Young, Restless, No Longer Reformed a Year Later: Calvinism Still Isn’t Beautiful

By on Feb 2, 2015

  “They’re not going to embrace your theology unless it makes their hearts sing.”[1] -John Piper   One of the more persistent myths regarding art (broadly defined) is that the artist understands what he or she is creating. It is, as it were, a half-truth. You understand parts of it, catch glimpses of its deeper meaning, shape it toward certain ends. But you certainly do not understand all of it. As Madeline L’Engle says, “The artist is a servant who is willing to be a birthgiver…each work of art, whether it is a work of great genius, or something very small, comes to the artist and says, ‘Here I am. Enflesh me. Give birth to me.’”[2]   Two years ago, I started writing. I didn’t intend to write a book so much as document a journey I had taken in and out of Calvinism, with the hopes it could help people in my own church who were treading similar paths. It ended up becoming a book and has helped people, and for that I am grateful.   But as I look back—now two years removed from when I started writing and a year removed from its publication—I feel as though I only now understand the deepest intention of the book. Bear with me if this seems indulgent.   Back when I was a Calvinist, I came across the above quote from John Piper: “They’re not going to embrace your theology unless it makes their hearts sing.” And while I didn’t fully understand it at the time, I knew what it was about.   I embraced Calvinism, not just because I found its exegesis and inner logic compelling, but because it made my heart sing. It was true, but also (and perhaps more importantly) good and beautiful.   Christians believe that truth (being grounded in God) is not only, well, true, but also good and beautiful. Beauty is “a measure of what theology may call true.”[3] Because God is infinitely good and beautiful, theology must be good and beautiful or else it’s not true. When properly understood, the truth invites not only the mind’s assent but the heart’s affection. The truth should make your heart sing.   This notion of the truth’s beauty is not an invention of secular humanism or some other boogey-man, but belongs to the deepest intuition of biblical Christian sensibilities. As the various psalmists never tire of telling us, “Great is the Lord and highly to be praised, and his greatness is unsearchable…The Lord is gracious and merciful; slow to anger and great in lovingkindness. The Lord is good to all, and his mercies are over all his works” (Psalm 145:3, 8-9).   God is infinite power but also infinite grace, so beauty “qualifies theology’s understanding of divine glory: it shows that glory to be not only holy, powerful, immense, and righteous, but also good and desirable, a gift graciously shared.”[4]   John Piper understands this better than most, and his brilliant attention to the aesthetics of Calvinism (channeling Jonathan Edwards) is one of the (if not the) primary reasons for the tremendous surge of Calvinism among young evangelicals. Simply put, plenty of people have argued Calvinism is true. Piper’s particular genius has been in arguing that Calvinism is also beautiful. Many young evangelicals have been convinced and their hearts sing for Calvinism.   My exodus from Calvinism was set in motion when I came to believe Calvinism was not beautiful—indeed, when I realized that Calvinism (consistent Calvinism at least) was, at best, cold and brutally enigmatic (which is, perhaps, why many cannot be consistent Calvinists). This realization then forced me to further reconsider its veracity.   The heart of the book, then, was a challenge to the aesthetic of the New Calvinism. The New Calvinists attempt to paint a ravishing picture of the manifold excellencies of the self-glorifying, all-determining God of Calvinism, expressed primarily through the doctrines of grace. I say that picture is a false veneer that only works when you ignore the reprobate. I say that picture cannot contain, as its central image, a crucified God who would rather die for sinners than give them what they deserve. Using the Bible as my measure of beauty, I say Calvinism isn’t beautiful.   People have asked if I could ever see myself “going back” to Calvinism—a little less young, a little less restless, and reformed again, perhaps? It’s a question I occasionally ponder. Depending on my mood, I can still find some of the exegesis and inner rationale for Calvinism compelling. As I’ve stated numerous times, I think Calvinism is one way to make sense of the teachings of the Bible (though as I also always state and many of my Calvinist friends have a hard time hearing, I think there is a better way to make sense of the Bible’s teachings that has far deeper ecumenical and historical roots).   And yet while I suppose I could again entertain the possibility that Calvinism is true, I don’t think I could ever again believe that Calvinism is beautiful. To my mind, calling Calvinism beautiful is to subject the very concept of beauty to so ruthless an equivocation that it loses any intelligible meaning.   So I agree with Piper: theology needs to make our hearts sing. That’s not a “strategic” statement about how to make Christianity more persuasive in its use of pathos. It’s...

Charlie Hebdo and the Beauty and Brutality of Religion

By on Jan 15, 2015

The recent attacks on Charlie Hebdo are a sobering reminder of the brutality of religion. Religion has killed lots of people (and there’s no need to pick on Islam here…Christianity has plenty of blood on its hands). Religion is capable of arousing the ugliest passions and cruelest actions. It boils the blood of some, causing them to do things that make the blood of others run cold.   Maybe the new atheists are right. Maybe religion poisons everything. Maybe it is a crude, savage myth we’ve outgrown, best relegated to the caves of ignorance we stood up and walked out of long ago.   But I have my doubts.   And in the wake of a worldwide display of religion’s brutality, those with ears to hear detect whispers of its beauty.   Most of the world has sense enough to lament the tragedy of Charlie Hebdo. And yet, to my ears at least, the lament of those steeped in secular ideology shows all the signs of the morally impoverished vocabulary and imagination of strict secularism. The attacks were lamented, with considerable emphasis, as an attack on freedom of expression (or freedom of the press or freedom of speech).[1]   For the record, I’m quite fond of freedom, be it of expression or speech or the press. But when human beings are murdered, surely our grief must run deeper than this—surely the most precious thing that has been attacked is not an ideal, but a human being…a human being with a family and story…a human being, dare I say, created in the image of God.   We are on the horns of a dilemma in the modern world. Many secularists want to do away with religion and Charlie Hebdo certainly provides a case in point: religion kills people. And yet…   It nevertheless appears that religion (and of course, Christianity to my mind) is the only thing that can look at Charlie Hebdo and truly grieve—the only thing that can really call it brutal and cruel and tragic beyond measure instead of, well, something that happened…survival of the fittest perhaps.   As David Bentley Hart says it, to kill the person who stands in our way is “the most purely practical of impulses. To be able, however, to see in them not only something of worth but indeed something potentially godlike, to be cherished and adored, is the rarest and most ennoblingly unrealistic capacity ever bred within human souls.”[2] And despite whatever rage might rightly be aimed at religion in general or Christianity in particular, it is a capacity that Christianity has bred with astonishing regularity, and often against all odds.   What happened at Charlie Hebdo was a damnable mockery of religion, but it was religion nonetheless—that much, all religious people must accept. But there is much more to the story, as it is only the mind informed (whether consciously or unconsciously) by the deepest moral sensibilities of religion—of charity, justice, and love—that looks at Charlie Hebdo and thinks to call it damnable and brutal. And that is the beauty of religion. [1] For example, check out the responses from many of the world leaders from “modern” countries. John Kerry’s are a good place to start. [2] David Bentley Hart, Atheist Delusions,...

War & Peace: Welcome to the Future

By on Dec 1, 2014

 A Confession So this morning we come to the end of our series on War & Peace and instead of starting with a recap I’d like to start with a confession: I really, really did not want to do this series, because I was quite aware of how delicate and difficult matters of war and peace and violence and conflict and hostility and justice and forgiveness can be. I was well aware that nothing stirs up a good fight like talking about peace. And if there’s one thing I hate, it’s people who follow Jesus picking stupid fights with each other. Amen? In fact, that’s one of the things I love most about Vista: we don’t pick stupid fights. We don’t fight over the music—we just have awesome music and it’s loud and if you want to pick a fight about it, we just turn it up so we can’t hear you. We don’t fight over the color of the carpet—we don’t even have carpet. We’re too busy engaging lost and unchurched people with the gospel and turning them into disciples to have carpet. So because of all that, I didn’t want to talk about this. I didn’t want to tell you that the violence we find so fascinating and necessary is boring and naïve and will be put to death by God. I didn’t want to tell you that we have to be more serious about forgiveness than the world is about vengeance. I didn’t want to tell you that we have to learn to love our enemies and not just forgive and forget them.   Thank You All of that stuff is hard and I wanted to wimp out, but became convinced that this was something we could not afford to not talk about. Because if we miss this, I begin to wonder what we’re doing here. And can I just say, I’ve been so amazed by all of you. Over the past 4 weeks, I’ve heard so many stories of forgiveness and reconciliation—big stories, little stories and everything in between. And what I love most about them is they’re real stories, not fairy-tale stories. They’re ugly and messy and unfinished, but by God, they’re the truth. Stories of you, of us, stepping beyond all the phony boundaries of what is and isn’t possible, what can and can’t be done, what can and can’t be healed…and stepping into God’s wild and unpredictable world of peace where forgiveness is making all things new. So on behalf of leadership—wow…yall are amazing. And as we end our series this morning, I want us to continue a conversation we started last week; namely, in a world at war, how do we become a community of God’s peace?   Fischer Wedding About 3 hours east of here, there’s a small town called Lufkin. Nestled deep in the piney woods, Lufkin is an unlikely site for the biggest, wildest party the world has ever seen, but on July 9th, 2011, that’s exactly what went down. Allison and I got married in front of all our friends and family and the reception that followed was, plain and simple, the greatest party the world has ever seen. Because there are parties and then there are parties, and this was a party. The whole town of Lufkin—young and middle age and old, and black and white and Hispanic, and Episcopal and Catholic and Baptist and Methodist and atheist and who-cares-a-ist—celebrating and eating and drinking and dancing together. I saw dance moves that I still cannot explain nor erase from my memory. I swear I saw my 80-year old grandpa crowd-surfing in a mosh pit (he denies it, but I know what I saw). It was the most joyous moment I’ve ever been a part of. And if only for a few hours, all of the walls that divide us were transcended and swallowed up by a huge swell of love and generosity.   God is a Party Now in the Bible, we get many different image of God. We’re told God is like a king and a warrior and a loving father and a judge, and so on and so forth. But believe it or not, we’re also constantly told that God is like the host of a massive, generous, extravagant party. God is like a party-giver. It starts in Genesis 1 where creation itself is portrayed as God throwing a cosmic party. God doesn’t create because he’s lonely or bored. God creates because his own existence is so filled with love, delight, joy, and energy that he just can’t keep himself to himself. He wants others to join in on the party. That’s why he creates. That’s why we’re here. And then once we’ve ruined the party because we’re terrible guests in God’s universe, God doesn’t just call if off. No way—God isn’t going to let us ruin his party. And so we get images like this from the prophet Isaiah.   Isaiah 25:6-9- “The Lord of hosts will prepare a lavish banquet for all peoples on this mountain; a banquet of aged wine, choice pieces with marrow, and refined, aged wine. And on this mountain He will swallow up the covering which is over all peoples, even the veil which is stretched over all nations. He will swallow up death for all time, and the Lord God will wipe tears away from all faces…And...

War & Peace: A Community Called Forgiveness

By on Nov 24, 2014

Recap For a quick recap, we’re in the third week of our series called War & Peace, a series where we’re trying to figure out what the Bible has to say about matters of violence and conflict and hostility and justice and forgiveness. And what we’ve learned so far is this. The very first and last thing the Bible has to say about war and peace is peace. Violence was not in the beginning and it won’t be in the end, because while we find violence fascinating, God doesn’t, and while we find peace naïve and boring, God doesn’t. That said, we live in a world filled with war and violence and faced with such a world, God’s peace moves forward by forgiveness instead of vengeance because God’s goal is not revenge but reconciliation. And it’s almost impossible to properly emphasize just how radical a thing this is—that Christians believe in a God who would rather die for his enemies than give them what they deserve. That Christians believe in a God who desires to embrace his enemies in the arms of forgiveness. And while that’s the most beautiful thing any of us could ever hear, here’s where it gets hard. Christians are not just called to accept God’s peace and forgiveness—we’re called to practice it, we’re called to embody it, we’re called to be a community that lives out God’s peace and forgiveness right smack dab in the middle of our families and our workplaces and our towns and our nations. Last week, we talked about what God’s peace does when confronted with a world at war, and so this week we have to talk about how we (the church) practice God’s peace in a world at war. The Sunflower During WW2, Simon Wiesenthal was a Jewish inmate at a concentration camp in Poland when he was asked to do the unthinkable. He was led down a hallway and brought to a room where a young Nazi soldier was dying. And in the moments before his death, this Nazi soldier wanted to confess his sins and receive forgiveness from a Jew. And so as Simon stood at the bed of this soldier, the soldier started confessing his shame at being a Nazi and admitted he’d been a part of a group that had rounded up hundreds of Jews into a house and then set it on fire, burning them all alive. And as Simon listens to the confession, he’s moved by the soldier’s grief and shame but sickened and repulsed by the things he’s done. So Simon listens in silence to the confession and when the soldier finishes, Simon walks away without saying a word—certainly not a word of forgiveness. Years later, Simon wrote a book called The Sunflower where he tells this story and then ends by asking the question: what would you have done? I’d like us to take up Simon’s challenging, troubling question this morning and think about it as the church, as a community of people who follow Jesus: what should we have done? We’re going to use two important texts from Matthew to help us move toward an answer: Matthew 18:21-22, 5:43-48. Matthew 18:21-22…70 x 7 So Peter comes up to Jesus and asks him, “Jesus, how often should I forgive one of my brothers when he sins against me? Should I forgive him as many as seven times?” Peter clearly thinks he’s made a very generous proposal, and I have to agree—I mean, forgiving somebody seven times is a lot, isn’t it? Can you imagine forgiving your spouse seven times for cheating on you? Can you imagine forgiving your buddy seven times for roundhouse kicking you in the face? Both of those things would be hard for me, so I think Peter is being awfully generous. And yet Jesus has other ideas, so he says, “Actually Peter, you shouldn’t just be willing to forgive somebody seven times but seventy-seven times.” Jesus is alluding to Genesis 4:24, where Cain’s great, great, great, great, great grandson, Lamech, brags to his wives that if anybody messes with him, he will seek 77-fold vengeance upon them. If you roundhouse kick Lamech in the face, he would roundhouse kick you back 77 times. Jesus’ point here is clear. Our capacity for forgiveness toward each other (in the church) must be deeper than even the world’s capacity for vengeance. Do you have any idea how deep the world’s capacity for vengeance is? How far people will go to seek revenge? Of course we do, because we’ve felt it—that primal, gut reaction of rage that wants to track down our enemy to the ends of the earth to get them back. Yes, we know the world’s capacity for vengeance, which is why we’re shocked and stunned when Jesus says we’re supposed to be more serious about forgiving than Liam Neeson is about revenge. We’re called to be better at forgiveness than the world is at vengeance. In the church, forgiveness is willing to move toward infinity. And now Matthew 5:43-48. Matthew 5:43-48…Love Your Enemies So as if having a capacity for forgiveness within the church that moves toward infinity is not enough, now we have to deal with this—a teaching from Jesus that seems so ridiculous and impossible that Christians have been trying to explain it away for 2000 years. What Jesus says is really clear. You’ve been told...

War & Peace: The Problem with Nuremburg

By on Nov 11, 2014

So we’re in the second week of our series called “War & Peace” and the question that is driving the whole series, the question that we’re all wrestling with for the next month, is this: when it comes to war and peace—to conflict and violence and hostility and justice and forgiveness—what sort of story does Christianity tell? Over and against everything the world has to say, what does the Bible have to say about war and peace?   And so last week we started that conversation with this: the very first and last thing the Bible has to say about war and peace, is peace. Period. Violence was not in the beginning and it will not be in the end. We find violence fascinating, but God doesn’t. We find peace boring and naïve, but God doesn’t. The universe has always, does always, and will always revolve around the wild and unpredictable peace of God.   That said, we live in a world that sure does seem to revolve around violence. So how do we explain that? And perhaps more importantly, what does God’s peace do when it’s confronted with a world at war? Let’s turn to Genesis 3 and we’ll read 3:22-4:16.   East of Eden Genesis 3 and 4 tell us the story of how God’s world of peace becomes a world at war. Adam and Eve have been cast out of the garden and they travel east of Eden—that’s an important phrase. In the Bible, to move east of Eden is to move away from God. Humanity has moved east of Eden, and the very first thing that happens is this.   Adam and Eve have two sons, Cain and Abel. And if Adam and Eve are the primal, archetypal husband and wife, Cain and Abel are the primal, archetypal brothers. Cain is the firstborn and he’s a farmer. Abel is the younger and he’s a shepherd. And one day they bring their offerings to God, and for some reason, God accepts Abel’s offering and reject’s Cain’s. This rejection makes Cain very angry—with God and with Abel—and what happens next will reverberate down the halls of history. Faced with conflict and needing to resolve it, needing to find a way forward, Cain sacrifices Abel. In order to secure his own future, Cain takes somebody else’s blood. Cain lures Abel out into a lonely field and murders him.   And immediately, God’s ears are filled with a terrible sound, a sound he’s never heard before. It’s the sound of Abel’s blood, crying out from the ground—and it cries out for vengeance. So God marks Cain and sends him even further east of Eden and in the stories that follow, more and more blood is shed, and more and more vengeance is called for. And we’re left wondering: how is God going to deal with the world’s cry for vengeance and justice?   Nuremburg The courthouse in Nuremburg, Germany is sight of the most famous trials of the 20th century. In the aftermath of WW2 and the fall of the Nazi regime, it was clear to the world that justice had to be served for the atrocities of the Holocaust. The blood of many Abels, millions of Jewish men, women, and children cried out for justice. Even now, so many years later, our hearts can hardly bear to hear the stories of the gas chambers and death marches and grotesque experiments.   And so faced with so much spilt blood, the Allies dealt with the cry for justice with Nuremburg, a series of trials where prominent Nazi leaders were tried and given a punishment that fit the crime—a number were sentenced to life in prison and twelve were sentenced to death by hanging.   And I don’t know about you, but few things bring me more satisfaction than seeing justice served by revenge and retribution. When I see pictures of a pile of shoes a mile high—shoes stolen from the feet of Jewish victims—and I think about all the little bitty shoes that are in that pile, there is nothing I’d like more than to tie the noose around the neck of every single person responsible. Because that’s what they deserve.   Just a few months ago, three teenagers were arrested in New Mexico for beating two homeless men to death. When asked why they did it, they answered that they were bored and one of them was angry about a break-up with his girlfriend. They beat two homeless human beings to death because they didn’t have anything better to do.   And so help me God, when I hear stories like that, everything in me calls for Nuremburg—for justice via revenge and retribution. I can think of nothing more just than spilling the blood of someone who has spilt somebody else’s blood. I like Nuremburg. I like giving people what they deserve. I like justice by means of revenge and retribution. But here’s the problem with Nuremburg.   You Are the Man! In 2 Samuel, we’re told the sickening story of David and Bathsheba. King David sees Bathsheba, the wife of another man, bathing, and lusts after her, has sex with her, gets her pregnant, and to avoid a scandal has her husband (Uriah) murdered. And David thinks he has gotten away with it.   Time passes when one day a wild, old prophet named Nathan comes knocking...

War & Peace: The Oldest Story of All?

By on Nov 4, 2014

Here’s the first sermon in our new series, “War & Peace”   Light Versus Dark Perhaps the best new TV series to come out last year was True Detective; a brooding, dark drama starring Matthew McConnaughey and Woody Harrelson as Rust and Marty, two detectives working a particularly sinister and perplexing murder case. And in the very last scene of the very last episode, Rust and Marty gaze up at the night sky. They’ve solved the case, but they’ve seen some terrible things. They’ve had to do some terrible things. And as they stare up at the sky, at a vast sea of dark speckled by small islands of light, Rust makes a simple but profound observation: when it really comes down to it, all of life is just one story…the oldest story of all—light versus dark. Now to be sure, life can be unpredictable—constantly changing, constantly moving, never at rest. And yet it seems that every change and movement is really just a fresh reenactment of the oldest story of all—light versus dark. Or to borrow the title of Leo Tolstoy’s famous book: if there is one story that the world is always telling, it’s the story of war and peace. War and Peace Just look at the world news from any time and place (be it on an IPad, a newspaper, a smoke signal, a cuneiform tablet, or a scribbling on a caveman’s wall) and what will you find? Stories of the battle between war and peace. Turn on the local news in any town, and what will you find? Stories of the battle between war and peace. Eavesdrop on the conversations and observe the interactions of any family or workplace and what will you find? Stories of the battle between war and peace. I could go on but you get the point. From the surface down to the soul of things, and on scales big, average, and small—human life, at bottom, is one unending, ancient story of the battle between war and peace. And so for the next 4 weeks, this is the question we’re gonna be asking ourselves, the question that I’m gonna invite all of you to wrestle and live with for the next month: when it comes to war and peace—to conflict and violence and justice—what sort of story does Christianity tell? Over and against everything the world has to say, what does the Bible have to say about war and peace? Enuma Elish In 1849, a man was on an archaeological dig in Iraq when he unearthed 7 clay tablets. And scribbled across these 7 clay tablets was a most remarkable story that came to be known as the Enuma Elish. The Enuma Elish is an ancient Babylonian creation story, thousands and thousands and thousands of years old—a story about where the world came from and why things are the way they are. It’s a story similar, in some ways, to what we find in Genesis 1, and yet very different in some ways. Here’s the cliff notes version. In the beginning, there are these two primeval gods: Apsu and Tiamat. But then, there comes this second generation of gods, and they’re really noisy and boisterous and this bothers Apsu and Tiamat…so, they decide to kill them because that’s what you do when somebody bothers you. And go figure, the second generation of gods doesn’t really want to be killed, so a battle of the gods ensues and it finally results with Marduk, this powerful, young god, defeating Tiamat in battle and then ripping her dead carcass into two halves, one of which he uses to make the heavens, the other of which he uses to make the earth. The heavens and the earth, the entire cosmos, are the two halves of a murdered god’s dismembered carcass. Which leads us to the next question: so where did humans come from? Well, after Marduk murders Tiamat, rips her in half, and uses to carcass to create the cosmos, he gets in another fight with another god. And you guessed it, he kills that god too and then uses that murdered god’s blood to create human beings. Human beings are created from the blood of a murdered god. So in summary, according to one of humanity’s oldest creation stories, the universe we live in is built from the carcass of a murdered god and we owe our existence to the spilt blood of a murdered god. The universe is a battleground, the product of a primeval conflict, a primordial war. And so when humans fight and hate and take and spill each other’s blood, we’re just doing what the gods have always done and will always do. The universe revolves around war. The Myth of Chaos And while most of us have probably never read the Enuma Elish, this is actually a story we’re all quite familiar with. Think about it. All of life as a battle of good against evil. Conflict and violence as the necessary repercussions of this essential battle. All of humanity divided into allies and enemies. Peace as a naïve illusion, a temporary armistice, a brief break in the action while everybody reloads. As George Orwell is said to have said it, “People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.” You know this story. Indeed, this is the...