We ate the food, we drank the wine. We didn’t know it was the end of the world.

Passion Week: The week that started with a parade and celebration, and ends in betrayals, horror and murder. On Sunday, Jesus was welcomed as a king by thousands, yet by the end of the week he would be dead and his followers scattered and demoralized. With hindsight, we can go through Palm Sunday and the early events of the week with a sense of foreboding, and feel the portending evil during the Last Supper. But for those surrounding Jesus, for those in the moment, it must have been a grand start to the week!

On Saturday, Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead and spends a celebrating evening with his friends. Jesus enters on Sunday to palm-waving throngs who seem to believe and worship him. On Monday Jesus clears the temple of people perverting religion and oppressing the poor. He spends the next couple days teaching of grace. By Thursday evening it must have been an exhilarating, even powerful, week, seeming to culminate for them in the intimacy of the Last Supper with their friend and Lord.

We probably know the story from there, or at least have heard the story; what starts late Thursday night in Gethsemane and seems to end on Friday evening on a cross. I find it beneficial this week to remind myself of the realness – the physicalness – of his sacrifice; to read the accounts of this week from the Gospels; to read them without concern for the contradictions or the translator’s agenda or religion’s abuse of the story; to simply read them as a narrative of a man who lived and loved and felt passion and pain. But to be really beneficial, I find I have to make room for these stories to penetrate my being. That means setting aside distractions: TV, radio, alcohol, comforting foods. Things that are not wrong, things that Jesus enjoyed on Saturday with his friends before his week of destiny. But noise, media, clutter – all things that occupy me and distract me. I find that in this space I may be anxious, scrambling for other thoughts. But it is my intent this week to create that space and let him fill it. Perhaps with peace and sadness. To resist the urge to jump ahead in the story, to say, “But on Sunday …!” To live in the sorrow and longing for peace that makes joy real.

Jesus Can You Take The Time To Throw A Drowning Man A Line?

"Do I believe God is going to take away my illness when he turned an entirely deaf ear to the six million Jews who went into the gas chambers?" - Karen Armstrong

I think I am a good father. If it were within my power to prevent the starvation, torture and murder of my boys, I am certain I would. So did their Abba hear their cries? If yes, did he anguish? If yes, how could he not intervene?

I’ve been listening to a series of talks by Greg Boyd about prayer. Boyd does a good job exposing the fallacies and theological holes in the theory that somehow the systematic torture and murder of millions of people is a “good” that we humans simply cannot understand. Personally, I find this viewpoint repulsive so I don’t care to spend any time on it. Greg’s excellent talks can be heard here: http://www.whchurch.org/content/page_855.htm Look for “Scorpions, Eggs and Prayer” Parts 1 and 2.

In light of the reality of my world, how can I harmonize these beliefs: Yahweh is all good, is all powerful, and loves us like children, and sickness and sorrow are not “good”?

The critical premise for Boyd’s thinking on this is God’s choice to grant Free Will to human and angelic beings. To this Free Will, Boyd adds several credible theological factors including God’s will (God is not a cosmic Santa Claus), the laws of Nature, and strength and numbers of spiritual actors (both human and angelic). Boyd also addresses at length – and rejects - the idea that the faith of the people involved in a tragedy did not fit some formula that would have brought God’s intervention. However, Boyd does conclude that faith is a factor.

I’m in complete agreement about Yahweh’s choice to give Free Will and establish predictability through Nature. I squirm, however, under the notion that anyone’s faith is a factor, or that anyone’s asking is even considered. Let’s take an extreme example to make for a bright test. If I know of the rape of my baby, do I need my baby to cry out for me? Or will I waste every ounce of energy and rip every cell from my body to get to my baby and save him? Of course! It is ludicrous to think otherwise. Love is my motivation and his actions are irrelevant.

Abba, how is this possible? I do not put forward that I am better than Abba, so how can this be possible? I think choice and faith are the keystones. I must choose freely and with faith. So at the beginning, Yahweh chose this arrangement on a complex scale, he chose Free Will for us. It is inherent in faith that I have Free Will. If every time I prayed for healing, the person was healed, how much faith would it take to believe? If I ask for a sign and get it, how free is my choice to believe? Doesn’t every obvious “reveal” further erode my ability to choose on my own?

When talking about my Free Will to choose God and how he will not impose upon or change that Free Will, it’s cool coffee shop talk. But when it’s Jeffrey Dahmer’s Free Will choice to rape and murder men and boys, and God still won't impose upon or change that, it hurts. But the Free Will concept is the same! We move through this world surrounded by the ricocheting choices of billions of beings and the laws of Nature. We are helped or are hurt, we help or hurt.

I believe in Grace and I believe in Redemption, but I do not believe in miracles.

Let me append, I believe Grace and Redemption ARE miracles, why must I insist that he also perform some further act of miracle? Yahweh promises peace that is internal, and that together he and I can turn something evil into a good result – something that can lead to Grace and Redemption in us and others. Is that not miraculous enough?

So what good is prayer? My Abba does want to stop evil, but for complex reasons of true faith he has chosen to do so through us. Abba is crying out for someone (me) to look around and act, to provide resources to affect change. My prayer is part of what brings me closer to acting as he would here. People are changed, killers are stopped, people are fed as we become like him. Yahweh will not reach from the sky and stop the sword.

I want divine help in keeping my family safe? Then, Abba, help me act with wisdom and responsibility. I want divine help in improving your health? Then, Abba, help me show you care and love. I want divine help in eliminating poverty? Then, Abba, help me live responsibly and give dramatically. I want divine help in my boys’ future? Then, Abba, help me show unconditional love and give them tools for the future. Now that I think about it, it would be easier if I could just pray and God would do these things himself…..