Dear Friends,
I’m thisclose to getting off of social media.
I benefit from social media in amazing ways. I get links to amazing writers and articles constantly from Twitter. I have made actual friends on Twitter. Instagram is great because all my friends still just post lovely photos of their lives instead of filling it with banal political memes. Really—show me the sunset, or whatever lovely design your barista put in the foam of your cappuccino! But I am pretty close to my breaking point. The tsunami of self-righteous virtue signaling is too much for me.
And I’ll be honest with you: too often it’s my fellow Christians that irritate me most. Every single thing that happens in the world has some kind of instant angle on “what this says about” the church, Trump, evangelicalism, patriarchy, racism and so forth. It is getting ridiculous—well, it was already. But now a 21-year-old very disturbed and porn-addicted young man goes on a shooting spree in Georgia, murdering eight people at Asian massage parlors, and I immediately see a flood of “tsk-tsking” hot takes about “what this says about” the problems of racism and misogyny in the church—because he reportedly at one time attended a Southern Baptist Church.
This just shows the church is turning a blind eye to its toxic masculinity problem.
This is what happens when you don’t vocally root out racism in your church.
As the saying goes, when you’re a hammer, everything looks like a nail. And if your gig is to talk about systemic this-and-that, racism, and misogyny, then everything will be about racism, misogyny, and, boy howdy, it will be systemic. I get it. A lot of these people have put a lot of time and effort into building their platforms as watchdogs, and I guess the incentives are for the watchdog to bark… at something. Anything.
It is frowned upon among the cool kids, I know, to call this “wokeness,” but I don’t know what else to call it. Certain people fancy they have the bloodhound’s nose for injustice—only they call smell it. They have the skeleton key that unlocks all things; they have the secret knowledge; they are “woke” to the invisible injustices and inequities and see their job as having to inform us how everything is about the invisible injustices and inequities. The church must have somehow fostered this guy’s hatred of Asians and women. Because it just must have. For it to make sense, it must be systemic, after all. Only institutional blame counts for anything. I can’t imagine thinking the world—and people—are so simple. It’s a superficial melodrama; people are cardboard cutouts with white hats and black hats, good guys and bad guys. And those spinning this narrative are typically the folks telling you that they’re the “nuanced” ones.
You know what? Maybe this guy’s church is full of misogynists and racists, and that influenced him toward this heinous course of action (to say that I doubt it, prima facie, is a gross understatement). But you also know what? There is literally no way you could ever know that from reading an initial news story. There sure are a lot of people who pretend they can.
I won’t quit Twitter just yet, but it helps to just get that off my chest.
Skip The Fear & Trembling
Hebrews tells us that Jesus has opened a “new and living” way to God because he has entered through the curtain into the Holy of Holies.
Ever since Genesis 3 the presence of God has been decidedly “off limits” for sinful human beings.
So the LORD God banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken. After he drove the man out, he placed on the east side of the Garden of Eden cherubim and a flaming sword flashing back and forth to guard the way to the tree of life.
When God descended on Mount Sinai with smoke, fire, and the sound of a trumpet, the people were terrified. God is not, as C.S. Lewis says of his allegorical Aslan, “safe.” He instructs the people to stay away from the mountain: “Go down and warn the people so they do not force their way through to see the LORD and many of them perish” (Ex.19:21).
But God plans to travel with his people, so certain precautions had to be taken. They would build a tent to “house” him. They made an ark, and according to God’s instructions they made two cherubim of gold for the top of the ark, wings outspread to cover the “atonement cover,” the place where God would descend and dwell (Ex. 25:17-22). They placed the ark inside the inner sanctum, the “Holy of Holies,” and covered the room with a curtain or veil. On that veil God instructed them to have skilled craftsmen weave into it images of cherubim (Ex. 26:31).
Hmm. Cherubim guarding Eden. Cherubim guarding the throne of God. Cherubim guarding the entrance to the throne-room of God. Getting the picture?
Imagine there was a nuclear reactor in your neighborhood. Do you imagine that there might be, say, fences, industrial-strength doors with “Authorized Personnel Only” signs, and massive concrete walls between you and the reactor? Do you imagine that inside that power plant they’d have a very large “User’s Manual” telling you what every single button or lever does, what to do, when and how? I’d bet that user’s manual would be really, really detailed. Welcome to the Book of Leviticus, the User’s Manual for this traveling Mount Sinai, in which the LORD God of heaven and earth is going to dwell.
And this tent is full of “Authorized Personnel Only” signs. Only one day a year can the High Priest enter behind the curtain into the Holy of Holies to sprinkle sacrificial blood on behalf of himself and his people: Yom Kippur, the “Day of Atonement.” Do you know what happened on the very first Day of Atonement? The people had just watched Aaron perform the sacrifice on the altar, and “fire came out from the presence of the LORD and consumed the burnt offering and the fat portions on the altar. And when all the people saw it, they shouted for joy and fell facedown.” (Lev. 9:24).
That must have been quite a sight and a joyous occasion. But then we are told that Nadab and Abihu, Aaron’s sons, offered to the LORD “unauthorized fire.” Immediately, “fire came out from the presence of the LORD and consumed them, and they died before the LORD” (10:2). They had to reset the counter to “0 Days Without Work-Related Accident” and I imagine the ancient Levitical version of OSHA conducted an investigation. Things went terribly wrong. What in the world did Nadab and Abihu do wrong?
Rabbis and scholars have debated that question for a very long time, but I think Leviticus itself gives us the clue. Chapter 16 begins:
The LORD spoke to Moses after the death of the two sons of Aaron who died when they approached the LORD. The LORD said to Moses: ‘Tell your brother Aaron not to come whenever he chooses into the Most Holy Place behind the curtain in front of the atonement cover on the ark, or else he will die, because I appear in the cloud over the atonement cover.’
I think we’re meant to conclude that they peeked. That’s what happened. They were “Unauthorized Personnel.” Cherubim and a flaming sword guard the presence of God, and the sign was literally on the door, woven into it.
Then one day something happened.
With a loud cry, Jesus breathed his last. The curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom (Mark 15:37-38).
The curtain was torn open. The perfect, “once for all,” final, decisive unblemished sacrifice was offered. Those cherubim, woven into the curtain, fell to the ground revealing a “new and living” way. The book of Hebrews loves to contrast our situation with that of the Israelites.
You have not come to a mountain that can be touched and that is burning with fire; to darkness, gloom, and storm; to a trumpet blast or to such a voice speaking words that those who heard it begged that no further word be spoken to them, because they could not bear what was commanded: ‘If even an animal touches the mountain, it must be stoned.’ The sight was so terrifying that Moses said, ‘I am trembling with fear.’
But you have come to Mount Zion, to the heavenly Jerusalem, the city of the living God. You have come to thousands upon thousands of angels in joyful assembly, to the church of the firstborn, whose names are written in heaven. You have come to God, the judge of all men, to the spirits of righteous men made perfect, to Jesus the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel (Heb. 12:18-24).
There is a scene in an old movie that I wish could just paste here, but I can’t find it on YouTube. It’s from the 1999 Jodi Foster film, Anna & The King. I’ll have to describe it to you as best I can.
The King of Siam has a lot of children. So many, from so many wives, that they fill an entire school building on the palace grounds. One day a fight breaks out in the schoolyard, and as the brawl does not seem to abate, a little girl runs out of the schoolyard toward the palace. She enters through the front doors.
She is suddenly standing in a massive, dark, gloomy hall with high, vaulted ceilings. A stone floor spreads out before her like an ocean. It’s reminiscent of John’s vision of a “crystal sea” spread out beneath God’s own throne. At the far end of the hall is the King’s throne, lifted high above the ground, with stairs leading up to it. The King is seated on his throne. Below him are a multitude of people, and every single one of them is lying facedown, prostrate before him. He is hearing their cases, one by one. The camera pans in and you can see that those lying there are trembling with fear.
The little girls skips into the room with hardly a worry in the world and begins tip-toeing around all of these trembling people and making her way forward. The court’s business continues as usual as she makes her way to the stairs. Once there, she scrambles up the steps and climbs right into the lap of the King, sitting on his throne. He tilts his head, she whispers in his ear, and he immediately stands, to the amazement of the audience. Without a word, he quickly exits the room, holding his daughter in his arms.
That little girl is you. And me. That’s the kind of access we have with this “new and living way.” Just as she tip-toed past the fear and trembling, so we can leave our fear and trembling behind. The King seated on the throne is “Our Father, who art in heaven.” We are privileged to call him “Abba, Father,” because we are his children, adopted sons and daughters, heir and co-heirs with Christ (Rom. 8).
What a gospel. I’ll let you think about all the mind-blowing implications, but at very least it ought to transform your prayer life. All it takes is a whisper in his ear.
Miscellany
I don’t have much by way of miscellany this week.
The Anglican Church in North America (ACNA), like so many other Christian denominations, is going through some upheaval surrounding the Bible’s teaching on sexuality. Hans Boersma’s essay in First Things is an important and excellent read. Being “theological” is not something different from being “pastoral.” Theology IS pastoral. Don’t forget it!
Since it was St. Patrick’s Day this week, I’ll send you off with a great Irish singer-songwriter, Glen Hansard, with Marketa Irglova and their band, The Swell Season. You might remember them from the outstanding 2007 hit independent film, Once. This song is “Gold.” By way of title, and by way of sweet, sweet sound. Have a lovely weekend!