Thanks for that nice piece of essay about Total Hostility and the Consuming Love of Jesus.

That was quite perceptive and insightful. I wish to engage you in a deeper comment especially about the response which i find quite vitriolic, prejudiced and to a certain extent personal.

It was succintly poignant of you to write that in your broken heart, God gave you a bigger heart to contain the love of God and for His people. JESUS actually said that “unless a kernel of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it does not bear fruit; but when it dies, it bears ten, twenty, thirty, a hundredfold”.

When our brokenness are due to an experience of the efficacious love of Christ, and when that brokenness is brought by the Triune God into our crucified lives, then we truly manifest what you have written: an exploded heart that is big enough to contain Him and His people.

May your tribe increase!

I believe the previous entry has a lot of inconsistencies both from theological underpinnings and empirical bases.

When the Anabaptists left England for America, what did they purpose to do? Wasn’t it to establish a society and a country where they could practice their faith in freedom? These Christians did not come to America purposedly to “steal, kill and destroy” being the persecuted Church that they were in England. Marxist ideology proposed a look at Historical Materialism as basis for analysis. But even Israel was taught to have a good sense of history. Why did the Founding Fathers stated in their currency the words “In God We Trust”? Was that not an expression of their faith in the God that they sought in America?

If the love of Jesus had consummated us in the first place, where have all the 500 years of Reformation gone by? Where are the years from Wilberforce to Martin Luther King to John Perkins? If we are consummated by that love, how come we still have to have books like Consuming Jesus? Because that Consuming Love of Jesus would have us taught “By this shall men know that you are my disciples: if you have love one for another… A new commandment i give you: love one another” and that command transcends race, culture or ethnicity.

The reality is that, yes, the victory is won- but it is NOT YET! It is NOW, it is ALREADY, but it is still NOT YET.

But it is both presumptuous and naive to think that we “strive to continually draw into His success story”? How does that play into what Paul said “It is God who wills you to do and to act according to His good purpose”?

Do men really come to God and seek Him to be consummated by His love? Think again.

It is certainly easier to look at the issue of Church and racism when one is white (whether blond, brunette or what-have-you) blue-eyed and enjoying the creature comforts of organized religion- while at the same time condemning it for being “self-righteous”. It is harder when your color of skin, or language accent, or cultural difference, is a barrier to a deeper fellowship, a more intimate friendship, a greater love, yes, even in the Christian Church . It is even more painful to realize that even when the Church tries to do “things” to abate racial divisions and discrimination, such actions tend to become but “projects” to make the white men feel good, look good and sleep well at night.

It is interesting to note that when John Perkins talked at the Chapel, one can count within the number of the fingers of hands and toes the visible minority present for whom the message of breaking down cultural barriers and divisions were being preached. One implication could be that the predominantly large number of Caucasians listening to and applauding the message of racial reconciliation are offsprings who are paying for the sins of their fathers? Or could it be that such efforts at reconciling cultures and races fall short and are not sustained because they do not emanate from the very people who are supposed to benefit from such efforts? I.e., There are how many John Perkins in the Christian Church today who are bringing in reconciliation in a positive and sustainable ways?

Interestingly, breaking down racial divisions is not only between blacks and whites but also among the Hispanics, the Asians, the Middle eastern races, in fact, every conceivable race in the Christian Church. So, in our churches, are we reflecting that kind of racial and cultural diversity? Especially in the Pacific Northwest, are we as diverse as we say we are? How far have come in expressing the Consuming Love of Jesus that does not disappoint by means of racial diversity in our Churches? A lot of times, we are simply one-generational, one-two racial churches. Thus, Dr. Metzger was right and prophetic: we are always wrapped up in predominantly white, upwardly mobile, economically well-off groups and we need to get out of this cocoon. Again, ships in a harbor are safe but that’s not what ships were made for.

The world wants this salvation? Really? So it is wrong exegesis to cite the Bible:

1. If the world hates you, remember that it hated me first (JESUS, John 17);
2. Men hated the Light because their deeds were evil (1 John )
3. Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? (James)
4. Do not love this world nor anything of this world; if anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him; for everything of this world: the lust of the eyes, the lust of the flesh, the pride of life, the boasting of what one has and does- all these things come from the world. (I John 2)
5. The Light shone in the darkness but the darkness has not understood it. (John 1)
6. And though the world was made through Him, the world did not recognize Him. He came to that which was His own, but His own did not receive Him (John 1)
6. Etc., etc., etc.

I think it is correct to say that the world needs the Consuming love of Jesus but it is incorrect to presuppose that the world wants that love. It was and still is God who took the initiative and continually seeks to win fallen humanity into the warmth of His embrace. That is why we say, we are not simply Totally Depraved, our carnal minds are also Totally Hostile to God and things of the Triune God.

There go my Biblical citations for Total Hostility.

The world does not want salvation but God so loved the world that he gave His only begotten Son. It was and still is God who loved the world. This world is under the sphere and influence of the demonic powers and without the “love of JESUS poured out in our hearts”, it will not be able to distinguish its left from its right.

Isn’t it inconsistent to note that the same saving love of God leads Christians to an “illogical conclusion” about the love of Christ? It is the most logical conclusion that those who believe in the love of God would die for it. Someone said, “If anyone has nothing worth dying for, then he/she has nothing worth living for.” The logical conclusion of “I want to know Christ and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in His suffering” is “I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live” , “I fought the good fight; i have kept the faith” (days before being beheaded in Rome).

But then again, what right does a brown-skinned, heavily-accented believer have to argue against those who have grown up in fully American structured religion who believe that their government is the “policeman of the world”? The unassumed is the unhealed.

If you really want to understand us, live with us, laugh with us, cry with us; eat our food, wear our clothing, feel our pain from the oppressin and tyranny, dance in our weddings, sing our dirges, walk barefooted on the the grassy soil we travel and toil, be one with us, be one amongst us…

Then, you have earned the right to be heard nad respected; then we are healed, because you have assumed our frailties…

If not Now, WHEN? If not Us, WHO WILL?

MORITURI TE SALUTAMUS! (“We who are about to die salute you!”) Mabuhay Ka!

Kelsi, I agree, we say things we don’t mean. We are great pretenders. I love t hear that that shallow religiosity is under scrutiny. The Church fools itself by creating a segregated Sunday, only propogating the countries already rampant race and class divisions. I however do not agree with the previous entry, that “Had “God’s love that has been poured into our hearts” been more dominant and dominating than the natural human tendency of “total hostility” towards God, the ideals of “all men created equal” and that all men having the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness would have prevailed.” The issue isn’t that God’s love failed us and that somehow because of that we are now faced with sin and the repercussions of a fallen world. Quite wrong, I beleive Christ in his outpouring was, is and will be victorious and I believe that the original speaks to that. One of the reasons that our diviciseness so plaques me and others, Christian or not, is because Christ rose, He claims victory. Why do we behave as though He failed us, that His love isn’t enough. Perkins mentioned in chapel that we have made the Gospel too small, that it isn’t big enough for racism. Because we know what God has done for us and saved our individual souls we must recognize how he seeks to reconcile our stuctures. Our total hostility cannot be greater than His outpouring of love and we strive continually to draw into his success story, running not alone but with our Church, His bride in tow. I agree the world wants this type of salvation, structural and individual. We must confess though that being Christian and honestly following Him, like you mentioned, is brutal. What is strange is that I have a broken heart now, He gave me a heart, when I had none, healed me and then exploded that heart to contain Him and His people. Some would say that’s amazing, but I see Christians take His love to its “illogical conclusion” and it breaks them for Christ and for others. What beauty.

In the theology of affections, it was not a battle against the will of a young nation to welcome the wretched refuse of foreign shores. It was that the desire to express that “hope that does not disappoint” was overcome by the desire to practice Martin Luther’s incurvitas in se. Had “God’s love that has been poured into our hearts” been more dominant and dominating than the natural human tendency of “total hostility” towards God, the ideals of “all men created equal” and that all men having the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness would have prevailed.

What is sad though is that this is not secular America that has advocated about ethnocentricity and the survival of the fittest: it is the same America whose forefathers came into this new continent to exercise the freedom to express their all-consuming love for the Triune God (“In God We Trust”).

A cliche says it for us, “Those who do not learn from the mistakes and the sins of the past are bound to repeat the same in the future.”

Like Ancient Israel who has to wander 40 years in the wilderness because of the stubbornness and hardness of their hearts, and their short memories about what God has done for them, Church-ian America continues to downplay and ignore class and racial tensions and divisions. And the many who are misled offer their children to be consumed by the Molechs of commercialism and consumerism, seemingly oblivious to the signs of the times but believing that ignoring the problem will make it go away.

By the way, many evangelicals coming from Third Word countries are not teeming wretched refuse of foreign shores: they are bright-eyed idealists, brilliant men and women who might have become naive to the benevolent assimilation of American neo-colonialism; their naivette leads them to follow their American Dream of a land flowing with milk and honey, in pursuit of Life, Liberty and Happiness where grass is greener on the other side of the fence.

Coming to America, they are shocked to find what Sir Thomas Gray once wrote in his Elegy:

“Full many a flower are born to blush unseen
And waste their fragrance in the desert air;
Full many a gem of the purest ray serene,
The dark unfathomed caves of ocean bear.”

How are we as evangelicals and as sheep of that Great Compassionate Shepherd helping these multiethnic creation in Imago Dei find their place in God’s Kingdom, let alone see the consuming love of Jesus? In the first place, do we witness to these multi-ethnic naive “wretched refuse” how it means to experience the all-consuming love of the Triune God? How passionate are we consumed by the certainty that we were loved, are loved and will be loved by the Father regardless? And that the proper response to the “Christ who loved me” is to live adn stay “crucified with Christ, nevertheless, I live”?

If not us, then, who will? If not now, when?

May we not go silently against the night… may we rage and rage against the dying of the light… with the passion of the Christ who loved us and gave Himself for us!

Or to put it another way, for us to really give ourselves to the demolition of these kinds of walls, we have to make peace with loss. Do we care enough about breaking down these divisions to say no to all the “options” that incubate this kind of social fragmentation? Because if we do give ourselves over to that inherently limiting way of being in the world we will be led “where you do not wish to go” (Jn. 21:18). Just some thoughts.