Five Ways That Atheists Advance The Kingdom of God

Decoupling government and religion

The separation of Church and State is rightly, and even necessarily, a fundamental principle in democratic and pluralistic societies. This is one of the rare things that Christopher Hitchens and, say, Menno Simons would agree on. The anabaptists broke with those of their time by insisting that religion should be totally voluntary and not enforced by the state. Other Christians only joined with them en masse after decades of inter-sectarian violence led Christian refugees who had fled to the American colonies to agree and include religious freedom in the American constitution. Surprisingly philosophes of the Enlightenment like Voltaire and Montesquieu did not call for total freedom of religion (though Diderot did). It was left to Pierre Bayle, a Protestant, and John Locke, a heterodox Christian, to provide philosophical-political justifications for “religious toleration”. In any case, I think it true that in our times the vanguard fighting for thorough separation of church and state, particularly in the United States, have been atheists. For those of us who reject dominionist fantasies of Christendom and recognize the fundamentally non-coercive and countercultural form of cruciform witness, their work can only be seen as a blessing. The fact is that the farther away from each other the “throne and the altar” are (in Diderot’s language), the more clearly visible the “altar” is. I think it axiomatic that the further away from government Christianity moves, the higher its profile among seekers of truth will become. One need look no further than the current Republican presidential campaign.    

Decoupling schools and religion

My argument here is similar to the one above, so I’ll state it briefly. The disappearance of Christianity from public schools may lead to lower numbers of nominal Christians, but I think it’s unlikely to lead to lower membership in the “invisible church”. What it will likely do is remove the sense of compulsion and oppression that many students feel when they do not believe (yet) in Christianity yet are forced to recite the Lord’s Prayer or take part in other Christian “rituals”. Free of compulsion or aversion, and not seeing Christianity as interwoven with “the establishment” they may, as above, be able to see it more easily.

Not letting us forget

Atheists are vociferous critics of Christianity. Granted much of their criticism is based on urban myths, misinformation, or outright slander, the inescapable truth is that the bulk of their criticism remains deserved. Christians going about their month praying, volunteering at the Church, or working with communities of service or justice seeking can forget the past misdeeds of the Church. Yet credible Christian witness in our time demands that the Church remembers, understands, repents of, and makes amends for, the suffering it has caused and the damage it has done to humanity and to God’s kingdom.

Putting up awful statues

Many Christians reacted with fear and anger to the erection of a 9 foot tall, one ton bronze statue statue of Baphomet by the Satanic Temple in Detroit last year. Even James Martin, S.J., the popular Jesuit writer known for his soft spoken, nuanced moderation, expressed consternation and warned of toying with dark forces beyond our understanding. The tall goat-headed statue, which combines a kind of animal sagaciousness with svelte muscularity, is flagged disturbingly by two children looking up to him with earnest receptivity. The addition of the children was meant to show, says the Temple, that “there is nothing to be afraid of”, yet to an unindoctrinated eye the fact of the children’s monotonal open-ness in the presence of a winged, goat-headed giant just comes off as creepy, suggesting brainwashing or sedation.

In any case the folks who put up this statue are not really Satanists. They don’t believe in a personal Satan, but rather see Satan as a literary symbol embodying a mixture of secular humanist ideals and softcore new age spirituality (“the embrace of opposites….as above so below”). I don’t think the statue or it’s followers are likely to unleash a fury reminiscent of the closing scene of Raiders of the Lost Ark on Detroit any time soon. I think in the long run their obsession with such things as moving the statue 900 miles (1,450km) south-west to erect it opposite a Ten Commandments monument outside Oklahoma City's Capitol Building is bound to backfire. As it happens, the skirmish between Satanist, secularist, and atheist groups on one hand and Christians on the other has led to Oklahoma's Supreme Court ruling that the use of state property to benefit a religion is banned under the state constitution, and as a result the fate of both the Satanist statue and the Ten Commandments monument that originally inspired it may be the same: their removal from State property. This development would show the true nature of this type of Satanism: it is primarily a rebellion not against Christianity, but against Christendom. In this sense the Satanists may be doing Christians a favor. Once they have succeeded in using the secularist principles of the US constitution to dethrone Christianity from its union with the State, secularism-mascarading-as-satanism will vanish like a fire set to put out a fire. Even better, the Satanists will have done the Kingdom of God a favour by cutting more of its ties with the Kingdom of the World. Satan is, after all, merely one of God’s employees.

Being decent and sometimes heroic human beings

Only the most insular of Christians would imagine that goodness, decency and heroism are confined to their co-religionists, or, say, to believers in God in some form. To start, Atheist religions like Buddhism, Confucianism and Daoism prove this wrong- but even among those with no religion, examples can be found of people living self-sacrificial lives, fighting for the causes of justice and love, or engaging in everyday acts of kindness or bravery.

We should not only be grateful to these people and celebrate their goodness, we should make common cause with them. Whether you view these people as acting on the image of God within, or as recipients of God’s “common grace”, it amounts to the same thing: God has scattered his goodness in the rocky soil of the world. As the great German pastor and theologian Christoph Blumhardt (1842-1919), mentor to Karl Barth, put it while talking about God’s movements beyond the Church:”God is weaving his design in the warp and weft of the world…..Where will the kingdom of God come from? Is not the entire history of the world a fulfillment of the promise? Are not bonds loosed, chains broken asunder? Who would have thought, for example, that new paths could open up for women as they have for men? Jesus lives, and he conquers more and more, although too many of us are unaware that he is behind it all (Everyone Belongs to God).”  

The Image of Holiness

"We see all of the virtues of holiness perfectly aligned in Christ. He was always gentle, but never soft. He was bold, but never brash. He was pure, but never prudish. He was full of mercy but not at all at the expense of justice. He was full of truth but not at the expense of grace. In everything he was submissive to his Heavenly Father, and he gave everything for his sheep. He obeyed hs parents, kept the law of God, and forgave his enemies. He never lusted, never coveted, and never lied. In all that Jesus Christ did, during his whole life and especially as his life came to an end, he loved God with his whole being and loved his neighbour as himself."

"If somewhere down the road you forget the Ten Commandments or can't recall the fruit of the Spirit or don't seem to remember any particular attributes of God, you can still remember what holiness is by simply remembering his name."

- Kevin DeYoung, The Hole in Our Holiness

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Born In Chains: Leonard Cohen and Jesus

I have been a big fan of Leonard Cohen, the Canadian singer/songwriter and poet, since my early teen years, and still am. I love the man. Since coming to faith in Jesus, it has occurred to me that there are many references to Christ in Cohen's music, some explicit and some subtle. I get the feeling that to Cohen Jesus is a part of his Jewish heritage and spiritual world and a presence in his thoughts as opposed to someone alien or threatening. Perhaps this is related also to his French Canadian influences growing up. On Cohen's new album there is a stunningly beautiful song of praise and contemplation with unmistakeable Christian resonances as well as the obvious Jewish ones. Before I share a direct quote from Cohen on Yeshua, here is the song:

Born In Chains

1. I was born in chains but I was taken out of Egypt
I was bound to a burden but the burden it was raised
Lord I can no longer keep this secret
Blessed is the Name, the Name be praised

2. I fled to the edge of the mighty sea of sorrow
pursued by the riders of a cruel and dark regime
but the waters parted and my soul crossed over
out of Egypt, out of Pharaoh's dream

3. Word of words, measure of all measures
Blessed is the Name, the Name be blessed
Written on my heart in burning letters
That's all I know, I cannot read the rest

4. I was idle with my soul when I heard you could use me
I followed very closely but my life remained the same
But then you showed me where you had been wounded
in every atom, broken is the Name

5. I was alone on the road then your love was so confusing
All my teachers told me I had myself to blame
but in the grip of sensual illusion
this sweet unknowing unified the Name

6. Word of words, measure of all measures
Blessed is the Name, the Name be blessed
Written on my heart in burning letters
Thats all I know, I cannot read the rest

7. I've heard the soul unfolds in the chambers of its longing
and the bitter liquor sweetens in the hammered cup
All the ladders of the night are fallen
Only darkness now to lift the longing up

8. Word of words, measure of all measures
Blessed is the Name, the Name be blessed
Written on my heart in burning letters
Thats all I know I cannot read the rest

There you have it. Stunningly beautiful. Hamaveen yaveen (let the wise understand).

A few thoughts on the images in the song: In both Jewish and Christian mysticism the Exodus symbolizes the salvation of the individual soul (verses 1 and 2). This is a more central metaphor for Christians since Jesus' death and resurrection is closely linked in the New Testament to the symbolism and inner meaning of Passover. "The Name" is itself a name of God and translates "Hashem", the usual way of referring to God among Jews. The Torah itself is also considered a "name" of God, sometimes said to be written in flaming letters (verse 3). In Jeremiah the promised "new covenant" will be written on the heart (verse 3). In the New Testament Jesus shows his wounds to "doubting Thomas" who then believes that Jesus has in fact come bodily back from the dead and is The Lord. This is also after Jesus' body is broken on the cross, an act Jesus foresaw and described with the word "broken" (verse 4). ""Unifying the Name" is a mystical goal of Jewish practice and refers 1) to the coming of the Messiah and the healing of the world; 2; to there being only one name under which God is known and 3) the unification of the shekhinah and God, or the unification of the soul of Israel/soul of creation with its Creator (verse 5).

I would not want to pin this song down to one clear meaning. I do get the sense that it is about coming to a relationship with God and finding his name written on his heart, even if in many ways he lives in a "sweet unknowing" which leaves many things not understood. It does seem like this has been a liberating passage for Cohen (out of Egypt) and that all of this may in some way be connected to contemplating Jesus' life and teachings as expressions of God as well. It is tempting to read more into the poem but out of respect for Cohen and the mystery and beauty of the the poem-song I will stop there. My point here is not to argue that Cohen is a closet messianic Jew. I do think though that Jesus is a presence in his thoughts and this is a provocative and interesting song melding Jewish and Christian imagery into a beautiful song of praise to the Name.

Here is the lovely quote from Cohen on Jesus:

"I’m very fond of Jesus Christ. He may be the most beautiful guy who walked the face of this earth. Any guy who says "Blessed are the poor. Blessed are the meek" has got to be a figure of unparallelled generosity and insight and madness…A man who declared himself to stand among the thieves, the prostitutes and the homeless. His position cannot be comprehended. It is an inhuman generosity. A generosity that would overthrow the world if it was embraced because nothing would weather that compassion. I’m not trying to alter the Jewish view of Jesus Christ. But to me, in spite of what I know about the history of legal Christianity, the figure of the man has touched me."

Leonard Cohen (1988), from "Leonard Cohen in His Own Words" by Jim Devlin

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The Faith of Abraham: Isaac, CS Lewis and Kierkegaard

The story of Abraham and Isaac, known as the Akedat Yitzhak (binding of Isaac), or Akedah in Jewish tradition, has long haunted the imaginations and consciences of Jews and Christians. The Torah recounts in suspenseful, harrowing prose God's request to Abraham that he slaughter his beloved son Isaac as a ritual sacrifice. Abraham famously acquiesces and takes Isaac up Mt. Moriah to a makeshift altar. He is stopped by an angel of God at the last moment. Do not stretch out your hand against the child, the angel says, you have passed the test.

What exactly is the test? How could God ask such a thing? How could Abraham agree? Are we supposed to applaud Abraham for the seemingly horrifying willingness to kill his own son? In the days of ISIS and other forms of religious violence across the religious spectrum these questions gain a new urgency. I want to suggest that the point of this story is somewhat different than most of us take it to be, and that there is still something important to learn from it 3,ooo years or so on from the events it purports to describe.

First bear with me while we reread the story.

Genesis 22

Some time later God tested Abraham. He said to him, "Abraham!"

"Here I am," he replied.

2 Then God said, "Take your son, your only son, whom you love—Isaac—and go to the region of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on a mountain I will show you."

3 Early the next morning Abraham got up and loaded his donkey. He took with him two of his servants and his son Isaac. When he had cut enough wood for the burnt offering, he set out for the place God had told him about. 4 On the third day Abraham looked up and saw the place in the distance. 5 He said to his servants, "Stay here with the donkey while I and the boy go over there. We will worship and then we will come back to you."

6 Abraham took the wood for the burnt offering and placed it on his son Isaac, and he himself carried the fire and the knife. As the two of them went on together, 7 Isaac spoke up and said to his father Abraham, "Father?"

"Yes, my son?" Abraham replied.

"The fire and wood are here," Isaac said, "but where is the lamb for the burnt offering?"

8 Abraham answered, "God himself will provide (adonai yireh) to the lamb for the burnt offering, my son." And the two of them went on together.

9 When they reached the place God had told him about, Abraham built an altar there and arranged the wood on it. He bound his son Isaac and laid him on the altar, on top of the wood. 10 Then he reached out his hand and took the knife to slay his son. 11 But the angel of the Lord called out to him from heaven, "Abraham! Abraham!"

"Here I am," he replied.

12 "Do not lay a hand on the boy," he said. "Do not do anything to him. Now I know that you revere God, because you have not withheld from me your son, your only son."

13 Abraham looked up and there in a thicket he saw a ram caught by its horns. He went over and took the ram and sacrificed it as a burnt offering instead of his son. 14 So Abraham called that place The Lord Will Provide (Adonai Yireh). And to this day it is said, "On the mountain of the Lord it will be provided."

Growing up in a Jewish context I was told that this story has two main points: 1) Abraham's incredible faith in God; and 2) God's lesson that Israel was not to sacrifice its children in religious ceremonies, unlike the tribes that Israel would later dispossess in the land of Canaan. I agree that these two points are among the lessons of the story. But they still leave many questions which Jewish and Christian thinkers have struggled with.

Kierkegaard famously opens his masterpiece Fear and Trembling with several re-imaginings of the story. What really happened? In one harrowing version Kierkegaard imagines Abraham indeed carrying Isaac up the mountain but before drawing the knife confessing to Isaac that he, Abraham, is in fact a fraud- an idolater and a violent man, and he intends to sacrifice Isaac to an idol. Better he not believe such a thing true of God and believe me evil instead, Abraham reasons.

In some Jewish versions the Rabbis notice that Abraham is described returning from the mountain but Isaac is not mentioned. He remained alone on the mountain, scarred by what happened and unwilling to descend, say some. Others, more shockingly: Abraham did kill him.

Mainstream Jewish tradition has always affirmed Abraham's virtuousness in the story, though the horror of it continued to surface in Jewish midrash (exegesis). As an old man Isaac was blind because His eyes were weakened by the sight of the angel that saved him. Or: His eyes were ruined by tears shed because his father was willing to sacrifice him.

Surely in all of our imaginings the shadow that haunts us is this: how could Abraham have been willing to sacrifice his son, and what kind of faith is this willing to do such a thing? Is this faith actually commendable? Let's look at the story in more detail.

God calls Abraham personally and unequivocally. Abraham responds: Hineni!, "Here I am!" a phrase which in Hebrew suggests total availability. At this point in his life Abraham has shown himself to have deep faith in God. God has been at times inscrutable and God's time frame in delivering promises has tested Abraham's trust, but Abraham has trusted and has thus far followed God's voice, and his trust has proven trustworthy.

God opens without preamble to a shocking request: Take your son, your only one, whom you love, Isaac.....God's wording is strange. Why does he not just say "take Isaac"? God's wording bears within it explicit reference to the intense meaning of Isaac for Abraham. Isaac is his son (his first son Ishmael is lost to him now). Isaac is his "only one", his only son, who carries the whole weight of Abraham's mission into the future. Whom you love. Isaac is not just the bearer of Abraham's legacy; Abraham dearly loves him.

Why does God speak this way? It is as if he is affirming Abraham's feelings and signalling that He understands them. I think God speaks this way, counter-intuitive as it might at first seem, to evoke Abraham's trust. In other words, at the moment that supremely tests Abraham's faith he speaks in such a way as to simultaneously support it. As we shall see, it is essential that Abraham be reminded of what we could call the humane nature of God.

Most amazing is Abraham's response to the request: early the next morning Abraham woke up and loaded his donkey. Abraham indeed responds with trust. What, though, is the exact nature of that trust? Does Abraham believe that whatever God ordains is good, and so he must comply? Is Abraham's trust a simple submission to God's inscrutable but always authoritative will? That was the way the text was presented to me as a child, and I think it is a very common reading. I also think it is wrong. Is this not the same Abraham who argued with God over the punishment of Sodom? The same Abraham who called out the challenge, will not the judge of the world deal justly?

I believe the text itself tells us the nature of Abraham's trust in the next harrowing moment in the story, surely one of the most spine tingling in all religious literature.

Abraham and Isaac proceed up the mountain together alone. Isaac seems to intuit that something strange is going on. Perhaps Abraham's hand trembles. Perhaps Isaac has heard stories of Canaanites who offer their children as sacrifices. Father? he asks.

Yes, my son?

The fire and the wood are here, but where is the lamb for the burnt offering?

Abraham's answer holds the key to the whole story. YHVH himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering, he replies. Adonai yireh, he literally says, God will see to it.

When I was a child I thought this answer was ambiguous and meant only to reassure Isaac. It wasn't until I read Yoram Hazony's discussion of it (in The Philosophy of Hebrew Scripture) that the scales fell from my eyes. Hazony argues simply that Abraham is here saying exactly what he means. God will see to it. Abraham does not believe that YHVH will actually require him to sacrifice Isaac. This is likewise why Abraham explicitly tells his servants not just to wait, but says, "we will return to you."

To believe that YHVH will in the end truly ask that heinous deed of Abraham would contradict everything Abraham believes about Him. Abraham's trust is not just about trusting in God. It is about trusting in God's character. The point of the monotheism of Israel is not just that there is one God. It is not a religion finally about the nature of divine authority- about its singularity. Judaism is not a numbers game. Israel's monotheism is the belief that the universe is ruled by one good God.

The fact that what is central to Abraham's trust is his trust in God's character is proven by his reaction when God does indeed send a ram in Isaac's place. Abraham names the spot to commemorate the wonder of what has happened. He does not name it "test passed." He names it, "God will see to it." That is the central meaning of what has happened to Abraham: He was right. Right about God's character. Right about God's justice. Right about God's promises and faithfulness.

The test that YHVH set for Abraham is significantly different than we might have thought. It is not in the final analysis a test of Abraham's submissiveness. It is a test of Abraham's faith: its nature and its object. It is as if God is speaking through the test to Abraham, and he is asking the question, Do you know me?

God is not interested in mere submission. What God wants is for Abraham to know His heart. God does not want Abraham just to trust Him, but to trust Him for the right reasons. God wants Abraham to know who He is trusting. In the story of the Akedah God does not just test the nature of Abraham's faith, He is also vindicates and reveals His own character.

Imagine that you wake one night to find your house on fire. You grab your sleeping infant and turn around to find your wife trapped in a part of the room that is becoming engulfed in flames. "Hand me the baby!", she yells.

Your reaction will tell us everything about your opinion of your wife. If you trust her with your life (and the life of your baby) you will hand over the baby to her even though it seems that this is a homicidal act. So you do, and she then passes the baby out the window into the arms of waiting firemen you couldn't see. 

If you believe your wife to be irrational or even delusional you will not pass the baby to her. Your trusting aquiescence, or lack of it, tells us about your understanding of her character and your consequent faith in her (or lack of). This is the meaning of the last line of the story of the Akedah: now I know that you revere YHVH, because you have not withheld your only son from me.

In CS Lewis' The Final Battle a cunning ape named Shift convinces a gullible, weak donkey named Puzzle to dress up like Aslan the lion, the spiritual ruler and creator of Narnia. The Narnians are well aware that Aslan is "not a tame lion" so when he begins making questionable, even violent requests many Narnians go along with it. Their instincts rebel and they feel sick, but who, after all, can understand the inscrutable Aslan?

Lewis brilliantly depicts the trap of perceiving God as above morality, a God of absolute power beyond good and evil. If God is not "tame", i.e. does not conform to human demands and expectations, then who are we to judge his actions? In the end God may request anything of us, which means that his "representatives" may request anything of us. 

Kierkegaard's analysis approaches the truth of the story but also obscures it. In Fear and Trembling Kierkegaard correctly asserts that Abraham surrenders his son, his family obligations, his ethics and even his very self in a transcendent trust of God. His brilliant insight is that Abraham does not do this merely as a "knight of resignation" who acquiesces out of his sense of nothingness before God. Abraham acts as a "knight of faith" who against all rational evidence trusts that since God has promised him Isaac God will deliver- Isaac will somehow be returned to him in this world.  

Kierkegaard is right in thinking that the nature of Abraham's faith transcends normal reasoning and is based in a trust that he will not lose Isaac because God has promised him Isaac and will not himself be unfaithful. He is wrong though in considering this a "suspension of the ethical" or a trust which is entirely irrational or absurd. This line of thinking actually obscures the nature of Abraham's faith as routed in an apprehension of the supremely ethical nature of God.

The Akedah teaches us about what Abraham believed of God's character, and what God wanted him to believe. The point is not submission, not obedience beyond reason. Abraham trusts God not just because He is God, but because Abraham knows God. Abraham has seen God's character and believes in Him as a God of grace and justice. Abraham trusts that God will not ask him to do something unjust, capricious, or immoral. If it appears that that is what God is asking than the reality must be otherwise, and Abraham complies and trusts, waiting to be proven right. God Himself will see to the lamb for the burnt offering, son. And he does. Abraham proves the nature of his faith, and God proves the nature of His faithfulness. The kind of faith that God wants is not simple obedience to pure authority, but knowing trust in His goodness. That is one of he reasons that God went to such great lengths to show His character to humanity in the life and death of his Son.

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