WHY DO THE INNOCENT SUFFER?

In graduate studies at New College Berkeley, I took a course on Job from the Bible scholar Francis I. Andersen. He let two assignments determine our grade. At the outset was a short essay about the suffering of the innocent. The final was to be a fully developed argument defending our personal response to this question, “Did the Lord answer Job?” With his permission I wrote an interpretive summary in drama called The Lord Answered Job, which so impressed him that he mentioned it in that year’s commencement address. Recently I put the drama on my website to be read or performed by anyone interested.

I had been reading Job on the day of the Connecticut massacre. That tragedy gave the question “Why do the innocent suffer?” a fresh context. My initial answer for Dr. Andersen’s class has not changed: God makes the best possible choice, to intervene or not to intervene, by thoroughly evaluating the direct and indirect effects resulting from the infinitesimally complex interplay of the following elements:

• Every single person involved or in any way touched by the incident in question.
• The impact of every past prayer, present choice, or future action of these individuals on all others with whom they are connected now or will be later.
• His omniscient decision to keep the world existing as it is until an ultimately unfavorable balance of evil over good makes prolonging its potential history unjustifiable.
• Each direct or indirect effect that the aftermath of the earthly incident in question will have on the environment and inhabitants of the afterlife.
• Any other interactive elements that God would need take into consideration for His decision. (If others come to mind, please mention them to me in a comment.)

“No man is an island, entire of itself,” wrote John Donne, “every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. . . . any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bells tolls; it tolls for thee.”

The film classic It’s a Wonderful Life was based on this idea—how one person’s life and actions crucially affect everyone and everything around them. More recently the book Five People You Meet in Heaven—also made into a movie—expounded this same theme. Somehow, “God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose.” (Romans 8:28).

When Abraham asked God, “Will not the Judge of all the earth do right?” (Genesis 18:25), he already knew the answer. We may not see how the intertwined relationships of people, or the ongoing effects of their choices, relate to specific tragedies. But when the innocent suffer, we can be sure that God chose the best of all possible bad choices. Yes, BAD CHOICES!

In an environment where people can behave selfishly, an array of bad possibilities are all God has to choose from, unless He decides to cancel free will. Since He won’t do that, all His decisions must deal with the reality of a fallen race living in a world groaning with earthquake and storm under the curse of human sin. Instead of abandoning this sinful mess, God employs His love and wisdom to make, from among all the bad alternatives, exactly the right long-term selection in every situation.

But God did not hang aloof from this knot of interwoven human suffering. The Incarnation is His ultimate answer to our questions about His allowance of suffering. God knows exactly how it feels to be an innocent human being suffering cruelty at the hands of insane powers and fanatical injustice. His divinity diminished none of the pain that cried out, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” (Mark 15:34). His pain did not dim the divine love behind His prayer for the persecutors who mocked Him, “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do.” (Luke 23:34).

As far as the suffering of the innocent or the injustice of some of our own pains, God is patient with our doubts about the rightness of His choosing to let them happen. After we reach the afterlife, He has an eternity to explain His reasons. But it might absorb a few eons of our heavenly bliss for God to unravel for our finite understanding what was obvious to Him in the fragment of a nanosecond. He could start with the closest and end with most distant contingencies related to the event in question, showing us one-by-one the weight of each in the cosmic balance of good over evil. When the last interconnected item is measured, we will invariably sigh that long interjection of acknowledgment that C. S. Lewis said would be one of the most familiar utterances heard in Heaven: “Oh-h-h. . . .”

Over the years, I’ve had many why questions I wanted to ask God someday. But as I grow older, they become fewer—not because they’ve decreased in number, but because I’ve increased in trust that the God of all the earth will do right. And if there remains any pains, any open wounds, any vestiges of grief, any tearful sorrows, He has already promised to wipe them out so thoroughly that they will hurt us no more (Revelation 21:4). Beyond the astronomically long explanation we might receive for our questions and doubts, such an ultimate and absolute comfort for affliction is as much as can be provided by God’s perfect love and wisdom, given the reality of unalterably interrelated human choices and actions in a fallen world.

BEYOND SAME-SEX ATTRACTION

The condition of same-sex attraction (SSA) is not synonymous with the campaign of gay activism. In fact, gay politics has been notoriously unkind to those whose perplexity with SSA causes them to pray for a transformation that would bring opposite-sex attraction. I'm writing this both to validate those hoping God will answer such prayers and to invalidate the arrogant dogmatism of those trying to discourage them.

Gay activists, following a plan documented as far back as the 1970s, have infused their agenda into almost every agency of social influence. Yet true science still thwarts their attempt to make SSA a new “norm.” Atypical examples extracted from nature to authenticate homosexuality are not norms of the natural order, but rarities. Political leverage alone turns them into mandates for redefining human sexuality.

Profiting from its momentum in destabilizing the ancient, trans-cultural concept of marriage, gay activists are now working to eliminate the social vocabulary that differentiates gender into “male” and “female.” This makes science the next logical target for political deconstruction, since this terminology is categorically scientific. As far as gay logistics, science has always created obstacles. It categorizes homosexual behavior itself as psycho-social in origin, not biologically natural. Science defines sexuality in mammals only in terms of complementary sexes. As far as sexual union, it doesn't occur except from joining the reproductive components of opposite, not identical, genders.

No, nature won’t march to the beat of a fictional drum, even to placate power politics. Lesbian couples still get pregnant the physiologically correct way: by uterine implantation of a female egg fertilized by a male sperm. Indeed, SSA may initiate an interpersonal bond between those of the same gender. Using the genitals to express that relationship can even bring mutual orgasmic pleasure. But the absence of real sexual union forbids true science from calling such intercourse sexual, just as all traditional cultures refuse to acknowledge such a union as a sexual marriage. The body’s biology and history's collective cultural wisdom are not tricked by modern emotional or political semantics.

Despite the above arguments, it may soon become a political hate crime to call persons “male” or “female.” But isn’t hate also a motive in the obliteration of scientific terms for gender distinction? Perhaps hate is too harsh a word. Anger might be more accurate. Where’s the anger about SSA really coming from? Obviously many are disgruntled by the gay agenda. But what about those who are experiencing SSA?

How upsetting it must be for someone with SSA to live in a body whose every cell ceaselessly exclaims, “I am physically a male!” or “I am physically a female!” The irritation has led some to try smothering the loud voice of their visible anatomy with hormones and reconstructive surgery. But from cradle to grave, nothing can stifle the cry of gender-identity embedded in DNA. Without exception, the same genes that determine the development of a person’s sexually distinct body parts reside in every single cell of the body.

The truth is that there definitely is hope for change, hope for healing. Why? Because God’s grace is still amazing! But the steps to hope and grace are also logical and understandable. One of those healed through the Pastoral Care Ministries seminars (now Ministries of Pastoral Care) started by Leanne Payne was Mario Bergner, who wrote Setting Love in Order: Hope and Healing for the Homosexual. He and several other PCM speakers, whose talks are available on CD, formerly had SSA and are cogently articulate in leading others out of it.

The emotional pain of this conflict between brain and body is understandable, for the unity of body and soul is a measure of psychological well-being. But the body’s incessant contention that the brain’s SSA is biologically incongruent with one’s physical sex cannot be silenced by politics. Even if the meaning of gender becomes as thoroughly altered as the original concept of the word gay, political redefinition can bring no true bio-psychical peace. Distorting gender distinction to soothe intrapersonal pain is as cruel as calling the body’s discord with SSA gaiety to make the brain laugh. For those wishing their SSA could be banished, neither is helpful nor humorous.

The cruelest aspect of gay activism’s power, however, is in how effectively it blocks those who wrestle with this internal anguish from seeking a reversal of SSA. At all costs, testimonies of real change through therapy, either human or divine, must be suppressed. A new normal will not survive, if there’s legitimate hope for healing. Those who claim it must be portrayed as impostors. Those who proclaim it must be labelled as perpetrators of homophobic hate. All is lost if dreams of therapeutic reintegration with his or her gendered body can really come true for the person with SSA.To maintain its credibility, the gay political platform must mentally barricade any exit the gay lifestyle. “Once gay, always gay, to your dying day!” Fortunately, such dogmatic slogans are just noisy smoke billowing from a feverish fear of the truth.

God wants us all to be whole spiritually, psychologically, and physically. For now, bodily healing is temporary and limited—becoming ultimate only in future resurrection. But God provides for wholeness of spirit and soul during this life. When SSA leads to sins of sexual immorality, He offers forgiveness. But in itself, SSA is not a sin. It’s merely one of the many human conditions that need the divine healing which God's grace brings into our fallen world. The problem has never been God’s inability to save and heal, but always our reluctance or resistance to come to Him.

People with SSA need to know they have a choice. Yes, they can choose to trust in gay politics to make them “feel better” with new meanings for words like marriage or gender. Or they can put their faith in the hope offered by Jesus Christ, the Savior and Healer, Who asks everyone of us the same question: “Do you want to get well?” (John 5:6).

GRATIFICATION, GRATITUDE AND THANKSGIVING

For our survival, the Creator designed us with certain thirsts and hungers that cause pain unless they are satisfied. Ravenous infants will escalate their fussiness to high-pitched screaming, if parents ignore their need to eat. As we grow up, this need for personal gratification reaches beyond physical appetite to psychological and spiritual longings. Indeed pain may result from these human desires, as Buddhism teaches, but life is sustained not by denying them, but by fulfilling them in the right way.

Part of that right way is for gratification to produce gratitude. The sensation of quenching thirst is a personal experience. Feeling grateful to the person who handed us the glass of water is a relational experience. The capacity for both these feelings were built into us by God to keep us alive and to keep us in love.
Gratitude is basic to the survival of loving relationships. But it cannot remain just a frame of mind. For it to be authentic, it must be authentically expressed. The attitude of gratitude must become the action of thanksgiving. Giving thanks releases the real power in gratitude, for it communicates an atmosphere of communion and community. It draws people together.

Saying “thank you” is the fulfillment of feeling thankful. Hearing someone say it is even more important, because our need for being appreciated is also divinely built-in. In fact, learning that others are grateful for who we are and what we do is very gratifying. This is why mutual thanksgiving is so important in life both for creating a pleasant social environment and for sustaining personal satisfaction.

This is why those who are gratified with many good things in life are never fulfilled unless they become grateful to the Giver of all good gifts. Thanksgiving to other people is the basis of relational health, but thanksgiving to our Maker is the bottom line in religious devotion. Never forget that God is a Person, and we are persons only because we are created in His image. The real reason we find expressed gratitude gratifying is because God does. It’s part of human happiness because it’s part of what makes Heaven heavenly.

“YOU MEAN. . .MEN ACT LIKE BABIES?”

I know God has patience with Christian teachers who support or promote a worldly, sex-obsessed view of female breasts, because He did with me. I used to parrot the “moral majority” by defiling my Gospel preaching with a message that unwittingly portrayed women and their breasts as sex objects. This cultural idolatry pervades the American church. God has already passed judgment on this pornographic view of the body by turning over our nation to the scourge of porn addiction that inevitably results from it.

Blind to how culture shapes thinking, many Christians teach that men are compelled by the sin nature to lust at the sight of women’s bodies, especially their breasts. If this doctrine was true, it would eliminate from fallen humanity all societies where breasts are customarily naked in public. This ridiculous falsehood is further exposed by the response to it from these cultures themselves.

Carolyn Latteier, the author of Breasts, The Women’s Perspective on an American Obsession, wrote that “we do have a peculiar obsession with breasts in this culture. A lot of people think it’s just the human nature to be fascinated with breasts, but in many cultures breasts aren't sexual at all. I interviewed a young anthropologist working with women in Mali, a country in Africa where women go around with bare breasts. They’re always feeding their babies. And when she told them that in our culture men are fascinated with breasts, there was an instant of shock. The women burst out laughing. They laughed so hard, they fell on the floor. They said, “You mean, men act like babies?”

This false theology may sound funny to them, but to me it’s emasculating. As a man who has helped tens of thousands of women nurse their newborns, I’ve never lost any male appreciation for the beauty of breasts or for the part they play in God’s awesome design of femininity. Yet, even at the outset of my nursing career, I realized I wasn’t reacting to them in the lustful way I’d been taught to expect! My culture had fed me a lie, and that deception came most consistently from the same lips that preached the Christian Gospel.

The bottom line is “we’ve acted like babies!”—not in a ludicrous way that made bare-breasted women in Mali laugh—but with such utter immaturity that we should be shedding tears. How could we, who claim to honor the Creator, so decadently degrade His anatomical wisdom and artistic design in the female breast? How could we—by social and religious precept—lead generation after generation of children to turn their natural, wholesome attraction to breasts into a lifelong perverted obsession? This ungodly behavior calls for repentance!

Immodesty isn’t the occasionally naked breast but the exploited one, strategically hidden or partially revealed by social custom. The habit of making breasts visible only for sexual activity socially defines them as avenues of sexual enticement. More modesty is shown when they’re laid bare for nursing on a crowded subway, exposed for modeling in an art class, or uncovered for sunning on a clothing optional beach. Treating unclad body parts realistically and respectfully is always modest. But when clothing is unnaturally trusted as a moral prevention for lust, then immodesty infects a whole culture, as it has ours. Our mistaken morality wraps the body up in a fantasy that tempts sinners and saints alike. I believe God abhors it.

Did you grow up with our culture’s pornographic view of breasts. Your only hope of expelling it from your mind and heart is by learning to see breasts the way their Designer does. His view is the truth, and only the truth will set you free.

(This article was originally written for the MCAG Blog. For further reading, see “Teaching God’s Design for Breasts—A Message about the ‘Visible Breast’ for Christian Leaders,” and “The Pornographic View of the Body.”)

THE SUPERSTITIOUS FAITH OF EVOLUTIONISM

I just finished an exceptional book, Anatomy of Movement, written by a French dancer-turned-physiotherapist. Its pages helped me visualize that dimension of the musculoskeletal system most often skimmed over by anatomy books: the dynamics of movement. This intelligent woman’s review of virtually every aspect of human mobility inspired my praise for the awesome craftsmanship of our Creator. How sad that she herself repeatedly attributed this marvelous interplay of bone, joint, ligament and muscle to an evolutionary series of cosmic accidents.

I’m not criticizing her any more than I would a parrot for mimicking its master. A powerful educational oligarchy groomed her to speak only the language of its sacred dogma, or to suffer political and academic shame. She’s a smart lady, but a victim of religious superstition.

Let’s be realistic. Darwinian evolutionism is not and can never become science. It’s merely a philosophy based on faith in presumptively interpreted archaeological data. Evolutionists freely exploit their position in the scientific community or their tenure among the academic elite to claim “science” as the basis of their beliefs. This not only deceives the gullible minds of a modern world, but prostitutes real science by trivializing the scientific method.

Evolutionists know that their belief system depends on a large array of unproven hypotheses. Not one of their proposed “guesses” are capable of ever qualifying as a legitimate scientific theory. In any discussion of orthodox science, intelligent evolutionists are obliged to confess this. Yet that fact doesn’t stop their bold preaching from textbook pulpits that evolution “developed this” anatomical marvel or “created that” physiological mechanism. Why can’t they just be honest and say they proclaim Evolution as Creator—or get really honest and admit they believe that Chance or Accident is God?

When evolutionistic faith sees similarities in the anatomical and physiological data of life on Earth, it claims that an infinitesimally long series of reproductive accidents brought forth all this biological diversity from a single ancestral cell. Theistic faith looks at these similarities and deems them compositions by the same Divine Artist. Evolutionists have called such belief in an invisible personal Deity “superstition.” But a small group of heretics have arisen from among them to challenge the academic status quo with the very same accusation. These disobedient scientists are using their brains and seeing Intelligent Design (ID).

A media well-catechized to parrot Darwinian faith has done much to slander ID scientists. But the obvious won’t go away, and that’s why these critically-thinking rebels dared to break from the pack in the first place. They saw the gross superstition in imagining that time and chance could produce the trillions of intricate complexities that comprise biological life on our planet.

Keep rolling a thousand mindless dice for a billion years. What are the odds of them all coming up “snake eyes”? Even if they finally did, what you’ve got is not the whole eyeball, folks, but just the retina. Yes, and that little bit of realism is not something evolutionists like to discuss. The enormous stretch of the imagination for the accidental production of the whole human body becomes hilariously preposterous. One biochemist converted to faith in ID when he realized that the statistical possibility for a linear series of necessary accidents to evolve the hemoglobin molecule would be one chance out of the number of atoms in the known universe.

The ID scientist is like an astronaut who lands on a planet and finds a strange but beautifully crafted vehicle resting on a plain not far from a dormant volcano. He tells his fellow astronaut that there must be intelligent inhabitants. The evolutionist is like the first one’s partner. After examining a nearby lava bed and finding the vehicle composed of the same volcanic material, he calls the first astronaut superstitious and says that the volcano must have spat that thing out. When the first questions the chances of that happening, the second dodges by saying, “Well, I don’t see any intelligent inhabitants around . . .do you?”

It’s way past time for atheistic evolutionists to give up their “scientific” hoax and confess their hypocrisy. Academic pushers of evolutionism have been calling theistic believers in a Creator “superstitious” long before ID scientists ever came on the scene. Yet all along these atheists knew they couldn’t offer a single example from the real world that illustrates how Nature's elaborate complexity could have arisen by chance from simplicity. Meanwhile, theists—and now ID scientists—have at arm's reach millions of human designs in everyday life that illustrate how an Intelligent Mind stands behind the fine-tuned sophistication of anatomical structure and physiological process actually involved in biological life.

People, wake up. Isn’t it obvious by now which group of believers has been religiously bowing its knee to Superstition?

(For my own testimony about leaving evolutionism when I discovered it took too much faith to accept, read “Journey to the Center of My Heart.”)

GOD’S INTERACTION WITH HUMAN WILLS

Triune Deity enjoys perpetual fellowship. Other concepts of God are lonely ones. The Trinity has no essential need for personal relationship beyond Their eternal Society of Three. Yet Scripture reveals that God desires to interact with the world He created, especially with faith decisions made by the world of humanity (John 3:16).

The Bible never bothers explaining any theological problems raised by its descriptions of this divine desire or by its expectation of true responsiveness between divine and human wills that make this desire genuine. Some forms of theology actually reduce the freedom of human choice—and God’s interaction with it—to an illusion. God’s Word, they reason, reports these mutually free dealings as authentic only to accommodate our limited understanding of His omniscience and sovereignty.

Such theological reasoning about God is human-unfriendly. The Bible, on the other hand, is not. In fact, Scripture often depicts God legitimately interested in how we respond to His directives, to His Presence, to His Person. If the biblical revelation is accurate, then God has sovereignly chosen to let human decisions inform His omniscience, and human actions in time move His will in eternity. Otherwise, biblical narratives of God’s activity seem as fictitious as fables or as illusory as the maya of Hinduism.

For instance, was God merely play-acting when, after having “formed out of the ground all the wild animals and all the birds in the sky,” He “brought them to the man to see what he would name them”? Genesis 2:19 says that “whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name.” God made but did not name any creatures. He let man name them. This verse literally shows God desiring to learn those names. Later, not only does He use them Himself whenever talking about animals, but He also adopted at least two for His own incarnate identity: “Lamb of God” (John 1:29) and “Lion of the tribe of Judah” (Revelation 5:5). Man invented those names. God responded to their invention in time by incorporating them into His own eternal vocabulary and by later naming Himself with a couple of them. That thought is something to chew on.

There’s an even greater biblical example of God identifying Himself with a human response to Him. Coming to Jacob in a dream, God announced, “I am the God of Bethel, where you anointed a pillar and where you made a vow to me.” (Genesis 31:13a). He was referring back to the time when Jacob did those things in response to His self-revelation (Genesis 28:10-22). Jacob renamed the location where it happened from “Luz” to “Bethel,” he performed a ritual anointing to consecrate a stone, and he made a solemn vow to the Lord. God told him to do none of these things. They were all Jacob’s own ideas. Yet God adopted Jacob’s creative responses to Him, making them into part of His own identity. The Lord, the Maker of Heaven and Earth, will forever be “the God of Bethel.” He sovereignly chose it as one of His titles for eternity, because of his interaction with human faith in time. He may have done exactly the same thing with many of your own faith encounters with Him. How human-friendly that is!

Another report of God’s reaction to our response to Him is given in Malachi 3:16 (ESV), “Then those who feared the LORD spoke with one another. The LORD paid attention and heard them, and a book of remembrance was written before him of those who feared the LORD and esteemed his name.” This verse is amazing! It shows that an eternally omniscient God is listening in on our conversations in time, because He’s concerned about what we have to say to each other about Him. He’s so excited about our discussion that he makes sure it gets it eternally recorded!

God certainly needs no notebook to jot down our devotional conversations to jog His memory. They probably were not written to remind Him, but to educate us. Some of us have a stubborn theology that undermines the authenticity of His open-ended interactions with humans. He wants it known in eternity that He did not determine our responses—He danced with them. His earthly interactions with us were all real, not just contrived accommodations for the frailty of our fallen and depraved human minds.

During His heavenly review of our lives and of the many unworthy trusts we held sacred, God may have to point out to many this human-unfriendly belief adamantly held and taught about His dealings with humans. This “book of remembrance” mentioned by Malachi will forever condemn the shame of such a theological allegiance.

When we live in a world where its Creator treats our decisions and actions with as much integrity as He expects us to treat His own, we live in a human-friendly world. In the midst of the trials and troubles brought about by human sin, faith in such a God makes the journey not just tolerable but joyous.

THE MYSTERY OF CHRIST’S ATONEMENT

It may interest, anger, befuddle or flabbergast you, but there’s no one specific view of Christ’s atonement that fully explains the spiritual transaction in history and in eternity that transpired at the Cross of Calvary. It remains as mysterious as the doctrines of the Trinity or the Incarnation.

Those interested can survey the various theories of the Atonement on the Web. My purpose here is not to recount them, but to decry how so many Bible teachers haughtily assume theirs to be the right one: “How dare anyone question the legal-penal substitution theory? Doesn’t it undergird all our evangelical preaching?” A better question is, “How could the church even use the word atonement to describe what happened on the Cross?” Most theologians readily admit that it’s a major misappropriation of terminology in Christian thinking, but also that it's a term we're stuck with.

In the Old Testament usage of the Hebrew word atonement (kaphar, “to cover over”) is a concept of hiding sin’s guilt by covering it with the blood of animal sacrifices. Ecclesiastic prudery insists that God clothed the first sinners with animal skins to approve or accommodate the very first independent idea and action of their sin nature: a felt need to hide their bodies. A view more in keeping with His gracious character is that God was providing His delinquent image-bearers either physically—with warmth and protection in a fallen world—or spiritually—with the first recorded kaphar, an atonement or covering for their sin.

Not only is the concept of atonement etymologically absent from the New Testament, but a new idea is introduced. We first hear it from the lips of John the Baptist upon seeing Jesus at the Jordan: “Behold! The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!” (John 1:29). Jesus came to take away sins, not to cover over them, which was all that animal sacrifices could do. These sacrificial repetitions, year after year, only reminded sinners that personal guilt was put away from sight not taken away (Hebrews 10:4-5). Jesus accomplished the latter.

But how did the transaction at the Cross work? Was it a debt repayment, a redemptive trade-off, a substituted punishment, an absorption of divine wrath? A narrow focus on the Cross alone, in conjunction with certain Scriptures, might elevate any of these motifs to the exclusion of others. But there is a larger picture, one that weaves the Cross and the Resurrection into one solid and inseparable tapestry of redemption. That is the ransom or restoration theory of the Atonement.

In Gustaf Aulén’s book, Christus Victor, I learned that this understanding of the Atonement dominated Christian thought for the first millennium of Church history. C. S. Lewis employed it as the basis for his allegorical representation of the death of Christ in Aslan’s death for “the traitor” and subsequent resurrection in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. When I first read Christus Victor, I was inspired to write the following poem with the same title, as an attempt to capture this idea of strategic ransom:

            CHRISTUS VICTOR

Drawn into a web of darkness,

Duped and drugged with sin's seduction,

Down we drank the Devil's lie

And were lost within the starkness

Of a wasteland of destruction,

Damned and doomed, condemned to die.

Love Almighty, Love Creator,

Love, Who breathed His image in us,

Love, the awesome Trinity,

Planned to foil the Fabricator,

Planned to plunder hell and win us

By strategic mystery.

God descended and invaded

Human flesh and limitation,

Preaching Heaven's Reign begun,

Waging war where sin pervaded,

Buying reconciliation,

Tasting death for everyone.

Had they known the power hidden

In the Lion's crucifixion,

Hell would not have killed the Son.

Now the human race is bidden

To depart from self-addiction

Through the victory Jesus won.

Christus Victor!  God descended

To fulfil the Law's postponement.

Slain, He slew the death we died!

Christ is risen!  God ascended!

Sinners, purchased by atonement,

Rise with Christ, the Crucified!

Christ Triumphant!  Christus Victor!

Captives freed by hell's disruption

Soar like eagles taking wing!

Ransomed by the Liberator,

Slaves to sin and death's corruption

Gain new life in Christ the King!

            -- David L. Hatton, 11/21/95

Because of its heavy dependence on a realistic view of the Incarnation, this atonement theory has quietly influenced the development of my theological thinking. Yet, in general, I forgot my initial excitement in discovering it . . . until recently, when I saw the video clip of Brian Zahnd giving, “The Gospel in Chairs.” I encourage you to watch it, maybe more than one time. If it doesn’t immediately blow your mind, then ask yourself, “Does how I view and preach the Cross accurately represent the heart of the Heavenly Father who ‘so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son’?” You may find yourself reaching back to the minds and helpful illustrations of our early Christian ancestors for a balanced view of this mystery.

It’s important to approach unfathomable mysteries in the Christian faith with deep reverence and godly humility. Glib confidence and sometimes outright cockiness in Christians mouthing their beliefs may not only be a turn-off for the prospective convert, but a point of great future embarrassment, or even tears of regret, in the presence of our risen, conquering King, Christus Victor.