Cross-Centered Life?

There seems to be two rising tides in the evangelical church: the Together for the Gospel tide that is holding fast to reformation theology, and the "emergent" tide that is trying to be relevant for the sake of being "real" with the world. I have been thinking a lot about the first group. There is a strong movement on cross-centered preaching. Mahaney has come out with "The Cross-Centered Life", which I have not read in full but have browsed. While I think they are the better of the two camps, I feel they are misguiding a lot of Christians. For just now, I want to focus on the Cross-centered life.



The Cross-centered life is one who's main thing is atonement, grace, forgiveness, freedom from sin, and so on. All essential things to a Christian's life. There are a few things about this teaching, however, that I think are harmful:

1. The cross is not equal to the gospel. I have heard Mahaney talk as the cross being an objective truth in history in which we focus on and lean on in our lives. I think we should focus on Christ (THE truth, a person) as the objective truth in history to lean on in our lives. The beauty of Christian doctrine is that truth is not knowledge to have, but a person to encounter -truth is a relation to enter. It is not the cross that should take our attention, but the person on the cross who is incarnate God, taught us how to live, was our atonement for our guilt, is our new life in the Resurrection, and whose kingdom we live in and navigate.

2. The position of man before the cross is not the same as the position man has before God as a Christian. The cross-centered life focuses on a guiltless, free position of man instead of a holy life. The cross gives us a new status before God, but not a new life. God freed us in order to redeem us. The difference is one talks about the state in which we are in while the other talks about the life in which we should live. For a Christian to continually focus on the cross in his or her life, only allows motivation for the holy life, but it is not the source of the holy life. Moreover, before the cross, man is a wretched sinner with evil inclinations. The issue with this is that man is no longer this way before God. I believe this where the Puritans and the Calvinist tradition gets it wrong. Man is depraved before salvation, but not after (or more accurately, during). Man is a new creation with new life. While sin is still an issue, we are not slave to it - meaning it is now out of our nature to sin.

3. While the cross is extremely central, as Paul said (Together for the Gospel's favorite theologian), without the Resurrection, our faith and preaching (yes, even preaching the cross) is meaningless (1 Cor. 15). This demonstrates once again that the cross, by itself, is not the gospel.

So if Christians should not center ourselves on the cross, what should we center ourselves on? I think the Christian life, or the life of God's people is a life centered around others. The Other-centric life is to love God and to love your neighbor. It is relational based instead of event based. While what happened at the cross is very relational, a relationship spans time and space. It may be marked by events, but it does not sustain itself by events.

The Other-centric life does not forget the cross nor does it see it as secondary. The cross is essential to my relationship with God and neighbor - it is through the cross that I am able to have such a relation with God. But I think it is being cross-centered that helps Christians to never leave Golgotha and begin their new life. Evangelicals can be so heavenly minded that we lose what it means to live. This does not just mean we strive for heaven as our "home", but that we fall back on the experience and event of the cross, which initiates our faith, yet never try to own our faith and live it out.

THis is also a result of the strong focus on creeds in Christian history, and the lack of holy action - it is faith without works is dead, not faith without sound doctrine is dead. The Other-centric life does not neglect doctrine, but realizes that the Christian life is much more about the fruits of the Spirit than it is about knowing the right creeds. I am not trying to create a dichotomy here. They rely on each other! I am, however, trying to balance the scales.

Much more about the Other-centric life will be coming on this blog. Starting with why only the Christian faith - in its affirmation of who God and man are - can truly be the basis for an other-centric life. I'll hopefully post this in the next few days.

Until then, let us discuss. These are more of my knee jerk reactions to the cross-centered life. I have not studied Mahaney's book intensely, but have merely gotten a basic grasp of it. Correction on my understanding of him as well as my faulty arguments are welcome and encouraged!

Love God With All Your More

“Love the LORD your God . . . with all your strength,” is ashamedly the one part of Deut. 6:5 that gets brushed over in the Christian tradition. Ironically, given the Scriptures strong metaphorical language against the body (flesh, dust, etc.), you would expect an in-depth analysis within the tradition for a clarification on this term. In Jewish tradition, it is also labeled as “strength” but not exclusively. Some theologians have chosen to translate it as “wealth” or “possessions” instead of “strength”.[1] The Hebrew word there - b'kol me'odekhah – does have a connotation of extra or more. In this context, the verse may actually be referring to

“loving God with all your heart, all your soul, and all the more that you are. . . All the more commands the mending of relation, for it takes us beyond the confines of ego in a movement towards the neigbor. God confronts man with the demand to turn to his human neighbor, and in doing so, to turn back to God Himself. . .”[2]

There is definitely more to this phrase than just to refer to the body.

In light of this rich exegesis, I would argue that we are commanded here not to merely love God with our bodies, as is commonly taught. For I believe that is already addressed in the command to love God with all your soul. To love God with all your more, means, or strength means that anything that is beyond your soul in which you have a responsibility for, you should cultivate in love towards God. I have responsibilities towards my neighbor, towards my money, towards my possessions, and towards my actions. And in all of these, I operate within the framework of cultivating these things in my life in order that I may love God in purity and earnest.



Therefore, the message and commandment of this verse is not to merely love God with all of yourself – as to say, we are to love him with our heart, soul, mind, and strength, which is thrown in there to mean everything else that is you. God is commanding us to love Him with all that we are and all that we have responsibility for, to love God in all of our existence. Our love for God extends beyond ourselves and into the world around us. Thusly, John’s insistence that to love God, you must love your brother![3] To isolate the love of God within our own egos is to assume that God’s love is not universal and does not connect our lives to others.

[1] Rashi

[2] Philosopher As Witness, 158.

[3] John 4

An Image Worth Waiting For....

Savannah and I take AmyDog for a walk whenever we get a chance. Well for the past two weeks I've been wanting to take a picture of this one tree but have yet to get the right timing or weather. Today, I finally decided to make it happen regardless. Ideally I wanted to be one the other side of the tree, but there were people standing there and dogs playing around them so I had to walk to the other side. So this is sort of the reverse of what I planned on shooting, but I still enjoyed it!

You can Experience God, I Want to Encounter Him!

While this is sort of tongue-in-cheek, I think this is a message that is skimmed over so much now because we hear it often. But I have been dealing with this issue with more scrutiny as I have been working on a music project that is for the church, yet can be kind of like a rock album at the same time. Am I encouraging a loss of encounter with God by overwhelming the the senses and creating a experience instead? Honestly, maybe only time and the correct congregation can determine that. But the broader picture has been illustrated to me more clearly through a very powerful passage from Isaiah.

Before I hit the passage though, I want to clarify what experience and encounter mean. Experience can be explained as passive, something that happens to you, many times, whether or not you want it to. It is always focused on the self or ego. It is my experience; going on a roller coaster is only an experience for me - the roller coaster does not experience anything and the person I'm sitting next to may have an experience but it is not related to me experience. However, an encounter is something or, more appropriately, someone who confronts you. An encounter demands a response from you, an interaction, a relation.

With that somewhat clear, let us move to Isaiah's commission:

In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord seated on a throne, high and exalted, and the train of his robe filled the temple. Above him were seraphs, each with six wings: With two wings they covered their faces, with two they covered their feet, and with two they were flying. And they were calling to one another:
"Holy, holy, holy is the LORD Almighty;
the whole earth is full of his glory."
At the sound of their voices the doorposts and thresholds shook and the temple was filled with smoke.

"Woe to me!" I cried. "I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the LORD Almighty."

Then one of the seraphs flew to me with a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with tongs from the altar. With it he touched my mouth and said, "See, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away and your sin atoned for."

Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, "Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?"
And I said, "Here am I. Send me!"

Isaiah 6:1-8

Isaiah definitely had a unique experience. In the face of God's holiness and magnitude, Isaiah realized his failures and became humbled. However, I want to suggest that Isaiah's responsibility for his own failures is not his gravest concern. Will not even Satan eventually acknowledge his unrighteousness before God? But what Satan will never do is what Isaiah does in light of God's call: take on the responsibility he has to God and his neighbor. God did not confront Isaiah with condemnation, but with a request. The first part of this passage is merely an experience, albeit a phenomenal one! And Isaiah does, in light of such an experience, react, but is not communion with God more than reaction to His holiness? True communion is dialogue, confrontation, and an acknowledge responsibility to the other. And this is what we see in Isaiah ultimately. "Here I am..." literally means "Here I am for you" in the Hebrew. At this moment Isaiah learns to look beyond himself and see the true responsibility he must take on.

So you can experience God and not be worse for it. But I desire an encounter with Him; when mere presence becomes relation, and a confrontation to become more to my God and my neighbor than I am at this moment. That is the true life before God.

The Two Great Commandments and What They Mean For Our Lives

Hearing that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, the Pharisees got together. One of them, an expert in the law, tested him with this question:
"Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?" Jesus replied: " 'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.' This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments."

Jesus was asked to give one commandment, and he gave two. There is a link, but what is he trying to say to us?

Let us discuss; this is something I've been thinking a lot about lately and could use some more thoughts.

Postmodernism and Religion

DISCLAIMER: This post is not an attempt to make religion and postmodernism compatible, but it is merely to show that the postmodern culture may be a positive thing for religion instead of a threat. Also I am saying "religion" to mean a system of beliefs and practices and not referring to a religious person - so think "Christianity" when I say religion and not your personal existence.

This post is stemming from a presentation I did in a class on postmodernism in grad school. I'm not an expert in this area of postmodernism but I have had over two months or about 30 hours of teaching under a postmodernist professor in a very small class. I say this just so I can have an ounce credibility walking forward.

In addressing religion in light of postmodernism, you have to understand that postmodernism is a critique of modernism. In short, while the Enlightenment was based on the rational search for truth and certainty, the moral progress of humanity, and the belief in a grand narrative account of reality (all of reality can fit under and be explained by a single system of beliefs), postmodernism rejects all of this (Borrowed from Pamela Sue Anderson in The Routledge Companion to Postmodernism pg. 45). So Postmodernism, as defined by a postmodernist herself, is the rejection of a grand narrative, moral progress, and certainty through rationality or any other means. In its place you have moral relativism, uncertainty, and no system of beliefs that can explain the world. As you can imagine this is exactly opposite of religion as well.

THis should show that I am not trying to find compatibility in which these two ideas - postmodernism and religion - can meld into one. I am want to show, however, that postmodernism, as a idea living side-by-side with religion in the same culture, can be positive for religion.

First of all, postmodernism's rejection of the Enlightenment ideal of reason and scientific method is much needed. Modernism sucked the life or soul out of the human being by making him/her a subject to speculative thought and scientific method. Moreover, the battle religion has been fighting for centuries is starting to ease up - it is no longer having to give strict, reasonable, and scientific justifications. This is not saying that religion cannot do so, but religion is much more than this by definition. Religion wants the whole human being, the Enlightenment just wanted the body and intellect. Postmodernism is ushering in a time where this game does not have to be played anymore by religion. Postmodernism can move this dialogue to a more constructive level.

You can argue that postmodernism sucks the life out of the soul as well, and I would agree. What is left is a descriptive idea of the human being based on title, occupation, race, gender, and so on. Postmodernism's skepticism of metaphysics brings human being to the surface and leaves the soul to suffocate.

However, this is under the assumption that postmodernism can effect religion at this level - I do not think it can without at one point destroying the very nature of religion and at the other side destroying its very nature of relativism. As you will see throughout this, postmodernism's relativism and disgust for imperialism (culturally or personally) does not allow itself to take over and make absolute statements. It is forever bound by its own rules and will self-destruct if it goes outside of them.

Secondly, postmodernism's can bridge the gap between religions by creating an atmosphere in the culture that requires it. Postmodernists hate religious wars and hostility. It's moral relativism requires that people respect one another, and this can create an atmosphere that is needed between religions. If you want to label it as tolerance you can but I want to stay away from that term because of its heavy stigma. Postmodernism believes in a culture, and really any idea, being in its pure form, and this is why you see a lot of them saying that they want Christians to be like Jesus and not like Christians. It's call for authenticity and respect can be a catalyst for change if it is widely held in the culture. We have already seen how Derrida's deconstruction of language has helped the study of the Scriptures by forcing us to look at it within the context.

I can say more, but I will leave it at here for now. All in all, religion and postmodernism are not compatible, but the influence they can have on each other can still be a positive thing. Am I saying that postmodernism should be held as a belief? No, it is untenable by its very nature. Religion will always have to fight its moral relativism, lack of certainty, and its disbelief in grand narratives. This whole post presupposes two things that I think can be presupposed.

Firstly, postmodernism cannot eradicate religion without it eradicating itself. Its moral and truth relativism will not allow it to make overarching judgements no matter how much a postmodernist wants to make a certain stance. I did this with my professor as he started talking about religious wars being horrible. After about a minute of conversation, he admitted that he cannot make that disgust a universal catalyst for changing it because, for him, all truth and morality is relative to the individual (which in and of itself is a universal stance). Postmodernism cannot maintain itself as a replacement for anything else and is therefore no real threat to any established idea. Modernism is still around, it has just been diminished. Religion is still around has actually flourished, I think in part of postmodernism's disenchantment with reason and science. Postmodernism will critique anything, but replace nothing.

Secondly, I am presupposing that we can operate and take truths from postmodernism without adopting it. While a Christian does not believe in relativism as a postmodernist does, he can still see the need for respect and authenticity through it. And even though a Christian does not believe where postmodernism has taken the human being, he can agree that modernism had it wrong and enjoy the looser chains. The postmodernist is open, and willing to listen and change. I would trade modernity for that culture any day of the week as a Christian and human being.

I hope this all makes sense, and I am not being disappointing. If you are looking for a duke-out between the two or a system that tries to meld the two, then you should be disappointed. My claim is only that postmodernism can be a positive thing for religion, and shouldn't be seen as such a threat to it. Individuals are still definitely threatened, but I think theology and beliefs are safe (although they may be tweaked some).

No More Clouds!

The sun came out for just a few seconds today after a whole week of just clouds and rain. Memphis weather is getting depressing, but this made me happy and I ran out to take some photographs! Here's my favorite: