You Have a Calling in Life

 

                                                                  (Amish country, Ohio)

In my first year as a Jesus-follower I felt God calling me to me the youth pastor of the Lutheran church I grew up in. Our church did not have a youth pastor. For Sunday after Sunday an announcement appeared in the church bulletin which read: "Please pray that we would find a youth pastor." I shared my sense of calling with our pastor. He agreed. I stayed for three years before moving, as a result of another call from God.

I experienced God calling me to study at a theological seminary. I was called to study, to learn, to research. My three years at seminary have been so valuable for me!

During that time God called me to be an assistant pastor at First Baptist Church of Joliet, Illinois. Linda and I were there for seven years. 

We left Joliet when God called us to be campus pastors at the Baptist Student Center of Michigan State University. We were there for eleven years. We loved campus ministry!

In our tenth year there we sensed God was going to call us elsewhere. He did. We came to Monroe, Michigan, to serve Jesus at Redeemer Fellowship Church. We are in year thirty-three!

Within this adventure Linda and I have experienced countless secondary callings. Like today, as God is calling us to reach out to some people. These callings give our lives meaning and purpose. Were there no God, then there would be no calling, no "vocation," and life would be without ultimate meaning and purpose. (Note: Os Guinness, in The Call: Finding and Fulfilling God's Purpose for Your Life, distinguishes between primary and secondary callings.)

A main way we experience God is by being called, and then, often in retrospect, seeing how God was in this all along.

Jacob Shatzer defines, in Transhumanism and the Image of God: Today's Technology and the Future of Christian Discipleship, "vocation" as "all of those experiences and insights that our lives are guided by Another, that we are responding not to inert nature that bends to our will, but to another Will, with whom we might live in covenant relationship, and to Whom we will be ultimately accountable.” (29)

Shatzer says a calling from God has four elements.

1. A call implies a caller, one doing the calling.

2. Often the call is to something the person hearing the call doesn't want.

3. Callings almost always lead to hardships that the person has to work through in order to obey.

4. The greatest danger is being distracted from the goal. Shatzer writes: "Often we act like making the wrong choice is the biggest problem. If we are responding to God’s call, the biggest danger is that we become distracted from that call by focusing on something else." (30)

Shatzer writes:

"Our society is very different from one shaped by this notion of calling, because we prioritize power and control. We don’t want to respond to a Caller. We seek knowledge so that we can control rather than participate in a larger community. In fact, “Power has become the centerpiece of a new kind of harmony, one based no longer on the ‘right relation of things’ in a world that both begins and ends in mystery, but it is a harmony that comes from control.” Control diminishes relationship; the will of one alone is expressed, and conversation and communion are lost. A loss of vocation that emphasizes the individual will and promotes the desire to control prevents the propagation of genuine community."
(Ib.)

Our current cultural malaise, angst, loneliness, and existential dystopian tendencies is partly, if not largely, due to the lack of meaning and purpose that logically follows from the absence of a Caller. 

***

Two of my books are:

Leading the Presence-Driven Church

Praying: Reflections on 40 Years of Solitary Conversations with God.

The Meaning of "Nothing" in Heidegger

Martin Heidegger

Michael Gelven introduced me to Martin Heidegger's Being and Time when I was an undergraduate at Northern Illinois University. Gelven is one of the best teachers I've ever had. He combined brilliant scholarship with an ability to communicate it to lesser beings like myself. His method of teaching and evaluating become the one I now use in all my teaching.

In my seminary studies I did an independent study with theologian Tom Finger on Being and Time. Thank you, Tom, for taking that time with me. I'm certain I understood very little of what Heidegger was saying and doing. Yet being-taught by Gelven and Finger served and still serves as helpful in now understanding Heidegger, I think, more than I did forty years ago.

Let me try with some "later Heidegger" bullet-points + auto-commentary.

• Heidegger-studies are usually divided into study of the Heidegger of Being and Time, and the "later Heidegger."
• I'm looking at Heidegger apart from his involvement in Nazism, an unfortunate development.
• Theologically, to understand Bultmann and Tillich one must understand Heidegger.
• If Heidegger is interested in God, his is a non-metaphysical God.
• Traditional ontology understood persons in terms of their relationship to "things"; in terms of the way things are. In doing this humanity was "led astray" by being.
• "Being" was the center of Heidegger's thought.
• Heidegger's term for human being was the German word Dasein. Literally, Dasein simply means "being-there." Heidegger uses this term to indicate that humanity must be studied in terms of its own structure rather than in relation to other "things."
• Heidegger speaks of Dasein as being "thrown." That does not mean there is a "thrower." Rather, as James Robinson has written, Dasein's "thrown-ness" "relates it to Dasein's own projection of itself. Dasein is grounded in nothing outside itself." ("The German Discussion of the Later Heidegger," by James Robinson; in The Later Heidegger and Theology, eds. James Robinson and John Cobb. I find Robinson's writing on Heidegger clear, and am using his essay for my bullet-points.) With this in mind, consider this quote from Heidegger, who says that the aim is "to let that which shows itself be seen from itself in the very way in which it shows itself from itself." (In Anthony Thiselton, The Two Horizons, 26)
• This is the meaning, in Heidegger, of "nothing." Dasein is grounded in "nothing" outside itself. For Heidegger there is "nothing" beyond Dasein. Robinson writes: "Dasein, held out into nothing, is beyond all beings, and has in this sense attained ultimate transcendence, the goal of metaphysics." Heidegger explains this in his lecture What Is Metaphysics? (Sartre's "nothingness" in Being and Nothingness is both indebted to Heidegger's phenomenology of being and misunderstands Heidegger and goes in a direction that is non-Heideggarian.)
• For Heidegger, there is nothing beyond Dasein, not a transcendent God, not to the universe as "the sum total of all beings" (Robinson, 11), and not to some Cartesian subject from which a world of things can be established. Beyond Dasein, nothing lies. The answer to the metaphysical question that haunted philosophers from Plato to the present is: "nothing." As Robinson says, "the answer to the metaphysical question is at the same time the end of metaphysics." (12)
• Keep all of this in mind in order to understand Tillich's idea of God as the "ground of being."
• Bultmann is indebted to Heidegger's phenomenology of being in the being of Dasein. The idea of hermeneutics is purely descriptive. Bultmann says, in regard to Heidegger's hermeneutics, "I learned from him not what theology has to say but how to say it." (In Thiselton, 28)

Serious students of Christian theology need to come to grips with the influence of Heidegger's anti-metaphysical phenomenology of Being.

As for "nothing," two interesting (but non-Heideggarian) studies are: Nothing: A Very Short Introduction, by physicist Frank Close; and Jim Holt's excellent Why Does the World Exist? An Existential Detective Story. 

Welcome to the Age of Cheap Grace

 

                                                (Lake Michigan; Pentwater, Michigan)

In 1970 (yikes!) I became a follower of Jesus. I was twenty-one. (Now, you do the math.)

One of the first books recommended to me was Dietrich Bonhoeffer's monumental The Cost of Discipleship. I didn't grasp it all at the time. But I did understand Bonhoeffer's distinction between "costly grace" and "cheap grace." It reminded me of the apostle Paul, when he wrote, What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? By no means! We are those who have died to sin; how can we live in it any longer? (Romans 6:1-2)

Eric Metaxas, in his biography of Bonhoeffer, argues that the Lutheran Church's drift into cheap grace was a factor in allowing Hitler to come to power. (See Metaxas, Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy; see also Tim Keller's Foreward.) 

Metaxas says that cheap grace means "going to church and hearing that God just loves and forgives everyone, so it doesn’t really matter much how you live." Anyone who believes that and self-refers as a follower of Jesus has drifted into heresy.

Tim Keller writes that, today, we live in an age of cheap grace. "Many Christians want to talk only about God’s love and acceptance. They don’t like talking about Jesus’ death on the cross to satisfy divine wrath and justice. Some even call it “divine child abuse.” Yet if they are not careful, they run the risk of falling into the belief in “cheap grace”—a non-costly love from a non-holy God who just loves and accepts us as we are. That will never change anyone’s life." (Foreward to Metaxas.)

***

Two good reads on the meaning of 'grace' are...

Philip Yancey, What's So Amazing About Grace?

Michael Brown, Hyper-Grace: Exposing the Dangers of the Modern Grace Message

Abortion and the "Whatever" In the Womb

(Church, in Columbus, Ohio)

(I'm re-posting this to keep this ball in play, as things are again intensifying.

It is important to understand why I, and others like me, are so against abortion.

For us, the conceptus/embryo/fetus is a "human life." So, to abort is to kill a human life.

I am against killing innocent, defenseless, voiceless human lives. I think you would be, too, if you believed the inborn being was a human life.

So, the human-life-killer [rightly named if the inborn being is a human life] claims "women's rights over their bodies" include a woman's right to kill a human life, which also happens to be their daughter or son.

If the inborn being is not a human, then there's no problem killing the life inside, since we kill non-persons all the time.)

This happened in 1984.

X was twenty-two years old when she asked to meet with us. She said, "I have something I need to share with you." We waited for X to call. She didn't.

X was in our church family. When we saw her again she said, "I am going to call you. I need to share something with you."

We waited. She didn't. And she said the same thing the next time Linda and I saw her.

We waited again. She called. Linda, X, and I met together.

"I have something I need to tell you," said X, with her head hanging down. We waited. For thirty minutes. Finally X said, through breathless tears, "Two years ago I had an abortion."

And X wept and wept.

Why did X weep? Why so sad, X? Because in X's mind, she killed her child.

At this point I am glad some of you were not there with X, because some of you believe X did not kill her child. Some of you believe that what X thought was her child was a non-person, a lump of fleshy matter, and nothing more. You would have told X that the "whatever" in her uterus was not really her child. You would have counseled X that she really didn't kill her child, and because it wasn't her baby, and yes it is wrong to kill babies and children and persons, it wasn't any of those things. You would have euphemistically counseled her that she was simply exercising her "reproductive rights." I am thankful you were not there to comfort X with these philosophical (not scientific) ideas. They would not have helped her as she grieved at the thought of her child now being two years old.

X knew that killing her child was wrong. X was brought low over choosing herself over her baby. This is why X wanted to talk with Linda and I. X wanted to know how she could go on with her life. We talked with her about forgiveness, and the amazingness of God's mercy and grace. This is the only answer we know of that could help and heal X. And, BTW, we all need this. Understand this, and you will understand Christianity.

Abortion, says Pope Francis, is "genocide." The Pope has compared abortion to "hiring a hit man to resolve a problem." 

The Pope has said: “How can we genuinely teach the importance of concern for other vulnerable beings, however troublesome or inconvenient they may be, if we fail to protect a human embryo, even when its presence is uncomfortable and creates difficulties?”

The core issue, which is lost in all the current political obscurity, is the nature of the "whatever" in the womb. Is it a human life? X knew it was.

(See the argument here. And here.)

***

If you have had an abortion, 

or supported an abortion, 

and are suffering as a result, 

please contact us.  

johnpiippo@msn.com 

A Note on the Utopian Myth of "Progressivism" and "Progressive Christianity"

 

                                                        (The River Raisin, in Monroe)

One of my objections to "progressive" Christianity is the belief in cross-epochal "progress," of the moral and spiritual kind. But this is not compatible with a Christian eschatology. Moral and spiritual progressivism is a utopian myth.

For example:

"A message repeated throughout [philosopher John] Gray’s work is that, despite the irrefutable material gains, this notion is misguided: scientific knowledge and the technologies at our disposal increase over time, but there’s no reason to think that morality or culture will also progress, nor – if it does progress for a period – that this progress is irreversible. To think otherwise is to misunderstand the flawed nature of our equally creative and destructive species and the cyclical nature of history. Those I spoke to in Basra needed no convincing that the advance of rational enlightened thought was reversible, as the Shia militias roamed the streets enforcing their interpretation of medieval law, harassing women, attacking students and assassinating political opponents."

- Andy Owen, "Reading John Gray in War"

Gray, BTW, is one of my favorite atheistic philosophers. I've read several of his books.

Nietzsche's "Parable of the Madman"

(I re-post this periodically.)

It's no secret that, among atheists, Nietzsche ranks as one of my favorites. I'm not being flippant about this. He was brilliant. If I was an atheist (which I'm not), I would orbit around him.

Atheist Peter Watson, in his book The Age of Atheists, presents Nietzsche as the beating heart behind all atheism that comes after him. Nietzsche is the prototype of current intellectual atheism. 

In the Fall 2018 semester I taught my final Philosophy of Religion class. In that class I presented  Nietzsche's famous "Parable of the Madman," from his book The Joyful Wisdom. I expected my students to know the following. 

The basic point is: Atheism overreaches if it claims one can secure objective morality on the non-existence of God. (See, e.g., Atheist Overreach: What Atheism Can't Deliver.)

EXPLAIN NIETZSCHE'S "PARABLE OF THE MADMAN"

1. Spell 'Nietzsche.' (I once put this question on a written exam. I was pleased that 95% of my students got the answer right. It is a mark of good teaching when nearly all students get the correct answer. What is the value of being able to spell 'Nietzsche'? Imagine you are dating someone you want to break up with, but don't know how. On your next date tell them, "I can spell 'Nietzsche'." Then, spell it. The relationship will be over at that point. The ball will be in the other's court, and they will be looking for ways to break up with you. Or, in an unlikely turn of events, they will believe they have finally found their soul mate.)

2. Explain what Nietzsche means by "the horizon of the infinite.'

Nietzsche is writing to the European, especially German, atheists of his time. The metaphysical foundation of their culture, the "land" upon which they stood, which provided the basis for their understanding of morality, was Christian theism. But once a person adopts the worldview of atheism, that metaphysical foundation, and all that is built upon it, must be abandoned. The result is that now the atheist is sailing alone in a boat upon a sea with an "infinite horizon." By "infinite horizon" is meant: there is no "land," no new metaphysical foundation, in sight.

This is one way of expressing Nietzsche's struggle with nihilism. "Nihilism" is the belief that life has no meaning.

3. Explain the "parable of the madman."

• In the parable the "madman" is Nietzsche.
• The madman is an atheist who enters a "village" of atheists. In this village there are "village atheists"; viz., "atheists" who do not have a clue about the philosophical ramifications of their atheism; viz., one cannot change worldviews and retain core elements of your previous worldview that you like. Objective moral values and duties fit in Christian theism; they don't fit in atheism. This is where most atheists overreach.
• The village atheists mock the "mad"-but-logically-consistent atheist, who rants despairing, dismal things like:  "The earth has been ripped out of its orbit around the sun and we're spinning out into total blackness!" 
• The "sun" for us was Christian theism. It was our light and life, and gave meaning to our existence. Once we abandon that worldview, we're out in the infinite blackness of space, looking for another "sun" to orbit around. Nietzsche's point is: when you abandon a worldview, you its propositional truth behind. This includes the moral values that came from a God as divine command giver. At this point, for Nietzsche, everything is up for grabs; we have begun de novo.
• On atheism, of course, the God of Christian theism does not exist. The problem is: We acquired our moral values from Christian theism. That's the "village" we've been living in. Now, one can no longer live in this village if one is an atheist.
• The realization that there is no God is for Nietzsche the greatest event ever, "and whoever is born after us will on account of this deed belong to a higher history than all history up to now." This is because an entire world of meaning and value (viz., the Christian theist worldview upon which Europe exists) has been taken away. It is as if, to use a metaphorical analogy, the entire world was seen as the game of baseball, but in actuality the entire world is the game of tennis. In tennis, obviously, the rules and values of baseball do not apply.
• The madman stares at the pseudo-atheists, holding his little lamp since there's no longer a sun to light our way. They don't have a clue. He smashes his lamp on the ground, says "I guess I've come too early," and goes into an empty European church and Gregorian-chants "God is dead."
• Such is the logic of atheism. Village atheists are those who live as if there's a moral foundation beneath ("land") while in reality they are all alone in an infinite situation. When a village atheist moralizes, they present as logically incoherent.

I'm not an atheist. Were I one, I'd be sailing in the lonely, drifting boat with Nietzsche (if he would have me), struggling with and against nihilism, the rest of my days. And, hopefully, I would understand that not only moral values, but the very idea of "value" at all, is not part of my world.

*****
Some notes from Stephen Williams, The Shadow of the Antichrist, pp. 118 ff.

Nietzsche's parable tells us:

1. "First, God and theism are gone." (119)
2. "Second, there are plenty of people around who know it." (Ib.)
3. "Third, there are not plenty of people around who understand it." (Ib.)
4. "Fourth, the demise of God and God's world is the product of human will and of human deed, not an accident."
5. "Fifth, it is more massively world-historical than anything imaginable." (Ib.)
6. "Sixth, it induces vertigo as we think about the future." (Ib.)

From his lonely outpost, Nietzsche announces a cataclysm. He is an atheist-prophet, who has been compared to John the Baptist. "Nietzsche has actually been called 'that unbalanced John the Baptist of the modern world.'" (Ib., 120)

For Nietzsche, the death of God, and the end of Christian theism, means that, "intellectually, it all has ended." (Ib.) "We have arrived at the close of an epoch." (Ib.) In Human, All Too Human Nietzsche writes: "There will never again be a life and culture bounded by a religiously determined horizon." (In Ib., 121) Which means: no metaphysical propositions, which includes moral propositions. (How could a rational atheist tell anyone they are "wrong" in an objective sense?)

Richard Hays's Widening of God's Mercy - Preston Sprinkle's Review

 

                                                  (Ice on the River Raison, Monroe)

I've taught spiritual formation at an African Methodist Episcopal seminary since 2007. This fall, I'm teaching at Payne Seminary again.

I love teaching there, it's a privilege and an honor, and I love all the students I have instructed.

I was recently pleased that, at the AME's Quadrennial Session (Aug. 21-27)), they rejected a proposal to strike down its ban on same-sex marriage. (E.g., see HERE.)

 On a related note, I (and others) have been looking forward to The Widening of God's Mercy: Sexuality Within the Biblical Story, by Christopher and Richard Hays. Year ago I read the latter's The Moral Vision of the New Testament, in which he argues for a position on gay marriage like the AME Church. But in Widening, Hays changes his mind and now believes God affirms same-sex marriage.

The new book comes out next week.

Now I wonder whether to buy it, after reading Preston Sprinkle's thorough review of it. See that... HERE. This review is a seminary class in logic, theology, exegesis, and hermeneutics.

SPIRITUAL TRANSFORMATION INTO CHRISTLIKENESS - STAGES

Today I shared this 23-minute video with my Payne Theological Seminary students.

Foucault - Genuine Liberation Via Revolution Is Impossible

                                                           (Veterans Park, Monroe)

I am not an atheist. But I am attracted to certain atheist thinkers. Especially, e.g., Nietzsche. And, more recently, Foucault.

Their reasoning that, given atheism, here is what follows, is interesting and persuasive. See, e.g., Nietzsche's "Parable of the Madman," for a peek into the Nietzschean idea that, with the demise of theism comes the demise of a metaphysical foundation that gave support for objective moral values. (See, e.g., here.)

I am now re-reading Gary Gutting's book on Foucault. These statements strike me as correct, and ominous.

"The fundamental transformation the revolutionaries seek requires central control down to finest details of a nation’s life. Here, perhaps, we have a Foucaultian explanation of the totalitarian thrust of modern revolutions. 

This analysis suggests the reactionary conclusion that meaningful revolution, hence genuine liberation, is impossible: the only alternative to the modern net of micro-centres of power is totalitarian domination...

[G]iven Foucault’s democratization of oppression – depending on the local context, we are all victims." (Gutting, Foucault: A Very Short Introduction, p. 88)

For example, the "Woke Revolution" on a trajectory of totalitarian domination. Foucault helps me understand this via the dynamics of oppression.

Is there a Christian alternative that avoids totalitarianism? I think works like those of Carl Trueman and Rod Dreher present alternatives while understanding the democratization of oppression.

Most recently, I finished Jesus and the Powers, by N. T. Wright and Michael Bird. Here we see a biblical theology of ministering to other cultures in the name of Jesus without politically dominating them.

My Book on Leadership

 

Leading the Presence-Driven Church - this is my book on leadership.