Greg is at it again
In the book I’m now working on (Jesus Versus Jehovah?) I’m offering an alternative interpretation. Over and against their polytheistic ancient Near Eastern neighbors, ancient Jews emphasized that there is one sovereign Lord over all creation who rules all of history. They thus tended to view God as a supreme ancient Near Eastern monarch king who had ultimate authority over all subordinate angelic and earthly rulers. As a good monarch king, Yahweh takes responsibility (though not moral culpability) for all that transpires within his “court” (the world), including events he himself abhors.
I’m not very widely read, but I know that a number of people have written books to address the apparent contradiction of the violent, angry God of the Old Testament compared to Jesus in the New Testament. It may just be that I am a fan, but I think that the book Greg Boyd is working on now could turn out to be one of the more important Christian books. The way we understand God and God’s character has massive implications for the way that we relate to the world and the gospel that we share. This book might even revolutionise our understanding of God’s ways and God’s plan. Greg is an excellent teacher with the ability to help us ordinary folks understand complex ideas without our brains hurting.
Unfortunately, the book isn’t done yet, so for now, go read the whole article
19 March 2010 Jeff Gill
tags: books,
god,
greg boyd
I'm a podrishioner
12 February 2010 Jeff Gill
tags: greg boyd,
video
...church is what you do from Sunday to Sunday out in your neighborhood, with your small group, with your tribe of people.
—From an interview with Greg Boyd on the Burside Writers Collective.
10 February 2009 Jeff Gill
tags: church,
greg boyd,
quotes
John Piper's spectacular
This morning I listened to an interview (i.e. puff piece for his new book Spectacular Sins) with Dr John Piper. The interview finished and iTunes appropriately chose Pipe Dreams by Travis
I read it all, every word
And I still don’t understand a thing…
Three things stood out to me in this interview:
1. The insanity of his understanding of God If God is like the god that John Piper describes, active rebellion against him is the only righteous position to take.
2. A very interesting insight into Judas’s betrayal of Jesus Judas was a man to whom Jesus gave authority to cast out demons. He not only lived with Jesus, he ministered healing and freedom to people with the authority that Jesus gave him; yet he chose the money over the relationship and the power.
3. John Piper and I have the same heart At the close of the interview he said that the reason he wrote the book was to enable a faith that could handle the really big, life-shattering bad/evil events that people too often have to live through.
I want to enable that same robust faith in people. That is what motivates me when I tell a woman that her friend’s child didn’t die because God killed them. I want people to know the God who triumphs over evil, not a god who invented evil and who uses it at a tool to make people glorify him. When I tell people that science and Scripture are not at war it is because I want students to know the God who isn’t afraid of the fossil record and the unravelling mystery of DNA. When I embrace a partially open future it is because I believe in a God whose infinite wisdom and insight and power is actually infinite enough to give human beings a true free will.
John Piper and I believe nearly opposite things about the nature of God. I see his theology as based on a logic so convoluted that it could only be suited for designing Russian motorway junctions. He boldly characterises many of my core beliefs as weak, spineless and false. (I’m talking about the beliefs here, not my holding of them. I don’t think John Piper knows I exist.) Both of us are convinced that our opposite beliefs offer better, more helpful and truer answers about the condition of the world and the nature of God.
Yet the marvellous thing is that we are both motivated by love for God and an earnest desire to see God’s kingdom come on earth. I have been writing this post in bits throughout the afternoon and evening, and the more I think about it the more I am shocked and humbled by the generosity of God. As far as I can tell he lets both of us stay in his family. He gives both of us meaningful work to do for his kingdom. It is conceivable that He even calls both of us his friends. That would mean I probably should think about calling John Piper my friend, even though that doesn’t fill well with thing number one.
I’d rather call him a heretic and overturn his URL, but I don’t think God offers that as a valid option.
20 October 2008 Jeff Gill
tags: faith,
god,
greg boyd,
kingdom of god
Some Word of Faith thoughts
I like to keep up with what was hot five years ago, so I just read Your Best Life Now by Joel Osteen.
It took me back to my teenage years and the two Kenneths. Messrs Hagin and Copeland were very influential on my spiritual development. I am very grateful today for the understanding of being in Christ I got from Kenneth Hagin and for Kenneth Copeland’s superb teaching on covenant.
On the other hand, when you lose a baby, despite all your faith and confession, you find that Word of Faith has some pretty poor answers to a lot of life’s big questions.
Nearly nine years on and past the pain and anger, I was able to thoughtfully read, if not enjoy (Joel, 10 aphorisms in a row isn’t a paragraph, it’s a list! And please stop calling me ‘friend’.) Mr Osteen’s book. I found it inspired me to pick up some important truths that I had thrown out with the bath water.
It also got me thinking. Here are some of those thoughts.
1. A lot of Word of Faith teaching is not uniquely Christian. Rather, it is universal principles with a Western church skin. I’ve read the same principles with a business skin, a self improvement skin and a Buddhist skin. Underneath it is basically the same: belief and words are powerful forces for change. In fact, my favourite ‘Word of Faith’ book is not Christian at all. It is a jaunty little self help read called Being Happy.
In some ways Word of Faith is better without God. It keeps us from trying to turn God into a genie. And when the thing that we are believing for doesn’t come to pass we can blame an imperfect universe instead of a god who is constantly evaluating our Faith Performance.
On the other hand, the idea of life without God stinks. God has to be bigger than the WoF version or I quit.
I don’t think Christians should stop living according to a principle just because it is not uniquely Christian. Our God is the God of the universe. All truth is ours. The question is how we use it. The answer is: How did Jesus use it? Which leads me to my next thought:
2. The stink of acquisition and greed is really hard to disguise, no matter how much perfume you put on. Giving to get is just ugly, and it sucks the joy out of giving. Surely we can give simply out of gratefulness to God for his indescribable gift?
3. The Word of Faith message is especially suited to inspiring preachers, motivational speakers and writers. They speak (or write) words, and people give them money. Tidy. It is a different story for the guys putting in the new water pipes on my road. They could confess increase and income all day, but unless they dig some trenches and put in some pipes, they will find themselves experiencing decrease and outgo. (see The Mustang 2 and James 2).
4. As I read Mr Osteen’s book I found myself constantly wondering how his seven principles could be made useful people living in poverty without any life skills. The book has something to offer to relatively well-off people who want to improve, but the stories about how to avoid speeding tickets won’t be much help to the single mum on the council estate who can’t afford a car. (Never mind the extreme poverty of the developing world!) Something else is needed.
The sequence of John 3:16 is instructive: God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. (TNIV) Loving and giving come before believing. And since we are supposed to be acting like Jesus in this world – James 2:16 comes to mind.
5. The more I talk to Christians the more I think that the majority of us, WoF or not, have a faith that is basically a belief in some form of mystical or formulaic magic – often coming surprisingly close to magick. Most of us probably don’t know any better.
6. I should shut up now and you should go right now and listen to Greg Boyd’s message on Speaking the Kingdom. Whether you love Word of Faith teaching or you hate it or, like me, you are all over the place, I think you will find this to be a inspiring and life-giving message.
26 August 2008 Jeff Gill
tags: faith,
greg boyd
Sunday evening reading
Tia Lynn has started a very promising series on God’s design for women at Abandon Image. She starts here with good definitions of egalitarianism and complementarianism. Her second post speaks brilliantly about NOT glorifying the consequences of the curse of Genesis 3. And I love the fourth post about Deborah. It shows the things you can find in the bible when you are willing to put aside your grid and read what the text actually says.
Greg Boyd has written a very good (and long) review of Chuck Colson’s latest book God and Government: An Insider’s View on the Boundaries Between Faith and Politics.
9 March 2008 Jeff Gill
tags: blogging,
books,
greg boyd,
kingdom of god,
women
Eight subversions of Christianity
Greg Boyd, my favourite pastor that I don’t know, wrote in his blog earlier this week about a book he read called The Subversion of Christianity by Jacques Ellul.
In his review Greg writes that the church has been subverted by success, money, morality, religion, pragmatism, violence, politics, power.
Every one of these things is realised in the kingdom of God, just not in the way or the timing that we humans necessarily want it to be. That’s what makes us so susceptible to temptation. We are so easily like Abraham with Ishmael, Saul with the pre-battle sacrifice. But we can be like Jesus when satan offered him easy shortcuts to everything God was giving him.
Have a read of Greg’s post, then come back here for a quick look at the good things that are subverted by each of these eight things and what implications they have for a life of following Jesus in our time.
Success God’s dream for the world has always been for the whole world – from Adam (fill the earth) to Abraham (all the nations of the world will be blessed in you) to Jesus (my house shall be a house of prayer for all nations; go into all the world…) to the apostles (God desires all people to be saved). The temptation is to try and make it happen by dumbing down the good news: Say a prayer, buy a T-shirt, you’re in the club. Salvation is transformation and that rarely happens while being swept along in the emotion of a giant crowd. The good news is for the whole world, one real connection with God at a time.
Money The bible talks so much about money. It is full of promises about our needs being met, about us having an abundance. But ‘all these things’ are added as a side-effect of seeking God’s kingdom, and we freely receive so that we may freely give. The temptation is to make the side-effect the goal.
Morality Living a moral life is not the aim. Living a life abandoned to God is the aim. The Kingdom of God is a return to eating from the tree of life. Goodness is a by-product of God’s kind of life. The temptation to base life on ethics and morality looks so good. It is so safe and easy. But it has no power to enable us to live a life that is truly good. The rules are a wall that separate us from really knowing the source of goodness. That brings us neatly to…
Religion Paul writes about people holding on to a form of godliness but denying its power. That’s a good definition of religion. There is this urge in people to be like God. That makes sense; we are made in his image. Religion gives us a set of boxes to tick in order to be like God. It gives us a feeling of accomplishment. Except that it doesn’t in the long run. Religion grows and looks for more and more behaviours to control. Look at God’s original terms of covenant with Israel – three chapters in Exodus. Look at what it turned into by the time Israel got to their land – Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy. Religion’s promise of making us like God or pleasing to God is a false one. Jesus said once that the one necessary thing was sitting and being with him. Fact is, it is a lot easier to try and define life with rules.
Pragmatism God has been at work to fix the world ever since sin came into it. We humans have a natural desire to join him in it. The problem is that we stink at fixing the world. The thing that fixes the world is the spread of the kingdom of God. That doesn’t make sense to our natural minds though. What makes sense is: I see a problem; I’ll try to fix it. And then it gets more broken, giving us more to fix and so on, leaving us completely distracted from the real answer. Living and spreading the Kingdom of God causes the world to be fixed without all our clever efforts
Violence See my upcoming post Hooray for violence.
Politics It’s religion, it’s fixing the world, it’s being willing to be bought (even though we’ve already been bought by God for an infinite price), it’s playing by the rules of this world’s system (which guarantees we lose*), it is ultimately a quest for…
Power Jesus says, you shall receive power. Paul writes about God’s power working mightily within us. People want power. It’s one of those built-in things that goes with our God-given mandate to take care of the earth. Once again, the temptation is to try to seize power. But the power that God promises is the power to be his witnesses, the power to lay down our lives for others. It’s funny how unpopular that kind of power is. Nevermind that it is the same power that Jesus had, the only power powerful enough to reach the world, to remove the fear of lack, to make us good like God, to connect us with God, to fix the world, and to defeat evil.
We Christians, if we are willing to let God change our minds about almost everything, could actually be the kind of humans God designed us to be.
—
*for an example of how to win by not playing by the rules, look at David fighting Goliath.
17 January 2008 Jeff Gill
tags: books,
church,
greg boyd,
humans