Barth’s Resurgence

I am a HUGE Karl Barth fan. Apparently there are others as well, as testified to by an article several years ago by Bruce McCormack of Princeton Seminary entitled, “The Barth Renaissance in America: An Opinion“. In the article, McCormack notes five reasons why he thinks Barth is becoming more popular in America, especially in contrast to European theologians. First, Barth’s theology is comprehensive in the sense that he draws largely not only from the Bible, but also from church tradition and history. Second, Barth’s theology is open-ended . . . he leaves room for God to be God and therefore, does not tie all the loose ends (although, by the large quantity of pages in his Church Dogmatics, we might be pressured to believe otherwise). Third, everything is seen through the lens of the person of Jesus Christ. Very christocentric in nature. Fourth, he welds together theology and ethics. Our theology should always inform our ethics, the way we live in the world. And fifth, theology is first and foremost for the purposes of the church.

You can get a more detailed explanation of these by referring to the article.

Laughing at God

Regina Spektor recently released a CD with a song entitled, Laughing With.

Here’s a snippet of the lyrics:

No one laughs at God in a hospital
No one laughs at God in a war
No one’s laughing at God when they’re starving or freezing or so very poor

No one laughs at God when the doctor calls after some routine tests
No one’s laughing at God when it’s gotten real late and their kid’s not back from that party yet

No one laughs at God when their airplane starts to uncontrollably shake
No one’s laughing at God when they see the one they love hand in hand with someone else and they hope that they’re mistaken
No one laughs at God when the cops knock on their door and they say “We’ve got some bad new, sir,”
No one’s laughing at God when there’s a famine, fire or flood

But God can be funny
At a cocktail party while listening to a good God-themed joke or
Or when the crazies say he hates us and they get so red in the head you think that they’re about to choke

God can be funny
When told he’ll give you money if you just pray the right way
And when presented like a genie
Who does magic like Houdini
Or grants wishes like Jiminy Cricket and Santa Claus

God can be so hilarious
Ha ha
Ha ha

On Sunday, I could not get this song out of my head. Sunday was a rough day in the life of the church. My version of Regina’s song would go something like this: No one laughs at God when you learn that a lady has lost 14 of her 15 siblings, three in the past year. No one laughs when the lady who has battled cancer longer than I have been alive is in a car accident on the way to church, breaking her foot. No one laughs when you hear a father recount the messy divorce settlement his daughter is enduring. No one laughs when you see generations in a family suffer from divorce or alcoholism. No one laughs when you see two young children without a father because he made one bad decision and now finds himself in prison for a long time.

Then there’s the other side to the song. When we laugh at God. I saw this later that evening when I was attending a church gathering at a different church with a much, much younger demographic represented. Here’s my verse: God can be funny, at a church barbecue, while drinking a Pabst or a Fat Tire. God can be funny when cracking a joke about a mega-church pastor’s really white and cheesy smile or his greased back hair or his church that at one time was a basketball arena. God can be funny when making jokes about people in the bible.

God can be funny here and not there. Life is not fair. Of this I am quite certain.

Self-Discipline of a Pastor

Another lesson that I have learned this summer as an intern at a church: Pastors need self-discipline and self-motivation. Let’s face it, what do pastors do all week? Yeah, they prepare a sermon and the worship service and may do some nursing home visits and go to a staff meeting and maybe even have some coffee with people in the congregation. Even if they do all of those things, they still have free time, essentially, time to do what they want. Time that if they don’t use wisely or spend it in a worthwhile way, nobody will notice. Pastors have to be disciplined enough to keep learning, to keep reading, to keep praying, to keep thinking. Nobody will ever notice this work. Thus, the pastor could spend his time playing Freecell or even Solitaire. But of all people, pastors should honestly be spending their time in a way that the kingdom of God is beginning to take root. Without self-discipline and self-motivation, pastors will quickly begin to burn out; they will easily find themselves bored and overflowing with apathy. We need pastors willing to do the work that nobody will ever see or acknowledge.

The Recovery of the Exodus

What is the defining moment of the Old Testament for Christians today? As I pondered this question, I would undoubtedly point to the fall of Adam and Eve and the consequences of such an action. However, many scholars, including Brevard Childs, are almost unanimous that this was not the event that the Israelites centered their lives around. Rather, the defining moment in their history was the exodus, not the fall. Contemplating a shift in thinking, I wonder what effect this change in perspective has. For us, who see the Old Testament through the lens of the Fall, everything following the Fall then becomes humans trying to become right with God again or humans trying to earn the approval of God once again. Thus, as we look at the narrative of the Old Testament, it is easy to say how many people acted in accordance with this and how many people just kept on sinning more and more, creating a greater and greater chasm between them and God. But how would the Old Testament change if everything was seen in light of the exodus? All of a sudden, we begin to see God’s deliverance central to the Old Testament text. In addition to this, God’s faithfulness to the Israelite people prevails as a theme key to understanding the text. Even when the Israelites find themselves in exile or find themselves so-called abandoned by God, they hold onto a strain of hope. Why? Because God has acted in the past in the event of the exodus. And because God has delivered them before, they hold to a hope that God will deliver them again. When we begin to read the Old Testament with the exodus at the forefront of our mind, we begin to see how God’s deliverance gives birth to a hope of the Messiah and a hope of the world to come. A hope that there is a better way to live and hope that one day shalom will flood the earth. Even in passages such as Psalm 130 and the entire book of Lamentations where we hear the writers chastising God for abandoning them and then, all of a sudden, you read that they find their hope in God, if only for a moment, before returning to their criticism of God.

The exodus gives us hope because God’s deliverance is coming. God has acted, is acting, and will act again. Jesus initiated the new exodus, the new people of God being delivered from an old way of life, which begs me to ask the question, Does the fall give us any hope?