An Interlude on Love
An Interlude on Love
Who do we love when we love the God of the oppressed...and remember we are beloved, too?
My last two posts have engaged messages I received from a friend of mine, voicing their reticence with the theology of James Cone. I found their questions instructive, earnest, but also paradigmatic of the many biases that keep the church in America from recognizing just what a wealth it has to draw from in our deranged and polarized present. I closed my last article by commenting on the one thing I felt my friend was uncomplicatedly wrong about: “Jesus was not crucified by an angry mob.”
“[This] is an oversight with tremendous theological consequences,” I wrote: “It affects…how we understand all our other theological priors. Our theology inflects our anthropology: what we believe about ourselves and our fellow humans affects how we treat each other.” And what we believe about the role of human violence at the foot of the cross has a tremendous impact on how we see all these other things.
I stand by this. For Cone, the human violence at the cross reveals how deeply theology and justice are related. It allows him (and us) to see a through-line (an analogy to use the appropriate theological term) between our immanent desire for justice and how Godself considers and works for justice. There’s something powerful it understanding that God agrees with us that the innocent should not be punished.
But that’s only if we allow the analogy to emerge. Many folks make much of the fact that God's justice is greater than our justice. In fact, this is a pretty standard evangelical line, especially in Reformed circles. Vouchsafing God’s transcendence, and that no human being is ever truly “innocent,” we deny any analogy between earthly justice and divine justice. We argue that we shouldn't use the human desire for justice as a benchmark for recognizing God’s sovereignty and goodness in history: “[H]e has mercy on whom he wishes, and hardens whom he will” (Rom 9:18).
Those who read the Bible this way simply believe they’re taking the text at face value and doing good theology. But I hazard most of my readers here recognize something missing from this equation–something hard to put our fingers on. Struggling to find the words, we might say that a God who aches for justice in something like the same way we, at our knowing best, ache for justice is somehow more splendid and trustworthy, more beautiful and worthy of worship.
I am not capable of producing a theology of beauty here, let alone setting it right to work in the text. (Some of my friends have already done this splendidly.) But I am going to take for granted that this instinct matters. That our deepest, most aching feelings, when attentively cultivated, drive us towards the feet of a God whose moral desires are intelligible from within our own moral desires. From within the parts of us that long for peace, accountability, and conciliation.
And for these reasons, we want to be “right” in our theology. Of course we do! Our theological beliefs inform everything we believe about who God is, who we think we are in that God's sight, and who we become as a result of “undergoing” this God. Being wrong about God and about ourselves has high stakes! If people believe wrongly about God, of course they’re going to treat people badly! Not all of us need convincing that there are violent errors in our theologies; most of us here (myself included) are anxious to see others convinced, for the sake of peace and justice.
But... What do we really want from the “being wrong” of others? I think most of us feel a little sheepish when we answer that question honestly for ourselves. We know how good it feels to chastise, to rebuke, to expose another’s use of Scripture as ignorant and ideological. Sanctimony lies in wait to devour us all.
But what if it were possible to want something more from these engagements? In what possible world does the vocation of “correcting” errant theologies take on the qualities of gentle gift-giving, of shackle-shattering generosity? If it’s possible, it would have to be because there’s joy in being wrong. Because great relief and great possibility opens up before us when we realize we have been wrong about God. That on the other side of this “wrongness” is the easy yoke of Jesus.
When’s the last time any of us really felt this? When did any of us last blow the foundations out of someone’s fundamentalism because we were thinking about how much more beautiful their life could be?
I recently had the privilege of getting together with both
and over Zoom, and the conversation reminded me of something really important. Two things, really, though inextricably related.The first was a kind of spiritual admonition, spoken from deep within Daniel’s own struggle: “If your theology isn’t producing love in you, what good is it?”
The second didn't arise from something said so much as from a general tone permeating the conversation: the importance of edification. Of having others confirm that the God we believe in really is a God of love who forgives and redeems his people into fuller versions of themselves. We need to feel, in and from others, the love that their faith is producing, so that same love can multiply in us.
But if our reading and writing practices are primarily critical of the violent theologies we’ve rejected, we lose opportunities for that deeper, sustaining work. We keep our eyes on the land we left behind, not on what we left it for. Once we’ve rejected the Angry God of simpler interpretations, Joel writes, it doesn’t mean that we stop wanting that same God to justify our desires for a violence we consider righteous. Often, our faith still has “violent vestiges.” There is still the work of appropriating the new story, of making it fully ours. That's a long work that happens over time, if it’s ever fully finished. We need help sustaining it.
I’m reminded of this as I read back through my engagements with my friend over James Cone. On the one hand, I think the project of correcting misinterpretations of Cone is very valid. Of course I’d want to correct errant beliefs about his theology, or other biases that might keep someone from engaging with his work.
But where am I while doing that kind of work? What change am I really undergoing? Certainly, I argued for Cone as an eminent theologian of race, a prophetic critic of America whom all evangelicals must reckon with… But is that all? Did I cite his triumphant proclamation that, in Jesus, “suffering and death do not have the last word”? (CLT 2) Or his celebration of those who “shouted, danced, clapped their hands and stomped their feet as they bore witness to the power of Jesus’ cross which had given them an identity far more meaningful than the harm that white supremacy could do them”? (22)
Cone’s God—the God of the Bible—hollows-out self-interested power (35) and deeply, passionately identifies with the scapegoats (77). This God struts willingly into the human melee, descends into suffering, to redeem those who suffer and cause others to suffer (89). Thinking nothing of his unimpingeable glory, Christ takes upon himself all the worst humiliations, the vilest names we heap on the oppressed (114). He is present to the mother’s sorrow (123), to the slave’s cry for justice (160), and can kindle in the heirs of violence flames of love that burn as though for a wayward spouse (166). What is there not to love about this God, who sows joy and beauty even in a cross? (162).
… My friend Anne M. Carpenter reminded me that it’s easy to assent to what Cone is saying while still falling back into old biases; I can agree with Cone, stand up for him, but still lose sight of the bigger picture he represents, because it doesn’t become “mine” all at once. I am still capable of “deconverting,” time to time, from the insights God has set to work in me. It takes genuine effort to keep new truths in front of us.
Sustaining a conversion like this requires inertia beyond sanctimony. It requires something more positive than the “negative affirmations” we frequently produce, showing who we are by going to battle against the theologies that wounded us. And it requires more than the shame of feeling like we “ought to have known better” all along. It requires leaning into the joy and truth and liberation of that hard-won perspective. It requires saying what we’re for more often that what we’re against. It means trusting the truth to be attractive. It means being evangelistic, but not expository, and showing off how in love we are with what’s real.
Whatever converted us to these new horizons in the first place, it probably did not involve having our own beliefs laid bare and criticized, scoured, bankrupted. I doubt many of us have stories of shame really doing that work. More probably, our conversion began because something suddenly emerged to us as new and beautiful.
For me, that happened back in college, as I vacillated between being a young fundie and a sneering atheist—sometimes multiple times in one semester. My senior year, a friend pierced me with this question raised in his reading of Thomas Aquinas:
“What if I don’t die because I sin? What if I sin because I’m dying?”
That question, along with all its implications, changed my life. Even now I feel myself tearing up as I type it. It changed my whole idea of who God was and what he’d saved me from. It formed in me a new vision of how things could be. It helped me see the folly of what was behind me, because what was ahead of me was suddenly so beautiful.
I don’t take enough time to remember and contemplate how God emerged from those questions resplendent in the humble, wooing mercy that is the divine character; the fingers God stretches out to the world to hold onto as it toddles and evolves; the austerity with which he confronts us not for failing him but for hurting each other. More than that, he confronts the source of our hurt: our knee-jerk violence, our self-devouring, because he is not willing that any should perish. (2 Pet 3:9)
This produces love in me. It deserves to be said over and over again. To be the constant final gesture of anything critical I might say. I’ve got a lot of anger left in me about the ways we hurt each other, about the veil we’re constantly erecting between ourselves and others and this God. But if my fire doesn’t burn that veil and show the light behind it, what good is it doing? “If I have no love, I am nothing.” (1 Cor 13:1)
We so easily step outside the divine gaze that reminds us we, too, are beloved prodigals. We forget that we are also on the cusp of further questions. And though we might question those still stuck in violent theologies, hoping to provoke them to new insights, there's something about all our “correcting” that tends to disguise from us how unfinished we still are. Our questions and corrections never take on the gentle quality of pulling someone up away from their own peril to climb beside us.
We are in a new season of that struggle, here in America. Donald Trump was recently indicted as a felon, and yet his base has rallied behind him. These last 4 years, it seems we’ve convinced very few that life could be so much better if only we’d leave Trump and our violent theologies behind. That’s partly because it’s very hard to look ahead, to take in the whole political situation of our nation, and gesture to anything hopeful.
When our hope is in “what we do not see,” perhaps we should prepare ourselves not for victory, but for a “long defeat,” as
recently contemplated in a quite stunning and vulnerable piece:
We keep finding ourselves right back to the first article that started this newsletter.
Only a deep awareness and attentiveness to “what produces love in us” will carry us through the “long defeat.” Only the questions that lead us to the feet of our forgiving victim who takes our tear-streaked faces in nail-pierced hands, himself weeping, thumbing the scars of our stumblings, tumbling to the ground with us and laughing:
“You were wrong! You were wrong! About yourself, about me—you were wrong! I am not angry! Death gave me thorns, and I set them aflame! Come home with me through the fire! Come home and be at peace, be at peace, where I am making all things new!”
(Isa 27:4-5, 43:19; 1 Cor 3:15; Rev 21:5).
… So I’m going to continue from where I left off, diving into questions about the human violence that hung Jesus on the cross. The question that changed my life—“What if I sin because I’m dying?”—can only find its answers there. And I don’t know of many who’ve articulated those answers better than theologian James Alison. In my text few issues, I’ll be walking through his book The Joy of Being Wrong, as well as JPM Walsh’s The Mighty From Their Thrones, hopefully showing more of the journey that prepared me to read Cone—and to fall in love with the God of the oppressed. A God whose splendor I am grieved to so frequently disguise with my own bitterness, vexation, and desire to be right. This God who, though he is theirs before he is mine, loves me, too—even from the foundations of the world.
A while ago, Joel advised me to “lead with my joy.” I thought I knew what he meant. But I didn’t quite. I think I’m closer to getting it now. Stumbling through the “joy of being wrong,” which is always joyful when you’re stumbling out into the real.
I’m grateful to do this work under the banner of unRival Network, a non-profit organization that accompanies peacebuilders to nurture hope, inspire collaboration, and overcome destructive rivalries in a nonviolent struggle for justpeace. This newsletter is part of unRival’s mission to expand its community of regular people seeking ever-better ways of being together:
This Fall, Joel D. Aguilar Ramírez and I will be working with unRival to refresh the hearts of US-based Christian leaders buffeted by polarization but motivated by nonviolent theology and discipleship. We’re designing a safe space for doubt, wrestling, and healing together. A community for developing spiritual habits that protect us from isolation and burnout. If you value this work and want to support it or be part of it, please get in touch, and consider making a small donation to unRival: