Behind the Wardrobe Door

"God is like Jesus. God has always been like Jesus. There has never been a time when God was not like Jesus. We haven't always known this. But now we do." - Brian Zahnd There are many important keys to reading the Bible well, but to me this is the best place to start. Ever since Marcion, Christianity's OG heretic, we've been tempted to see a stark contrast between the God of the Old Testament and the Jesus of the New Testament. In simplest terms, it's like a good-cop/bad-cop situation. Jesus is nice, gentle, and loving. God is angry, violent, and vindictive. Jesus wants to help us, God is out to get us. Jesus rescues us from hell, God wants to put us there. God's holiness is the reason we humans are doomed, but Jesus steps in and takes the divine beating we deserve. This completely misses the point of the incarnation. Again, Brian Zahnd: "Jesus does not save us from God: Jesus reveals God as Savior." Of course, John the Beloved said b...

Where is the center of your faith? Is it Jesus or the Bible? Here's the funny thing when we talk about "the Bible." When we say "I believe the Bible" or something like that, we don't mean it in a objective way. We may fool ourselves into thinking otherwise, but as limited humans, the only thing we are capable of meaning by that is, "I believe my interpretation of the Bible." And that interpretation is not only subjective, it is capable of change as we learn new information. Building your faith on the Bible is like building your faith on a house of cards.* Yet this is what many of us have tended to do. We read every verse like it's equally important. Above all, we read every verse literally (of course, no one really does, but we come to a place where we cling to this ideal of reading literally for our very identity). And then we forge very dogmatic and rigid beliefs about what we think every verse says. Eventually we fit all these beliefs ...

Let me ask you a question: What is the Word of God? Think you know? Well it's a trick question. Because the Word of God isn't a what. It's a who. It's Him.  "In the Beginning was the Logos ," says the poet-apostle, John the Beloved. "The Logos was with God. The Logos was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through Him all things were made." In making these claims, the poet-apostle is drawing on images ingrained in his religious and cultural psyche by two poets even more ancient that he. The author of Genesis 1, with his stirring recollection of the  ruach  (breath/wind/spirit) of Elohim nurturing the wild and waste of the primordial earth into a world that was ordered, functional, and good with every word that He breathed. And the author of Proverbs 8, who described the wisdom of God laboring alongside Him as an indispensable master workman when the foundations of the earth were laid. Breath and Wisdom. Decree and Logic. Life and Tr...

You know how it is. You're going through life and everything seems like it's going just the way you expect it. Until one day, without warning... ... a mysterious man who wears sunglasses indoors and seems to know everything about you tells you that the world you're living in isn't the real world after all. ... two droids show up at your farm needing your help to get a message to some local hermit who might actually be a space wizard with the power to save the galaxy. ... an old man in a gray, pointy hat rousts you out of your comfy hobbit hole and conscripts you for a dragon-slaying adventure. ... a wardrobe that at first just looked like a good place to play hide-and-seek on a rainy day turns out to be a passageway into a world you thought only existed in fairy tales. Or, maybe you're like me and haven't had any experiences quite so fantastic, but some that are certainly just as unexpected and life-changing. If you grew up in the Bible belt in a genera...