Missional Living

Tue 15 Aug 2006

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12 Responses to “ What is it good for? ”

Comments:

1. scott says:
   August 15th, 2006 at 9:29 pm

   Well, it’s a cute and catchy slogan. I’ll give the sign designer kudos for that. However, it wears its agenda on its sleeve and is woefully easy to deconstruct.

   Let’s start at the end. It’s difficult to imagine what the would be sloganeer even has in mind when proposing that war has ended communism. The USSR is certainly not a likely candidate. Fortunately, since almost every scenario ended in a nuclear conflagration, our detente with them never actually came to war. Essentially, we were by far the wealthier country and were thus able to ratchet up military spending to the point that we drove them to economic collapse. Unless, of course, the sign author has in mind the terrible drain the decade long morass in Afghanistan placed on the Soviet Union in so many ways. But since that is hardly an argument for war, I rather doubt it.

   Going backwards to previous wars, I find it unlikely our witty writer has Vietnam in mind. Seeing how that was a conflict in which we were supporting a corrupt government, were largely disliked by the people on both sides, faked a casus belli, and eventually tucked our tails and fled leaving the country to the communist north, Vietnam just doesn’t look like a good candidate.

   Hmmm. So let’s jump farther back to Korea. At least we actually were (and largely still are) truly wanted in this conflict by our allies and most of the people of the south peninsula. So it’s not as bad as Vietnam out of the gate. But ending communism in Korea? Not so much. Mostly we fought that one to a still-ongoing stalemate. And we’ve maintained an armed ceasefire in Korea now for half a century. And the communist North has an even crazier leader now than it did then.

   At this juncture I’ve run out of wars against communism, so unless someone has something else to throw into the pot, I can’t really see anything. And since the most populous nation on the planet remains under communist rule, I don’t really see how we can call communism even vaguely “ended”.

   Fascism is a little easier to pinpoint. Clearly this can only be a reference to Nazi Germany and WWII. This one deconstructs down several paths. First, I suppose it depends on what you mean by “solved”. Basically all war did was enable countries (powers of this world) to fulfill their charge to protect their citizens (or not as the case may be) in response to overt aggression. Even when we were dragged kicking and screaming into the war by the attack on Pearl Harbor, we defeated the aggressor and paved the way for a solution. But solve the problem? War never does that. War is a tool by which you accomplish political goals by killing people and blowing things up. You can do that more effectively than the other nation and by so doing bring the other to the point where a political or diplomatic solution can be reached. But war, in and of itself, solves nothing, and should always be the tool of last resort and (at least from a Christian perspective) only in a defensive manner. Read some of the things Eisenhower said and wrote about war for a perspective you can take seriously.

   But let’s not forget the hyperbole in the other claim as well — that war has “ended” fascism. Oh, really? Tell Victor Hugo that. Tell it to all the myriad fascist regimes around the world. Heck, tell it to the neo-nazi groups in our own country. I see no evidence that fascism has been ended at all. The reality is that we were able to successfully defend ourselves and the world against the most aggressive fascist regime fueled, in part, by a retelling of the story of Christianity that was ironically enabled through the hermeneutical space left open by Luther’s well-meant and at the time useful reappropriation and non-contextual redefinition of the Pauline concept of law. I’m certainly glad we won the war. But it was the treaties that actually solved (or tried to solve) the problem. And neither ended fascism by any stretch of the imagination.

   (BTW, my Dad fought in Vietnam. My father-in-law was in Korea. And my grandfather flew fighters in WWII. So I have a little personal perspective and stories from all three as well.)

   And then we have the slavery bit. Obviously, that’s a reference to the American Civil War. And in this instance, I’m simply too soaked in its complexities to accept the simplistic connection the sign author tries to draw. This one is just to big to even begin to deconstruct in a comment on a blog. Suffice it to say that, like most things in life, it’s a lot more complicated than that. Was slavery a key issue in the war? Of course. But it’s not as simple as fighting a war to end slavery. In fact, Lincoln strongly resisted that strain as long as he could, since that charge had been a piece of what precipitated secession and Lincoln hoped to find a way to end the war in a peaceful solution. Further, he certainly did not want to drive away those slave states that had remained part of the union. Nor did the Emancipation Proclamation actually free all the slaves. That action required the 13th amendment.

   The slave trade had already been ended in Britain and other places by this time. And the Southern states saw the writing on the wall. When Lincoln won without carrying any Southern state, those in the South considered that the first step toward full abolition in this country and the loss of their ability to control their fate. (Actually that’s over-simplistic, but the best I can do in a short space.) The war didn’t end slavery and the war was not fought for the purpose of ending slavery. Given the strength of the global abolition movement, it’s likely slavery would have ended within a couple of decades if the war had not cut short the process (at the price of bitterness on all sides that persists even today). Of course, that’s speculation and we’ll never know for sure.

   And then, of course, there is the reality that slavery is not, in fact, ended. The global sex slave trade (including children) comes to mind immediately and I don’t think it’s amenable to solution by war. There are probably other examples as well.

   I would tend to say that, in a fallen world, war in a defensive cause (defense against direct attack, defense of an ally that is attacked, or defense of a population inside a state gone genocidal) is sometimes necessary. We are masters of self-justification, though, so I hold strictly to the tenet that a defensive cause is the only just cause without playing games about what defensive means. Nations are charged to protect the people under their rule and refusing to fight in defense would be an abandonment of that charge and their citizens to evil.

   However, war — even when it is necessary — solves nothing. (Hmmm. Well I supposed it was a solution of sorts promised by Mutually Assured Destruction, but it wasn’t one anyone actually desired.) Armies kills people and blows things up. We have one that is very good at that task. But unless you are willing to complete destroy the opponent, kill all citizens, raze all buildings, war offers no good solutions for destruction is the only solution it is able to offer. At best, it can break the other to the point that they will agree to seek a solution by other, less violent means. That’s at best.

   We have only to look at the looming civil war in Iraq to see the sort of “solution” war more typically produces.

   Enough thoughts?

2. jimmiekersh says:
   August 16th, 2006 at 8:47 am

   I have spent the last five months looking at the first 20 books in the OT very carefully. I have been consumed in reading and writing exclusively concerning every time God explicitly speaks. The God of the OT is not a God of defensive war. The God of the OT is a God of complete annihilation of enemies (men, women and children along with all animals and buildings).

   The God of the OT is not a pacifistic God. The God of the OT is not a God of treaties.

   YHWH is the God of the OT and He is the God of the NT. Since Jesus is the earthly manifestation of the Godhead can Jesus be any different in character or context than the Father or the Spirit? Do we see anything different in Jesus? No! Jesus came to make right personal relationships between man and God. Jesus did not deal with nation-state relationships.

   In reality, the OT is how nation-states deal with each other. It simply stretches the bounds of exegesis to apply New Testament theology to nation-state relationships when New Testament theology is about intimate, individual personal relationships between God and man. The Old Testament exegetically read is about God’s love for Israel and what He put Israel through to be brought into a right relationship with YHWH.

   War, when used how God demands it is 100% effective eternally and brings about lasting peace with the enemy 100% of the time. Political war does not bring a lasting peace and is never 100% effective because the enemies still exist and live to fight another day.

   God understands and promotes the former concept of war so that the enemy does not live to fight another day. Is it not Jesus Himself who is coming as the ultimate warrior at Armageddon to annihilate his enemies? I seem to have read that He will kill so many people that the blood of His enemies would be above the legs of the horse that He is riding.

   I know the pacifist dirge, I originally registered with Selective Service as a CO. I was one until I began reading the OT. I realized that my God is a God of war against the enemies of His people. At that point my pacifist arguments fell to the wayside. Am I a warmonger? No, I hate war. But on the other hand, war is GOOD when practiced appropriately with one goal and desire in mind: The total and complete annihilation of the enemy. Is war civilized, I guess it depends on who your God is and if you know how to wield the jaw bone of an ass or pull the trigger on a thermonuclear device.

3. scott says:
   August 16th, 2006 at 12:09 pm

   Jimmie,

   It’s pretty clear that we have such a dramatically different understanding of the story we are provided in scripture and its purpose that we’re going to have a very difficult time finding common terms, narrative frameworks, and understanding within which to communicate. For the record, though, I’ve carefully read, more than once, everything in scripture. I had to do that to work past some of my own preconceptions and prejudices against Christianity. I’m am constantly discovering more and ever deeper layers, but I certainly know the particular framework and story of the bible.

   Before I discuss the particulars, it’s necessary to examine your interpretive framework to the extent it is revealed above and show how it differs from mine. That will at least provide some ground for discussion. Of course, this involves the very tricky task of looking behind your words and attempting to understand why you structured them the way you did. Given that, it’s inevitable I will be wrong in places. I ask that you bear with me and correct any mistakes I make in trying to grasp your perspective.

   First, it appears that you are taking stories and descriptions of ‘God’ and using those to construct your own understanding of the God who has never been seen. And then largely fitting Jesus into that image, whatever it may be. That strikes me as a deeply dangerous and unscriptural way to understand our God. Having followed a number of gods, I’m deeply in tune with our tendency to reconstruct an invisible god in an image we desire. Further, we are told no-one has seen God at any time. We are told his ways are not our ways and his thoughts are not our thoughts.

   How then do we understand God? Jesus tells us. Whoever has seen him has seen the Father. And that (as well as a number of other NT statements) tells us that the only lens through which we can truly see God take the shape of Jesus, our living Lord. We do not build our own sunglasses with our own thoughts and understanding of an invisible God, however we develop them, and then use those to ’see’ Jesus. No, we fill our understanding and sight with the unfiltered Jesus and through Him we can finally see and know God. The Bible provides no other lens.

   Secondly, in order to apply the picture of the invisible God you construct through the OT stories to the present age also requires that you decompose or atomize Scripture into a set of timeless, contextless truths we are free to arrange and understand as we choose. Not only are we free to do so, we must. For it is only when we have correctly assembled all the puzzle pieces we extract from Scripture into one eternal picture of Truth will we KNOW truth, all truth, and nothing but the truth. (Of course, those who take this path all seem to put the pieces together differently creating often radically different pictures. And everyone one of them deeply convinced they are RIGHT and thus everyone else is wrong. I’m not saying that’s the case with you. Here I’m making the more general observation about the end result of those who approach scripture as if it were an unorganized bag of truths that needed to be assembled properly in order to be understood rather than the text given us by God. You see, I tend to believe that if God had felt a list of truths and rules were what we needed, he would have given that to us. But he didn’t. He gave us a story.

   And what a story it is! I’m also an actor, so tend toward the analogies that capture the story as a great drama in which God is not just the distant or controlling director of the drama. No, God enters the play himself. He is intimately involved at every step even to becoming like the actors himself. Personally, the best framework I’ve yet encountered to wrap my head around the story of scripture is Wright’s 5 Act play image. I believe this approach to scripture honors the text God actually gave us rather than trying to blast it to bits, which is what the other approach most often looks to me to actually do, whatever its intent.

   This view also avoids at least some of the logical contradictions the other approach inevitably encounters. If it’s a timeless collection of truths, a person can honestly ask questions like: Why do we wear clothes made from more than one type of cloth? Why do we not take rebellious sons to the center of the town, charge them with being a ‘glutton and a drunkard’ and with the whole town stone them? Why, precisely do we get to pick and choose the things we from the OT we will or won’t do. Why do we consume blood? Even outside the context of the third Act of the play (Israel), which so many are quick to dismiss from their timeless truth model without much explanation, God told Noah not to consume blood, a commandment repeated by the Jerusalem Council, the only Church Council actually recorded in scripture. (This isn’t a command so much about drinking blood, though that would be excluded, as it is not to eat meat prepared without draining the blood, and in our case, that would also include meat-like products which do use blood as one of the components.)

   How does taking the NT as a story a grand, overarching drama help? Because it provides a place in the ongoing story in which we can place ourselves. The 5 act version of this metaphor typically uses the following Acts.

   Act 1 - Creation
   Act 2 - Fall and Consequences
   Act 3 - Israel: God’s People
   Act 4 - Jesus: Life, Death, and Resurrection
   Act 5 - The Church: Inaugurated Kingdom of God

   So in this drama we begin with God’s act of lovingly forming his good creation culminating in the creation of man. And what is man? The image-bearer of God, the Imago Dei, Eikon of the creator God. That’s to much to unpack here, but all of that must condition everything you understand from that point on in the story. This is foundational. God created a good creation and God loves and is intimately involved with his creation. And as you understand that, you understand how deeply God wishes to redeem and restore his creation, how much it hurts him to see its current state. Don’t lose that thought.

   From there, we move to Act 2. We see this Act unfold in Genesis 3-11. And it is awful indeed. Read the story of the descent of man, the Eikon of God intended to reflect his glory throughout creation, as so very few choose to walk with God, to listen to God, to long for and love God at all. It becomes so bad that God acts to preserve the one man who will still listen to him among all humanity. Wow. That’s almost unimaginable to me.

   And after that, does it get any better? No, violence, pride, and evil quickly consume the earth again and culminate in Babel and the intervention yet again of God to end the unity of man in which we all descend to the worst that is within us.

   Why? I think there is a hint in the Genesis 12, the opening scene of Act 3. God finds a man and calls him to start a new people, a people of God, a people that will be holy and through whom God will bless and redeem all the nations of the earth. Of course, everyone here wants to jump straight to Jesus, and the story does get there, but we need to hold onto our chairs and wait for the proper moment in the story, when the time is fully come.

   In Act 3, the charge is given to Israel to be the agent of God’s redemption. They grow in captivity to a large nation, different than all the other nations on earth and when that captivity becomes unbearable, he redeems them in an amazing story of liberation.

   And then? God gives them the law. And the law is good. If they could follow it, Israel would be the people through whom God would redeem his creation. But they can’t. And so there story becomes a cycle of failure, correction, and renewed good intentions ending finally in exile and the abandonment of God. (At least that’s how the second temple prophets and writings, scriptural and otherwise viewed it. God had abandoned his temple (otherwise who could have destroyed it) and even though some of them have returned to the land, there has been no scene like that in 1 Kings 8 of the shekinah glory filling the temple. They remain under the thumb of pagans, still in exile, and the Act closes with them longing for God’s Anointed One, the Messiah who will rebuild the temple and defeat evil.

   The law was not strong enough to act redemptively. It ended up doing nothing but making Israel more aware (intermittently) and thus more responsible for their sin. The good law God provided ended up making sin worse.

   At this point, we reach the climax of history. for the Anointed One does come, but he is more than just king and liberator, he will also embody in his own person the return of YHWH to Zion. But he looks little like anyone expected and the manner in which he fulfills prophecy looks like nothing they had constructed in expectation. It’s not that they had a single picture from prophecy. They had a bunch (just like we do today), and they were all wrong.

   Jesus walks the land restoring the outcast, making clean the unclean, and issuing the announcement that God’s Kingdom was starting. It was beginning now and that he embodied. The exile was ending and God would now act to redeem the nations of the world. If you view the miracles and the teachings through our Act five lens of Jesus saying he was the second person of the Trinity and being God all over the place you miss the real picture, I think. And most importantly you miss the deep and complete humanness of Jesus. Human yet following the Father perfectly and obediently in every way out of love.

   And so Jesus rebuilt the Temple, but not in a way that anyone recognized. He acted in his authority as King to cleanse the temple after riding in on a donkey with a royal procession in a highly symbolic act that claimed the authority to do so, an innately Messianic act. And then he balanced that with a new institution, using bread and wine in part to declare himself the new temple and, as we discover later in the story, a temple he rebuilds and continues to build with a renewed people of God carrying within them the actual Spirit of God himself! But we’re jumping ahead in the story again.

   Jesus then proceeds to defeat all evil, but again not in any way imaginable. He submitted to the worst that evil could do and he did so obediently, without protest, without casting insults, speaking nothing but words of forgiveness and love. And then he died on the Cross and to all the world appeared to be nothing more than yet another failed Messiah.

   But then Act 4 takes a dramatic turn in the Resurrection. Raised from the dead, Jesus breaks the bondage of those final enemies, sin and death. And he teaches his followers how it had to be this way, how the Messiah had to suffer and die, explaining to them through law and the prophets how this had long been foretold. And Jesus goes to stand at the right hand of the Father (fulfilling another prophetic image) after telling the disciples to wait in Jerusalem. There’s more coming. And thus Act 4 draws to a close with a sense of eager anticipation of something fantastic to come.

   And Scene 1 of Act 4 does not disappoint. It opens with a sound like a tornado and tongues of fire as the Spirit of God not only descend on but takes up residence within the followers! And they rush out and begin speaking to all the Jews gathered across the Diaspora for the festival in all their many languages! And through the power of the Spirit and his confidence in the risen Lord, Peter tells them what is happening, how they were seeing prophecy fulfilled before their eyes and what the life, death, and now resurrection of Jesus really meant!

   And then through the rest of the text up to John’s Revelation, we are given the rest of Scene 1, the foundation and dramatic guidance from which we cannot stray in our interpretation and enactment of the rest of the Act. And we are given some notes, often in highly apocalyptic Jewish images, of what it will look like when the inaugurated Kingdom is fully realized and God makes all things new, fully redeemed and restored, as we join in his rule in the resurrection of the dead of which Jesus is the firstfruit.

   Now, that whole summary of the interpretive framework I have developed and am continuing to developed was necessary for me to say the following and have any hope of being understood.

   I do not claim to understand the reason or the circumstances for everything in the OT, but I do know a few things. I know that God had to establish a people who knew what it meant to live as true human beings in order to set the stage for Act 4. And I know that God was doing so in a world that largely would not listen to him or even acknowledge him. And I know that Israel is the only nation that actually had God for a king and no earthly human or power. And so I simply accept the story of the second and third act of the play even though I don’t fully understand everything in them in the confidence that it was necessary to bring the drama to the proper climax. I view nothing in it as prescriptive for our Act of the play. Is some of it still applicable? Absolutely! That can know more be denied than the reality that some of it is not applicable. However, since the other nations are not directly ruled by God, but by other powers, I reject your assertion that God’s actions in building his unique people in history can serve as a model for other nations. It appears that, at times, God had to have his people use their methods, or something like them, in order to establish and keep Israel as his people. But I’ll grant no more than that.

   No, our guidance comes from Act 4, since that is the climax of the whole play and the foundation for our Act and from the first Scene of Act 5, the act within which we live and which we are writing and acting out as we go. Further, it is lived within the tension of the bits of the final scene we are given. We start with the establishment of the church on the cornerstone of Jesus and the foundation of the apostles and other followers in Scene 1 and have been steadily building the drama ever since.

   What is our purpose in the drama? To live as citizens of God’s Kingdom in outposts where God’s Kingdom is not yet realized, on earth where God’s will is not yet done as it is in heaven except imperfectly by us. And by so doing, carry God’s Spirit to the world in pain everywhere it is in pain living always as Jesus, the apostles, and the author Scene 1 authors have told us Kingdom citizens live.

   And it is within that understanding that problems arise. Yes, it’s a fallen world. And the kingdoms of this world, though Satan is still allowed to hold the reins and influences them all to one degree or another (including our country), do operate under the general charge of God to maintain order for the good of its citizens. Some do better than others, but you have only to look at any failed state to see how horrible it is without even an effective evil government. It is reasonable to think that active efforts at genocide of its own people are also a gross violation of this responsibility, but that’s mostly been a recent phenomenon. And within that framework in a fallen world, the nations must at times employ the evil tool of war to protect and maintain order for its citizens. That always means that at least one part is using that tool aggressively and unjustly, or it would never be needed at all. In this case, an evil tool must be used to combat worse evil. Exerting power, using the sword is the only way kingdoms can operate in this world in its fallen state. We have no disagreement there.

   The problem arises when a citizen of God’s Kingdom must decide how to act. Jesus tells us that the way human beings act in God’s Kingdom is to make themselves servants, the least, and the last. He tells us that we are not to return evil for evil and that we are in fact to actively do good and pray for those who harm us. He tells us we are to do more than the world’s kingdoms compell us to do. In all things, we are to pick up our cross and follow in his steps even as we proclaim him crucified and risen and the Lord of all the world (euvangelion).

   And that stands in direct conflict to the power of the sword. It becomes a particular problem when followers of Jesus hold the reins of power in this world. For we cannot then abdicate the responsibility we have been given even as we live as Kingdom citizens. Just War doctrine is nowhere in scripture. It is a construct designed to guide us in that most difficult of decision-making processes. If you wish to be strictly scriptural as a member of the NT church, the inaugurated Kingdom, the only path you are offered is that of Jesus, that of pacifism.

   Personally, I have long studied the Just War doctrine, its development, and the many, many ways it has been grossly abused over the centuries. It was always an important subject to me given my history as a soldier (though solely a peacetime soldier). I was looking for ways to reconcile these teachings of Jesus and the NT Church with the worldly need for a military to protect the citizens of a nation-state.

   And so finally, I thoroughly disagree with your conclusion. War is never, ever good. It is a symptom of the violence of a fallen creation. It is sometimes necessary nonetheless, but it is never good.

   Nor do I see any way to reconcile any other perspective with Christianity, though it’s not particularly difficult to reconcile with Judaism.

4. jimmiekersh says:
   August 16th, 2006 at 6:32 pm

   Scott, you are a stud! I am more than aware of current philosophical and theological differences in how we (you and I) view the text of scripture. We have two distinctl;y different and opposite conclusions about where we are going in our beliefs. Is one right and one wrong, I doubt it.

   Are you and I brothers in Christ? I am more than sure we are if we agree about a very few things.
   1. God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit exist as three in one.
   2. All mankind has sinned.
   3. Jesus died, was burried, and rose from the grave.
   4. Sin is forgiven only through forgiveness which comes from Jesus Christ.

   If we agree about those four things, we are brothers in Christ and I will defend your beliefs in our faith as much as I defend my beliefs in our faith. I always know that there are 360 degrees to look at something in one perspective and the same number of ways to look at it from another perspective.

   We may never agree about how we interpret the Bible or the Godhead, but as brothers in the faith, we are bound to each other in something more special than how we interpret the Word, we are co-heirs with Christ.

   I am so glad we are one the same side because debate with an intellectual believer is never fun because many allow philosophical discussions to become personal when the debate should never be personal. I appreciate that in your writing, you do not allow debate to become personal.

   Again, you are a stud and I do appreciate your intellect of debate.

5. scott says:
   August 17th, 2006 at 8:34 pm

   Jimmie, I appreciate the positive and complimentary words, though I’m left wondering, from your opening and closing, if there’s an implication somewhere that I should be put out to pasture.

   And I will add that my responses don’t take the turn most debates tend to take, especially online, primarily because I don’t much care for intellectual debates or (as is often the case) rather less than intellectual arguments and outright fights. As a general rule, when presented with such a response, I tend to simply disengage and abandon the discussion. I tend to engage in serious topics of discussion only when it is a subject I feel is worth the time and attention and only for the purpose of trying to make my thoughts clear enough to be understood. It is often only when I am challenged to articulate my thoughts juxtaposed to the thoughts of another that I truly test and connect them anew, often in ways I had never considered. I relish the opportunity whenever it arises. Thank you for providing such a wonderful opportunity on a central and critical topic.

   The purpose of ‘debate’ often seems to be to prove that you are right and the other person is wrong and in so doing somehow coerce a change of heart and mind on the other person. While I find it often the case that one person in a discussion may have more points that seem valid and convincing, it is rare that someone is either completely ‘right’ or completely ‘wrong’. Possibly more ‘right’ than ‘wrong’ but that’s as far as I’m willing to go. I prefer discussion where two or more people engage in a sincere effort at that oh, so difficult task we call communication.
   Further, the fact that someone is ‘wrong’ on a point is not an indication that someone offering a different perspective is ‘right’. They can easily both be wrong. Ironically, we see that clearly in 1st century Israel where there were numerous ideas on how to work to bring God’s Kingdom, what the Anointed One would like, and how it would be when YHWH forgave the sins of Israel and returned to Zion (as Malachi and many others prophesied in the second temple period) ending the exile and restoring the nation.

   And they were all wrong. When the Anointed One came, he came both as the arm of YHWH and the servant of YHWH (from Isaiah) and he defeated evil by submitting to the worst that evil could do, even to death. He was vindicated as both Messiah (Christ) and Lord (the reigning God of creation) when he rose on the third day. It was nothing at all like anyone had imagined in anything we have recovered or preserved from the period, though a few came closer than others.

   In the same way I’m convinced virtually all of our pictures and understanding of the prophesied return of Jesus are fundamentally wrong. When it happens, it will be — in retrospect — unmistakeable and an obvious fulfillment of prophecy, but it will also look like nothing we ever anticipated. This time we are the people of God awaiting the coming of God’s Anointed One, whom we now know is also truly God the Son and worthy of all worship, the crucified and risen Lord of all creation. And as we wait we are anxiously trying to predict the timing and the manner of his return. It’s a very similar situation. And just as they were all significantly mistaken, so I think our own poor attempts to paint a detailed picture of the future will be found woefully inadequate.

   None of that is to say that eschatology is unimportant. Since we are to embody in the present God’s future kingdom, it’s very important that we have some concept of the true kingdom. Of course, we find in the NT a lot of detail, if we can only understand it, of how Kingdom citizens are to live as truly human people. What does it look like to be human? That will eventually become the burning question of anyone shaped by postmodern culture who does not give in to the pressing despair and nihilism the raging whirlwind of postmodern experience leaves in its wake. But part of that answer must come from our understanding of the future God has planned. And in that discussions, after all my thought, I have found that there are really only three perspectives (although there is infinite variation) on the thoughts that significantly impact the manner in which Kingdom citizens strive to live in the present. There may be more, but I’ve only uncovered three.

   First, there are those who believe God will eventually wipe out his entire creation, utterly destroy it, except for the few humans he miraculously preserves. He then takes those people and makes a brand-new creation, gives them a new body, and we all live in that creation. I’ve simplified it, of course, but that’s the essence of this eschatological thread, in all its variations. The thing I notice in this perspective is how similar it is to the eschatology of Platonism, of Hinduism, heck, even of Mormonism. In one way or another, all teach that at some point, and perhaps in an eternal cycle, the present creation is destroyed and a new creation begins.

   If you add in the perception that the matter of this world is irredeemably evil or flawed, and the spirit is good, you even begin to tread the same ground as the gnostics. Some forms of Buddhism, even, could be at least dimly viewed through that lens (at least to the extent that the unformed, impersonal essence of god from which the whole universe has been born is seen as a superior state of being toward which all matter is striving). People laboring under this eschatology strive to be personally ‘good’, however they define ‘good’, and perhaps to enlighten others about their ‘truth’. Unless their definition of ‘good’ includes a particular treatment of others and/or nature, it is unlikely to be a primary goal. Why does it tend to reduce to this state? Because if all that is out there is going to be destroyed, why expend much energy on it. Focus your attention and energy on those people you encounter or love and on your personal spirituality (for which we would use the word ‘holiness’).

   There is absolutely nothing in this model that challenges the postmodern world. This view is perfectly OK within it. Go off to tend to your own personal spirituality in the face of whatever end you feel is coming and whatever you feel will happen when you die. And if your personal understanding comes with the idea that you’ll talk about it, that’s ok. We’ll either tune you out or ignore you. Or if we’re in a good mood and you’re not an unpleasant person, we may even actively listen and engage you. Don’t take that as a sign that we’re actually interested in following your path, though of course some may be. Odds are, we’re just honoring your personal spiritual pursuit. The western postmodern culture is full of spiritualities of escape from this world or at least rising above the level of this world in some way. This path tends to demote Christianity to just another of those in the eyes of the viewers. Jesus becomes nothing but, at best, another guru.

   Alternatively, I hear (though I don’t think I’ve ever personally encountered it) that there is an eschatological perspective out there that somehow believes we can, perhaps through the political process, actually fully realize God’s Kingdom in the world as it is. Further, it is somehow our vocation to do so. Frankly, the arrogance of that perspective dumbfounds me. Having been renewed, and in the process of being renewed ourselves, only through the power of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection, how can we presume to be able to fully realize God’s kingdom ourselves? Yes, we carry within us the Holy Spirit of God, the third person of the Trinity, but we fail to listen to him as often as not. While I’ve found this perspective amply documented in my research, I’ve never been able to place my mind in the correct framework to understand it, so if anyone else does, feel free to expound.

   The third perspective lives in tension between the two above. God’s creation is, in its essence, good. God repeatedly said so as he lovingly shaped it. It has been deeply harmed by the ravages of sin and death, and that deeply grieves God. Our tears are echoes of his tears. And the God of scripture has been working to redeem his creation, not destroy it. If he were just going to toss it out and make another, why not just make the one he actually wanted in the first place? If he didn’t love his creation so deeply, why go through all he has gone through to redeem it? Making all things new is not the same as making all new things. Rather it is returning all things to the state they should have had. We see in scripture that heaven and earth were designed to be interlocking and both were intended to be the place where God’s is will is done. But today, while the earth groans under bondage to sin and death, there is a veil or curtain drawn between heaven and earth and, as we see in the prayer Jesus gave us, God’s will is not presently done on earth, however much we might wish to tell ourselves it is. At most we catch glimpses of heaven today. However, the path of redemption, we see in Jesus, is not easy. Rather, it takes the shape of cross and resurrection.

   In scripture, we are instructed again and again to live now as the citizens of the Kingdom we are. Even more than citizens of Rome who were often expected to settle and live abroad in outposts, carrying with them the culture and values of Rome, we are expected to live as citizens of God’s Kingdom in whatever earthly kingdom we inhabit. And in everything we do and everywhere we go we are to carry the Spirit of God, even to the darkest places of the pain of the world. And as we do so, in the power of that same Spirit, it is the vocation of the church to do and be for the world as Jesus was and did for Israel. We are further promised in scripture that our efforts, our labors will not be in vain. Will they bring the Kingdom? No. But they can bring glimmers of the Kingdom. We can peel back that curtain just a bit and show our world the deeper reality that is coming. And our efforts, in any discipline and place, will surely endure. They are not in vain.

   That was actually longer than I intended, but the discussion is a very important one. And I sense that at least the perspective of the eschaton above matters a great deal in any discussion of the present fallen world. We live in tension between the Kingdom begun and the Kingdom realized. And we will likely live our entire lives in that tension, so it’s important to understand how then we should live. To my mind, that is the burning question of the age, not what happens to my disembodied spirit when I die.

   Operating from within that tension, before I turn back to the question of the day, I need to add one more thought to the swirling pot. I think we are agreed that God is uniquely qualifed to judge his creation. Nobody but God can pronounce and execute final, judge-style judgement on any part of his creation (to use the inevitable courtroom metaphor). I think we lose something if we fail to maintain that thought in the forefront of our minds. And when we believe we can destroy and abuse any part of God’s creation as a form of final judgement on it, we are assuming that authority. As a result, the way you approach this question is important.
   Yes, we all must make ‘judgement’ calls about the manner in which we interact with the world. But before we begin executing the sort of destructive judgement we see in the early stories of creation and Israel, we also, I think, need to recall those strange words of Jesus that are clearly a charge to his church, but one that is cryptic and, if you give it any credence at all, one that should give us all pause. “The sins you forgive are forgiven. The sins you retain are retained.” Those do not impress me as words of power. They strike me as words of incredible responsibility, whatever they may mean. When we assume the role of judge, jury, and executioner, what exactly happens? Is it possibly more than we can see or imagine? How deeply does it in fact go?

   Given that God alone is the true judge, how then should we interpret Israel’s part in the grand drama? Were they not the true people in covenant with God, the people who knew his presence, who heard his voice, and who at times served as his arm of judgement? To the extent I understand some of the actions, they look to me similar to the judgement of God delivered in the flood, to Sodom and Gommorha, and to many individuals. The fact that God’s people were the agents of his judgement makes it no less the judgement of God, the judgement he is uniquely privileged to execute. In fact, you see that reflected in light of what always seems to happen to Israel when they proceed into battle without God’s blessing or even against God’s instruction.

   However, there is no nation-state today that is directly ruled by God. There is no people through whom an action can truly be called a pure judgement or command of God untainted by evil influence. As such, the heavenly authority by which Israel did the things God instructed cannot be transferred to any other power or authority. Those actions belong to the unique story of Israel and though we can and must learn much from them, they do not and cannot serve as a model for any earthly kingdom. We are not free to move and adapt them to a different context and place in the story.

   We also need to remember that Jesus called twelve. In so doing, he clearly placed himself directly in the role of God calling Israel to be his people. It carried a deep and obvious meaning to all. By that act and others, his life showed that he was forming a new people from the remnants of the old. And in the unfolding of the story of Acts, we see that this new Israel will not only serve as a blessing to the nations of the world, it will consist of members of every nation, of every race, of every class, male and female. Instead of a strip of land in the Middle East, the Land of Israel, God’s holy and promised land for his people now encompasses the entire world. God’s people are all those knit by the Spirit into what we call the “communion of the saints” — the church, the peculiar people formed by Jesus doing for Israel and the whole world what Israel could not do for herself.

   So how does this new people look? How should it live? How does a citizen of a Kingdom that is yet to come live as an outpost encroaching in a foreign land? Are they a great national power of this world that will conquer other nations through the might of the sword? Are they endowed with supernatural gifts so none may stand against them? Do they call fire from heaven to burn those cities that reject their Lord? No. They seek out, serve, and seek to restore the weakest, the forgotten, the outcast. They love wildly and with sacrificial abandon. They go above and beyond anything they are unfairly compelled to do. They go the second mile. They give their shirt when someone takes their coat. They seek to do good to those who seek to harm them, even to the point of death. And they approach that death with a song on their lips for the honor of following in the steps of their Lord and Lord of all the world, the crucified and risen Messiah, Jesus! Why? Out of a sense of duty or obligation? With a sense of burden or reluctance? No! Because this is how the God who has done everything to show his love has demonstrated true human beings should live. This is what it looks like to be a citizen of God’s Kingdom.
   And every time the Church has forgotten its calling, has conflated its existence with that of Israel, and the power and judgement God sometimes exercised through Israel as his unique people, it has produced horrors. After all, in the first crusade, a ‘just’ and ‘holy’ war modeled after the conquest of the land by Israel, we entered the conflict confident we were God’s chosen people ‘liberating’ Jerusalem. And in so doing, we took upon ourselves the command God once gave directly and specifically to his people about specific nations, and thus slaughtered the children of Ishmael, man, woman, and infant. We may have largely forgotten, but the Arab world has never forgotten. As the Exodus was and is to Jewish children, so the horrors of that time are to many Arab children. Do you wonder why so many burn with hatred toward us? They see so many of the things the West has done and continues to do as a ‘Christian’ act from the same forge as the Crusades, especially the first. And, out of arrogance or ignorance, we fuel the raging fire of anger with our actions.

   How might it look if the church sought to serve all Muslims, and Arab Muslims in particular? Not because they are nice to us or respect us. But simply because it is what our Lord would have us do? Not do what we think or ‘know’ they ‘really’ need, but rather take the time to learn where they are actually in need and sacrifice to meet that need? Love is not rude. Love does not insist on its own way. Love does not count up wrongs that have been done. Love is not selfish. Love patiently accepts all things. When we do not listen and when try to ‘give’ the other what they do not need, however ‘good’ our gift, it is not love. I have no idea what would happen. But I think it would be closer to an authentic Kingdom action than much of what we actually do today.

   Right now, Islam has a better reputation for charity, for caritas, than Western Christians do. In this instance, we should burn with shame for so failing our Lord and master. Think again. Precisely how did he say people would know we are his? Do you love those who are so trapped in bondage to hatred that they wish to destroy our nation, kill our families, and crush us with the very terror and pain in which they are bound? Loving the people we like, the ones who are properly grateful, the ones who do not try to harm us is easy. Anyone can do that. Is this the place of the Church? Or is its place standing safely afar, on the public stage, waving the American flag? These are the sorts of questions we should at least be asking. But nobody wants to talk about them.

   This has nothing to do with the role of nations. This sort of love is the role of God’s people. Is it easy? Even though Jesus tells us his burden is light, that can only be because he makes it light when we need his help the most. For the path we are to trod is the path of the Cross. I’m not very good at it. That path scares me to death. But I know that if Jesus is my Lord, I must walk his path. And so I keep climbing back on it, even when I would much rather not, for I trust him to walk with me, every step of the way. I never seem to get very far before I fall off again, but then I’m still a postmodern relativist struggling out of pagan faith and into Christianity. I’ve not come nearly as far as some, in part I guess because I started late and am way behind the rest of the pack. My wife is much better at this life of love thing than I am. Sometimes I think she’s already better than I’ll ever be.

   If you assert that ‘war’ is not just sometimes necessary in a fallen world (which is as far as most Christians have been willing to go in two thousand years and farther than many have been willing to go), but that it can actually ever be ‘good’ you must approach the question of violence. What did God see when he looked at his creation in Genesis 6:11- 13? (By all means read the whole of chapter 3 to this point to get the whole setting since it graphically illustrates the rapid rise of violence.) After the flood, we see the same thing happening. Within the story of Israel, we find again and again the same violence. The men of Sodom found nothing unusual or extraordinary in the casual and violent gang rape of strangers.

   When we fail in our trust of God (which I see as a first cause of sin, for if we truly trusted in him, why would we choose a different path?) tremendous wellsprings of violence are unleashed within his creation. And war is the ultimate form of systemized violence. In its era, Rome was unparalleled in its ability to kill, crush, and destroy. And everyone knew it. Rome brought peace with an iron fist. Submit and live peacefully or die and gain that sort of peace instead. In our own day, nobody can match the ability of our country to inflict death and destruction with (compared to past modern armies) tremendous precision. The violence of war is nothing new to fallen humanity, but good? Which by definition means in some way like God? I think not. I’m not sure how you can move from the foundation of creation and fall with any concept that God finds violence even vaguely ‘good’. Judgement? Clearly that has been necessary to place limits on the violence flowing from the damage of sin. But our human wars and conflicts? None of us are good. None of us are just. All of the powers of this world are at least influenced by the evil one. We are not the judge and our countries are not the chosen people of that one true judge.

   Also, pause for a minute and think. If God has declared that people from all earthly nations are now his people, that all land is now his Holy Land, what does that make the soldier you see through your sights (much less the innocents that are inevitably caught in any conflict)? It strikes me that in this current age they can only be either a fellow citizen of God’s Kingdom or someone God deeply desires to renew into a Kingdom citizen. I’ll concede that, in service to your nation, acting defensively against a violent and aggressive power of this world, it may be necessary to pull that trigger. But good? I know myself and my ability at self-deception (never mind for the moment that of others) to follow that path.

   Once we begin to travel the road of self-justification according to our desires, we have rarely, if ever, reached any destination we might have desired. And some of the places we have found on that road are truly and deeply evil. To use one of the most extreme examples I can bring to mind, the Nazis took a loophole Luther had unintentionally opened by recasting Paul’s description and use of Torah (Law) in a manner other than Paul intended (but closer than the broader understanding of Luther’s day) to justify a recasting of Jesus into a Aryan picture supporting an Imperial ambition and eventually even twisted into a perspective that justified slaughtering Jews.

   I use that example to point out something most people forget. The vast majority of the people who ended up caught in the storm were just ordinary people living their lives. They had not intended to reach such depths. It matters that we strive to always be the people who speak truth. And that begins with a willingness to speak truth to ourselves, for the heart is deceitful above all things. We cannot even see to speak and live truth anywhere until we have first stood fully in the light of the living Truth. And every time we wander out of that light, as we often do, we lose our ability to truly see. And then the day comes when we find ourselves looking around in horror and confusion asking, “How did we get to this place?”

   I may be culturally shaped by the forces of postmodernism and I have certainly lived most of my life within true postmodern relativism. Once upon a time, before there was much of a Christian taint to my identity, my views were along the lines that ours would be a much more polite society if everyone were armed. Your rights ended at the point where mine began. Do what you want as long as you keep within your sphere, but enter that of any whom I consider ‘mine’ and face the consequences. This is the heart born of ’sin’ and darkness.

   A life shaped by relativism is one in which anything like ‘firm’ beliefs are difficult, to say the least. Certainty on any point, much less absolute certainty, is a never-ending challenge. In fact, I’m not sure I’ve ever achieved much ‘certainty’, though I have found confidence in our Lord. He has been trustworthy and has never betrayed that confidence. I hold all but a few beliefs (and most of those few you’ll find centered around Jesus in the Nicene Creed) with varying degrees of looseness. They are not deeply rooted and thoroughly solid and are unlikely to ever be so, rightly I think.

   As Tom has heard me say more than once, I’m sure half of what I currently believe is wrong or at least deeply flawed. I just don’t know which half. As a Christian, though, a perspective on violence is one of the few areas where I strongly sense that we have little leeway. Violence is clearly something that flows directly from sin and a world marred by sin. You can’t read the stories of Israel, Act 3 of God’s drama, standing alone. You must understand them in light of both creation and fall. And as such, this is one of the areas where, since allowing my identity to be shaped in any way by Jesus, my perspective and understanding have completely flipped from what they once were.

   Violence is incompatible with life as a renewed human being, a citizen of the Kingdom of God. The fact that we live as outposts of that Kingdom in places that have not yet been renewed (but which one day will be by Christ himself!) may make violence sometimes a necessary choice, a lesser evil. But that can never make it ‘good’ or ‘Godly’. It is always evil. This, of all areas, is one where I do not sense that one answer is as good as another. How we answer this question says almost everything about how we see God.

   Also, pause for a minute and think. If God has declared that people from all earthly nations are now his people, that all the world is now his Holy Land, what then does that make the soldier you see through your sights (much less the innocents that are inevitably caught in any conflict)? Who is it that we kill in war? It strikes me that in this current age they can only be either a fellow citizen of God’s Kingdom or someone God deeply desires to renew into a Kingdom citizen. I’ll concede that, in service to your nation, acting defensively against a violent and aggressive power of this world acting properly according to the Just War doctrine (which given our powers of self-deception and self- justification, I sense we must construe narrowly or we will twist it beyond all recognition), it may be necessary to pull that trigger. But good? I know myself and my ability at self-deception (never mind for the moment that of others) far too well to even start down that most slippery of slopes.

6. tom cottar says:
   August 18th, 2006 at 3:03 pm

   …just glad to have given you boys an opportunity to play those cards…

   

7. jimmiekersh says:
   August 18th, 2006 at 11:31 pm

   Scott,

   Concerning the compliment of being a “stud.” It is a sincere compliment in that you are capable of committing to a voluminous answer which is proficient and profound. I am absolutely familiar with each of your concepts and ideals and understand where you arrive at your understanding. I would suspect that the dominate hemisphere of your brain would be the right (creative) side, while mine is the left side (not creative). In the past I was as dogmatic as a person could be and still think. Now, I think more and am much less dogmatic except for the necessities of the faith. I own that shift in thinking to Dr. Bob Utley from ETBU.

   The Roman Catholic “just war doctrine” is not from the biblical text and therefore I refute its validity, just like I reject all doctrines and philosophies which are not found explicitly within the Biblical text. I have also, (literally within the last three weeks) completely shifted my eschatological reading of the biblical text to betray my 19th century roots of eschatology to a more 1st century understanding of the prophetic texts. Now that is hard to do in Baptist life and survive.

   I am a modern thinker while comfortable with the philosophical filter of the postmodern mindset for determining truth. I myself love Nitsche and would be a nihilist if it were not for my being a Christian. I am absolutely convinced if Christianity is false, then Nitsche is absolutely correct. If Christianity is the ultimate reality then Nitsche is completely false.

   I understand the ideals based around each and every one of your concepts and find that they have a basis in the Biblical text. I find the opposite to be valid from the text as well. That is what my favorite professor at ETBU (Bob Utley) called tension as you have used. I think it can be argued almost anything in the Biblical text has its complete opposite also being held in tension. I find that comforting that we can look at the exact same thing and see it from two totally different aspects. I think it is important to realize that we are looking at the exact same thing but from different sides of the same ball (or donut according to Bob). You are looking at most things from the top left side of the ball while I am looking at the ball from the bottom right side. Are we looking at the exact same thing, yes? Are we seeing it through the Biblical text, yes? Are we right, who knows. I think someone looking at the ball from a straight down position may see the exact same things, just not in the same way that we do. I am always glad to know God sees everything from every side and every angle and from the outside in and the inside out. We cannot see like that, but He can and that is what makes him, God.

   War, has it ever settled anything? Yes and no (that tension thing again). Is it “good” when it is commanded from God? That is why the “just war doctrine” does not hold water: it is not from the Biblical text.

   The true determination on whether any of this actually means anything is whether or not there is an explicit Biblical directive concerning war which is not commanded from God. I can not find one, but many argue it can be determined or assumed to be implied.

   Nation-states war for numerous reasons. Are there any legitimate explicit reasons from the Biblical text? I only know one legitimate explicit reason for war from the Biblical text, and that would be God commanding it. Implicit answers could be brought out of the text both for and against, but all in all, war from the political realm is futile. When God commanded war, He commanded annihilation. Since nation-states are not bound by the Bible as their ruling authority, they can determine their own standards for war and believers as well as non-believers can argue about their “justness” or legitimacy. Nation-state war politically and never war for total annihilation and therefore are futile in that they never actually accomplish what they set out to accomplish because of compromise and civility.

   American Christianity is morally bankrupt and devoid of agape love. American consumerism Christianity is egocentric and based solely upon Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson and the demand of rights. We have believed Franklin’s “God helps those who help themselves” theology. We have also bought into Jefferson’s “tear out of the Bible what you do not like and it will be ok” theology as well. Even worse than those two things is the demanding of rights. As believers we have no rights, we have been bought with a price and we no longer live, but He lives in us. He can demand rights, but we have no authority in a nation-state to demand rights.

   We have abandoned our first love. We have also forsaken our second love: other believers. We treat each other like trash and then expect the world to want to be like us. They will know you by your love seems to be the biggest joke today concerning American Christianity. Who would want to be like American Christians?

8. jimmiekersh says:
   August 18th, 2006 at 11:32 pm

   Just for the record, this is the longest responses to any post that I have ever read.

9. scott says:
   August 19th, 2006 at 1:34 am

   What can I say? I’m a wordy sort. Tom puts up with me anyway.

   And yes, I’m left-handed. And a programmer. And an actor. And a writer. And have always enjoyed theoretical mathematics more than applied. And I read. A lot. So yes, right-brain creative dominant. I guess it shows …

   I don’t particularly have to speculate about what I would be if I were not Christian. I would be what I was. A postmodern spiritual relativist with beliefs and understanding held loosely and no anchors whatsoever. Overt nihilism is certainly another path, but it never held much attraction for me.

   ‘Just War’ is not an RC doctrine. Augustine was the first to begin to work through the implications of what it meant when those in the church also held reins of worldly government power. And Augustine was working through this before any significant split in the church. It’s not a question the church had to address as long as the pagans controlled the earthly kingdoms and armies. But Christians in that role face a tension. They are charged by God (whether they know it or not, whether they do it well or not) to maintain order for their citizens in a fallen world. And God says that as they fulfill that role, they are good. Just War is simply, if construed narrowly, the best approach we’ve yet found to live in that tension.

   I’ve heard the comment about discounting anything not explicitly contained in the text many times, but I’ve not yet encountered a version of that thought which can survive the postmodern shredder of deconstruction. First, without the constantly expanding historical work to grasp what not just words meant at the time and in the language they were written, but also what collections of words meant and how they would have been understood within the culture, none of us would even have an English bible to read. And that historical work is ongoing all the time resulting in better understandings of the text. And then, of course, nobody understands the bible without some sort of interpretive framework, their own, someone else’s, or most commonly some amalgamation. Yet that interpretive framework cannot be found within the text itself.

   Finally, should I assume your comment about God always ordering annihilation is pure hyperbole? Because once the land was conquered, God often gave victory, but not, by any means, annihilation. And once again, if God is ordering or allowing it then it is judgement rendered by the one true judge. And that simply has a different flavor than that concept we call ‘war’.

   I’m glad to see you’ve read more than the prooftexts bandied about to recast the nation’s founders as good 20th century evangelicals. They were complex and interesting men. I get tired of having them turned into caricatures for one position or the other.

   And Tom knows how much it grieves me that there is so little evidence of that by which everyone should know we are his followers — that we love one another as Jesus loved us. Who would want to be like American Christians? Beats me. They were a big group I had to find a way to clear a way through on my journey.

   And the whole last first, first last, etc. concept has also almost vanished.

   This is a fun conversation! Thanks …

10. tom cottar says:
    August 19th, 2006 at 10:59 am

    Great how one picture spans Victor Hugo and Augustine, Thomas Jefferson and Bob Utley.

    It’s funny how the simplest of doctine (Be imitators of Christ) gets so very complicated.

    That’s what (in theory) keeps us humble.

11. jimmiekersh says:
    August 19th, 2006 at 12:00 pm

    TOM DUDE,

    Time to change the topic before my fingers blister from keeping up!

12. jimmiekersh says:
    August 19th, 2006 at 6:41 pm

    Scott,

    How would you like to team up with Tom and me to write a book on how churches must minister to minister to people in the PostModern World? Ask Tom if I am legit about this idea? I have started one aimed only at SBC churches, but would be absolutely willing to go back to the beginning and start all over with someone as interesting and intellectual as you are to be able to write a small book, (less than 500 pages) to either give to churches or, to sell. I am willing to do anything you would be interested in if you would like to attempt something like this. Remember, you would have to deal with a modernist (me) and a postmodernist (tom).

    I think this could actually be a great tool for local churches if you are willing to put up with my logical brain picking your creative brain and tom’s brain (he may be too busy to get too involved, but I doubt it) for the purpose of trying to find a way for churches to actually minister in the Post-Christian era here in our country.

    If interested, jimmiekersh@hotmail.com. You already know how to contact tom.

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