The following post is from Shawn Harrison. Shawn is a youth pastor and he regularly blogs at six11.wordpress.com.

“Shawn are you ex-gay?”  “Nope.”

“Then are you gay?”  “Nope.”

“Wait, what?  Then what are you?”

I hate this conversation.

Throughout my life, I have struggled to embrace my true, core identity.  I’ve been all over the spectrum in this pursuit.  As a teen, being gay was the center of my life.  Everything I did, everything I was about revolved around being gay and proud.  When I became a Christian, I changed my identity to ex-gay, reflecting my newfound faith.  I was told to reject the past and embrace what Christ had done.  I was no longer gay; I was hetero.  However, I didn’t feel quite hetero, as I was still attracted to guys.  I believed what the Bible said, but I was struggling to mesh the truth of scripture with my attractions to men.  Changing my identity to gay Christian, then, seemed logical to do.

For me, though, that stint didn’t last long.  In due time, I underwent another identity change and eventually became a husband, then a father.  My same-sex attractions haven’t ceased totally, and this of course confuses many people.  They either want me to pick a side or they want me to deny my attractions altogether.  Yet, I refuse to pick a side or deny what’s going on inside.  To me, all of these characteristics make me the unique person I am today.  However, at this point in my life, I refuse to be labeled by the terms “ex-gay,” “gay,” or even “mixed-orientation marriage.”  None of these labels make-up the core of who I am.  My wife, my kids, nor my role as a pastor defines my core identity.  My life centers around one core truth that my identity is shaped around: child of God.

Everything I do centers around this one, simple, yet all-freeing truth.  Outside of this, nothing else matters.  In my experience as a pastor, most people form their identity around talents, work, heritage, sexuality, and church affiliation.  While these are all true characteristics of one’s identity, they do not make up one’s core identity.  See, if the core of who we are centers around anything other than being God’s child, if these things pass away, we lose who we are.  Being God’s child can never be taken from us.  Being God’s child is what we were originally created and called to be.  Moreover, as we continue to move closer to Him, as Christians, the Holy Spirit continues to mold us into God’s likeness, as His children.  These truths should be very freeing to us.  For more about who you are in Christ, go to this page on my blog.

The verse that has set this idea aflame in my heart and life is 1 John 3:1, “How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are!”  Other scriptures highlight this truth too, but I find great freedom and assurance in this particular passage.  There is a universal truth extended here that holds the depth of God’s love for people despite who they are or what they’ve done.  It speaks of a love that He has initiated with us, and it’s love that is beyond our comprehension.  Yet, it’s a truth and a identity that few of us model our lives around.  Rather it serves as an attachment, or a side-thought, to something we hold in greater importance.  What, though, could be greater than being called a child of God?

For me, I don’t reject being a husband, a father, a pastor, a writer, an artist, a reader, a evangelical Christian, and so forth.  I love all of these traits about me, but they are a part of something greater that I choose to center my identity around.  My sexuality is a part of this great identity, too.  My attractions aren’t the totality of who I am.  They simply add to my uniqueness.  For me, I choose to be known as God’s child, primarily, and everything else is secondary.  If people can’t accept that, well, that’s not my problem.  I live to please no one else, nor answer to anyone else, but God alone.  I know exactly who I am, and I am quite content with life and myself.

“What am I?  I’m God’s child; that’s who I am.”

Much love.

www.themarinfoundation.org

The following post in the ongoing series on identity in relation to faith and sexuality is from Will.

“I have come that they may have life, and have it abundantly”

-John 10:10

As a young man, I knew I loved other men. This knowing wasn’t sexual, or even physical, but rather something profoundly onotological.  Deeply rooted in myself was a desire to spend my life, my self, pursuing an intimate (emotionally, physically, spiritually) relationship with another man.  This same desire for relationship existed in my pursuit of faith.  I’d long known a love for and the love of God, a commitment to Christian community, and the hope of justice and grace I found present in my experience of Christianity.

In John 10, Jesus speaks of himself as shepherd, reconfiguring his role as Messiah to one of inclusion, acceptance, and abundant living.  At the heart of this passage, I believe, is Jesus’ commitment to ensuring all people’s ability to fully live into themselves; to have their humanity loved and recognized in a diverse and grace-filled community.

This deep recognition of one’s being granted the hope of not only being fully human (and therefore fully one’s self) but at the same time allowed the possibility of participation in the Kingdom of God.  The invitation to abundant life, more profoundly, speaks to the hope of community that affirms mental, emotional, physical, spiritual, and sexual well-being.

When we speak of sexuality, we are not simply speaking about someone’s eroto-physical attraction, but something far deeper; an indivisible part of our being.  For translesgaybi individauls, sexuality is an ontological reality, a part of being inexorably intertwined with every other part of ourselves.  As a personal example, my vocation as pastor, and love for the work of Christ, is as much a part of my being as my attraction to men.

When Christian communities suggest that “homosexuality is not God’s best for us,” this is not a rejection of some foreign object, a sin to be exorcised, but of a part of someone’s soul.  Not only, then, do we create for our translesgaybi brothers and sisters a self-perpetuating identity crisis, but we in effect deny them the very opportunity Jesus offers in John 10:10.  Rather than offering abundant life, the hope of community, or the promise of grace, we ask them to build boundaries within themselves, effectively relegating them to a half-life of loving God without knowing intimacy with another.

In the abundance of life offered to us through Christ, I cannot escape the thought that there is room in this abundance for me to be both that young man that loves Jesus and men.  And what I have found throughout the course of my ministry is that as I live more fully into who I am as a gay man, I find myself growing ever deeper in my relationship with God.  As these two parts of my whole self find recognition, and acceptance, in the love of Christ my life is being transformed and renewed.

Ultimately, it is this experiential revelation that has led me to reject the notion that my desire for relationship is “not God’s best for me.”  The reality of God’s on-going presence and participation in my life, as well as the ever-deepening nature of my relationship with God confirms that in living into my sexual self I am indeed living into who God is calling me to be.

As Christian communities continue their struggle to understand the interplay between faith and sexuality, I recognize not only Christ’s abundant life calling me to be both a gay man and pastor, but inviting those communities to live into that abundance for themselves and share that abundance with the world around them.  This is my prayer.  This is my hope.  That all might know life and have it abundantly.

Much love.

www.themarinfoundation.org

The next post in this series is from Matt Richards. Matt is a Church Planting Intern at Urban Village Church, a Social Worker at the University of Chicago and he received his M. Div from the University of Chicago Divinity School.

Recently, I went and saw a play that one of my friends wrote called, “The Homosexuals.” It tells the story of a group of gay urban men who become family for one another. There is a very moving scene in which one of the characters recalls feeling utterly drawn to one of his male friends during adolescence and realizes at that moment that he “could never get close enough.” At that moment, he realized that no matter how deeply he was drawn into the life of this other person, there would always be more left to know, always places yet to traverse, questions yet to ask, words left to utter.

I remember a few of these magical moments. They will be etched into my memory forever because they were the beginnings of me feeling beauty inside my bones. These were moments in which I began to understand that there was some pulsating force inside of me that would lead me into the world of other people. Let us call it a basic curiosity or desire. That we often have these experiences before we have completed puberty, conveys that these experiences are not reducible to questions about who is putting which genitals where which, unfortunately, is the impoverished vocabulary employed by most of our churches when speaking about “homosexuality.”Instead, these are moments in which we begin to comprehend that we are not enough for ourselves and never will be. We are not at home.

I also remember sitting in front of the television when I was a child and listening to Robert Knight from the Family Research Council tell a national TV audience on CNN’s “Crossfire” that the average gay man consumes “80 lbs of feces in a lifetime.” I remember realizing that this dazzling mystery inside of me was nothing more than smut in the eyes of this man. He was disgusted by people like me, so much so that he could think of nothing better than to contrive the sorts of lies that prevent humans from thinking clearly—that is what disgust always does and it has regrettably been a Christian political strategy for a very long time.

However, this was an important experience because it was a more honest expression of the sort of Christian homophobia and heteronormativity that today tries to reduce gay intimacies and desire to acts of penetration or some issue that straight people (especially theologians) can puzzle over into the wee hours of the morning, studying with passionless detachment. This is strikingly different from Jesus who was always keen to a fascinating detour into some particular persons life.

I don’t argue about my gayness anymore because I feel no inclination to justify it. When I share in fellowship with my friends, when we show up for one another in surprising ways, that feeling of dazzling beauty arises again. I look around and I see surprise and delight in the faces of friends who have traveled long roads to arrive at this moment.

God creates all of us in such a way that we cannot be enough for ourselves. Ever. Think about that. We want everything near at hand and all at once but the tape will not play out that way. Consequently, we will all need companions, and lovers, and late night phone calls with friends. If we can’t go home, we will need people who help us discover where home now is. We will need banquet tables filled with beverage, and warmth, and people we love. Hopefully, like Jesus, we will endeavor to share all of these things with people who feel far from the center, who feel as if they have no one.

I imagine that Jesus’ return will be a final homecoming. One in which all of my friends will be free to go home to their Christian families on Thanksgiving. When they will not be regarded as disappointments or prodigal children who left town. Instead, they will be recognized as the beautiful, complicated, searching creatures that they are.

This eternal communion table indeed feels many worlds away. Part of the final communion I dream about is one in which the Church stops acting like “homosexuality” is my great spiritual dilemma. Instead, it will recognize that it’s all the other stuff.  My insecurity, my silence in the face of injustice, my weariness about the state of the world, my lack of trust in God, my obsessive need for control. When the Church starts treating gay people like the textured creatures that all humans are, I will perhaps believe that home is just around the bend.

But until then, I try my best to remind myself that God can and will accomplish things that I cannot imagine. I pray that some of these unimaginable things will happen inside of me. We all need the cross and the empty tomb— signs of the God who is with us and for us until the end of all things. The shit storms of life demand that we try and remind each other of these things. That is the task of the Church and the interesting and difficult work of Kingdom building: that our lives become tangible expressions and reminders of the communion that is yet to come. May we all—straight, gay, bi, lesbian, queer, trans—be people who do just that. In Christ’s name. Amen.

Much love.

www.themarinfoundation.org

I have a very good friend, Karen Bowlby (Twitter name is @KBowlby), who lives in New York City. She, amongst other things, is an unreal writer and slam-poet who keeps it as real and raw as I’ve ever seen or heard. She holds nothing back as she is on a journey to figure out what life and faith and fidelity look like. I love her. Some call her a lesbian. Some call her a Christian. Some call her a prophet. I call her Karen. And I hope you enjoy her poems as much as I do. I am going to start posting some of her poems on the blog, starting with this one. You can check out her website, Deviant Poems, here.

This poem is called Electroshock Therapy:

“Love should not feel like electro-shock-therapy
But yours does

I noticed it today, for the first time
The vibrations starting just behind my ears
Here

Starting when your honeyed voice
Your “public-speaker” voice
The one you use for “ministry”
The one that makes strangers
Love you
Admire you
Want to listen to every word you say
The one that’s
Filled with sweetness,
Compassion
The one that wears
Masked manipulation

Turned on me

That’s when the buzzing began

As you
Elevated me from
“Gay-sister” to
“Project”
You transformed
Grew patient
Kind, even

I almost fell for it
Thought how nice it felt
How you hadn’t spoken to me in your
Big-sister voice
How you hadn’t seen me as your
Little sister
Since I stopped asking for
Your opinion
Your approval
Since I stopped wearing
Little pieces of mirror
For eyes

But then the buzzing got louder
Began to move to that place
Right behind where those mirrors used to hang
When you slipped

Stopped listening
Started preaching
Spitting image of the mother you disdain
Honey words comparing your life to
Mine
Feeding me bite after bite
Of the sweet morality
You have cloaked your
Insecurities in for
Years

And I could almost feel you praying for me
Knew what words would spew forth
Were they aloud

Things like
“Dear God
Make my sister miserable

Ruin her life
Fill it with pain and suffering
Until she sees the error of her ways.”

But you forget
Dear sister
We sat in that pew together
For years
You and I
We drank the same kool-aid
Learned the same tricks
I have prayed those same prayers
Spoken those same words
Used that same
Saccharine tone filled with
Understanding
But we do not worship the
Same God
Not anymore

So when you pray

“It’s what’s best for her”
And
“Make misery her companion
So she might have no other

At least not one that’s female”

When you bruise your
Martyr-knees with

“Dear God
Make my sister
Straight”

Know that I know that you
Mean

“Dear god
Make her know she’s wrong”

Because, you see
Sissy
I discovered long ago that it’s not
Actually about my
Gay-ness or
The labels of “lesbian” and
“Queer”
Your god doesn’t actually care about
What’s best for me

Your god
Is the god of who’s right
And who’s wrong
And you are never
Wrong
Can’t allow yourself to be
And I am never right
I’ve never even tried to be

Even when
The vibrations of your judgement
Travel their way down my neck
Even as my heart begins to skip
Stall
Stop

You are
“Right”
For praying misery into my life
Loneliness over companionship
Ache that overcomes hope

As if anymore could possibly fit

You watched me drown for years
Sissy
You knew before anyone else
Where exactly that life-preserver was
Hiding
But you and
Your god
Watched me flail
Suffer
Breathe in water again and again
Because you were “right”
And I was “wrong”
Even when I stopped flailing
Stopped fighting
Allowed myself to sink
You did nothing
Let me sit at the bottom of that pool
Where we used to have our
Underwater tea-parties
Waiting for me to cry out
“Uncle”
You were willing to watch me
Die

I almost did

So your “kind” voice?
The one you just gave me?
The one that is vibrating now in my
Fingertips
Angry bees rebelling against your
Foreign sweetness

Your “kind” voice
Can go fuck itself

Because kindness does not watch
Her sister drown

Compassion does not let her
Little sister slice her arms into
Ribbons
Bleed onto altars of sacrifice that
Will never be filled

Love does not feel like electroshock therapy
And my God
Doesn’t give a shit about who is right or wrong”

Much love.
www.themarinfoundation.org

We are continuing the Q&A between myself and prolific theologian, author, professor and blogger, Scot McKnight, about his new book, One.Life. You can check out a number of his award winning books and blog here.

Andrew’s Question: Shane Claiborne once asked, What if Jesus meant everything he said? You bring more depth to that question in your Committed.Life chapter by commenting that the mark of a follower of Jesus is following. You quote musician Rob Thomas who famously sang: Give me your heart, make it real or else forget about it; as a summary of Jesus’ expectations for his followers. There are many well intentioned self-proclaiming followers of Jesus who say they have surrendered their heart to the way of Jesus. But some suggest their actions speak differently. How can we expose ourselves to know our actions and our heart are indeed in the right place, committed to Jesus?

Scot’s Response: Gotta say this. It doesn’t mean having Shane’s hairdo! (It’s OK, Shane, I love you. Call it hair envy.)

Two points, Andrew. First, Jesus’ radical claims on his followers are not games. They mean business, but we are wrong to interpret them legalistically – as if he gave up one form of legalism to shape a new kind. No, those radical claims are designed to get us to see that Jesus wants “us” – the inner you and the inner me – from the inside out. Totally. All of us. Every one of us. Each day. All day long. So, his words are powerful rhetoric of summoning us to give ourselves unreservedly to Jesus.

Second, we have to get to know the Gospels better. (Not just the Gospels, brother, but the whole Bible for only in reading the whole Bible do we see what the Gospels are getting at.) We need to read them, to listen to them, to gnaw on them and let them gnaw on us. We need to listen and learn and to hear and to heed.

I can’t say more.

Followers of Jesus follow Jesus, and to follow Jesus, we have to know Jesus and to know Jesus we have to learn about him by reading and listening to the Gospels.

Much love.

www.themarinfoundation.org

We are continuing the Q&A between myself and prolific theologian, author, professor and blogger, Scot McKnight, about his new book, One.Life. You can check out a number of his award winning books and blog here.

Andrew’s Question: On page 93 you said “Enemies can be loved easier than conquered.” Wow! So profound and so relevant to our culture wars today that exist only to conquer. What are your thoughts about Jesus’ message of loving your enemies in relation to the acceptable medium of engagement in our society to conquer, dominate and win? It seems to me that many feel that reconciliation, or peace, cannot happen unless there is a winner and a loser.

Scot’s Response: When there is a winner and a loser, there is no winner but two losers. Andrew, I’m a pacifist and an Anabaptist and that means I’m grieved by war – even if I read and comment on political postures we take in this world. But deep inside I am convinced that our interventions with war do not and cannot bring genuine peace – they may stop war but they only drive the desire for revenge and war to deeper places. Over time they will come back in harsher forms, and that is what we are seeing played out in the international state right now. And I’m not blaming just the USA; the world’s power brokers are to blame. It’s a power game.

Followers of Jesus are called to a different ethic. He calls us – in everything – to love God and to love our enemies, what I call the Jesus Creed.  That means also in political rhetoric (we are to be “with” as a “for” even in political discourse) and in international relations. To be sure, maybe we are so far from the table that we can’t engage the powers. But we can pray and we can protest and we can make the way of Jesus known, and urge our leaders to sit at the table until a genuine and peaceful form of resistance can work its way into how the nations relate.

You may call me a dreamer. Go ahead, because I’m appealing to the kingdom dream of Jesus. We are called to follow him, not to win in the war games of this world.

Perhaps you wonder why I’m talking about “war.” The cultural wars are one degree lower than the international wars we are experiencing. For us to sort out as Christians how to relate to the political and cultural wars today we have to be willing to acknowledge that sometimes the “other” is our enemy. That’s flat-out wrong for a follower of Jesus. I don’t care if you don’t like Sarah Palin or Barack Obama – if you are a follower of Jesus you are called to love Palin and Obama. That means being “with” them as someone who is “for” them in the way of Jesus, even if sometimes your “for” means you have to disagree. But the posture is what matters: do you love your (cultural, political) enemy? If not, it’s time to follow Jesus in a new way.

Much love.

www.themarinfoundation.org

We are continuing the Q&A between myself and prolific theologian, author, professor and blogger, Scot McKnight, about his new book, One.Life. You can check out a number of his award winning books and blog here.

Andrew’s Question: You devote a whole chapter to wisdom, and say the most important posture for one who wants to be wise is to be receptively reverent to those who are wise, as wise people sound like their mentors. That challenged me to think, do I sound like Jesus? Besides the not-so-trivial daily acts of reading the Bible and spending time with God, how can we continue to engage culture and be oriented each day towards God sounding like our mentor Jesus?

Scot’s Response: Let me clarify your excellent brief summary. Wisdom is not honored in our culture; newness is honored; youth is honored. To honor wisdom is to honor the wise, not the famous, not the celebrity, not the rich, not the powerful, not the youthful.

The wise are those who have learned to live in God’s world in God’s way in the way of Jesus Christ.

We become wise only by a posture of listening to and walking with and learning from the wise; we become wise by developing a posture of receptive reverence of the wise. That means listening to them –

Andrew, brother, nothing in our culture favors this kind of biblical wisdom. Everything is about what is new and youthful. In fact, for many today anyone over 40 is old and can be ignored. I’ll say it biblically: this is foolish, and it cutting into the fabric of culture and church.

So, my advice is to ask you this: How many older people are speaking directly into your life in a way that you reverently receive their wisdom and go with it? Until that happens we can’t have a wisdom culture.

Reading the Bible is important because we learn from Jesus’ wisdom (and Paul’s and Peter’s et al). That’s the first step. But the second step is to connect yourself to someone who is genuinely wise – pick someone over 50 – and to spend time “with” them and let them become someone who is “for” you – I’m speaking the language of love.

Much love.

www.themarinfoundation.org

We are continuing the Q&A between myself and prolific theologian, author, professor and blogger, Scot McKnight, about his new book, One.Life. You can check out a number of his award winning books and blog here.

Andrew’s Question: I thought your short chapter titled Peace.Life was very direct. Let me summarize some of your thoughts… Jesus’ version of peace was a very Jewish version of peace (shalom) that was based on: material prosperity; loving relationships with God, family, Israel and other nations; and moral goodness and integrity. You mention that peace is a result and not a goal—peace is the result of years in good relationships as the result of love. “People who want peace but who aren’t willing to love will not find peace” (p. 73). Based on Jesus’ teachings, how do you see warring or opposing communities finding the will and strength to come to the table to seek a result of peace?

Scot’s Response: I’ll put this down right away: it’s OK to sit down at table to seek peace.

But seeking peace won’t necessarily bring us peace.

To get peace we have to learn to love our neighbor; to get peace we have to love our enemies.

In other words, we need to realize that the big table of peace is in a home whose door is called “love your neighbor, love your enemy.” Until we walk through that door, we’ll never get to the room or to the table.

I’ll put it this way: many people want peace but they are sitting at picnic tables in the park chatting away. The only way to get to peace is to love, and that means love our neighbor and love our enemy. And it means being willing to be “with” that person as someone who is “for” that person in the way of Jesus Christ.

In our communities we need to have people sit down with one another, but they won’t get to peace until they are willing to love that other person for that person’s good. Until they honor the person as someone who is worthy of my “with-ness” and “for-ness” and not just as someone I’d like to get persuaded to my way of things.

Do I have a witness? 

Most definitely Scot! You’ve got a witness

Much love.

www.themarinfoundation.org

We are continuing the Q&A between myself and prolific theologian, author, professor and blogger, Scot McKnight, about his new book, One.Life. You can check out a number of his award winning books and blog here.

Andrew’s Question: I loved this: “Often you can learn what a person is for by listening to what they are against. I’ll give you what Jesus was against, and you can infer what he was for: 1) Jesus spoke against authorities who ignored oppression; 2) He spoke against the tax collectors who ripped people off; and 3) He spoke against his disciples when they ignored the children” (p. 59). You then go on to suggest that Jesus was for the proper use of power, for justice and for the value of everyone. It seems to me that those three simple ‘for’s’ could end the obsessing culture wars that continue to dominate our world. How do you define the proper use of power, justice and dignity of everyone and what would that look like for us to live it out?

Scot’s Response: In a word, the only proper use of power is love. The only just conditions are love of one another and love of God, and the only dignity we can give to someone is to love them.

In one word, each of these is about love. But let me explain love a little bit.

We are in trouble in our culture today for many reasons, not the least of which is that we just don’t get what the Bible means by love. Love is not toleration – that’s a condescending “you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours” kind of relationship. Love in the Bible is about three things: presence (a pledge or commitment to be “with” someone); it’s about a plot (a pledge to be with someone as someone who is “for” that person in making that person to become the person God wants them to become) and love is about Jesus Christ (the ultimate form of love in the Bible is God becoming one of us – hence “with” us – as someone who worked redemption “for” us).

We use divine power when we commit ourselves, through the difficulties and in the good times, to be with someone but not just “with” but as someone who is genuinely “for” that person. We are committed to helping them to become all God has for them … folks, this is tough and it is hard and it takes more effort than tolerance ever had in mind. And this means we are to love them by pointing them to Jesus Christ as the ultimate revelation of God – as the one who lived for us and died for us and who was raised for us and who rules for us. That’s genuine power, genuine justice and genuine integrity.

Much love.

www.themarinfoundation.org

We are continuing the Q&A between myself and prolific theologian, author, professor and blogger, Scot McKnight, about his new book, One.Life. You can check out a number of his award winning books and blog here.

Andrew’s Question: A very interesting section of your book was when you talk about the 613 laws of the Torah (p. 49-52). You mention that each of the 613 laws is broken down into two broader categories: either an expression of how to love God better or how to love each other better. How do you explain some of the more obscure laws, or severe punishments, within the 613 to reflect an expression of how we are supposed to love God and love others?

Scot’s Response: Now you’re asking a tough one. The focus of Jesus’ teaching that the entire Law (and Prophets) hang from these two commandments is to say: At the bottom of all of God’s directives for God’s people are these two commandments: love God, love others. I take that to be not something I’ve invented or figured out, as if I’ve got a pet theory. No, this reduction to love is Jesus’ own perspective on the laws of the Bible. So, he’s right.

Now it’s ours to explain some things. There are some commandments, or some punishments that are commanded by Israel’s God in the Old Testament, that appear to be brutal or over the top – however you might want to say it. But if you stare at those commands long enough, and think them over and over, you will often find your way into the deeper pools of love.

Take, for instance, making a man marry a woman because they have had sex inappropriately, even in the case of rape. This strikes us today as brutal. What we learn in studying texts like Deuteronomy 21 is that violated women were set loose in that ancient culture – they couldn’t return home and they couldn’t find a husband because they were violated. The law of Moses, and here is where love starts to shine through, was shaped to protect that woman and punish that man and require that man to be faithful to that woman – and that is a step toward redemption away from turning that woman loose to become a prostitute or somehow dependent upon others. At the guts of this somewhat brutal law then is a love for a woman, God’s love for that woman, and Israel’s need to care for that woman.

It’s a bit too easy to settle down on the barbarity of ancient conditions, and harder to see how that law functioned in that world, but when we do we see that laws are designed to help us love one another and to love God.

There’s so much more that could be said; so much more that needs to be said; but the only way to move forward here brother is to look at tough examples and see how Love God and Love Others works in those settings. I’ve given it a fair shot.

Much love.

www.themarinfoundation.org

We are continuing the Q&A between myself and prolific theologian, author, professor and blogger, Scot McKnight, about his new book, One.Life. You can check out a number of his award winning books and blog here.

Andrew’s Question: In the chapter Kingdom.Life you talk about Jesus’ understanding of kingdom (God’s dream for this world come true) versus our Christian cultural understanding of kingdom today (personal experience with Jesus). Can you explain for us more about a ‘kingdom’ that encompasses the society and community of God rather than an experience-driven kingdom of God?

Scot’s Response: There’s a history here, Andrew. The foundation for most of what evangelicals think about “kingdom” is a scholar named George Ladd. George Ladd was fighting old guard dispensationalism, for whom kingdom was (for Ladd) too much about a place and an earthly arrangement with a king. So Ladd pushed for the kingdom meaning “God’s dynamic reign.” The next thing you know, evangelicals colonized “kingdom” into our personal experience of salvation. That is what kingdom means: God’s personal reign in my life.

I’m not a dispensationalist (and there aren’t many classic dispensationalists left), but they had a view of kingdom that pointed to something that is coming much more into focus today: kingdom is about God, about land, about citizens, about a law, and about King Jesus. In other words, those early followers of Jesus didn’t say “Jesus is talking about kingdom. Come along, guys and gals, and we’ll get saved.” They thought “Wow, the promises to David are about to happen. Jesus is the Messiah.” The first word was “Messiah” not “salvation.”

Which brings me to this, Andrew: when Jesus talks about kingdom he is talking about a society shaped by God’s will as taught by Jesus, about a society where Jesus is king, a society where we are his citizens, a society marked by doing justice and peace and love and grace and forgiveness and holiness and righteousness. The word “kingdom” always and forever will be a society – and never just a personal relationship with God.

Much love.

www.themarinfoundation.org

I love Scot McKnight. I love his balanced thoughts, writing and his ability to communicate what many need to hear – but not necessarily want to hear. He’s the real deal … not just in his academic work but also as a person and friend. I read Scot’s new book, One.Life: Jesus Calls, We Follow, earlier this year and was quite taken back by a number of deeply profound insights about life, faith, culture and sex that he (in his classic manner) communicated in an easily accessible way for those of us who aren’t as smart as he is. I reached out to Scot with an idea for a series on my blog regarding his new book and he so graciously agreed to answer my questions!

I know, without a shadow of a doubt, you will not only enjoy, but get so much out of Scot’s responses to my questions. Scot also has one of the most read Christian blogs in the world, and if you’ve never visited, please do so! It’s the only blog I go to everyday. Let’s begin…

Question from Andrew: In the intro to One.Life you describe the three things you have learned about Jesus in the 34 years you have been studying and teaching the Gospels: 1) Jesus didn’t define the Christian life the way I (Scot) did and the way many do today; 2) Jesus defined being a Christian as “following” him; and 3) Following Jesus is bigger than the single-moment act of accepting Christ and the personal-practices-of-piety plan. What do you see today as the biggest conduit that continues to lead Christians to fall into these same old paradigms that, as you say leads to, “Jesus having little place in religion”?

Scot’s Response: As I read that question, Andrew, I feel my own history wash over me – those three ideas are big for me. The fundamental problem I see at work is the way we define “gospel” and the way we define “what we’re really looking to accomplish.” The gospel is defined as God loves me, but I’m a sinner, but Jesus died for me, and if I trust him I can be reconciled to God and live with him forever. With that gospel, many are armed in the battle of leading people to make decisions – and once that decision is made, it’s really all over. Though such people surely want people’s lives to be for God, and to be good, and for them to be transformed, in the end the focus of that gospel is getting people to make decisions.

Jesus doesn’t recognize that gospel or that goal. I have more to say about what the gospel is in a book coming out next fall called The King Jesus Gospel, but for now (and in light of our question for tomorrow), Jesus preached the dawning of the kingdom of God and he summoned people to follow him. That was his gospel, and that was his goal.

Much love.

www.themarinfoundation.org