Toward the end of 1 John there is a puzzling and controversial passage:

If anyone sees a fellow believer committing a sin that doesn’t lead to death, he should ask, and God will give life to him—to those who commit sin that doesn’t lead to death. There is sin that leads to death. I am not saying he should pray about that. All unrighteousness is sin, and there is sin that doesn’t lead to death. (1 Jn. 5.16-17)

In this exhortation regarding petitionary prayer, two sorts of sins are described. There is a sin that "doesn't lead to death" and there is a sin that "leads to death." What, exactly, is 1 John talking about here? Specifically, what is the nature of these two types of sin?

Historically, there have been two streams of interpretation regarding the sin that "leads to death." On the one hand is the view that what is being described is a sin that is so grievous it places one's soul at risk. For example, in the Catholic church there is a contrast between venial (for example, lust or telling a lie) and mortal sins (like murder). Venial sins, being less severe, do not separate you from God. Mortal sins, by contrast, separate you from sanctifying grace. Dying in a state of mortal sin, therefore, would "lead to death."

An alternative take on this text goes back to the topic of the last post. Specifically, the sin that "leads to death" isn't a particular sin but is, rather, a continued habit or pattern of sinning. That is, there are occasional and isolated sins committed by those striving to do the will of God. These sins don't lead to death. By contrast, intentional and continual rebellion against God would lead to death. 

What is to be said about these two views? Is the sin that "leads to death" a particular, grievous sin? Or is it willful and habitual rebellion? 

The answer I floated out at the unit (recall, these are notes from my Bible study out at the prison) goes back to the point I made in the last post. Specifically, I think the issue here continues to concern the atonement. Let's back up and read the text right before the passage in question:

The one who believes in the Son of God has this testimony within himself. The one who does not believe God has made him a liar, because he has not believed in the testimony God has given about his Son. And this is the testimony: God has given us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. The one who has the Son has life. The one who does not have the Son of God does not have life. I have written these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God so that you may know that you have eternal life. (1 Jn. 5.10-15)

Notice the focus on the work of Christ. The one who has the Son has life. And the one who does not have the Son does not have life. Everything is dependent upon one's relationship to Christ.

Then, right after the "sin that leads to death" passage, we read this:

We know that everyone who has been born of God does not sin, but the one who is born of God keeps him, and the evil one does not touch him. (1 Jn. 5.18)

Here it is again, the same point we discussed in the last post: The one who has been born of God does not sin. Which, as we noted in the last post, sits in seeming contradiction with 1.8: "If we say, 'We have no sin, we are deceiving ourselves, and the truth is not in us." How to make sense of this?

Well, if the argument I made in the last post is correct, then the issue here, regarding the sin that leads to death, is less about a particular sin or a pattern of sinning. Rather, the issue goes back how one relates to the work of Christ. The passage regarding the sin that "doesn't lead to death" is preceded by a passage describing how the person who has the Son "has life" (i.e, not death). Further, after the passage about the sin that "doesn't lead to death" we revisit the theme that the one who has been born of God "does not sin." As I argued in the last post, this sinlessness is due to the fact that there is no sin "in him" (that is, "in Christ"). 

Summarizing, it seems to me the issue concerning the sin that "leads to death" is if our sin is taking place "in Christ" or not. If our sin is taking place "in Christ" we are in a state of both life and sinlessness because, as 2.1-2a declares: "If anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father—Jesus Christ the righteous one. He himself is the atoning sacrifice for our sins."

An additional thing to note here is the Greek preposition pros, generally translated as "unto." Pros means "toward," as in tending or heading toward a destination. There is a sin, therefore, that is "going somewhere," either toward death or not.

Basically, here's my take about all this. The sin that doesn't lead to death is the sin of the Christian who remains in Christ. This sin doesn't lead to death because of the atoning work of Christ (see, again, 2.1). By contrast, outside of Christ there is no atonement. Sin outside of Christ, therefore, is tending toward death. Sin outside of Christ takes you down the dark road. 

Stated even more simply, the sin that doesn't lead to death is the sin of those in Christ. Outside of Christ, however, sin has a destination. And that destination is death.

The title of this post might seem strange. Of course Christians sin. But there's actually a bit of a puzzle here if you do a close reading of 1 John.

1 John starts off by making the claim that, as I said, Christians sin:

If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us. (1.8-10)

Seems clear and straightforward. And yet, later in 1 John we read this:

Everyone who remains in him does not sin; everyone who sins has not seen him or known him. (3.6) 

Everyone who has been born of God does not sin, because his seed remains in him; he is not able to sin, because he has been born of God. (3.9)

So what's going on here? If we say we have no sin we are a liar. But the one who is born of God "does not sin."

Some translations try to resolve the tensions here by translating 3.6 and 3.9 in a way that highlights an ongoing pattern of sin. For example, the NIV translates 3.6 this way:

No one who lives in him keeps on sinning. No one who continues to sin has either seen him or known him.

The NLT translates 3.9 this way:

Those who have been born into God’s family do not make a practice of sinning, because God’s life is in them.

I'm not enough of a Greek scholar to judge if these translations are legitimate or not, but you can see what they are trying to do to resolve the tension with 1.8-10. And not just 1.8-10, our lived Christian experience as well, the fact that we do sin. These translations are making a contrast between an isolated act and an ingrained habit and pattern of sinning, an ongoing rebelliousness. We do sin, yes, but Christians do not "make it a practice of sinning."

Such a contrast might be enough to resolve the tensions for you. But you still might have some questions. And there are some Christians who look at texts like 1 John 3.6 and 3.9 as evidence for the possibility of complete sanctification, like John Wesley's view of Christian perfection. 

I don't have any amazing or bulletproof answers here, but the argument I made out at the prison when we wrestled with these texts circled less about "sin" versus "patterns of sin" than about the centrality of the atonement. For example, let's go back up to 1.8-10 and read a bit further into Chapter 2:

If we say, “We have no sin,” we are deceiving ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say, “We have not sinned,” we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.

My little children, I am writing you these things so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father—Jesus Christ the righteous one. He himself is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours, but also for those of the whole world.

I think this is critical for 1 John's later discussion about sinlessness in Chapter 2. My thought is that, when 1 John mentions sinlessness in Chapter 3, the issue isn't about our behavior as much as Christ's atonement. We sin, but we are sinless, because of Christ. Let's look at the fuller context of 3.6 and 3.9:

Everyone who commits sin practices lawlessness; and sin is lawlessness. You know that he was revealed so that he might take away sins, and there is no sin in him. Everyone who remains in him does not sin; everyone who sins has not seen him or known him.

Little children, let no one deceive you. The one who does what is right is righteous, just as he is righteous. The one who commits sin is of the devil, for the devil has sinned from the beginning. The Son of God was revealed for this purpose: to destroy the devil’s works. Everyone who has been born of God does not sin, because his seed remains in him; he is not able to sin, because he has been born of God.

Notice how the work of Christ weaves through the passage about sinlessness. "He was revealed that he might take away sin." "Everyone who remains in him does not sin." "The Son of God was revealed for this purpose: to destroy the devil's works." Here is what I think 1 John is saying here, connecting 3.6 back to 1.8-10: Everyone who remains in Christ does not sin because there is no sin in him. I think that "in him" is key. Yes, I sin, but if I remain in him and confess my sin then I do not sin because I am in him and in him there is no sin. 

Simply put, I don't think the issue of sinlessness refers to our moral capacity for Christian perfection. I think the issue of sinlessness is primarily about "remaining in him" and that "in him" there is "no sin." The critical issue isn't our morality but Christ's sufficiency. 

I'm not saying I'm right about this and you might have a different take. But I raise this line of argument to set up one more post about 1 John, the discussion we had out at the prison about 1 John 5.16-17 and the enigma that is "the sin that leads to death." In the next post I'll share that discussion.

"we will not fear, though the earth should change, though the mountains shake in the heart of the sea"

I have a new book coming out in October. The Shape of Joy is now available for preorder (Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org). 

The Shape of Joy continues my project of integrating faith and psychology. After many books that have been very faith forward, The Shape of Joy is my most psychologically focused book, keeping my eye on our mental health crisis and sharing much of the literature coming out of the field of positive psychology. I talk about humility, ego volume, mindfulness, gratitude, mattering, meaning in life, the small self, and awe. All to have a conversation about a joy that is increasingly missing or fragile in the world and in our lives. The Shape of Joy tells the surprising story about how transcendence is good for you. Joy isn't found by turning inward. Joy is found by turning outward. Joy has a shape. Happiness has a geometry. 

In Chapter 1 of The Shape of Joy, entitled "The Collapse of the Self," I quote Psalm 46:

God is our refuge and strength,
a very present help in trouble.
Therefore we will not fear, though the earth should change,
though the mountains shake in the heart of the sea,
though its waters roar and foam,
though the mountains tremble with its tumult.

The point I make in quoting Psalm 46 is a point I also make in Hunting Magic Eels: We need to lean upon a reality more sturdy than ourselves. As I share in The Shape of Joy, psychological research is revealing just how unsteady and unhappy the mind is when it is left all alone, when we're trapped inside our heads to stew in anxious worry or depressive rumination. Left alone with our thoughts we are very unsteady creatures. The mind needs to make contact with and rest in a reality that is independent of its own subjectivity. Especially when the storms of life begin to howl. Especially when our dreams crash and burn. Especially when we face heartache and failure. 

Here, then, are the mental health benefits of transcendence. In making contact with God the mind finds refuge, strength, and help in times of trouble.

As I described in the last post, you can make a good argument that assurance is the major theme of 1 John, that the epistle is devoted to answering the question "How do I know if I'm a Christian?" As I showed in the last post, the refrain "This how we know" threads through the whole letter from start to finish. 

So, what's 1 John's answer to the question "How do I know if I'm a Christian"?

The answer is twofold. 

First, there is a confessional aspect. A Christian is one who confesses Jesus as the Son of God. For example:

"Who is the liar? It is whoever denies that Jesus is the Christ. Such a person is the antichrist—denying the Father and the Son. No one who denies the Son has the Father; whoever acknowledges the Son has the Father also." (2.22-23)

"Dear friends, if our hearts do not condemn us, we have confidence before God and receive from him anything we ask, because we keep his commands and do what pleases him. And this is his command: to believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ..." (3.21-23a)

"Dear friends, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world. This is how you can recognize the Spirit of God: Every spirit that acknowledges that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, but every spirit that does not acknowledge Jesus is not from God." (4.1-3a)

"And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. If anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in them and they in God." (4.14-15)

"Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God, and everyone who loves the father loves his child as well." (5.1)

"Who is it that overcomes the world? Only the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God." (5.5)

"Whoever believes in the Son of God accepts this testimony. Whoever does not believe God has made him out to be a liar, because they have not believed the testimony God has given about his Son. And this is the testimony: God has given us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life." (5.10-12)

"I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God so that you may know that you have eternal life." (5.13)

The second part of the answer "Who is a Christian?" turns to love. We know we are Christians if we love. For example: 

"Anyone who claims to be in the light but hates a brother or sister is still in the darkness. Anyone who loves their brother and sister lives in the light, and there is nothing in them to make them stumble." (2.9-10)

"We know that we have passed from death to life, because we love each other. Anyone who does not love remains in death. Anyone who hates a brother or sister is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life residing in him." (3.14-15)

"This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters. If anyone has material possessions and sees a brother or sister in need but has no pity on them, how can the love of God be in that person? Dear children, let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth." (3.16-18)

"Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love." (4.7-8)

"God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them. This is how love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgment: In this world we are like Jesus." (4.16b-17)

"Whoever claims to love God yet hates a brother or sister is a liar. For whoever does not love their brother and sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen. And he has given us this command: Anyone who loves God must also love their brother and sister." (4.20-21)

I'm struck by the strongly behavioral aspect regarding assurance on Judgement Day. Confession, while critical, isn't sufficient. Love is necessary and required. 1 John 4.16-17 sums it up nicely. How can we be confident on the Day of Judgment? We can have confidence if we walk in the world as Jesus walked. Love is what "casts out fear" regarding judgment. Because God is love, and whoever lives in love lives in God.

So these are the two assurances in 1 John. Who is a Christian? The one who confesses Jesus Christ as the Son of God and the one who loves as Jesus loved. 

Out at the prison we were in the book of 1 John. There are passages in 1 John that I adore--God is love!--but I'd never done a close study of the book. 

What struck me about 1 John is that a major theme of the book, perhaps its main and overriding theme, is the issue of assurance. How do you know you are, in fact, a Christian? 

To start, consider how often the word "know" shows up in 1 John: 32 times in only five chapters. No epistle comes close to this sort of density. By contrast, Romans and 1 Corinthians, the two longest epistles, use the word "know" 31 and 39 times respectively. 

You can trace this theme of assurance--How do you know?--through the whole letter:

"This is how we know that we know him." (2.3)

"This is how we know we are in him." (2.5)

"This is how God’s children and the devil’s children become obvious." (3.10)

"This is how we have come to know love." (3.16)

"This is how we will know that we belong to the truth and will reassure our hearts before him." (3.19)

"The way we know that he remains in us is from the Spirit he has given us." (3.24)

"This is how you know the Spirit of God." (4.2)

"This is how we know the Spirit of truth and the spirit of deception." (4.6)

"This is how we know that we remain in him and he in us." (4.13)

"We have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us." (4.16)

"This is how we know that we love God’s children." (5.2)

"This is the confidence we have before him." (5.14)

"We know that the Son of God has come and has given us understanding so that we may know the true one." (5.20)

So, what's John's answer to the "How do you know?" question? It's a two-part answer, which I'll turn to in the next post.

For years here at my original blog (which also runs in parallel on Substack for those who like to follow the blog via email) I had a quote from Thomas Merton running in the banner:

You are not big enough to accuse the whole age effectively, but let us say you are in dissent. You are in no position to issue commands, but you can speak words of hope. Shall this be the substance of your message? Be human in this most inhuman of ages; guard the image of man for it is the image of God. 

After about a decade of writing under that quote, I changed it to lines from Flannery O'Connor's novel The Violent Bear It Away:

...trudging into the distance in the bleeding stinking mad shadow of Jesus...the Lord out of dust had created him, had made him blood and nerve and mind, had made him to bleed and weep and think, and set him in a world of loss and fire...

A lot of readers loved the Merton quote, frequently sharing it on social media. It is a great quote. Perfect for a meme. Few readers, by contrast, have shared O'Connor's strange and provocative lines about following "the bleeding stinking mad shadow of Jesus." 

Here's the story behind the change of quotations.

Merton's line "be human in this most inhuman of ages; guard the image of man for it is the image of God" is lovely and inspiring. And the attraction of that quote to me was something I learned from William Stringfellow, who inspired a lot of my writing for a season, that the goal of the Christian life is to "live humanly in the midst of the Fall." Our world is full of dehumanizing forces and our great act of resistance to reject and deny those forces of dehumanization. We must protect the image of man for it is the image of God.

I still believe this. And yet, as my thinking and writing progressed over the years, I felt that Merton's quote was too easily sentimentalized and co-opted by an insipid humanism. Even worse, purported resistance to dehumanization often did so though acts dehumanization. In modern moral and political discourse, you're allowed to hate so long as you're hating the right people. All we really do in the end is shift our hatreds around, depending upon how you vote or where you stand in the culture wars. Hate-shifters, that's who we are.

As hate-shifters, the really hard and difficult thing is to love as God loves. I am haunted by the things Jesus says:

For he is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked. Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.

Who wants to be kind to the wicked? And our reluctance here isn't just an issue of motivation. The imperative strikes us as downright immoral. Here we come face to face with it, the bleeding stinking mad shadow of Jesus. The scandal, the offense, the shock. Our visceral revulsion. 

Each adjective hits us like hail stones. Mad. Stinking. Bleeding. Insane. Offensive. Costly. And yet, this is the medicine for the disease of dehumanization. Here's the antidote for our hate-shifting. If we want to protect the dignity of human persons, this is the path. Here is how we reset the broken bone. 

This is why I changed the Merton quote. Merton's vision is true, but I think readers too often misunderstood what the vision demanded of them. For me, O'Connor's quote brings those demands out into the open. We all want a more humane world, but few want to follow the Human One. He remains our scandal. 

So, my friends, we live in a world of loss and fire. Tragedy and trauma surround us. The Lord God has created you out of dust to live in the midst of this ambiguity and pain, created you bleed, to weep, and to think. To live humanly in the Fall. Let us trudge into the distance following the stinking bleeding mad shadow of Jesus.  

Today another film from my 2019 conversation with Travis Reed for The Work of the People. 

Again, you can preview the first two minutes of the film. The Work of the People is supported by a subscription-based model, so if you'd like to access the whole film, along with every other film at the site, it's only $7 a month for a personal subscription, which you can cancel anytime.

Today's film is entitled "The Great Campaign of Sabotage," and I start it off with this provocative claim: "I think Christianity is inherently involved in ministries of exorcism."

Again, this was in 2019, three years after my publication of Reviving of Old Scratch: Demons and the Devil for Doubters and the Disenchanted. Of all my books, Reviving Old Scratch has received the most reviews on Amazon. And is in second place on Goodreads after Unclean.

Regarding the quotations in the preview. The Biblical passage I cite, describing Jesus' ministry as being primarily one of exorcism, is from Acts 10.37-38:

You know what has happened throughout the province of Judea, beginning in Galilee after the baptism that John preached—how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and power, and how he went around doing good and healing all who were under the power of the devil, because God was with him.

The second quote, which is cut off at the 2:00 minute preview limit, is from C.S. Lewis, and is where the title of the film comes from:

Enemy-occupied territory--that is what this world is. Christianity is the story of how the rightful king has landed, you might say landed in disguise, and is calling us to take part in a great campaign of sabotage.

The origin story of Reviving Old Scratch was the start of my prison ministry. As a deconstructing and disenchanted progressive Christian, my vision of Satan and spiritual warfare had been wholly demythologized. I replaced any supernatural vision of evil with a vision of social justice activism. During this season I leaned, and still lean, heavily upon Walter Wink's seminal and influential vision of the principalities and powers. William Stringfellow and Jacques Ellul were also, and remain, good partners.

And yet, the spiritual world of the prison, in the lived experiences of the inmates, was very enchanted. Satan was real and demonic attack an acute predicament, demanding a pastoral response from me. Inside the prison, the warning of 1 Peter 5.8 was no metaphor and no joke:

Be alert and of sober mind. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour.

Facing this enchanted/disenchanted divide in the early days of my prison ministry, I tried to build Biblical and theological bridges between these worlds. Reviving Old Scratch was the result, an "in between" book, a "Devil for Doubters" book. Consequently, it's prospects for pleasing a wide audience were, and remain, dim. Too equivocal on the reality of supernatural evil for some, but also too believing for the skeptical. 

But more than a bridge, Reviving Old Scratch attempts to address the problems found among both progressives and evangelicals regarding spiritual warfare. When it comes to the devil, there is much to criticize within pentecostal and charismatic spaces. And much also to criticize among skeptical progressives who reduce spiritual warfare to social justice. As is always my goal in writing a book, I want every reader--evangelical to progressive and believer to atheist--to be on the hook. I wrote my book about the devil to do just that. 

No matter where you stand, I want to call you to the great campaign of sabotage.

Again, you can watch a preview of "The Great Campaign of Sabotage" at The Work of the People here.

"I recite my verses to the king"

Psalm 45 is a marriage song written for the Davidic king. The poem praises his physical beauty and martial prowess. The queen-to-be is also praised and encouraged to take the king's hand. Given all this, I don't think Psalm 45 is in anyone's Top 10 list. The song is too specific to the royal court, and some of its gender assumptions make it fall a bit flat for many modern readers. It's just hard to see yourself in the poem. 

And yet, throughout Christian history these songs have been interpreted as describing the wedding of Christ with his church. Israel's covenant with God is routinely described as a marital bond. Revelation describes the New Jerusalem as "the bride of Christ."

Within Protestantism, these marital metaphors remain pretty much metaphors, and thin ones at that. But within the Catholic mystical tradition, the bridal and erotic imagery of Scripture has been used to describe the soul's passion and longing for God. Consider the most famous treatise in the Christian mystical tradition, St. John of the Cross' The Dark Night of the Soul. John of the Cross' discourse is a commentary upon an erotic love poem entitled "Stanzas of the Soul." Here is the poem as translated by David Lewis:

I.
In a dark night,
With anxious love inflamed,
O, happy lot!
Forth unobserved I went,
My house being now at rest.

II.
In darkness and in safety,
By the secret ladder, disguised,
O, happy lot!
In darkness and concealment,
My house being now at rest.

III.
In that happy night,
In secret, seen of none,
Seeing nought myself,
Without other light or guide
Save that which in my heart was burning.

IV.
That light guided me
More surely than the noonday sun
To the place where He was waiting for me,
Whom I knew well,
And where none appeared.

V.
O, guiding night;
O, night more lovely than the dawn;
O, night that hast united
The lover with His beloved,
And changed her into her love.

VI.
On my flowery bosom,
Kept whole for Him alone,
There He reposed and slept;
And I cherished Him, and the waving
Of the cedars fanned Him.

VII.
As His hair floated in the breeze
That from the turret blew,
He struck me on the neck
With His gentle hand,
And all sensation left me.

VIII.
I continued in oblivion lost,
My head was resting on my love;
Lost to all things and myself,
And, amid the lilies forgotten,
Threw all my cares away.

St. John of the Cross uses this poem for the rest of The Dark Night of the Soul to expound upon "the way and manner which the soul follows upon the road of the union of love with God." The lover goes out into the night for a moonlight tryst with the Beloved. This romantic rendezvous with the Beloved is the regulating metaphor for The Dark Night of the Soul. 

And if you're familiar with the bridal and marriage Psalms, like Psalm 45, along with the Song of Songs, all of this imagery is perfectly natural and expected.

I was recently reminded of an exchange out at the prison that I shared here a few years ago. 

In our study we were in Mark discussing the healing of Jairus' daughter.

Casey, one of the inmates, was sharing his observations, and while he was talking he said this:

"Jesus has this effect on dead people."

Casey was connecting the raising of Jairus' daughter with the healing of the woman with the issue of blood (which occurs in the midst of the story). Both women are dead, one physically, the other socially and ritually. Jesus comes into contact with each woman, bringing both to life.

As I noted when I first shared this story, Casey's observation startled me. Stopped me dead in my tracks with its simplicity and truth. So many of us have been brought to life, because Jesus has this effect on dead people.

Two years ago, I made the intentional decision to pray before all of my classes. I'm in agreement with Andrew Root: the most critical and pressing spiritual formation task facing the church today is teaching ourselves how to pray. 

To be clear, this isn't about some pious "add-on" to make my class "Christian." It's not really even about practicing a "spiritual discipline," some grueling work we engage in to become better Christians. Prayer is, rather, simply an enchantment. As I describe in Hunting Magic Eels, prayer helps us overcome our pervasive attention blindness, bringing the dancing gorilla into view (if you don't know what I mean by "dancing gorilla," read the book). Prayer is vision and perception. Cleaning the dirty windows. Prayer recovers our lost sacramental ontology.

Prayer is also good medicine. A balm for the heart, a salve for our hurts. Every time I pray with my classes after the "Amen" there is soft but audible sigh. I wish you could hear it. Some cool cloth has been placed upon a fevered brow. A moment of relief and respite found in the middle of a hard and difficult day. A stream appearing in the middle of the desert. 

Out at the prison we were in the book of 1 Peter. One of the many things we talked about was the theme of alertness.

You see this theme emerge early in the letter in 1.13. Here's how the CSB renders the verse:

Therefore, with your minds ready for action, be sober-minded.

Most translations have something similar to the idea of "preparing your mind for action." The more literal NKJV makes the underlying idiomatic expression in the Greek more clear:

Therefore gird up the loins of your mind, be sober.

As you likely know, given first-century dress, the long skirts of male clothing were pulled up and tied off prior to military action. "Girding up the loins" freed the legs for action, getting excess cloth out of the way so that you wouldn't trip over it. Obviously, since modern readers of the Bible don't do much "girding up the loins" anymore, the idiomatic expression doesn't communicate very well. Consequently, translations go with something like "preparing the mind" for action.

Regardless, the point is to prepare yourself for mental combat. This theme echos through 1 Peter:

"Be alert and sober-minded" (4.7) 

"Be sober-minded, be alert. Your adversary the devil is prowling around like a roaring lion, looking for anyone he can devour." (5.8)

Prepare your mind for military action. Be alert. Be sober-minded. Why? Because we are engaged in a spiritual battle.

This call to alertness parallels the call for watchfulness in the gospels. We must be watchful so that we won't be taken unawares by the coming of the kingdom. 

In short, there is the steady drumbeat in the Scriptures calling us to mental preparedness, alertness, watchfulness, and vigilance. Our mental life is contested territory. Our thoughts are a battleground. 

Given this, we prepare our minds for action.

In 2019 Travis Reed and I got together to film some conversations for The Work of the People. 

If you know Travis' work, you're aware of his talent in capturing and expressing spiritual and theological messages in short films. Travis has done films with Richard Rohr, Brene Brown, Nadia Bolz-Weber, Miroslav Volf, and Stanley Hauerwas, to name a few. But so many others as well. Take some time to browse all the films at The Work of the People. You'll be overwhelmed by the riches Travis has captured and curated. 

Travis has been releasing videos of our wide-ranging conversation from 2019 and I'd like to share links to these over the next month or so.

The Work of the People is supported by a subscription-based model. So you'll only be able to view, with each film I share, the first two minutes as a preview. If you'd like to access the whole films, along with every other film at the site, it's only $7 a month for a personal subscription, which you can cancel anytime.

Here's a link to the film entitled "Apocalyptic Mysticism." 

As you'll see in that clip, in 2019 I was making my way toward the book that would become Hunting Magic Eels: Recovering an Enchanted Faith in a Skeptical Age. I didn't use the phrase "apocalyptic mysticism" in the book, but "apocalyptic mysticism" is the book's regulating idea. 

Specifically, by mysticism I mean an experiential encounter with God, "bumping into God" as I say in the film preview. Here's how I make the contrast between belief and experience in the Introduction to Hunting Magic Eels:

The issue is the difference between belief and experience. Belief is intellectual assent and agreement with the doctrinal propositions of faith. Experience exists prior to and drives belief. Experience gives birth to belief. It’s hard to “believe” in God if belief isn’t naming something in our lives, something we’ve felt, sensed, seen, or intuited. As the Christian mystical tradition teaches us, life with God is more about knowing than believing. The mystics didn’t believe in God; they encountered God.

So it’s crazy to demand or expect beliefs from people (or ourselves) where there is no experience. Without an experience of God, belief has no content, no reference, no object. No way to get to “Yes!” Demanding belief without experience is asking people to believe in nothing, for the word God would be hanging in thin air, pointing to a gaping hole in a person’s life. Belief without experience is an empty bucket, making it a very useless, discardable thing. But if there’s water in the bucket, if our beliefs are carrying precious experiences of Thanks, Help, and Wow, well, you’re going to hold onto that bucket for fear of spilling the water, especially if you’re standing in the middle of a disenchanted desert dying of thirst. I’d like us to spend less time talking about the bucket and start filling it with water.

Concerning the apocalyptic in apocalyptic mysticism I mean the way our attention and perception "unveils" or "reveals" deeper truths. (The word apocalypse means "to reveal" or "to unveil.") In Hunting Magic Eels I describe mystical encounters as primarily an act of seeing. Here's a passage describing this also from the book's Introduction:

We think religion is a matter of belief. [Andrew] Root points out that something deeper and more fundamental is going on. Faith is a matter of perception. Faith isn’t forcing yourself to believe in unbelievable things; faith is overcoming attentional blindness. Phrased differently, faith is about enchantment or, rather, a re-enchantment: the intentional recovery of a holy capacity to see and experience God in the world. Without this ability, pervasive cultural disenchantment erodes our faith, and we’re seeing the effects all around us, in our homes, in pews, and in the culture at large...

God is there, but we’re going to have to retrain ourselves to see. I like how Marilynne Robinson describes this in her novel Gilead: “It has seemed to me sometimes as though the Lord breathes on this poor gray ember of Creation and it turns to radiance—for a moment or a year or the span of a life. And then it sinks back into itself again, and to look at it no one would know it had anything to do with fire, or light...Wherever you turn your eyes the world can shine like transfiguration. You don’t have to bring a thing to it except a little willingness to see.” Enchantment starts with this willingness to see. As the Christian mystic Simone Weil said, “Attention is the only faculty of the soul that gives access to God.” Disenchantment isn’t about disbelief. Disenchantment is a failure to attend.

That's apocalyptic mysticism.

"Wake up, Lord! Why are you sleeping?"

These lines in the Psalms, calling out the Lord for sleeping on the job, are some of the most startling, daring, and risky in Scripture. The poet cries out to rouse a drowsy God. 

My earliest research in the area of psychology of religion concerned attachment to God, how attachment-related dynamics describe our experiences of God. For example, attachment bonds can be haunted by anxieties rooted in fears about the attachment figure being available to us or abandoning us. When we worry about the availability of the attachment figure we might grow excessively clingy or needy. We might become jealous and never want them to leave our sight. We might grow angry when the attachment figure isn't as responsive or attentive as we'd like. 

Attachment anxiety is one way to frame the lament of Psalm 44. For example, in a scale my colleague Angie MacDonald and I created called the Attachment to God Inventory (a widely used instrument that has been translated in to numerous languages) we ask questions to assess various symptoms of attachment anxiety:

Angry protest: Getting angry if the attachment figure is not as responsive as we wish they would be.

Example AGI item: “I often feel angry with God for not responding to me when I want.”

Preoccupation with relationship: Worry, rumination, or obsession with the status of the relationship.

Example AGI item: “I worry a lot about my relationship with God.”

Fear of abandonment: Fear that the attachment figure will leave or reject you.
Example AGI item: “I fear God does not accept me when I do wrong.”

Anxiety over lovability: Concerns that you are either not loved or are unlovable.
Example AGI item: “I crave reassurance from God that God loves me.”

Jealousy: Concerns that the attachment figure prefers others over you.
Example AGI item: “I am jealous at how God seems to care more for others than for me."

Again, we could frame the lament of Psalm 44 as an expression of attachment anxiety. And yet, I've come to think that attachment theory isn't the best model for thinking about lament in the Psalms.

Specifically, I'm uncomfortable framing the lament of Psalm 44 as pathological, as an expression of relational dysfunction To be sure, there is angry protest, fear of abandonment, and anxiety over lovability in the lament of Psalm 44. But these fears are real and legitimate complaints, rather than expressions of an insecure attachment. 

Because of these concerns, framing lament as pathological, in 2007 I published my Summer versus Winter Christian model of religious experience. In this model, lament isn't framed as dysfunction but is, rather, a normal and expected experience of faith. In that article I quote Walter Brueggemann's assessment from his book The Message of the Psalms:

It is a curious fact that the church has, by and large, continued to sing songs of orientation in a world increasingly experienced as disoriented…It is my judgment that this action of the church is less an evangelical defiance guided by faith, and much more a frightened, numb denial and deception that does not want to acknowledge or experience the disorientation of life. The reason for such relentless affirmation of orientation seems to me, not from faith, but from the wishful optimism of our culture. Such a denial and cover-up, which I take it to be, is an odd inclination for passionate Bible users, given the larger number of psalms that are songs of lament, protest, and complaint about an incoherence that is experienced in the world…I believe that serous religious use of the lament psalms has been minimal because we have believed that faith does not mean to acknowledge and embrace negativity. We have thought that acknowledgement of negativity was somehow an act of unfaith, as though the very speech about it conceded too much about God’s “loss of control.”

Again, we are tempted to think that lament is pathological, that "acknowledgement of negativity" in our relationship with God, like the angry protest of Psalm 44, is an act of "unfaith." But as Brueggemann goes on to say:

The point to be urged here is this: The use of these “psalms of darkness” may be judged by the world to be acts of unfaith and failure, but for the trusting community, their use is an act of bold faith…

That is the jolt of Psalm 44, how crying "Wake up!" to God is a daring expression of bold faith.

In 2010, when I first shared much of this material about Bonhoeffer's religionless Christianity, I was a very different person. I thrilled to Bonhoeffer's vision of Christ as "the man for others." And I wholly agreed with Bonhoeffer's claim that "the church is the church only when it exists for others." At the time, I identified as a liberal, progressive Christian, and Bonhoeffer's vision of a religionless Christianity, our "being there" for others, resonated with my humanistic values and social justice concerns.

And yet, if you've followed this series, I was alert enough in 2010 to attend to Bonhoeffer's discussion of the arcane and secret discipline in his theological letters. This aspect of Bonhoeffer's thought has been largely ignored. But this part of Bonhoeffer's vision has taken on increased importance in my own life since 2010. I now identify as a post-progressive Christian. My season of deconstruction, evidenced in the early years of this blog, gave way to a season of reconstruction. I still believe, with all my heart, that the church is only the church when it exists for others. But more and more, I think the discipline of the secret is necessary to sustain that vision. 

As we've seen, Bonhoeffer was alert to the temptations of liberal humanism. As Bonhoeffer wrote, he didn't want his religionless vision of Christianity to become "the shallow and banal this-worldliness of the enlightened, the busy, the comfortable, or the lascivious." Rather, faith was to be "characterized by discipline and the constant knowledge of death and resurrection."

However, it's fair to ask, what is the connection between discipline and being there for others?

Here's my best answer.

Bonhoeffer's vision of "being there for others" is radical. Bonhoeffer is calling for a radical availability to the world. The vision is deeply kenotic and cruciform. Christ, as the man for others, gives his entire life away. And we, as the church, are called to do the same. But what can possibly sustain such radical self-offering, self-giving, and self-donation? As I describe in The Slavery of Death, as finite creatures in a world of scarcity, our worries about self-protection and self-preservation are real and pressing. Consequently, we hesitant at the boundary of sacrificial love. We recoil at the demands of love. The costs are too steep. 

What we require, at the boundary of love, is a metaphysics of hope and a community of support and care. As Bonhoeffer says, we need constant knowledge of death and resurrection. For if love only ever involves my diminishment and death how can that love become joyous and sustainable?

This is why I believe the discipline of the secret is absolutely necessary for a church seeking to exist for others. If Christ calls us to die in existing for others that call is sustained by the hope of the resurrection and in our shared life together. Prayer and righteous action go hand in hand, each sustaining the other. 

I think those who want to reduce Bonhoeffer's religionless Christianity to ethical social justice action in the world miss the radical Christological vision of "being there" for others, the cruciform nature of this lifestyle and its associated cost. Missing this cruciformity, they overlook all that is necessary to make a lifetime of self-donation sustainable, joyful, and hopeful. Back in 2010, when I first wrote this series, as a deconstructing, progressive, social justice Christian, I thrilled to how Bonhoeffer's letters and papers described a church that existed for others. This remains my vision. And yet, fourteen years later, I'm increasingly aware of how our life together in the church, as we celebrate the mystery of Christ's death and resurrection, makes our radical availability to the world joy-filled and hopeful and, therefore, sustainable. 

And finally, looking back at this series here in 2024, I would also observe that all is not ethics. Since 2010, and largely due to my prison work, I have rediscovered grace. On Easter I shared a bit of that story in a video at church. You can watch it here at the 50:53 mark.

One of the problems I discern in the progressive Christian turn against penal substitutionary atonement is the eclipse of grace, reducing the cross to ethics. To be clear, I share concerns with certain expressions of penal substitutionary atonement. But when you work with a prison population you come to see, first-hand, the transformative power of forgiveness and grace. A Christianity that is reduced to ethical action in the world misses the gospel of grace. Your shame has been overcome. Your guilt undone. While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. God does not treat us as our sins deserve. As far as the east is from the west, so far has God removed our transgressions from us. Nothing can separate you from the love of God. You have been washed in the blood of the Lamb. By his wounds you have been healed. 

Beyond ethics, this too is the gospel. And I've come to believe that our "being there" for others means inviting a soul sick world into this grace.