead suggests, be affective. We also know that divergence can set in, but a faithful response in presenting preaching and teaching is possible. 

As we preach and teach, wholeheartedly take up His invitation and engage yourself to seek, to crave, to yearn for God’s instruction and to settle for nothing less.

As we preach and teach, wholeheartedly invite and engage those whom God loves to seek, to crave, to yearn for God’s instruction and to settle for nothing less.

Seek it and yes, as you find it – guard it. 

Continue the conversation!