Immigration and the Bible

          I really hate to say this, but this time John Piper got it right.

          I might describe Piper as a hyper-Calvinist, or maybe just an irritating theological and social “conservative.”

          I once read a book of his titled Don’t Waste Your Life. Great title! Terrible book.

          Usually when I’m done with a book, I pass it on one way or another. Not this time. It went straight into the recycling bin. I did not want to expose another human being to Piper’s toxicity.

          One thing about him: he tends to ground his awful ideas in scripture. Yeah, he usually reads scripture very wrongly, but at least he reads scripture.

          Would that some of his critics might as well.

          A week or so ago, Piper posted this on X:

          “You shall treat the stranger who sojourns with you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God.” Leviticus 19:34 Christians know the miserable bondage we were all in.

          It would appear that you just can’t quote the Bible to expose contemporary hypocrisy. Piper was inundated in mostly vituperative replies to his post.

          It also would appear that most people yelled at him because they did not want a biblical voice of any kind in today’s immigration debate.

          But at least one commentator twisted scripture around to fit his vision of the immigration problem. According to this guy, the “strangers” in question were converts to Judaism and were to be accepted because of that.

          Yep, they were no longer strangers at all. Now they were just good Jews – former immigrant foreigners, yes, but now Jews in good standing.

          There is no way you can read Leviticus 19:34 that way – or any of the hundreds of other similar passages in the Old Testament. No way at all.

          Here’s another translation of Leviticus 19:34 that makes it pretty plain: “The alien who resides with you shall be to you as the citizen among you; you shall love the alien as yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God.”

          John Piper, once a “conservative” darling, is now denounced as “woke.”

          You know what “woke” means. It means you are awake and alert and trying to follow Jesus.

          On this one, Pastor Piper, you are wide awake, while so many of your critics snore loudly in ignorance.

A long time coming

My new book, Day by Day, calls itself A Journey Through the Bible, and when some people see the depth of it, they wonder how long it took to put together.

  More than 25 years, actually – not in continuous writing, of course, but in a couple of spurts and gasps over three distinct iterations.

  The first iteration was in 1999, when I was pastor of what is now Crossroads United Methodist Church, in Lansing, Kansas. I called it Testaments, and I created it as a one-year study of the Bible.

  In fact, a hardy group of parishioners soldiered with me through the study over a year’s time. I don’t remember who all the participants were, only that at least four have now gone on to glory.

  I offered it as an alternative to Disciple Bible Study, which is more intensive and takes a very long time to get through the whole Bible. Testaments also was cheaper, only $5 per copy, basically the cost of copying and binding it.

  It was 52 pages long. I supplemented it with weekly doses of commentary and discussion questions. It was a lot of work, but I was appointed three-quarters time at Lansing, so I had some time for extras.

  When we were done with it (and pretty much exhausted, as I recall), I set it aside and worked on other projects.

  One of those extras was the script for The Victory of God, a stage production based on the book of Revelation that we put on in 2002. I’ve since expanded that into a book as well, though I’ve discovered that publishers shy away from books that don’t follow the misleading “end times” claims of dispensationalism.

  More than 20 years after Testaments, I was looking for a long-term Bible study for my congregation in Edgerton, Kansas. I was formally retired by now but still working half-time. I gave Testaments a thorough work-over and came up with a new title, Connections.

  The timing was bad, though. The pandemic made a mash of our plans for group study. Connections never had much opportunity to connect.

  But I really liked the way I’d revised it, so I thought I would expand my revision and clean it up even more. I discovered that Cokesbury already sold a Bible study called Connections, so I went in search of a new title.

  Day by Day was such a natural fit that I figured that title would also be taken, but it really wasn’t, so I ran with it.

  Connections wasn’t bad, just a little slapdash here and there. Day by Day is a lot better. Now that I see it in print, of course, I see some things I wish I’d expanded even more, and a couple of things I might have done without.

  But overall I’m happy with it. I even recommend it to you if you’re looking for a daily study that will challenge you to grow in your faith and really think about what you’re reading without some of the cliches we’ve come to associate with Bible study.

  As I’ve explained here before, in this study we try to move beyond the assumptions and clichés of pop religion and really try to take the text on its own terms rather than on our terms.

  Likely I have not always been successful in that endeavor, but trying to set aside ourselves and open ourselves to the ministry of the Holy Spirit is what Bible study is essentially all about.

More on Lent…

       More thoughts on Lent, including a clarification:

       To clarify: I am not categorically against the idea of “giving up” something for Lent.

       Especially for young people or relatively new Christians, giving up soda pop or chocolate or Facebook or something similar may be entirely appropriate as a teaching and learning experience.

       It’s just that after awhile you need to move beyond that.

       In more mature Christians especially, I think you need to think more strategically about what you’re giving up. You want to shun those things that distance you from God and move toward those things that bring you closer.

       In that vein, Linda and I are both embracing a more positive approach to Lent this year.

       Following a hint from Nadia Bolz-Weber, Linda is celebrating all the people and experiences that bring her joy.

       Following a hint from Ginger Rothaas, I am celebrating all the people and things I love.

       We’re both recording these things as they occur to us in a Lenten journal.

       Ginger’s suggestion is to record one love for each year of your life. Following that pattern, I need to record 77 loves – and maybe one more because I’ll be a year older in another month.

       So far I’ve got 11. Rather than listing each person individually, I’ve grouped them as Immediate Family, Extended Family, Church Family, Good Neighbors, and so on. Maybe if I run out of ideas in a few weeks, I’ll celebrate people one by one by name.

       Anyway, that’s what we mean by marking a positive Lent rather than a negative one. If repentance really means setting new directions, then careful consideration of all the loves and joys of your life is surely the start of a new direction.

       What do you think? Am I avoiding the issue here, or getting closer to it?

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       In a recent blog on forgiveness, slightly renegade Anglican Bishop Todd Hunter recalls an encounter that has helped him understand the importance of forgiving.

       He writes:

        “In a conference setting I cannot remember, a young man came up to Dallas Willard seeking forgiveness for an unkind, unfair comment he had made against him. Dallas always had a warm, welcoming presence about him, but in this moment his eyes softened even more. The gentleness of Dallas’ face, the peace exuding from his body language, signaled no retaliation or rejection was about to happen.

        “Instead, with a tone full of love, Dallas simply said, ‘Thank you—but don’t give it another thought on my account. You are off the hook. You are free.’ ”

       I find the language intriguing. “You are off the hook. You are free.”

       The expression derives from fishing, of course. When you release a fish, or it evades the hook on its own, it is no longer captive. It is free.

       When you forgive someone, you let them off the hook. You set them free. You also set yourself free, if you were harboring any resentment against them.

       According to various dictionary renderings, getting off the hook means escaping from a difficult situation, escaping from an obligation, or escaping the consequences of an action or a punishment that you deserve because of an action.

       And isn’t that what Jesus has done for us? Hasn’t he let us off the hook for our sins for our many failures to love God and others as we love ourselves? Hasn’t he freed us from some of the consequences of our actions?

       And, depending on how you want to interpret this, hasn’t he placed himself on the hook for us?

       To think of it that way, you don’t have to subscribe to the awful doctrine known as Penal Substitutional Atonement. You just have to know that Jesus has let you off the hook and set you free. That’s enough in my book.

Have a happy Lent!

Ah, Lent

Lent is here. Again.

Here are a few observations on the first day, Ash Wednesday:

Centuries of bad practice have given Lent a bad name.

I have always advocated a joyous, almost cheerful, Lent rather than a grim Lent. Yes, it’s a time for reflection and setting of new directions (often termed repentance). But it’s intended to be a time of renewal, not self-flagellation

We have turned the idea of “giving up” something for Lent into a silly game. We abstain from things to learn their true importance to us. Giving up chocolate for 40 days might give me a powerful hankering for chocolate, but I don’t think it will help my spiritual growth.

That’s because chocolate is not a barrier to my relationship with God. Other things are. These are the things I should shun as acts of self-denial – both during a “test run” during Lent and as a life-affirming practice afterward.

It is possible during Lent to be overwhelmed by distracting obligations. For more about this, check out a blog post by a former Kansas City Star colleague, Bill Tammeus: https://billtammeus429970.substack.com/p/the-dalai-lama-a-grammy-reincarnation

The real kicker of Lent is that it reminds each of us of our own mortality. (More about that another time.) Kate Bowler has some powerful observations here: https://katebowler.substack.com/p/the-ache-is-not-going-away

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          Another giant has fallen. Jesse Jackson was a longtime advocate of human rights and a legendary protégé of Martin Luther King Jr. He may be best remembered for his mighty rhetorical affirmations: “I am somebody! I am God’s child!”

          Another passing noted: Robert Duvall, an actor who played good guys and bad, saints and sinners, with equal skill.

Only love is biblical

      If you’re not more loving after reading the Bible, you’re reading it wrong. – St. Augustine, about 400 CE, or some 370 years after the death and resurrection of Jesus

      In my new book, Day by Day, I call that quote from Augustine central to reading the Bible.

      If you’re not more loving after reading scripture, you have totally misread and misunderstood it.

      I find an interesting variation on that theme in last week’s 5th installment of the new TV series “Star Trek: Starfleet Academy.”

      The episode involves a search for the truth about what happened to Benjamin Sisko, the legendary commander of Deep Space Nine in the series of that name.

      The show was meant as a tribute to Avery Brooks, the now retired actor who played Sisko in the original series. The show closes with a voiceover by Brooks, who reads from a tribute he did to his father in 2007. The quote is especially fitting because it closes an episode that focuses on Sisko and the meaning of fatherhood.

      Here’s the quote:

      “Divine laws are simpler than human ones, which is why it takes a lifetime to be able to understand them. Only love can understand them. Only love can interpret these words as they were meant to be interpreted.”

      That’s the way it works with the Bible. Only love can interpret the words of scripture as they were meant to be interpreted. Any other reading will distort the message. Any other reading will result in a demonic message, not a message from God.

      That is especially true in this day when white nationalists who call themselves Christian and many other fakers try to read their own hate into the Bible.

      If it ain’t love, it ain’t biblical. It’s that simple. And that hard.