Category Archives: Religion

Religion

The glory in the Face

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Rembrandt, Head of Christ. Fogg Museum. Netherlands Institute for Art History, Digital ID 232193

For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. (2 Corinthians 4:6)

I’ve been thinking about the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. That turn of phrase has intrigued me for a long time.

The glory of God is a frequent topic in Scripture. In the Old Testament, God’s glory is a serious issue. The people of Israel could not bear to hear His voice on Sinai, and asked Moses to be their mediator instead (Exodus 20). When Moses was permitted to see God’s “backside” (Exodus 34) on the mountain, he got the merest glimpse of the least part of the divine glory, and yet his face shown for days.

The Holy of Holies in the temple was so sacred that common people couldn’t enter. When Uzzah touched the Ark of the Covenant – even to keep it from slipping off a cart – God struck him down (2 Samuel 6).

In short, the Hebrews took God’s holiness deadly seriously. God was just and merciful, but nobody to treat lightly. Holiness meant separation, and nothing was holier than God. His holiness could kill you. He was so Other that even images of Him were forbidden.

Then along comes Jesus Christ, claiming to be God incarnate.

Suddenly God – of whom no image might be made – had a face.

That’s amazing, when you think of it.

If He really was the incarnation of that same God who terrified the Hebrews, a tremendous condescension had happened. The voltage had been stepped down infinitely, just so God could walk among men without leaving corpses behind wherever He went. To the contrary, this Holiness healed the sick and raised the dead.

Too often Christians forget what we’re dealing with in Jesus Christ. We take the incarnation for granted. We handle holy things lightly. We ought to remember what incredible power we’re dealing with. The Lion has agreed to be our friend, but it would be wise not to poke the Lion.

More than that, how amazing is it to look in a kind Man’s face, and encounter God Himself? As theologians have observed, only the Highest can descend to the very lowest level. God has always been perfect goodness, but Jesus Christ made that perfection touchable.

The phrase “perfection made better” comes to mind. It’s probably wrong in some theological way, but it’s what strikes me.

Religion, The Press, Uncategorized

From the sublime (mine) to the ridiculous (Netflix)

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In today’s really important news, my article on the Lutheran Free Church for the Acton Institute’s Religion & Liberty Magazine is now available free online. You can marvel at its awesomeosity at this link.

In even better news, I HAVE FINISHED MY MARATHON SLOG THROUGH THE VIKINGS: VALHALLA SERIES.

It was particularly frustrating watching a series that covered events I’ve researched and dramatized in my own novels, observing how the producers took historical events and characters, shuffled them like cards, and dealt them out in random order. Particularly annoying was their treatment of King Magnus the Good of Norway, who is treated here as a homicidal psychopath. I mean, they called him “the Good” for a reason.

But what’s important is that I can write my article now, with an eventual eye to payment. All through my life, I’ve harkened back to a poem I read somewhere, which went like this (more or less):

There’s a little check at the end of this verse. 
I see it just three lines away.  
And it shall be mine  
For the good of my purse  
If luck is my fellow today.

(I’d credit the author, but a web search doesn’t reveal his name, and I can’t find it in the book where I thought I saw it.)

Religion

‘The glory and honor of the nations’

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Photo credit: Sebastian Gabriel, sgabriel. Unsplash license.

And how was your Independence Day? I feel like I spent the whole long weekend watching that bloody Vikings series, and I sympathize with the Dark Age Christians who are supposed to have prayed (there’s some controversy about this) “A furore normannorum, libera nos Domine” (From the fury of the Northmen, deliver us, O Lord”).

I mean, will the cursed thing never end? I finally finished Season Four, which turned out to be a double season – twenty episodes. And Season Five apparently has the same number. I grow grateful that they compressed the timeline – an accurate chronology might kill me off. Yet another martyr of Viking atrocities.

The more I watch, the more I’m impressed that the writers and producers simply had no interest in real Vikings at all. They invented some fantasy barbarians, in fantasy outfits and haircuts, and injected them into a fast-forward early medieval chronology. Here and there they throw in an authentic (or semi-authentic) artifact to make it look good, but basically they’re just spitballing – probably under the influence of drugs.

Well, enough of my problems. Let’s turn to something inspirational. Here’s part of what I read in my devotions this morning, from Revelation 21:22-27:

And I saw no temple in the city, for its temple is the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb. And the city has no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and its lamp is the Lamb. By its light will the nations walk, and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it, and its gates will never be shut by day—and there will be no night there. They will bring into it the glory and the honor of the nations. But nothing unclean will ever enter it, nor anyone who does what is detestable or false, but only those who are written in the Lamb’s book of life.

This is part of the big triumph scene in Revelation. God’s enemies have been conquered and disposed of in the Lake of Fire along with the devil and his angels. God’s eternal Kingdom has been revealed – it’s a huge city, perfectly square in shape. (I take this as a contrast with the earlier statement that the sea will be no more. The sea in Scripture symbolizes chaos and disorder, the unruly things God bridled at Creation, and which have now been abolished forever. Instead we now have the City Foursquare, solid, flawless, unshakeable. All the wrong and injustice of the world is gone. No longer will anyone complain that life makes no sense. In the Kingdom, it does make sense. Life is fair at last.)

And I was struck by these verses: “The kings of the earth will bring their glory into it….They will bring into it the glory and the honor of the nations.”

What does that mean? I can’t make pronouncements, being neither a theologian nor a Greek scholar, but what struck me immediately was that the glory and honor of the nations had formerly been outside the Kingdom, and will now be brought into it.

To me that suggests cultural and intellectual glory and honor. The art and philosophy of Athens. The wisdom of China. The strength of Rome. The subtle delicacy of Japan. The courage and honor of Native Americans. The creativity of Africans. No beautiful thing will be lost – they’ll be taken as spoils by the true Kingdom and brought into the City, to the glory of God and for the delight of His elect.

It’s like a backwards missionary effort – even the old heathen things will be christened. As Chesterton wrote in “The Ballad of the White Horse”: “Because it is only Christian men, Guard even heathen things.”

I took that (perhaps in arrogance) as a possible benison on my Viking books.

Religion, Uncategorized

Personal drivel, plus Cain & Abel

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William Blake’s “Cain and Abel,” 1826

First I’ll tell you what’ s going on in my thrill-packed life. Then I’ll tell you about one of my cosmic revelations. Those are always good for a chuckle.

There’s a shrink-wrapped pile of roofing material sitting in the driveway behind my house. I had hail damage last year and my insurance company authorized a full replacement. But one complication after another has delayed the actual job. First it was supposed to happen today. Then tomorrow. Now it’s all in flux – it may or may not happen tomorrow, like Schroedinger’s Shingles. What makes it annoying is that the contractors are going to be parking a dumpster in front of my garage when finally they get to work, which means I have to park on the street tonight on the possibility that work will start tomorrow.

Even more annoying, my air conditioning is out, and has been for about three weeks now. I have a sort of insurance for that, too – a home warranty. The HVAC tech who autopsied my unit said the compressor had burned out, and it couldn’t be replaced. A new AC unit would have to come in. And that shouldn’t take long.

The warranty company, however, has ideas of its own. They opted to replace the compressor. They have a source for replacements which (apparently) they get at a discount. But that source is not a fast source. So we’re still waiting for the part to be delivered.

Thankfully, we’ve had relatively cool weather recently.

Which is supposed to end tomorrow.

Ah, well. I grew up without air conditioning. And hey, it keeps my electric bills down.

A pack of blessings lie on my head, as the Friar said to Romeo (not long before Romeo killed himself).

And what is my revelation?

It wasn’t a full-fledged revelation, of course. Just one of those moments when two ideas inhabiting separate pigeonholes in my brain suddenly link, and I have an ah ha! moment.

It started out with Jordan Peterson. I’ve grown quite taken with Jordan Peterson videos. He’s not right about everything, but he can see correctly what the problems are. He exhorts me to do things I don’t want to do, which is generally a mark of truth.

Anyway, Peterson was talking about Cain in Genesis 4. Peterson’s interpretation of the story of Cain and Abel is that it represents the Easy Way and the Hard Way in life. Cain sacrificed vegetables, which were (as Peterson sees it) an easy sacrifice. Abel sacrificed animals, which means blood and pain. God was pleased with Abel because he took the Hard Way. The right thing in life almost always means blood and pain.

The spark, the circuit that closed, for me was a comparison to the parable of the talents, of which I think I’ve written here before. There are two versions of the parable. In Matthew 25, the master gives talents (sums of money) to three servants – five to one, two to another, and one to the last. In Luke 19, he calls ten servants and gives them ten talents each. In each case, the servants are told to do business with (invest) the money for him while he’s away. In each case, only one servant fails – the one who, instead of investing the money, hides it safely. He returns the full amount to his master, and his master is furious. He didn’t want security. He expected a profit.

The point in both stories – looking at it this way – is that God expects his servants to stretch their horizons. Do bigger things. Move outside their comfort zones. Break new ground, at least personally.

This isn’t about salvation, of course. Salvation is by grace. This is about our earthly lives – what God expects us to do with the talents He bestowed. We’re not here just to wait passively for Heaven. We’ve been given gifts – for the sake of our families, for our neighbors, and (especially) for the church.

And always God expects the bloody sacrifice, the dying to the self. Taking up the cross.

It all makes me feel tremendously guilty. But even I can recognize the truth of it.

Religion

Is God Silent? Why Belief in God Isn’t Obvious

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This month I’ve been editing the video lectures of a philosophy course in my day job, and I’ve gotten into discussions on God’s existence. There are a couple natural problems with knowing God. One is that he is a metaphysical being, who by nature transcends the senses. We cannot know and observe God the same way we would anything in the created world. He is beyond us. He is invisible and without form. We think of the Holy Spirit as a breath because we have few metaphors to go by. God as a being is hard to describe.

Because God is beyond us, because he is the creator and we the created, we have epistemic distance with him. There’s only so much we can know about him because we can’t comprehend him.

He is also a person, who may choose to go unseen. This is a simple point for any person. If our environment allows it, we can hide from each other. If our environment doesn’t allow it, we can choose to sit the corners of the room and not talk to each other. People are intelligent beings who choose to communicate or stay silent. Since God is not a force of nature but an eternal being, he could choose for his own reasons to remain unknown to his creation.

There are some who ask why God doesn’t make his presence obvious. Why are agnostics even given room to breathe? Wouldn’t it be better if we all knew there was a God and couldn’t doubt? Responding to this, some argue that God maintains a distance from us in order to allow for our free will. He wants us to love him freely, not under compulsion. I can understand the appeal of this argument; many people put a lot of stock in human free will, but does this argument fit with the world as the Bible describes it?

God created the first couple in a perfect garden and spoke to them personally. We don’t know what that looked like, but it seems to be as relational as two people talking—no distance maintained out of respect for the free will of the created. And Adam and Eve chose the knowledge of good and evil over the divine being they spoke to earlier that day.

Jesus said, “And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil” (John 3:19 ESV).

This turns the question of God’s self-revelation back to us. It isn’t that he hasn’t done enough to reach us; it’s that we are running away. We stop our ears. We shut our eyes. We actively “suppress the truth” that we were created by God for his glory.

For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse.

(Romans 1:18–20 ESV)

It would be more correct to say that God isn’t holding back out of respect for our free will but that we love darkness.

Photo by Jordan Wozniak on Unsplash

Music, Religion

Memorial Day, Battle Hymn

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Today is Memorial Day. It was raining here today, so I couldn’t fly my flag. I’d better lose no (more) time in posting my virtual commemoration of the holiday. The video above was (oddly), compiled by a Canadian, using footage from some of our more patriotic movies and TV series, the kind they don’t do anymore.

The Memorial Day tradition goes back (according to Wikipedia, to a proclamation by John A. Logan, Commander in Chief of the Grand Army of the Republic (the Civil War veterans’ organization), declaring May 30, 1868 to be a day for placing flags on the graves of fallen soldiers. Decoration Day, it was called. (That was what my grandmother used to call it. The official name was changed in 1971, some time after her death.) However, the Veterans’ Administration credits the idea to a woman named Mary Ann Williams.

The hymn tune, “Battle Hymn of the Republic” is obscure in its origins. It seems to have risen in the camp meeting culture of the American south, and possibly echoes a Negro spiritual. The tune was picked up by the 2nd Infantry Battalion, Massachusetts Militia (the “Tiger Battalion”). They used the coincidence of one of their members being named John Brown to make up a song that teased him, when he was late to report for duty (apparently a frequent occurrence). They joked that this was excusable on the grounds that he was dead – all the papers said that John Brown (the abolitionist) had been hanged. Other units picked the song up without the teasing, as the conviction grew in the ranks that they were carrying on John Brown’s work.

Julia Ward Howe, the abolitionist, felt the lyrics were not worthy of the cause, and sat down to write a nobler version, which was first published in 1862 in the Atlantic Monthly. It is a stirring song, and I remember thrilling as I sang it as a member of the Waldorf College Choir in 1969.

A few years back I discussed the hymn with a scholarly friend whose field is American religion. He pointed out to me – and I should have been aware of this, but emotion dulls the sight – that the theology here is in fact rather bad. A political/moral cause is elevated to the level of the work of salvation. The fighting of a war is compared to Christ’s sacrifice for our sins.

Howe was in fact a progressive, my friend pointed out. She had left Calvinism to embrace Unitarianism. In the manner of progressive Christians, she downplayed the atonement for sin and focused on the creation of a more just society. She and her compatriots were the forerunners of today’s social justice warriors.

There has never been a nobler cause in human history than the abolition of slavery. It’s a supreme triumph of Christian civilization – one for which Christian civilization gets insufficient credit. But it wasn’t the same thing as Christ’s redemption.

Having conceded that, I still have to say I’ll always love the Battle Hymn of the Republic. It’s not a true Christian hymn, but it’s a very good earthly sentiment. I’ll put it up against secular sentiments from anybody’s culture you care to name.

Religion

Conversions and reversions

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The Conversion of Saint Paul – painting by Spinello Aretino (Spinello di Luca Spinelli) (MET, 1975.1.11)

It is, I think, a function of my essential pessimism that I worry too much about celebrity conversions. Celebrity conversions, I’m sure, ought to be treated like any other conversions. Good news. Pray for them. But do not impute to them too much significance. In the parable of the sower, for instance (Matthew 13), only one seed out of four survives to bear fruit. And that, in my experience, is a pretty fair (possibly generous) rule of thumb.

The latest celebrity conversion I’ve been hearing about is the English actor, comedian, and media personality Russell Brand. I knew nothing about him before this news, aside from hearing his name and seeing his face online. He seems, according to Wikipedia, to have had a troubled life (imagine that – a comedian with a troubled life!), and has experienced drug abuse, sexual promiscuity, and dabbling in various religions. But now he’s been baptized, and he claims to truly believe.

I’m all for him. Less promising converts have proved out to be great blessings. John Newton, for instance, was a foul slaver, insufferable even to other foul slavers. But God took hold of him, and he ended as a minister and a powerful abolitionist. He left us with the hymn, “Amazing Grace.”

I’ve reminisced about the 1970s before, the heady times we called the Jesus Movement. They made a movie about the Jesus Movement not long ago, starring Kelsey Grammar. I couldn’t get excited about it, though, because my memories of that time suffer in retrospect. Of all the people I prayed and evangelized with in those days, only one or two (out of my own circle) have persevered in anything that looks to me like the same faith.

As a cultural phenomenon, the Jesus Movement seems to me almost a complete bust. No doubt it suffered from the biblical illiteracy and theological ignorance of a bunch of young people gushing about their “experience.” In the long run, my perception is that the Jesus Movement simply got swallowed up in the wave of subjectivity that is still washing the pilings out from under our civilization.

In my mind, the Jesus Movement was too cool, too popular for a season. Luke 17:20 says that the Kingdom of God does not come in ways that can be observed. Which means (as I see it) that it doesn’t come in any way that we see coming. Jesus Himself didn’t come as expected. The stone that the builders rejected becomes the cornerstone (Psalm 118:22). God loves to blindside us.

I’ve seen lots of celebrity (and other) conversions in my time. The most promising often fell short. The least promising sometimes amazed us. Russell Brand could go either way. It’s not up to me, and it’s not my place to judge.

The most remarkable celebrity conversion I’ve observed was the one I expected the least from. I remember reading about Charles Colson’s conversion back in 1973, while I was in college. I think I read about it in Time Magazine. Congressman Albert Quie, who came from my home area and to whom I have family connections, helped lead him to Christ. Colson said reading C. S. Lewis had influenced him greatly.

“Oh great,” I said at the time. “That’s just who we need on our team. Colson.”

Chuck Colson was one of the most hated men in America in those days. Beyond the general contempt being rained on President Nixon, there was special derision for Colson, “Nixon’s hatchet man,” the guy who’d said he’d run over his grandmother for political advantage. I remember a college teacher bringing it up in a class, and I cringed on behalf of all Lewis fans.

But what do you know? Colson rang true. He served his sentence. He devoted himself thereafter to self-sacrificial ministry. He always spoke honestly, and he cared for the lost and the least.

There were plenty of people who never stopped hating him, of course, and he acquired new enemies as he went on. But he was a blessing, and he walked the walk.

In other words, let’s pray for Brand and wait and see.

Religion

Sermon: ‘The Ruthless Love of Christ’

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I don’t preach very often, but I was invited to do so yesterday, at Faith Free Lutheran Church in Minneapolis. The sermon has been posted on YouTube, and can be viewed above. I fumbled the service itself a bit (the Prayer of the Day, which I couldn’t find, was actually in my suit coat pocket, mistakenly put away with other papers I thought I didn’t need. That’s how my efforts at efficiency generally work out.) But the sermon itself, I believe, went okay.

This is a sermon I’d delivered before, in a slightly different version, at the Free Lutheran Bible College chapel. I think it’s not entirely contemptible.

Bookselling, Music, Religion

Book plug: ‘Pain In the Belly,’ by Thomas E. Jacobson

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Last Saturday I ventured outside my comfort zone to make the perilous drive to downtown Minneapolis (one of the still unburned parts), to hear a lecture. The lecture was delivered at the Mindekirken, the Norwegian Memorial Church (there’s one in Chicago too), where they hold a Norwegian language service every Sunday. You’d think I’d go there all the time, but they’re not really my kind of Lutherans. However, they offer cultural and language programs too, and I lectured myself there once, at one of their regular lunchtime events.

One reason I don’t go there more often is that it’s an awful place to drive to. The conservative Center Of the American Experiment, based here in Minnesota, has documented the fact that our city planners have it as an explicit goal to make driving around here as inconvenient as possible – so we peasants will be compelled to use buses and the wonderful light rail they’re forcing us to pay for. I don’t think I’ve ever driven to the Mindekirken without getting turned around in some way – even with GPS.

Anyway, I arrived at last, only a few minutes late. I came in during the introduction, so I didn’t miss any of the lecture.

The lecturer was my online friend, Pastor Thomas E. Jacobson, who has recently had a book released. It boasts the surprising title, Pain In the Belly: The Haugean Witness In American Lutheranism. I’ve written about the Norwegian lay evangelist Hans Nielsen Hauge many times before in this space – just do a search in the box up above if you’re curious. We Haugeans (I still identify as a Haugean) have been called a sect, but we never separated from Lutheranism or denied its basic tenets. In Norway, the Haugeans in any parish tended to pool their money to build a “bedehus,” a prayer house. There, after having attended regular services in their local Lutheran churches, they could gather among themselves and hold “edification meetings” and other social and educational functions. Many bedehuser still exist in Norway, and continue to be used for something like their original purpose.

I haven’t read Tom’s book yet, but I thought I’d give it a plug here anyway. It focuses on the influence of the Haugeans on Lutheranism in the USA. The title comes from a comment made by a Haugean leader when the old Hauge Synod at last agreed to join a church merger. When told that a theologian in one of the more conservative groups entering new church body had said that he rejoiced that the Haugeans would now be “swallowed up” in mainstream Lutheranism, this man said he expected to cause them “a pain in the belly.”

Sadly (in my view), in the long run the new church body and its successors turned out to have a pretty iron digestion.

In any case, we sang a hymn that Hans Nielsen Hauge wrote in 1799, “With God in Grace I’m Dwelling.” He wrote it during one of his imprisonments for illegal lay preaching.  I looked for a video of somebody singing it, but as far as I can tell nobody has ever been bold enough to perform the hymn and leave a permanent record. So I’ll just transcribe a couple verses here. A common tune used for it is “Passion Chorale,” the one we use for “O Sacred Head, Now Wounded.”

With God in grace I’m dwelling, 
What harm can come to me  
From worldly pow’rs compelling  
My way thus closed to be?  
Though they in chains may bind me  
Inside this prison cell,  
Yet Christmas here can find me;  
Within my heart ʼtis well.
Our God has promised surely  
To free each seeking soul,  
Who walks in spirit purely  
With truth as way and goal.  
Whose heart the world’s deceiving  
Can never lead astray,  
Who, constantly believing,  
Will walk the Kingdom’s way.
God grant us now His power,  
And help us by His might  
To follow truth this hour,  
All guided by His light;  
And may we work together  
As one in mutual love,  
Forsaking self and gather  
At last in heav’n above.

(Translation: P. A. Sweegen, 1931)

Music, Religion, Writing

‘Now the Green Blade Riseth’, and a ‘writing’ update

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Above, the King’s College Choir with what I must confess is the only Easter hymn I really like. And it’s not one that’s commonly sung in the churches of my own religious body.

And even this one, lovely as it (it shares a melody with the Christmas hymn, “Sing We Now of Christmas”), doesn’t entirely satisfy me. What Easter merits is a good, rousing, triumphal hymn, something on the lines of “A Mighty Fortress” or “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing!” We do have triumphal Easter hymns – there’s “Up From the Grave He Arose!” and “Christ the Lord Is Risen Today!” But personally I find them kind of clunky. They don’t sing well, to my mind. I want one I can throw my head back and bellow, as I used to do at Christmas, before my singing voice gave out.

I should probably write a text myself, and see if somebody can come up with a melody.

Better yet would be if somebody wrote a rousing melody and I could put words to it.

It’s been 2,000 years. Somebody should have taken care of this by now.

Want a writing update? I’m not writing at all right now, in the strictest sense of the term. I’ve got my beta readers reading The Baldur Game, and I’m using the time for the necessary procedural stage of forgetting everything about it. So I can come back to it with my mental palate cleansed.

Therefore, I have turned to the business of book narration. Some generous friends have given me a decent microphone and other equipment, and I’ve carved out a makeshift studio space in my bedroom. I’m playing with the system – especially the Audacity recording software. I have a certain level of technophobia, not unusual, I suppose, in people of a certain age. Right now I’m just doing drills. Self-assigned exercises. The plan is that, once I’ve got The Baldur Game published, I can devote a chunk of time to getting The Year of the Warrior recorded, so I can release it on Audible. I was always considered a good copy reader when I was in radio. Maybe audio books will be my ticket to the big time.

It could happen.