Well Wuduyuknow, A New, New Atheist

I am very interested in the phenomenon of “The New Atheism”. This is the strident push-back against God and religion (mostly Christianity) , championed by folks like Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens, and inspired by the 9/11 terrorist attacks. I believe these folks do believers a service in challenging our thinking and helping us to see ourselves as at least some others see us, but I do get rather tired of the gratuitous nastiness of it all.

Well, here is an atheist who acknowledges some of the strengths of religion, and suggests that unbelievers might have something to learn from believers. It’s a TED Talk by Alain de Botton entitled Atheism 2.0. He also has a book out called Religion for Atheists that looks interesting.

What’s with all this blood?

A theme that troubles many Christians and non Christians alike, but is central to the doctrine of the Atonement, is the blood of the covenant, or the blood of Jesus. The literal blood of the ancient sacrifice, smeared on door posts and poured out on altars, is difficult enough but, when taken up in Christian hymns and reflection, it can be pretty disconcerting. I’m sure hymns like “Nothing but the Blood” and “There is power in the Blood” have troubled countless uninitiated church visitors over the years. And, in this secular age, even the previously commonplace notion of communion wine being a symbol of Jesus’ blood, must seem strange to many.

We tend to think that images have obvious meanings, but it’s really all about associations. Every year, in mid February, we have a custom of exchanging cards decorated with stylized, disembodied human hearts. Having been schooled in this image from childhood, we “get it”. In our culture, because the heart is imagined to be the seat of love, it is a symbol of love. Unless it’s pointed out to us, the potential goriness of the symbol fails to register at all.

In a similar way, blood was a significant symbol in ancient biblical culture. It was not eaten and all contact with it was deeply significant and circumscribed by ritual, not because it was gory, but because it was sacred.

"'Any Israelite or any alien living among you who hunts any animal or bird that may be eaten must drain out the blood and cover it with earth, because the life of every creature is its blood . That is why I have said to the Israelites, "You must not eat the blood of any creature, because the life of every creature is its blood... (Leviticus 17:13-14)

When the blood of a creature was drained away its life departed, so blood was seen as the place where life resided. Blood was associated with death, of course, but that was the back side of the coin, as it were. When the blood of an animal was poured out, sprinkled on the altar, or used to anoint the priest, it was not the death of the animal but its life that was being manipulated in this symbolic way.

At some point blood sacrifice may have been associated with the notion of appeasing an angry God, but the prophets and psalmists challenge this view.

Psalm 50:12-15

If I were hungry I would not tell you,

for the world is mine, and all that is in it.

Do I eat the flesh of bulls

or drink the blood of goats?

Sacrifice thank offerings to God,

fulfil your vows to the Most High,

and call upon me in the day of trouble;

I will deliver you, and you will honour me."

Isaiah 1:11-13

"The multitude of your sacrifices —

what are they to me?" says the LORD....

I have no pleasure

in the blood of bulls and lambs and goats.

When you come to appear before me,

who has asked this of you,

this trampling of my courts?

Stop bringing meaningless offerings!

Your incense is detestable to me.

In the end, the sacrificial system is about what we require, not God. The life of the lamb in the Old Testament (its blood), and the life of Jesus in the New (his blood), are not poured out for God but for us. It is we who are dying and in need life, and that life is provided by God.

A crucifixion is about as gruesome a scene as anyone could imagine, so we can hardly fault those who are shocked by it. Even in the first century Paul writes that the cross is “a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles” (1 Corinthians 1:23) And if all this suffering and death is something required by God before he will forgive, it’s not surprising that people turn away in disgust. But in the Gospels it’s not God who requires it. It is we who, in the persons of religious and political leaders and an angry mob, require it. It’s sin, rebellion, anger and fear, that require it. In short, it is death that requires life, and God, through the lamb of the Old Testament and Jesus in the New, is the only source of life.

Many years ago my brother, Tim, gave a bone marrow transplant to my brother Rick, who had leukemia. This was not because the doctors required that if one was to live another must die a little. It was because my brother, Rick, who was dying, required healthy bone marrow, and Tim was the only source he had. Tim gave up bone marrow joyfully for his brother and, seen in this way, it was a beautiful thing.

The metaphor at the heart of the Atonement is based on the idea of substitution, but it is not Jesus’ death being substituted for our death, but Jesus’ life being substituted for our death. In Paul’s words, I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me . The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. (Galatians 2:20)

To be “washed in the blood of the lamb” is to be immersed in his life. To “drink the blood of Jesus” is to live by his life. In the words of Jesus, "I am the vine; you are the branches. Those who remain in me, and I in them, will produce much fruit. For apart from me you can do nothing.” (John 15:5-6)

It’s all about the Incarnation.

The Bible talks of the human predicament in terms of several metaphors: Infirmity - We are blind, deaf, lame. Illness - "It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick.” (Luke 5:31) Alienation – We are wayward and lost in darkness.

It’s the theme of alienation or separation that the classical doctrine of the Atonement picks up on, but it seeks to address it in legal terms, the interplay of justice and mercy. This is not completely without biblical foundation; the Bible does talk of redemption and ransom, two legal or quasi-legal terms related to deliverance from bondage. Jesus, however, employs a much simpler and more enlightening metaphor in his three parables: the Good Shepherd, the Good Woman, the Good Father. (Luke 15:3-32)

In the first, a shepherd has a hundred sheep and finds that one has gone astray. He could, of course, write off the stray as part of the cost of doing business and, like Bo Peep, just wait and see if it will find its way home. But, because he is a good shepherd, he sets out to find the sheep. He goes wherever he must go, and suffers whatever danger, privation or discomfort he must suffer, to recover the sheep. It is the shepherd who must bridge the gap if the sheep, who is at two with the shepherd, is to be saved, i.e., come to be at one again. This is at-one-ment.

In the second story, a woman who had ten coins has lost one. The coin is not suffering of course, but it is being wasted, and the woman is suffering a loss. The coin is obviously impotent in this situation, so it falls to woman to do all that must be done. She sweeps the house and searches until she finds the coin. She, like the shepherd, must go all the way to where the coin has gone. She does this because she is a good woman, and what was at two with her is, in the end, at one again.

The story of the good father is more subtle and complex, but the pattern is essentially the same. "There was a man who had two sons”, and in the course of the story both become estranged from him. The younger takes his inheritance and journeys to a distant country where he squanders it. But, as every loving parent knows, children are not sheep or coins. They cannot simply be pursued. So the father waits until his son has had a change of heart.

The son returns to the geographical location of his home, but with no hope of being a son. He declares to his father, “I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son”. He has no means with which to span the gulf that lies between them, and aspires only to be a hired servant. "But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him; he ran to his son, threw his arms around him and kissed him.”

It is the Father who must span the gulf. And, in doing so, he enters into the shame and rejection of his child. But surely we imagine this. Who would shame and reject such a father? Who indeed?

"The older brother became angry and refused to go in. So his father went out and pleaded with him. But he answered his father, 'Look! All these years I've been slaving for you and never disobeyed your orders. Yet you never gave me even a young goat so I could celebrate with my friends. But when this son of yours who has squandered your property with prostitutes comes home, you kill the fattened calf for him!'

"'My son,' the father said, 'you are always with me, and everything I have is yours. But we had to celebrate and be glad, because this brother of yours was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.'"

The doctrine of the Incarnation teaches that, at a particular point in history, God entered into human life in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. Like a good shepherd, good woman, good father, he spanned the gulf, at great cost to himself, to become one with his lost children again. He enters into all the suffering and shame, lives and struggles and dies, because that’s who his lost children are, it’s where we have gotten to.

Jesus was not crucified to pay some debt of suffering owed to God, or balance off some absolute standard of justice. But, as with the shepherd, woman, father in the stories Jesus told, at-one-ment is a costly thing. He died in the place of two thieves, not in substitute for them, but with them. And we suffer and die with him. The Incarnation is the Atonement.

Don't you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life. Romans 6:3-4

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.