I’ve enjoyed reading Joel Green’s Body, Soul, and Human Life. While I can’t say I fully understand or agree with everything I’ve read, it has been very helpful in connecting the dots of several concepts, particularly, how we are to think about ourselves. Green makes the case that we shouldn’t see ourselves in a Cartesian way (i.e. René Descartes of “I think, therefore I am” fame), meaning that our true self is mind or spirit quite apart from our bodies. Rather, Green says that human identity is threefold: physicality, relationality, and narrativity. This has important implications for community, which I’d like to explore briefly.
Physicality
Our bodies are not something we have but part of who we are. The Scriptures talk about bodily resurrection, not a disembodied spiritual existence, so even in the after life, the body will matter. What does this mean for us? Among other things, it means that what I do with my body is important. It means my gender matters and is part of who I am. It means that this life and creation are good, to be cared for and treasured, and not to be seen as alien and sinful. It means that caring for people’s physical needs cannot be separated from caring for their “spiritual needs.” As Green says, “Angst among Christians in recent decades over how to prioritize ministries of ‘evangelism’ and ’social witness’ is simply wrongheaded, therefore, since the gospel, the ‘evangel’ of ‘evangelism’ cannot but concern itself with human need in all its aspects.”
Relationality
Individualism is the plague of our time and is fully at play in the Church. Cartesian thinking makes us believe that our identity, our true self, is a personal possession of an inner reality. It’s me and Jesus and all I need is some good instruction to be a better me. The truth is that we are a inextricably part of a web of relationships. We are part of a community and our identity is tied into that network of people. Green points out that our brains are actually shaped by our relationships, so in a very tangible sense, our relationships shape who we are. There are no loners, and to try to be one is to fight against reality. This is why cherishing, developing, and enjoying our relationships must be our prime task in life. Quoting Green, “…we are shaped in our character and limited in our choices by the company we keep.”
Narrativity
The stories by which we make sense of our lives play a part in forming who we are. Our life is less like the running of a machine and more like the performance of a drama. Our history matters. Our direction matters. We need to know, like Jesus, where we come from and where we’re going (John 13:3-4). Our story and the overarching story we identify with sculpts us profoundly. Narrative disrupting experiences, like divorce, hurt us because whole chapters of our lives become off-limits. We can’t escape our history (so true especially today in a Facebook world). This is a further reason to continue in our relationships and work through difficulties. Additionally, we need to actively recall and rehearse the overarching narrative of God that we are a part of. Liturgy, regular scripture reading, and flowing in the rhythm of the Christian calendar are ways to do this.
This understanding of our nature impacts and supports the vision of Christian community. We are not marbles in a bucket, but cells in a body. Green would say, “…who we are, our personhood, is inextricably bound up in our physicality, and so is inextricably tied to the cosmos God has created, and in the sum of our life experiences and relationships.” Christian community fits well in this view of humanity.
“For 1 Peter, then, human life is life on the potter’s wheel, so to speak - being shaped one way or the other, by the ancestral ways expressed in taken-for-granted social conventions, or by the sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit and the formative influence of the people of God. Humans act out of their formation, so the primary questions must be, Formed according to what pattern? Formed within what community?” Joel B. Green Body, Soul, and Human Life
“Like those who live with life-long disease, humans easily adjust their lives to account for their maladies. The human family can scarcely imagine what the freedom to chose God’s ‘good’ would be, so much has humanity adapted itself to estrangement and alienation.” Joel B. Green, Body, Soul, and Human Life
I personally find Wright’s view of The New Perspective on Paul very exciting. I love how he puts the Scriptures, Paul, and Jesus in their historical context. He takes that same approach with this book and makes the doctrine of justification very clear and historical. I’m personally not helped by the esoteric explanations of justification that others have given. What I loved most about this book, though, is the overarching, big picture paradigm which is opposite of an anthropocentric vision that is often espoused.
Here are some great quotes of this idea of us not being the center of the universe:
“Salvation is hugely important…. Knowing God for oneself, as opposed to merely knowing or thinking about him, is at the heart of Christian living…. But we are not the center of the universe. God is not circling around us. We are circling around him. It may look, from our point of view, as though ‘me and my salvation’ are the be-all and end-all of Christianity. Sadly, many people–many devout Christians!–have preached that way and lived that way. This problem is not peculiar to the churches of the Reformation. It goes back to the high Middle Ages in the Western church, and infects and affects Catholic and Protestant, liberal and conservative, high and low church alike. But a full reading of Scripture itself tells a different story (23).”
“God made humans for a purpose: not simply for themselves, not simply so that they could be in relationship with him, but so that through them, as his image-bearers, he could bring his wise, glad, fruitful order to the world. And the closing verses of Scripture, in the book of Revelation, are not about human beings going off to heaven to be in a close and intimate relationship with God, but about heaven coming to earth (24).”
“Paul’s view of God’s purpose is that God, the creator, called Abraham so that through his family he, God, could rescue the world from its plight…. Paul’s understanding of God’s accomplishment in the Messiah is that this single purpose, this plan-through-Israel-for-the-world, this reason-God-called-Abraham … finally came to fruition with Jesus Christ (94).”
N.T. Wright in many of his books, and certainly in this one, has continually opened my eyes to the big picture of God’s purpose and saving activity in the world.
I just became a dad 9 months ago. I started fatherhood a bit later in life. I am 37 years old and have been married for over 8 years. My wife and I recently completed the adoption of our son and have embarked upon a new chapter in life. As I look back on what my expectations, fears, and trepidations about fatherhood were I am amazed at the stark contrast to the reality of being a dad.
For one thing, I am not a little baby kind of guy. I did not grow up thinking having a family was the direction I was going to go. I didn’t give it much thought but when I did I was fairly sure that raising a child would be a bit of a headache best left alone.
As my wife and I contemplated having a child I became very clear what my expectations were. Work, work, work, and more work. Yes, having a child would be noble, inspiring, and a way to give back and to love another person in a way that friendships aren’t able. I could see from a rather heady perspective the ‘rightness’ of fatherhood.
The reality of fatherhood isn’t too far from what I expected. I haven’t gone fishing once since my son was born. I haven’t gone kayaking. We haven’t had a dinner party. I get far less sleep, have far less money. I have never been so concerned for someone else’s health. I was right; being a dad is a lot of work and expensive.
On the other hand the work is not a drudgery, nor is there any sense of loss for those things that I had time to do before. My son is an absolute joy to see every morning. I look forward to seeing his face when I come home from work. I anticipate the weekends when I can be more involved in his entire day. I am grateful to get to know him to be a part of his new life. Being a part means changing poopy diapers, playing with little plastic drooled on toys, making bottles, folding countless little cloths, making stupid faces to get him to laugh, and taking him for walks.
I have my son’s picture taped to my visor on my work truck; I never taped a picture of my kayak or my fishing rod. Every little thing he learns is fantastic. I am convinced he is a genius. The mold was broken with the advent of my son. He is an inspiration. I don’t mind working for someone I love. A little work never hurt anyone anyways!
As Christians we are not delivered from God’s judgment. Because of the kindness and mercy of our God our judgment is transformed to discipline. Sin is unthinkably destructive. Because it causes suffering it can’t be ignored or flippantly passed over. It will not do to just receive a clean bill of health when the cancer still lives, eating away life moment by moment. The cancer has to go.
“…on the cross Jesus bears God’s judgment on sin in order not that sinners should not be judged (condemned), but that they should endure judgment in a different form, as discipline. The point is indicated in Barth’s observation that Jesus’ bearing of God’s judgment for us does not mean that we are not judged ourselves…Christ, we might say, bears anticipatorily the eschatological judgment of death – he goes to hell – in order that those who trust in God through him should be able to bear the judgment that cleanses rather than annihilates.”
God works on us and disciplines us to form us into people who reflect His love. He forgives and heals us. This is, at times, a painful but happy process whereby we change to become people who can be good friends to others and faithful followers of our loving Master.
Colin Gunton, in The Christian Faith has a chapter on “Christian Community and Human Society” which I have found helpful in understanding the vision and purpose of the church. He says:
“The church is the society whose distinctive way of being in the world – distinctive polity, we might say – is oriented to God primarily in terms of thanksgiving and worship. As we have seen, this is not to be understood narrowly but as an offering of all life, so that the question of the nature of the church is best approached by means of a discussion of the kind of social order that it represents. And it is as follows. The church’s way of being in the world is one that corresponds to Israel’s way of being while allowing for the changes that are consequent upon the movement from particular nation to a community incorporating all peoples.”
In other words, the church carries on Israel’s calling to worship God by the way they interact with each other and order their social life together. That social life was lived and proclaimed by Jesus (and summarized in the Sermon on the Mount) as He came announcing the Kingdom of God. As Gunton says:
“…the words and actions which maintain the church in relation to [Jesus] are those which seek to embody in its structures the form or pattern of his career. In that light, the church is a way of being socially whose life is ordered to God by means of words and actions which are evoked by the Spirit’s action.”
How we live together as a church is worship. How we care for, commit to, and interact with each other is our calling out from the world for the sake of the world. We bring glory to God and witness to the lost by our concrete ways of loving each other and orienting our lives around each other as brothers and sisters in God’s kingdom.
Colin Gunton says, “…Jesus is the eternal Word of God in person, yet without being in any way less human than we are; in fact, being more truly human.”
Looking around me and seeing how broken mankind is, it gives me hope to see that this brokenness is not reflective of true humanity, but a push away from humanity. Jesus, in His love and servanthood, represents true humanity and He calls me to become more human by being like Him.
Reading John D. Zizioulas’ Being As Communion and reflecting on community and the truths we’ve learned over these years about relationships and the nature of the Church, I had this thought about freedom:
Freedom is not the ability to choose between different possibilities, but to be capable of communion.
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