The wonder and glory of the human

The Givenness of Things: Essays by Marilynne Robinson (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2015, $26, 292 pages)

 

 

Marilynne Robinson is that rare example of a writer who excels as a novelist and an essayist. And the qualities that make her fiction so good—the precise delineation of characters, beautiful language and intelligence—apply to her nonfiction as well.

Her fifth book of nonfiction is a collection of 17 essays originally delivered, sometimes in different form, as lectures. She favors one-word titles, a description that applies to all four of her novels and all but one of these essays.

The first essay, “Humanism,” lays out a theme that recurs throughout the book: the wonder and glory of the human. She presents this as a counterpoint to how we tend to treat one another. Although “the spirit of the times is one of joyless urgency,” she writes, “we have as good grounds for exulting in human brilliance as any generation that has ever lived.”

And while she freely acknowledges humanity’s destructive tendencies, she places her humanism in the context of faith. “Our ontological worthiness,” she writes, is “in relationship with God.”

Robinson shows that she reads widely, as knowledgeable about science and history as she is about theology and literature. And she is unafraid to offer her critique of people’s faulty thinking in either area. She calls scientists’ insistence of the category “physical” absurd, an error of logic.

“I find the soul a valuable concept,” she writes, “a statement of the dignity of a human life and of the unutterable gravity of human action and experience.” Meanwhile, she argues, “neuroscience, at least in its dominant forms, greatly overreaches the implications of its evidence and is tendentious.”

She freely admits her own bias as a theist, which she recognizes goes against materialism, “a discipline of exclusive attention to the reality that can be tested by scientists.” While acknowledging the usefulness of this approach, she writes, “the greatest proof of its legitimacy is that it has found its way to its own limits.”

In another essay, “Givenness,” she makes a similar point: “Scientific reductionism, good in its place, is very often used to evade the great fact of complexity.”

In the same essay, she goes on to compare faith with disbelief: “Faith takes its authority from subjective experience, from an inward sense of the substance of meaning of experience. The same is true of disbelief, no doubt. Objective proof cannot be claimed on either side.”

In her emphasis on humanity’s dignity, Robinson often criticizes our current denigration of one another. She laments the rise of “cultural pessimism,” which she defines as “bitter hostility toward many or most of the people within the very culture the pessimists always feel they are intent on rescuing.”

Robinson notes that “the writer most widely read in England while Shakespeare wrote was the French theologian John Calvin.” She is a huge fan of Calvin, whom she references in nearly every essay and quotes often. She does not mention his involvement in persecuting Anabaptists, however.

Calvin convinces her of the importance of human fallibility. Yet, Robinson writes, “I wouldn’t mind hearing the word ‘sin’ once in a while. If the word is spoken now it is likely to be in one of those lately bold and robust big churches who are obsessed with sins Jesus never mentioned at all. On the testimony of the prophets, social injustice is the great sin.”

She often criticizes a Christianity that is “rooted in an instinctive tribalism.” Christianity’s true nature, in contrast, “has no boundaries, no shibboleths, no genealogies or hereditary claimants.” This tribal Christianity is false and goes against the teachings of the Bible, she writes. “Does the word ‘stranger,’ the word ‘alien,’ ever have a negative connotation in Scripture? No. Are the poor ever the object of anything less than God’s loving solicitude? No.”

She also writes often about Shakespeare, noting that “[his] theological seriousness is simultaneous with his greatness as a dramatist.” In the essay “Grace” she concludes that Shakespeare “proposes that we participate in grace, in the largest sense of the word, as we experience love, in the largest sense of that word.”

At the opposite end of love is fear, the title of another essay. Robinson makes two points: “Contemporary America is full of fear,” and “fear is not a Christian habit of mind.” She does not mince words in her criticism of those who profess to be Christians: “Those who forget God, the single assurance of our safety, however that word may be defined, can be recognized in the fact that they make irrational responses to irrational fears.”

Robinson is free and unafraid in laying out her opinions, which many will not like. In “Proofs” she quotes Karl Barth, who said that “Christianity that excludes the Old Testament has a cancer at its heart.” In “Memory” she writes, “True and utter cowardice is defined by the act of carrying a concealed weapon.” And further: “If Christianity is thought of as a religion of personal salvation that allows one to sin now and repent at leisure, it is … almost limitlessly permissive. It virtually invites the flouting of Jesus’ teachings.”

In “Value,” she turns to economics and justice: “If bankers wrecked the economy, what sense does it make to drug-test the unemployed who need help surviving the wreck?”

In “Theology” she critiques rationalism: “The rationalists are like travelers in a non-English-speaking country who think they can make themselves understood by shouting.”

In the same essay she goes on to describe how she comes to write a novel: “I find my way into it by finding a voice that can tell it, and then it unfolds within the constraints of its own nature, which seem arbitrary to me but are inviolable by me.”

Robinson addresses other subjects: economic inequality, the English Reformation, education, metaphysics, religion and more.

In “Realism,” the concluding essay in this volume, Robinson returns to the theme of human worth: “We know how profoundly we can impoverish ourselves by failing to find value in one another….A theology of grace is a higher realism, an ethics of truth. Writers know this.”

“The Givenness of Things” is a rich source of thought and provocation. Robinson’s interests are wide and her intelligence keen. Reading her is a rewarding experience.

Humility and the lessons of history

It’s rare for a religious discussion to remain in our mediaculture for long, but that’s been the case for President Obama’s comments at the annual National Prayer Breakfast on Feb. 5. Obama gave a speech in which he compared Islamic violence with historic Christian violence. Political opponents expressed outrage. Jim Gilmore, former chairman of the Republican National Committee, called the remarks “the most offensive I’ve ever heard a president make in my lifetime.” 

In the speech, Obama said that “during the Crusades and the Inquisition, people committed terrible deeds in the name of Christ.” He then brought his historical analogy closer to home: “In our home country, slavery and Jim Crow all too often was justified in the name of Christ.”
From what I’ve seen, historians who’ve responded to the claims don’t take issue with his statements. Others, though, don’t like him criticizing Christianity or America. 

This raises a question: Is it valuable to practice self-reflection (and self-criticism) as Christians?
A second question is, Is it fair to even call what was done in the Crusades, the Inquisition and in the American South Christian? Most Muslims would deny that what ISIS is doing reflects Islam.
In a Feb. 10 article at Slate.com, Jamelle Bouie explores the facts behind Obama’s statement about Jim Crow. He makes two basic points: (1) it was worse than we may have thought, and (2) it was a religious ritual.
“In a recent report,” Bouie writes, “the Alabama-based Equal Justice Initiative documents nearly 4,000 lynchings of black people in 12 Southern states—Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia—between 1877 and 1950, which the group notes is “at least 700 more lynchings in these states than previously reported.”
He goes on to offer descriptions of a few of these “lynchings” (the word doesn’t capture the brutality of the torture and butchery), which are too horrible to quote here.
Bouie then notes that these lynchings weren’t just vigilante punishments or “celebratory acts of racial control and domination.” They were rituals. He quotes historian Amy Louise Wood, who writes in her book Lynching and Spectacle: Witnessing Racial Violence in America, 1890–1940: “Christianity was the primary lens through which most southerners conceptualized and made sense of suffering and death of any sort.”
Another historian, Donald G. Mathews, writes in the Journal of Southern Religion: “Religion permeated communal lynching because the act occurred within the context of a sacred order designed to sustain holiness.” 

But why bring this up? What purpose does it serve?
Perhaps it’s a lesson in humility and a warning against self-righteousness. Jesus certainly had plenty to say about the perils of self-righteousness (see Matthew 23).
What ISIS has done is horrible—and comparable to what those “Christian” lynch mobs did. But let’s not judge all Muslims by that group. We don’t want all Christians judged by what other so-called Christians have done.
And let’s do some self-analysis as well. Are we not all prone to acts of domination or violence? Can we learn from our past in order to not practice such violence?
Maybe we need to practice confession and repentance on occasion.

Why Christianity makes emotional sense

Review of Unapologetic: Why, Despite Everything, Christianity Can Still Make Surprising Emotional Sense by Francis Spufford (HarperOne, 2013, $25.99, 240 pages)

There’s a long tradition of Christian literature called apologetics, which is an intellectual defense of Christianity, why it’s reasonable to believe it. British author Spufford in his witty, accessible and profane new book takes a different approach. His is a defense of Christian emotions, “their grown-up dignity.” He writes: “The book is called Unapologetic because it isn’t giving an ‘apologia,’ the technical term for a defense of the ideas. And also because I’m not sorry.”

Who will want to read this book? First, Christians will be drawn to it but will also find plenty they may disagree with. And his swearing will offend some.

Second, people who like to read good writing. Just take a few minutes to read his brief critique of the message New Atheists have put on British buses: “There’s probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life.” His beef is with the phrase “enjoy your life.” What follows is prose that reads like a good novel.

Third, the curious. Whether or not you call yourself a Christian, take note of that word in the subtitle: “Surprising.” You will find something to surprise you, whether or not you agree with it.

While Spufford, who is an Anglican, claims not to be presenting an intellectual defense, he does make reasonable arguments in an attempt to clarify what Christianity is; he just tries to tie them to people’s experience. For example, he notes that people may view believers as “people touting a solution without a problem, and an embarrassing solution too, a really damp-palmed, wide-smiling, can’t-dance solution.” Then he argues that “it’s belief that involves the most uncompromising attention to the nature of things of which you are capable.”

Another part of the subtitle he keeps to throughout is “Emotional Sense.” While many claim that it is assent to the propositions that makes you a believer, Spufford writes that “it is the feelings that are primary. I assent to the ideas because I have the feelings; I don’t have the feelings because I’ve assented to the ideas.”

Spufford develops his own terms as alternatives to standard theological ones. For example, his second chapter is called “The Crack in Everything,” in which he presents a way of addressing “sin” without using that word, which tends to refer to “the pleasurable consumption of something,” especially sex. He goes on to create a term he uses throughout the book: HPtFtU, which stands for the human propensity to f--- things up.

In “Big Daddy,” he addresses the experience of God, which he describes thus: “I am being seen from inside, but without any of my own illusions. I am being seen from behind, beneath, beyond. I am being read by what I am made of.” Then he goes into a long description of awareness in lovely prose. He notes that such an experience brings comfort but is not comfortable. “Starting to believe in God,” he writes, “is a lot like falling love, and there is certainly a biochemical basis for that.”

Spufford reiterates the emotional sense of faith: “I’m only ever going to get to faith by some process quite separate from proof and disproof; … I’m only going to arrive at it because in some way that it is not in the power of evidence to rebut, it feels right.” He concludes that God “is as common as the air. He is the ordinary ground. And yet a presence. And yet a person.”

In “Hello, Cruel World,” Spufford considers the problem of evil, which he describes thus: “What sort of loving deity could have the priorities that the cruel world reveals, if the cruel world is an accurate record of His intentions, once you look beyond reality’s little gated communities of niceness?” He then dismisses several theodicies, or arguments to solve this problem, before concluding that “all is not well with the world, but at least God is here in it, with us. We don’t have an argument that solves the problem of the cruel world, but we have a story.”

This leads to his chapter on Jesus, which he calls “Yeshua,” where he retells the story of Jesus from the Gospels. Scholars will no doubt find it too cursory, but I found it well done and engaging.

Even though Spufford writes in his preface that he didn’t write the book to “engage in zero-sum competition with atheists,” he has those and other voices in mind at times as he confronts and names certain perspectives. In his chapter “Et Cetera,” he points out the view that somebody, “probably St. Paul, retrospectively glued Godhood onto poor Jesus,” who was really “a minor first-century religious reformer with a bit of a bee in his bonnet about gentleness. A well-intentioned and irrelevant person from the pre-Enlightenment ages of superstition.”

In “The International League of the Guilty, Part Two,” Spufford deals with the difficulty of balancing grace and justice. He writes, “We want God’s extra-niceness confined to deserving cases such as, for example, us, and a reliable process of judgment put in place which will ensure that the child-murderers are ripped apart with red-hot tongs.”

While parts of Unapologetic may tax one’s patience, most of it reads quickly. And while some of his points are hard-hitting, confronting Christians as much or more as others, the tone is mostly confessional. He’s giving us his experience, how he came to see how Christianity makes emotional sense.

This is likely a book I’ll return to more than once. And I imagine others will, too.

A scientist's experience of heaven

While many see compatibilities between science and religion, many others see conflict. An Oct. 15 article in Newsweek, “My Proof of Heaven” by Eben Alexander, tries to bridge that conflict in a dramatic way.

Alexander is a neurosurgeon who has taught at Harvard Medical School and other universities. He tells of an experience he had four years ago when he awoke with an intense headache. “Within hours,” he writes, “my entire cortex—the part of the brain that controls thought and emotion and that in essence makes us human—had shut down.” Doctors at the local hospital determined that he had contracted a rare bacterial meningitis that had penetrated his cerebrospinal fluid, and the bacteria were eating his brain.

For seven days he lay in a deep coma, and his higher-order brain functions were totally offline. Then, as his doctors weighed whether or not to discontinue treatment, his eyes popped open.

Alexander writes about his experience as a scientist because he knows how stories like his sound to skeptics. He notes that while he considered himself a Christian before this happened, it was “more in name than in actual belief.”

But his experience changed that. He writes: “There is no scientific explanation for the fact that while my body lay in coma, my mind—my conscious, inner self—was alive and well.” He describes “a larger dimension of the universe: a dimension I’d never dreamed existed and which the old, precoma me would have been more than happy to explain was a simple impossibility.”

Alexander is not the first to describe such an experience, but he is one of the few who does so as a scientist, and a neurosurgeon at that. And, as far as he knows, no one before him ever traveled to this dimension “(a) while their cortex was completely shut down, and (b) while their body was under minute medical observation.”

This is important because the chief arguments against near-death experiences “suggest that these experiences are the results of minimal, transient or partial malfunctioning of the cortex.”

His cortex wasn’t malfunctioning; it wasn’t even functioning. “According to current medical understanding of the brain and mind,” Alexander writes, “there is absolutely no way that I could have experienced even a dim and limited consciousness during my time in the coma, much less the hyper-vivid and completely coherent odyssey I underwent.”

He goes on to describe his experience, with frequent disclaimers about language not being able to adequately capture what happened.

The message that “went through [him] like a wind” had three parts. He summarizes them thus:

“You are loved and cherished, dearly, forever.”

“You have nothing to fear.”

“There is nothing you can do wrong.”

Regardless of Alexander’s science credentials, most nonbelievers, I imagine, will simply deny the truthfulness of his experience, believing (yes, having faith) that some nondivine explanation will eventually emerge.

Many Christians, I imagine, will also deny his message because it’s too inclusive. It lets people off the hook. It doesn’t punish evildoers.

Alexander writes that the universe he experienced in his coma is “the same one that both Einstein and Jesus were speaking of in their (very) different ways.”

I’ve read (and heard) other accounts like Alexander’s, and each time I feel encouraged. But I also know it comes down belief. While science feeds our knowledge, what we decide about the universe and our place in it comes down to faith.

Prejudice and religious ignorance

Mennonites are used to being misunderstood, both in negative and positive ways. We often hear others ask about horse and buggies or plain black clothing when they hear we are Mennonites.

On the other hand, some people laud Mennonites for being committed to peace and justice, not realizing the great diversity in our ranks on those subjects.

We all carry prejudices. We prejudge others, make assumptions about them, often out of ignorance about those people and what they may believe.

Much of our media betrays great ignorance about religion—not just Mennonites but many religious groups. And if you spend much time on the blogosphere, you encounter great ignorance as people spout views that are at times hateful, certainly prejudiced and that show ignorance about the groups they are putting down in order to advance their own views.

One of the groups most commonly misunderstood are Muslims, whose numbers are growing rapidly in the United States. And worldwide Islam is the second largest religion.

Nevertheless, it is treated as monolithic and homogenous. As religion scholar Philip Jenkins writes, “Arguably, over the span of its development, Islam worldwide is quite as diverse as Christianity.”

One of the stereotypes about Islam is that it is Arab, yet, Jenkins writes, “Of the world’s eight largest Muslim countries, only one—Egypt—is Arab in language and culture, and it would not be too far off the mark to see Islam as a religion of South and Southeast Asia.”

A recent book, Woman, Man and God in Modern Islam by Theodore Friend (Eerdmans, 2012, $35), is an excellent source for getting to know modern Islam.

Friend, a senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute and an award-winning historian, traveled across Asia and the Middle East in order to understand firsthand the life situations of women in Indonesia, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Iran and Turkey. The book relates hundreds of encounters and conversations with people he met along the way.

Friend writes that the reader will find “respect for Islam conjoined with faith in women and in their creative and productive potential.”

Meanwhile the media regularly report bombings by Islamicists but ignore peaceful overtures by Muslims, such as “A Commond Word” in 2007.

Ignorance of religion has enormous consequences, whether it’s a white supremacist killing Sikhs or U.S. soldiers burning copies of the Qur’an or the U.S. invasion of Iraq helping overturn half a century of women’s right to be treated as equal citizens in Iraq.

And with the recent rioting over the anti-Islam video reveals religious ignorance going many directions. 

Religious ignorance extends beyond Islam. Every day some media reinforce views of religious groups that are simplistic and fail to build understanding.

One media source that helps counter this practice is Religion News Service. For example, the weekly report dated Sept. 5 included an article on Mormons okaying Coke and Pepsi, one on Seventh-day Adventists arguing about female clergy, a Q&A with Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf of the “Ground Zero mosque,” one on Jews in New Orleans, a Q&A with David Niose, president of the American Humanist Association, and one on the trial of Amish bishop Samuel Mullet Sr., whose followers forcibly cut the beards of Amish men.

There are many sources for learning about others and their beliefs before we make judgments about them. Jesus’ warning about judging others (Matthew 7:1) is pertinent. Let's take time to understand others' religious beliefs before we make judgments about them.

The juvenilization of American Christianity

The June issue of Christianity Today devotes several articles to “The Juvenilization of the American Church.” Thomas E. Bergler’s long cover story, “When Are We Going to Grow Up?” presents a history of American Evangelicals reaching out to youth through organizations such as Youth for Christ and Young Life. He notes the success of this outreach but cautions about unintended consequences: “Juvenilization tends to create a self-centered, emotionally driven and intellectually empty faith.”

Throughout its history, the Christian church has adapted the gospel message to its culture, with varying degrees of success. At the same time, such efforts have been criticized as either watering down the message or presenting a false one that doesn’t adequately challenge people to follow Jesus.

White evangelicals, in particular, writes Bergler, found success in adapting the gospel message to the culture, especially to young people: “It fared equally well in the buttoned-down 1950s and the psychedelic 1960s.”

Meanwhile, in the wider culture, the meaning of American adulthood underwent change. Instead of encouraging responsibility, self-denial and service to others, a new “psychological adulthood” encourages the individual’s needs and wants above obligations and attachments to relationships.

He quotes sociologist James Côté, who says the seven deadly sins have been redefined: “pride has become self-esteem … lust has become sexuality … envy is now channeled into initiative and incentive … sloth has become leisure.”

Bergler refers to the National Study of Youth and Religion by Christian Smith and other researchers, which found that the majority of American teenagers are inarticulate about religious matters. Smith labels their pattern of religious beliefs as Moralistic Therapeutive Deism.

This kind of adolescent narcissism, Bergler writes, has come to typify many Americans today: “God, faith and the church all exist to help me with my problems. Religious institutions are bad; only my personal relationship with Jesus matters.”

In that same issue, several other writers respond to Bergler’s article. John Ortberg, a megachurch pastor, mostly agrees with Bergler but calls the issue a missiological one of contextualization. He asks, How do we contextualize the gospel to a youth-worshiping culture?

He also notes that we need help defining just what spiritual maturity is.

David Kinnaman, a researcher and president of Barna Group, says we under- and overestimate the power and shape of the next generation. He notes that “typical parents are just as ‘addicted’ to media and technology as are their teenagers, just in different ways.” He says they’ve interviewed teenagers who complain that their parents’ use of technology inhibited quality family time.

David Zahl, a cultural critic, agrees with Bergler’s diagnosis but says “it misses the freedom at the heart of the gospel.”

He makes the point that we don’t grow out of spiritual adolescence by trying to grow up. “The Christian religion,” he writes, “is not ultimately about the Christian, either adolescent or mature—it is about the Christ.”

The question Bergler raises is an important one: Are we too immature? One of the better resources I’ve found in discussing spiritual maturity is Richard Rohr’s book Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life. He posits that we create an ego structure in the first half, then “fall upward” in the second half as we search for meaning.

The cult of the individual--part 3

For decades the mainstream media generally ignored religion. Now we see articles on religion, which is a major factor in American society, with some regularity. For example, the April 9 issue of Newsweek proclaimed on its cover, “Forget the Church: Follow Jesus,” while the April 16 cover of Time ran the headline “Rethinking Heaven.” Even more notable than the prevalence of articles on religion is that many are written with some understanding of religion.

 

Even though I don’t agree with everything in the two articles I’ve mentioned, they are worth reading and discussing.

Andrew Sullivan, a Catholic, writes in Newsweek about “The Forgotten Jesus.” He laments how in America faith has become too politicized. Early in the article he asks two questions: “What does it matter how strictly you proclaim your belief in various doctrines if you do not live as these doctrines demand? What is politics if not a dangerous temptation toward controlling others rather than reforming oneself?”

He refers to Thomas Jefferson’s Bible, from which he removed all but those passages he thought reflected the actual teachings of Jesus. Jefferson (and Sullivan, apparently) considered this “a simpler, purer, apolitical Christianity.” That’s naïve, to say the least.

Sullivan assumes a certain framework for "politics." In Chapter 4 of my book Present Tense I use the word in a different sense, that of a community making decisions together. Jesus had plenty to say about politics (see John Howard Yoder's The Politics of Jesus, for example), but he wasn't talking about American politics. 

Sullivan goes on to point out that organized religion is in decline, largely because churches have pursued power rather than faithfulness to Jesus’ teachings. He notes the Catholic hierarchy being exposed as “enabling, and then covering up, an international conspiracy to abuse and rape countless youths and children.” Mainline Protestant churches have declined rapidly, he writes, while Evangelical Protestants, to give one example, is the group that American pollsters have found to be most supportive of torturing terror suspects. He writes: “This version of Christianity could not contrast more strongly with Jesus’ constant refrain: ‘Be not afraid.’ ”

Sullivan claims that Christianity (and he means in America; he ignores Christianity in other parts of the globe) is in crisis. He notes that “many Christians now embrace materialist self-help rather than ascetic self-denial,” that “the fastest-growing segment of belief among the young is atheism” and that “many have turned away from organized Christianity and toward ‘spirituality.’ ”

His solution? Christianity needs to go back to Jesus by emulating Francis of Assisi, who did not seek power but lived nonviolently.

Sullivan makes an important point when he says this does not imply a privatization of faith, which has been a typical American response to religion. He writes that great injustices, such as slavery, imperialism, totalitarianism and segregation, “require spiritual mobilization and public witness.” But the greatest examples of such movements renounce power and embrace nonviolence.

The cult of the individual enters when we pit "Jesus" against the "the church" without designating what those words mean. The church becomes a monolithic bogey man that is the locus of all evil, while Jesus generally represents a nice person who embraces all my beliefs. We end up with an unspecific, simplistic "church" and thousands of Jesuses, all made in our image. 

Thomas Jefferson, a deist, exemplified this individualistic approach when he made a Bible that included only Jesus' teachings. Where did he think those teachings came from? Did he—do we—not recognize that Jesus was a Jew, a member of his religious community who loved Israel (the people, not the country) and criticized it from within?

There's no doubt churches and other religious groups have done horrible things, but they have also done wonderful things. And who made each of us arbiter or judge of those entities?

Generally I like Sullivan's article. But I don't like the cover title. It sets up a false dichotomy.

In the Time article, “Heaven Can’t Wait,” Jon Meacham, also a Christian, notes that while 85 percent of Americans believe in heaven, “we don’t necessarily agree on what heaven is.” 

Meacham explores the history of the afterlife and shows how understandings of heaven have evolved. He points out the difference between the New Testament's view of heaven and the way many Christians view it today. He quotes New Testament scholar N.T. Wright: "When first-century Jews spoke about eternal life, they weren't thinking of going to heaven in the way we normally imagine it." Instead, "eternal life meant the age to come, the time when God would bring heaven and earth together, the time when God's kingdom would come and his will would be done on earth as in heaven."

Today, Americans have different understandings of heaven. "Many Christians," writes Meacham, "often focus more on accepting Jesus as their personal savior and the subsequent enforcement of biblical laws in preparation for the world to come."

Others, Meacham writes, argue that “the alleviation of the evident pain and injustice of the world is the ongoing work that Jesus began and the means of bringing into being what the New Testament authors meant when they spoke of heaven.”

But Erik Thoennes, chair of biblical and theological studies at Biola University and a pastor, thinks this focus “tends to come from white dudes wearing skinny jeans who live in the suburbs and not poor, suffering people.”

Meacham seems to agree more with Wright, who is white but as far as I know doesn't wear skinny jeans, that this as the work of religion: “bringing reality closer to conformity with theocentric aspirations in a world in which loving one another as we would be loved is a sacred act and a way of expanding the dominion of God—or heaven—in the world.”

I also fall more on Wright's side, though I understand the need for comfort and encouragement in the midst of suffering, and I do believe God embraces us in life or death. One thing I like about this view Meacham describes is that it focuses on God's bringing justice to the entire creation. It's not just about my soul.

Both these articles are worth reading and pondering. They are also worth talking about with others as we do politics, discern together how we should act in our faith community.