Wonderful post! The parables are so fun and provocative.
I kept waiting for you to say something about the "Collect the weeds first and bind them in bundles to be burned, but gather the wheat into my barn" part. You did reference justice toward the end of your post. But Jesus get's pretty extreme in some of his parables with his imagery, like burning bundles of weeds in this one. I'm never sure what to make of that stuff in the context of uncontrolling love.
Great question. (Not surprising, since you are great at asking great questions.) I, too, am uncomfortable when I hear Jesus talk in a way that appears to challenge a concept like uncontrolling love. The following is about the best I can do…
1-Yes, he definitely seems to be committed to the idea of a God moving things toward justice.
2-Here, as in other places, he’s fond of slipping into a preaching style, not uncommon for prophets in his day, that might be best described as Jewish Apocalyptic. Certainly, one of the characteristics of such a genre is describing events on earth as part of a large and dramatic spiritual battle playing out between good and evil forces. Another characteristic might be the use of cosmic symbolic language that, at times, almost feels oversimplistic or cartoonish even. (I’m thinking now of the way the writer of the Book of Revelation writes. If you take it literally, you’d wind up creating a violent religion.)
It’d be important for me to say that I’m not suggesting the words of Jesus are to be devalued because of all this; on the contrary, sometimes a good sketch, drawing, or cartoon that accentuates certain things in a simple way can get to the heart of the matter better than the most in-depth dissertation.
Another angle here is that in the same way that someone might be able to pick out themes an artist returns to again and again, and therefore, can more quickly interpret the artwork, so people familiar with the Jewish Apocalyptic genre would be capable of more quickly understanding the symbolic language being used.
3-Thinking about it in terms of art … a point here might be that, irrespective of the art, the artist himself was never violent. One lone possible exception would be the cleansing of the temple scene, but even that story, once looked at critically, doesn’t really reveal a violent Jesus. (Thankfully!)
4-Ultimately, for me, whenever I read any scriptural references to fire connected to punishment, I read it through Song of Songs 8:6 - "Love burns like fire, the brightest kind of flame." So, if fire is involved, it’s a fire of love. We cannot escape this “fire.”
For the person oriented around control and coercion, I suspect that love’s fire feels a bit like torture, but for the person who's oritented around consent and trust, by faith, I think this fire will be campfire like at sunset, on a perfect summer evening in the mountains. (Hence, the micro theology series book on hell I titled Love Burns Like Fire.)
5-None of these things entirely relieve the discomfort I feel when I hear Jesus talk this way, but when I consider them altogether and smashed into the movement of the bible which is from bondage to freedom, closed-minded to open-minded, and from law to grace, then I'm able to accpet it.
Thanks again for pointing this out. And what do you think? Have I nuanced it too much? (Ha, others have told me as much!)
Not nuanced too much. Good answers. I guess I would put it this way. God does not control but lets us make our own choices. And when you choose love, you will probably run into difficulties in this life (turning the other cheek can hurt!) but then so does everyone. In the life to come, about which we can only speculate, I'm guessing that choosing love works really well and choosing non-love hurts. So as long as one chooses non-love, one is going to hurt bad, hopefully leading to a change of heart. So choosing non-love is a self-chosen judgment that torments, like being in a bundle that is thrown on the fire. The good part is, one can always choose to go with love instead of non-love, and while learning to love well hurts as we learn, in the end it brings joy to everyone.
"It means accepting that our theology must remain humble enough to be surprised when grace shows up in unexpected places and through unexpected people."
Oord...really? Yikes. I disagree completely on that point. God can and does override circumstances. Take miracles for example. Oord says that God cannot act in the physical realm because God has no arms or legs. He's one nutty guy in MYHO.
Hi Anthony, I don't normally engage with people who call one of my friends—someone who exemplifies embodied intelligence and love—'nutty,' but I'm willing to dialogue.
If a God that "can and does override circumstances" exists, what rationale do you use when considering why he or she didn't override circumstances like the Holocaust, the African slave trade, or the Rwandan genocide? Or a thousand other examples? How would you characterize a type of love that would use or allow such travesties?
I feel spanked and probably rightly so for my Oord comment. To answer your question re God's lack of intervention. How do you know God did not intervene? But my best answer would be 'I don't have a clue'. That's a question that will be answered in our next life.
Ha, well, thanks for the response. On to the matter ...
When you ask: "How do you know God doesn't intervene?" It makes me realize that you probably haven't read much of my stuff. (Ha, no worries, most people haven't!) But, to be clear, I've not said God doesn't intervene. Tom probably hasn't either.
WHat O.R.T. would want to do, is nuance the word "interevene" and say that God is very much active in the world, but "intervene" implies that God reaches in from some other time and space and does his thing. O.R.T. isn't going to be interested in a God who's separate from our time and space.
So, we're still down with God's involvement, even more, really desire it and need it, it's just that we would want to keep the creature's response at play. All that to say, it's more of a co-partnership with the divine. I love this approach because it esteems and empowers people. Which I very much think is in alignement with the way Jesus operated.
I think that's close, but a healthier intepretation is that God is always acting... inviting ... working ... but whether or not his/her goals are achieved are, in part, due to our willingingess to get involved. For me, it'd be impossible, based on my current thinking, to think of God as love if this wasn't the case. If God could unilaterally do whatever they wanted to do, then ...
a)it would override a peron's agency, which then necessarily relegates this to a move of anti-love and
b)it would raise massive questions about why this God would not have already acted to prevent the horrible things that have happend in our world (i.e., The Holocaust, African Slave Trade, Extermination of Native Americans, or the recent insanity of gun violence, to name a few.)
None of this is meant to argue with you, rather, to make sure I've done my part in advancing the case for love.
Wonderful post! The parables are so fun and provocative.
I kept waiting for you to say something about the "Collect the weeds first and bind them in bundles to be burned, but gather the wheat into my barn" part. You did reference justice toward the end of your post. But Jesus get's pretty extreme in some of his parables with his imagery, like burning bundles of weeds in this one. I'm never sure what to make of that stuff in the context of uncontrolling love.
Great question. (Not surprising, since you are great at asking great questions.) I, too, am uncomfortable when I hear Jesus talk in a way that appears to challenge a concept like uncontrolling love. The following is about the best I can do…
1-Yes, he definitely seems to be committed to the idea of a God moving things toward justice.
2-Here, as in other places, he’s fond of slipping into a preaching style, not uncommon for prophets in his day, that might be best described as Jewish Apocalyptic. Certainly, one of the characteristics of such a genre is describing events on earth as part of a large and dramatic spiritual battle playing out between good and evil forces. Another characteristic might be the use of cosmic symbolic language that, at times, almost feels oversimplistic or cartoonish even. (I’m thinking now of the way the writer of the Book of Revelation writes. If you take it literally, you’d wind up creating a violent religion.)
It’d be important for me to say that I’m not suggesting the words of Jesus are to be devalued because of all this; on the contrary, sometimes a good sketch, drawing, or cartoon that accentuates certain things in a simple way can get to the heart of the matter better than the most in-depth dissertation.
Another angle here is that in the same way that someone might be able to pick out themes an artist returns to again and again, and therefore, can more quickly interpret the artwork, so people familiar with the Jewish Apocalyptic genre would be capable of more quickly understanding the symbolic language being used.
3-Thinking about it in terms of art … a point here might be that, irrespective of the art, the artist himself was never violent. One lone possible exception would be the cleansing of the temple scene, but even that story, once looked at critically, doesn’t really reveal a violent Jesus. (Thankfully!)
4-Ultimately, for me, whenever I read any scriptural references to fire connected to punishment, I read it through Song of Songs 8:6 - "Love burns like fire, the brightest kind of flame." So, if fire is involved, it’s a fire of love. We cannot escape this “fire.”
For the person oriented around control and coercion, I suspect that love’s fire feels a bit like torture, but for the person who's oritented around consent and trust, by faith, I think this fire will be campfire like at sunset, on a perfect summer evening in the mountains. (Hence, the micro theology series book on hell I titled Love Burns Like Fire.)
5-None of these things entirely relieve the discomfort I feel when I hear Jesus talk this way, but when I consider them altogether and smashed into the movement of the bible which is from bondage to freedom, closed-minded to open-minded, and from law to grace, then I'm able to accpet it.
Thanks again for pointing this out. And what do you think? Have I nuanced it too much? (Ha, others have told me as much!)
Not nuanced too much. Good answers. I guess I would put it this way. God does not control but lets us make our own choices. And when you choose love, you will probably run into difficulties in this life (turning the other cheek can hurt!) but then so does everyone. In the life to come, about which we can only speculate, I'm guessing that choosing love works really well and choosing non-love hurts. So as long as one chooses non-love, one is going to hurt bad, hopefully leading to a change of heart. So choosing non-love is a self-chosen judgment that torments, like being in a bundle that is thrown on the fire. The good part is, one can always choose to go with love instead of non-love, and while learning to love well hurts as we learn, in the end it brings joy to everyone.
I’m truly honored to be mentioned by you—especially alongside Chris Hanson and in such a rich, thoughtful post. Thank you so much!
"It means accepting that our theology must remain humble enough to be surprised when grace shows up in unexpected places and through unexpected people."
I love this!
Oord...really? Yikes. I disagree completely on that point. God can and does override circumstances. Take miracles for example. Oord says that God cannot act in the physical realm because God has no arms or legs. He's one nutty guy in MYHO.
Hi Anthony, I don't normally engage with people who call one of my friends—someone who exemplifies embodied intelligence and love—'nutty,' but I'm willing to dialogue.
If a God that "can and does override circumstances" exists, what rationale do you use when considering why he or she didn't override circumstances like the Holocaust, the African slave trade, or the Rwandan genocide? Or a thousand other examples? How would you characterize a type of love that would use or allow such travesties?
I feel spanked and probably rightly so for my Oord comment. To answer your question re God's lack of intervention. How do you know God did not intervene? But my best answer would be 'I don't have a clue'. That's a question that will be answered in our next life.
Ha, well, thanks for the response. On to the matter ...
When you ask: "How do you know God doesn't intervene?" It makes me realize that you probably haven't read much of my stuff. (Ha, no worries, most people haven't!) But, to be clear, I've not said God doesn't intervene. Tom probably hasn't either.
WHat O.R.T. would want to do, is nuance the word "interevene" and say that God is very much active in the world, but "intervene" implies that God reaches in from some other time and space and does his thing. O.R.T. isn't going to be interested in a God who's separate from our time and space.
So, we're still down with God's involvement, even more, really desire it and need it, it's just that we would want to keep the creature's response at play. All that to say, it's more of a co-partnership with the divine. I love this approach because it esteems and empowers people. Which I very much think is in alignement with the way Jesus operated.
Yes. I've read some ORT and what I got was that 'intervene' for him meant that God could not act outside of human agency. I disagree with that.
Best, and keep writing.
I think that's close, but a healthier intepretation is that God is always acting... inviting ... working ... but whether or not his/her goals are achieved are, in part, due to our willingingess to get involved. For me, it'd be impossible, based on my current thinking, to think of God as love if this wasn't the case. If God could unilaterally do whatever they wanted to do, then ...
a)it would override a peron's agency, which then necessarily relegates this to a move of anti-love and
b)it would raise massive questions about why this God would not have already acted to prevent the horrible things that have happend in our world (i.e., The Holocaust, African Slave Trade, Extermination of Native Americans, or the recent insanity of gun violence, to name a few.)
None of this is meant to argue with you, rather, to make sure I've done my part in advancing the case for love.
Best to you!