Judging Angels

What is Heaven Like?

Do you not know that the Lord’s people will judge the world?  And if you are to judge the world, are you not competent to judge trivial cases?  Do you not know that we will judge angels?  How much more the things of this life?

1 Cor 6:2-3

            Let’s be careful.  A basic rule of interpretation, of the Bible or any other text, is to pay attention to context.  In this part of his first letter to the Corinthian Christians, Paul takes on lawsuits among believers.  It’s unseemly and embarrassing, he says, for Christians to take their disputes to civil courts.  Rather than have one brother suing another before unbelievers, Paul says, it would be better to be cheated.  The main point is clear: settle disputes in the church.

            Having recognized the main point of the text, let’s speculate about a side topic.  Paul says Christians will judge the world and, even more mysteriously, they will judge angels.  Imagine for a moment how strange that would have sounded in the 1^st century.  The believers to whom Paul wrote were a tiny minority in the Roman Empire.  They were, as he wrote in another place, not drawn from the upper classes or those considered wise or powerful.  How will it be that Christians would judge the world?

            The answer is clear.  Paul refers to the future, after Jesus returns to earth.  The Christian worldview is based on the Hebrew idea that history will not always go on as it has; rather, the “Day of the Lord” will come when God will judge the nations.  The Christians modified this idea only slightly, in that Jesus is the Lord.  When Jesus returns, he comes to rule.  Apparently, we will rule with him.

            “Do you not know?”  Paul says.  It seems to be a rhetorical question, assuming they’ve already been taught about the coming age.  Latter day readers, though, might feel like objecting: “No.  We don’t know!  What are you talking about?”

            What will heaven be like?  Occasionally you meet someone who says heaven sounds boring—sitting around on clouds strumming harps—a silly caricature, based on comic books rather than Christian doctrine.  But the charge is sometimes developed philosophically.  A friend of mine once argued seriously that in an infinite span of time the activities of heaven must inevitably become repetitive and boring.  This argument errs because it applies infinity only to time, forgetting that God is an infinite being.  There will always be more to learn, worship, and love.

            So what will heaven be like?  Our answers must carry the caveat that God has much more in store for us than we can know now.  But the Bible gives tantalizing hints.

            First, we should think not of going to heaven, but of heaven coming to earth.  In Romans Paul says the whole creation longs for the Day to come.  In Revelation, John pictures the New Jerusalem on earth.  The biblical promise is of a “new heaven and new earth.”

            Second, there is worship now in heaven (Revelation 4), and there will be after the resurrection.  In the New Jerusalem there is no temple, because the presence of God fills the city.  Worship implies joy and praise, at least.

            Third, our bodies will be like Jesus’ body.  In the gospels, Jesus’ resurrection body was undoubtedly physical—able to eat fish, marked with scars of crucifixion—and yet able to appear in locked rooms and able to ascend into heaven.  Such snippets raise more questions than they answer.  What will resurrection bodies be able to do?  Jesus himself said there would be no marriage in the resurrection; what does that mean? 

            Fourth, there will be community.  Heaven is not just “Jesus and me.”  The Bride of Christ is the church, all of us together.  Each one of us will learn to rejoice as fervently for the goodness of God to others as we do for God’s goodness to us personally.  We will genuinely love others as much as we love ourselves.

            Fifth, we will be creative.  We are made in the image of God, the great creator.  Our creative activities now—cooking, gardening, writing, researching, building—will be remembered as dim precursors to our work as creators.  Notice the word “work.”  In heaven our labor will not be an oppressive curse, but there is no reason we should not have work to do.

            Sixth . . . the list could be extended.  It seems that part of our “work” will be judicial.  “We will judge the angels.”  Again, a mystery.  What does that mean?  What do the angels do?  Why should they need judges?  Why would God entrust such judgment to us?

            So much we do not know!  Should we not be eager to find out?  Maranatha!  Come, Lord Jesus.

Reflections on St. Petersburg

This Too Shall Pass

            I recently had opportunity to visit St. Petersburg, Russia, with students from George Fox University.  Many Americans would be surprised to learn that this great city, capitol of the Russian Empire for two hundred years, is newer than Boston or New York.

            Peter I ruled Russia 1682-1725.  He added significantly to Russia’s territory, producing an empire and making himself an emperor.  Russian history books call him Peter the Great.  Peter wanted to make Russia more European, to bring French and German culture to Russia.  To open a door to the West, and to provide access for the Russian navy to the Baltic Sea, 1703 Peter founded a new city on the banks of the Neva River where it flows into the Gulf of Finland, on land he had taken from Sweden.  He named his new city for his patron saint, and in 1712 St. Petersburg became capitol of the Russian Empire.

            The new city grew rapidly.  The Russian nobility built palaces and brought servants.  Shipbuilders, merchants and manufacturers gained fortunes and built mansions.  Later in the 1700s Empress Catherine the Great, whose policies also added to the Russian Empire (including Alaska), began the art collection that later became the famous Hermitage Museum.  At the beginning of the 20^th century, St. Petersburg was the seat of Czarist government, the most Westernized city in Russia.

            World War 1 brought defeat and the 1917 Bolshevik revolution.  Dedicated atheists, the communists changed the name of the city to Petrograd (“Peter’s City”), and after Lenin’s death it became Leningrad.  Marxist doctrine teaches the inevitability of a worker’s revolution, and the Russian Communist Party enthusiastically proclaimed itself the vanguard of humanity’s future.  Despite such confidence, the soviet era lasted less than 75 years.  In 1991 the people voted to restore the name St. Petersburg.

            Our study group toured St. Petersburg on foot and by boat on streets and canals that date to the 1700s.  We visited Catherine’s summer palace outside the city, the Winter Palace (which is now part of the Hermitage Museum), Russian Orthodox cathedrals and churches, and other tourist sites.  The visit impressed me with the transitory character of “great works.”

            Here’s an example.  In 1881, a revolutionary group wounded Emperor Alexander II with an explosive device; the emperor died soon afterward.  His son, Alexander III, began building a church in homage to his father.  The resulting Church of the Savior on Spilled Blood is one of the main tourist sights in St. Petersburg.  Construction continued from 1883 to 1907.  The Church is lavishly adorned with beautiful mosaics, but it was actually used only as a place for memorials, not for public worship.  After the 1917 revolution it was used variously as a warehouse, a morgue (during World War 2), and a museum.  Today it belongs to the Russian Orthodox Church, but it has not been re-consecrated.  It is a tourist attraction; our students gathered for a group photo outside the church.

            St. Petersburg is a great city; more than six million people live there.  Perhaps it is, still, the cultural capitol of Russia.  Our boat tour guide said as much, voicing what is probably a common boast.  In that regard, we might say that Peter the Great and Catherine the Great’s ambitions are still bearing fruit.  But their empire is gone.  The palaces and mansions of the Russian nobility became state property in the communist era; now, those that are not museums belong to new owners, the new wealthy class.  The Soviets, assured by Marx and Lenin that their movement represented the future, have passed from history’s stage.  Today the city faces all the uncertainty of modern Russia; they have a President who rules much like one of the Czars.  Not even Mr. Putin will be President forever.  Who will succeed him?

            All our works, even the “greatest,” fade into history.  This is not a new insight, of course.  “This too shall pass,” is attributed to medieval Sufi poets.  But St. Petersburg pushed the thought into my mind.  Maybe the city speaks particularly to people of my generation.

            I grew up in the Cold War, a generation raised in the shadow of nuclear war.  We children were taught in grade school how our country (US) faced great danger from them (USSR).  Public libraries had bomb shelters in the basement.  We heard the grown-ups at church talk about the Berlin Wall, the missile crisis, Red China, and Khrushchev.  To a child raised in that world, the division of the world between “us” and “them” seemed permanent.  Or almost permanent; we knew the missiles could fly any time.

            Peter’s empire is gone.  The Soviet era passed.  The Cold War has been replaced by a “war on terror.”  (No president can declare victory in this war, since terrorists can renew their war at will.)  Nevertheless, this too will pass.

            I do not believe everything is transitory.  We pray for the kingdom of God to come, the kingdom of righteousness, peace and joy in the Spirit.  When the kingdom is fully come (it is now, as Jesus said, breaking in), it will transcend all the great works we have ever attempted.

           

           

On the road again

Five Days to Pack

            “So, where are you going?  Russia, right?  Moscow?”

            “Not Moscow.  We’ll go to St. Petersburg, the Baltics, then Germany, and finally Denmark.”

            “Sounds great.  Wish I could go.”

            I’ve had some variation of that exchange at least ten times in the last few days.  Dr. Javier Garcia and I are leading a Juniors Abroad group (15 students), leaving Portland a few days after spring semester ends.  My new wife, Sarah, a veteran international traveler, will accompany us.  Friends may think, and some of them tell me, that they envy me.  Maybe.  But they aren’t thinking of what has gone before.  In the past, when I taught Juniors Abroad, I was very much the “junior” professor; my colleague (Ron Mock in one case, Caitlin Corning two other times) did the hard work.

            I’ve been preparing for months.  I first proposed the trip in fall of 2017; after it was approved, students enrolled in spring 2018.  At that stage, Roger Newell was to be my faculty partner.  His book, Keine Gewalt! No Violence!, describing the German churches’ response to Nazism and Communism, provides much of the academic substance of the course.  But in summer 2018 Roger reluctantly decided, for health reasons, that he ought not to go on the trip.  We decided to ask Dr. Garcia to take his place, and Javier quickly agreed.

            In fall 2018 we prepared our budget, which meant planning the trip in greater detail.  I discovered a gold mine disguised as a human being: Viktorija Giedraitiene, who works at LCC University in Klaipeda, Lithuania.  Viktorija has managed US student group trips to various destinations in eastern Europe.  She planned the first half of our trip (Russia, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania), including museums, churches, historical sites, and more, even preferred restaurants!

            With spring semester 2019, preparations shifted to high.  Our class (GEED 365J) began meeting on Tuesday nights.  Students made class presentations on various aspects of Baltic or Russian culture (food, religion, music, even German beer).  They all read Keine Gewalt! and wrote papers on one of its chapters.  Sarah visited the class and gave packing advice.  We invented quizzes for review purposes—and for fun.  (Weinerbrod is not a hot dog.). For health reasons one of the students had to drop the class, but 15 are confirmed to go.

            In February we applied for Russian visas—NOT a user friendly process—which added cost to the trip.  The application required we send our passports to an office in Washington, DC.  Our actual passports!  In a FedEx truck!  You can’t leave the country without a passport.  After three weeks of mild anxiety, the visas and our passports arrived.  I began to think: “This is actually going to work.”

            Airfares have been paid, hostels and hotels reserved (paid in most cases), insurance forms filed, temporary cell phone upgrades made (don’t want to lose students), and foreign currency acquired.  I’m going to give each student 3000 rubles the very first day.  Don’t get excited; it takes a pile of rubles to buy a sandwich.

            Now we’ve come to final preparations.  Earlier this week we had the student bring packed suitcases to class so we could practice walking with luggage.  We’ll do a lot of that in airports, train stations, and hotels.  It’s important not to overload one’s suitcase.

            I suppose I’m about 95% ready.  I’m not Rick Steves, the famous travel guru.  Somewhere along the way I’ll wonder why I didn’t remember to bring something.  That’s part of the adventure.

            Of course, before we head for PDX, there’s the little business of grading . . .

           

Easter Time

Eucatastrophe

            We are two weeks from Good Friday, Holy Saturday, and Easter Day.  Jesus’ story is the great story, the back story to all our stories, and resurrection is its essential core.

            In “On Fairy Stories,” J.R.R. Tolkien invented the term eucatastrophe for the happy ending that he thought was almost necessary for complete fairy tales.  Tragedy, he thought, is the true form, the highest function, of drama; but a happy ending is the true form of fairy stories, and in the best stories it is an almost-beyond-hope happy ending. 

            Readers of The Lord of the Rings (and in recent decades, viewers of Peter Jackson’s films) are familiar with Tolkien’s eucatastrophe: the armies of Mordor have surrounded the army of Gondor; Aragorn, Gandalf, Gimli, Legolas and their friends face defeat and death; but at the last possible moment certain defeat turns into victory, because the enemy’s ring of power is destroyed.  In a sense, of course, Frodo failed.  His long quest brought him, with Sam’s help, to Mount Doom, but at the last Frodo fell prey to the spiritual corruption of the ring.  He took the ring for himself, and the quest would have failed—except that Gollum, consumed by lust for the ring, bit off Frodo’s finger and fell into the fire with it.  The quest succeeded not by Frodo’s strength but by unexpected “grace.”

            It would be interesting to compare Tolkien’s eucatastrophe scene with the happy endings of contemporary fantasy stories.  Stan Lee’s Marvel comic books have blossomed into movie franchises, and it seems the public has an insatiable appetite for Spiderman, Captain America, the Green Lantern, and all the rest.  We notice a contrast immediately.  Frodo and Sam are hobbits, little folk, a humble and unspectacular race.  In the Marvel universe, the heroes are superheroes.  Their literary forbears are Odysseus and Beowulf, not Everyman.  The superhero suffers temporary defeats which leads her (some are female) to crisis, but in the end she triumphs by her power (or the help of her friends).

            It’s no surprise that Tolkien was a Christian.  The Lord of the Rings is not an allegory (Tolkien said he hated allegory), but it is full of Christian themes, including discipleship and grace. Discipleship to Christ takes different forms in different lives, but in the end discipleship always demands our whole being.  (Remember Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Cost of Discipleship.  Christ always calls us to “come and die.”). And even then, especially then—when we have given our all—success comes by God’s grace, not by our power.

            It’s fun to imagine having a super power.  People love role playing games, super hero movies, and Harry Potter.  I’ve had fun imagining characters like Debbie Apple (in Buying the Bangkok Girl) blessed with a “little” magic.  Because it’s fun, I predict a long successful market for superhero movies and fairy stories.  They won’t all succeed; even fairy stories can be badly written or badly screened.

            An effective eucatastrophe pulls a fairy story into parallel with the great story.  For creative purposes, we avoid direct copying (not too many resurrections in our stories, unless we are writing allegories, like The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe).  Our happy endings are only symbolic of resurrection.  When it comes to the real thing, there’s only one.

Absences

Missing You

            My wife left me!  Don’t take that the wrong way; she came back.  But the experience has got me thinking about absence.  Not just the absence of a wife.

           

            As the deer pants for streams of water,

                        so my soul pants for you, O God.

            My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.

                        Where can I go and meet with God?

                                                Psalm 42:1-2

                       

            Sarah went to Italy to serve with Thrive Ministries.  I knew she would be gone sixteen days, and she came back when I expected (pretty close, anyway; she missed an airport connection, which necessitated an alternate flight).  Before we married, she spent two weeks in Japan and the Philippines.  Later this year she’ll go to Estonia.  I have to get used to a globe-trotting wife.

I say to God my Rock,

                        Why have you forsaken me?

            Why must I go about mourning,

                        oppressed by the enemy?

                                                Psalm 42:9

            What do we mean when we say, “I miss you”?  It varies from case to case, I suppose.  I can miss a wife, a student, or a friend.  We can miss places—an old home, a childhood neighborhood, or landscapes.  And there are more permanent losses: loved ones who died, a friendship broken, jobs lost, and opportunities wasted.  In each case there is pain, a hole in the heart. 

            When the loss is temporary, the pain of separation adds joy to the reunion.  It’s fun to kiss in airports!  With permanent losses—Sarah and I lost our first spouses to cancer—we may say time heals wounds, but it really doesn’t.  The loss stays with us; it becomes part of us.  A person’s interior life, the life of the heart, is complicated.  Sarah doesn’t have to quit missing Loren in order to commit to me. 

            My bones suffer mortal agony

                        as my foes taunt me,

            Saying to me all day long,

                        “Where is your God?”

                                                Psalm 42:10

            The spiritual life is complicated too.  At times we experience God’s presence like an electric current, at other times like a comforting embrace.  Exciting or reassuring, we rejoice when we fell God’s presence.  But there are other times, times when God seems distant or absent.

            Vindicate me, O God,

                        and plead my cause against an ungodly nation;

            Rescue me from deceitful and wicked men.

                                                            Psalm 43:1

            The pleasure the believer used to feel in prayer or study or worship has gone away.  She feels alone in a world of temptations, injustices, and mockery.  Even times of service, when she gives a cup of water in Christ’s name, seem hollow and useless.  Everything is pointless—at least it feels that way.

It’s important for Christians to understand that “dry” times are a normal part of the spiritual life.  I don’t say that everyone will experience the absence of God to the same degree, but it is common enough that no believer should be surprised by it.

Who would claim to know the mind of God completely?  Not I.  But it might help to consider some advantages of the felt absence of God.  First, absence teaches us to proceed in obedience rather than pleasure.  The beginner often needs special encouragement to start learning a language or practicing a skill, but later a good master will drop the constant reinforcement.  The protégé needs the discipline of “going on.”  

Second, and perhaps more important, the felt absence of God teaches us to trust.  We believe in God, and we believe he is working on us even when we don’t feel it.  Modern psychology can help us here, because we have all become familiar with the notion of the unconscious.  I don’t mean to endorse Freudianism or any other school of psychology in detail.  But we are used to the idea—and it seems almost certainly true—that our minds are complicated.  Our conscious thoughts and reasoning constitute the top layer; underneath are desires, drives, fears, and “forgotten” things.  The good news of Christ’s gospel is “taken in” by the conscious mind, but it also touches our inner selves.

In the dry times, then, we may remind ourselves that God’s Spirit has the power to work on us—to speak to us—at the unconscious level.  He has that power; we trust him to use it.

Why are you downcast, O my soul?

            Why so disturbed within me?

Put your hope in God,

            for I will yet praise him,

            my savior and my God.

                                    Psalm 42:5 (repeated in 42:11 and 43:5)           

A Most Pleasing Defeat

Atonement Metaphors and the Cross

            I invite you, gentle reader, to meditate on the cross of Jesus.  I invite you to find in it the most wonderful defeat.

Let’s start with the apostle Paul, in 1 Corinthians 15:3: “For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures…”

            The main message of the chapter concerns resurrection.  Paul insists that the resurrection of Jesus is essential to the Christian message.  If we don’t affirm and hope for resurrection, he says, Christianity is pointless.  Having admitted that resurrection is the central concern of the passage, I’m not going to focus on that right now.  The Christian gospel clearly predated Paul; he wrote that he had “passed on” items of doctrine, a tradition.  I want to meditate on the first affirmation of that tradition: Christ died for our sins.  How are we to understand this fundamental article of Christian belief?  What does it mean that Jesus died “for” me?

            This is, as theology students know, the driving question of atonement theory.  The question is practical as well as theoretical.  For two thousand years Christian evangelists have proclaimed good news and invited their neighbors to believe in Jesus.  Inevitably, when we preach the gospel, we tell people that Jesus died “for” them.  Just as inevitably, we explain that “for” with some metaphor.

            In the early centuries of the church, a “ransom” metaphor dominated Christian preaching.  In this picture, Jesus “buys” our freedom from the Devil, who has all sinners in his grasp.  The picture is one of exchange, as in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, where the White Witch gives up Edward (who is justly her prisoner) if Aslan will take his place.  The White Witch thinks she wins, because she kills the lion.  But in fact she doubly loses; Edward goes free and Aslan rises from the dead. 

Later, Saint Anselm objected to the ransom theory, because he thought it unseemly that God should have to pay off the Devil.  Instead, Anselm invented the “satisfaction” theory.  Our sins, Anselm wrote, are offenses against God.  The picture here is a royal court, where sinners are brought into the presence of a holy God.  Since God is infinitely great, our sins are infinitely offensive.  Because he was God, Jesus could repair an infinite insult; because he was a man, that repair could apply to us.

            The centuries after Anselm brought more metaphors/theories.  Among many Protestants, the dominant picture is borrowed from criminal court.  In this “penal substitution” theory, sinners are guilty of crimes against God and deserve eternal death.  But Jesus, the perfect Son of God pays our “fine” for us.  Other preachers tried out a “moral influence” theory, which pictures us as followers of Jesus (much like the disciples following Jesus around Galilee).  On this view, Jesus’ death is part of his life, part of his overall example for us.  We are changed, or “saved,” as we become like him.  Another theory, “Christus Victor” in Latin, sees Jesus’ death and resurrection as victory over sin and death.

            By calling the various atonement theories “metaphors,” I already indicate the attitude I take toward them.  Christ’s death for us will always be, I think a mystery.  The various metaphors are useful if they help individuals commit their lives to Jesus.  Evangelists should freely use different pictures with different audiences.  They should not mistake their favorite metaphor for the honest-to-God precise truth.  God only knows precisely what it means that Jesus died for us.

            Having said that, there has been, nevertheless, an aspect of the Christus Victor theory growing on my mind for decades, since I first discovered it.  Paul wrote (Romans 5:9-11):

Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God’s wrath through him!  For if, while we were God’s enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life!  Not only is this so, but we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.

           

The picture here is a battlefield.  God is on one side; we sinners are his enemy.  If you want to imagine Sin, Death, and the Devil as allies with us, I won’t object.  But the key element is that we were God’s enemies.

I call this “peacemaking” atonement theory.  God fought his fight against us by letting us crucify his son.  Who killed Jesus?  We did, all of us.  We were there, in the cruelty of the Roman soldiers, in the cowardice of Pilate, in the treachery of Judas, and in the conspiracy of the Sanhedrin leaders.  Though we killed him, we lost.  Jesus would not stay dead, and he offers reconciliation to his murderers.

Rejoice with me!  We lost.  In our losing, we are made God’s friends.

           

About Immigration

What the President Should Say Tonight

            President Trump has asked for TV time to make an address to the nation tonight.  Yesterday’s news suggested he will address immigration and make another appeal for congressional support to fund a border wall.  Some speculated that Mr. Trump will declare a national security emergency and order the wall be built without congressional approval.

            Since I am writing in the afternoon before Mr. Trump’s speech, I don’t know what he will say.  I can’t comment on what the president said.  I could, perhaps, predict what Mr. Trump will say and make comments on that.  But I won’t.  Instead, I want to write about what the president should say.  It will be helpful to also write what the president’s opponents should say.

            The president has repeatedly said that the United States needs greater border security, specifically in regard to our border with Mexico.  Often he has expressed a desire to build a “wall” (or some equivalent) to keep out illegal immigrants—that is, people who do not yet have proper approved paperwork.  The president has repeatedly said that we need to improve our border security because lawbreakers of many kinds—murderers, drug smugglers, rapists, etc.—are taking advantage of our current weak border security to come to the US.

            It is much harder to summarize the arguments of the president’s opponents on this issue, because they differ among themselves and offer diverse criticisms of the president’s position.  Some say the country’s border security is already strong enough.  Some say it should be improved, but with some other mechanism than a “wall.”  Some deny the president’s repeated claims that illegal immigrants are the lawbreakers he alleges.  Others say many undocumented immigrants are really asylum seekers, fleeing crime or poverty in their home countries.  Still others say our asylum system takes too long to process asylum claims, with the result that people who should be able to take refuge in the US are forced to steal their way into our country or return to horrible fates in their country of origin.

            From both sides, it seems to me, we hear a great deal of overblown rhetoric.  I suggest we move away from rhetoric—“Lies!” “Treason!” “Racism!” “Wishful Thinking!”—to real evidence.

            There are, in fact, some lawbreakers who have crossed our southern border, taken up residence in the US, and committed terrible crimes here.  Therefore, it is true that if our border security had prevented those lawbreakers from entering the US, some terrible crimes would have been prevented.  This is the heart of the president’s case.  What should he say if he wants to make his argument persuasive?  He needs to supply facts.  How many criminals have come in this way to the US, over how many years?  In those same years, how many non-criminals have entered in the same way?  What percentage of the total illegal immigrant group has committed crimes after moving to the US?

            Obvious aside: The president need not give exact numbers; he can give estimates.  But they must be reasonable estimates, based on responsible research.  This side comment applies equally to the president’s critics.  Don’t just throw out generalizations; give us real numbers.

            How many undocumented immigrants have come to the US over our southern border?  Over what time frame?  How many undocumented immigrant have applied for asylum?  What percentage of undocumented immigrants ask for asylum?  What percentage of asylum seekers has been approved?  How long do most asylum cases take to be decided?

            Now, the question of a border wall—or fence, or whatever—is actually a sub-question about overall immigration policy.  Giving good answers to the questions I have suggested will not resolve basic policy disputes.  But good factual data would clear away much confusion and let us debate the underlying questions.