Yesterday we looked a reading of Genesis 1-3 that leads to a complementarian view of marriage. We used Mark and Grace Driscoll’s book Real Marriage as a case study of this view. As one commenter pointed out, the Driscoll’s didn’t invent this position. It’s been around for centuries and, I’m sure, has been presented with different nuances.

What’s certainly true of all complementarian theology is that its rooted in a view that prior to sin entering the world, Adam and Eve were given unique roles to fulfill in their marriage relationship with each other and that these roles would be true for men and women throughout history. In their reading of scripture, the story of the Fall is, in part, the story of how Adam and Eve refused to embody these roles. For a complimentarian, then, redemption includes husbands and wives return to these Edenic roles.

I poked this way of reading the text, and suggested that there’s another way of looking at the text. For time’s sake, I’ll match these points with the Driscoll’s five points that I quoted yesterday.

1. Both men and women are “the glory and Image of God.”

(Genesis 1:26-27)

I mentioned yesterday that the Hebrew word “adam” has two translations, the proper male name, and “humanity.” The text makes it clear that God was referring to humanity here:

²⁶ Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals,^[a] and over all the creatures that move along the ground.”

²⁷ So God created mankind in his own image,
in the image of God he created them;
   male and female he created them.

2. By naming his wife “Eve”, Adam was abusing his God given creativity. 

Before the Fall, the relationship between Adam and Eve is described in terms of intimacy and closeness. Eve is fashioned from Adam’s side. Adam doesn’t nothing to contribute to creating her. He is asleep.

His love song to his wife emphases their partnership and closeness:

“This, at last, is bone of my bone

and flesh of my flesh

she shall be called Woman,

because she was taken out of Man.” (Gen. 2:23)

The Hebrew word Adam uses for “man” is “Ish” and the word he uses for “woman” is “Ishshah.” The words sound alike in the Hebrew. Adam is celebrating intimate partnership. God has given him an equal.

It’s not until after the Fall, and the conflict that God prophesied that would arise between men and woman that Adam renamed his wife Eve. There’s a suggestion among some theologians, that Adam was abusing his God-given task of naming the animals. In his own way, Adam was making a subtle power play against the intimate partner that God gave him.

3. Adam and Eve sinned as a couple (Genesis 3).

Sure, Eve was tempted by Satan and ate first. But the text says that Adam was there (Gen. 3:6). He participated willingly. And then verses later he sins against his wife by throwing her under the proverbial bus when God confronted him (Gen 3:12). When God pronounced his judgment he judged them both.

4. The story of redemption includes returning the marriage relationship to its pre-Fallen state. 

Galatians 3:28

5. Servanthood and submission are mutual tasks.

Ephesians 5:22-30. Yes, the text uses the word “submission” in reference to the wives. And then it goes on to tell the men to love their wives as Christ loved the church, this includes servanthood, submission, and self-sacrifice also.

This isn’t an exhaustive post on the topic by any means. I’m not suggesting that complementarians as chauvinists. I’m not even suggesting that this is the egalitarian position that I hastily laid out today is the position of my church. We’ve got staff and pastors on each side of the aisle on this issue.

What I’m trying to say is that the fastest way to predict the main points of a Christian marriage book is to see how Genesis 1-3 are handled. The author’s vision life before the Fall is the direction that he or she is pointing your marriage.

I wasn’t going to read Real Marriage. I really wasn’t. I wanted to stay out of the stampede of  rush-to-judgment reviews that occurs whenever a polarizing figure releases a new book. I also know my biases about Mark Driscoll. The odds of me doing an objective review are, well, low.

But sometimes, when you are a pastor you find yourself reading books that you’d rather not. Real Marriage rocketed to the New York Times Best Seller’s list and hit #1 in the Advice category. And the book is being discussed and read by quite a few in my church. It’s was time to crack the book.

I’m about halfway through the book, deep enough to be reminded of a central truth: If you want to quickly understand where a Christian marriage book is going, skip to the part where he or she deals with Genesis 1-3. 

The Driscoll’s use the creation account to argue the husband’s inarguable role as the “covenant head” of the home:

1. God called the race “man” (Genesis 1:26) and “mankind” (Genesis 5:2).

2. By naming Eve, Adam was exercising his authority over her as God commanded (Genesis 2:23).

3. Although the woman sinned first, God came calling for the man (Genesis 3:8-9) and held him responsible because he failed to lovingly protect his family from Satan and sin. Sadly, our first father, like many of his cowardly sons, did nothing while his wife was being deceived (2 Corinthians 11:3, 1 Tim 2:14).

4. It is Adam’s sin that is imputed to the human race, because he is our head, and only Jesus, who is called “the last Adam” can remove that sin (Romans 5:12-21; 1 Corinthians 15:45).

5. Echoing the creation account of our first parents, the Bible repeatedly declares that husbands are to lovingly, humbly, and sacrificially lead their homes as Christlike heads, and that wives are to submit to their husbands (Genesis 2:18, cf Genesis 5:2; 1 Corinthians 11:2-16; 14:33-34; Eph 5:21-23, Col 3;18, 1 Timothy 2:11-15; Titus 2:3-5; 1 Peter 3:1).

(page 72)

For the Driscolls,  and others who hold what’s know as “complementarian theology”, the story of the Fall is the story of how sin entered the world, in part, by Adam and Eve failing to exercise their god-given gender roles in their marriage. This led to Adam not protecting Eve and sin entering the world.

I think it would be fair to categorize the advice throughout the rest of the book as an attempt to return marriage to its condition before the Fall. I suspect that this is true of every Christian marriage book. Our marriages should work better if we attempt to emulate marriage as God designed it.

For the Driscolls, Men will act like men and lovingly lead. Women will act like women and humbly submit to this leadership. Although I disagree with this premise, I need to note that the Driscolls take painstaking care to paint a complementarian theology where men are not free to callously dominate their wives. This is commendable, however, it doesn’t take away from what I believe to poor reading of Genesis that serves at the foundation of their book.

Here are some quick objections to the five points the Driscoll’s made above:

• English translations do translate the Hebrew word “adam” as man and mankind. “Adam” has two meanings in the Hebrew. It’s Adam’s proper name, but it’s also used as the generic term for “humanity.” The dual use of the term is hardly an argument for the headship of males.
• Adam didn’t name his wife “Eve” in Genesis 2:23. I’m baffled as to why they make this claim. In his song, Adam calls himself “Ish” and his wife “Ishshah.” Man and Woman. The words sound alike and connote intimacy and partnership between the two. Adam doesn’t name his wife “Eve” until after the Fall. In tomorrow’s post, we’ll see that the second naming is a power move.
• The text does say that Eve was deceived by Satan first.  Paul does reiterate this fact and wrote some passages that will demand a careful reading from us. For now, its enough to say that the Driscoll’s editorial remarks about Adam not acting as a loving husband aren’t indigenous to the Genesis passage (or in the provided cross references).
• The scriptures talk about sin being passed through what is commonly known as the “Federation of Adam.” However, the truth of that doctrine doesn’t depend on a complementarian theology of men and women.
• Finally, yes, the Bible does talk about women submitting in marriage. However, the texts also call men to the same task, even though the language is different. The Bible calls for all parties to defer to each other and serve each other.

I’ve been thinking a lot about that verse in the book of Hebrews where the author tells the church to “consider how to spur each other on to love and good deeds.” I don’t know what your faith tradition is like, but in my experience this verse has become the property of folk who have a natural bend toward confrontation. Worse, this verse is surrendered to those who, by appearances, are the “spiritual haves”; that 1% of the church population who has it all together, while the 99% scrape by the best they can.

Don’t get me wrong. There’s nothing wrong with a good direct challenge. I’ve given and received my share of these. But I think there’s another way…

What if you and I, by the very nature of our uniqueness and brokenness, was somewhat shaped like a spur? What if we had rough-edges and places of weaknesses that had the potential to offend, challenge, rub people the wrong way, and even inspire compassion from others? What if the same thing were true of our strengths?

If this were the case, we’d  spur each other to “love and good deeds” just by showing up and being a community together.

By “showing up” I’m not talking about merely being in the room, or posturing ourselves to be appear to have our spirituality together. I’m talking about being present in the moment and being real with each other.

I think this would involve three things:

We’d need to learn the art of being weak around each other.

There’s obvious risks to this, and we’ve all been burnt in the past. Obviously, we get to choose who we feel safe with. But if we got to the point where we were just open about our sins, insecurities, and silliness then others would have the chance to practice grace. They’d have the opportunity to just love us as we are and to let their own guard down and say “me too.” Grace would free us from shame and give us the courage to repent and ask God to pick us up and give us the strength to do better.

We’d learn how to dream around each other. 

There’s part of my that feels more than a little foolish when I tell people about the dreams and goals I have for myself. I don’t mind telling people that I’m writing a novel. I feel foolish saying that I expect to sell it to a publisher, in spite of the fact I’m changing genres, and in spite of the rough economic landscape. Here’s the risk of sharing a dream: You’re admitting that you’re not smart enough to have let this rough world beat the hope out of your completely. And that looks like foolishness to the cynics.

But what if our dreams are road signs pointing us toward the  ”love and good deeds” that the author of Hebrews was talking about? A community of people could help us make sure that those dreams were truly big enough and would actually do someone else any good.  We’ve have a band of friends who’d encourage us to keep out own goals instead of theirs.

We’d learn how to be strong around each other.

Yes, we’d have to learn to do be strong around each other, also. We’d have to learn how to be humble and accept the fact that we do have strengths without letting it go to our heads. We’d embrace the responsibilities that come with those strengths. We offer to use our strengths to encourage each other, and yes, tell the hard truth to each other when necessary. We’d push each do get more out of ourselves than we thought was possible.

But first, we’re going to have to take the risk of showing up to our marriages, our churches, our small groups… wherever it is that you and I call our communities.

Our church recently worked through Romans 10:1-17 during our sermon and small group times together. The passage is rich and filled with all sorts of tangly theological challenges. The gist of the passage is that Paul explores all the unproductive ways that his countrymen attempt to establish their own righteousness. He then explains what it looks like for someone to be relationally connected to Jesus. Finally he moves on to talk about why’s its necessary for those connected to Jesus to let others know why they can set down their self-righteousness projects: Jesus is Lord, he’s proven this through the resurrection, and he’s decidedly not impressed with our DIY righteousness projects. In fact, these efforts peeve Jesus because they’re attempts to make his gift irrelevant.

I was caught by something different in this reading of the passage. DIY righteousness always comes at the expense of other people. Look at the Gospels. The religious leaders created a class of people called “sinners” to point at. Those people might actually been immoral or they might have worked in professions that the clergy thought were shady. They religious leaders needed these bogeymen to point at. It’s how they graded themselves on the curve. The gospels are filled with stories of the Pharisees making up oppressive rules and marginalizing people, all in an attempt to posture themselves at the proper end of their bell curve. When God’s not in the picture, being righteous is one nasty game of “king of the mountain.”

Now contrast that the behavior of someone whose found their righteousness in Jesus. Paul uses imagery to describe that person as a messenger who works to connect others to Jesus.  Paul reaches back into a dark moment in Israel’s history to make his point. Israel had been carried off into exile. God had allowed this calamity because the nation wasn’t interested in keeping its covenant with God. Eventual God forgave the nation and it was time for them to return to their home. However, it was necessary for messengers to run from city to city throughout Babylon to deliver the news. Otherwise, entire villages of Jews would have remained in exile simply because they didn’t get the memo.

It’s an amazing contrast in posture. DIY Religion requires a person to keep others down and to push them off the mountain. But a person who is truly connected to Jesus runs towards others and invites them to experience God.

So here’s the test that I can use to determine if I’m really trusting Jesus to be the source of my standing before God or if I’m slipping back into playing church: How well do I treat people? Especially those who think, believe, or act contrary to my understanding of God and what he wants? Am I drafting these people into my game of king of the mountain? Or am I introducing them to a Jesus who has already worked out their righteousness too?

The street preacher eyed the work site come to life as the morning dawned. Thick forearms assembled steel pipe and long planks until the framework was nearly as tall as the blighted store front behind it.

The preacher took in the morning smells: Coffee, car exhaust, and bacon. He craned his head and found the source of the bacon smell.  A half-eaten breakfast sandwich, dropped and abandoned by harried business woman. He did not check to see if he was being watched before picking it up and eating it. Homelessness stole that dignity years ago.

He eyed the well fore-armed workers select chisels and rubber hammers and ascended their Tower of Babel and began chipping at the decaying mortar.

A young boy asked his mother why the strange man didn’t comb his hair or pick the scrambled egg out of his beard. The mother blushed and scolded the boy. This too was lost on the preacher who was lost in reverie.

Angry car horns shattered the moment. He clutched at the dilapidated Bible and volume of Nietzsche which he stole from the public library on Main back when Clinton was in office. Bill, not Hillary. The Preacher dictated ideas for his next sermon to no one in particular as he prowled the sidewalk to nowhere in particular. He arrived, bent over and set the volume of Nietzsche on the pavement as soap boxes were a relic of another time.

He cleared his throat and preached:

“A parable for those with ears: The angel shook the sculptor awake and gave him a vision. Build a statue grand enough to make history forget Michelangelo.

“The artist trembled under the weight of the responsibility, having never been commissioned by an angel before. He sold his home and raided his 403(B) and found funds needed to purchase a worthy piece of granite.

“He knew he would need the perfect scaffolding to satisfy the angel’s demands. Google the Oracle revelated a legion of options. Manufacturers used steel, aluminum, or plastic composite to make the pipe. In Indonesia, locals use bamboo, glory be.

“The oracle proceeded and offered countless varieties of couplings. The sculptor was a smart man, but was beginning to get discouraged by the choices.

“The sculptor scratched his head and fulminated, fulminated at the decisions ahead of him. The oracle directed him to a message board filled with sculptors who had also been visited by the angel. After swallowing his disappointment over not being the only chosen artist, he committed himself to reading the litany of opinions that each artist had form over which combination of pipe, coupling, and plank would create scaffolding worthy of the divine vision bequeathed to each. Tension ran high among the sculptors. The more our artist read, the more opinionated he became regarding the matter, until he threw himself into the online fray. He never did separate the statue from the excess stone, but at least they made him a moderator on the message board.

The preacher paused to clear his throat before concluding his homily. “Cursed is every man called to build a statue and loses his life in the scaffolding.

“Verily.”

Whenever someone is fortunate enough to be pardoned from Hell, the demon working the front lobby teaches that rare individual a secret handshake. Least that’s what the stranger in the diner said.

The stranger sat at my table uninvited and spilt coffee over my half-read newspaper and launched into his story before I could cuss him out.

He claimed to have been in a heavy equipment accident just yesterday. Brain injury would explain volumes.  But the dozer bucket just didn’t ring his bell, he claimed, it killed him dead.

My money’s on a sharp but non-lethal rap to the head.  But I had time to kill until the missus returned from shopping, so I let him ramble.

Shortly after dying, he was ushered into Hell and was processed for an Eternity of suffering. A short hour later, an embarrassed minion politely explained that there had been a clerical error and that Hell wasn’t authorized admit him just yet. The demon explained to the shaken patron that he could collect his personal affects at the lobby on his way out.

By the time the man reached the lobby he collected himself and was more relieved than scared and struck up a friendly conversation with the demon wearing the shabby suit behind the desk.

“Whada day. My own personal hell”, the man said as he scratched his name next to several “X’s.”

“You think a hell, on any scale, is ever really personal?” the Demon asked.

“Come again?”

“Nothing. Just thinking out loud. There is one last thing”, the demon said and then proceeded to teach the man a secret handshake.

“What’s this for?” the man asked.

“You’ll meet all sorts of interesting people with it. People like you, who’ve been through personal hells not unlike yours Use the handshake to find each other.”

The man thought about the possibilities and how he’d struggled to strike up friendship his entire life. The handshake would up open up a word of possibilities.

The demon noticed his smile and warned him not to get overly worked up over the handshake.

“Why’s that?” the man asked.

“’Cuz there’s only two types of people who ever leave here. Those who forgot the handshake and those who are too proud to admit they know it.”

The man was disappointed but wore a brave face. “Not much of a handshake is it?”

“Depends on your druthers”, the demon countered. “I think it’s heavenly, but there’s no accounting for taste.”

You meet the darnest people in diners.

I live in the shadow of Happy Valley, even though State College is a four hour drive from Erie. We’ve all been processing the meaning of Paterno’s life and we’re a conflicted lot.

Some still call him Joe Pa. These folk have stories of his personal generosity. They watched him generously pour his affections back into the campus. I have a friend who played for Joe PA during the Rose Bowl winning season and is now mourning the loss of a loved mentor.

I know others that will never call Paterno by his nickname again. Paterno  is the man who willfully allowed a sexual predator to roam the campus and to freely victimize innocent boys. I’d heard multiple stories from sexual abuse victims who’ve involuntarily had to re-live past horrors; the recall triggered by ten-minutes of listening to ESPN. Their version of Paterno is a man who turned his back on innocent boys and knowing let a monster do the unthinkable in order to protect something far less valuable.

This debate subsided for a few weeks, but bubbled up as we all watched the coverage of the funeral. Coach’s legacy has become a Rubric Cube and we’re unsure what combination of tumbled squares brings clarity.

Paterno is our Citizen Kane.

Amy bought me the 70th Anniversary Edition of the movie for Christmas and I watched it again for the umpteenth time over break. The movie tells the story of a journalist assigned to learn the meaning of Kane’s last words. Like Paterno, Kane, was both loved and hated and larger than life.

The movie ends and the reporter is stymied. The viewer is left to conclude that it is impossible to truly know what’s in the heart of a person. This is, perhaps, doubly truly if you are wearing the skin of the person being studied. Citizen Kane is an Every Man.

…

When I left college, I fell in love with Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov. Story by story, Dostoevsky chipped away at my tendency to catalog people into my two boxes: Villains and Heroes. His characters were all divided selves. The heroes had dark sides and the villains all possessed beautiful nobility. He populated his world with people who were an impossible mix of oil and water.

Citizen Paterno was both JoePA and Joe Paterno. Oil and Water. A divided Dostoevskian-self.

And I believe there’s hope in seeing both him and ourselves in this light.

For starters, we’d come a little closer to understanding the Gospel. God’s story isn’t one of coming to earth to reward the good people and damning bad ones. That story was taken by Santa. And we all know, deep down, that’s there’s no such thing as wholly good or wholly bad children. We’re all just divided selves, broken by the Fall, and unable to do a darn thing about it.

It’s the story of a Christ who came to earth, and died to begin to heal the damage of sin, including the human duplicity found in all of us.

Like Citizen Kane, Joe Paterno was a larger-than-life Every Man, reminding us all of our dived condition.

I mentioned in an earlier post that I’m in therapy sorting how out I managed to slip in a deep depression and how I can keep from returning there. Part of the puzzle is the ways I’ve misunderstood God’s personality.

In my late adolescence, I worked at a Christian camp as a counselor. I want to be careful with my words here. I truly love those people and believe they have a deep love for God. A few of them taught me spiritual disciplines that continue to deepen my faith to this day. In spite of the beauty of the people and the undeniable good that camp from the place, there was a brand of rigid spirituality taught there that I can only describe as ham-handed and destructive.

The leadership at the camp venerated Bill Gothard, the ultra-conservative leader behind the “Institute of Basic Youth Conflicts” which was later re-branded the “Institute of Life Conflicts.”

Grandiose, for sure.

My therapist wasn’t familiar with Gothard, so I tried my best to quickly explain the book as being the DSM for fundies.

The DSM, for the uninitiated, stands for “The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.” Think of the DSM as the hypochondriac’s L.L. Bean catalog. It’s an encyclopedic volume of every recognized mental malady under the sun.

Bill’s red book was a catalog of sinful behaviors, a diagnosis of the root sin, followed by a three to five step procedure to redemption. Seven steps if you fouled things up in royal fashion.

Becky asked me if I still had the book. I pitched it years ago,  which is a shame. I think there’d be value in walking through it page by page and identifying the distortions I cut my teeth on.

I’d make note of the Chinese finger trap of authoritarianism. It was impossible to question the party line without discovering that one had “a broken and wounded spirit.” The questioner was marginalized as a rebel and incapacitated from doing further harm.

I’d doodle a picture of Mary Poppins dancing on the “Umbrella of Authority” to childishly poke at a brand of patriarchalism that makes Mark Driscoll look like Alan Alda.

But its Bill’s diamond illustration that I’d take careful aim at. Gothard teaches that we are all like diamonds being formed under the pressure of suffering. However, he argues that when we sin its like discoloring a portion of the uncut diamond. It’s irreperable. All that is left for God to do is chisel that section of the diamond off and discard it.

Translation: The wages of sin are permanent, diminishing, and irredeemable. Yes, forgiveness is there. But so is permanent smallness.

There’s something about me, and I can’t blame this one on Bill, that has difficulty differentiating between sin against God and failing myself or others on an emotional, instinctive level. Last year, I did the later. Flamboyantly. And despite the truth I know about God, that big, red book sat open in the corner of my mind, open to the page with the clip art illustration of the diamond, telling me that my life would forever be permanently smaller.

Meanwhile, the God of scripture inspired words like “fall down seven times and get up eight.” He turns murderers into heads of state and his personal ambassadors. He tells adulteresses to “sin no more” while leveling his worst anger on the Pharisees and their damned red books.

Last week I mentioned that I received my the first feedback for my work in progress. One of the most challenging things to hear was that the three central characters all had the same voice. This was especially disturbing when I realized that all three characters shared my personality. My novel, in its current form, is a collection of mini-me’s. I couldn’t stand the thought of subject readers to that.

I grabbed my e-reader and reread a few chapters from Gloria Kempton’s Write Great Fiction- Dialogue. She recommends grabbing a book on the Enneagram as a tool to flesh out the nuances of each character. The Enneagram is model for understanding human personality that predates modern psychology by  centuries. (Yes, the Enneagram has some roots in the Kabbalah  and Islamic Mysticism. I tempted to record myself reciting the Apostles’ Creed and embedding itself in this post to calm fears that would only bloat the size of this post. A little trust, then).

The model has a tremendous insight: That each personality has a signature fear that leads to a missing of the mark. Moses and King David referred to this as “transgression” and used the same work to describe an arrow that missed the target. The day after the AFC championship game there’s not a Baltimore fan who would object to that word being used to describe the final play of the game.

I read the book and worked to find which personality trait fit my protagonist. He’s the prototypical Number 3: “The Achiever.” Not coincidentally, so am I. The “Passion” or “fear” that comes with being an Achiever is deceit. Riso and Hudson define deceit as a drive that”causes us to put all of our efforts into developing our egos instead of our true nature. We could also call this passion Vanity, our attempt to make our ego feel valuable with without turning to our spiritual source.”

My Evangelical Decoder Ring translates this to mean “I’m prone to relying on performance instead of God’s grace and love to measure my worth as a human being. I’m not above subverting Christianity and even Jesus into pawns for my own spiritual DIY project.

This is my signature sin. It’s what I do.

God must appreciate my tendency to be a slow learner. My church is studying a book by John Ortberg, The Me I Want to Be. Last week I read these words:

We do not get tempted by that which repulses us. Temptation rarely begins by trying to get us to do something that is 180 degrees in the opposite direction of our values. It starts close to home with the passions and desires that God has wired into us and then tries to pull them a few degrees off course. The result is enough to pull them a few degrees off course. That subtle deviation is enough to disrupt the flow of the Spirit in our life, so coming to recognize the patterns of sin most tempting to us is one of the most important steps in our spiritual life. (p. 147)

Pastor John says that the pattern of each person’s sin is like a fingerprint and its always connected to our strengths.

Ortberg pulls a list of strengths from a book that draws from the Enneagram. He goes on to suggest that Achievers are prone to become preoccupied with success and are even willing to manipulate others to secure praise. It’s insights like this that keep me from inviting Ortberg over for parties.

And then this morning I visited Don Miller’s blog and read his confession that he’s tired of being more consumed with his reputation than his character. Like I said,  God knows that in this arena, there’s no difference between the slope of my learning curve and that of a bowling alley. Thee days, three different looks in the mirror.

The next task of the book is to flaw every important character with their signature sins. The heroes will become self-aware and find some level of triumph over these character flaws on their way to resolving the conflict. The villains will be the ones driven by their own passions.

Sounds a lot like life.

We’re sixteen Republican debates into the election season. By November, we’ll have all whipped ourselves into a vitriolic froth and will have convinced ourselves that the very survival of the planet hinged on the result of the election. Somehow we Christians, whether we are on the right or the left, have given ourselves a pass to be more partisan than Christ-follower in the arena of politics.  Christianity Today wisely cautioned us all regarding the endorsement of Santorum last Saturday by 150 Evangelical leaders.

Confession: I found myself mentally disengaged from politics after being sickened by the culture wars and the power plays in which Evangelical Christians get entangled. But this is no good either. If the Gospel is to work itself into every arena of our life that would include politics. Unfortunately, I didn’t have a an alternate model to culture wars in my imagination. Here’s four books that helped me on my way:

“Exclusion and Embrace” by Miroslav Volf: Richard Dahlstrom turned me on to this book. Dr. Volf experienced the devastation of the ethnic and religious conflict in the Balkans and responded with this rich theology of reconciliation. Volf is no Utopian. He’s seen too much. He accurately describes the sociological moves needed for a group of people to feel justified in taking aggression against another tribe.  Then he describes what it would look like for the Gospel to confront misogyny and Patriarchalism, racism, and nationalism. Volf writes from the vantage point of witnessing a literal war, but the truths apply just as sturdily to our culture wars.

“A Public Faith” by Miroslav Volf: Volf’s 2011 release paints a positive vision of what it looks like to be a Christian in the pubic arena without resorting to combativeness. Another 2011 release,  Love Wins opened up a theological battlefield in the afterlife. “A Public Faith” is a field guide for deescalating the ones we’ve built in this one.

“God Politics” by Jim Wallis: This is the book to read understand the case for Christian politics from the left. Wallis methodically works through scripture and forces the reader to see God’s unmistakable concern for the poor and marginalized. Brother Jim concludes that a government submitted to God will reflect God’s desires in this area. I appreciated his willingness to save some critiques for the Democrats as well.

“Politics– According to the Bible: A Comprehensive Resource for Understanding Modern Political Issues in Light of Scripture” by Wayne Grudem:There’s foreshadowing in the title, kids. For those who don’t know, Grudem is an esteemed, New Testament scholar and systematic theologian. You’d probably file his work under “Reformed/Calvinist.” This volume is a thick reference manual, laid out in the style of a systematic theology. That said, I haven’t read this one cover-to-cover. However, if you want to understand the mind of a Christian who is politically conservative and skip the vitriol, this would be the book to tackle.

“The Myth of a Christian Nation” by Greg Boyd: This will never cease to amaze me: Pastor Boyd preaches open theology and his congregation barely blinks. However, when he preaches sermons debunking “American Exclusivism”  and the mythology that America is somehow a Christian nation, thousands of his congregants walk. I don’t agree with every word in this book, but he makes important points.

How about you, what books have help you work through the thorny issue of God and politics? 

(This post does not reflect the positions of Grace Church or any of my coworkers. We’re diverse like that.)