Word for the century

The Christian response to failure is repentance and the relinquishment of hero-worship.— Naming Neoliberalism: Exposing the Spirit of Our Age, 198

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Let those who have ears to hear, hear!
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Once more, round the 'Net

Not sure where to start this week. Maybe let's start with this, from Bicycling, on how social media affects, wait for it. . . what you eat! Yep. According to this article, "new research shows you’re more likely to consume the types of food you see most while scrolling on the ’gram." Not only are you what you eat, but you eat what you see. I guess placement ads must work for the same reason. There's a theological lesson there, isn't there. Something about fixing our eyes on Jesus.

But how about the mouth? Well, for you word of faith people, Andrew Gabriel, an Assembly of God theologian, so no cessationist, says it's overblown:

When I point out that there is no verse in the Bible where anyone ever says, “I decree and declare X over my life,” one question Christians sometimes raise is, “But don’t you believe the Bible when it says there is power in the tongue?”

Yes, I do. But we have to ask, what does the Bible mean when it refers to the power of the tongue?

Some Christians claim that because we are created in the image of God, we, like God, have the power in our tongues to speak things into being.

This is poor reasoning. God spoke the world into being literally out of nothing. No human has ever done that. And this is why no theologian in church history has ever suggested that being created in the image of God means that human words have creative power. Well…this, plus the fact that this idea has no biblical support.

But, as he does not hesitate to point out, the tongue does have real power to hurt and to heal, a theme that Ron Sider takes up via a guest post. Final two paragraphs:

We are speaking and hearing creatures. We live by words spoken and heard, words addressed and answered. In Finally Comes the Poet, Walter Brueggemann writes, “How we speak matters enormously…because the shape and power of everything else is put at risk and made possible by our speech with each other.”

Given our current situation, we have an option. Obama didn’t walk on water, but we have in him something far better in presidential rhetoric than what we’ve heard over the past three years. It seems worth talking about the difference words make and voting for something better in November.

Speaking of which, Heather Cox Richardson posted this Feb 23:

Ukraine journalist Marko Suprun and Russian-born foreign policy journalist Julia Ioffe said something interesting this morning on CNN. They were pointing out that observers often make the mistake of thinking that Russian disinformation is designed to pit the American left against the American right to sow chaos. But, in fact, they pointed out, Russian disinformation is designed to pit the American left and the American right against the American center, because it is in the great American center that democracy lives.

And David Fitch has this to say about reconciliation (part 2 to follow next week):

The “enemy-making machine” is my label for how antagonisms work in a society that lives in autonomy from God. Using observations taken from the field of “critique of ideology” (or “critical theory”), I’ve noticed several repeatable patterns to how antagonisms work in our culture and even in our churches. There are several elements to it that can help us ask the right questions, diagnose what is happening, and resist entering into the enemy-making machine. I contend if we can resist its temptation, we can open space for the presence of the living God to unwind the antagonism and make way for grace, forgiveness, and healing.

He follows that with some solid advice; read it!

On a darker side of things, this op-ed says that maybe it's just a dark comedy

I’m sorry not sorry to be a Cassandra about this — and I sure hope I’m wrong. But confronted with this reality, it is staggering to me that anyone can say we should chill. The nature of Trump’s instinctual tyranny is that it never stops by itself. And, like any psychological disorder, it never rests. It has an energy all its own. Each new beachhead of power is simply a means to acquire more of it in an ever-more ambitious and dynamic form. This is not a comedy; it’s a tragedy we want to believe is a comedy. Because the alternative is too nightmarish. A Kierkegaard quote, of all things, popped on Twitter this week that seemed to capture the dynamic beautifully: “A fire broke out behind stage at a theater. The clown walked out to warn the public and they thought it was a joke and they applauded. He repeated it; the acclaim was even greater. I think that’s exactly how the world will end: to generous applause from wits who think it’s a joke.”

Or maybe, this whole thing is because we have a warped view of masculinity.

The gospel of Jesus is not a gospel of proving yourself or measuring up. It’s a gospel of acceptance. Proving yourself is unnecessary. Before you can make your case that you belong, the Father places his signet ring on your finger and calls you “son.” Your title, your place, your identity has been secured by an act of love. Not a show of strength.

This one is compliments of Jim E. (who says he got it from James E.). David Bentley Hart looks at what socialism really is, not the imaginary versions that are used as scare tactics, and then proceeds to dismantle a few things that need dismantling. I'll just grab one paragraph, but as always, read the whole thing

Americans are, of course, the most thoroughly and passively indoctrinated people on earth. They know next to nothing as a rule about their own history, or the histories of other nations, or the histories of the various social movements that have risen and fallen in the past, and they certainly know little or nothing of the complexities and contradictions comprised within words like “socialism” and “capitalism.” Chiefly, what they have been trained not to know or even suspect is that, in many ways, they enjoy far fewer freedoms, and suffer under a more intrusive centralized state, than do the citizens of countries with more vigorous social-democratic institutions. This is at once the most comic and most tragic aspect of the excitable alarm that talk of social democracy or democratic socialism can elicit on these shores. An enormous number of Americans have been persuaded to believe that they are freer in the abstract than, say, Germans or Danes precisely because they possess far fewer freedoms in the concrete. They are far more vulnerable to medical and financial crisis, far more likely to receive inadequate health coverage, far more prone to irreparable insolvency, far more unprotected against predatory creditors, far more subject to income inequality, and so forth, while effectively paying more in tax (when one figures in federal, state, local, and sales taxes, and then compounds those by all the expenditures that in this country, as almost nowhere else, their taxes do not cover). One might think that a people who once rebelled against the mightiest empire on earth on the principle of no taxation without representation would not meekly accept taxation without adequate government services. But we accept what we have become used to, I suppose. Even so, one has to ask, what state apparatus in the “free” world could be more powerful and tyrannical than the one that taxes its citizens while providing no substantial civic benefits in return, solely in order to enrich a piratically overinflated military-industrial complex and to ease the tax burdens of the immensely wealthy?

OK, this is getting long, so a couple on education. First, the situation for adjuncts. Summary: not good. Fix: complicated. And Chris Gehrz asks if your Christian college will close. Hard thoughts, but good ones. And the old curmudgeocrat takes a look at the loss of shared public spaces via technology. Worth a read.

In other news, A.J. takes a look at productivity. BW3 quotes from Volf on divine retribution. Interesting quotation and worth thinking about (chase the link). And Christianity Today talks about identificational repentance.

Daniel was taken into captivity along with thousands of other Israelites during the Babylonian exile. There he was confronted with the complexities of living out his faith in a foreign culture while working for a pagan king. His prayer comes after decades of service to a foreign nation.

You do not have to read very much of the text to recognize the prayer as a confession. Daniel finds just about every way imaginable to ask for forgiveness. And he fully identifies himself with his people: We have sinned. We have rebelled. We have not listened. We have done wrong. We have been wicked. We have transgressed. We have turned away. We have been unfaithful. We have refused to obey. We have not sought the Lord. We have not turned from our sins. We have not given attention to your truth.

You would be hard-pressed to find a more comprehensive acknowledgment of guilt, which is a little mystifying because, up until this point, Daniel hasn’t exhibited any obvious moral lapses. He’s been the very model of a faithful servant of God.

There’s a disconnect between his exemplary behavior and his humble confession. It makes you want to protest and say, “Daniel, you don’t have to do that. You didn’t do anything wrong. It’s those who were unfaithful who should be apologizing!”

Daniel’s approach is so opposite from my own. When it comes to collective sins—whether those of the church, the clergy, or the nation—I want to distance myself from the offense. I want to point out why “they” are not “me.” And I want to denounce what I see “them” doing.

Yep. Here's an encouraging post, via Jim E. again, about a boss who put actions to his words by taking a pay cut back in 2015 and giving that money to his employees. Guess what? It worked. His employees are more productive and less stressed. Whodda thunk, eh? If you're not spending all your energy working 2–3 jobs to make ends meet on minimum wage, maybe you'll have energy to do one job well. Duh, as we used to say.

OK, two final posts on books. Nick Norelli on book gluttony (he should post more often). And the Literary Review of Canada looks at a book about books:

One thing to keep in mind when we talk idealistically about books is that many of the people who work directly with them—publishers, retailers, librarians, and authors alike—generally value one form of paper over all others: money. Publishing, like all other industries, is a profit-minded business, and bottom-line thinking often has ugly consequences for the object itself. Price’s book, for instance, contains a provoking “interleaf”—a section of about eight pages in which you read each line of text from the left-hand page across the gutter of the book to the adjoining right-hand page. It’s a clever game of mise-en-page, driving home visually and phenomenologically how our posture affects our experience of books and how habituated we are to using the material form of a book one page at a time. But the “interleaf” is also a failed experiment, thanks to the sloppiness with which Price’s book was bound up. Not a single one of the eight pages in my copy lines up properly across the gutter, rendering a hands-on study in graphic design just an unreadable, vertiginous nightmare. You should love books, we are told, even when they’ve been assembled with the care usually allowed to a last-minute science project.

Ouch! Wish I could disagree with them, but I can't.

That's it for this week. Hope you found something worth reading and didn't get too mad at me : )

Just stop it!

I try to avoid commenting on political issues, but this is too much!

As an article at the Atlantic says:

Even those who believe that Ford fabricated her account, or was mistaken in its details, can see that the president’s mocking of her testimony renders all sexual-assault survivors collateral damage. Anyone afraid of coming forward, afraid that she would not be believed, can now look to the president to see her fears realized. Once malice is embraced as a virtue, it is impossible to contain.

You have sown the wind, now be prepared to reap the whirlwind. You have sold your soul to the devil in exchange a for a sop of political influence. You turn your back on blatant sin to gain a little bit of a pat on the back and empty rhetoric.

But the biblical prophets have a different viewpoint, as does the New Testament. Take a look at Amos 5:

7 There are those who turn justice into bitterness
and cast righteousness to the ground.

10 There are those who hate the one who upholds justice in court
and detest the one who tells the truth.

11 You levy a straw tax on the poor
and impose a tax on their grain.
Therefore, though you have built stone mansions,
you will not live in them;
though you have planted lush vineyards,
you will not drink their wine.
12 For I know how many are your offenses
and how great your sins.

There are those who oppress the innocent and take bribes
and deprive the poor of justice in the courts.
13 Therefore the prudent keep quiet in such times,
for the times are evil.

14 Seek good, not evil,
that you may live.
Then the Lord God Almighty will be with you,
just as you say he is.
15 Hate evil, love good;
maintain justice in the courts.
Perhaps the Lord God Almighty will have mercy
on the remnant of Joseph.

16 Therefore this is what the Lord, the Lord God Almighty, says:

“There will be wailing in all the streets
and cries of anguish in every public square.
The farmers will be summoned to weep
and the mourners to wail.
17 There will be wailing in all the vineyards,
for I will pass through your midst,”
says the Lord.

The Day of the Lord
18 Woe to you who long
for the day of the Lord!
Why do you long for the day of the Lord?
That day will be darkness, not light.
19 It will be as though a man fled from a lion
only to meet a bear,
as though he entered his house
and rested his hand on the wall
only to have a snake bite him.
20 Will not the day of the Lord be darkness, not light—
pitch-dark, without a ray of brightness?

21 “I hate, I despise your religious festivals;
your assemblies are a stench to me.
22 Even though you bring me burnt offerings and grain offerings,
I will not accept them.
Though you bring choice fellowship offerings,
I will have no regard for them.
23 Away with the noise of your songs!
I will not listen to the music of your harps.
24 But let justice roll on like a river,
righteousness like a never-failing stream! (NIV)

And what does James say:

27 Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world. (James 1:27 NIV)

Good news? The gospel is supposed to be good news. But in the hands of the current thought leaders of the evangelical movement, it is bad news unless you are the very people who were Jesus's greatest enemies.

Repent! Repent before the lampstand is removed (let the reader understand!). Your children will judge you for your stand. Make them proud by standing with righteousness and justice instead of political game-playing that will only sully the hands of those playing. It will never bring about the righteousness of God. That comes by repentance—real repentance, not mumbling a prayer, but as the CEV translates μετάνοια (metanoia) "change your hearts and lives." As the old Anabaptist saying goes, "There is no salvation without transformation."

Stop putting Nationalism before Jesus! God will not tolerate rivals. Update: Read this post at the Anxious Bench, an evangelical blog. Here's taste:

Rather than granting women greater legal protections against harassment and abuse, they [evangelicals] prefer to ascribe to husbands and fathers the power to protect women. But by placing such trust in patriarchal power, there is little recourse when those very men betray the women they are ostensibly responsible to protect. For some evangelicals, this scenario is simply unthinkable. For many more, their default setting is to believe men, not women, when allegations of abuse surface. And to blame women, not men, when women do come forward.

Read the whole thing! Be among the 36 percent who think character still counts!

It's effective, but limited…

I would like to draw attention to another important dimension of the prophetic intercessory ministry that comes to expression through the metaphor of the “breached wall,” namely, the notion that the intercessor can only protect temporarily the breached covenant relationship. Just as the breach in the wall needs to be repaired to make the city a safe place in the long term, so intercessory prayer can only pacify divine anger temporarily. Persistent offense will eventually result in a divine prohibition to intercede and lead to severe punishment (e.g. Isa 58:10–12; Jer 15:1; Amos 7). In other words, in the long term the rebellious people need to return to Yhwh and recommit to the covenant stipulations to make the divine-human relationship whole again (cf. Deut 9:18–19, 25–29, 10:12–22). Understanding this dynamic confirms that the ministry of the prophet is essentially twofold: (1) “standing in the breach” in “defensive prayer” and (2) “repairing the breached wall” through calling a wayward people back to Yhwh and teaching the way of God (e.g., 1 Sam 12:23).—Standing in the Breach, pages 518–19

Not despite, but because of!

Yhwh reveals Himself as a God of grace and mercy who is firmly committed to His covenant relationship with Israel. This understanding reaches a further climax in Moses’ final petition for the pardon of Israel’s sin (Exod 34:9); it is climactic because Moses makes Israel’s sinfulness the basis for his plea for divine forgiveness (“Forgive their iniquity because it is a stiffnecked people”). In other words, Moses, in an audacious yet profound way, makes Israel’s hopeless state the principal reason for his appeal to divine grace and forgiveness.—Standing in the Breach, page 510 (emphasis original)

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Wow! Did you catch that? Because of their stiffnecks, not despite their stiffnecks! That is ḥesed at its finest! Prevenient grace, the grace that goes before and awakens the sinner.
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What's the response?

[E]ven in the New Testament, there appears to be a sin that is beyond prayer for forgiveness. The challenge for the intercessor is to exercise spiritual discernment like Amos, to know when and how long one is to persist in intercession for a particular person or situation. Seeing a brother or sister committing sin, should not lead automatically to a judgmental attitude but, like Amos, to prayer.—Standing in the Breach, pages 503–4

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Not sure how much I agree with the first part, although 1 John does seem to imply what he's saying. But, I can definitely get behind the second half: prayer should always be our first response, although I sadly confess it isn't always. When we hear of, see, or experience firsthand a person sinning, or first response should be an involuntary one similar to Amos's: "Lord, forbear, Israel is so small!"
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When is too much too much?

In solitude, perhaps like in Abraham’s case, Yhwh not only reveals His intentions but also invites prophetic participation in leading Amos into the realization that Israel has sinned themselves beyond the reach of prophetic intercession. From Amos’s two intercessions, we know that the prophet was fully committed to Israel, even if they could not bear him (cf. Amos 7:10). The overruling theological message of these visions is that when God’s word is consistently rejected, there comes eventually a time when the divine punishment can no longer be postponed. Like Abraham, Amos too is being taught by God about the meaning of divine mercy and justice (Gen 18:16–33). In contrast to Abraham, Amos is called to become a messenger of judgment and doom. This process, as we have seen, is also central to the intercessory ministry of Jeremiah. There too, the sinfulness of the people reached a level at which Yhwh had to prohibit his prophet from praying for his people (cf. Jer 7:16, 11:14, 14:11, 15:1).—Standing in the Breach, page 498

God changes his mind

Usually when God changes His mind, it is a gracious response, either to an intercessory prayer or because people turn back (šûb) to Him in repentance (cf. Jer 18:8–10). Thus, we conclude with Jeremias that the change of Yhwh’s mind is intrinsically connected with (1) the divine punitive intentions (2) the prophetic intercession, and (3) the postponement or the annulment of the divine judgment. In other words, divine mutability, according to the first two visions [in Amos], presupposes God’s intention to punish Israel, a prophetic plea for mercy, and God’s willingness to show grace and mercy.—Standing in the Breach, page 495

No cheap grace here

Jeremiah acknowledges in prayer the necessity of divine discipline but he also pleads for leniency. Calvin draws attention to a general truth by pointing to the necessity of the people’s repentance as well: “the real character and nature of repentance is, to submit to God’s judgment and to suffer with a resigned mind his chastisement, provided it be paternal.” In other words, the intercessor urges Yhwh not to judge Israel in the heat of His justified wrath or nothing will be left of His people. The text makes a clear distinction between discipline in anger that would destroy the obstinate sinner and a discipline according to justice (ְbemišpāṭ) that will eventually lead to repentance and renewal. Here divine justice has the connotation of grace and mercy. Jeremiah does not plead for cheap grace. He clearly speaks of Israel’s guilt and its need for discipline, but he prays for a calm and well reflected judgment that would not endanger the future of the people of God (“. . . lest you would bring everything to nothing,” Jer 10:24; cf. Ps. 6:1).—Standing in the Breach, page 351

Delaying the inevitable

In sum, Israel’s pardon, reconciliation with their covenant God, and restoration to the land are always dependent on a fundamental “turning” back to covenant obedience and Yhwh’s compassion evoked by the intercessory prayer of the mediator. The public context of Solomon’s intercession suggests that the prayer partially aims to foster an understanding of the essential nature of repentance among the Israelites. According to classic Christian theology, Jesus’ intercessory act on the cross also demands a wholehearted response in the form of repentance of sin and trusting in the faithful love of God (cf. 1 John 1:8–2:2, Acts 2:37–38). In other words, the intercessor might be able to stand in the breach for a while, prolonging Yhwh’s just punishment from being implemented, but in the long term a breached relationship requires a wholehearted turning to God and a firm commitment to the covenant relationship by the lost wanderer.—Standing in the Breach, page 285

Intercession, yes. Repentance? Essential

As we shall learn from Jeremiah, even the greatest intercessors cannot achieve divine forgiveness, if the party being prayed for remains in their sinful ways. As there is nobody who does not sin, Solomon anticipates in his prayer a future when the people need to turn consciously from their sin in order to attain divine forgiveness (cf. 1 Kgs 8:46). In other words, only if Israel turns from their evil ways and recommits to covenant obedience will Solomon’s intercession find a favorable hearing.—Standing in the Breach, page 284

Forgiveness is only the beginning…

[I]t is important to note that Solomon’s prayer is never, as Fretheim notes:

simply for God to forgive sins, but are also for God to act in other ways to reverse the effects that their sins have had on various aspects of their lives. Salvation, therefore, is understood to comprehend more than forgiveness of sin; it includes also the amelioration of the consequence of sin that have reverberated out into the larger community, including the natural order. (vv. 35–37)

Terence E. Fretheim, First and Second Kings (WBC; Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1999), 50—as quoted in Standing in the Breach, page 268

No coercion

We've been gone for the last ten days, visiting family, hence the hiatus. We're back and so are the daily excerpts from Standing in the Breach.

A consistent theme of Solomon’s prayer, and indeed of many Old Testament intercessory prayers, is however that divine pardon cannot simply be evoked by the intercessor. Brueggemann notes that “Israel’s only way into the future is to reverse its course and reembrace Torah obedience.”

The dynamics and circumstances of Solomon’s second petition are also reminiscent of Samuel’s intercessory activity in Mizpah (cf. 1 Sam 7:3–10). There as well, in the face of a military threat, the people gathered at the sanctuary to confess their sins and to recommit themselves to covenant obedience. The covenant mediator intercedes for the repentant Israelites. Samuel’s prayers are also accompanied by burnt offerings (1 Sam 7:2–12). The logic of these passages seems to be that, unless the sinful party recommits to Torah obedience, the intercessor can only pacify God’s wrath for a certain time.—Standing in the Breach, page 267