what is one word to describe/found/explain you’re theology? And if you just say “Jesus” or “Christ” I’m gonna ask “what about him” Ready… go!

How do we see the future? Are we looking forward to an escape to finally get to our true “spiritual” home? Waiting for an existence that is finally free from this earth and these bodies? Or, do we look forward to the progress that is happening? We continue to advance in science, medicine, government and these movements are out steps towards what we as a race and a planet are destined to become.

Both of these lines of thinking are myths.

Wright spends chapter 5 sketching out the two “myth” views of the future and chapter 6 walking through Paul and Revelation laying out what the Christian hope really is and how it answers both of the “myths”.

Three themes that keep popping up in Paul’s letters and Revelation are the goodness of creation, the nature of evil, and the plan of redemption. Several images in the New Testament fill out these themes, and paint for us the picture of Christian Hope:

• The victorious battle (1 Cor.)
• Citizens of Heaven colonizing Earth
• God will be all in all (1 Cor. 15, Philippians)
• New Birth (Romans 8 )
• The marriage of Heaven and Earth (Revelation 21-22)

I have heard this doctrine my whole life in various places, both in books and from some pulpits. Jesus is coming to set everything right. But, in daily conversation, Christian Bible and book studies, funerals, songs, and in the general assumption of pop-theology, I hear talk that suggests we are really refugees, waiting for rescue and judgment to fall on this evil place we have been hostages in.

Thoughts like this are not hope. It’s something else entirely.

If our hope truly is redemption then living as people who are bing redeemed and are part of the redeeming work of God (rather than hiding out as refugees) is what we are freed to do.

Tags: Suprised By Hope, Books, Christian, Hope, NT Wright, flock

Some day i would like to possible make some money off of photography and design. This is my first step in that direction. Plus, it’s a cool way to share my favorite photos.

100000 Words: Photography and Design by Aaron J. Smith

Psalm 1

Some translations read “Happy are those…”
Others read “Blessed is the one…”
The Message says, “How well God must like you…”

My joy in life rests on God’s opinion of me.

He rejoices in/over me because I am like a tree that he planted in his garden, in Eden, not cavorting with and trying to claim worth from the wicked, the foolish, the out of step with God. Disjointed and craving their way is death.

But, I deep your word close, chewing in it for my nourishment. I am sustained and I bloom, bearing fruit time and tome again.

So, you enjoy me. Not because of what I do or refrain from doing, but because I am on the road you have charted out and called good… because I am growing into/being what you have had in mind all along: I am happy, I am blessed, I am rooted in you

Tags: Bible, Psalms, prayers, flock

Mini pine cones, originally uploaded by Cultural Savage.

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Chimney’s, originally uploaded by Cultural Savage.

]]> http://culturalsavage.wordpress.com/2008/06/14/chimneys/feed/ Cultural Savage http://culturalsavage.wordpress.com/2008/06/14/self-365-12/ http://culturalsavage.wordpress.com/2008/06/14/self-365-12/#comments Sat, 14 Jun 2008 18:46:19 +0000 Aaron J. Smith http://culturalsavage.wordpress.com/2008/06/14/self-365-12/

Morning in my little world

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“This then is the more of less universal witness of the early Christians: that they are who they are, they do what they do, they tell the stories they tell not because of a new religious experience or insight but because of something that happened; something that happened to the crucified Jesus; something that they at once interpreted as meaning that he was after all the Messiah, that God’s new age had broken into the present time, and that they were charged with a new commission; something that made them reaffirm the Jewish belief in resurrection, not swap it for a pagan alternative, but introduce several distinctive but consistent modification within it.” ( pg 58 )

Chapter four deals with the question “what can we say about the resurrection of Jesus it’s self?” Write deals with arguments and dismissals of the resurrection, first dealing with the arguments against the gospel narratives as valid sources for the resurrection story then addressing what a historian can or cannot say about the resurrection event.

The last half of this chapter has allot of good stuff in it, especially Wright’s dive into the epistomoligies of faith, hope, and love. (I pray that I may have an epistemology of love)

The conclusions is this: “…the totalitarianism of the last century (speaking of the Enlightenment) were simply among the varied manifestations of a larger totalitarianism of thought and culture against which postmodernity has now, and rightly in my view, rebelled. Who, after all, was it who didn’t want the dead to be raised?… It was, and is, those in power, the social and intellectual tyrants and bullies; the Ceasers who would be threatened by a Lord of the world who had defeated the tyrant’s last weapon, death it’s self; the Herods who would be horrified at the postmortem validation of the true King of the Jews. <i>And this is the point where believing in the resurrection of Jesus suddenly ceases to be a matter of inquiring about an odd event in the first century and becomes a matter of rediscovering hope in the twenty-first century.</i> Hope is what you get when you suddenly realize that a different worldview is possible, a worldview in which the rich, the powerful, and the unscrupulous do not have the last word, The same worldview shift that is demanded by the resurrection of Jesus is the shift that will enable us to transform the world.”

These first four chapters form part one of the book. Wright has brought the resurrection to the front of the stage, swept away some wrong thinking about it, shown us that you can believe in resurrection, and that the resurrection of Jesus matters and changes the way we view everything. From here, he jumps into the second part of the book, dealing with the question “…what then is the ultimate Christian hope for the whole world and for ourselves?” ( pg28 )

Self 365, originally uploaded by Cultural Savage.

It's cold today

“…What sort of an event was it? Just how empty was the tomb on Easter morning?…
What should we believe about Jesus’ resurrection, and why?…
The issue is not whether the Bible is true or not. The issue is not whether miracles occur or not. The issue is not whether we believe something called the supernatural or not. The issue is not whether Jesus is alive today and we can get to know him for ourselves. If we treat the question of Easter as a test case in any of those discussions, we are missing the point.”(pg 33-34)

The issue at hand is the resurrection. We need to talk about that. So, Wright tries to clear out the stage, so we can think clearly about what resurrection actually means.
According to Wright, the first century world had mo misconceptions about what resurrection meant. It only referred a person who was once dead coming to full, bodily life again. The world generally laughed at this idea; resurrection didn’t happen. Some Jews believed in resurrection, but only at the last day when God resurrected all the righteous persons.

The early Church sided with the Jewish belief of resurrection (ie that it did happen, someone once dead could come back to life body, soul, and spirit), but because of the resurrection of Jesus, there sere several modifications made to the Jewish thought.

“The first of these modifications is that within early Christianity there is virtually no spectrum of belief about life beyond death” (pg41)

They believed in resurrection, not life beyond the grave. Or, to put it another way, they believed that life in Jesus conquered death, not lived on after death.

“In second-Temple Judaism, resurrection is important, but not that important… But in early Christianity resurrection moved from the circumference to the center” (pg42)

Resurrection was not some fringe benefit for believing God. Rather, it was the hope God offered in Christ, and that the church was holding out to the world.

“… throughout early Christian resurrection belief is the view that the new body, when it is given, will posses a transformed physicality, but not transformed in the one way the central biblical text might have suggested.” (pg44)

The Christian language when speaking of the resurrected bodies lacks the OT language of “shining like stars” (Dan 12). Instead of some luminous being or a glorious form, the church believed that after we are raised from the dead, we will have physical bodies in a physical world. Granted, they are transformed physical bodies, but they are still flesh and blood.

“The fourth surprising mutation evidenced by early Christian resurrection belief is that the resurrection, as an event, has split into two” (pg44)

Jewish thought held to one resurrection at the last day. Suddenly, Jesus rises in the middle of history, not as an end to history. He raises as an individual, no mass resurrection here. And His resurrection “anticipates and guaranties the final resurrection of God’s people at the end of history”.

“Because the early Christians believed that resurrection had begun with Jesus and would be completed in the great final resurrection on the last day, they believed that God had called them to work with with him, in the power of the spirit, to implement the achievement of Jesus and thereby to anticipate the final resurrection, in personal and political life, in mission and holiness.” (pg 46)

“The sixth remarkable mutation within the Jewish belief is the quite different metaphorical use of resurrection.” (pg46)

Judaism had been using the metaphor of resurrection to talk about the restoration of Israel. In Christianity, that metaphor is replaced with “resurrection referring metaphorically to baptism (a dying and rising with Christ), and resurrection referring to the new life of strenuous ethical obedience, enabled by the Holy Spirit, to which the believer is committed.” (pg47)

“Nobody in Judaism had expected the messiah to die, and therefore naturally nobody had imagined the messiah rising from the dead.” (pg47)

Instead of Messiah being identified by his victory over the pagan nations, the Christians believed Jesus was Messiah because of his resurrection.

Understanding what resurrection means is important if we are going to rightly think about our hope as Christians. It is not about some sort of spiritual life after death, it is about life conquering death. It is not about a victorious life, it is about the victory of God in the resurrection and us getting in on it, working with God to see the kingdom com and His will be done.

Self 365, originally uploaded by Cultural Savage.

Been a while since i did a self shot for this 365 project. Had alot going on for the past little bit. Ok, so time to catch up.

NT Wright asks the question “How do you see death?”

There has been, in fact, an oscillation between two polls… Some envision death as a horrid enemy, stalking it’s pray. This is often combined with the firm proclamation that, though an enemy, death will finally be defeated…
The other pole of belief is represented by St. Francis’s hymn, “All creatures of our God and King”, with its remarkable invocation of “And thou, most dear and kindly death, waiting to hush our latest breath.” Many hymns, prayers, and sermons have tired to soften the blow by presenting death as a friend coming to take us to a better place… (pg16)

What we say about death and resurrection gives shape and color to everything else. If we are not careful, we will offer merely a “hope” that is no longer a surprise, no longer able to transform lives and communities in the present, no longer generated by the resurrection of Jesus himself and looking forward to the promised new heavens and new earth. (pg 25)

So, how do you see death? What is it? And the other half of the question is what then is resurrection?

“First, what is the ultimate Christian hope? Second, what hope is there for change, rescue, transformation, new possibilities within the world at the present?” (pg5)

Monday night at the Lompic, Chris and I started talking about the problem of suffering… which is really the problem of evil… which is really the problem of sin.

My issue is not that suffering exists. I can believe that, I can accept that… but I can’t do anything about it. That is my struggle.

If God is good, and he promises salvation to all who will believe, than why don’t I who believe have any power against evil in my own life, let alone the world at large? If I can’t bring good about in my life, how can I bring good into the world? Why has God not given us the power, strength, the knowledge, the ________ to overcome evil with good?

This struggle is why I believe NT Wright is correct in seeing the two questions of hope for my self and hope for the world as intertwined, rather than the two separate issues to be talked about.

If I don’t know my hope as a Christian, or if I have the wrong hope and call it the Christian hope, I can’t hope rightly for or rightly give hope to the world around me.

Chris and I talked about allot of things, and I’m still processing the conversation. I have a feeling I’ll be doing that for a while. As I break into “Surprised by Hope”, I do have a few things from that conversation on my mind:

• -I can give shape to the Kingdom of God, but I can never totally embody the entirety of the Kingdom of God.
• -The resurrection is God’s answer to suffering, evil, sin
• -Since The resurrection is the solution, I don’t have to “do it all” (embody the entirety of the Kingdom of God). Rather, I can accept it as the solution in my life, place, and time… and truly, really, and actually stop trying to do enough to save my self, and let the resurrection be the answer.
• -God’s doesn’t give us meaningless gifts. We are given gifts (graces) that can bring about the shape of the kingdom in the world around us as we do good.
• -We should do good

So, I keep hearing about this book by some guy who is named after the New Testament (or was the New Testament named after him… I kid).

Suprised By Hope by N.T. Wright is suppose to be a great read, and since I just dropped a few bucks for it, I hope it is.

I’m really looking forward to reading this book, for a few reasons. The main reason today is a conversation that Chris (the ass. Pastor for Evergreen) had last night at the Lompic (mmm… beer). That conversation has shifted a few things in me. It’s a good shift, but it needs time and food to bare fruit in my thinking, heart, living, and faith. I hope Suprised By Hope will be some food for that.

Oh, and by the way:

Why would God give you a meaningless gift?

Michael Spencer recently posted a honest piece about what the past year of His life has been like and why He gave up on your god. It is honest, beautiful, and (apparently) like kicking a hive of proselytizing hornets that are just itchin’ to get you across the Tiber (aka make you one of the “True Church”).

Some of the responses Michael has posted at the BHT, and honestly they make me fighting mad.

Too often, I see people (vultures I want to call them) circling around, waiting, watching and chomping at the bit for a opportunity to pile on some life that appears “readied by God” to now receive the true truth, to finally believe the true faith. This inter familial proselytizing makes no since to me.

I grew up in Church. I grew up in a lot of churches and traditions. The first church I remember going to was a Four Square congregation. Soon after that, I remember moving to a small Calvary Chapel church. This move was not a cut and run. It really was a migration to another tribe while retaining and cultivating the relationships from the Four Square congregation.

During this time, I was attending an Episcopal school, and our chapel services- with their semi-liturgical form, adherence to the Church calendar, and weird communion wafers- was very different from the church service I saw on Sunday mornings.

In middle school, I transferred to a Catholic school, and our church transitioned from a Calvary Chapel to a non-denominational fellowship. Again, what I saw in chapel and mass was very different from what I was seeing on Sunday mornings.

A few years later, I transferred to an evangelical, non-denominational high school. Shortly after this, I started floating from church to church, going with friends and family, going sometimes by my self. I went to Baptist churches, Catholic Mass, Sunday night bible studies, Charismatic worship services, etc… Finlay I settled on a Evangelical Free Church as my home congregation. Eight or so years later, I was involved in a Christian Missionary Alliance church plant. Two or three years later, I am in Portland Oregon, and am part of an emerging community called Evergreen

What I have seen in all these places has been very diverse. To be honest I do have a huge drawn to high church, with liturgy, vestments, and the whole shebang. However, all of these experiences, observances, and relationships has led me to a place very “un-high” church.

I’m at a place that some people say has no history, a place with no connection two the past 2000 years. Some people will say that I am not part of the true Church. Other’s will say that I don’t have the fullness of the Gospel. Others say I have un-orthodox beliefs, and that my community can’t call it’s self a real church.

These kind of lines have been thrown around me and at me for most of my life. They have been said to me by Catholics, as well as baptists and charismatic types. And to all of them I say: you go to hell.

The one thing that my melting pot faith journey has led me to believe without a shadow of a doubt is this: there is absolutely one true Church, one apostolic and catholic Church. It is the only place anyone will see Jesus, and with out it, no one will see God.

It’s called the body of Christ, the Communion of saints, the church invisible. It is the only true church, and there is not a one tradition that can lay claim to be it. Rather, it is every tradition, every congregation, every person who can say “Jesus is Lord” that makes up this one true Church. Every congregation and church tradition I have dipped into has helped me see this clearly, and with out them all I wouldn’t know this true Church.

This one true Church has orthodox belief, and the best formulation of that faith that I have ever heard is the Nicene creed, articulated by the one true Church and passed down from generation to generation of saints to be tested as orthodoxy and be found true.

I could go on, but I hope you see the picture.

So ya, I get a little pissy when people decide that the Church invisible is only made of of one small denomination or narrow tradition. It’s cutting parts out of the body of Christ… parts that you need, parts that need you. The proselytizing of your fellow saints makes no since what so ever! Sure, lets talk and argue Theology. That is good for us to keep striving to think correctly and better about God, salvation, and life. Chances are, I think your Theology is wrong somewhere. And there is an even better chance of my Theology being wrong in places. But, let’s remember even if my Theology changes to match yours or your’s changes to be more like mine, we’re still not any more a part of the one true Church than we were before.

So, no matter who you are and what you believe about my place in or out of the true body of Christ… To all who can say “Jesus is Lord”, I call you brother.

Come, share the table with me. We will remember, proclaim, and anticipate what Jesus has done that makes us His Body.

Self 365., originally uploaded by Cultural Savage.

Sporting a tie; drinking some coffee.

sibbelence, sibbelence…

So, I’m testing out some blogging software. Lets see if this works…

Self 365, originally uploaded by Cultural Savage.

Off to work on a saturday.

You have new Picture Mail!, originally uploaded by Cultural Savage.

]]> http://culturalsavage.wordpress.com/2008/04/25/you-have-new-picture-mail-5/feed/ Cultural Savage