:: In.a.Mirror.Dimly ::

The deeper I go into Christianity, the more I feel compelled to write about the Holy Spirit and to root more of my belief and practice in the presence of the Spirit.

On the one hand, I think this is the absolutely correct way to move with Christianity, but on the other I wonder if Christians today are so diverse in our experiences and knowledge of the Holy Spirit that writing anything with a focus on the Holy Spirit could cause a lot of trouble without making sure we’re all on the same page first.

Here’s my question for you: Has the Holy Spirit helped or confused you as a Christian?

I’ve had a little of both. For a while I really struggled to understand the Holy Spirit and even feared that I wasn’t a real Christian because I didn’t experience the Holy Spirit like my charismatic friends and family.

Today I’m far more comfortable with the place of the Holy Spirit in my walk as a Christian, but that has been some hard-won comfort.

I hope to write some more about the place of the Holy Spirit in a week or two, but for now, I’m curious where you’re at.

I don’t follow everything that the Bible teaches.

Neither do you.

In fact, nobody follows everything in the Bible.

Having said that, I care deeply about letting God speak authoritatively over my life, and one of my commitments as an evangelical Christian is to study a historically accurate Bible that is relevant for today and is used by the Holy Spirit to speak into our lives.

If I’m looking to the Bible for guidance, then I don’t want to arbitrarily ignore one part while listening to another.

The problem with taking the Bible literally or constructing a “biblical” view of anything is that you inevitably end up picking and choosing certain passages over others. And even if you can find a clear teaching in the Bible, the application gets really dicey.

Paul says to honor the government in the book of Romans, but some evangelicals in America have used that as justification for cozying up with the Republican party. Meanwhile the Anabaptists are quick to point out that the Roman Empire was a corrupt, destructive force. Paul was merely telling the Church to go about their business without running afoul of this evil empire.

“Honoring your father and mother” becomes difficult when a child’s parents don’t share his faith—I’ve been there.

A “biblical” view of money has to take into account the presence of affluent Christians who owned homes like Priscilla and Aquila as well as Jesus’ exchange with the rich young ruler where he told him to sell everything and give it to the poor.

In drawing from NT Wright’s understanding of the Bible as a four act play that helps us complete the fifth act, I’d like to suggest that literally following the Bible  is impossible, and that the Bible was never intended to be a reference guide. We are left with a measure of uncertainty as we listen to the Spirit and imperfectly apply scripture to our lives without necessarily proof texting everything we do and believe. 

In fact, the writers of the New Testament took this very approach with the Old Testament.

How Peter Applied the Psalms

With Judas out of the picture, Peter rallied the 11 apostles in an attempt to restore them to a nice even number again. I like to think Peter was a little OCD. “Guys, it’s got to be 12. It just, just has to be 12!!!”

Whatever his motivations, Peter wasted no time in “bending” scripture to support his argument by citing Psalms 69:25 and 109:8. Neither are about Judas. Neither say anything about apostles or even numbers of apostles.

They’re both Psalms that contextually and poetically speak about wicked people. The first is a curse of sorts on the wicked and the other is a prayer that God will send a new leader to replace an evil one.

We can see what Peter is getting at, but his route isn’t exactly historical critical contextual exegesis. He isn’t finding a blueprint for how to structure the apostles in the Psalms. We are light years away from Peter writing up a brief handbook called Biblical Apostleship based on his studies of scripture.  He’s taking two themes from the Psalms and suggesting that they speak into the current situation.

We could argue that he does something similar in Acts 2:25-28 where he takes a Psalm that is historically about David’s Kingship and applies it to Jesus. There is a clear original context for Psalm 16:8-11, but Peter doesn’t let that stop him from using it to inspire his sermon.

Why We Can Eat Rare Steaks

As hard as it is for us to process the way the early church used the Old Testament, I find it equally hard to sort out a consistent way to apply all of the Bible to today. There are certain situations where Christians have seemingly intuitively realized that binding commands for every early Christian no longer apply to us, while other archaic commands for the early church (that make no sense in today’s context) are considered binding.

Let’s take rare steaks for instance…

The letter from James to the wider Gentile congregations explicitly forbids eating/drinking blood. We have no problem sorting out the cultural implications.

It’s simple really. There’s a subtext: They didn’t want to offend the Jewish believers. What does the Bible say? “We should not make it difficult for the Gentiles.” It’s a bit of a nudge, nudge; wink, wink moment.

The Bible doesn’t spell it out for us, and we could technically suggest that a literal reading demands that we should abstain from blood—after all, this is a concession for us. James is trying to remove burdens for us non-Jews. We should be grateful, right?

For a passage like this, we have a much easier time realizing that the Bible is telling us a true story about something that happened to a specific group of people in a particular situation. We have no trouble removing ourselves from the narrative and seeing the wider lessons about removing obstacles for new believers that are non-essential elements of the message about the saving work of Christ.

The irony is that we could read this passage literally and completely undermine it by using it to create obstacles today.

We could make similar arguments about head coverings and women in ministry in 1 Corinthians, although very few Christians today worry about hair length or head coverings in contrast to the church’s deep divisions over women in ministry.

It’s plain to see that Paul was writing to people in a specific context where hair length, head coverings, and women teaching were problematic, hot button issues. He was especially emphatic about head coverings, saying that the churches of God had no other practice on this issue (1 Corinthians 11:16).

We can look back to the culture and understand that head coverings and hair length were important statements about a person’s values and practices. We can also see that few women were educated and that Greek religions distorted women into either sexual vessels for worship or noisy, ecstatic prophets.

These contextual clues make it easy for us to understand the symbols and cultural struggles Paul faced, but today we can only reach consensus on head coverings.

The Many Ways of Reading Scripture

There are times when we read the stories of scripture and intuitively realize that certain teachings or events apply directly to us. When Jesus cried out, “It is finished!” on the cross, we know something about how to apply that. The statements of Jesus about his divinity are equally clear.

However, once we get into the stories and letters of the early church, we have to figure out just how far to take these teachings.

If we’re going to take the Bible literally, then we could even go as far as affirming Paul’s letter to Titus: “One of Crete’s own prophets has said it: ‘Cretans are always liars, evil brutes, lazy gluttons.’ He has surely told the truth!” (1:12-13).

We are always trying to sort out which parts of the Bible apply to us and which don’t. We would never say it quite so clearly as that. On the face of it we want to say that the Bible is authoritative and clear and true and easy to apply. I believe that the Bible is authoritative and true, but how it’s authoritative is another matter since it isn’t clear and it’s not always easy to apply.

Perhaps I’m on the wrong track by seeking after a consistent way of reading the Bible. Is this is another impossible holy grail quest for evangelicals? Will I only find a French castle that catapults the cattle of interpretive uncertainty onto me?

Even the Bible itself doesn’t present a uniform method of interpretation. Paul wasn’t above using allegory (Galatians 4:21-31), and certain stories and letters are easier to sort out than others. There were times in church history where the majority of interpreters relied heavily on allegory for Biblical interpretation.

Their sermons on the Song of Songs are on an awkwardness scale comparable to Michael Scott’s comedy routines on The Office.

A Bible with Uncertainty or Possibility?

While certain teachings in the New Testament are unmistakably clear, applying scripture has never been a precise science. We can surely all agree that the focus on the Gospels is Jesus: his incarnation, Kingdom ministry, death, Resurrection, and promise to return. We can all see that Pentecost jump-started the church and must remain central to our identity if we hope to persevere.

How we work out the details of Christian living and doctrine is another matter.

All is not lost. In fact, we could say this is a win.

Whereas I used to read the Bible to find the theological cheat sheet—a cheat sheet that came dangerously close to actually reading the Bible itself—I now face the challenge of continually reading these stories and listening to the voice of the Spirit anew. This is more work, but it fits what I see in scripture.

No one had a doctrinal cheat sheet for the church that scholars developed from orderly outlines and studies of the Old Testament. It was a Spirit-led struggle that didn’t always present tidy resolutions.

I’m tipping my Protestant hand here. I like the way Protestants are diverse and decentralized. I like local churches with a community focus. Oversight and authority will always be our challenges to work out, but I’ll always take chaos and diversity over centralized authority and rigid uniformity.

I like to think that Jesus imagined a diverse church with different kinds of leadership, different understandings of salvation, and different ways of celebrating his life, death, and resurrection.

I can’t point you to a proof text for this. It’s just a feeling I get as I read the story of Jesus and see him welcoming Roman soldiers, synagogue leaders, fishermen, tax collectors, patriots, priests, and thieves.

We’ll always face the challenge of picking and choosing from the scriptures. That’s why we need to keep reading it. We need to let these stories get under our skin and become a part of us. We’ll start immersing ourselves in the ways God lovingly interacts with people and how we can embody that love to one another.

The Spirit can whisper to us, guiding us this way and that. We may only know enough to take a single step today. Then again, Jesus told us to pray for our daily bread. I mean, that was technically about meeting our daily needs, right? But then you can see the possibilities there, at least I hope you can.

Dependence. That is the prayer. We depend on God for our food, our work, and our daily needs of shelter and safety. We also depend on his Spirit to guide us. To give us just enough light for today.

Each day has enough worries of its own after all.

You see, we can’t systematize all of this and save it for later. This is all just bread that we’re breaking and sharing with each other for today.

Tomorrow we’ll rise again and open the scriptures and ask God for another serving of his bread to meet our uncertainties, worries, and challenges. If I’ve learned anything from the scriptures, God delights in those who seek him.

I’m playing with an idea that has been haunting me lately. It’s still half baked at this point. I haven’t lived with it very long. That gives me pause with how I present it here.

Still, I think there’s something to it. I’ll pose it as a question:

What if the Bible only exists to give us stories?

Here are the caveats:

• The stories are true and historical unless specified otherwise.
• There is a wrong way to read these true stories.
• These stories have profound implications for how we live.
• The Bible is authoritative, but not as a rule guide that we can easily plop into our lives.

My sense over the past few years has been that no one actually reads the Bible literally. And the more we insist on it, the sillier we look when we create all kinds of rules and caveats about New Testament passages that we don’t take literally, while we take others at plain face value.

My thesis is that the Bible exists to give us patterns and methods.

We use these patterns and methods in order to find God today and the stories provide us with a kind of baseline that helps us discern whether we’re far from or near the truth.

So we don’t necessarily read Paul to find Paul’s rules for living. We read Paul to learn how he sought out God, we seek God for ourselves, and then we evaluate our direction based on the authority of scripture without necessarily binding ourselves to Paul’s conclusions.

I’m not quite sure how doctrine fits into all of this, but for applying scripture to our lives, I find this intriguing though not quite convincing quite yet.

My dislike of systematic theology is nothing new here. So perhaps this is a logical step for me.

I’m not ready to dig into all of the details yet. I’m planning to work on a longer post for next Monday.

So this is just the teaser really. And also, I want to ask what you think.

How does my question strike you?

Can you relate with my struggles to apply the Bible literally?

I’ve already mentioned this week that it’s biblically impossible to be “biblical,” but there’s something else that’s impossible for evangelical Christians: unity as intellectual uniformity. Authors/speakers/bloggers often lament that the church could truly be unified if only we could all agree on “X.”

The measure for unity has been anything from adopting specific doctrines or creeds to a particular approach to social issues.

If I’ve made one huge, colossal mistake over the years, it’s the expectation that the right theology can fix everything. That’s where so many evangelical and progressive reform movements fall off the tracks.

It usually goes something like this:

There’s a particular theology at the heart of one group, and once some of us find issues with it, we break off to form a new group that coalesces around a “superior” form of theology. The only problem is a new reform group will emerge with its own critique and suggested changes that will lead to yet another split.

This is the future of evangelicalism.

We’re always tweaking theology with different philosophical concoctions, suggesting that if we could just think about things a little differently or if we staged a radical enough theological revolution, we’ll find true Christianity. Such captivity to “thinking as the answer” has been my own undoing.

We’ll never think the same thing as Christians.

We’ll never get our theology just right.

Most of us know this in theory, but it’s hard to give up that constant tweaking and shifting of theology. It’s hard for me to stop believing that the most important part of my Christian life is perfecting my theology.

I have lived as if perfecting my theology is all that Jesus required of me.

Since evangelicalism took shape largely around a common vision of sharing the Gospel, there’s a glimmer of hope that perhaps we can find unity again. However, it will never come about by signing a piece of paper or all subscribing to the same blog.

There will be evangelicals who disagree on the existence of hell.

There will be evangelicals with vastly different views of God’s power and sovereignty.

There will be evangelicals with dramatically different views of the atonement.

There will be Democratic, anarchist, apolitical, and Republican evangelicals.

There will be evangelicals with very different views on homosexuality.

There will be evangelicals who permit women to teach and those who don’t.

There will be vastly different evangelical approaches to church leadership.

It’s all a mess, and we’ll never line up every doctrine just right. If we’re waiting for someone to “come around” to our perspective, we may be doomed to frustration and disappointment.

Frustrated though we may be, I’m hopeful.

A few months ago my pastor drew a 2-mile circle around our church’s neighborhood. Within that circle we found hundreds of thousands of people—far more than you could squeeze in all of the existing churches in our area.

If our neighborhood needs anything, it needs more churches and more diverse groups of Christians who can serve the poor, the lonely, the worried, and the aimless. There are thousands of people all around us who don’t know about the freedom of God’s Kingdom, so it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to spend our time beating up on each other, trying to line everyone up with the same exact doctrines.

In fact, after our church moved to a new location that is two blocks away from our previous location, our pastor encouraged a new neighborhood church to plant their church in the old location. In fact, there’s an Episcopal church in between our church’s meeting spot and the new church in our old spot.

We still need more churches.

I have needed this shift in mindset. Instead of always looking for the perfect way to think about my faith, I’ve been challenged to think of ways to live my faith in community. When I’m focused on serving specific people in my community, I’m rescued from myself and my obsession with getting my beliefs just right.

I’ll never sign the right creedal statement or stage the right revolution. I have only found hope in the imperfect act of serving another person and passing along the mercy and love that God has given to me.

Some Christians speak and write of the Gospel as a purely private matter of deliverance from personal sins and an empowerment to live in holiness. Heck, some just focus on the deliverance from sin and leave things there.

I hear over and over again that we need to be “Gospel-focused” or “Gospel-centered.” It’s often stated as a kind of critique of those dedicated to addressing the seemingly peripheral issues of Christianity.

• Don’t address the problems with patriarchy… just focus on the Gospel.
• Don’t talk about political corruption… just focus on the Gospel.
• Don’t speak of economic inequity… just focus on the Gospel.
• Don’t call out abuses of power in the church… just focus on the Gospel.

Defining the Gospel has been a sort of ongoing street fight among evangelicals of late. I don’t expect that I can resolve all that much with this blog post, but I want to explore one aspect of the life of Jesus as it relates to defining the Gospel and at least leave everyone with something to chew on.

How Jesus Announced the Arrival of God’s Kingdom

The politically charged message “Jesus is Lord” and even the phrase “Gospel” were appropriated from the Roman Empire. The “gospel” was an announcement from the Roman Emperor, who was known as “the lord.” Jesus took hold of these common phrases used by the powerful and offered a remixing of that word according to his own message.

While Jesus certainly depoliticized these words from their Roman usage, he didn’t necessarily move completely away from the public and political realm. Jesus didn’t launch a political party, but he also wasn’t unconcerned with the issues of his day. He just addressed them through the message of God’s Kingdom coming.

When we speak of God’s Kingdom coming, we’re not just talking about the cross, although it was an essential part of it. The message throughout the New Testament of God’s Kingdom and Jesus as Lord was spoken directly counter to that of the Romans even though the Kingdom of Jesus was different from Rome in just about every way.

The Gospel addressed the powers of our world, but it didn’t address these powers on their own terms.

What This Means for the Gospel

To say that we want to “only” focus on the Gospel and then speak of personal salvation and a personal relationship with Jesus Christ only captures part of the picture. The Gospel literally proclaims freedom to captives, but it’s not a politically organized freedom. There is both a spiritual element to this and a physical reality of freedom.

We can both pass along spiritual and physical freedom to each other, living as if the Kingdom of God is truly present and among us—because it is. We can give generously to one another because God’s Kingdom has come. We can pray for emotional or physical healing because God’s Kingdom has come. We can treat the least as the first because God’s Kingdom has come.

Our opportunities for living in the Kingdom of God and embodying the Gospel’s message, Jesus is Lord, are all around us:

When a single mother encourages an overwhelmed new mother, the Kingdom comes.

When a family delivers a meal to those who can’t provide for themselves, the Kingdom comes.

When a child offers a pile of her clothes to those in need, the Kingdom comes.

When the most fearful and insecure Christian prays with confidence for a friend in a dark place, the Kingdom comes.

The Gospel isn’t about standing around the cross for the rest of our lives.

The Gospel sends us running down a dirt road in the early morning hours to find an empty tomb.

The Gospel fills our rooms with fire and wind, giving us words we would never find on our own.

The Gospel gives us confidence to lay hands on a friend and to pray as if God can actually do something.

The Gospel steadies our minds in a chaotic world because Christ has overcome the world.

The Gospel breaks our hearts for those suffering from the consequences of their pasts.

The Gospel is incarnation, God among us, God broken for us, God risen for us, and God forever in us.

The Gospel is too big to keep it inside of ourselves or to be confined to a dark Friday morning outside of Jerusalem. The Gospel of our Lord started with the arrival of God among us, and it continues every time we live in the freedom and peace that our Lord’s presence brings.

The Gospel is freedom, hope, peace, healing, and salvation. It has everything to do with confronting the powers of our world, whether that’s an abusive church, an abusive government, or an abusive relationship.

Every time we live as if the power of evil has been defeated, every time we mend the broken, every time we tell the powerful they can’t bully the weak, and every time we tell the fearful and lost about our wounded healer, we proclaim the Gospel of Christ’s Lordship over every power in this world.

Note to Readers: Today’s post is the second of a 3-part series covering 3 things that are impossible for evangelicals.

There is a holy grail that evangelical Christians have been seeking. It’s a quest that has consumed much time and left many battered believers by the side of the road. I’ve sacrificed my share of time to this pursuit over the years.

This is the holy and righteous pursuit of being the most “biblical.” In the evangelical world, if you aren’t “biblical,” then you are clearly influenced by your sinful desires or our evil culture.

While “biblical” could technically mean “influenced by the Bible,” it has become a code word for “possessing the one and only way to interpret the Bible on a particular issue.” In our zeal to follow the teachings of scripture, we have sought a definitive, once and for all time way to read a book that has always been a work in progress.

In one sense, we all want to be guided and informed by the Bible. However, the pursuit of being biblical more often turns into: “I know God’s definitive and authoritative perspective, you better agree with me, or you’re going to be unbiblical.”

If I don’t agree with the “biblical” perspective being presented, then I’ve rejected God’s truth. The possibility of ambiguity is lost, even if that ambiguity is all over the Bible:

Do you want a biblical approach to conflict resolution?

You could turn the other cheek.

But then, Jesus did tell his followers to buy swords.

And whether or not you’re going to offer a sword or a cheek, the Bible says you can’t let the sun go down on your anger, so if the sun is about to set, you need to make your peace immediately. If the sun is already down, you’re clearly in big trouble.

Or are you? Somehow we don’t lose sleep over those details.

Do you want a biblical marriage?

You could marry your wife’s concubine.

Don’t have a concubine? Better get cracking on that one.

Then again, men could try loving their wives as Christ loved the church. I should add that I mean each individual man should love his individual wife. We need to be specific about these things when we talk about being “biblical.”

Do you want a biblical approach to money?

Sell everything you have and give it to the poor.

Then again, you’re supposed to tithe 10%, so I’m not sure how to manage that if you’ve just sold everything you own.

Do most Christians ever try to do either of these things? For some reason we don’t. We also don’t hear too many Christians having a crisis of faith because they worry about having too much money.

Do you want to look appropriate for church?

Men better keep their hair short and women should wear head coverings. That’s CLEARLY not a culturally limited mandate since Paul cited the precedent of Adam and Eve in his statement in 1 Corinthians 11. He used the same logic when speaking of his ban against women teaching in 1 Timothy 2:11-15.

Or can we just wink at Paul about the hair length/head coverings business? In fact, most of us do just that.

For some reason most Christians don’t have any problem dropping the bonnets and letting our hair down, but we’re divided over permitting women to teach. Ironically, Paul made his strongest statements in relation to head coverings:

“If anyone wants to be contentious about this, we have no other practice—nor do the churches of God.” 1 Corinthians 11:16

There are days when I ponder starting a “Biblical Head Covering” business and marketing it to The Gospel Coalition.

You’re either biblical in all things or you hate the Bible, right?

Arriving at the definitive biblical answer for everything is not quite so easy, especially because the Bible itself was never intended to function like a reference guide.

Same God, Different Settings

If you think of the Bible as a play, the settings and many of the characters change, but the one constant is God at the center of the drama (except for the book of Esther!). As each scene shifts and new characters face challenges, God interacts with them in keeping with the values and standards of each setting.

For example, when God reveals himself to the Israelites, he allows them to marry multiple wives and he mandates sacrifices as central to his worship among many other culturally accepted norms. Back then, being “biblical” looked quite different from today.

After the ministry of Jesus, the notion of being biblical shifted to monogamy and a more spiritual approach to the worship of God.

The point has never been to find a perfect outward way of serving God. The thread woven throughout scripture has been whether God’s people are loving God and loving others.

Even under the abuses and imperfections of patriarchy, the Law contained a number of provisions to protect women. In the case of worship, the only consistent biblical law has been to love the Lord with heart, mind, soul, and strength.

The Place of a “Biblical” Holy Spirit

When you think of how many churches Paul planted, you could say that the amazing thing isn’t how much he wrote. It’s how much he didn’t write. Even if we lost of a few of his letters to the Corinthians (Is anyone else dying to know what the “Painful Letter” said?), Paul did not rely on primarily on his letters.

When Jesus left his disciples behind, he didn’t rely on written words to keep them close to him.

Isn’t that strange? Jesus just made a little old thing called Pentecost happen and left it at that.

I don’t mean to be flip about the Bible. I read it every day. The main point here is that the Bible alone is not going to get the job done apart from the Holy Spirit in our lives.

Jesus trusted the Holy Spirit to lead us into all truth, to keep us after he had gone. And while we should not neglect the teachings of scripture, an air tight system of theology does not replace the work of the Spirit among us.

There is no “biblical” way of doing things. There is only a biblically informed and Spirit-led way of doing things. And that information and leading may evolve and shift over time.

That doesn’t leave us with a simple phrase we can tack onto a book title or blog post. That doesn’t give us clear standards we can set up for our churches and denominations.

If I may be so bold to suggest, without such clear standards, those with power and authority will find it much harder to exercise their influence over others.

I’m all for using the words of scripture to guide and inform us, but turning the words of an ancient book into a once and for all time authoritative guide is another matter. We’ll end up frustrated and divided over our interpretations.

Even worse than that, the words of Jesus may prove hauntingly true, “You study the Scriptures diligently because you think that in them you have eternal life. These are the very Scriptures that testify about me, yet you refuse to come to me to have life.” John 5:39-40

Note to Readers: Today’s post is the first of a 3-part series covering 3 things that are impossible for evangelicals.

Derek Cooper wraps up his guest post series about Christianity and world religions with a third myth Christians have about world religions:

In my recently published book, Christianity and World Religions: An Introduction to the World’s Major Faiths, I discuss the six major non-Christian “stories” of the world. As I teach these different religions in classrooms and churches and discuss them with friends and neighbors, I have consistently uncovered several myths many Christians believe about each of these religions, including Christianity.

In the first two blogs posts, I wrote about the false belief that Christianity is the only religion with a Savior as well as the common notion that Hinduism believes in many gods. As I showed, both of these assumptions are not true.

In this blog post, I will discuss the third myth: All, or at least most, Muslims are Arabs.

Of all the different religions today, Islam is the one that receives the most attention. No matter whether you are listening to the radio, reading a newspaper, or watching the local news, reports of Muslims, ostensibly violent ones, are rampant. Many of these reports focus on Arab Muslims, especially in light of the recent Arab Spring and the Syrian war. Because of such media attention in the Middle East, coupled with the basic knowledge most people have that Muhammad, the father of Islam, was Arab, many assume that Islam must be an Arab religion.

Now, of course, it is true that Muhammad was Arab and that Islam is the dominant religion, by far, in the Middle East. However, nobody assumes that because Jesus was Jewish, Christianity is exclusively, or even predominantly, a Jewish religion. Nor do most people regard Buddhism as an Indian religion despite the fact that the Buddha was Indian and that Buddhism emerged out of India. Instead, most people assume that Christianity is a non-Jewish religion—mostly European—and that Buddhism is a southeastern or eastern Asian religion, originating perhaps in China or Tibet.

In point of fact, I must first clarify that the Middle East does not equal Arab. Two of the largest countries in the Middle East—Turkey and Iran—are not Arab at all. The term Middle East is unfortunately amorphous; if we reasonably broadened it to include Central Asia, the percentage of Muslim Arabs would dwindle even further in relation to the non-Arab population in countries like Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, and Kazakhstan.

As these statistics indicate, it is more accurate to conclude that Islam, if anything, is an Asian religion. In fact, according to the Pew Forum on Religion (pewforum.org), predictions for the next couple of decades indicate that Asian countries will continue to boast the largest populations of Muslims worldwide. Of the ten countries to have the largest Muslim populations, only two of them—Egypt and Iraq—contain sizeable Arab populations that speak Arabic.

Throughout Islamic history, it is indisputable that Arabs—including their Arabic culture, thought, and language—have played a significant role in the development of Islam. And the very fact that the Qur’an was written in Arabic and that the Kaaba, a holy shrine in Mecca, is located in Saudi Arabia ensures Arabic influence. Yet Arabs are a small percentage of Muslims in the world today.

Truth be told, much of the historical antagonism between Muslims and Christians during the medieval and modern periods did not necessarily pivot on an inherent antagonism between say, European Christians and Arab Muslims. In many ways, today, as in the past, Islam has been an Asian religion. For it was Central Asians, like the Turks, who ultimately wrested Christian control out of the eastern Mediterranean, and it was the Mongols who were the architects of one of the largest and most powerful empires in world history, stretching from Japan to Russia, and wiping out the (Nestorian) Christian population in the process.

In the future, Christianity and Islam will continue to be the two most influential religions on the planet. Because these religions both believe in their universality and that they alone convey the truth about God, humankind, and the world, competition between them will fiercely persist. The tension, in other words, has less to do with ethnic differences and more to do with their common and singular vision for universality. In the end, and unlike inclusive religions like Hinduism or Baha’i, either Christianity or Islam is true.

In this three-part series, we have dispelled three common myths many people believe about world religions. If you would like to read more about other religions and learn how to respond to them as a Christian, I encourage you to read Christianity and World Religions.

About Today’s Guest Blogger

Dr. Derek Cooper is assistant professor of biblical studies and historical theology at Biblical Seminary, where he also serves as the associate director of the Doctor of Ministry program. Derek’s most recent book, which was written for classroom use, church groups, and for lay readers, is titled Christianity and World Religions: An Introduction to the World’s Major Faiths. His faculty page can be found here.

Today is part two in our series on Christian myths about world religions by my friend Derek Cooper:

In my recently published book, Christianity and World Religions: An Introduction to the World’s Major Faiths, I discuss the six major non-Christian “stories” of the world. As I teach these different religions in classrooms and churches and discuss them with friends and neighbors, I have consistently uncovered several myths many Christians believe about each of these religions, including Christianity.

In the first post of this series, I wrote about the false notion that Christianity is the only religion with a Savior. We saw how Hinduism and Buddhism, among others, demonstrate this to be a myth.

In this post, I will discuss another myth many people believe about world religions: Hindus believe in many gods. According to many calculations I have seen, there are 330 million Hindu gods. This clearly gives the impression that Hinduism affirms many deities! Yet the truth is that Hindus are more monistic (believing that all existence comes from one God) than they are pantheistic (believing that there are many gods).

A few years ago, I distinctly remember having a conversation with a group of Hindu believers at a Hindu temple when I asked how many gods there are. Without blinking, they responded in unity: “We believe in one God!”

“Then how,” I rejoined, “are there so many different gods in Hinduism?”

Again in unity, they replied: “There is one supreme God that cannot be fully known or understood. The gods we talk about on earth and give devotion to are simply manifestations of that one supreme God.”

This gets to the core of a common misconception about Hinduism. Although there are countless “gods”—whether Shiva or Vishnu or Ganesha or Parvati or Hanuman—they are commonly understood by Hindus to be representations of (the) God, whom or which we cannot fathom. This is why one Hindu can worship Shiva, while another worships Kali or Ganesha. Although each person seems to be worshiping different gods, the person is really only worshiping the one God who is manifest through Shiva or Kali or whomever.

How do you decide which “god” to worship? It depends. Some people worship specific gods due to the town or village in which they live or due to their family or place within society.

More pragmatically, some worship a particular god because of that god’s association with something specific. I once had a conversation with a Hindu priest about this very topic. He said that perhaps the most popular deity in his temple was the goddess Lakshmi. I asked him why, and he was quick to reply: “Because most of the people in our temple would like more money, so it’s natural to worship her, who has cascades of gold coins rushing down from her hands!”

In the temple he presided over, he said, it is not that some people prefer Shiva or some people prefer Vishnu—two of the most common gods in the Hindu pantheon. Instead, people worship this or that manifestation of god based on present circumstance. Are you about to go on a business trip? Then ask Ganesha for guidance, the divine incarnation of venture and journey. Are you in need of money? Then ask Lakshmi!

Although Hinduism thinks very differently than Christianity in many ways, the two religions align in their common conviction that only one God exists who can be manifested in different ways. While for Christians this means that God reveals himself most fully through Jesus Christ, for Hindus God reveals himself in countless ways through divine incarnations and other living beings.

So, the next time you see a picture or statue of a Hindu god, it’s best to begin thinking of this or that as one representation of (the) God, commonly called Brahman, rather than a distinct entity that is separate from other Hindu gods. For, as we have discussed, the actual picture or statue is the equivalent of a drop of water coming from the one eternal ocean (God).

In the final post of this series, I will discuss one common myth about Islam.

About Today’s Guest Blogger

Dr. Derek Cooper is assistant professor of biblical studies and historical theology at Biblical Seminary, where he also serves as the associate director of the Doctor of Ministry program. Derek’s most recent book, which was written for classroom use, church groups, and for lay readers, is titled Christianity and World Religions: An Introduction to the World’s Major Faiths. His faculty page can be found here.

My good friend Derek Cooper is a professor at Biblical Seminary and has just released a new book about Christianity and World Religions. I’ve had a chance to preview some of the chapters, and I was so impressed by all that I learned, I asked Derek to write a 3-part series covering three myths Christians have about world religions. Today is part one:

In my recently published book, Christianity and World Religions: An Introduction to the World’s Major Faiths, I discuss the six major non-Christian stories of the world. As I teach these different religions in classrooms and churches and discuss them with friends and neighbors, I have consistently uncovered several myths Christians believe about each of these religions, including Christianity. In this and my next couple of blog posts, I will concentrate on three common myths about different world religions.

The first myth concerns Christianity. The myth goes something like this: Christianity is the only religion with a Savior. I consistently hear Christians say that Christianity is the only faith where God comes to humankind in contrast to every other religion of the world where humans are trying to go to God. Yet the truth is that many world religions, including religions that were dominant when Christianity emerged as well as contemporary religions such as Shia Islam, assume a Savior figure.

According to Hinduism, for instance, Vishnu, the God who preserves the world, regularly visits humankind to maintain order and peace. When the world is particularly in straits, Vishnu incarnates himself to save the righteous. In the fourth chapter of the Bhagavad Gita, one of the most beloved of the Hindu religious scriptures, the God Vishnu, who has incarnated himself as Lord Krishna, speaks with a valiant human warrior named Arjuna:

Whenever spirituality decays and materialism is rampant…I (re-) incarnate Myself. I am reborn from age to age to save the righteous, destroy the wicked, and establish the kingdom of God. The one who realizes this divine truth concerning my incarnation and sacrifice is not born again [in this life], but when he leaves his body, he becomes one with Me.

As these verses state, the God Vishnu incarnated himself as Krishna in order to save righteous, punish the wicked, and establish God’s kingdom. This is an example of one of Vishnu’s avatars, a Hindu word that can be translated as “incarnation,” “manifestation,” or “revelation.” There is no precise agreement on how many avatars Vishnu has had, but according to one long tradition, Vishnu’s incarnation as Krishna was his eighth of ten incarnations.

Another example of a God incarnating himself and saving humankind appears in Buddhism. In Mahayana Buddhism, the largest of the two major Buddhist denominations, practitioners revere a Savior figure called the Bodhisattva (“enlightened being”). Bodhisattvas are Buddhas in the making, who have made a vow to sacrifice themselves for the salvation of all others. In one Buddhist religious writing called the Shurangama Sutra the Buddha encourages all holy men to deny nirvana in order to save all other beings: “I [Buddha] urge all saints and holy men to choose to be reborn in order to deliver all living beings.”

As this brief passage illustrates, these Bodhisattvas—whether Siddhartha Gautama or the Dalai Lama—travel to earth in order to save people from the constant cycle of death and rebirth called samsara. These Bodhisattvas have made a vow that their life mission is not complete until all living beings have been liberated.

As Christians, we need not fear the similarities between the Christian faith and other religions. As one ancient Christian expression goes, “All truth is God’s truth.” The notion that God saves people is apparently a common belief throughout the world, which does negate or call into question the Christian belief that Jesus is the Savior of the world.

Rather than fearing this commonality, we should allow it to be a bridge from which we more naturally share our faith in Jesus with Hindus or Buddhists, for instance, who already believe—perhaps because God intended it—in a Savior figure. After all, when God became a man, he not only did so at a particular time and in a particular place, but he did so in a way that was understandable to the many cultures and religions at the time.

In the next blog post, I will discuss one common myth about Hinduism. You will not want to miss it!

About Today’s Guest Blogger

Dr. Derek Cooper is assistant professor of biblical studies and historical theology at Biblical Seminary, where he also serves as the associate director of the Doctor of Ministry program. Derek’s most recent book, which was written for classroom use, church groups, and for lay readers, is titled Christianity and World Religions: An Introduction to the World’s Major Faiths. His faculty page can be found here.

[Derek conveniently left out the fact that he co-authored a book with me titled Hazardous: Committing to the Cost of Following Jesus, but I guess he’s too ashamed to admit that now! Ha!]

I met Angie Mabry-Nauta at the Festival of Faith and Writing, and we had some great chats about theology and ministry. Angie will be sharing her thoughts about Mother’s Day and how one particular atonement theory may take on a special meaning for us:

Mother’s Day, it seems, has become a sacred festival. Not many churches across our country fail at least to mention mothers on “their day”, which is this Sunday. Many churches have mothers and motherhood as the theme of worship and the sermon.

Odes to Mom are shared. Special music is played, often accompanying a slide show of pictures that make everyone cry. And Proverbs 31 is read – at least verses 28-29 that mention a mother’s children and husband praising her.

I wonder how many churches honor our Mother who gave life to us all – Christ?

One of the most beautiful theologies of what happened on the cross was given to the world by Julian of Norwich. At the age of 31 and a half (ca. 1373), she suffered from a potentially life-ending illness. As she neared death, Julian experienced sixteen intense revelations, or “showings”, as she named them, of Jesus.

Upon recovering, Julian wrote a narration of the visions. This recording, along with a theological expansion of each showing written about 20-30 years later became Revelations of Divine Love. Julian’s work is believed to be the first book written in the English language by a woman.

Unique to Julian’s theology is the motherhood of God. Beyond giving us life via creation, God lovingly took a greater step in bearing us to eternal life. Christ revealed himself to Julian as mother, the mother who gave all of humanity new life through the labor pains of the cross.

[Our] great God, the most sovereign wisdom of all … dressed himself in our poor flesh to do the service and duties of motherhood in every way. The mother’s service is the closest, the most helpful and the most sure, for it is the most faithful. No one ever might, nor could, nor has performed this service fully but he alone. We know that our mothers only bring us into the world to suffer and die, but our true mother, Jesus, he who is all love, bears us into joy and eternal life; blessed may he be! So he sustains us within himself in love and was in labor for the full time until he suffered the sharpest pangs and the most grievous sufferings that ever were or shall be, and at the last he died. And when it was finished and he had borne us into bliss, even this could not fully satisfy his marvelous love, and that he showed in these high surpassing words of love, ‘If I could suffer more, I would suffer more.’[1]

Look at the meaning of the cross in this atonement theory: God is not angry. God is not demanding recompense for sin or a perfect blood sacrifice. God is displaying love, love and more love.

The cross is God’s way of showing humanity the extravagant extents God will go to help us understand how deeply, widely and completely we are loved.

Not only does Christ our mother suffer out of amazing love to bring us to eternal life, he nourishes us by feeding us himself – his body and blood that are our Sacrament. He also nurses us “through his sweet open side”. And as we nurse, Christ looks up on us, his children and rejoices: “Look how I love you.”

Human mothers blow it. All of us who were born of mothers and raised by them (or not) could tell our own tales. Those of us who are mothers could list a myriad of ways that we fear we’ve messed up our kids for life. No human mother is perfect.

A perfect Mother does exist, though – the one who will not let us down, abandon us, embarrass us, bully us, abuse us, nor ever stop loving us. Jesus labored and gave us life so that we might live, and have life abundantly.

Hug or remember your Mama this weekend. Then give praise, glory and honor to your Christ your Mother. Great things he hath done.

[1] Julian of Norwich, Revelations of Divine Love, trans. Elizabeth Spearing (New York: Penguin Books, 1998), 141.

About Today’s Guest Post

Angie Mabry-Nauta is a theologian, freelance writer and speaker in Plano, TX.  She is an ordained Minister of Word and Sacrament in the Reformed Church in America (RCA), and served in congregational ministry for six years.  She blogs regularly at her own website, "Woman in Progress…" and for the RCA at the Church Herald Blogs. Follow her on Twitter @Godstuffwriter.