"I think people tend not to believe in God until they need him." (David Zahl)
"God won't be your only hope, until he is your only hope." (Jared Wilson)
...Is that true? Is it true wholly or partly? What are the implications for our dealing with suffering? What are the implications for our preaching? What are the implications for seeking to grow as Christians?
They come from these two videos:
On the videos, one of my most profound reflections is that David Zahl looks scarily like my Uncle Stuart. I also wondered whether Doug Sweeney really got what Jared Wilson was saying.
Recently I've really benefited from listening to these MP3s by David Zahl of Mockingbird Ministries. They are unlike anything I've ever listened to and at heart that is because, as he repeatedly says, the motivation behind the series is to look at reality, not just Christian reality.
That works itself out in two striking things about the series:
Christian jargon is avoided and it is dominated by clips and stories from 'secular' culture. 10min clips from films, songs, poems, celebrity biography are all brought in, but not as a mere springboard but as something to really look at. David Zahl really believes that the Gospel has something to say to all of life.
Five out of the six talks are on the some of the darkest parts of our lives: self-involvement, judgment, depression, addiction, and death. It is a course which focuses on the diagnosis rather than the cure, and in some sense that is a weakness. But the strength is that David Zahl believes that the good news comes through the bad news. Unlike most of society and the church, he believes that it is through facing up to reality that resurrection life can be found.
[The] Gospel provides the assurance that actually produces repentance, forging the pathway to the place where we find forgiveness and redemption. We can finally grasp hold of the truth that it is always better to be sorry than to be safe. The pastoral implications for marriage alone are staggering." (David Zahl)
Sometimes people say that it is reductionist [...] to always talk about Christianity as a courtroom. Life is more than a courtroom, so why on earth would you always want to make everything about justification and exoneration and guilt and verdicts?
And the only response that we have to that is that is how life actually works. If you're not in a courtroom in your mind when it comes to your spouse, making up fake arguments after something has happened that has hurt you, then I can't relate to you at all.
Life is a courtroom. I wish it weren't that way, but we are arguing. We argue with ourselves, we argue with people that aren't there, we argue with parents that are long deceased. We are constantly arguing and trying to justify ourselves.
So that God should choose to work in that framework should be something that we see as a grace. Not that he is limited or somehow caged in by a legal framework, but that human beings are hard-wired for the law, [so] that God would somehow deal with legality is a good thing.
After briefly reviewing the conference and discussing different perspectives on what the freedom at the heart of Christianity is he finds the most significant meaning of freedom is freedom from yourself; or to use the jargon, imputation.
This freedom from yourself works itself out in four ways (among others):
Freedom from judgement
Freedom from obligation
Freedom from time
Freedom from freedom
I got quite emotional listening to this talk. I've listened to it four times over the last day because it penetrated so deeply.
'Then the Lord put out his hand and touched my mouth. And the Lord said to me,
"Behold, I have put my words in your mouth.
See, I have set you this day over nations and over kingdoms,
to pluck up and to break down,
to destroy and to overthrow,
to build and to plant."'
(Jer 1:9-10)
Would you describe that as a good summary of the work of God and the work of his ambassadors?
I can think of a whole host of reasons why you wouldn't. Some better than others.
But I am convinced that God doesn't just work through 'good news', but through 'bad news' as well. Equally I'm convinced that God doesn't lay on the 'good news' so he can later catch you with the 'bad news' or that the 'bad news' is hidden within the 'good news'. Instead I believe God always works his alien work of 'bad news' in order to do his proper work of declaring 'good news'.
This is the pattern of all God's saving work in this fallen world.
If we reflect I think we can see this in our own experience and in profound pieces of art like this scene from Finding Nemo:
Ultimately though we see it the story of the crucifiction and resurrection of Christ.
David Zahl in this 14min reflection on Jeremiah 1:10, draws on the scene from Finding Nemo and episodes from real life to show that God really is present in his alien work, despite how alien that thought first appears. I encourage you to listen to it.
This is how he ends his sermon, summing up "the message of grace":
Heavenly Father we thank you for this message. Lord, we pray that where we need to be torn down that you would overthrow us and overpower our controlling tendencies. Lord we pray also in the places where we are torn down and bereft and tired and depressed and lonely that you would build and plant just as you have done ultimately in your Son our Saviour Jesus Christ, in whose name we pray.
A few things to like about David Zahl:
He likes people;
He understands people;
He likes pop culture;
He uses pop-culture well;
He's Evangelical-Lutheran-Episcopalian, which has to be rare;
And most importantly he understands why Pixar make the best films.
