Author: W. Keith Brenton

The Really, Really Big Picture

/ W. Keith Brenton / 4 Comments

This is bigger than any 72-inch plasma HDTV or 72-foot jumbotron. It’s bigger than the color displays in Times Square or on the sides of any Goodyear blimp. It’s the answer to the question, the question, the one whose answer in the Douglas Adams universe is “forty-two” and requires the ultimate computer to spend millions of years to build a bigger computer that can correctly phrase the question.

That question was originally asked as, “What is the answer to life, the universe, and everything?”

And “forty-two” is a very unsatisfactory answer to the mortal mind, even if correct.

But out here in the mostly-non-Douglas Adams universe, it isn’t even close to correct.

I think the answer is in Ephesians 3:8-11, where Paul seems to almost brush it aside as a footnote about why God wanted Paul – and all of us – to see the gospel as a purpose in life:

Although I am less than the least of all God’s people, this grace was given me: to preach to the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ, and to make plain to everyone the administration of this mystery, which for ages past was kept hidden in God, who created all things. His intent was that now, through the church, the manifold wisdom of God should be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly realms, according to his eternal purpose which he accomplished in Christ Jesus our Lord. … (emphasis mine)

I think that’s the really, really big picture.

I’m not really, really sure I understand what it means, but I am fairly, fairly willing to take a crack at it.

Why does God create us? Why does He create us mortal? Why does He give us the choice, from the very beginning of creation, between good and evil; between selflessness and self; between living forever and dying?

I believe it has something to do with the angels – that “rulers and authorities in the heavenly realms” refers to them. That there is an eternal purpose behind creation. That it displays the manifold wisdom of God.

There have been all kinds of books written about angels, and most of their content is speculation – and the honest authors admit that. We really don’t know very much about angels. We presume that they are kind of heavenly halflings: created at a point in time (or at least in eternity), and eternal thereafter. We deduce that some were given responsibilities to carry out; became rulers and authorities. (Satan seems to be referred to euphemistically earlier in Ephesians as the “ruler of the kingdom of the air,” for instance.) We conjecture that something went wrong at some point further down the timeline. Some of them rebelled. Some of them remained loyal to God: recognized His manifold wisdom (that good is intrinsically greater than evil?) and continued to obey and worship Him. The rest … fell. We don’t know when. We don’t know a better word for it. And Satan, the Accuser, seemed to be at the head of the pack.

For a while, Satan seems to split his time between prowling up and down the earth in search of victims like Job and showing up before the Lord to accuse them of treachery.

Are you seeing a pattern match here?

God believes in Job, as surely as Job believes in God. God knows that Job has the integrity to live out, even while suffering, his belief that good is intrinsically greater than evil and that His God is good. He will question God, challenge God’s mercy and justice. But he will not challenge God’s authority to do what He wills. He will not curse God and die.

It was a taste of things to come, I think.

Paul says that God’s intent was to display his manifold wisdom to these rulers and authorities (All of them? Just the rebellious ones? – I don’t know!) now and through the church.

Yup. You read that right, and so did I.

The fellowship of believers in Christ is the culmination of God’s ultimate plan. Will they continue, even in suffering, to live out their faith in God through Christ? Mortal beings, born to die, who have never seen God face-to-face (though some of them were witnesses to His incarnation)?

The former are the folks, I’m convinced, that Jesus is talking about when he comments on Thomas’ belief at seeing the wounds of the crucifixion in His resurrected body: “Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.” (John 20:29b)

That’s us. And I believe it puts us in a position of truly cosmic responsibility:

We are to judge angels. (I Corinthians 6:3)

Again, Paul seems to brush it off as common knowledge while upbraiding the believers at Corinth for being unwilling to wisely judge disputes among themselves; instead they filed lawsuits in pagan courts.

I don’t think he means it literally; scripture is abundantly clear in many instances that the Lord is the only righteous judge.

But I still believe we have a role.

Those of use who follow Christ should lead lives that daily prove good is intrinsically greater than evil; lives of selflessness and service to others; lives that speak of Christ’s sacrifice and His giving nature. If we, who have not seen, can so believe and live our faith – then for the angels who knew and saw God and His ultimate goodness yet rebelled, there can be no excuse, no pardon, no alternative than to live out the rest of their eternity in exile and the punishment of never, ever seeing Him again.

No more roaming up and down the earth. No more appearing before the throne to accuse. No more evidence will be admitted to mitigate the sentence.

Instead, the mortal believers will be changed; will become immortal; will take that place of knowing and seeing Him face-to-face and being forever blessed.

And so the angels are judged … by us. Perhaps not us as their judges; but certainly as the standard by which they are judged. That’s how the church makes known the manifold wisdom of God to the rulers in the heavenly realms.

Conjecture, I know.

Yet it is a simple answer which happens to fit all of the available facts, and I think William of Occam would be willing to shave with it.

And, for me, it’s the answer to the $64 gazillion dollar question; to life, the universe and everything – and to how really, really big of a picture we find ourselves in.

Singing in Church

/ W. Keith Brenton / 6 Comments

I sing in church. I used to sing softly because I do not have a lovely voice and I was shy. I can carry a tune in a bucket, if the bucket has a 1-1/2-octave lid and the tempo doesn’t swing it too fast. I can sort of read music, about the way that I read French after taking a couple of semesters of it thirty years ago. So I used to sing quietly, mostly to myself, in church because I didn’t want to spoil the experience for others.

Now I sing lustily and loudly, much to the embarrassment of my teenage son next to me.

But I think I sound better than I used to.

My voice has not improved because of some miracle drug purchased from China through an exclusive e-mail offer, nor from surgical intervention through the skill of competent physicians, nor from the miraculous intervention of the Holy Spirit through the laying on of hands. In fact, I don’t imagine it has improved at all.

However, my attitude about singing has changed.

Truth is, I don’t really give a flip what people around me (including my son) think about my voice; not even when I’m singing a song of encouragement to them.

You see, my voice is a gift from God – just like Amy Grant’s, or Stephen Curtis Chapman’s, or Enrico Caruso’s, or that sweet little old lady in the middle right section of the worship center who has never let being off-key interfere with her devotion to God or her expression of it with great volume. (Lord, I love hearing her sing! He must love it, too.)

God doesn’t expect my voice to sound any better than the voice He gave me.

He wants me to sing because it’s good for me. Increases the oxygenation in my lungs. Lifts my spirits, sometimes. Convicts me, at other times. It gives me a chance to participate in worshiping Him, and to do it with others who love Him.

I love singing. I always have. I can’t believe I cheated myself out of the full blessing of it for so many years.

Oh, sure, there are times when I don’t sing. There are times when I need to listen and be spoken to by the song; times when I am not qualified to sing it as an encouragement to others because I have not been faithful to its message. There are even rare moments when I don’t fully agree, in my ticky-picky word-loving writer way, with the way a certain concept is phrased – or even the concept itself.

Most of the time I sing anyway. Because I don’t want my reluctance to sing to become chronic. That would be an indication of something wrong – not with my voicebox, nor my lungs – but with my heart. And it might be serious.

Serious enough that only the great Physician could heal it.

And how would I know if He was just waiting for me to ask for that healing in song?

Or that the singing itself was the therapy He was prescribing?

The Moment That Passed

/ W. Keith Brenton / 2 Comments

I didn’t know David Wright very well. From the way his close friends prayed for him and cared for him over the long months leading up to his death last night from a brain tumor, I can surmise that he was a good man, good friend, good father. And that he will be deeply missed, as deeply as he was loved in this life.

But I will always treasure a gift that he gave me one Sunday morning during our time at the table.

He had shared a testimony that morning about the support of his brothers and sisters in Christ a few minutes before, and it had been deeply moving. A quiet and somewhat private man, David had undergone something of a personality change at that time; had become more gregarious and outgoing. Perhaps it was the tumor. Perhaps it was the insight that there were more days behind than there could be ahead for him.

So our church sat, as we always sit, while the symbols of Christ’s body and blood were served: uncomfortably upright, heads bowed or gaze straight ahead, eyes averted from each other. And for the thousandth time, I wished for that moment of communion – not only with God, who is always present and welcome in my meditations – but with someone else.

With someone else who understood with me that communion is a gift to share with brothers and sisters, as well as their God.

I yearned for that moment a little like the one at the close of the movie The Right Stuff, when the Mercury astronauts were being honored for challenging outer space at a cheesy dinner, and across the smoky room they shared among themselves a look; an expression of knowing and comprehending it all for having been the only seven to actually go and be there. I wasn’t hungering for the exclusivity or any arrogance attached to it; just the recognition of a kindred soul who understands.

Just about that time – while the cup was being distributed – David’s head turned toward mine and our eyes met. And he half-smiled. And half-nodded.

I returned his acknowledgment, and thanked God for him.

The moment passed. Now David has, too.

But his gift to me remains precious, and always will.

The Mishnah (and Gemara) of Christ

/ W. Keith Brenton / 8 Comments

I am truly sorry to have interrupted a decent series of posts with two others about inspiration by the Holy Spirit and a general rant about my country still being at war.

What I had really intended to write about next, after The Tanakh of Christ and its two predecessors, was The Mishnah of Christ. Now I’ve completely derailed my train of thought and can’t seem to get it back together.

I remember that I wanted to say that the Mishnah of Judaism is the point at which the religion leaves preachin’ and goes to meddlin.’ Or something like that.

Maybe more accurately (and maybe not, as I am only a surface scholar of such matters), the Mishnah begins the process – 200 years after century one A.D. – of writing down all of the oral tradition of scholarly types among the Jews plus a little bit more. At least some of that is the oral tradition of legal interpretation that Jesus shot skeet-holes through while He walked this world with mortal feet.

Not all of it. Just some.

And there’s probably nothing technically wrong with nitpicking God’s law to the finest detail and recording it in volumes and volumes of commentary, other than perhaps the time used up doing so which might have been put toward actually living it out to the greater benefit of His children.

I do it. I admit it. I blog. I blog about the details of my interpretations of the Torah of Christ which differ from other people’s views. Sometimes I wash my hands afterward, but I usually forget.

And I think I’m typical of a long, long generation of Christianity (my tribe is Restoration Movement) that has been guilty of exactly the same misdemeanor.

The problem is, a new generation is sprouting up in all kinds of Christian tribes with the recognition that it wasn’t a misdemeanor at all; it was a felony. The world was left to starve and die and rot in a cesspool of what my long generation has gotten away from calling “sin,” because we didn’t feel it was politically correct – or that it was judgmental – to point it out.

Perhaps it is. The thing about it is, we never tried. Not really. And we never really discovered that we didn’t have to. All we had to do was tell The Story – without embellishment or commentary or controversy – and Jesus’ perfect life would have illuminated sin for the heinous thing it is.

So, here I am. I’m “mishnah-ing” again. I could be blogging about Christ at the old, abandoned cooperative blog What Would Jesus Do Next?. I could be doing a thousand things for other people. I could even be kneeling in prayer for some that I know and love who are hurting. I could be trying to invent ways to make their lives more blessed. I could be attempting some of them.

But it’s cold outside, and those attempts take effort, and it’s the end of the day, and I’m tired – too tired to think of any more excuses.

Oh, sure, I think a molecule or two of good comes from my “mishnah-ing.” Occasionally. Yet far too much of all the Christian “mishnah-ing” that has been generated in the span of my tribe’s existence has left preaching and gone to meddling; to differing and accusing and debating and proving and sometimes snubbing, disfellowshipping, eternally condemning and once in a while even rudeness and insult. It has gone to the Gemara level – the commentary on the commentary. (And sometimes, way beyond.)

Yup. In Judaism, as I understand it, there are copies of the Talmud whose pages contain the Torah and Tanakh, framed by the Mishnah commentary on the Torah and Talmud, encircled by the Gemara commentary on the Mishnah commentary.

And I have to ask myself: Are the things that God wants to say to us really that complicated?

Or is all our commentary just a way to avoid living and doing it?

So that’s why I asked HTML to strike through of Christ: When the level of commentary hits a certain point, it’s no longer about Christ or of Christ or for Christ.

At least, that’s what I think I was going to say in this post. It’s really been a while since it all occurred to me; before Christmas, when my train of thought first hit a snag in the rails. It was a dark time, a time of refining and discipline, a time when I just couldn’t write … when I was beginning to realize that in my life – when all was said and done – there would probably be a lot more said than done.

And, somehow, with God’s help, that has to change.

Fathers and Sons and Wars and Rumors of Wars

/ W. Keith Brenton / 6 Comments

I just read Patrick Mead’s recent post Another Tent Peg Pops Loose, and his fatherly angst brought to mind some that I felt a little over four years ago, and wrote about in my weekly column in the Abilene Reporter-News. I wrote it in the late autumn of 2002, when Matthew was about to turn ten years old, and pretty much everyone in the Western world believed that Iraq was brimming with weapons of mass destruction. I don’t write political commentary in this blog very often, but I do now strongly believe that the administration at that time pulled a stunt like the mythical Governor sang about in The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas in his showstopper, “Dance a Little Sidestep.” I believe that some sleight-of-hand about this so-called WMD “intelligence” and Iraqi government sponsorship of Al-Quaeda was presented to distract Americans’ from the unsuccessful attempt to kill or capture Osama Bin Laden, the self-admitted mastermind of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Yet it is undeniable that Saddam Hussein practiced genocide within his own country and attempted to annex another. And while I rue my own credulity, and detest the catastrophe that has befallen Iraq and all armed forces there engaged in trying to establish peace, I can have nothing but the deepest admiration for the young people who are willing to serve at the President’s whim and protect their nation to the price of their own lives – even if he may be wrong about where or how that must be done – and admiration for the parents, spouses, children and friends who send them off with their ongoing prayers. If my son chooses to serve, I will not be able to be more proud of him. If he chooses to protest and oppose the war, I will not be able to be more proud of him. He will do it with all his heart, whatever he chooses. But if he chooses to remain silent and do nothing, I will be no more proud of him than I am of myself for having said nothing and done nothing all this time. So here is what I wrote then, and what I felt then, and what I mostly still feel ….

“What war now?” my son asked, appearing at the entrance to our den in his pajamas.

I fumbled for the remote and quickly shut off CNN.

“C’mon,” I redirected him, heading for the kitchen. “Let’s get water for you and your sister. It’s bedtime.”

“What war now?” he persisted.

Matthew’s question came some time back, when sabres were first being rattled in the direction of Iraq and CNN was already discussing strategy. He was already aware of the “conflict” in Afghanistan, which eventually was called “war.”

“It’s possible,” I said hesitantly, “that we will go to war with a country called Iraq, and soon.”

“Why?”

Why do countries ever go to war? I wanted to say, but it was a question beyond adult reason and certainly not an answer to an honest child. I filled two kid cups with ice and water.

“Their leader may have helped the people who destroyed those two buildings in New York and damaged the one in Washington.”

“And crashed that plane?”

“Yes, and crashed that plane.” I gave him his cup and we started upstairs. “He also tried to take a country next to his several years ago and said it was his. When we stopped his army, they set fire to everything they could so no one could have it.”

Matthew thought about it. “So we didn’t really stop him.”

I shook my head. “No, I guess we didn’t.” We were in his room now, and I picked up his globe to point out Iraq. “But if a war does happen, it will happen way over here, on the other side of the world. Nowhere close to us; we’re here. Their missiles can’t go that far.”

Yet, I thought. Yet.

“So we have to go to war to stop him?”

I hedged. “It will cost a lot of money. And a lot of young soldiers may die or be hurt really badly.” For one heart-stopping moment, I saw my little blond, blue-eyed boy very differently: all grown up, and yet just a teenager … wearing desert fatigues and carrying a gun. “But, yes, our president thinks it’s the only thing that will stop him.

“And the sad thing is, he may be right.”

“More than an end to war, we want an end to the beginnings of all wars. Yes, an end to this brutal, inhuman and thoroughly impractical method of settling the differences between Governments. The once powerful malignant Nazi state is crumbling; the Japanese warlords are receiving in their homelands the retribution for which they asked when they attacked Pearl Harbor. But the mere conquest of our enemies is not enough; we must go on to do all in our power to conquer the doubts and the fears, the ignorance and the greed, which made this horror possible.” – What would have been President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s next speech, had not a stroke taken his life the day before he was to deliver it. His son read the message April 13, 1945.

How Can You Tell If You’re Inspired?

/ W. Keith Brenton / 5 Comments

Well …

Did you ask to be inspired?

“For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened. Which of you fathers, if your son asks for a fish, will give him a snake instead? Or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion? If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!” – Jesus, as recorded in Luke 11:10-13

The context is His teaching on prayer. In one swell foop, He tells us that God loves us like a father and wants to give us good things; wants to give us the best gift of all – His Holy Spirt, but that we should ask. I get the impression that this describes how He wants to live through us, and it’s not something to be taken lightly. And that it doesn’t seem to be in His nature to just appropriate someone’s body and do His will through them without their consent or request.

So there’s really nothing to fear, is there?

Have you obeyed God?

“We are witnesses of these things, and so is the Holy Spirit, whom God has given to those who obey him.” – Peter, as recorded by Luke in Acts 5:31

Oh, well; then no one is worthy of God’s Spirit, because all have sinned and falled short of His glory. Sure, I’ve read Romans 3:23. That’s the whole reason Jesus came. Not a proscription against Him being able to work through us. Remember, the same Peter speaking in in Acts 5:31 was the one whom Paul had to withstand face-to-face for refusing to eat with Gentiles.

Have you actively resisted the Holy Spirit?

“You stiff-necked people, with uncircumcised hearts and ears! You are just like your fathers: You always resist the Holy Spirit!” – Stephen, to the Sanhedrin, in Acts 7:51

Again, the implication to me is that the Spirit won’t go where He isn’t wanted.

Were you baptized into more than just the name of Jesus?

“When they arrived, they prayed for them that they might receive the Holy Spirit, because the Holy Spirit had not yet come upon any of them; they had simply been baptized into the name of the Lord Jesus. Then Peter and John placed their hands on them, and they received the Holy Spirit.” – Luke, again, in Acts 8:15-17

I am admittedly going out on a limb here. What seems to be described here – to me – is an act of two apostles signifying by prayer and by resting their hands upon these Christians that they felt these believers should receive the Spirit without having to be re-baptized in the way Peter and John have described to them. That’s making some assumptions, I admit. But Jesus requests that his disciples baptize in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit in Matthew 28:16-20, and – unlike its companion passage in Mark 16 – these verses’ authenticity is not generally questioned. And a similar thing happens with Paul in Acts 19.

Have you ever felt the power of overwhelming hope?

“May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.” – a blessing from Paul in Romans 15:13

Well then, if He brings such power it might seem logical – given the whirlwind, tongues of fire, healings and other miraculous manifestations connected to the giving of the Spirit in century one A.D. – that there could be no doubt about His presence in our lives in century twenty-one.

If there can be no doubt, why are would there be phrasings in scripture like these:

“It seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us ….” – Acts 15:28a

“… I think that I too have the Spirit of God.” – Paul, in I Corinthians 7:40b

That second verse is a study in the conflicting teachings of Paul and some other individuals whom Paul – rather graciously, “I think” – concedes have the Holy Spirit, even though they disagree on a matter that he qualifies “In my judgment.”

I have to conclude that there are matters on which people can disagree and still be inspired by God’s own Holy Spirit. Spiritual matters. Not just political parties or football teams or worship styles; but matters of life choice and destiny, such as whether to marry at a time when cataclysm is prophesied – the question at hand in this passage.

In other words, when there is no “right” answer.

And I have to conclude that the Spirit sometimes operates in us so subtly; so unobtrusively that we might even doubt His presence; or at least, not fully perceive it.

I think that’s because God’s plan involves faith and choice and free will.

I don’t want to reduce His indwelling to some simplistic formula, for it is a matter much deeper and wider and more powerful and mysterious than any of us ultimately can grasp. But there are aspects of it that God wants us to know and understand, and be comforted by – that is one of the Spirit’s primary concerns – and they are not too difficult to seek, to find, and to comprehend.

Are You Inspired?

/ W. Keith Brenton / 13 Comments

I will tell you something that I’m not sure I’ve ever shared on this blog before.

Pretty much every time I sit down at my retro Mac to write a post for “Blog In My Own Eye,” I pray that God will inspire me through His Holy Spirit; that He will not let me mislead others; but instead that He will use me to draw others closer to Him – and me along with them.

It’s something I’ve done for about the last year year and a half of my blogging endeavors, after a time when I was wistfully remembering how Mike Cope would begin each of his sermons during our tenure at Highland with the prayer that God would “pour through me the gift of preaching.”

I don’t believe that such a prayer – for Mike, or me, or anyone else – is a solid guarantee that God will answer with a sudden earth-trembling wind-stirring inrush of holy inspiration and an infallible prevention of error and an inarguable gift of persuasion.

But I do believe it’s a good place to start.

I think it’d be a good place for everyone who shares The Story to start. I’ll go further than that. I think it’s dangerous for anyone to speak, ostensibly on God’s behalf, without the assistance of His Holy Spirit.

We make His indwelling such a thing of ultimate mystery; of fear and even dread – perhaps that we’ll somehow lose control of ourselves and become scripture-spouting lunatics, or glossalalic-babbling weirdoes, or just some of those glassy-eyed people who murmur intense blessings on you when you check out at their register at Lifeway Book Store. Or the notion of His home in our hearts may be a thing of doubt – maybe that we’re not sure when we are or aren’t indwelt by Him or whether we’re speaking by His inspiration.

While there is certainly an element of mystery and depth to the Spirit that we may never understand, I believe that what scripture says of the way He lives within us is fairly simple and direct.

Therefore I tell you that no one who is speaking by the Spirit of God says, “Jesus be cursed,” and no one can say, “Jesus is Lord,” except by the Holy Spirit. There are different kinds of gifts, but the same Spirit. There are different kinds of service, but the same Lord. There are different kinds of working, but the same God works all of them in all men. Now to each one the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the common good. – I Corinthians 12:3-7

The mention of the name “Jesus” is no guarantee of the Spirit’s inspiration. (I hope you can deduce that by watching Televangelical TV.) But no one who tells The Story and proclaims Him as Lord and lives out that Story in service can do so by any other means.

I believe that the Spirit’s inspiration is no more complicated than that.

People today are inspired as were people of century one A.D. It’s expressed in their writing, their speaking, their art, their music … now just as it was then.

I haven’t seen the manifestation’s of the Spirit’s presence that most folks call “miraculous.” I haven’t seen the blind made to see, or the deaf to hear, or the lame to walk, or the dead to rise. I do see in scripture a tapering-off of those incidents as years pass in century one. But I also try to keep an open mind about century twenty-one.

What I do see are miraculous results of the Spirit’s residency.

People are still persuaded that God loves them enough to have sent His Son to live and die and live again for them, so much so that they resolve to die to themselves and live for Him and for others.

Isn’t that miraculous?

And the effects – unlike a wonderful but temporary healing of the body – are an eternal healing of the soul.

I do see and hear and read extraordinary insights into the deeper meaning of scripture – some of those insights already centuries old, but later than century one; others in blogs written and sermons shared and lives lived in the past few months and weeks and days. I believe they are inspired by the same Spirit.

Should they be in the canon of scripture?

In a sense, I believe they are. God remembers them. And I think He wants us to share them, just as Paul did before judges and governors and kings. Our stories as believers are part of the ongoing Story of Christ; the way He works in and through our lives. Now, I believe the canon to be complete due to its sufficiency of truth. (Scripture was never intended to convey all truth – the atomic weight of artificially-induced elements, for instance; or the meaning of a half-smile on your beloved’s face.)

Yet Christ living in us is a story that has great power, and is a worthy supplement to the gospels of scripture.

Just like the epistles.

And, like the subtitle of my blogging buddy Matt Elliott‘s blog says: “Every day I write the book.”

The Tanakh of Christ

/ W. Keith Brenton / 5 Comments

As I understand it – and I welcome correction from folks who know better – most Jews agree that the Torah (what we Christians call the first five books of the Old Testament) is The Law; it is authoritative; it is handed down from God. The remaining volumes of that covenant are known as the Tanakh, and the vast majority of Jews agree that these books, too, are authoritative.

But they do not carry the same weight, nor are they viewed with the same degree of reverence, as the Torah.

And while I’m not writing this to advocate that Christians should view the first four or five books of our New Testament as dictated by God while the remainder were simply suggested, I would like to propose these few scattered thoughts, and let you work through them just as I am doing.

First of all, you should know that I believe in the inspiration of Scripture. Yup, all of it. Every page of every volume within the Old and New Testaments. Some of us will part company there, but if I’m willing to at least hear the reasons for your beliefs, I hope you’ll do the same for me.

Secondly, it seems to me that the return of people to God and the establishment of His kingdom in this world goes pretty well in the better part of those first five books. Yes, it does seem to go badly for a while at the close of the four gospels, but there is a surprise ending that they all corroborate, wiping out any doubt about a happy ending. And the momentum continues into Luke’s sequel called Acts of the Apostles (which probably would not have been even his working title) – as long as the believers persist in telling and living out The Story.

Now you can take to extremes the verses in that book about “continuing in the apostles’ teaching, and fellowship, the breaking of bread and prayer” – and some folks in the past have, by saying “That’s all that scripture authorizes Christians to do.” Many of those folks would be horrified to advocate doing those things in homes as well as in God’s house, and doubtless very few of us would go to the extreme of selling our possessions to share with those in need. But I digress. The fact is, as long as people did these things, “the Lord added to their number.”

Things continue to go well for another couple of chapters, even though Peter and John are imprisoned for telling and living out the Story. Their imprisonment is short-lived, and the authorities are timid about pressing their luck afterward.

Until Avarice steps in. And Envy – trying to keep up with the Josephs in your giving. And then Exaggeration. Finally, Conspiracy to Defraud, with a penalty of death for Ananias and Sapphira. Somehow – with all the miracles going on around them, both extraordinary and everyday miracles – they just didn’t “get” The Story.

Then Peter and many other apostles stick up for The Story before the authorities and will not back down. Gamaliel recommends a code of pragmatism, but the floggings begin – and will continue on and off for the next three hundred years for many Christians who do the same.

The problems begin in the next chapter because some others don’t “get” the selflessness of the story. Whether they are actually neglected or just feeling neglected, a policy is made to give special attention to some widows.

And folks, whether you agree or not, I believe that one of the first big mistakes in church leadership takes place here.

The twelve apostles gathered the disciples together and told them that it wouldn’t be right for them to neglect the ministry of the word of God and wait tables. So they delegated the job. They began creating a hierarchy of service. They, the apostles, would handle the more spiritual tasks. The selected seven would wait tables.

Which means they missed one of the major points of The Story. The one Jesus made by wrapping a towel around himself, and washing the feet of eleven of the twelve of them. The point is this: waiting tables is the ministry of the word of God.

Do you think I am a heretic for harboring this opinion?

(To me, there’s a hint that something was amiss when no mention was made of prayer or fasting before/during the decision; and yet that the decision “seemed to please everyone.”)

I’m guessing that most of you will have as much difficulty proceeding in reading further as I am having in trying to write further. But I beg you to journey with me a little more; a second mile, if you will. Read on, but not here. Read the scripture itself.

See if it isn’t true that things ultimately go well for the company of believers we call the church as long as they stick to The Story – even when their persistence leads to imprisonment, torture and death.

See if it isn’t true that things go horribly wrong when folks within that church family begin pushing their own doctrines (about whether Jesus was all-divine or all-mortal; about whether circumcision and the law must be honored to produce a “true” Christian) and leave behind the simple, haunting beauty of The Story.

See if it isn’t true that when self becomes more important that selflessness; when the details of what is preached and practiced have greater priority than the sacrifice of the Savior; when race and heritage and diversity become obstructions rather than assets to the family of faith – all hell breaks loose, just as Satan designed and intended.

See if it isn’t true in Galatia, in Corinth, in Ephesus, among the Romans, among the Hebrews, in the seven cities of the Apocalypse. See if it isn’t true in the hearts of those loved by Peter and Jude and James and John.

See if there isn’t a measure of desperation in the those epistles decrying attempts to legislate unity through uniformity, morality through just good behavior, and even faith itself by just believing in The Story rather than by living it out as a vessel of Christ’s Holy Spirit.

See if there isn’t triumph in the epistles when they call back to His teachings, His examples, His sacrifice, His promises, His resurrection.

Don’t take my word for it.

See for yourself.

See if it’s even possible in your faith to accept that there might be a New Testament Tanakh – written by good people, inspired people, people doing their best under crushing circumstances, people to whom the Spirit spoke but would not dictate because dictatorship is simply not in God’s nature. But people, nonetheless, who were growing more distant by the moment from the sharpness of their recollection of having been part of The Story first-hand.

Then, we can converse some more about that Holy Spirit, given as surely to those who believe today as to those who believed then.

And how He enables us to write our own Tanakh with our lives.

The Torah of Christ

/ W. Keith Brenton / 11 Comments

Jesus’ commandments, as you probably know, are few and far-between. And simple, and demanding, and life-changingly self-sacrificial.

His commentary on the Torah is that it was summed up in only two commandments. Get those right, and you don’t even have to put words to the rest.

His capstoning commandment is for us to love one another as He loves us.

A great ambition. An impossible achievement.

But He teaches detail. He goes into quite a bit of it, even just in the Sermon on the Mount. However, it isn’t so much detail as example. The examples illuminate principles that could be applied by any thinking child to the circumstances of her or his own life.

And he teaches by living out His examples. He helps others. Provides wine generously at a wedding party. Heals sick, broken and dead people. Feeds the hungry en masse. Casts out demonic spirits enslaving folks. Dandles children on His knee. Teaches that God loves us deeply, and would give anything – even His only Son – to be reconciled to his prodigal children. Then He becomes the reconciling sacrifice.

That’s The Story.

You’ve heard it before. You know what it is. You can tell it in as many words, or fewer, or more, or better.

He is the two summation commands.

He loves the Lord His God with all His heart and with all His soul and with all His mind and with all His strength.

He loves His neighbor as Himself.

That is the Torah of Christ.

Does He say anything about how we must worship? Yes, “in spirit and in truth.” And He sings a hymn with most of His closest friends on their last Passover eve together. Anything else? If so, point me to it.

Does He ever forbid a man or a woman from telling others about Him? No; in fact, He stays an extra day in Samaria because a woman has told her village about Him; the first persons to whom He appears resurrected are women who run to tell the others Whom they have seen.

Does He require attendance at assemblies of God’s people? No; He just goes. He reads in synagogue. He attends feasts at the temple. And on off-days, He gathers people in small groups and mountainside-filling multitudes to teach them how to love each other and how to love God.

Does He outline a hierarchy of church government? As nearly as I can tell, He establishes his church in a whirlwind of convicting, spirit-filled faith-sharing around the core of The Story. He breaks His kingdom into a world through ambassadors and embassies; outposts of faith. God is the King. We are His subjects.

Does He demand our baptism? No; He demands repentance, and then is Himself baptized to fulfill all righteousness. Then He undergoes the very barbaric death, the very pathos-laced burial in a borrowed tomb, and the very incredible-yet-undeniable resurrection which that baptism comes to signify.

Does He require the good confession? No; He simply makes it Himself before Pilate.

Does He threaten damnation if we do not agree upon every single way of thinking about His teaching? Oh, get real. He prays for God to make us one, because no one else can. And anyone else can ruin it. So He prays it as one of the last requests to leave His lips as a human being who can suffer pain and torture and humiliation and death:

“Father, may they be one.”

Is there anything else that He asks of us to do?

Yes.

He asks us to go. Everywhere. Tell The Story. Build up faith in others. Baptize them into a reconciled relationship with God.

He leaves many of the details, the applications, the interpretations, the commentaries, and the responsibility for living out our faith pretty much up to us. Yet He does not leave us to do so alone. He gives us the gift of His Spirit, to comfort and encourage and convict and inspire our telling of the Story. He gives us each other, to love and to be accountable to and to be blessed by. He gives us prayer, a conduit of communication with God the Father Himself.

He leads us captives to freedom in His train, and gives us all these gifts.

So, is there really anything else that we can teach, any doctrine we can expound upon, any commentary we can make, any interpretation we can insist upon, any theology we can legislate, any judgment we can make that can be worthy of the time we spend neglecting the simple telling of The Story of the Torah of Christ?

Teaching as Torah the Talmud of Men

/ W. Keith Brenton / 13 Comments

Okay, I know those probably aren’t the exact words of Jesus. (He wasn’t speaking English, after all.)

But I wonder if that’s what his listeners heard.

The Torah, as I recall from freshman Bible class, is the law given by God to Moses – much of it in narrative form. Then there’s the Tanakh, which recorded a lot of other oral traditions of law and history. There’s the Mishnah, a sort of commentary on the preceding. Finally, there’s the Talmud, a kind of super-commentary which was intended to illuminate and expand upon all of those teachings.

I don’t know whether all Jews see them as equal – and there are a lot of different views within Judaism – but there does seem to be a consensus that the Torah came from God and that good men wrote the Talmud. (In fact, I think that the Babylonian Talmud generally receives preference as older and more authoritative when a conflict with the Jerusalem Talmud is perceived.)

Probably some Christians somewhere make the same distinction between the Gospels and the rest of the New Testament, but I’m not one of them. I believe in God’s inspiration through His Holy Spirit, and a deep purposeful truth within each volume of the Biblical canon.

What I don’t believe is that the messages within them all carry equal weight in our lives and our walk with God. And I don’t believe that the commentaries written about them carry equal weight – with each other, or with scripture. And I don’t believe that the articles written about the commentaries written about scripture … well, you get the picture.

So when we teach something – and we really pound the pulpit about it – is it generally something that is Torah or Talmud?

When we tell someone the story of Jesus; describe His compassion for others; repeat His teaching about our relationships with God and others; relate His sacrifice as the ultimate innocent for our guilt – do we really have to pound the pulpit? Isn’t The Story powerful enough that it persuades all by itself, though told with the gentlest of tone and the most timid of sociability?

And when we really want to persuade someone of our “rightness” on a particular question of doctrine that does not immediately “sell” itself by its intrinsic qualities, isn’t it then that we find ourselves proof-texting and cross-referencing and committing assault and battery on an innocent lectern?

Isn’t it then that we are tempted to generalize, exceptionalize, rationalize, extemporize and categorize? When the “truth” isn’t so simple, so obvious, so heart-wrenching and will-breaking?

Maybe that’s because what we’re defending is a tradition of men and not necessarily of God.

Jesus wasn’t fond of men’s traditions that took priority over – or contradicted – God’s teaching. He said it nullifies our worship. He said it puts our lips in a different segement of life from our hearts.

He said it was teaching the commentary as if it were the law itself.

That sounds like a really dangerous mistake to me.