The Organ of Meaning

I think most Christians don’t know what to do with the Law, by that I mean that we often speak about the regulations given to Abraham by God as if they are defective and somehow not good. The Law is full of things that we don’t get – when do you do this kill this animal this way, don’t mix fabrics, don’t grow a goatee (I’m looking at you youth pastors), don’t even touch your wife during her “special time”.

I’ve been reading a book that we got for free from Advance09 – Total Church: A Radical Reshaping around Gospel and Community. Honestly, I didn’t expect that it would be a book that I would underline all that much, but I was underlining within 6 pages. One of the things that I underlined had hit me like a slap in the face:

The Law of Moses is given as the word by which God rules his people as they wait for the coming Savior. It is a liberating law given to bless God’s people. It was the lie of the serpent to portray God’s rule as harsh and tyrannical. The reality is that the rule of God is a rule of life, blessing, peace and justice. God rules through his word, and his rule brings freedom and joy.

The author is right! The thing that I do so often is portray the Law as something that was intended to be a limiting shackle on the people of Israel. Quite the opposite, it gave freedom by giving boundaries. Our Americanized idea of freedom says that where there are any boundaries there is no freedom, but real freedom requires boundaries; how free would we really be if there were no laws to restrain murder and theft? We’d spend all of our days protecting ourselves and our stuff.

The Law did the same thing.

In the nations that surrounded Israel, the polytheistic faiths gave no liberty – no freedom to live life unshackled by guilt and doubt. Think of all of the stories even of the ancient Greeks and Romans, they were always trying to appease some god or making sure they weren’t stepping on some goddess’ toes (I’m looking at you Hera); they were never sure if they were in good standing.

Think about it, you’re following a God that just held back the sea and then drowned the most elite soldiers of one of the most powerful nations on earth at the time, a God who had made a tangible darkness hang over the whole country, that turned the Nile into blood and supernaturally killed hundreds to set you free – and not just random hundreds, but only the firstborn and only in unmarked houses. You want to know whether or not you’re in good standing with that God. So, what does that God do? He gives you guidelines so you can know.

You no longer have to guess whether or not you’re doing things right, you have the Law to make reference to. You can know whether God is pleased with you or wanting a closer walk with you.

One thing to remember – unclean was not sin. You have this trichotomy of holiness. You have things that are clean (this is set apart or holy or able to be in God’s presence), you have things that are sinful (things that God is against and are an affront to him in some personal way) and you have the middle ground of the unclean (which is just common, banal, vulgar). The unclean was not bad (or else undertakers were never able to be in God’s good graces and the dead would just lie where they died), it was just common. The reason that this is talked about so much in the Law – God had called his people to be set apart, to be holy and a light that shined His holiness. They were not better than other people, they were just to imitate God more closely.

I think the lesson that I need to take from this is to understand why those in the Old Testament loved the Law.

Psalm 119:97

Oh how I love your law!
It is my meditation all the day.

Just before Christmas I read an article that was recommended by a friend that works in the American University’s chaplain’s office. It was written by an author that works at Penn State as a history prof who focuses on the history of Christianity and particularly focuses on non-Western Christianity.

The article referred to a book that he had written that had been recently released, called The Lost History of Christianity that focused on what happened to the “Jesus movement” in Asia and Africa after Acts ended. Let me just say that this book is fascinating and eye-opening. It outlines a lot of things that we are happily ignorant to in our own histories and which is absent in most of our minds as we think about how the message of Christ has spread to the parts of the earth that are not European in historical and cultural origin.

I read some of the reviews on Amazon – yes, some of the churches that he outlines are ones that have been historically designated as heretical, but there is still value to understanding reality in relation to where the Gospel has gone before and how & why the rest of the world sees and interprets its history. The chapter that I have just finished even talks about the fact that Arab Christians were major players in the Palestinian Movements of the early 20th Century and much of the pro-Arab Identity movements that continue today. It will shed some light on how fellow followers/worshippers of Christ still influence into the wars that we’re fighting now… both on “our” side and on the side of our opponents (either explicitly or implicitly). And, it shows how complicit our own nation and government is in the martyrdom of thousands of Christians in the past 50-ish years alone.

Again, I recommend the book as a history book (as opposed to a “Christian book”) that I think that every Western person who calls themself by the name of Christ (”Christian”) should read this book – especially those who have dreams or callings towards the Middle East or Asia.

After spending some time in a few seminary classes, I’ve decided to put it to use and study Mark for the next… well, until I get through it I guess.

This week I’ve developed a deeper affinity for the Gospel of Mark. It’s short. Seriously, you can read the whole thing in less than an hour, yet there is some stuff in it that hits pretty hard.

The Gospel of Mark.

This past weekend, on “Holy Saturday” to be exact, I was in a Family Christian Bookstore and was really pretty upset by the sheer amount of Christian kitsch and fluff that was around me… not to mention the things that don’t have any place in a strictly Christian bookstore. There are crappy little bumperstickers, weight-loss books, American flag t-shirts and lotions that happen to have the word “Eden” on them.

Then there was the shelf labeled “Christian Classics,” books that have been around for centuries; the books that set fire to the Reformation and to revivals for the past 500 years. The shelf was a grand 6 feet of space sparsely filled with the “cheap” books. I decided that, for at least 6 months, I am cutting out the Christian fluff from my life. I am declaring a fast from anything that has been written in the past half-century (with exception).

There will be no Left Behind, or Purpose Drivenness. No books about how rock music is evil or how this regime or that is the Anti-Christ, and (unfortunately) no Piper (despite his non-fluffness). I’m pulling out (from the library and my own book shelf) things written by people named Spurgeon, Bunyan, Lewis, Calvin, Edwards, Foxe, and Chesterton…

Right now I am reading a book of Spurgeon’s sermons, next will be some of the Chronicles of Narnia, then Pilgrim’s Progress and perhaps the Practice of the Presence of God…. we’ll see.

My only exceptions (besides what I have to finish) will be thus: unChristian which has been reccomended by a lot of people as very good and books assigned for the classes that I’ll be taking this summer.

If all of this goes well, I may extend it another six months.