Hungry and Full of Praise

Passage: Proverbs 27:7,20-21

One who is full loathes honey, but to one who is hungry everything bitter is sweet.

Sheol and Abaddon are never satisfied, and never satisfied are the eyes of man.
The crucible is for silver, and the furnace is for gold, and a man is tested by his praise.

I have a friend who is a professor of literature.  He recently mentioned he was preparing a lecture series comparing the characters of Job and King Lear.  Never needing to be asked for my opinion, I enthused about the Book of Job.  Many Bible-believers are simply confounded by Job; non-religious people – even those who appreciate the book’s artistic merits – are offended by the God it presents.  I argue that in fact Job is the key to understanding not only the Bible, but the Christian faith.

Here’s why: the Book of Job is a response to the charge that God is not intrinsically worthy of praise.  The book opens with a confrontation between God and Satan (or ha’satan, “the accuser”) in which Satan alleges that the only reason for Job’s devout worship is the nice things God has given him.  “Take away all his stuff,” says Satan, “and Job will curse you to your face.”  The wager between God and Satan isn’t a wager about Job’s righteousness.  It’s about God’s praiseworthiness.  What the book maintains is that God deserves human praise regardless of what’s going on in human life.  Job’s righteousness is his simple insistence: no matter the evidence in my own life, God is God; and God is good. 

The Book of Job is classified, along with Ecclesiastes, Psalms and Proverbs, as the “Wisdom Literature” of the Bible.  Proverbs, which seems practical rather than theological, nonetheless upholds the lesson at the heart of Job – namely, that the good life revolves around God rather than goods.  The verses above highlight the fact that a life built on goods – possessions, property and pleasure – is not only unsustainable; it’s ultimately unsatisfying.  The three verses seem at first only loosely related.  In fact they build on one another.  The first verse establishes a truth that is plainly visible in our experience: those who have a chronic overabundance of anything – food, sex, stuff – experience decreasing enjoyment of anything.  This leads in turn to the obsessive pursuit and acquisition of more, the subject of the second verse, which also identifies insatiability as a natural tendency of fallen humanity.  

But what of the third verse?  The true test of a person is the consistency and quality of their praise.  What happens to your capacity to praise God when you have been deprived of something you want or need?  Do you praise God only when you have more than enough?  Or can you, like Job, declare at any time, “God is God, and God is good?”  True faith looks for the gift and grace of God in any circumstance.  And true faith maintains that God and God’s actions are always praiseworthy.  

Noah, and Why We Don't Get our Theology from Popular Culture

I’m looking at a pamphlet entitled “Worldly Amusements in the Light of the Scripture: Theatre Going, Dancing, Card Playing, Etc.”  It was published for the annual Synod of my denomination (the Christian Reformed Church in North America) in 1928, and presents a case against Christians engaging in any kind of popular culture or entertainment.  Anticipating a possible “baby-with-the-bathwater” rebuttal, the authors argue the following regarding plays and movies:

“…some of the so-called good plays are more dangerous than the bad, because of the false conceptions of religion and morality which they set forth.  [Also], by attending the theater occasionally one incurs the risk of developing a taste for theater-going.  The whetted appetite will cry for More! More!  Who knows how many inveterate theater-goers have started in their sinful course by viewing the occasional good play!  We believe that the safest course is the way of total abstinence.” 

This was the default position regarding film and television in many corners of the CRCNA as late as the 1970s.  What turned the tide for many households was television broadcasts of Sunday afternoon football and the release of films that were explicitly biblical or evangelistic.  Since then the CRCNA has adopted a far more affirmative stance regarding Christian engagement in culture and the arts, recognizing the redemptive potential in them along with many other human endeavors and disciplines. 

That said, there continues to be healthy debate about how cautious, discerning, and discriminating Christians should be in both their consumption of popular culture and their production thereof.  One of the captions in the aforementioned pamphlet provides a guiding principle we are well-advised to revisit: “Even when our amusements are not spiritually and morally harmful, they should not be allowed to occupy more than a secondary, subordinate place in our life.”  We go the way of our culture when the primary informative voice in our lives is popular culture; when news media, television and film comprise more of our diet than the Bible and the faith formation of the church.  This should go without saying.  But it is neither a foregone conclusion nor guiding principal for many self-professed Christians. 

And it becomes problematic when we encounter any cultural form that makes a statement about God.  There’s an easy way to evaluate the god-statements of popular authors and filmmakers.  You compare them with what God says about himself in the Bible.  You can’t do that if you aren’t familiar with the Bible – not a short list of your favorite verses, but the whole thing, the entire chronicle of God’s redemptive action throughout human history.  It has always been human instinct to create our own versions of God.  Because of this, we either avoid the Bible entirely, or read it very selectively.  We want to cut and paste the parts that present God in our image.  To some extent we all do this – even the most orthodox and well-read preachers and theologians.  No one person’s interpretation of God and God’s word is wholly reliable.  Which is why it is dangerous to base one’s theology solely on the books of Rob Bell, CS Lewis, Joel Osteen or NT Wright; or the TV shows of Mark Burnett; or the films of Darren Aronofsky.  None is God’s word; and each is processed through the fallible filter of one person’s experience. 

So when am I going to get to Noah?  I’m not.  At least not personally.  A lot of Christians have condemned the movie (some without having seen it).  Some have seen fit to defend it.  Of all the reviews I've read, the following, in three parts, has been the most helpful.  The author is Seventh-Day Adventist, so his theology on certain issues diverges from mine; however, his evaluation of the film is thorough.  In addition, his conclusions about the film's theology, and what it says about the church's responsibility in shaping our culture's understanding about God, is invaluable.  If you've seen the movie or plan to do so, take the time to read all three parts of this review.  

Noah,Part 1

Noah,Part 2

Noah,Part 3

Peter, Judas, You and Me

Passage:Luke 22:1-34

The question in our Bible study guide read, “What are the similarities and differences between Peter and Judas?”  At first we thought, Similarities?  The two are nothing alike!  But as we talked we came to realize that Peter and Judas are more alike than different.  Both disciples abandon Jesus when circumstances are at their worst.  Both deny any affiliation with the man who has been their faithful teacher and friend for three years.  Both give up hope that Jesus is the Messiah about whom they’d been so certain.  The only real difference between Judas’ and Peter’s betrayals is that Judas is more honest about his.  Judas sees the end coming and hedges his bets.  Peter is so self-deluded that he believes himself to be a committed follower right up until the moment he’s not. 

The real question should be, “Why is Peter redeemed while Judas is lost?”  There isn’t a clear Sunday school right answer.  The restorative grace of Jesus is unpredictable.  What we do know is this: when it became clear that Jesus was not the kind of Messiah who would storm the capital and claim political and economic ascendancy for his people, Judas found an alternative.  He’d always had a thing for money.  So he replaced Jesus with cold, hard cash.  He would go it alone.  Peter made no such side-bets.  He did deny Jesus.  But he had nothing with which to fill the void Jesus left.  When Jesus arose, Judas was already dead.  He discovered his money couldn’t save him; he had nowhere else to turn.  He wasted no time in ending it all. 

Peter, though despairing and empty, was ready when Jesus came looking for him.  Nothing else had taken up residence in Peter’s heart, so it was there waiting for Jesus to move back in.  

Every human being lives on the fulcrum between hope and despair.  The evidence for both is always in flux.  Faith in Jesus Christ provides a basis for hope that isn’t quite as shifty as the Dow Jones Industrial Average.  But it rarely feels as cold and hard as whatever temporary comfort we can lay our hands on.  The challenge of the life of faith is not to live without doubt.  But during those moments of doubt to resist the urge to reach for some substitute.  To push through the doubt and despair trusting that they are, as Paul puts it, “light and momentary troubles”.  None of us is immune to the denials of Peter or Judas.  But our redemption comes as we endure the dark night and hold out for the dawn of resurrection.  Even if your heart feels empty with despair, don’t fill it with an inadequate substitute.  Your Savior lives. 

Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day.  For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all.  So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal. (2 Corinthians 4:16-18)