The Mockingcast

Most people will recognize Stephen King’s It as the one about the killer clown. Which it is. But at 1100 pages, it has to be more than that, you know? In his dedication King writes: “Fiction is the truth inside the lie”—which, I’ll admit, I still don’t fully get—but that’s nevertheless a good place to begin investigating one of It’s running themes: extracting the truth from the lies, particularly the ones we tell ourselves. Centered around a group of raggle-taggle tweens, It is a story about growing up and facing fears, about selectively remembering (and discarding) our early painful memories. What the characters develop, as their first line of defense against the killer clown in question, is an elaborate but ultimately fragile method of narrative construction that carries them into adulthood: Mike Hanlon, one of the story’s protagonists, explains, “We lie best when we lie to ourselves.” It’s true for all of us. With the recent deluge of social studies concerning #confirmationbias, and with the self-righteousness of American politics cropping up wherever we look—not to mention moral dispatches from Starbucks cups—there’s never been a better time to take a second glance at the stories we tell ourselves. If spun right, “taking control of your narrative” can sound just as liberating as “taking a trip to Aruba”; but the late David Carr, in his memoir, The Night of the Gun, illustrates the exhausting side of this self-embossed coin: “You spread versions of yourself around, giving each person the truth he or she needs—you need, actually—to keep them at one remove.” So let’s get all our narratives in one place and talk about them, Friday, April 28, 3:30PM, at the 10th Annual Mockingbird Conference. We’ll discuss some of the best stories told by liars and madmen, including some by me and some by you. And—of course—we’ll talk about the great, final page-turner that illuminates the truth about us and pulls us into it, not as tragic heroes but as pardoned villains.

At last year’s NY Conference we mined deep, but there’s a ton more to share. In this breakout, we will continue to explore the world of obscure Christian funk and electronic music from yesteryear. We will learn about why early Christian hip-hop floundered so after its inception (hint: the reason is theological). And we’ll remember how radical it is to introduce a Moog into your worship band, in 1974 (!!). Then there’s Mr. T’s song about the Ten Commandments. Are you wondering what happened to Jimmy Mamou when he read the Bible in Hawaii? What about the nu-wave album that Gary Numan’s favorite guitarist made about the Holy Ghost? Or what Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s poetry sounds like when read aloud over a funky, clavinet-heavy groove? (note: Germany will be making a strong showing this year). I can’t wait to share it all with you… Praise the Lord!

The time for the most wondrous conference – the Mockingbird NYC spring conference – has rolled around again, and the powers-that-be have condescended to let me come and do a breakout session! I’m going to talk about a book I’ve been writing for 3 years now called “The Word of the Cross.” I’m very excited about this material! The Cross is our Solution? The Corinthian church was a mess. There were divisions and theological quarrels and pride about obscure knowledge. Gross sexual sins were being tolerated. Church members were suing one another. There was idolatry, overeating at potlucks, and a carnal fascination with spiritual gifts. If anyone ever talks about the early church as a model of success, they certainly don’t mean this particular early church. Paul wades into this familiar-sounding morass of fleshliness and spiritual immaturity with a very unlikely message: For I determined to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, and Him crucified (1 Cor 1:18-2:5) For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, 4 and that He was buried, and that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures (1 Cor 15:3-4) Paul considered the cross of Christ to be so important and central to this mess of a church that he began and ended his letter to them with it. In fact, he was determined to know nothing else among them, and he delivered it to them as of first importance. The question is, how does the cross of Christ speak to these terrible (if all too familiar) problems? Is it possible that the cross of Christ, far from being some obscure point of doctrine or the subject of strange and dusty old hymns, is in fact the power of God which holds the key to addressing the very real carnality and fleshliness in the church? The Word Made Flesh is a Crucified Word In the first chapter of the book of John, we learn that the “Word” which was in the beginning was with God, and was God. If Jesus Christ is the very word of God made flesh, then what is He saying to us? He didn’t just speak God’s words — He actually is God’s word. What is the message of this word of flesh and bone and blood? Of all the things He taught, there was no greater word than the cross. You can be certain that every word that Jesus spoke and every action He took was done in light of His crucifixion. When He rose from the dead, He was not raised as a completely healed man as if newborn. He retained the scars. His crucifixion has become an essential part of His identity. This preserved evidence of crucifixion was proof to the disciples of His identity, that the risen Savior is the the Savior who has suffered. He describes Himself to John in the vision as the One who was dead, who is alive forevermore (Rev 1:18). It is the Lamb standing, as if slain, who is worthy apart from all creatures, to open the scroll in the Father’s right hand (Rev 5:6). He is worthy because He was slain, and purchased men for God with His blood. (Rev 5:9). He is known as a slain lamb, and His worthiness is that He was slain. All of heaven understands the centrality of the cross of Christ. An Infinite Well of Atonement Theories There seems to be some controversy in some circles about whether this atonement theory or that atonement theory of the cross is true. I have come to think that not only are almost all of these theories true, but they are not even exclusive. The cross is speaking virtually everything that God ever wants to say to us at once – so many important and beautiful things! Far from being exclusive, these words of the cross are like the bones and sinew and organs and nerves which together make up a human body. They are like the many facets of a single exquisite diamond. They are like many rivers which come together to fill up the ocean. The cross speaks a powerful word of crushing law while at the same time it speaks a liberating word of lavish grace. The cross speaks forth perfect justice, and at once speaks forth a startling mercy. The cross speaks forth the wrath of God at the same time that it speaks forth an enduring declaration of the love of God. The cross speaks that God understands our suffering, and that our worst circumstance can be turned around to become something beautiful. The cross says that we will in Christ transcend the ever-present problem of evil within ourselves and all round about us. The cross speaks forth that God understands our suffering and is able to cause even our most grief-stricken and sorrowful times and our most shameful failures to turn out for good. The cross speaks forth a powerful grace in the form of penal substitution – for which I will give, not simply a biblical defense, but a philosophical defense. I hope everyone walks out convinced that this strange doctrine is really a very deep well of incredibly scandalous and delicious grace. In the end, the cross speaks forth a theologically profound word, and it also speaks forth a most tender and effectual pastoral word. The word of the cross speaks forth the only true transformation available to us as humans. The cross is the truest and surest word written supernaturally by the very finger of God Himself on the fabric of human history.

Perhaps the most basic piece of information about the Christian faith — so basic that in the West it is more assumed than taught, even to the unchurched — is that there is one God. We don’t have to think much about this. When somebody says they are religious, we assume that they believe in one God and not many. People might ask, “Do you believe in God?” or say, “I don’t believe in God,” but the question, “Which of the gods do you believe in?” would take most of us by surprise. It isn’t only Christians who speak of one God, of course. Jews and Muslims make a core assertion of God’s unity, but not only they. Plato could both speak of God in the singular or plural as he found it necessary. We encounter “God” or “the god” or “gods” in the writing of pagans ancient and modern, and it isn’t always clear what the difference is between these expressions. The Bible, if we read carefully, mainly complicates. The ancient Hebrew word for God (elohim) is the grammatical plural of the singular noun for a god (el), and though it often means one God, the God of Israel, sometimes the same word indicates “gods” instead. So Psalm 86:8 — “There is none like you among the gods (elohim)…” Or even more confusing, Psalm 82: “God (elohim) has taken his place in the divine (el) council; he judges in the midst of the gods (elohim).” We aren’t left in the middle of such confusion, of course. The Bible does teach (in both Old and New Testaments) that there is only one God. But if the Israelites of old struggled to maintain adherence to their singular deity, one wonders why or whether the matter has become so much simpler for us. Are we so faithful, or are we fooling ourselves? Contrary to descriptions of the modern world as having undergone “disenchantment,” of the loss of God or the gods from the public sphere, we might instead observe that the gods are as numerous as ever, though hidden under other names. Officially an atheist, Nikita Khrushchev could say, “History is on our side. We will bury you.” What sort of being is history, do you suppose, that it could have sides and determine our fate? To this we could compare Darwin’s invocation of “Selection” or modern references to “the economy” or “the market,” all-powerful forces to which we owe our lives, our intellectual homage and our labor. From this angle, our cultural assumption that there is one God (and here we might summarize the narrow vision of contemporary Western atheism as, “There is no God but God, and I don’t believe in Him”) looks like little more than a cover story, a distraction from the truth that we have multiplied gods beyond measure. It should be clear that saying there is one God, and having but one God, are not the same thing at all. This is not a question of counting — if we find ourselves more polytheistic than feels right for scrupulous Christians, it isn’t because our arithmetic went bad and we forgot to stop at one (or is it three? Three and one? Three in one? God-math is hard). In this breakout we’ll try to get our hands dirty with the question of how to have just one God in a world that has gone “very religious in every way.” To do this we’ll enlist help from as many of the gods as we can manage, learning what they have to teach, and finally observing how they appear in the light of the One preached to us as the Crucified.

“The Academy” is a term used by both insiders and outsiders to speak about the world of biblical scholarship. It is a term meant to ascribe prestige and importance to one’s profession and life work. To be a card-carrying member of “the guild” – to use another term of esteem – is to be part of an elite club of professionals trapped by the perpetual need to justify their significance. But to most people, “the academy” is a term of intimidation to create a feeling of inadequacy on the part of the so-called, non-specialist layperson, thus making the Bible and faith itself feel like something you’re not qualified to have an opinion about. Along the same lines, the last 40+ years of Pauline scholarship – with its almost iconoclastic radicalism – has so thoroughly revised the traditional understanding of Paul that many, if not most, feel unable to understand the Bible at all. This breakout session has three, related goals. I first hope to offer a pointed critique at recent interpreters of Paul and their overall practice of interpretation, particularly those within what are known as the “New Perspective on Paul,” and the “anti-imperial Paul.” By way of critical-historical inquiry, these scholars ironically offer an allegorical reading of Paul by constantly reconstructing what St. Paul really said and overlooking what he actually said. Secondly, I hope to outline a positive vision for how to read the Bible, one that views it not as a riddle to be solved by the specialist, but as a conversation partner that wants to be charitably heard on its own terms, without being overinterpreted. Finally, I will examine Galatians 3:24-25 to offer some critical self-reflection on how Paul has been understood by Luther (and, by extension, Mockingbird!).

Kendall Jenner once said, “The ache for home lives in all of us, the safe place where we can go as we are and not be questioned.” Just kidding! It was Maya Angelou who said that. But now that I have your attention, do you agree? Because I’ve had to give this topic A LOT of thought lately. My family was recently uprooted from Atlanta to Sydney, Australia because #grace, and the fallout has been…a bit of everything. No demogorgons have shown up, but that hasn’t squelched the similarities with Stranger Things because a) said comparison allows me to equate myself with Barb in our hair color and suffering; and b) this new life in the Down Under feels not totally unlike the Upside Down–absence of Winona Ryder notwithstanding–what with the disorientation, opposing seasons, and strange lighting patterns (aka Daylight Savings flipped). Kendall Jenner, Winona Ryder, and Barb: is that click-baity enough for you? Well, allow me to further tease that I’ll be providing handy keys on how not to assimilate in a foreign country, embarrassing stories about my (lack of) driving skills and language difficulties, further details of my IKEA breakdown–all as a guide to managing depression: Aussie Edition. But the big kicker will be what home means for those of us torn between an upside-down world and the Upside Down Kingdom. Spoiler alert: tons of ambivalence, a Ron Burgundy reference, cities with oceans attached. Oh, and wine. Lots of wine.

This breakout is entitled “The Reformation Today” because “Is the Reformation Over?” has already been taken by everyone writing at First Things or The Gospel Coalition. Also, because at Mockingbird we believe the answer to that question is a resounding “NO.” In order to make my pitch, I believe the shake up at the burger chain Carl’s Jr and Hardee’s has a lot to to say. For seventeen years, Carl’s Jr and Hardee’s defined their business not by amazing fast food burgers (when it comes to fast-food burgers they are the best) but instead by sexy models eating the burgers. Interestingly enough, this actually led to a drop in sales over time. A new ad campaign is throwing all that to the wind, with Carl Sr. coming back to office and taking Carl’s Jr and Hardee’s back to its roots: really, really good burgers and amazing customer service. Is the Reformation Over? It is–if the Reformation has to do with smoke machines or sermons on sex and community development. As in life, the present is never understood by looking to the future (Carl Jr.). We understand the present by looking to and understanding the past (Carl Sr.). In this breakout, we will take a trip back to our roots as Reformational Christians, and look briefly at some of the overlap between the English and German Reformations, which all came together in the person of Dr. Robert Barnes. Then using “The Reformation Essays of Dr. Robert Barnes,” we will define and answer the big question at the heart of the Reformation: “How is a person justified before God?” That is the question. That question will help the church get out of the realm of trying to be cool and get back to the “Carl Sr. of Christianity.” With this question answered, we will examine some important pastoral implication in the midst of real pastoral ministry because when this question of justification is not answered correctly the real power and strength of Christianity is lost. This breakout is for anyone, especially those who are interested in pastoral care and practicing it from a perspective of “by grace alone!”

According to the Pew Research Center (see here and here), over half of American adults who were sampled (59%) believe that, in general, science is often in conflict with religion. But “conflict” is only one way of seeing how science and religion might relate. Other possibilities include “independent”, “competition”, “dialogue”, “discussion”, “engagement”, “partnership”, “collaboration”, among others. Some, like scientist and theologian Alister McGrath, take a more nuanced approach, and describe the relationship as complementary, while historian John Hedley Brooke (writing before Facebook was a thing) simply described the relationship as: “It’s complicated”. How about you? How do you view the relationship between science and religion? We (Bonnie and Bethany) have spent a great deal of our professional and personal lives thinking about how science and religion might relate. We’ve heard people tell us that Christians can’t be scientists, on the one hand, and that theology is the queen of the sciences, on the other – and everything in between. One of us is a scientist (Bonnie) and one is a theologian (Bethany) and we’d like to invite you on a brief journey on the history of how we’ve gotten into this complicated relationship through our disciplines of psychology and theology– and more importantly, hear your thoughts on –the unanswered questions about how science and theology speak to the suffering in the world and in personal lives.

Nietzsche said that he would only believe in a “God who dances.” As Mockingbird devotees, and survivors of three marriages, Debbie and I have come to believe in a dancing God. Yet, this view of God only came after years, many years, in which we didn’t. A romantic courtship, with breathless excitement and anticipation of an American-dream marriage, quickly turned into a marriage of unmet expectations from both sides. Indeed, each of us hurt the other (albeit unintentionally) in the very fashion that would cause the most pain. We unknowingly tread upon the past hurts and expectations that each of us brought into the marriage. Our marriage devolved into separate lives with no hope of reconciliation–none. We certainly didn’t believe in a dancing God–in one who could bring dance into our marriage. We believed in a God who rewarded effort and wise decisions. We thought we had married the wrong person. In fact, we each wished that the other was dead or that we were dead. But then, the dancing God, the God we talk about at Mockingbird, stepped in. By God’s limitless grace, we both began learning of a God who knew the depths of our dark hearts–the true extent of our sinful flaws–but loved us nonetheless with His limitless, eternal love. Over the years, as we became more convinced of God’s unfathomable, eternal love for us, we began to love each other. My favorite parable is the one concerning the “treasure in the field.” Virtually always, the “treasure in the field” is construed as the Kingdom of God. Yet, when you review the parables surrounding it (the lost coin, the lost sheep), it becomes abundantly clear (as I first learned from CI Scofield) that we are the “treasure in the field,” that Christ sold everything (gave His life) to purchase. The character of a Kingdom is determined by the character of the King. This King is the savior and redeemer of individuals, of marriages, and of all creation. As Sally Lloyd Jones writes in Thoughts to Make Your Heart Sing: “God made everything in his world and in his universe and in his children’s hearts to center around him–in a wonderful Dance of Joy! It’s the dance you were born for.”

Dynamite does one thing well: it blows stuff up. Dynamite is no more than an absorbent material, such as sawdust, soaked in a highly combustible chemical called nitroglycerin. The absorbent material makes the nitroglycerin much more stable. Attached to the nitroglycerin infused sawdust is either a fuse of a blasting cap. Once lit, the fuse or cap creates a small explosion that triggers the larger explosion in the dynamite itself. Once ignited, the dynamite burns extremely rapidly and produces a large amount of hot gas in the process. The hot gas expands very quickly and applies pressure, and thus blows up or explodes. The Greek word dynamis (δύναμις) is commonly translated as “power of God.” A college professor of mine once smacked his hands down loudly on the podium and said: “the Gospel is dynamite, exploding faith into the heart of the believer by the power of the Holy Spirit.” The Gospel, to me, from that day on, has been dynamite. It blows up the Old Adam and creates from the rubble the New Man who by faith stands in Christ alone. The idea that it was the Gospel of Christ––either through the stand-alone proclaimed Word, or the Word as it is connected to water in Holy Baptism or the bread and wine, body and blood, in Holy Communion––as the Means of Grace (media gratiae) through which God brings sinners to Himself was an idea unique to the Reformation. The idea itself is simple but carries with it immense implications. If God blows up my Old-Adam with the dynamite of the Gospel, then it is His work that saves from beginning to end. I do nothing to save myself; He does everything. This has always vexed Christians, especially new Christians. If God has saved me of His accord and His work on account of Christ, what can I do now for God? How can I serve Him? How can I say thank you? Often, the answer to this question leaves the questioner disappointed. The answer is, God doesn’t need your service. He is the almighty creator of heaven and earth. By His Word, all things were made that have been made. By His Word, He performs great miracles. By His Word, your Old Adam is constantly blown up with the dynamite of the Gospel. You need Him; He doesn’t need you. The Reformers had an answer for this one too. The Reformers realized that it was not the monks and priests of the church that were doing “super works” to please God. They saw that the everyday person served God, but did so in a way that had not previously been recognized. The Reformers called this the doctrine of vocation. We are all called to freely love and serve those whom God has called into our lives. We don’t always recognize the form that this service will take. And we certainly serve them imperfectly; often badly. Sometimes this service will look like changing a diaper. Sometimes it will be getting a cup of coffee for your spouse. (Thus, some of the most common and important vocation are being a dad or mom, husband or wife.) Sometimes it’s telling someone that you love them. Sometimes it’s standing next to a friend as they bury a loved one. The one thing we know is that it will probably look very standard, and will likely be difficult to recognize as “unique.” To quote Gerhard Forde as he tries to explain Luther’s ideas on this topic: “Whatever call there might be for more extreme action, it must be remembered that Luther’s idea is that first and foremost one serves God by taking care of his creation.” (Gerhard Forde, A More Radical Gospel) So then, the Gospel is the dynamite that constantly blows up the Old Adam in us, and then God uses the rubble to, by the work of the Holy Spirit, build up saving faith, trust, in our hearts saving us on account of Christ alone. He then calls people into our lives, inviting us to love them and be loved in return, serve them and be served in return, all through the ordinary everyday motions of our daily, often boring lives. This is the Christian vocation. When we fail––and we do––he forgives once more through the dynamite of salvation, the Gospel of Christ.