The Theology of the Atonement, Part 2

This is continued from part 1.

Moral influence

“Jesus' death shows the depths of our sin: God came among us, and our only response was to kill him. Jesus' resurrection shows the depths of God's love: even death would not keep him away from us.”

This theory is more popular among some of the more liberal modern-day theologians. Since liberals like it, it's automatically bad, so we'll skip it. Moving on.

Just kidding. Actually, I find this a very beautiful idea, and just because some theologians try to use this to replace penal substitution doesn't mean we should ignore it completely. Jesus came to earth – our Creator, the only truly innocent man, the only one who really didn't deserve anything bad to happen to him – and our response was to kill him. And we didn't just kill him, we picked a pretty awful way of doing it. The folks at Alcoholics Anonymous say that the first step is to admit the problem; seeing our sinfulness demonstrated in this way makes it impossible to not admit it. Jesus' death shames us into recognizing the wrong that we've done.

That's not the end, though. Jesus came alive again. He could have simply stomped out the tomb and gone straight back to heaven. He could have wiped out his recalcitrant creation with a flick of the wrist. Instead, he demonstrated the same love to his followers that he did before his death. Jesus' love spurs us on to do good.

Theosis

“Jesus became like us so that we can become like him.”

Many of us are familiar with some of the arguments between Catholics and Protestants, but we tend to kind of skip over the third major branch of Christendom, the Eastern Orthodox Church. Orthodoxy has a much different view of humanity and salvation than we do. In Catholic and Protestant thought, our major problem is sin. Adam and Eve sinned, so now we all sin, and so Jesus came to pay the penalty of our sin and to enable us to get rid of it so that we can go to heaven.

In Orthodox thought, though, our major problem is death. Because of what Adam and Eve did, they die. We all die. All around us, the world faces death and decay. Jesus came to earth and identified with us, not to merely take us to heaven, but to overcome death and to enable us to become like God. The early church theologian Athanasius said, “God became man so that men might become gods.&dquo; The Orthodox term for this idea is theosis.

This at first sounds like a very strange idea, and if you take it the wrong way, it sounds blasphemous, but it's Biblical: “he has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature” (2 Pe 1:4). Orthodox theologians emphasize that this doesn't at all mean that we become gods rather than human. Instead, they use the analogy of a piece of metal in fire: the metal's nature never changes, but it nonetheless is permeated with the light and energy of the fire. In the same way, although remaining human, we will be permeated by God's holiness. Daniel Clendenin describes it as “believers' real, genuine, and mystical union with God whereby we become more and more like Christ and move from corruption to immortality.”

Our view of salvation is really too small sometimes. We sometimes seem to think of it as merely a “get out of hell free” card or a way of extending the duration of our existence. This is part of it, but Jesus came to earth and died and rose to transform who we are, not to just give us an eternal change of address form. As C.S. Lewis puts it in Mere Christianity,

(God) said that we were “gods” and He is going to make good His words. If we let Him – for we can prevent Him if we choose – He will make the feeblest and filthiest of us into a god or goddess, dazzling, radiant, immortal creature, pulsating all through with such energy and joy and wisdom and love as we cannot now imagine, a bright stainless mirror which reflects back to God perfectly (though, of course, on a smaller scale) His own boundless power and delight and goodness.

Christus Victor

“By becoming human and dying, Jesus entered into battle with all of the enemies of humanity: sin, death, and Satan. His resurrection proved his victory over these enemies.”

This is actually an old view. A different form of it was possibly the view of some of the earliest Christians, before they'd worked out all the theology of penal substitution and so on. By becoming a human, Jesus enters the battleground of this world. Over the course of his ministry he fights all of the aspects of the world's fallenness: oppressive government, corrupt religious leaders, broken relationships, disease and suffering. He dies and battles death and Satan themselves, on their home ground, and emerges victorious.

The Bible also talks about this view. “Our Savior, Jesus Christ, who has destroyed death and has brought life and immortality to light through the gospel” (2 Tim 1:10). “When he ascended on high, he took many captives and gave gifts to his people. What does ‘he ascended’ mean except that he also descended to the lower, earthly regions? He who descended is the very one who ascended higher than all the heavens, in order to fill the whole universe” (Eph 4:8-9). “For since death came through a man, the resurrection of the dead comes also through a man. For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive… Then the end will come, when he hands over the kingdom to God the Father after he has destroyed all dominion, authority and power. For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death” (1 Cor 15:21-26).

Steve Green's song, “He Holds the Keys,” expresses all of this better than I could:

Because sin is defeated, we can change.

Because death is defeated, we know that death is not the end, and so “we do not grieve like the rest of mankind, who have no hope” (1 Thess 4:13).

If Jesus defeated these great enemies of humanity – sin, death, and Satan – then we don't need to worry about lesser enemies – unemployment, dysfunctional politics, allergies, parenting stress.

Summary

Penal substitution reminds us of the seriousness of our sin and the cost of what Jesus did for us.

Satisfaction theory reminds us of the honor and glory that God deserves and the greatness of what Jesus did.

Moral influence reminds us that God's love, not fear of punishment or a set of rules, is what motivates us.

Theosis reminds us of our goal: we are to be transformed to be like Jesus, not merely to live as we are with extended lifespans.

Christus Victor reminds us that Jesus defeated death, sin, and Satan.

The Theology of the Atonement, Part 1

Let's talk theology. In particular, for this Easter season, I'd like to talk about the theology of the Atonement – in other words, our understanding of why Jesus became a human and was crucified and rose again and how this brings about our salvation.

Theology sometimes has a reputation of being dry or impractical. From medieval theologians' supposed debates on “How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?” and “Can God make a rock so big he cannot lift it?”, to the sometimes abstruse philosophies of 19th and 20th century thinkers, it's sometimes earned this reputation. It doesn't have to be this way, though. C.S. Lewis compares good theology to a map of the ocean. If you've seen the vastness of the ocean and the power of the wind and the waves, a map can seem dry by comparison – but if you want to sail someplace, you won't get far without one. Similarly, to follow God, we need to experience God, but without knowing anything about him, we won't get far. Theology is simply knowing about God.

There are two ways of approaching theology. The first is to view it as almost a sort of science, figuring out as much as we can about God and explaining as much as we can about God. There's obviously nothing wrong with this – God is kind of an important topic to understand. This first approach is how my mind works; I tend to think along rational and intellectual lines, and I'm uncomfortable with not knowing or with mystery or uncertainty.

The problem with this first approach to theology is that God is God, and we're not, and so we can pretty quickly run into the limits of how much we can know and how much we can explain about God. The second approach to theology is to let our learning about God bring us face-to-face with God's greatness and his transcendence and his majesty and to realize how far beyond our understanding he is, and so to bring us into worship.

So, the theology of the Atonement. I imagine many of us have been taught the traditional view, that because we sinned, we deserve the penalty of death, and Jesus became human and died to bear this penalty, so we can live forever. This traditional view is a good view – it's the best single explanation I've heard – but, throughout the centuries of Christianity, not all Christians have subscribed to this understanding, and Christians still sometimes disagree, so I'd like to take some time to look at other views as well. I'm not interested in just making a list of these theories of the Atonement, all ready for a Bible college test, and I'm not interested in arguing over which view is right. Instead, I think that because we have “so great a salvation” (Heb 2:3), we sometimes oversimplify things by insisting on viewing Jesus' death through the lens of a single theory – especially one that many of us have grown up with and may accept without much thought. I think that looking at some of these other viewpoints can bring us to a new appreciation of Jesus' death and resurrection and so bring us into worship.

A quick warning: I'm probably oversimplifying some of these positions. I'm not a professional theologian, and I'm more interested in how I can better appreciate what Jesus did for me than I am in trying to prove one view or the other correct. If you're interested in a more systematic and thorough treatment, Wikipedia is not a bad place to start.

Penal substitution

“Our sin carries the penalty of death. By dying, Jesus accepted our penalty, so that we are freed from the power of sin.”

As I mentioned, this is the traditional view. Sin isn't just breaking a rule; it's rebelling against God, the source of our life. The consequence is death. God can't simply ignore this rebellion; it violates his justice, and if he permitted his creation, which he sustains, to remain in rebellion against him, he wouldn't be true to himself. So Jesus, by living a sinless life (so that he deserved no consequence of sin himself) and bearing the consequences of our sin, removes the penalty from us.

Knowing this is immensely freeing. I have this nagging voice in the back of my head, “Did I do okay? Did I do enough? Am I good enough?” Jesus death answers that question – it's all been taken care of. Every burst of anger? Paid for. Every selfish deed I've done? Paid for. Every lustful look I've permitted myself? Paid for. Every good deed I've left undone, every encouraging word I've left unspoken? Paid for.

The penal substitution view can kind of get distorted into saying that God is vindictive, that he's angry at us for our sin, like I sometimes lose my temper with my kids when they disobey but blown up to a cosmic scale, and that he takes his anger out on Jesus. That's a warped view, but God's wrath is real: “the wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness” (Rom 1:18). I like how my NIV Study Bible describes God's wrath: “not a petulant, irrational burst of anger, such as humans often exhibit, but a holy, just revulsion against what is contrary to and opposes his holy nature and will” (p. 1709). It's the response of an exterminator to a termite; the response of a surgeon to cancer; the response of a police squad to a meth lab. I'm not saying this to try and scare us into repentance, to go all “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” on us, it's just that appreciating just how serious sin and God's wrath are let us recognize how even Jesus' death and God's love are even greater.

Satisfaction theory

“Our sin robs God of the honor due him. By obeying to the point of death, Jesus renders supreme honor to God, so that we are freed from our debt.”

This is similar to the idea of penal substitution, but the emphasis is a bit different. Penal substitution emphasizes the penalty for our sins and how bad what happened to Jesus was and how that covers our penalty. Satisfaction theory emphasizes the offense to God's honor and how good what Jesus did was and how that repays the offense. This was popularized in the 11th century by a guy named Anselm. I don't generally think in terms of “honor” and “satisfaction,” and when I first heard about this, it seemed like an odd idea, however...

I've been a Christian my whole life, but it wasn't until the last couple of years, when I read a little bit by a modern Christian author named John Piper, that I felt like I started to get a glimpse of just how great God is. And theologians argue that, if you commit an offense against a being, then the greater the being, the greater the offense. This makes sense, intuitively. If you go up to a low-life criminal and spit in his face, it's not polite, but he probably had it coming. If you go up to some random person on the street and do the same, it's a pretty mean thing to do; the person deserves it less, so your offense becomes greater. If you spit at some loving, saintly person – your grandma, maybe, or Mother Teresa – then now we're talking about a pretty despicable act. Now imagine a Being who's greatness towers over Mother Theresa like Mount Everest towers over an ant, and who therefore deserves all the honor that we'd give our grandmothers or Mother Teresa multiplied a thousandfold, and realize that our actions are robbing him of the honor due him.

And this isn't a debt that we can just pay back. If you're behind on a project at work, you put in overtime to catch up. If you're doing poorly at school, you can do extra credit work to boost your grade. If you're worn out from the work week, you sleep in on Saturday. There's all kinds of ways to do extra to make up for a shortcoming, but there's nothing extra we can do to pay off our debt to God, because everything is already God's. “The earth is the Lord's, and everything in it” (Ps 24:1). “‘The silver is mind and the gold is mine,’ declares the Lord Almighty” (Hag 2:8). God “gives breath to all living things” (Nu 27:16). “In him we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28).

This is why, according to the satisfaction theory, Jesus became human. Only a human could pay back the debt, because the debt was humanity's. Only God was capable of paying back the debt, because humanity had nothing more they could give. Therefore, Jesus came as a man, and by obeying God to the point of death, he satisfied God's honor and repaid our debt.

Our descriptions of Jesus' death usually focus on how terrible it was, and it was pretty terrible. But I like this idea from satisfaction theory about how good, in a sense, it was, about how much Jesus honored God through his obedience and his sacrifice. This is a very Biblical idea. Hebrews 5:8 says that Jesus “learned obedience from what he suffered” – not that Jesus came to know something he didn't know before, or did something that he didn't know how to do before, but he took on a new experience, he demonstrated something new. Philippians 2:5-11 has perhaps the most beautiful statement of this idea.

Have the same mindset as Christ Jesus:
Who, being in very nature God,
     did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage;
rather, he made himself nothing
     by taking the very nature of a servant,
     being made in human likeness.
And being found in appearance as a man,
     he humbled himself
     by becoming obedient to death—
     even death on a cross!

Therefore God exalted him to the highest place
     and gave him the name that is above every name,
that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,
     in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord,
     to the glory of God the Father.

Jesus glorified God by obeying him, even to the point of death, and now Jesus is glorified to the highest place.

Part two covers three more views: moral influence, theosis, and Christus Victor.

Hair Loss

I have a mole on my forehead.

That, by itself, is not particularly interesting, but because of its position, it's helped me to track my slowly thinning hair. Several years ago, when I first noticed it, it was covered by enough hair that I couldn't even tell what it was. A while later, and I could make it out fairly easily; now, it's covered only because of how I happen to comb my hair. Several years from now, it will be visible for all to see, a moley testimony to my receding hairline.

I'm only 34, but the mole on my forehead isn't the only reminder that I'm getting older. I take eyedrops to prevent glaucoma. I have ringing in my ears. My shoulder and wrist joints let me know, at various times and in various ways, that they weren't really designed to sit at a computer all day. And I know that all of the real indignities of age – bifocals for eyes that have lost the ability to refocus, age-related hearing loss, arthritis and colonoscopies – are still to come. Paul wrote that “outwardly we are wasting away,” and while I really can't say that I know how he feels – I'm still too young, and my life is too easy, and American healthcare is too good – I can at least see there from here.

John Ortberg writes, “There is a strange gift in aging. God, in his severe mercy, sends us daily reminders that the game will end” (p. 50).

Ecclesiastes is a bleak book; bleak enough that parts of it seem like they don't even belong in the Bible. But its perspective is a necessary reminder that our time and our health on earth are limited:

Remember your Creator
     in the days of your youth,
before the days of trouble come
     and the years approach when you will say,
     “I find no pleasure in them”…
Remember him – before the silver cord is severed,
     and the golden bowl is broken;
before the pitcher is shattered at the spring,
     and the wheel broken at the well,
and the dust returns to the ground it came from,
     and the spirit returns to God who gave it.
“Meaningless! Meaningless!” says the Teacher.
     “Everything is meaningless!” (Eccl 12:1-8)

It's easy to simply let time pass. “High school, college, grad school is merely temporary; I'll get moving once it's done. This job is just to pay the bills for now, so I'll simply mark time until something better comes along. Doing anything with young kids is too hard; I'll do more later. Retirement is approaching; I'll just wait until then.” And so time passes, and years pass, sometimes without our ever stopping to notice and grab the opportunities that God gives us and live up to the purposes to which God calls us.

Our time is limited. Let's make the most of it.

Teach us to number our days,
     that we may gain a heart of wisdom. (Ps 90:12)

Kakure Kirishitan

(This is a continuation of sorts to an earlier posting.)

Many of the elements of the Tales of the Otori are drawn from the real-life history of Japan, and the persecution of the Hidden (a small religious sect based on real-life Christianity) is no exception. Christians' mission to and persecution in Japan are a chapter in the history of Christianity that's rarely discussed in the American church. The first recorded Christian missionary in Japan was Francis Xavier, a Spanish missionary who landed in Japan in August of 1549. He and other missionaries met with significant success, and by the end of the 16th century, there were an estimated 300,000 baptized believers in Japan, making Japan one of the largest Christian communities outside of Europe.

This changed at the beginning of the 17th century, first under the ruler Toyotomi Hideyoshi, who issued an (initially laxly enforced) edict of expulsion against European missionaries, and then under Hideyoshi's successors Tokugawa Ieyasu and Tokugawa Iemitsu, who started persecuting Christians in earnest. Many missionaries were forced to leave, and several who tried to stay were beheaded. The persecution was absolutely brutal:

Every kind of cruelty was practised on the pitiable victims of the persecution. Crucifixion was the method usually employed in the case of Japanese Christians; on one occasion seventy Japanese at Yedo were crucified upside down at low water, and were drowned as the tide came in. For Europeans the penalty was generally burning alive… As the persecution moved forward, what the authorities wanted was not death but apostasy. The torments were carried to the point at which resistance was almost impossible; again and again victims were brought back from the point of death, and then again put to the torture. Apostasies among the Japanese were very numerous, and we have the records of seven missionaries, all as it appears Jesuits, who gave way and apostatized… Most of these almost immediately afterwards recalled their apostasy and died… The number of those put to death was about 1,900 in twenty-four years, of whom sixty-two were European missionaries. To these must be added the far larger number of those who died from the hardships of imprisonment and malnutrition. There were, no doubt, cases of timidity and too ready repudiation of the faith. But the great Japanese persecution has added a memorable chapter to the long record of Christian endurance and faithfulness unto death. (A History of Christian Missions, Stephen Neill, p. 137-138)

One common form of persecution was the fumie, a bronze or stone image of Jesus or Mary. Japanese soldiers would order suspected Christians to trample on the fumie; anyone who did was considered an apostate or unbeliever, while anyone who refused was tortured or killed.

The horrible persecutions almost wiped out Christianity in Japan. Those Christians who survived went into hiding, passing along their beliefs by word of mouth. They became known as Kakure Kirishitan (“Hidden Christians”). Over the centuries following the persecutions, their beliefs became garbled and mixed with the beliefs of those around them:

Worship without benefit of a Bible or book of liturgy had taken a toll, however: their faith survived as a curious amalgam of Catholicism, Buddhism, animism, and Shintoism. Over the years the Latin words of the mass had devolved into a kind of pidgin language. Ave Maria gratia plena dominus tecum benedicta became Ame Maria karassa binno domisu terikobintsu, and no one had the slightest idea what these sounds meant. Believers revered the “closet god,” bundles of cloth wrapped around Christian medallions and status, which were concealed in a closet disguised as a Buddhist temple. (Soul Survivor, Philip Yancey, p. 275-276)

American evangelical Christians have an odd relationship with persecution. Within the States, we demonstrate a persecution complex. We're sometimes quick to label anything – from zoning disputes, to overzealous school administrators' attempts to regulate prayer, to public opposition of the sort we should expect in a democracy, to legitimate opposition to pseudo-Christian hate speech – as religious persecution. We talk as though we're a threatened minority, under constant assault from secularists; in taking this attitude, we're seemingly oblivious to our substantial numbers (over one third of Americans, by some estimates) and political clout (which is demonstrated every election season, as politicians court the evangelical vote). (Ironically, I've seen Internet forums where secularists talk as though they're a threatened minority, under constant assault from evangelicals.) We get defensive and combative in the face of slights real and imagined.

While we demonstrate a persecution complex inside the U.S., we almost romanticize persecution outside of the U.S. 1,800 years ago, Tertullian said, “The blood of Christians is the seed of the church,” and we continue to believe this. We talk about how the church spread throughout the Roman empire, in spite of the persecution there, and then lost its vitality once it became state-sanctioned. We talk about the growth of house churches in China, in spite of the Chinese government's hostility, and the discussions that I've heard about this have an almost wistful air, as if we wish that the soft, lukewarm American church could experience a bit of purifying hardship so that it could get some of that vitality too.

There are just two problems with this approach. First is that persecution – the crucified-and-left-to-drown, whipped-and-tormented, firebombed-your-church sort that people overseas have experienced, not the received-some-unpleasant-speech sort that we usually experience in the U.S. – is bad. The second problem is that, as the Kakure Kirishitan in Japan illustrates, sometimes persecution works. Sometimes the church isn't strengthened by purifying hardships; sometimes it barely survives.

I don't like stories like this. I want to see the church always triumphing over its opposition. I want to see the evangelical agenda sweeping Congress and the White House. I want to see the church always growing in numbers and influence. I want my beliefs validated by knowing that numerous other people agree with me. I don't want to have to put up with ridicule or scorn or blind hostility.

I don't like stories of post-Christian Europe or the faith of the Kakure Kirishitan hanging by a thread in Japan or the declining number of Protestants in America. Jesus promised that “the gates of Hades will not overcome” his church (Mt 16:18), but it's hard to reconcile this with the church fading to irrelevance in postmodern Europe or barely surviving in 17th century Japan.

However, although Jesus promised that the church would be victorious in its assault on the gates of Hades, he never promised that this victory would be in our time frame and on our terms. And Jesus also repeatedly promised persecution and opposition (Mt 5:13, Mt 24:9, Mk 10:30, Mk 13:9-11, Lk 21:12, Jn 15:19-21, 2 Tim 3:12).

I keep wanting to see the church succeed in human terms: numbers, respect, political and cultural clout, being powerful enough to avoid hardship. But Jesus' promise is that we will overcome on God's terms: lives transformed from within, blessedness in persecution, God's “power made perfect in weakness” (2 Cor 12:9).

Further reading: Cal Thomas's 1996 column, “Christians shouldn't gripe about persecution,” is still the best commentary I've read on how American Christians view opposition and how we should view it.

Yet Another Petraeus Commentary

General David Petraeus sinned.

I'm not particularly interested in talking about the specifics of his sin. As C.S. Lewis said, “One man may be so placed that his anger sheds the blood of thousands, and another so placed that however angry he gets he will only be laughed at. But the little mark on the soul may be much the same in both.” I might add that one person may be so placed that his sin gets him humiliated in national front page news, while another person so placed that his sin remains only between him and God. Most of us are fortunate enough to be more like the second person. The immediate consequences of the first man's sin are greater and are newsworthy, but the recent media frenzy surrounding Petraeus extends beyond that.

I'm more interested in some of the reactions to Petraeus's sin. “How,” reporters, columnists, and bloggers ask, ”could such an intelligent man – the head of the Central Intelligence Agency – make such a dumb mistake?”

The answer, of course, is that intelligence and morality don't really have anything to do with each other. A good intellect doesn't automatically mean good judgment. Sin can make people do dumb things.

I'm a pretty smart guy; more than smart enough to think through, in the abstract, the consequences of my actions and inactions. That often doesn't make a difference when the moment of decision comes; either I don't stop to think, or I ignore my reasoning to do what I want, or I convince myself that this time the consequences will work out differently. Intelligence – “knowing better” – has not helped me to actually do better. And I don't think I'm alone. Very few people, if told that they need to lose weight or stop smoking or spend more time with their family or give more of their time and money, will say, “Oh, thank you. I didn't know that. Now that I know that, I will immediately make the appropriate changes.” It's nice to think that Petraeus's problem – and our problems – are simply the result of not being quite smart enough, something that could be fixed simply with a little careful thought or the right kind of education or some better decision-making. In reality, though, our problems run much deeper than the mind; they affect the heart and the will.

Our society values intelligence. For the first eighteen years or so of your life, you're evaluated primarily on the basis of your intelligence and how well you apply it in school. Even into adulthood, your IQ has a huge impact on college, career and income. Surprisingly, and in contrast to modern society, the Bible has almost nothing to say about intelligence. In fact, other than describing a few people (Abigail, Solomon, Daniel, and Sergius Paulus) as smart, Scripture only mentions intelligence once, in Isaiah 29:14 (also quoted in 1 Cor 1:19):

Therefore once more I will astound these people
with wonder upon wonder;
The wisdom of the wise will perish,
the intelligence of the intelligent will vanish.

The Bible does, however, have a lot to say about wisdom: good judgment, “experienced and competent mastery of life and its various problems” (TDNT, p. 1057). The Bible mentions wisdom hundreds of times, with Proverbs 9:10 being one of the best known verses:

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom,
and knowledge of the Holy One is understanding.

Intelligence, schooling, knowledge, and reasoning are all good things, and I'm very thankful for them. But it's good to remember that they won't ultimately save us, and they may not even protect us in the short term from the destruction and humiliation that sin can bring. Wisdom, good judgment, and the fear of the Lord are far more important.

Election Night Musings

It's Tuesday night, and all anyone seems to want to talk about is the election. TV shows have been bumped so networks can show election coverage. Statisticians like Nate Silver hone their mathematical models to try and predict the outcome. Various web sites show fancy data visualizations of state-by-state polls and electoral vote breakdowns. Co-workers wonder if they're going to be able to sleep tonight. All of this is in an effort to find out, as soon as humanly possible, who will be the president in 2013.

There is, of course, a much simpler way of finding out who will be the president in 2013: turn off the TV and computer, read a book or play a board game, go to bed, and check the news the next morning. This is, of course, very hard to do for anyone who cares one whit about American politics; I'm resisting the urge myself to go check web sites.

Why do we feel like we need the hour-by-hour, state-by-state breakdown? Why do we care so much about something we can't affect? Why can't we choose the simpler, faster, less stressful alternative of simply waiting?

We hate not knowing what's going to happen.

We hate uncertainty. We hate the unknown.

We hate not being in control, and knowing what's going to happen – knowing, in some small way, the future – lets us feel like we're in control.

Lack of control is really at the heart of worry. I don't worry about the things that I can control; I simply handle them. Even if it's something bad, as long as I have control, I can deal with it. It's often less stressful to deal with the certainty of something bad, as long as it's a situation where I have some control, than to deal with the possibility of something bad, about which all I can do is worry.

We expend enormous effort trying to control the world around us, trying to know what's going on, even to the point of distorting our view of the world just to believe that it's controllable. All of this is in an effort to establish some security in our lives, but tragedies both national and personal show us how fragile security is.

As a Christian, I've come to believe that this need for control is something that we need to outgrow. The Bible makes it very, very clear that God is in control and that God knows the future and that that's good enough. The Bible and my everyday life make it very, very clear that I'm not in control. Yet I continue to expend mental energy worrying about matters such as national politics, climate change, the culture wars – things over which I have almost no influence – when I could instead devote that energy to those areas where God has clearly called me – growing in my walk with him, developing my relationships with family and co-workers, making the best use of the gifts he has given me.

So I'm doing my best to tune out the election news today. I've already done everything that's in my control – I've read about the candidates, I've prayed, I've cast my vote. Now, instead, I'll try practicing the discipline of focusing on what's around me, where I can make a difference, instead of worrying about where I can't.

Of the Tales of the Otori

I've been reading the Tales of the Otori, a series of five historical fantasy novels by Lian Hearn set in an imaginary Japan. The novels are noteworthy for several reasons—their beautifully evocative descriptions of Japan's culture and landscapes; the web of attractions, loyalties, and rivalries that binds the characters' stories and lives together; the sparse, engrossing storytelling—and the first three novels in the series, at least, are a very enjoyable read.

In her preface to the first book, Lian Hearn writes that “neither the setting nor the period is intended to correspond to any true historical era, though echoes of many Japanese customs and traditions will be found.” Accordingly, many aspects of the story have analogues in the real world, and I was surprised to recognize that the novels' Hidden, the small religious sect in which the main character was brought up, corresponds to real-life Christianity. The books never use the words “Christian” or “Christ,” but there are plenty of details about the Hidden that make the relationship obvious. The Hidden believe in one God and ignore the gods and goddesses worshipped around them. They are forbidden to kill or (in contrast to the honor-bound warrior class) to commit suicide. They're taught to forgive, as the main character reminds himself even after his village is destroyed and his family killed in the first chapter of the first book. The Hidden practice a “ritual meal” (the Lord's Supper) (Across the Nightingale Floor, p. 20) and “speak of being reborn through water” (Across the Nightingale Floor, p. 29). Later books make the link between the books' Hidden and real-life Christianity even more explicit, referring to the cross and to “the son of God when he walked on earth.”

The Hidden are ruthlessly persecuted in the Three Countries (the setting of the Tales of the Otori). Their persecution is explained in the first book, in a conversation between two women, Kaede and Shizuka, who are discussing Iida, the villain of the book:

One evening Shizuka, uncharacteristically subdued, whispered to her [Kaede] that men and women had been found… they were to be hung from the castle walls until they died of hunger and thirst. The crows pecked at them while they were still alive.

“Why? What crime did they commit?” she questioned.

“They say there is a secret god, who sees everything and who they cannot offend or deny. They would rather die.”

Kaede shivered. “Why does Lord Iida hate them so?”

Shizuka glanced over her shoulder, even though they were alone in the room. “They say the secret god will punish Iida in the afterlife.

“But Iida is the most powerful lord in the Three Countries. He can do what he wants. They have no right to judge him.” The idea that a lord's actions should be judged by ordinary village people was ludicrous to Kaede.

“The Hidden believe that their god sees everyone as equal. There are no lords in their god's eyes. Only those who believe in him and those who do not.” (Across the Nightingale Floor, p. 87)

The third book is even more blunt in explaining the persecution of the Hidden:

“They believe everyone is equal in the eyes of their God, and that he will judge everyone after death. Great lords like Iida hate this teaching. Most of the warrior class do. If everyone is equal and God watches everything, it must be wrong to treat the people so badly. Our world would be overthrown from the ground up if everyone thought like the Hidden.” (Brilliance of the Moon, p. 23, emphasis added)

The world values power over service, status over humility, acquisition over giving, comfort over sacrifice, strength over character, convenience over doing the right thing. The world says that the people of our own tribe are more important than people different than us. The world values people for what they can do (how they can benefit us) rather than for who they are. Even when the world tries to do otherwise (for example, saying “business people need to have character”), it can't help but turn it into a means to an end (“…because that will make them more successful!”).

Christianity turns this thinking on its ear. Christians cared for plague victims and started orphanages. They start schools, hospitals, and homeless shelters. They fought inequalities from slavery to racial segregation in the U.S. to the caste system in India. They fight for the unborn and oppose euthanasia. All of this is to help the powerless, the poor, those of other races—all people who the world's value system would ignore or oppress.

We're used to Christianity. Our culture, for all of its faults, has been deeply influenced by Christian values. We at times have made compromises with our culture, which further blurs the distinction between Christianity and the world. For these three reasons, I'm afraid that we sometimes forget how truly radical Christianity is. The perspective of an outsider (such as the characters of the Tales in the Otori) can help remind us of just how much Christianity runs counter to the world's standards, how it's purposed by God to “overthrow the world from the ground up.”

Let's not lose sight of this.

Jesus himself shows most clearly how God overthrows the world from the ground up. He said that the poor, the hungry, the sad, and the looked-down-upon are those who are truly happy (Luke 6:20-22). He said that the rich, the well fed, and the religious people of his day were not nearly so well off as they thought (Luke 6:24-26). Although he had literally all the power and possessions in the world, he did not use them. When fans sought after him, he discouraged them (Luke 9:57-62, John 2:23-25, John 6:60-66). When foes betrayed and beat him, he forgave them. He could have commanded obedience; instead, he became a servant. Instead of conquering the world by an exertion of raw power, he submitted to every evil that the world could throw at him, dying to it, and by dying, became the Savior of all.

Further reading: “The Difference between a Theologian of the Cross and a Theologian of Glory,” by Justin Taylor; 1 Corinthians 1:18-31; Philippians 2:5-11