Greetings!
Peace, mercy, and grace be with you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
In Southern California we’re experiencing the warmest weather of the year; we’ve had multiple days of triple digit heat in Los Angeles. We’ve had some wildfires set off in the mountains. Thankfully the air conditioning still works. We hope and pray all is well with all of you.
Sunday, September 08, 2024
The Voice 14.36: The Dragon, the Beasts, and the Lamb | Revelation 12:1-14:20
You could imagine Revelation ending with the conclusion of chapter 11; by common confession (no mean thing in Revelation studies), Revelation 12 hearkens back to Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection. Such is why interpreting Revelation in terms of at least two cycles can help us make sense of the text, and Revelation 12 would begin a new such cycle.
All too often people get all wrapped up in trying to identify the beast, its number, and its mark; modern readers and interpreters seem as bewitched by him as were those under his spell and doing his will back in the day. We should not miss the point: the dragon’s weakness is expressed by his use of the beast, not his strength; the beast is to be overcome through faithful witness to the Lamb that was slain, and the Lamb would have the victory, and His holy ones will share in it.
Lesson: Not Abandoned to Sheol | Psalm 16:1-11 | Hope in Psalm
Outline | Podcast | Conversation
Psalm 16:1-11 is justly and rightly famous for its testimony of the resurrection of the Christ.
Yet at its core, Psalm 16:1-11 is a prayer of praise and thanksgiving to God, celebrating the believer’s secure attachment and relationship with God. David looked to God for his protection and as the Source of all he had and was; he rejoiced in that relationship.
Do we look to God as our refuge and our protection? Do we celebrate our secure attachment to God? Do we even see ourselves as having secure attachment to God? That’s the basis on which we can trust we will not be abandoned to Sheol, and will share in life now and forevermore in God in Christ through the Spirit.
Since we’re still suffering through heat, this week’s picture is a reminder of one of the coldest moments we experienced during our European odyssey: a short trip out to Howth and the Irish Sea in the rain.
Book Reviews
Sometimes a piece of reporting proves incredibly compelling, and all because a person is in the right place at the right time to chronicle it all. Such is the case with Eliza Griswold’s Circle of Hope: A Reckoning with Love, Power, and Justice in an American Church (affiliate link; galley received as part of early review program).
The author had made the decision to profile a Philadelphia and greater environs area multisite but singular entity church associated with the Anabaptist tradition called Circle of Hope. It had been the brainchild of Rod and Gwen White who both inculcated the Evangelical Jesus People vibes along with the Church Growth Movement. They prided themselves on being a church that wasn’t your “normal” church, and considered itself quite progressive (for Evangelicalism in the late 20th century).
It was beyond time for the Whites to hand over leadership to the next generation, and the author had been invited in to be present in the meetings of the four new lead pastors and she would also interview them continually…beginning in 2019.
And then 2020 happened. The pandemic. George Floyd and greater sensitivity about the heritage of white supremacy in church spaces. Beyond these things also involved LGBTQIA+ matters of affirmation and inclusion.
What the author ends up chronicling is a lot of unwinding regarding all of these matters. Trying to extricate the church from the cult of personality around its founder, and the founders’ inability to truly step aside and to not respond poorly, led to all sorts of difficulties. They seemed entirely blind to their privilege and how their church’s culture tended to welcome and keep certain people but likewise proved alienating to others. The pastoral leadership is entirely on board with considering how well their church had addressed matters of race, but few were willing to really grapple with the truth of the matter. And yet there also seemed to be an exasperation which can be noted among many of those agitating for the work of antiracism in ways which ultimately proved counterproductive. It also doesn’t help when some of the new pastors want to make it all about them, whether they realize that’s what they are doing or not.
The matter of LGBTQIA+ affirmation caused a significant rift with the church’s denominational partner, which ultimately led to the church losing most of its property but holding onto a couple of its lucrative thrift store type businesses.
But it all seemed to prove too much for the pastors and the unity of Circle of Hope. By the end of the book, they are leading other groups or have moved onto other forms of employment. There are still people who had been part of Circle of Hope and who still meet together and share their faith in the four original areas, but Circle of Hope as a church and organization is no more.
In this book you will find whatever grist you want for your culture war mill. If you want to talk about how antiracism and LGBTQIA+ affirmation can tear a church apart, there’s material for that in this book. If you want to talk about resistance to concerns about antiracism and affirmation prove problematic, there’s material for that in this book. This book is not going to persuade anyone to change their minds about these matters.
But what the book does exceptionally well is attest to how you keep people according to what you are selling, and it’s very hard to steer a ship like that toward a different course. It expresses the ultimate limitations of the “church growth movement”: that which will work to make a church grow will not necessarily work well to allow for its development and maturity, and when you’re “marketing” a “product” to a given “audience,” and you get an “audience” and the numbers, and think yourself important, you’re often setting yourself up for a fall. Likewise regarding the cult of personality: when the attraction in a church is the preacher/pastor/founder/visionary/whomever, it’s going to be hard to move away from that person and keep people. It’s also a warning about aspirations to be “hip”: Circle of Hope might have been the “progressive” or “hip” type of community in the late twentieth century, but by the same standard seemed pretty backward by the end of the 2010s. For better or worse, we are all strongly tempted to hold to our “line” based on what we felt was right or comfortable at a given point in our lives. The past few years have been revealing about what that particular “line” has been for different people as various aspects of our culture have changed.
The author, and the pastors, should be commended for their openness and ability to express what happened in such a real and raw way. There’s a lot we can gain from it. But above all we should come to understand why Paul again and again emphasized the importance of bearing with one another, proving patient and long-suffering, and forgiving one another: when you do not, the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace cannot be sustained. Situations will expose and reveal you for who you are and what you are really about. And any kind of major change, let alone a whole suite of them, must be managed with the utmost care and especially patience. When people get exasperated, it all blows up.
I have donated to and volunteered for End Overdose, helping to pack test kits and Narcan kits for wide distribution. The need for these resources has not grown lesser over the past few years.
It does not have to be this way, but it is.
Beth Macy continued her advocacy, research, and investigative journalism after Dopesick in Raising Lazarus: Hope, Justice, and the Future of America’s Opioid Crisis (affiliate link).
Throughout the book, we watch the Sackler family bankruptcy case play itself out through the court system: their attempt to pay a pittance to shield themselves from future and further liability, implicitly recognizing while officially denying their significant role in today’s opioid crisis.
By today, of course, very few are still on OxyContin. But many are still feeling the effects of the OxyContin pill mills of the past, and now are addicted to opioids. Throughout the book the author profiles the various people, particularly in parts of Indiana, West Virginia, Kentucky, and North Carolina, who serve on the ground to try to do whatever they can in order to get people the help they need. Most of them have some kind of personal background with opioids or something similar. The story is one full of relapses, even, and sadly perhaps even especially, among these helpers.
There is hope and promise: there are ways forward for people. Bupe (Buprenorphine) can help those addicted to opioids to better manage their condition. Some people are able to find a way out through addiction recovery programs without such medication. Slowly but surely, many are coming around, moving away from the previous posture of incarceration and castigation and understanding how opioid addiction is not like many of the drugs of old, cannot be managed the way former forms of drug addiction were managed, and with appropriate medicine and care, those addicted to opioids can find a way forward.
But it is incredibly time-intensive and expensive, and it always seems easier to judge and condemn those addicted for perceived moral fault. The Sacklers relied on this kind of discrimination and prejudice to make their case. Plenty of citizens and their elected representatives manifest little patience with those addicted in their midst; and probably not a few find the whole thing quite embarrassing. Often the areas in which the situation is the worst are those areas in which there is the greatest resistance to change and management.
This book is a hard and emotional read. It’s gutting to read how most of the women on the streets of Charleston, West Virginia, had previously been faithfully married with children before whatever circumstances led to their addiction; one was even a pastor’s wife. Those of us who are not among the addicted want to find some justification or reason to consider those who are addicted as culpable, as the “other,” so that we might not imagine that we would ever suffer this “contagion.” Yet it is only by the grace of God that perhaps we did not suffer some injury, or go through some similar experience, for it is haunting and horrifying to imagine we could become as them very easily and ourselves be dopesick and on the streets.
If we, as a society, are best judged in how we treat the least of those among us, then our judgment will not go well for us, and those who have suffered greatly in the opioid crisis rightly condemn us. We can, and should, do much better.
May the grace and peace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirits.
Ethan