sweet Jesus

Last night I saw a news story about a sculpture of Jesus, meant to be displayed in an art gallery housed in a New York hotel. The exhibition was cancelled after vocal protests.

It turns out there are two unusual things about this sculpture…

1) It depicts Jesus, arms outstretched as though hanging on a cross, without so much as a loin cloth.

2) It’s made entirely of chocolate.

No, you did not read that last sentence wrong. The artist — whose past medium have included five tons of pepper jack cheese (sprayed on a Wisconsin home, of course) and 312 pounds of processed ham (you start to get the feeling he’s not a conventional artist) — calls his latest creation “My Sweet Lord.”

And what does the artist have to say about it?

My intention was to celebrate the body of Christ in a sweet, delicious, tasteful way.

This post is not about the suitability of chocolate as a media for artistic depictions of Jesus. It’s not about the appropriateness of portraying the crucified Jesus without any clothes. (Although his Roman executioners almost certainly stripped him completely, taking even the smallest shred of dignity.)

I guess I just don’t take artists who paint hotel rooms in melted mozzarella too seriously.

But what about the way some Christians have reacted to the sculpture? The gallery and hotel say they were overrun with angry phone calls and emails, including death threats.

Death threats? From Christians?

Then Bill Donohue, president of the Catholic League (a group that exists to “defend the right of Catholics… to participate in American public life”) went head-to-head with the artist on CNN.

Among Donohue’s many comments, he had this to say about the offending artist, gallery, and hotel…

They’re morally bankrupt. I want to see them financially bankrupt.

And this…

Oh, no, let me tell you something. You’re lucky I’m not as mean, because you might lose more than your head.

(More than your head?) Finally, the interview ended with this…

Look, you lost. You know what? You put your middle finger at the Catholic Church, and we just broke it, didn’t we, pal?

Wait… who is it that’s known for going around, breaking their enemies’ fingers?

Isn’t that what the mafia does?

Bill, I may not be Catholic, but what you say reflects badly on Christians of all stripes. I seem to recall Jesus teaching us to love our enemies. Do good to those who hate us. Bless those who curse us. Pray for those who mistreat us. (Luke 6:27-28)

Wasn’t it one of Jesus’ followers — for Catholics, the first pontiff, no less — who said, “Do not repay evil with evil or insult with insult. On the contrary, repay evil with blessing”? (1 Peter 3:9, TNIV)

I think that means not breaking the fingers of those who offend us. You may have been speaking figuratively, Bill. But what does it say about what’s in your heart, that you reach for a such a violent metaphor to describe how you respond to your enemies?

Aren’t Christians called to be people who bring healing, not inflict injury?

TNIV Truth post…

I’ve added another post to the TNIV Truth blog. You can read it here…

what makes God mad? (I mean really mad)

Do not mistreat or oppress a foreigner, for you were foreigners in Egypt. Do not take advantage of a widow or an orphan. If you do and they cry out to me, I will certainly hear their cry. My anger will be aroused, and I will kill you with the sword; your wives will become widows and your children fatherless. (Exodus 22:21-24, TNIV)

Hey, I never promised warm fuzzies on this blog.

I’m sure I’ve seen this passage before, but when reading Exodus 22 a few months ago, I stopped in my tracks at verse 24. There aren’t many places in scripture where God threatens to kill his own people, at least not this directly.

That’s not to say there aren’t other things the Hebrew scriptures deemed worthy of death. Just a few verses earlier, God tells his people, “Do not allow a sorceress to live.”

…and, “Anyone who has sexual relations with an animal is to be put to death.”

…and, “Whoever sacrifices to any other god… must be destroyed.”

But what strikes me about these commands, in contrast to Exodus 22:24, is their passivity; God delegates the act of punishment. But when it comes to the one who mistreats the foreigner, the widow, or the orphan, God takes matters into his own hands.

It’s no longer, “Let that person be put to death.” Suddenly it’s, “I will kill you with the sword…”

Years later, Amos (the farmer-turned-prophet) recorded these words from God:

Strike the tops of the pillars so that the thresholds shake. Bring them down on the heads of all the people; those who are left I will kill with the sword. Not one will get away, none will escape. (Amos 9:1, TNIV)

Who is Amos speaking to? To find out, you have to turn back just one chapter:

Hear this, you who trample the needy and do away with the poor of the land, saying, “When will the New Moon be over that we may sell grain, and the Sabbath be ended that we may market wheat?” — skimping on the measure, boosting the price and cheating with dishonest scales, buying the poor with silver and the needy for a pair of sandals, selling even the sweepings with the wheat.

The Lord has sworn by himself, the Pride of Jacob: “I will never forget anything they have done.” (Amos 8:4-7, TNIV)

I think it’s safe to say God cares deeply about how we treat the poorest and the most vulnerable…

Of course, if mistreating the poor makes God this angry, imagine how pleased, how happy he is when we do our part to bring justice, compassion, relief… when we stand with the poor and not against them… when we use the wealth he’s given us to bless others…

According to the scriptures, God’s love far exceeds his anger (Exodus 34:6-8). That’s some pretty good news, especially for those of us who are just beginning to understand our responsibility to the poor.

everything changes

Some friends have been writing lately about relationships and the way they change with time. Here and here.

Sometimes it’s slow and gradual. Friends who used to be quite close drift apart. (Or the opposite happens.)

Sometimes it’s sudden and painful. A falling out. Someone dies. Or moves to the farthest ends of the earth…

…like, uh, Seattle.

It’s strange, really. Moving was absolutely the right decision. We’re here because we heard God’s voice calling us here.

But at the same time, moving disrupts something very natural — something God-given — in each of us: the need for connection. To know and be known. To find stability and community in the company of others.

Paul once wrote that “you yourselves are God’s temple” (1 Cor 3:16, TNIV).

The “you” is plural. It’s not, “you the individual are God’s temple.” It’s, “you the community…” Each of us is one stone or brick. Only together do we become God’s temple.

I suppose when you take a brick out and move it someplace else, it’s bound to leave a hole somewhere.

It may be an inevitable reality of life, but I don’t think we’re meant to ever get used to it. It don’t think we should become too transient, never staying in one place or season of life long enough to establish real connection with anybody.

And at the end of the day, some relationships are worth holding onto, even when you wake up and find several thousand miles of earth and ocean between you.

seattle pics…

poaching souls

I heard a guy from Lifewater International use this phrase, and I liked it.

(Lifewater is a group that brings clean water and sanitation to those who don’t have them.)

Anyway, he was talking about the need for holistic ministry when he said, “We’re not just poaching souls.” His point was that we have to meet the needs of the whole person, body and soul… because this life and this world matter immensely to God, not just the life to come…

When it comes to it, I can’t think of many things more “Christian” than giving someone access to clean water. (Matthew 10:42 is worth checking out.)

Speaking of which, today is World Water Day. Consider this…

1.2 billion people (1 in 6) don’t have access to safe water. (Imagine having to drink water that might actually kill you.)

2.6 billion people (2 in 5) don’t have basic sanitation. (Imagine not having any toilet paper or a toilet to flush it down.)

According to some estimates, every $1 spent on safe drinking water and sanitation creates up to $34 in economic development.

In other words, helping the poor is in everyone’s interest.

I’ll drink to that.

thinking jewish

It’s tempting to think of Christianity as a “Western” religion, invented by Jesus when he walked the earth… possessing its own set of totally unique ideas, practices, beliefs…

…when in reality, Jesus didn’t set out to “invent” as much as we think he did. Sometimes we forget that Jesus was not only Jewish, not only the Messiah… he was also a Jewish rabbi.

Almost everything he said—every teaching, every parable—was interacting with the Jewish tradition…

interpreting the Hebrew scriptures…

participating in the great conversation of his day about who the people of God are and how they’re supposed to live.

After all, it was Jesus who said (speaking about the Hebrew scriptures):

Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. Truly I tell you, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished. (Matthew 5:17-18, TNIV)

A couple years ago, I went to Israel and Turkey with Ray Vander Laan, retracing the footsteps of Jesus and his disciples… exploring the Jewish origins of my Christian faith.

To know who you are, you have to know where you’ve been. To better understand the New Testament (and the especially teachings of Jesus), you have to understand the Old Testament. If you’re a follower of Jesus, then the Jewish story is your story, because your faith is fundamentally Jewish in its origins.

Anyway… the plan is to explore Christianity’s Jewish origins more in future posts…

will work for food

Seattle has a fairly large homeless population, so it’s not uncommon to see someone standing on a street corner, cardboard sign in hand, asking for money.

This weekend, I saw two signs that, if nothing else, deserve points for honesty and creativity, respectively.

The first read: “Why lie? Need money to buy beer.”

The second read: “Ninjas killed my parents. Need money to learn Kung Fu.”

Seriously.

It’s kind of funny, but I have to wonder: Does it trivialize the plight of the hardworking poor who have fallen through the cracks through no fault of their own?

TNIV—basic idea or details of meaning?

I just contributed my first post to the TNIV Truth blog, addressing the criticism that the TNIV overlooks details of meaning in favor of capturing just the “basic idea” of a passage.

Click here to read the post.

Dobson and global warming (updated)

James Dobson has a new enemy. Someone he believes is trying to shift emphasis “away from the great moral issues of our time.” Someone who, in his opinion, is engaging in a “dangerous and divisive” conversation.

The culprit is Richard Cizik, vice president of the NAE (National Association of Evangelicals). His crime? Calling on evangelicals to articulate a public theology of creation care.

In an open letter to the NAE, Dobson and several others recently called on Cizik to resign, saying that his “disturbing views seem to be contributing to the growing confusion about the very term ‘evangelical.’” Ouch.

I’m not a scientist. I don’t pretend to be an expert on the subject of global warming. Still… I am troubled (though not surprised) by tone and content of Dobson’s letter.

Caring about the earth is not the exclusive domain of tree-huggers and pantheists. Environmental issues are not just for one political party or ideology. Cizik, a self-described “pro-Bush conservative,” is proof of that.

Whatever one believes about global warming—whether it’s real, whether its causes are human or natural (or both), and what (if anything) should be done about it—one thing seems clear: creation care is important to God.

It’s so important to God, in fact, that it was one of the very first commands he gave us: “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it.” (Genesis 1:28, TNIV)

To subdue the earth is to harness its natural resources for our benefit—but it is to do so in ways that are responsible and sustainable. (In other words, being pro-environment should not mean being anti-agriculture, anti-forestry, or anti-industry.)

One of the distinctives of ancient Jewish thought was the idea that humans ought to work with the land, not against it. You can see it in Jewish architecture. Its humble simplicity is a stark contrast to the mountain-leveling construction projects of the Greeks and the Romans.

In fact, creation care is part of the reason we are here: “The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it” (Genesis 2:15, TNIV).

Creation care (or environmentalism or whatever you choose to call it) is about stewardship. It’s about realizing that we are made from the same stuff that the earth is—that we are connected to the earth because we’re all made by the same creator.

It’s about realizing that how you treat something reflects how you truly feel about its creator.

Let me illustrate. Several years ago, I was at my grandmother’s house when I found a drawer, tucked away on the third floor, crammed with papers. My grandmother had kept every letter, every card, every picture I had sent her when I was little.

Some of the letters and drawings were pretty comical. (Apparently, when I was five, I though grandmothers appreciated pictures of things like dinosaurs pooping.)

Why did she keep all those drawings (even the pooping t-rex)? She cherished them because she cherished the person who made them.

The same is true for us and God’s creation. Our success or failure to care for what God has entrusted to us will reveal how we really feel about the one who made this world.

Sincere Christians will disagree on how we should go about caring for our environment, how we go about obeying the spirit of Genesis 1:28.

The point is that we need to be having the conversation. Christians ought to be wrestling with things like creation care, global warming, etc. We need to acknowledge that if creation care is important to God, then contrary to what Dr. Dobson thinks, it may well be “one of the great moral issues of our day.”

More to come on the open letter and a theology of creation care…

[Update: Click here to read Climate Change: An Evangelical Call to Action. You can also view the list of signatories to this statement.]