AT-ONE-MENT

I’m part of a house church in North Bay where we watch a podcast by Bruxy Cavey (that’s him to the left) each Sunday morning. His church, The Meeting Place, is in Oakville, with Internet house church connections all over the world. They’re Brethren, a conservative Evangelical denomination, but not highly denominational, so it works for me. He’s an engaging preacher, and even when I disagree with him (generally a little, sometimes a lot) he stimulates my thinking.

Since Easter he’s been doing a series called “Why Did Jesus Die?” and a few Sundays back he spoke about the doctrine of the Atonement. Check it out. If you can persist through the irritating, breathy voice-over at the beginning I think you might enjoy this guy.

The Atonement is one of the central teachings of the Christian faith. It states that the great human problem is that we are “at two” with God and one another, separated because of sin, which is not just the bad things we do but the broken condition of human society and the human heart. According to this doctrine God brings about “at-one-ment” (reconciliation) through the death and resurrection of Jesus.

Over the centuries Christians have come up with many theories of how it all works. Some have suggested that Jesus is simply the divine example; if we live the way he lived we’ll be fine. This sets a high standard and can encourage some pretty good living, but the downside is discouragement. Who lives the ideal life we imagine Jesus lived?

Another idea is that Jesus’ death and resurrection was a divine con job in which God gave Satan his Son in exchange for humanity, then, after three days, Satan discovered he couldn’t hold him. There’s a delicious irony in seeing the great swindler swindled, but it’s a bit unsettling to imagine the God of Righteousness stooping quite so low, even if his purpose is to save us. This is, however, the theory of atonement at the heart of The Narnia Chronicles by C. S. Lewis, so it does have some formidable champions.

The most popular Evangelical theory for a while now (a few centuries) has been one called Substitution. This theory says that, because of our sin, all human beings are condemned to die and roast in blue flame for eternity. Since this is divine justice, the sentence can’t simply be ignored, so God, in his mercy, substitutes Jesus for us. Jesus dies a terrible death and descends into hell taking God’s “wrath” upon himself and satisfying the demands of “justice”. And we go free, satisfying God’s desire for mercy.

This approach is neat, tidy and, in a way, fiercely logical. It is also, however, morally outrageous, neither just nor merciful. It’s as though some father were to decide that his five year old daughter deserves to be punished for something she has done, but since the appropriate beating might kill a child so young, he beats his fifteen year old son instead. Of course, the suffering that the Father experiences in all of this is often noted as a justification; the old “This hurts me as much as it hurts you”, line. But, in the end, I believe this view is scandalous. One of my seminary profs used to say, “Why would I say something about God that I’d sue you for if you said it about me?” Why indeed?

If you read the New Atheists (Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, etc.) you will find that this teaching is a prime motivator for them. They are scandalized, as they should be, and insist that a God like this is not to be believed in, and certainly not to be worshipped. Amen, I say, and again amen and amen!!!

As a pastor and preacher I never taught this view of the Atonement. I condemned it in one-on-one teaching, and taught a different approach in larger settings, but my failure to condemn it from the pulpit as specifically and forcefully as I should have is one of my great regrets. I thank God that preachers like Bruxy Cavey have the courage to openly challenge this view. I only wish I’d led more forcefully and faithfully myself.

Then again, I wasn’t all bad. Next post I’ll tell you what I did teach.