I want to put forward a brief expression of an idea (brief for me, at least) about the relationship of emotional, spiritual healing and cognitive processes. At the core, I want to put forward that people who are well are cognitively able to take in and comprehend ‘information’ about the goodness of life, both in moral goodness but also experiential goodness. However, what readily happens due to the brokenness in trauma and our acting upon sin is that we began to get cognitively fixated on the badness in life. We may dream of some good we wish we had with the experience of trauma and we may imagine some sense of good from our actions when we sin, but we are not so much processing information but rather trying to assign meaning and purpose (meaning and purpose is important, but it isn’t the end-all-be-all of human thriving). However, in brokenness and sin, our relationship to the world is primarily defined by either experiential badness from the trauma or moral badness from sin. Consequently, we look at what is bad, ugly, and evil in the world.

When God heals, our hearts and minds become open to the goodness of life. We begin to see and experience the world with brand new horizons. For those with trauma, they begin to see and experience the good and joyful things in life. For those enslaved to their sins, they begin to see and discern the way of life that brings goodness to others. When God is at the heart of this, God discloses to the broken and to the sinner His own goodness, both in God’s powerful demonstrations in the world but also, through recognizing God in His self-expression, those who are healed begin to be able to see and recognize the goodness in the world that He created. The oppressed are set free from the burdens of their life. The sinners are given a medicine that can alleviate their iniquity. In all of this, people begin to pay attention to the information of life that points to the goodness of God, both experientially and morally.

Now, certainly, similar types of healings can occur without God’s self-expression and self-disclosure to us where we go from seeing the world negatively to seeing it positively. These are good in their own rights and should be appreciated. Yet, healing via accepting and recognizing God’s self-expression and self-disclosure leads to the emergence of a reliable understanding of the goodness of life. Because the God who created the world has made His will and His wisdom known to us, we are able to more readily to recognize and understand the fundamental, life-giving aspects of creation as it is, along with the new creation as it is emerging within us and will come to complete fruition. Healing through the work of the Triune God sets forth our hearts and minds to be in openness and harmony with God’s wisdom in the creation and new creation. Our lives synergize with the goodness of God’s creation.

However, in order to see the life that God has bestowed onto the world and is bestowing to others, we must ourselves have real life to comprehend true life. I can not understand something that I am not capable of recognizing in the first place. Life must well up within us from the Holy Spirit to see the goodness of the gift of life that comes from God, which comes up within us because we receive Jesus’s words of life. In letting go our own immediately impulses to think we know and comprehend the life of Jesus’ words, we cognitively distance ourselves from the way death has taken a stranglehold of us, both in our brokenness and in our sin, and become open to receiving from the Spirit a transformational comprehension of the life-giving words of Jesus. The life the Spirit is bringing within us causes us to see the goodness of Jesus Christ in His words, which then opens us up to see the goodness of the creation that Jesus as the Logos made, along with the goodness of the new life that He is giving now.

It is here, then, that we may suggest that the gifts of the Holy Spirit begin to flourish, as the very hearts and minds that are necessary to make use of the gifts are now freed to act with the gifts of God’s creative and redemptive power in the world. However, as we grow deeper in our comprehension of God’s goodness, as the wells of life from the Holy Spirit bubble up more and more, it leads us to make use of the Spiritual gifts for the love of building up others, not self-aggrandizement. It is here, then, that God’s wisdom comes to full birth within us, as the goodness of love that has welled up within us from the gift of life enables us not just to begin to recognize God’s goodness, but it enables us to come to a comprehensive vision of the work of new creation in the death and resurrection of the servant Jesus Christ that allows us to understand the world with the mind and attitude that Christ Himself had.

In this case, healing from God is not just about our own sense of self-satisfaction with life, but its telos is towards the comprehension of God’s wisdom, so that in so doing we can align ourselves more and more with the loving, life-giving purpose of God. Healing from God is not just about an inward wellness and thriving, but it brings us to become people who become agents of shalom and thriving for others through our lives being in harmony with the on-going creative, life-giving activity of God in the world.

John 8.31-32:

So Jesus was saying to those Jews who had believed Him, “If you continue in My word, then you are truly disciples of Mine; and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.”

At the heart of the Christian life is seeking after the will of God, while at the same time resisting all the forms of wrong-doing we often find ourselves intermeshed within. However, as both our experience and the Scriptures repeatedly testify to, we see others and ourselves fall short of this purpose time and time again.

As we experience the failure in our own sin and error, we can be tempted to go one of two directions: we can be tempted to try to address the resulting loss of self-esteem from our sin by minimizing the Gospel call to holiness, to suggest that God really doesn’t expect or want us to pursue a perfection. God’s grace and forgiveness is appealed to not just simply as God’s continued love for us even as we sin, but as a reason that we don’t need to really seek a purity of heart. In such a state, we may be tempted to think that we can live satisfied with perhaps our decent but flawed or horribly disfigured spiritual and moral lives with the false confidence that God will be with us in the midst of all of this, no matter if we seek to follow Jesus or not.

Then, there is the other temptation to resolve this loss of self-esteem by re-upping on the type the behaviors that may make us seem good in our eyes and/or in the eyes of others. We can call this compensation, where we seek to ground our sense of our goodness in the sight of God, or even others, by all the things we do that show how “good” we are. This compensation can come in various forms, such as performing exemplary deeds or ‘helping’ others, and putting forward to others about our ‘goodness’ and successes. However, one of the most tempting forms of compensation is pointing out the sins of others. To the extent that our self-esteem is derived from how we feel about ourselves relative to others¹, we can become tempted to compensate for our spiritual imperfections by consistently pointing out and characterizing the perceived sins in others, which may make us think we are pursuing holiness like the Pharisees thought they were reaching for purity. This was at the heart of the Pharisees religious practice during Jesus’ time that he pointed out in Matthew 7.1-5:

Do not judge so that you will not be judged. For in the way you judge, you will be judged; and by your standard of measure, it will be measured to you. Why do you look at the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ and behold, the log is in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye.

Jesus’ prescription in such a case is to focus on one’s own sin and become freed from it. While this may often be said with a hint of derision towards those who we think unfairly judge, and thus a form of compensatory characterization, Jesus’ words are more so an apt description of the cure needed for their illness. Their own sin has blinded them regarding others, seeing what is in themselves as being in others, making them “hypocrites.” The solution is to focus oneself and address one’s own sin so that they can then be of aid and assistance to their brother.

At the heart of Jesus’ prescription is freedom. In order to be able to help our sisters and brothers in Christ, we must be expunged ourselves of the very sins we find others committing. Without this, we risk incurring judgment upon ourselves. The good news is the very heart of Jesus’ ministry is to bring us to this freedom.

However, this freedom entails that we neither accept the pathway of spiritual malaise nor compensation, but an ever consistent learning from Jesus’ words, which ultimately points to His our own action of sacrificial love that guides us. Jesus says in John 8.31-32 that true disciples continue in His word and this leads to knowledge of truth that sets free. Let us point out what Jesus does not say. He doesn’t say by thinking about God and Jesus you will be set free. Freedom doesn’t come by how much you pray and praise God in and of itself. He doesn’t say you can be free from sin by compensating for it. One must, ultimately, learn from Jesus’ own words.

However, this learning must come from a sense of patient humility that accepts that we don’t readily understand and that we must first be examined ourselves before we can understand. In John 8.31-32, Jesus was speaking to the very Jews who have believed Him but were in their heart actually seeking to kill Him. As Jesus spoke of this deeper truth of sin that resides in the hearts of people, they argued and resisted Jesus’ words to them and eventually sought to stone and kill Jesus. They could not accept the words of Jesus, but they quickly abandoned it as Jesus spoke to the sin in their heart. They could not take the blow to their own sense of identity that Jesus’ words presented. As Jesus warned in the Beatitudes, persecution comes to those prophetic figures who are seeking to bring God’s shalom by helping people to see their sin, repent, and discover the (deepening) life that God’s gives.

Continuing in Jesus’ word so as to bring us into freedom can be a bumpy process. Jesus’ words suggest that truth and freedom doesn’t come immediately from receiving Jesus’ word, but one must regularly continue to learn from Him as a true disciple. While it is often times said in evangelical circles that getting “saved” when we believed frees us from the power of sin along with the guilt of sin, this is only a partial truth. When we believe, we have found the source of God’s life that can free us from the powers of sin and death, but we must fight against these powers before we come to experience this freedom. When we are “saved” we come to a powerful friend in the Holy Spirit who we comprehend and understand through learning from Jesus that can assist us in fighting back against the previously forced, imperial servitude to the powers of sin and death, but we are faced with the dilemmas of following the Spirit or following the flesh. Only by putting to death the deeds of the flesh by the Holy Spirit do we come to discover this freedom, but we can only identify and know the work of this Spirit as the Spirit brings the life spoken in Jesus’ words to true comprehension. Freedom from sin, often times referred to as sanctification in Wesleyan circles,² comes from a long, sustained obedience in the same direction.

That this freedom emerges in the long-run is perhaps the reason that Paul warns against appointing leadership over the church who are newer converts (1 Timothy 3.6). As impressive as some might be, the pathway towards freedom from sin doesn’t generally occur overnight or even the course of a few years. Spiritually young Christians may show impressive potential in their lives and a remarkable change in their life, but they haven’t necessarily rooted out all the sin in their lives. They are still in the need of putting to death the deeds of the flesh, including the pride that can be incurred by being observed as a fast riser. Being vaulted into a position of spiritual leadership at such an early point may make them conceited and fall into what Paul calls the “judgment of the devil.” Their is still much work for them to be done in discovering the truth for oneself to becoming truly free from sin.

This is why the mercy and forgiveness of God is such an integral part of the good news, and why we ourselves must learn to forgive those who speak and act wrongly. While painful words may be spoken in such a case that may cause a blow to self-esteem, much as a prophet often has to tell people of their own misguided nature, it is forgiveness that allows people to know that they can confidently continue in this spiritual growth towards freedom through continuing in the words of Jesus. God forgives and we are called to forgive not so that we can protect people’s feelings, but God forgives and we forgive so that people can feel a confidence that God and others have not rejected them in the midst of their own spiritual struggle.

So, let us cast aside all the ways we try to protect our self-esteem from our own sins and errors by either accepting mediocrity or compensating and, instead, seek to continue in the words of Jesus Christ, so that we can know the truth and be set free.

Hebrews 2.14-15:

Since, therefore, the children share flesh and blood, he himself likewise shared the same things, so that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, 15 and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by the fear of death.

If you have not read The Worm at the Core by Sheldon Solomon, Jeff Greenberg, and Tom Pyszczynscki, I would highly recommend it. At the core of the books is a basic principle: that our fear or mortality is one of the primary shapers of human behavior, culture, our need for self-esteem, etc. One of the observations they make about the fear of death is how it impacts the way we uphold our values:

Reminders of death don’t just provoke more negative reactions to those who fail to live up to our values. They also spawn more positive responses to people who uphold them. In one study, death reminders tripled the monetary reward people recommended for someone who reported a dangerous criminal to the police. And the effects of death reminders aren’t limited to those we judge to be immoral or noble. They also increase our general desire to fortify our faith in the correctness of our beliefs and the goodness of our culture. So after being reminded of death, we react generously to anyone or anything that reinforces our cherished beliefs, and reject anyone or anything that calls those beliefs into question.¹

Feelings of vulnerability to death motivate us to reward and punish, to honor and to shame, to include and exclude. Our cultural values guide us as to how we interact in the world from childhood, as we move from seeing our parents as the source of trust to our surrounding culture.² This leads us to then place strong value within specific, highly valued cultural symbols that help us to stave off fears of death.³ If this thesis is correct, then at the core of most cultures are a set of inter-subjective values and external symbols that ground our sense of safety and security in the world. For instance, the values of freedom and the symbolic status of the American flag in part help to stave off fears of mortality. These values and symbols were especially important during the Cold War, where the existential threat of the Soviet Union lead people to unite under the banner of American capitalism and democracy to feel safe and secure in a threatening world. Similarly, these values and symbols also helped protect our fears of mortality after 9/11, with the uncertainty as to what would come next from terrorists. Such cultural values and symbols serve a very helpful and useful purpose in trying help people feel safe in a world that seems threatening.

However, at the same time, staving off feelings of mortality comes at a social cost: it often comes at the cost of judging ‘outsiders’ as dangerous⁴. Harm is inflicted upon those people who we perceive to be a threat to our cultural values. Communists/Marxists were deemed evil during the Cold War. The way African-Americans were kept perpetually on the outside of society made them the repeated target of racist derision. Muslims were often stereotyped as potential terrorists at the beginning of the 21st century. Outside of American politics and into religion, passionate reformers who challenged the status-quo, such as Martin Luther and John Wesley, were regularly persecuted and excluded.  In each of these cases, all these people are considered potential threats to their political or religious cultures that they were a part of. The threat is perceived not because the people were actually a threat, but because these people fell under a label of people who were deemed threatening in the past or they had specific practices that caused others to see them as tearing down their values.

So it was also for Jesus, as he warns in the Beatitudes that those who seek righteousness would come under persecution, just like Jesus did. For instance, Jesus was deemed a “sinner” because he healed a man on the Sabbath and the Pharisees rejected the testimony of the blind man because they rationalize his condition meant he was born in sin (John 9.13-34). As is so often the case, when people present threats to cherished values, the threat of people is vastly exaggerated beyond their actual actions. This is what happens when our cultural values become challenged. Witness how people who disagree on social media may perceive each other as mortal threats and evil, even though most people on social media are otherwise decent, albeit imperfect, human beings. At the core of cultural values is the tendency to become highly judgmental and characterize people who present some challenge to one’s values as morally tainted and threatening.

In such a condition, grace and mercy can not really thrive and grow. This is where the Gospel comes in. As the Gospel of Jesus Christ beckons us to bear our own cross, we no longer rely upon our culture as a source that protects us. We are no longer caught in a fear of death that makes us avoid the prospects of our vulnerability by harsh judgments and derision. Instead, following Jesus to the cross leads us to become anti-fragile, to grow resilient in the face of potential threats without feeling the need to react to the first signs of vulnerability or potential danger due to the fragility of our feelings of mortality. In this case, culture no longer binds those of us who follow Jesus. Instead, we are freed to bring the message of God’s reconciliation in Christ to others and free to receive people from other cultures as part of the Body of Christ. As Christ’s liberation from death in the resurrection begins to define our own story in facing our own crosses and overcoming them, we make the transition from our cultural predilection towards protecting ourselves from mortality to being able to receive the “sinner” in grace, mercy, and love, not seeing them as threatening simply because they have been regarded as a deviant but as one beloved by God.

However, there is a difference between the Gospel of Jesus Christ that calls us to bear our cross, to accept the wounds that make us feel mortal, and the forms of religion built around Jesus where Jesus’s death is a substitute for our own. When Jesus’ death is understood primarily as a substitute, there you find people avoiding feelings of mortality. How much clearer can this be than in some form of evangelical theology that thinks Jesus’ death secures their eternal security from judgment. People feel secured from morality, include an existential, spiritual mortality. Is it any wonder, then that modern evangelicalism in the United States has become associated with various forms of racism, sexism, xenophobia, etc.? At the core of their religious form is a theology of avoidance of mortality.

However, the death of Jesus was not primarily understood as a substitute for the Apostle Paul. Rather, the death of Christ, along with the resurrection of Christ, defined the story of those who were baptized into Christ in Romans 6.1-11:

What then are we to say? Should we continue in sin in order that grace may abound? By no means! How can we who died to sin go on living in it? Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? Therefore we have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.  For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. We know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be destroyed, and we might no longer be enslaved to sin. For whoever has died is freed from sin. But if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him. The death he died, he died to sin, once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God. So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.

When we touch the wounds of Christ in our own lives as we experience our own forms of resurrection, we discover a new freedom that we did not have beforehand. We find freedom from sin, as our fear of mortality not only leads us to be judgmental but it also drives so many pursuits of pleasures and powers, such as wealth, as a form of avoidance from and staving off mortality. This is the truth that Jesus sets out before us that sets us free (John 8.31-32), which eventually culminates in the command to love one another in the way that Christ lays his life down in love (John 15.12-14). In order to live truly free, we must face death for the purposes of love, either the direct threat of death or the various symbolic events that bring about our feelings of mortality and vulnerability. Otherwise, we are still enslaved to the fear of mortality, even if we are not aware of how much this fear motivates and directs us. Only by being set free can we then be free to show grace and mercy to others without putting a bunch of conditions on our kindness or pulling strings to keep us feeling safe.

So, in the Gospel call to bear our cross, we find the truth that sets us free to become part of God’s reconciliation of the world, to be agents of God’s liberating grace and mercy, to be people who learn to love as Christ loved. It is this that is the difference between those who believe in the name of Christ, as one who as power and God is present with, and those who believe in Christ. The former appeal look to Christ’s power on their behalf tp stave of personal feelings or mortality like the crowds that wanted Jesus to continue miraculously making them food on their behalf (John 6.1-59), whereas the those who believe in Christ go beyond that to see Christ’s love as progressively becoming their own love. The former expect something from Jesus on their behalf, whereas the latter participate with Jesus to experience what Jesus experienced. Perhaps this is why Paul said the following in Philippians 3.8-11:

More than that, I regard everything as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and I regard them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but one that comes through the faith of Christ, the righteousness from God based on faith.I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in his death, if somehow I may attain the resurrection from the dead.

Paul connects God’s righteousness in Christ with his own sharing in Christ’s suffering as he knows Christ and the power of His resurrection. By facing vulnerability and mortality, Paul sees himself coming to obtain God’s righteousness in Christ. This is no picture substitution; this is participation. And, perhaps in so doing, Paul sees himself playing a role for the Church that is similar to Christ, but in a much more minor role in Colossians 1.24-26

I am now rejoicing in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am completing what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church. I became its servant according to God’s commission that was given to me for you, to make the word of God fully known, the mystery that has been hidden throughout the ages and generations but has now been revealed to his saints.

By becoming a servant of the Gospel through his own sufferings that are done to “complete what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions,” Paul sees his own sufferings as a demonstration of the word of God to make known the mystery of God in Christ. Perhaps in so doing, Paul’s own sufferings will minimize the sufferings that the Church as a whole must face, as they can become mature without having to face the degree of sufferings he faced by recognizing this truth of the Gospel as made known in Paul (this is speculation on my part though).

So, may the Gospel of Jesus Christ be heard clear and fresh again in our day as call for us to move out from the security of cultures and to face our own crosses, so that we may be the people who experience the liberating resurrection of Jesus’ death and resurrection and become its spokespeople. May we push back against the forms of religion that seek to tame this call to face our vulnerabilities with various forms of substitutions and avoidance and hear the mystery of the Gospel spoke loud and clear: the crucified and resurrection Christ lives in and forms us in our own lives and how we face the challenges of them.

As discussed in previous post, the Gospel of John portrays two types of faith: believing in the name of Jesus and believing in Jesus. The former relates to recognizing Jesus’ power and that God is with Him, whereas the latter relates to receiving Jesus’ words that ultimately point to His love. Roughly put, believing in the name of Jesus relates to the power of Christ, whereas believing in Jesus relates to learning from Jesus and seeing His loving charachter.

It is important to emphasize here that believing in the name of Jesus is not consider some sort of inauthentic or false faith. They are not judged. The only ones who are spoken of as falling in judgment according to the Gospel of John are those who do not believe in the name of Jesus. Otherwise, both forms of faith puts one within the sphere of God’s mercy and grace, but the former have not come to realize the life that those who believe in Jesus do. For instance, is never stated those who believe in Jesus’ name have not been worked on by the Holy Spirit. We might assume that of Nicodemus in John 3, but Jesus doesn’t say that Nicodemus wasn’t born above, but rather challenges Nicodemus to understand the deeper realities of the kingdom of heaven. What is true is that Jesus does not make Himself known to those who believe in His name, as he see whats is within them (John 2.23-25). This need not be taken as a statement of judgment or condemnation, but only that they operate in the middle-ground somewhere where they are neither doing evil, but nor are they practicing the truth (John 3.17-21). In such a place, they wouldn’t be able to understand and accept Jesus’ teachings. This happened with many of Jesus’ so-called disciples in John 6.60-71. The point being is that the Gospel of John recognizes one stage of faith that is defined by recognizing the power of Jesus, whereas another stage of faith is related to recognizing the life and love of Jesus Christ. Both, however, operate within the sphere of God’s gracious love.

We see a similar breakdown in 1 Corinthians 2. Paul describes the Corinthians as believing in the power of God in 1 Corinthians 2.1-5. However, in 1 Corinthian 2.6-16, Paul describes the mature as loving God. While Paul doesn’t use faith in that passage, we can certainly see the progression from a focus on power to a focus on love. It is the people who love who receive and understand the wisdom of God, much as it is those who believe in Jesus that Jesus entrusted Himself to. We can see an overlap between the Gospel of John’s description of faith and Paul’s portrayal in 1 Corinthians 2.

I would suggest we something similar in Romans as it pertains to the resurrection. In Romans 1.3-4, we see Paul describing Jesus being declared the Son of God based upon the resurrection. Yet, if one pays attention to the rest of Romans, Paul does not connect the resurrection to power elsewhere. In fact, we see the resurrection being connected both explicitly and implicitly with Christ’s character in overcoming sin. Romans 6.1-11 connects death to overcoming sin and we see this more expressly with Jesus in Romans 8.3. Against this backdrop, resurrection is about God’s vindicating and redeeming power for Jesus over death. So, when we see Paul talk about believing in the resurrection in Romans 10.9-13, we see belief in the resurrection associated with righteousness in the person. When we recognize that Daniel 12.1-3 is the prime passage for resurrection in the OT and it connects resurrection with a moral vindication, reading Paul’s discussion about the resurrection in the rest of Romans certainly portends to the resurrection as an action communicating Jesus’ moral character. As Paul describes Jesus as the revelation of God’s righteousness (Romans 3.21-26), we can perhaps understand the resurrection to be God’s statement that Jesus is His righteousness that is ultimately a reflection of Christ’s love that allows people to conquer the sufferings and hardships of the world (Romans 8.37-39). We see within Romans two ways of understanding the resurrection: as a declaration of Jesus’ status and power as the Son of God and as a vindication of Jesus’ character. While Paul agrees with the former in Romans 1.3-4, it is the latter that takes precedence in the rest of Romans.

In conclusion, perhaps it is helpful to understanding the development of Christian faith as starting from a recognition of God’s power in Christ that moves towards a moral appreciation and trust in the loving, faithful, serving character of God made known in Jesus Christ. The former are consider to be part of the Church, as Paul does not consider the Corinthians who are not mature to be on the outside of God’s people, but they will not progress nor understand until their morals lives are transformed (1 Corinthians 3.1-4), much as it is what was within people that prevented Jesus for disclosing Himself to them in the Gospel of John.

Something to think about when it comes to evangelism, discipleship, and Spiritual formation!

In my study of recent months on the Beatitudes in Matthew 5.3-10, I have been searching to find Old Testament allusions for the various Beatitudes. Wanting to go deeper into understanding the Beatitudes, finding the Old Testament backgrounds allow us to see the Beatitudes more from the perspective of the Jewish Jesus. Psalm 40.17 is a likely allusion of poor in spirit, as King David refers to himself as poor in that psalm. The language of Psalm 36.9-11 fits very well with the beatitude about the meek, contrasting the strength fo the wicked with the future deliverance or the meek. The beatitude about peacemakers being all the children of God with the Greek translation of Psalm 2.7-9. However, I really couldn’t find a good passage that connected all the Beatitudes together into something approaching a coherent whole, that is, until I read Isaiah 61 the other day:

The spirit of the Lord GOD is upon me,
because the LORD has anointed me;
he has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed,
to bind up the brokenhearted,
to proclaim liberty to the captives,
and release to the prisoners;
to proclaim the year of the LORD’s favor,
and the day of vengeance of our God;
to comfort all who mourn;
to provide for those who mourn in Zion—
to give them a garland instead of ashes,
the oil of gladness instead of mourning,
the mantle of praise instead of a faint spirit.
They will be called oaks of righteousness,
the planting of the LORD, to display his glory.
They shall build up the ancient ruins,
they shall raise up the former devastations;
they shall repair the ruined cities,
the devastations of many generations.

There are a few reasons why Isaiah 61 is likely in the background of Jesus’ Beatitudes. Firstly, we know that Isaiah 61 was a critical part of Jesus’ own sense of mission and purpose. In Luke 4.17-21, Jesus reads from Isaiah 61 in the synagogue and says this Scripture was fulfilled in the reading of it. Jesus was establishing Himself at the one who comes to bring about this age of restoration. Secondly, the language about mourning and comfort in Isa. 61.2 matches perfectly with Jesus’ beatitude about those who mourn will be comforted. Additionally, the Beatitudes are each preceded by “Blessed” and Isaiah 61 talks about proclaiming the Lord’s favor: the Beatitudes are the proclamation of the good news of Isaiah 61. Also, the contrast between proclamation of the Lord’s favor and the day of God’s vengeance can be seen to be reflected in blessed and woes of the Lukan version of the Beatitudes in Luke 6.20-26. Then, in addition to this, we see the motif of reversal throughout Isaiah 61, which is a common motif in the Beatitudes. Isaiah talks about people being oaks of righteousness and Jesus talks about those who hunger and thirst for righteousness. Finally, if we understand peacemakers to be people who bring well-being within the world, then the repair of the ruins can be seen as a form of peacemaking. Altogether, this STRONGLY suggests that the Beatitudes are built from Jesus’ own sense of vocation from Isaiah 61. While other Scriptural allusions are pertinent, Isaiah 61 helps us to make sense of the Beatitudes as a whole unit.

The implications of this? That the Beatitudes are not simply about some sense of moral virtues or personal well-being, though it certainly includes those two, but the Beatitudes is Jesus’ expression of the shape of the liberation He brings in the reversal of fortunes. Those who are brought low are lifted up high by God. Those who are last will become first. Those who live as servants will be called greatest in the kingdom of heaven.

The nature of the Beatitudes is expressed even in Jesus’ own life: he grew up in a peasant family and lived His life of ministry without a place to lay His head; Jesus certainly fits the bill for being poor in spirit. Jesus had deep compassion and mourned for the lost sheep of Israel. Jesus was meek in that many people regularly tried to unjustly kill him, even as he sought to do no harm to others. We should all agree that he deeply craved righteousness. Jesus was merciful. He dedicated hours of prayer to seeking the will of the Heavenly Father, making His heart pure. He brought shalom/well-being to many people by healing the sick and casting out demons. On top of that, he was persecuted for righteousness’ sake. On top of all that, the realization of the reversal is expressed in the cross and resurrection of Jesus in that He who was falsely regarded as a vile transgressor worthy of the crucifixion is vindicated as the Lord and the righteousness of God.

The Beatitudes are the proclamation of liberation for the people because Jesus in His human nature experiences all the aspects of this liberation (although without needing to be freed from any committed sins). He can proclaim liberation because He Himself experiences the very thing that He offers to others. As the preacher says in Hebrews 2.17-18:

Therefore he had to become like his brothers and sisters in every respect, so that he might be a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, to make a sacrifice of atonement for the sins of the people. Because he himself was tested by what he suffered, he is able to help those who are being tested.

How true this must this also be for His disciples who also seek to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor. How true is it that they must go through and experience this liberation to be able to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor and the day of God’s vengeance. Notice that the emphasis is on favor, though, as God’s favor last longer than His vengeance (see Exodus 34.6-7). So many preachers proclaim a vengeance that seems to overwhelm God’s favor, as if God is sending everyone to hell unless one gets their beliefs right about Jesus. However, Jesus does not come to judge the world, although those who entirely reject the name of Jesus are judged, but He comes to save the world. So too must those who experience God’s liberation come to understand that God’s favor is more prevalent than His judgment. The Beatitudes were Jesus’ expression of the future of God’s redemptive activity to bring favor to and liberation for the lost sheep of Israel that were bereft of dutiful shepherds, along with making God’s mercy to the Gentiles known (Matthew 15.21-28).

So, let us reflect more deeply on Jesus’ vocation from Isaiah 61 and how we ourselves come to experience this liberation that Jesus experienced and offers to us, so that we too can faithfully proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.

John 6.44-47:

No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him; and I will raise him up on the last day. It is written ain the prophets, ‘AND THEY SHALL ALL BE TAUGHT OF GOD.’ Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father, comes to Me. Not that anyone has seen the Father, except the One who is from God; He has seen the Father. Truly, truly, I say to you, he who believes has eternal life.

John 5.24:

Truly, truly, I say to you, he who hears My word, and believes Him who sent Me, has eternal life, and does not come into judgment, but has passed out of death into life.

John 6.63:

It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh profits nothing; the words that I have spoken to you are Spirit and are life.

In the Gospel of John, we hear Jesus make various statements who has life and where does life come from. In the three passages quoted from above, we see eternal life is associated with (1) being taught by the Father that leads one to come to Jesus and believe, (2) hearing Jesus’ word, along with believing God sent Him, and (3) the Spirit gives life. The eternal life that the Gospel of Jesus describes is intimately connected with the relationship of the person to three persons of the Trinity.

IF we follow all of what Jesus says, it all starts with being taught by the Father. in John 6.44-47, Jesus emphasizes the holiness of the Father, and no one has seen Him except Jesus. Even as people are taught by the Father, presumably by people searching the Scriptures to know God, they don’t truly know what He is like, because God is “holy, holy, holy.” (Isaiah 6.3). Once one is taught by the Father through the Scriptures, one can recognize and come to Jesus because the Scripture that one has learned from testify to Him (John 5.39). This leads people to come to believe in Jesus and hear His words. Yet, IT is not His words alone that give life, but as expressed in John 6.63, Jesus’ words are Spirit and life. Elsewhere, Jesus speaks of the Spirit as waters welling up in oneself.

What we see taking place here is a progressive movement in coming to know God and receive the gift of life from outside ourselves to it coming within ourselves. Our relation to God starts from the the Father, whom we do not see and know directly. The holiness of God means that we don’t see Him as He is. However, Jesus as the Word made flesh gives us a look at the Father through Jesus’ words and actions. However, at the same time, Jesus words are not something that are immediately understood and known as the habitual response of His disciples make known, and so understanding Jesus’ words requires the Spirit to provide the life that Jesus’ words speak to. This three-fold movement from the Father, to the Son, to the Spirit is the progressive movement of the life of new creation coming within us.

However, there is something important to understand. We come to know God outside of ourselves before we come to know the Spirit who is inside ourselves. We must always look to God as He is working and speaking outside ourselves to understand the work that God is doing inside ourselves. Principally, we must let Jesus’ words be a guide to the work of the Spirit within us. Our inner experience alone won’t lead us into the God’s will and life, as the inner life for the Christian is being faced by the thinking and desires of the flesh and the thinking and desires of the Spirit (Rom. 8.5-6; Gal. 5.16-17). How can we discern within our inner life what is the Spirit leading and what is the flesh’s leading. Many of the same actions that can be done can be motivated by the desires of the flesh or the desires of the Spirit. When Jesus warns about public piety in Matthew 6, prayer, charity, and fasting can be both motivated by fleshy desires and by the desires of the Spirit. So, we need a outside voice to help us differentiate the conflict between the Spirit and the flesh within ourselves. Jesus’ words of life gives us the outside source by which we can discern the Spirit at life working inside of us. Since the Spirit and the Lord are one (2 Corinthians 3.17-18), what we see in the Lord is what the Spirit is doing and what we find the Spirit is doing is transforming us into glory that we see in the face of Jesus Christ.

However, to receive Jesus’ words as the words that help us discern the Spirit in our life, we must understand Jesus’ words to be words from the holy God, which means we do not naturally comprehend or understand them unless the Spirit who is in us helps us to comprehend them. If we presume to know exactly what Jesus words mean, we lock ourselves into whatever mindset we are in. If it is the Spirit leading us, that is one thing, but if it is the flesh leading us, then we are locked into reading Jesus’ words for a fleshy perspective. But if we believe the Father sent Jesus and we hear and continue in Jesus’ words, then we give our minds the space to allow the Spirit to bring forth meaning that corresponds to what we hear and see from Jesus. So, in humility, we need to receive Jesus’ words as a perpetual word from a holy God who we do not naturally understand and allow the Spirit to continue to bring forth the meaning of Jesus’ words to us and, in so doing, help us to recognize and identify the work of the Spirit in our lives.

As we do this, we begin to be able to discern the work of God in other people’s lives also. Not that we ever see directly what is within them, as we are not Jesus and can only see works and actions, but we can discern words and action consistent with the will of God coming through other people who believe in Jesus and are lead by the Spirit. As we know the Triune God, we come to recognize others lead by the Triune God who speak and act in accordance to Jesus and the Spirit. So, we trust that the Spirit is working in them as we continually focus our attention to Jesus whose words and actions happened outside of us, allowing us to trust the inner work God is doing in them is in accordance to the Jesus we mutually believe in and listen to.

To live out this matter of Spiritual formation, however, we have to break the chains of cognitive internalism that the modern world has bequeathed to us. The truth of God comes from outside of ourselves by God’s own teaching and self-expression before we recognize and know the truth within ourselves. This is how the Christian life proceeds from the Triune God, the Father teaches us leading us to Jesus, whose words of life bring forth the Spirit of life welling up within ourselves. It starts with God as we do not see Him, then moves to God who is outside of us but whose words and actions we can hear and understand, then moves towards the Spirit gushing up within us.

The modern world wants to progress from the inside-out, but the progression towards understanding, knowing, and doing God’s will is outside-in. It is the difference between “Be the change you want to see in the world” and “Discover and believe what God is doing in the world and it will become part of you.”

Colossians 2.8-10:

See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the universe, and not according to Christ. For in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily, and you have come to fullness in him, who is the head of every ruler and authority.

We all have a history. We have the history of our personal upbringing, our culture, our community, our nation, etc. Our histories have a way of helping to define the way we understand ourselves, others, and the world around us. Sometimes these histories are the result of an emergence of relative recent values, practices, and events, which will leave us experiencing a dissonance with those whose formative life periods were not experienced under similar conditions. For my generation, the emergence of the internet helped define my generation, particularly those of us who are older millenials, as existing between two different worlds. On the one hand, we were the first to step into the new communication technologies, but at the same time we grew up in a world that had a longer history.

So, I grew up divided between two commonly differing ‘histories’ between a tradition and a new, emerging pattern. As a consequence, I have a vantage point to see how different cultural patterns can both play together and also conflict with each other. My tradition extends from the white south, of which I have seen much good but also I have discovered much injustice present within it that my emerging ‘history’ allows me to observe and notice. Nevertheless, I can not jettison the entirety of these traditions, but my conscience does not allow me to turn these traditions into an authoritative, unquestionable Tradition.

I have come to have a similar perspective about the traditions of the orthodox Christian faith. To cut off any speculations and theological hyper-vigilance from the get go, I am a theologically orthodox. While I have still much learning to do, I consider myself to have a conciliar theology that finds the Church councils of the first centuries of the Church to be important voices we must hear from as we seek to understand the confession of faith in Jesus Christ that we have. I place much value in the collective voices of the early Church as the outworking of the Holy Spirit. However, I have come to question both the role of the Christian tradition in the the emergence and training in faith and also the way we champion specific figures of the traditions as representing to us the truth of the Gospel. We necessarily need the traditions of the Church to help us to hear the Gospel without telling the wrong sort of story; we don’t need to tell the Arian story that the Logos of John 1.1 was Himself created, lest we take away the power of God Himself from the Gospel of Jesus Christ. However, when the tradition morphs into Tradition, we treat the teachings of the Tradition as the representation of the Gospel and we lift up the theological “champions” of the past as venerated figures.

 My first example is the doctrine of the Holy Trinity. The doctrine of the Trinity importantly protects the way we tell the Gospel story in a way that the Scriptures don’t make explicit. It reminds us that the one God we trust is known as the Father and as the Son and as the Spirit. However, there is a distinct difference from the way the Trinity protects the way we tell the story of God and the way the doctrine is treated as most important content of faith and the various debates over Trinitarian ontologies are treated of the highest theological importance. This later focused emerged as the result of the significant influence of philosophy on the early debates on Christology that allowed believers to hash out important distinctions. However, this useful tool for addressing narrow questions of central importance to understanding of the Gospel took on a life of its own, treating the content of the Christian faith as a facsimile of philosophy. If we value tradition, then we can recognize the important of the doctrine of the Trinity, but if we move towards valuing Tradition, our faith becomes controlled by all the ways the Tradition itself developed.

As to the champions of orthodoxy, I lift up Athanasius as a central target of a misplaced honor. The dogged persistence of Athanasius was certainly pivotal in protecting the Church from Arianism. However, the Nicene Creed was a reflection of the Church’s voice, not Athanasius himself. By many accounts, Athanasius was a morally ambiguous character. This doesn’t mean that we should forget Athanasius or treat him as vile, but we should carefully reflect on the value of his overall theology to the Church. Athanasius was not a beacon of gentleness and mercy. For instance, Athanasius thought that Arians’ should be “held in universal hatred for opposing the truth.” With such hostility in mind, read this following quote from Athanasius on debt of death for which Christ came to redeem us from:

But since it was necessary also that the debt owing from all should be paid again: for, as I have already said , it was owing that all should die, for which special cause, indeed, He came among us… (De Incarnatione 20).

While Athanasius was accused of murdering a person who was still alive, Athanasius statements and theology represent a very punitive worldview that people deserve to die for their sins and errors. While that doesn’t mean we should throw everything Athanasius said, insofar as Athanasius understanding of the Incarnation is tainted by the death-dealing worldview, I can not respect his broader theology of representing the truth of the Gospel. The Holy Spirit can use ambiguous figures who do love God and seek the truth to accomplish His purposes, but that doesn’t mean everything the defenders of the faith said is gold, silver, and precious stones that will last when God’s judgment comes to the whole world; much of it is wood, hay, and straw. When we venerate the Tradition, these figures take on greater importance, and their own brokenness becomes passed onto us through the authority of the Tradition. I hold Athanasius’s proto-substitionary explanation for the Incarnation responsible for the latent anger and predilection towards death that Christian circles influenced by penal substitution have a tendency to embrace in ways they aren’t readily aware of, because the nature of your worship will form the type of person you become. The Incarnation of Jesus is important, but Athanasius’ words aren’t necessarily so.

For a more contemporary example, I am highly indebted to John Wesley’s theology in my study of Scripture. For instance, his understanding of grace fueled my explorations of the New Testament to understand the various ways in which the power of God in Jesus Christ and the Spirit manifests His influence on our lives. However, let me state that I think the brokenness of Wesley and his theology was transmitted to me. I developed a “methodological” approach to living the Christian life that left me in somewhat of a perfectionist mentality. Additionally, Wesley’s own failures with relationships with women, which I attribute to his own ethical style, was transmitted to me. Even as the Wesleyan tradition has much to say, to the extent I treated it as a Tradition, the brokenness of Wesley was transmitted to me.

We need a critical appreciation of the early traditions, recognizing their voices are voices who heard the Gospel in a way that wasn’t as controlled and malformed by later traditions. At the same time, the proclaimed truth of the Gospel is conditioned to the disclosure of the eternal Holy Spirit and not any individual person or individual period of time. If we are to take seriously the role of the Holy Spirit in coming to life and learning the truth of the Gospel, then we have to take a step back from the veneration of the Tradition, even as we recognize the collective tradition of the Body of Christ lead by God’s Spirit is something we should give ear to as we seek to understand the Gospel.

When Paul warns against philosophy and empty deceit in Colossians 2.8-10, he partly attributes the problem of this to relying upon human tradition. Now our modern ears might hear “philosophy” as something likened to the metaphysical speculations of Plato or some of the modern, more abstract modes of doing philosophy. This wasn’t what Paul was describing though. Philosophy in the Greco-Roman world was thoroughly ethical in its orientation, even if it did address broader, more “traditional” philosophical topics. These philosophies would regularly rely upon older traditions, such as the Stoics reliance upon Zeno and Chrysippus or the Epicureans reliance upon Epicurus.

However, Paul’s target doesn’t seem to be Greek philosophies, but rather Jewish “philosophies.” When we look at Colossians 2.16-23, the target of Paul’s warning looks much closer to some form of Jewish ethical teaching. Judaism was often treated like a philosophy in the Roman era. Josephus represented the Pharisees, the Sadducee, the Essenes, and a fourth group as philosophical schools. Philo of Alexandria attempted to bridge Judaism with Greek philosophy, with Jewish teachings being the ultimate foundation. Insofar as philosophy was understand as the love of wisdom and wisdom was understood to be ethical, some of the schools within Judaism could be considered a philosophy.

The significance of saying that Paul regards at least some portions of Jewish teaching being a philosophy is profound for us today: that meant that the Jewish tradition Paul grew up in was also something that Paul regarded as a human tradition that could lead people astray. The very people who study God’s Scriptures could form a tradition that misleads people. This overlaps with Jesus’ criticism of the tradition of the elders as misleading people to break the commandment of God (Matthew 15.1-9) As a consequence, these human traditions that came from the Jewish faith are forms of human righteousness rather than God’s righteousness (Romans 10.3; Philippians 3.8-9). As a result, they are not based upon the power and work of God, but rather the basic principles of the world in which we live. Hence, the instructions Paul say to reject are based upon not handling, tasting, or touching, as very basic, element actions in the world.

Herein lies the problem of Tradition: it can readily enshrine all too common earthly, fleshly realities as the power of God. When tradition doesn’t function to point us towards the power of God in the Gospel of Jesus Christ so that through the fullness of Jesus Christ we can experience fullness in him, but instead functions as the foundations for the Christian faith, we begin to slowly usher in the earthly, the fleshy, the human into our theology, worship and devotion, rather than allowing the loving power of God who gives us new life to define and redefine our theology, worship, and devotion. Even as Athanasius’ Incarnation theology and Wesley’s theology on grace points to the life-giving power of Jesus Christ, they both also bear deep human brokenness in their theology that when transmitted directly or indirectly in an authoritative way can bathe the Church within human brokenness that comes to rely so much on basic earthly principles. In this modern age, I would suggest human power has been this earthly principle.

Edited to add: About 40 minutes after posting this, I saw the following tweet:

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Some of you care more about your institutions & traditional ideology than you do about the people who have been hurt by them. For the longest time, your desire to protect “it” & “them” over “me” was how I thought God based my worth. I’m glad Christ loves us more than you have.

— Hannah Kate (@freedomsbride) August 23, 2020

Hannah Kate’s story is one you research if you wish. But let me request and urge you to consider how much Tradition can be used mislead and be used in the service of harming others, rather than raising people up and loving Christ. Let us constantly repent and unlearn as we return to the Word of God in the fullness of Christ through the Spirit who gives us life, which sometimes includes learning how to use our traditions appropriately in life-giving ways.

As I have written a bit about previously, the Gospel of John distinguishes between two types of “faith” early in the gospel: believing in the name of Jesus and believing in Jesus. These two ways of describing faith do not appear to be simply synonymous phrases, but they appear to actually describe a form of a development in faith for some people. The differences between the two may be considered to roughly correspond to the difference we think of when talking about knowing about Jesus vs. knowing Jesus. However, to believe in the name of Jesus is a bit more positive and hopeful in the Gospel of John than the often implicit judgment we give towards people we consider to only know about Jesus. The modern distinction is often said with a hint of spiritual superiority and exclusion, whereas the distinctions between the two forms of faith in the Gospel of John is meant to be encouraging for those who believe in the name of Jesus, but have yet to believe in Him.

The description of believing in the name of Jesus starts back in John 1.12-13:

But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave the choice (ἐξουσίαν) to become children of God, who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God.

It doesn’t say that those who believe in Jesus’ name ARE children of God. Rather, the Greek word for ἐξουσία is used to assign some power or possibility. Given the way John portrays Nicodemus in John 3, which I will come to in a moment, the best way to interpret ἐξουσία is some freedom or choice that the believer has. In other words, to believe in the name of Jesus brings one into a place where one may become a child of God. Granted, the purpose here isn’t to suggest that people can make themselves a child of God, but rather to put forward that they are put into a position where they could come to become a child of God. The Gospel of John doesn’t say here what “triggers” God’s action on their behalf.

The best way I can think to phrase is that to believe in the name of Jesus is to put oneself in a state of liminality, where one is no longer of this world but that one has not fully come over to the light of God in Jesus Christ either. This liminal phase may make one more open to hearing and reading the Scriptures differently than before believe in Jesus. As Jesus says in John 6.44-45, those who are taught by the Father come to Jesus, whereas those who read the Scriptures for other purposes than to know God, such as to obtain life, will not see the Scriptures testifying to Jesus (John 5.39-40). Perhaps by believing in Jesus’ name, one is in a place where one can learn from the Father through the Scriptures in a fresh way.

This leads me to what exactly it means to believe in Jesus’ name. In John 2.23-25, there are people who believing in Jesus’ name, but yet Jesus does not entrust Himself to them. Then, we have Nicodemus enter in the narrative immediately afterwards, suggesting he is an example of a person who believes in the name of Jesus. This is confirmed by the fact that Jesus is rather indirect and does not describe exactly how someone comes to be born from above. He leaves Nicodemus hanging about heavenly matters because Nicodemus does not understand the earthly matters. This is Jesus not entrusting Himself to Nicodemus.

What we see that Nicodemus says to Jesus at the beginning is similar to what caused the people in John 2.23-25 to believe in Jesus: they both saw and recognized the signs that Jesus was performing. They could tell that God was at work in Jesus, as Nicodemus makes this rather explicit. In so doing, they recognize that Jesus has a power from heaven at work in Him. Later in John 10.38, we see Jesus contrasting believing in Him with believing in the works he did, suggesting that recognition of Jesus’ power leads people to understand that God the Father is present with Him. At the heart of believing in the name of Jesus is to believe in His reputation and power that He had in virtue of his works so that one believed that He was sent by and was present with God.

This is the state that so many Christians are at today. So many of us confess that God is present with Jesus, even going so far as to recognize that Jesus is the second person of the Holy Trinity. So many of us have recognized the reputation and power that Jesus has. This is not a bad place to be. One who believes in the name of Jesus is not judged. Rather, it is those who have not believe in His name who are judged because their evil prevents them from coming to Jesus (John 3.18-21).

For instance, the Pharisees are adamant that Jesus is a sinner for healing the blind man on the Sabbath (John 9.13-41), not being able to even believe in the name of Jesus for the wonder he performed. We know from the synoptics that the Pharisees suggesting Jesus exorcised demons by Beelzebub, blaspheming the Holy Spirit who was working in Jesus. They could not bring themselves to believe that God was working in Jesus. So, to believe in the name of Jesus was to set oneself off from those whose evil kept them from acknowledging Jesus.

However, recognizing the power of Jesus’ name does not secure oneself before God. As Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 7.21-23, Jesus does not recognize everyone who knows Jesus as Lord and who do powerful deeds in Jesus’ name. It is one thing to believe in Jesus’ name and not fully come to the Light in this lifetime. It is another thing to use Jesus’ name for one’s honor and status through working powerful works and yet fail to do the will of the Father; such a person should have come to the Light but they did not.

Nevertheless, for the Gospel of John, one who believes in the name of Jesus is not judged. However, it is not the same thing as believing in Jesus. Believing in Jesus goes beyond recognizing the powerful deeds Jesus does, but it comes to believing and learning from His words. When one compares John 3.16 with John 5.24 which both speak of people having eternal life, we see that believing in Jesus is equivalent to hearing Jesus’ word and believing that God sent him. Believing that God sent Jesus is along the lines of believe in the name of Jesus, but something specific happens when one believes in Jesus: His words and instruction become important. To believe in Jesus means one takes His words as the words of eternal life.

We see tension between believing in Jesus’ name and believing in Jesus take place in John 6.60-71. Most of Jesus’ disciples had trouble accepting and continuing in Jesus’ word about eating His flesh and drinking His blood. His words troubled them so that they left. Jesus recognize that some of the disciple didn’t believe. Yet Peter and a few others stay, with Peter acknowledging that Jesus has the words of eternal life. It is only those who genuinely continue in Jesus’ word who are truly Jesus’ disciples and are on the path towards knowing the truth that sets free (John 8.31).

Consequently, to believe in Jesus is to go beyond recognizing the power, authority, and the presence of God with Jesus. It is to recognize that Jesus speaks life and to treasure, cherish, and learn from His words accordingly. To believe in Jesus is to set Jesus as one’s ultimate Teacher, which in doing so sets one’s life on the trajectory where one comes to truth and freedom from sin.

The problem is that the Church today doesn’t really present Jesus as the Teacher of life. We treat Jesus’ words as teachings that we use to justify our moral and theological debates and conflicts. Jesus’ words are readily used as a source of power for us to use to justify ourselves and/or to condemn others. Much as those who read the Scriptures for life do not recognize how the Scriptures testified to Jesus, in a similar way reading and studying Jesus’ words for something other than the life they are to provide gets us off track. We are drawn to the power and authority of Jesus, so we see Jesus’ words as a source of power and authority to appeal for our own concerns and debates.

Let’s just be honest with ourselves. Most of the Church today believes in the name of Jesus and that Jesus’ words are authoritative as a consequence. What most don’t really believe is that Jesus’ words are life. They think their ‘belief’ is life, which readily becomes nothing more than a psychological placebo, rather than believing that it is Jesus and His words that are life. Jesus does not judge such people, but nor does Jesus entrust Himself with the ways of the kingdom to such people either. They aren’t evil but they aren’t really good either. They may be decent, God-fearing people, but they haven’t really come fully into the Light nor do they comprehend and understand the life that Jesus’ words give.

In the end, the life of Jesus’ words is revealed in His love: to give up one’s life for one’s friends. This is what is means to eat of Jesus’ body and drink of His blood: to adopt the very nature of God’s love that Jesus’ words point to. Jesus’ words points us ultimately to his His love as God’s love. Jesus’ words are the direct self-expression of God’s love for the world. So, at the end of the day, to believe in Jesus is to go beyond believing in the power of Jesus, but to draw us into the love of God made known in Jesus Christ. It is Jesus’ words that give us this truth which free us so as to live out that love for others, thereby making ourselves friends of Jesus.

So, let us not judge those who only believe in the name of Jesus. These are people who on the pathway that can lead them to be instructed by the Father, be drawn to Jesus, and come to be God’s children. Let us not look down on them or make them feel somehow they are not within God’s love and favor. However, at the same time, we need to recognize within others and even without ourselves that to believe in Jesus is to dig into Jesus’ words as the words of life from God and God’s love that will give us the life so as to be free to live out this type of love for each other.

Reading the Scriptures, digging into theology, etc. does not make us believers in Jesus; we can do these things passionately as believers in His name. For instance, to believe in Jesus as the second person of the Holy Trinity and to dig deep into Trinitarian theology doesn’t require us to believe in Jesus, but to only believe in Jesus’ name as the Son of God. It is only as God draws us to believe in a deeper way in Jesus that we will experience in the present time the abundant life that God’s Spirit gives to us. Those other activities may give us a sense of meaning, purpose, joy, hope, etc. and can be very important in their proper place for true disciples, but let us never mistake those things as what it means to believe in Jesus. In fact, if we are not careful, those activities can distract us from learning from the Father through the Scripture that can lead us to believe in Jesus. The reality of the Trinity can then come to define our lives as our learning from the Father will lead us to Jesus, who gives the Spirit, making the doctrine of the Trinity a reflection of the reality of our spiritual formation and epistemic knowing of God, rather than simply a doctrine about the powers, relations, and ontologies of the Godhead.

I have always aspired to be a man of “reason.” Even though I have been a believer and follower of Jesus for nearly two decades, there was always a part of me that didn’t want to go off into the “deep end” of religion, where we find people making outlandish claims. I wanted to remain reasonable. Yet, I have found that God has surprised me. Not by getting rid of any sense of reason, but rather by helping me to redefine what reasonable is and isn’t. In the midst of my learning and transformation over the past three years, I have discovered something akin to a prophetic gift residing within me. However, it is nothing something that allows me to forsee the future, but rather I can peer into deeper truths that get confirmed in the following days that I write about it.

If one were to look at my life leading up to these past few years and one believed in signs and visions and audible words coming from God, one would not be surprised at this possibility. My name came from a dream that my mother had and I heard the words “Follow me” uttered to me with no one around, following by “Owen” in a similar fashion a week later.

On another level, I was born on a solar eclipse. Before I went to St. Andrews, we had a full solar eclipse in North American. This event was fortunate as it ended up saving my mother’s life. As my parents went traveling to their cabin where there would be a better view, they had a wreck. In that wreck, my mother was forced to go to the emergency room, where she was mostly okay but they discovered that she had cancer. This solar eclipse which was marking my transition to a new phase in my life was also the instrument of saving my mother’s life. Then a few weeks ago, the comet NEOWISE passed through. I had spent the past three years studying wisdom in 1 Corinthians as part of my thesis, but with the arrival of the comet, a few days later I went through a total upturning of my life where God granted me the ability to see and understand in a way that I couldn’t prior: to combine the sense of the Spiritual and the demonic with my analytical eye.

In the past couple weeks and really past couple of months, I have observed at least three times where my writing foreshadowed something that would happen in the days immediately following. On May 30th, I used the example of an idolatrous billionaire. On May 31st (my blog says June 1st because my blog was still set to my timezone in Scotland, but my twitter verifies it was psoted in May 31), I wrote about the illusion of a national rightenouss. Then during the early afternoon of June 1st (see my twitter to verify the time), I wrote a blog post that made reference to the burdens that the religious Pharisees placed upon people. Then, on the evening of June 1st, we then see Trump, the idolatrous billionaire, hold up the Bible in response to protests, not recognizing the illusion of righteousness such an act had with the manner in which the photo op was set up. In so doing, he used religion that came from God to overlook and ignore the burdens that had been and were continuing to be placed upon people. 

Then on August 5th (The blog post says August 6th as my time settings are set for when I was in Scotland, but my twitter account verifies that I posted it on August 5th), I made a post that had the following that I wrote in it:

Repent, you who have celebrated joyously over money!
Discern, you who have lifted up human power over God!

Then, the next morning on August 6th, Donald Trump, one who celebrates joyously over money, said that Joe Biden would “hurt God,” lifting up a human as one who has power to inflict a wound upon God.

Then, just this week on August 19th, I wrote a post about the image of God and evolution. My purpose behind that post was to make the case that the image of God should undercut the way evolution has been used to control the way we see humans, which implicitly was my way of tearing apart the basis for the eugenics propoganda that fueled 20th century racism that still has an impact today. In that post, I make reference to humans who do not disclose their activities but yet they have an effect as an analogy for understanding how God may not disclose His activities but they still have an effect of human life (to be clear, there is no necessary moral analogy between God and human lack of disclosure). On the next day, August 20th, Steven Bannon, associated with the alt-right, was arrested for with fraud with a fundraising scheme where he did not disclose the truth about the money he was raising.

So, while I don’t understand, for some reason, my writings seem to be a mirrored in one way or another by the impurities and evils that have been plaguing our country. Call me a prophet or not, you can decide. Yet, for some reason, this seems to be happening that I can not readily explain to chance, but that God has been giving my heart and mind insights that are then somehow being verified soon thereafter in American politics.

So why do I share this? Do I share this so that you will start to listen to me more? Do I share this so I can have some greater status with my readers? Not precisely. I have a picture of my future in sight and while I am happy for God to continue to use me in this way, my hope and passion for compassion in the future is not contingent upon someone recognizing anything about me.

I in part share it because it seems like God is up to something. I can’t say exactly what, but God is up to something and I just have been graced to be a part of communicating that.

However, I also share this to lift up a teacher of this prophet as someone God is using and that you should be paying attention to. This teacher is a Diamond in the making, without whose sermons my heart would not have been restored and taught so as to be the person God has lead me to this day to be.

When I was transitioning from ministry to move to Scotland for my education, I had some time to read Scripture in a personal manner and reflect spiritually on where I was at and where God was leading me. I happened upon Isaiah 8.3, where a prophetess has a son and names him Maher-shalal-hash-baz. This passage had always been a bit of joke for me as I regularly quipped that if I ever had a son, I would name him that because it was the longest name in the Bible. However, as there was a small portion of my at that time who considered myself possibly a prophet because of past experiences, this passage was emotionally charged for me because I longed to be married and have a family.

Around this time, I also remet an old crush of mine from high school that I had not seen in years. While I wanted to talk and spend time with her more, I was moving to Scotland so that was a no. However, while I didn’t think about this at the time, my HS crush had the same name as the Diamond in the making, who comes back into my life story a few weeks later. After discovering news of my mother’s cancer, I found a sermon from the Diamond that for the coming months had a prophetic ring to it, as she said many things that were directly pertinent to my own life, including some things that she almost certainly did not understand. This sermon released a bevy of conflicting and powerful emotions, with me not being sure what to think of it, but amidst all the emotions it was a sort of comfort and hope.

In that sermon and in other sermons she gave over the following months, something was happening to me. My heart had been torn by many events in the years prior. While I still sought to follow Jesus, my heart was split and fractured and the part of my heart that guided my mind to learn from and follow Jesus was emotionally exhausted and weak.¹ The warmth and love of God from and through the Diamond began to come together with the mind to form a heart that was growing in strength in seeking after God.² This warmth of the prophetess joined together with the mind of this prophet to form the heart that was forming and brining to birth Christ in me, of which the pains of the previous months and years can only be described as part of the pain of this spiritual childbirth (Galatians 4.19).

I am where I am today because the Diamond spoke a truth that no other  human, not even herself, could have known to tell her to speak on my behalf. Only God gets credit for that; no one else. While my hopes for marriage and a family as I resonated with from Isaiah 6.3 have come not true, that Scripture was analogically true for the relationship between the Diamond and me, as what was birthed and conceived in me is a signal to the changing of the times, much as Maher-shalal-hash-baz similarly foreshadowed the changing of Israel’s history. Quite the surprise from God, I might say.

So, for those who believe they have ears to hear and eyes to see and minds to comprehend: do I have a prophetic gift? If so, then pay attention to what God is doing and consider whether you yourselves need to repent. But beyond that, pay attention to and support the Diamond. If I am a prophet of some fashion, then God ordained her the teacher of this prophet: how much should you support and honor her! I stand here praying for and supporting her from the distance as the circumstances are, with her needing to only to say my name if she ever needs or wants something from me. I invite you get behind her and support her, because God has gifted her in a way that I don’t yet fully comprehend and you should be watching and supporting her future.

Psalm 27.13-14:

I believe that I shall see the goodness of the LORD
in the land of the living.
Wait for the LORD;
be strong, and let your heart take courage;
wait for the LORD!

Isaiah 64.2:

From ages past no one has heard,
no ear has perceived,
no eye has seen any God besides you,
who works for those who wait for him.

Matthew 6.27

And can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life?

One of the things that distinguishes humans from most other animals is our ability to develop extended long-term plans. While some animals are able to anticipate the future and recognize how their actions can lead to different outcomes, humans are able to think extensively about our plans and futures in a way that no other animals are capable of. Whereas other animals are familiar with the “tactics” of life, humans are capable of strategically seeking to implement their long-term goals.

This ability to plan and implement has many useful applications. A wonder of the world like the Eiffel Tower would not be possible if humans did not have the ability to formulate long-term plans. One does not simply decide to build such a monument on the spur of the moment, but it takes a ever-recurring series of steps of thinking, brainstorming, filtering, implementing, and receiving feedback to augment plans in order to be able to accomplish such feats. As God created us to have dominion over His creation, the ability to plan gives us the capacity to fulfill God’s long-term purposes for us and His creation.

Yet, this capacity to make long-term plans also bites us. It is the source of worry and pain as we can “foresee” possible futures where we might be harmed or become irrelevant, so we develop long-term strategies to to try to ensure our continuing security, if not dominance. Our ability to plan for the future leads us to worry about how we can protect ourselves in the future. Armies are raised and trained, resources are stored and hoarded, people are manipulated and pull towards supporting agendas all because we fear the possible futures and we make plans to circumvent those fearful possibilities.

Now, sometimes bad things are approaching and we have reliable enough advance warning to take action now (reliable doesn’t mean perfect). However, much more frequently that that, we are caught worrying about the possibilities and taking action based upon mere possibilities. Our distrust about our security leads us to take action to protect ourselves even though the fear possibilities is incredibly unlikely. In such a condition, we take strong, if not possibly extreme, actions that will entail sacrifices elsewhere, and often we expect and inflict upon others the sacrifices in order to ensure our security and well-being; sacrifices that were not needed, sacrifices that bring grief and harm to ourselves and others, all to ensure our own safety and security.

The Scriptures, particularly the Old Testament, repeatedly warn against trusting in armies, alliances, and rulers. For instance, Psalm 20.7 says:

Some take pride in chariots, and some in horses,
but our pride is in the name of the LORD our God.

This “trust” in other persons or things other than God emerges from our ability to foresee and plan for the future. At the core of idolatry is our ability to see and plan for the future by appealing to some idol or expecting some earthly thing to have the power to ensure our security and well-being into the future. Not only do these things cause harm, but they are also unreliable for long-term planning, as so many things can thwart our various sources of power and security. This is perhaps part of the reason Jesus refers to wealth as an idol, as the parable of the rich fool in Luke 12.13-21 shows what happens when one makes elaborate plans to build storage for his craps in order to prosper in the future: their plans are cuts short and are powerless when God decides their time has come.

In the end, so many of our efforts to protect our future are foolhardy. There are those cases where we need to take the steps today to be ready to take action in the future when they occur, but most of the time, we worry about the future and try to make plans for things that are likely not to occur and these plans may not benefit us like we hope for.

Alternatively, the Scriptures speak of a different way of life: trusting and waiting upon God. Unfortunately, trusting and waiting on the Lord is often times understood as a form of passivity in face of difficult times and troubles, but that isn’t what trusting God is about. When Jesus tells his hearers to trust God in Matthew 6.25-24, he isn’t saying “Don’t do anything, just wait on me to provide.” No. Jesus’ point is that we have enough to focus on today that we need to address, there is no need to try to worry and plan for the future also. Trusting God is about not feeling the need to take account of every possibility about the future and our well-being, but to wait on the Lord to provide when we feel the crunch of the future possibilities that we can not interact with. Otherwise, we will be tempted to take foolhardy action for the future that we foolishly trust will address the future, which will ultimately divert us from what Jesus calls people to seek: God’s Kingdom and His righteousness. It is here that we see what waiting and trusting upon God is ultimately pointing us towards.

At the heart of the Scriptures call for waiting on and trusting God is not some therapeutic mode of coping with the difficulties of life. The purpose is not our ability to cope. Rather, through learning how to cope by trusting in God, we become freed and attentive to seek God’s will and purposes. Coping is instrumental for seeking God’s Kingdom. However, when we do not cope through trusting God well but instead get caught into trying to make big plans for the future, we risk working against the interests of God’s Kingdom. Our hearts become ‘hardened’ to the leading of God to bring good in our present circumstances as an immediate opportunity of the moment, but we are caught interpreting our circumstances through our long-term plans and the potential benefit or risk they have for those plans. Our hearts become prone to overlook, if not even resist, the righteous thriving of life in favor of our other concerns and goals.

However, the truth is that much of our planning for the future is rooted in a subtle yet pervasive feeling, much like the sounds of howling ghost that one hears even if there is nothing we can see and readily point to: despair. We despair our life and the potential threats to our well-being, so we seek to plan for security and progress. At the heart of the compulsive, long-term planning for security and progress is this existential despair that fuels and feeds planning. Flannery O’Connor one observed that “we live in an age which has domesticated despair and learned to live with it happily,” and so we live in an age that domesticates and pushes the awareness of despair to the margins of our awareness by dreams of progress in the future.

At the heart of this despair is something demonic, the denial of the goodness of life. Certainly, those who plan for a glorious future believe there are good things in life and the dream of these things may fuel hope and happiness, but at the core of the compulsive dream of progress is this existential despair that disagrees with God’s word that creation is good. This compulsive dream of progress is, at its core, bereft of trusting and waiting on the Lord to face off against the challenges to life, but instead takes matters in one’s own hands, becoming oblivious to the costs and sacrifices that come at the cost for this vision of “progress” that will never occur. Since the Enlightenment, the West has become drunk on this devilish spirit, believing that the world was fundamentally error and wrong and that a select group of people in as specific period of time are especially privileged and enabled to bring a good future. Time and time again, these dreams of progress have lead to nightmares. The barbarity of the French Revolution, the persistent oppressions committed after Communist revolutions, Western Europe’s dream of progress fall into the terror of world wars and genocide, etc. Dreaming and planning for the future because the world as it was was somehow fundamentally bad has not brought about blessings, but spiraled us into deeper despair, only for us to remember these atrocities and to continue to drink this devilish spirit to get us out this despair THIS time. Like an alcoholic who continues to wash away his woes with a drink, only to bring more pain and suffering, the drunk dreams of “progress” speak of a fundamental distrust of God’s creation and bring about unintended nightmares as a consequence.

This is all because we as humans are planning creatures who try to protect ourselves from the threats we see in the world. If we don’t truly believe and trust that creation is good but rather, narcissistically, that “MY” or “OUR” life is good in a bad, evil world, our fear and anxiety will constantly trigger, tempting us to plan for our well-being and security into the future. We won’t so much see the actual, real threats, but we will hear ghosts that are not really there (we may even miss identifying the real threats because we feel so inundated with the possibilities that we won’t give attention to what really needs attention). Then, it is our long-term planning, which has the capacity to help us to fulfill God’s vision for human life to be in the image of God, that will be turned into a tool that works against the fundamental goodness of God’s creation.

However, if we learn to wait and trust in the Lord and His goodness for this world, we will be able to seek after His Kingdom and His righteousness, to be part of God’s life-giving, loving purposes for His creation. There is a time to plan and strategize, but much of the time we are tempted to do so, we are missing the will of God and acting foolishly, if not unrighteously.