Discovering the Real Jesus in Monroe

Vanity Fair has an interesting essay written by Julian Sancton called “Why America Worships Superheroes.”
Currently superheroes are big. Nytimes film critic A. O. Scott calls it the “superhero surge.” Why the surge?

For one reason, says Sancton, we humans can relate to them. Sancton writes: “the heroes themselves have become more, well, complex. The films still pit good against evil, but with character actors like Robert Downey Jr. and Heath Ledger taking more risks, good has gotten more ambiguous and evil more unsettling.”

Further, just as we are struggling economically and politically and globally, so are our superheroes. “Hancock’s a drunk, Tony Stark’s a war-profiteer, and Bruce Wayne’s a rich jerk. Wouldn’t you be messed up if you were fighting, respectively, L.A. crime, the Taliban, and Al Qaeda in clown makeup?”

And then there’s Hellboy. “Hellboy’s inner demon is that he’s an outer demon. O.K., that’s not quite as easy to relate to, but he’s nonetheless an irritable, cynical hero, and audiences like that.”

Superheroes portray the ethos of the time. When Superman arrived to help us the world was simpler and black and white. Good was good and evil was evil. Now, there’s a lot more ambiguity and complexity. And this I believe is true. As we Jesus-followers like to say it’s a post-Christian world that we live in. The spiritual “air we breathe” is highly polluted.

But what about the whole superhero thing anyway, in itself? Sancton’s observation is that we need them. Quoting Hellboy’s director Guillermo del Toro: “There is still a longing for mythos, for a spiritual Pantheon. And in an era where we have enshrined materialism to such a degree and we have killed off every conceit that seems to be weak and based on religion—New Age, all those types of things—the only sort of acceptable mythology, I think, is superhero mythology.”

In short - superheroes are our gods and goddesses. It’s not that people actually believe Hellboy exists or that the Joker is around the corner and we’d better hope the psychologically struggling Batman sees the bat-signal we throw up and is in an emotional state to respond to it. It’s that most of us, arguably all, have this deep, inner need for someone or something more to come to our rescue. For me, it’s the Jesus-story, with the main difference being Jesus actually came to deliver the oppressed. Perhaps, as C.S. Lewis thought, the superhero stories, and even his own Narnia books and his friend Tolkien’s trilogy, were reflections of a hope God placed in wach of us and responded to in history.

(Good Hart. Michigan)

Tonight at 8 PM Voice of the Martyrs and Charisma Magazine will be talking with Bob Fu, a Chinese pastor who experienced persecution himself inside China, and now leads a group helping the persecuted church in China.

You can watch, listen, and join the discussion here.

(Linda, in Korazin, Israel, Feb 2008)

Today Linda is 59 years old. I’m also 59 - last April! We’re not ashamed to say this. Our hearts and spirits are growing newer and younger every day!

Linda is the most beautiful 59-year-old I have ever seen. And her beauty is not only physical. Linda is a deeply spiritual person, a phenomenal listener, a non-judgmental, loving, imperfect (she’ll admit to this), passionate, real Jesus-follower. That God gave her to be my life companion astounds me. On August 11 we’ll have been married 35 years.

Last night we went for a date to walk around Levis Commons in Perrysburg - very cool! A beautiful evening, a good meal, some Starbuck’s for me and a little chocolate for her, then sitting on a bench on the grassy traffic island listening to music and talking and feeling the cool, low humidity breeze. Linda said, “This is just a perfect summer night!”

Perfect for me because God gave me Linda to share my life with. Happy birthday to my friend, sister, lover.

(Green Lake, Wisconsin)

I was trained in an evangelical Christian environment. For all I received from my teachers and pastors I will forever be grateful.

Yet, we’re all learners, and this includes me. I feel I’m learning new things about God and Jesus every day! One of the most important things I’ve learned in the past few years is that my evangelical training left me with an incomplete Gospel. I learned how to proclaim God’s Word, but was not trained or mentored in demonstrating God’s Word in love and power.

I now see that I was taught only a half-Gospel. I do not mean to criticize my teachers at all. I’m convinced that there’s not one of us who has the Gospel exactly right in all areas, to include moi. Nevertheless, it is abundantly clear that the way Jesus brought in the Kingdom was 2-fold: He proclaimed the good news of the Kingdom of God, and then he demonstrated it by doing things like healing and delivering people from demonic oppression.

George Ladd, former New Testament professor at Fuller Theological Seminary, is one of the most influential evangelical scholars of the late 20th century. Here’s how Ladd explains this in his excellent book The Gospel of the Kingdom: “Our Lord’s ministry and announcement of the Good News of the Kingdom were characterized by healing, and most notably by the casting out of demons. He proclaimed the Good News of the Kingdom of God, and He demonstrated the Good News of the Kingdom of God by delivering men from the bondage of Satan.” (47)

Of course. And then Jesus told his followers to do the same. I have now concluded that persons who devalue the importance of healing and deliverance ministry have devalued the real Gospel. They have only half a Gospel. If you are a theological kind of person, one reason for this devaluing in evangelicalism is because of the influence of that nonbiblical theory known as dispensationalism.

(I took this picture of a moth on a wall at Monroe County Community College yesterday. Anyone know what kind it is?)

Today I’m spending time preparing for my first semester Kingdom of God class I’ll teach in our coming Redeemer Ministry School. I absolutely LOVE taking time to study like this and being able to focus on and dig in to the things that I value most highly and deeply.

The main text for my Kingdom of God class is George Ladd’s excellent The Gospel of the Kingdom. Ladd’s essential point is that, in the Bible, the Kingdom of God is both future and present. The presentness of God’s Kingdom is seen in Hebrews 6:5, where we are told that there are those who have “tasted… the powers of the age to come.”

This is a now-thing; an experiential reality of this life. Thus our faith in Jesus is not merely a religion of promise and future hope. Listen to how Ladd writes about this.

“The Age to Come is still future, but we may taste the powers of that Age. Something has happened by virtue of which that which belongs to the future has become present. The powers of The Age to Come have penetrated This Age. while we still live in the present evil Age and while Satan is still the god of This Age, we may taste the powers of The Coming Age. Now a taste is not a seven-course banquet. We still look forward to the glorious consummation and fulfillment of that which we have only tasted. Yet a taste is real. It is more than a promise; it is realization; it is experience. “Taste and see that the Lord is good.” We have “tasted the powers of The Age to Come.” (41)

For some really excellent reading on how this shakes down in a person’s life today, see Bill Johnson’s When Heaven Invades Earth.

(Green Lake, Wisconsin)

I talked today with a friend who comes to my church. He was with us last Sunday when I preached on the parable of the prodigal son, which I called the parable of God’s outrageous love. In this story Jesus tells in Luke 15 the father welcomes back his son who left him, embarrassed him, scandalized him, and treated him like he was already dead. The father throws a huge party for this son who comes back to him!

My friend told me, “OK - but what comes next?” I think that’s a good question. If I understand it correctly (and I may not, but here goes anyway!), my friend was asking about things like consequences and his son’s future behavior. Should there not be some consequences for what the son did? Do we just forget the whole thing and treat it as if nothing happened? I think not. But it’s the transformed heart of the son that will be proactive regarding this, and not the father.

 The purpose of this parable is to show that God’s love is unconditional and is always there. It does not go up and down based on human performance or adherence to rules and laws. But aren’t their rules to be kept? Of course. And at this point we need to distinguish between the commands of God and human-made rules. God’s not into enforcing all the little rules we make because of who we are and what we personally like or dislike. For example, my grandmother wished dearly that I, at age 22, would shave off my moustache. She tried to manipulate me to do this. In this sense her love towards me was conditional - she would tell me “Johnny, you looked so much nicer when you didn’t have that moustache.” Maybe. But God didn’t love me any less because I had one. That, precisely, is the point of this parable; viz., God’s love doesn’t have any “if-clauses.” (”If you do ______, then I’ll love you.”)

I’m assuming that, when the younger son returned to his father, he had a changed heart. He’s humble now. He’s no longer a victim. He acknowledges his bad choices. Like some of you, I was like this younger son. When I returned to God the Father’s loving embrace, there were some consequences of my behaviors that I needed to make right. And, I began to understand and love the commands of God. I saw them then, as I see them now, as life-giving.

So, as I see it, when the younger son returns “home” he:

1. Experiences God’s unconditional love

2. Wants to make things right that he has destroyed or lost (because he has a changed heart)

3. Wants to obey the father’s commands (because he sees them as the way to life)

(Monroe)

Last Sunday I preached on Luke 15’s “parable of the prodigal son.” This famous and beautiful parable would be better called “the parable of the father’s outrageous love.”  The central character is the father, and neither the younger son nor the older son.

About the Younger Son

He asks his father for his inheritance. This would have been a scandalous thing to do, since a son only received his inheritance after his father was dead. To ask for it while his father was alive was as good as saying to him, “Father, I view you as dead.” What the son got was probably mostly land, not cash. He cashed in the land and spent it all in a foreign land on sex and who-knows-what-else. It would, at that time, have been a son’s responsibility to care for his father in his old age. But now that he’d sold his father’s land it was like saying “Not only do I consider you dead, don’t plan on me taking care of you when you get too old to care for yourself.”

Finally, he comes to senses. He’s lost all his money, he’s an alien in a foreign land who works feeding pigs and even eats the pigs’ food. He is at the very bottom of the social hierarchy, an “expendable” person even below “unclean” persons whom no one cares to help him. He thinks of his father’s love and care and rises up to go home.

About the Older Son

The older son, in the parable, represents the Jewish religious Pharisees. They are mentioned in Like 15:1-2 as being disgusted that “sinners and tax collectors” are welcomed by Jesus. Jesus hangs with the lowly and poor and hungry and marginalized and weak and sick and blind and filthy and the prostitutes. The Pharisees can’t believe it! The older brother can’t believe it when his father runs to embrace and kiss his screwed-up younger son. And he is shocked that the father throws a huge party for the kid. The older son obeyed all the rules and stayed at home – so why doesn’t he get the party; why didn’t his dad at least take him to Chuck E. Cheese for a good time? The older brother is scary-moralistic and self-righteous. He thinks his younger brother doesn’t deserve a celebration, and if his father should kiss anyone it should be him. In this the older brother is right and he is wrong. He’s right that the younger brother doesn’t deserve his father’s love; he’s wrong in that he deserves it. The older son is an alien in his own father’s home, who does not understand how his father loves.

About the Father

In the parable the father loves both his sons. He loves them with an unconditional love. A conditional love says “I love you IF… you perform/look nice/keep all the rules.” But the love of this father, and by analogy the love of God, loves with no conditions or strings attached. God longs for both his sons to come back to him. He longs to celebrate the return of his children. And he welcomes them with loving, enveloping arms.

This is how God loves you. Unconditonally. No strings attached.

Greg Laurie’s son Christopher was killed in a car accident last week. Go here to watch Greg speak about his loss to his church family. And learn from someone whose hope is in Jesus the Christ.

(Warren Dunes State park in SE Michigan)

I recently re-read C.S. Lewis’s The Problem of Pain. Lewis writes to give answers to the philosophical or intellectual “problem” of pain, not to give ideas about how to relieve pain and suffering. Yet for me, and I think for others, it helps to get answers to the question “Why is there any pain at all?”

Lewis argues that a main reason pain exists at all is because 1) God gave persons free will to choose; and 2) not even God “could create a society of free souls without at the same time creating a relatively independent and ‘inexorable’ Nature.” Let me try to explain this.

That you and I have free will to choose between alternatives seems obvious (though, philosophically and scientifically, it’s hugely debated today. If you want to see examples of this debate go to my more academic website johnpiippo.com).

We can make free choices. Lewis says we make these choices in a natural environment that is for the most part already fixed. Lewis writes that “Society implies a common field or ‘world’ in which its members meet.” Let me use this analogy: If you and I are playing chess we are free to move the chess pieces as we choose, but the chess board we play the game on is fixed and cannot be changed. If this were not so we couldn’t play the game of chess at all. So Lewis reasons that if we did not live in a world that was common to us all we would not be able to have free will. Our free will does not impact the fixed world we live in, but has to do with the free choices we make within that fixed world.

If you were the only person that existed in this world the world “might conform at every moment to [your] wishes.” For example, trees might crowd into a shade for you to sit under if you chose this. But because I and many others live in this world along with you we could not expect Nature to conform to human free will, since what I choose would not always be what you would choose. If I were a farmer I might pray for rain today, while you, the golfer, would pray that it would not rain during your game.

Lewis writes it this way: “If the fixed nature of matter prevents it from being always, and in all its dispositions, equally agreeable to even a single soul, much less is it possible for the matter of the universe at any moment to be distributed so that it is equally convenient and pleasurable to each member of a society.” (23)

What’s the point Lewis is trying to make? It’s this. God has given you and I free will. Why? Because without free will love is impossible, and love, for God, is his highest value. God IS love.

Now if I had a piece of wood I could use it to make a chair for you to sit on. Or, I could use it to make a club to beat you with. If I chose to do the latter, why couldn’t God turn the club into something as soft as grass every time I swung it at you? Because, in such a world, wrong actions would be impossible, and therefore “freedom of the will would be void.” In fact, says Lewis, “evil thoughts would be impossible, for the cerebral matter which we use in thinking would refuse its task when we attempt to frame them.” (24-25)

Lewis’s conclusion is this: “Try to exclude the possibility of suffering which the order of nature and the existence of free wills involve, and you find that you have excluded life itself.” For there to be human free will it must be the case that there is also human suffering. Read Lewis’s entire chapter in PP for more detail.