The Park Forum

May my accusers be put to shame and consumed; with scorn and disgrace may they be covered who seek my hurt. But I will hope continually and will praise you yet more and more. — Psalm 71.13-14

“There is a noble Christian tradition which takes evil so seriously that it warns against the temptation to ‘solve’ it in any obvious way,” N.T. Wright explains in his book Evil and the Justice of God. “We cannot and must not soften the blow; we cannot and must not pretend evil isn’t that bad after all. That is the way back to cheap modernism.” Wright believes modernism exchanged the Christian view of evil and justice for a straw man:

Classical Judaism and classical Christianity never held an immature or shallow view of evil, and it is one of the puzzles of the last few centuries who mainstream philosophers from Leibniz to Nietzsche could think and write about the problem of evil as though the Christian view could be marginalized or dismissed with cheap caricature.

How do we reclaim this nuanced view of evil and justice? We must be careful not to oversimplify what the authors of the Psalms sought as they cried out to God. “You will increase my greatness and comfort me again,” the prayer of Psalm 71, is not a longing for suburban tranquility. When confronted with the brutality of evil in his life, the psalmist joins the centuries-long ache of Scripture for God to restore the world for which humanity was created.

Some of this return, we must know, is a depth and severity of justice we are unable to dispense on our own—yet full restoration must go beyond this. The problem of evil isn’t solved until all that was lost has been returned. N.T. Wright concludes:

God’s justice is not simply a blind dispensing of rewards for the virtuous and punishments for the wicked, though plenty of those are to be found on the way. God’s justice is a saving, healing, restorative justice, because the God to whom justice belongs is the Creator God who has yet to complete his original plan for creation and whose justice is designed not simply to restore balance to a world out of kilter but to bring to glorious completion and fruition the creation, teeming with life and possibility, that he made in the first place. And he remains implacably determined to complete this project through his image-bearing human creatures.

Today’s Reading
Ezekiel 23 (Listen – 7:48)
Psalms 70-71 (Listen – 3:29)

 

By Elisabeth Elliot (1926-2015)

I am afflicted and in pain; let your salvation, O God, set me on high! — Psalm 69.29

The apostle Peter writes, “My friends, do not be bewildered by the fiery ordeal that is upon you, as though it were something extraordinary. It gives you a share in Christ’s sufferings, and that is cause for joy.”

When we remember that Peter was writing his letter to exiles, we can try to imagine all the various kinds of suffering that were involved for them. Peter had been through a few mills himself, and understood deeply how they were feeling and the quite natural human tendency to be bewildered when you’re in the middle of trouble. Don’t be, he says.

He does not deny that it is “fiery.” He calls it an ordeal. That’s honest. But he tells them it’s nothing out of the ordinary. It is what all of us ought to expect in one form or another, as long as we’re following Jesus.

What else should we expect? Jesus said we would have to give up the right to ourselves, take up His cross, and follow. He said we would have to enter the Kingdom of God “through much tribulation.” We bargained for a steep and narrow road—why should we be bewildered to find it steep and narrow?

The thrilling, heart-lifting truth that Peter speaks of is that in this very ordeal, whatever it is, we are being granted an unspeakably high privilege: a share in Christ’s sufferings, and that, Peter says, is cause for joy.

Sometimes people wonder how on earth their kind of trouble can possibly have anything to do with Christ’s sufferings. Ours are certainly nothing in comparison with His. We are not being crucified. Our burden is certainly not the weight of the sins of the world. No. But in all our afflictions He is afflicted.

We are together in them. If we receive them in faith—faith that they are permitted by a Father who loves us, faith that He has an eternal purpose in them—we can offer them back to Him so that He can transform them. If, like Paul, we want to know Him and the power of His resurrection, we must also know the fellowship of His sufferings. The only way to enter that fellowship is to suffer. Can we say, Yes, Lord—even to that?

*Excerpt from Exulting in Suffering from Elisabeth Elliot’s Newsletter.

Today’s Reading
Ezekiel 22 (Listen – 4:58)
Psalms 69 (Listen – 4:04)

 

The single printed copy of the Bible I own sits in a closet and has not been opened in over half a decade. This has, I believe, less to do with my devotion—I regularly engage with Scripture, write this devotional, hold a degree in theology, and read in Greek and Hebrew—and more to do with my age and culture. I’m in my mid-thirties and access nearly everything on my smartphone—regularly engaging with apps and sites like NeuBible, Bible Gateway, Logos, and YouVersion.

Last week Crossway Publishers issued the final revision of their popular translation, the English Standard Version. The publisher noted the text, which was first translated nearly two-decades ago, would now remain, “unchanged forever, in perpetuity.” Though if my reading habits—and those of a significant majority in my generation—are a sign, there are significant changes coming.

Scripture has undergone six major transitions throughout time. In the first transition, much of the early sacred text moved from oral tradition to written (early Hebrew was one of the first few written languages in human history). Centuries later, that written text was canonized.

The canonized text was then illuminated—adding imagery and ornamentation to language. (The impact of this third transition on a pre-literate culture cannot be understated—for the first time ever the masses could access the word of God—even today the artwork is among some of our most celebrated ancient works).

Then translation began to gain significant steam, followed by Gutenberg’s press. These fifth and sixth transitions were so earth-changing they are still the dominant paradigm for modern Bible societies, missionary movements, and even apps on our phones.

The sixth transition was the shift from largely open-text to copyrighted text—something that has only occurred in the last couple hundred years as Christianity and capitalism merged in the west. The most recent lawsuit to protect the “intellectual property” of Bible translations was finalized in April of 2016 by the Evangelical Christian Publishers Association—which, according to their own press release celebrating the victory, is a conglomerate “of nearly 200 member companies worldwide, representing a combined revenue of nearly $1.4 billion.”

The Venn diagram of translation, distribution, and protection that represents the modern Bible has led to massive declines in Scripture engagement and represents largely under-funded and duplicative work. Facebook and Google are in an arms race to accomplish the world-wide distribution of information, and the later organization’s machine translation project will not be deemed successful until it can accurately render text in every language.

Protection of Scripture’s translations—and litigation when the Bible has spread without profit—have created a world where more versions are available while less people are reading and legally able to spread the word of God than ever before.

It is time for Scripture’s seventh major transition.

This transition won’t be led by corporations hungry to make up the lost revenue of declining print Bible sales, or even by the clergy; it will be led by the people—by those faithfully practicing their faith, by those hacking new technologies for the Kingdom, and by those who want Scripture to find its place in our new world.

The seventh transition for the Scriptures will be that of integration. Litigation will be replaced by Creative Commons licensing and open-source translation. Translation and distribution will be accomplished through the tools and platforms of world’s largest tech companies. But what will interest the next generation in Scripture most will be how well this generation—you and I—integrate it into our life, vocation, and community.

It could be said that this was always the goal—but we must admit it has not been the focus of the Bible movement of the last century. As we look toward the future, integration into modern life requires technology, but it also pre-supposes community. It demands open governance from those in the business of holding copyrights on sacred text. Most of all, it depends on the faithful to look at the Scriptures not as a book that sits on a shelf, but as a living and active Word that shapes, corrects, and instructs our daily lives.

Weekend Reading List

• Releasing God’s Word: Do Copyrights Help or Hurt Bible Translation? Sarah Eekhoff Zylstra for Christianity Today.
• Where Did the Bible Go? Emily McFarlan Miller for Sojourners.
• After Tweaking 29 Verses, Bible Translation Becomes Unchanging Word of God. Sarah Eekhoff Zylstra for Christianity Today.
• State of the Bible. The American Bible Society (infographic, summary, and research).

Today’s Reading
Ezekiel 19 (Listen – 2:12)
Psalms 64-65 (Listen – 2:39)

This Weekend’s Readings
Ezekiel 20 (Listen – 9:25) Psalms 66-67 (Listen – 2:32)
Ezekiel 21 (Listen – 5:29) Psalms 68 (Listen – 4:26)

 

By Augustine of Hippo (354-430 C.E.)

O God, you are my God; earnestly I seek you; my soul thirsts for you; my flesh faints for you, as in a dry and weary land where there is no water…. Because your steadfast love is better than life. — Psalm 63.1,3

In the darkness of this world—in which we are pilgrims absent from the Lord as long as “we walk by faith and not by sight”—the Christian soul ought to feel itself desolate, and continue in prayer, and learn to fix the eye of faith on the word of the divine sacred Scriptures, as “to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts.”

For the ineffable source from which this lamp borrows its light is the Light which shines in darkness, but the darkness cannot comprehend it—the Light, in order to see that which our hearts must be purified from by faith; for “blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.”

In the shadow of your wings I will sing for joy. My soul clings to you; your right hand upholds me. — Psalm 63.7-8

If there is no temptation, there will be no prayer; for there we shall not be waiting for promised blessings, but contemplating the blessings actually bestowed. Scripture adds, “I will walk before the Lord in the land of the living”—not in the wilderness of the dead, where we are now—“For you have died,” says the apostle. “and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.”

For that is the true life on which the rich are exhorted to lay hold by being rich in good works. It is the true consolation; for want of which another is desolate—even though she conducts her household piously, entreating all dear to her to put their hope in God: and in the midst of all this. She says in her prayer, “my soul thirsts for you; my flesh faints for you, as in a dry and weary land where there is no water.”

This dying life is nothing else than such a land—however numerous our mortal comforts, however pleasant our companions in the pilgrimage, and however great the abundance of our possessions.

But the king shall rejoice in God. — Psalm 63.11

*Abridged and language updated from The Confessions and Letters of St. Augustin with a Sketch of His Life and Work (Vol. 1).

Today’s Reading
Ezekiel 18 (Listen – 5:26)
Psalms 62-63 (Listen – 2:44)

 

You have made your people see hard things; you have given us wine to drink that made us stagger. — Psalm 60.3

“One of the reasons the Psalter does not yield its power,” Walter Brueggemann observes, is, “because out of habit, or fatigue, or numbness, we try to use the Psalms in our equilibrium. And when we do that, we miss the point of the Psalms.”

According to the Scriptures, the acts of covering and hiding were man’s immediate responses after sin entered the world. Not much has changed since the creation narrative was penned. Though Adam sewed together fig leaves and jumped behind a tree, we are far more sophisticated in our ability to conceal what is really happening in our lives.

When we reduce prayer to what we feel are the proper things to say—pleasantries and sentiments about how the world ought to be—we miss the greatest opportunities to engage in the deep and transforming nature of faith.

We have become so used to these types of prayers that the Psalms can seem alarming in their total transparency. The Psalms, Brueggemann notes, “propose to speak about human experience in an honest, freeing way.”

We can only grow in relationship with God if we choose to be vulnerable rather than pleasant. It’s only when we share the brutality of life, the injustices of our world, and the depth of our pain and anger that we begin to grow. Brueggemann continues:

In most arenas where people live, we are expected and required to speak the language of safe orientation and equilibrium, either to find it so or to pretend we find it so…. As a result, our speech is dulled and mundane. Our passion has been stilled and is without imagination. And mostly the Holy One is not addressed—not because we dare not, but because God is far away and hardly seems important.

This means that the agenda and intention of the Psalms is considerably at odds with the normal speech of most people, the normal speech of a stable, functioning, self-deceptive culture in which everything must be kept running young and smoothly.

Against that, the speech of the Psalms is abrasive, revolutionary, and dangerous. It announces that life is not like that, that our common experience is not one of well-being and equilibrium, but a churning, disruptive experience.

Spiritual growth is not for those seeking simple answers, but for those who, emboldened by grace, wrestle with the beauty, brokenness, and complexity of our world.

Today’s Reading
Ezekiel 17 (Listen – 4:26)
Psalms 60-61 (Listen – 2:27)