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Here is another draft/snippet from my forthcoming book (re)aligning with God.

Genesis 3 marks the watershed moment in humanity’s walk with God. Before Gen 3, men and women enjoyed endlessly open and free relationships with God, the created world, and one another. They lived in the world described and assumed by Genesis 1:1–2:25. Genesis 3:1–7 narrates the disastrous conversation between Eve, Adam, and the serpent. Bonhoeffer’s calls this encounter the “first conversation about God.” This is a sublime observation. The root of humanity’s rebellion is the idolatrous objectification of God. In Genesis 2, humanity freely conversed with God. In Genesis 3, God moves from subject to object. The serpent tempts Eve and Adam. At issue is the trustworthiness of God. The serpent denies that God can be trusted. Humanity needs to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil because God is intentionally withholding something good and desirable from humanity. In essence, the existential question faced by Eve is this one: Do I trust that God has my best interests at heart? This is the fundament question that all people face. In the context of Genesis 1–3, God has demonstrated his trustworthiness and care for humanity by providing a idyllic setting in Eden, abundant food, authentic relationships between men and women, purposeful vocation as keepers of creation and regents of the Creator, and unfettered access to himself. God has gifted humanity with access to all sources of food except for the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. This exception serves as the only prohibition that God gives to humanity. Otherwise humanity is endlessly free to fulfill God’s creation affirming mandates. Yet it is the prohibition against eating the fruit of a single tree that serves as the impetus for the temptation facing Eve and Adam. Thus from the beginning humanity’s sin and rebellion against God is irrational and astonishing given God’s kindness and grace to humanity. Humanity was supposed to exercise dominion over the created world, but instead allows a serpent to usurp authority and lead the first man and woman away from the Creator God. In the conversation with the serpent, God becomes an object rather than the subject of a moment-by moment-relationship. Trust is broken. Apart from dependence on and trust in God, humanity goes its own way and eats the forbidden fruit. The effects are tectonic. Adam and Eve feel the breech immediately. Their new knowledge illuminates only their own nudity for which they feel shame. They hide from God.

In the aftermath of their decision, God comes looking for his prized creation. God does not hide from humanity; humanity hides from God. This is the profound irony of sin. Adam and Eve attempt to reach beyond their creaturely status and tragically fall well below the potential for which they were crafted. Their decision to eat from the tree causes immediate breeches in their relational web. They have already experienced their own nakedness and the separation that they now sense between their once naked and one-flesh bodies. Their unfettered access to God becomes a liability as they are fearful at the once welcomed sound of God’s approach. Yet the first words out of the Creator’s mouth are “Where are you?” (3:9) God’s response to sin is an immediate attempt to re-engage humanity relationally. this line demonstrates God’s continued engagement with humanity despite their disobedience. God doesn’t withdraw from Creation – he goes looking for his lost people. The verb used for God’s pursuit of humanity is qr’ “called.” The Lord calls out to a humanity that has alienated itself through its actions.

Humanity’s rebellion has consequences (Gen 3:14-24). God draws out of Adam and Eve the details of their conversation with the serpent and their actions. The serpent is downgraded from its high place in the animal world to a creature, which will henceforth craw about on its belly. Adam and Eve will face a daunting new world. Their vocation of filling the earth will now by complicated by painful childbirth and the relational brokenness. Gen 3:16 describes a new power dynamic between the sexes. No longer will the relationship be rooted in mutuality. Men and women will focus on issues of power and attempt to dominate one another. Humanity also will experience the created world as an adversary. Humanity will toil over the earth to maintain life. Easy access to food and sustenance ends. The climax of sin’s consequences is humanity’s expulsion from the Garden of Eden. Access to the tree of life and immortality ends for all people from Adam and Eve onwards. As Paul will pen years later, “…through one man sin entered into the world and through sin came death. Thus death spread through all humanity because all have sinned” (Rom 5:12).

A missional reading or hermeneutic recognizes the devastating effects of human sin on God’s creational design. However, it also highlights the character of God in response to Adam and Eve’s transgression. We have already observed that God pursues humanity in the aftermath of the garden. God does not speak words of condemnation, but rather calls out to humanity, “Where are you?” One of the distinctive features of the divine–human relationship is the capacity for verbal communication. This does not end with the entrance of sin. The relationship between God and humanity has changed, but verbal revelation remains. Moreover Gen 3:21 records an additional act of God’s grace and mercy. The immediate result of Adam and Eve’s consumption of the fruit of the forbidden tree was the sudden realization of their own nakedness. This marks the irony of their disobedience. They were seeking wisdom and instead discover nakedness through their folly. They move from “naked and unashamed” in chapter two to “naked and ashamed” in their heightened awareness. Yet, instead of leaving them exposed and humiliated, God kindly provides a suitable covering for the man and woman. God’s love and compassion for humanity, even when men and women are at their worst, will remain a hallmark of God’s character and actions. It serves as a model for God’s people as we seek to engage the world with the Gospel.

What do you think?

© 2010 Brian D. Russell

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An excellent video on preaching the Gospel in our time.

Tim Keller Feb’09: Preaching the Gospel from Newfrontiers on Vimeo.

Main points:
Preaching in Western culture should be:

1) Gospel centered
2) Christ centered
3) Life Changing on the Spot
4) Culturally transforming

Ecclesia Press under the leadership of J.R. Woodward has published its first book, ViralHope: Good News from the Urbs to the Burbs (and everything in between).

ViralHope is a collection of essays by key missional leaders from around the Western World. Each contributor has written an announcement of the good news to his or her city of residence.

Here is my contribution: “The Good News for Orlando”
One of Walt Disney’s core maxims reads: “If you can dream it, you can do it.” Over the last forty years, Orlando has morphed from a sleepy Central Florida town centered on the citrus industry and World War Two era military bases into a gateway city that welcomes the world with top-notch resorts and attractions. Orlando is in the business of fun and offering its visitors a respite from the suffocating status quo of the daily grind of life. The dream of carving out an international city in the midst of former wetlands and citrus groves has largely been achieved. Orlando is known as the City Beautiful. At least, this is what the marketing campaigns proclaim. But as an almost decade long resident of the area, I wonder if perhaps we haven’t dreamed big enough?

It is undeniable that millions of persons enjoy their vacations in Central Florida. But is an existence rooted in manufacturing memories for others of mouse ears, sun tan lotion, roller coasters, chain restaurants, and convention centers truly a dream worthy of our lives? What if instead we were in the business of life transformation? What if people came to Central Florida for a vacation and instead found life? What if vacationers did not encounter only employees of Orlando’s extensive service industry but women and men joyously serving as part of a radically different Kingdom? What if Orlando embraced a bold and daring vision for what it might become—a gateway city that welcomed and ushered the world into a radical new reality?

For this to be possible, we will need a new story to ignite a fresh vision for our community. Let me suggest an encounter with a largely forgotten storyline.

The Bible offers an audacious narrative of a God who is looking for a people with whom to partner to extend blessing and good, life and wholeness, and hope and reconciliation to all peoples, nations, and tongues. This God is the creator of a world in which the final words are Rest, Love, Justice, Mercy, and Peace. In the life of Jesus, this God came to live among us. Jesus modeled true humanity while at the same time subverting strongly held misconceptions about divinity and religion. Jesus came to invite us back to life the way that God had intended. To this end, Jesus announced a liberating message that can be summarized this way: “(Re)align yourselves because the long awaited good future has now arrived in me.” Jesus immediately called into being a new community to embody his life and teaching and freely sacrificed his life for this new vision.

But this isn’t the whole story. Jesus was no mere martyr who inspires us and serves an example to emulate. The full story is this: Jesus is alive. The Creator God of all that exists delivered Jesus from the grave so that he stands today fully alive as the triumphant Lord of a new Kingdom. If we have ears to hear, we can still hear him calling to us today to dream new dreams and envision new possibilities. But most all of all he promises to stand as the vanguard who will lead us to become the women and men whom we were created us to be—a people that exist to reflect and embody the character and nature of the God in and for the world.

What if following Jesus was the way to taste and experience true life—the life that God alone dreams for you and has acted in Jesus to make possible? That would be good news indeed. What would our lives and city look like if we (re)aligned our lives in response to this good news?

What does a missional hermeneutic or a missional approach to reading Scripture look like? Here are a few thoughts about how one may profitably read Genesis 1:1 through the lens of missional hermeneutics.

“In the beginning God created the heavens and earth.” So reads the opening sentence of the First Testament. The first two chapters of the Bible unfold God’s creative activity and offer a snapshot of God’s plans and intentions for Creation. Genesis 1:1 is crucial for a couple of reasons. First, it affirms that there is an active personal deity behind all that is. The creation is not the result of an impersonal force or forces. It is not an accident or the result of some cosmic battle between gods. God (Heb elohim) will later be identified specifically as Israel’s covenant God known as the LORD (Heb Yhwh). Second, though Genesis 1:1-2:3 explicitly challenges the theology of the creation stories of Israel’s neighbors, it remains staunchly international in focus and in scope. It is vital to make the simple observation that Israel’s Scripture opens with its more generic name for God (Heb elohim). In Hebrew, this noun is ambiguous in form and referent. It is a plural noun and can be translated “gods.” But in the context of the Scriptures of Israel, the plural form is deployed with Israel’s god as the clear referent. It is not until Genesis 2:4 that the reader of the Bible encounters God’s personal and relational name—Yahweh (typically rendered LORD in our English translations). There the form is Yahweh Elohim (the LORD God). In other words, Genesis 2:4 links explicitly elohim of Genesis 1:1 with the personal name of Israel’s God that was revealed to Moses at the time of the Exodus (Exodus 3 and 6). Why is this important? I think that it points to the missional intent of the Scriptures. If the Bible opened “In the beginning Yahweh created the heaven and the earth”, this claim (though completely true) forces the reader to react to Israel’s claim that its god Yahweh is the Creator. Instead, the Bible opens with 35 recurrences of elohim before one encounters Yhwh in 2:4. Notice the power and wisdom of this word selection. Genesis 1:1-2:3 audaciously argues for a solitary and powerful Creator, but refuses to name the deity. The opening of the Bible demands only a belief in God or gods as the precondition for reading its pages. It allows the narrative to shape the reader’s understanding of God. Last, it affirms that the created world, all that is, is separate from God. Rocks and trees are not divine. Dogs and cats are not divine. Women and men are not divine. The environment may be beautiful but it is not god. From the opening verse of the Bible, the reader encounters a transcendent deity who stands over creation as Lord and King of Creation. This is all present in merely the opening verse.

What do you think?

© 2010 Brian D. Russell

A missional hermeneutic seeks to read the Bible for both the church and world. The goal is a realignment to God’s mission. Here are some thoughts about the challenges of reading Scripture for the world. I hope that this makes a contribution to the wider field of missional hermeneutics.

Reading for the World
Religious/cultural pluralism. The lost of Christian memory in the post-Christian West has not been replaced by atheism. Instead, the Western world is thriving with religions. The hegemony of Christendom has ended. Now every world religion, syncretistic amalgamation, and cult stands on equal footing. This is a new given. There are more Muslims attending mosques in Europe today than Christians gathering for worship regularly in churches. All across the United States Christ followers are now coming into regular contact with adherents of all of the world’s religions as well as secularized Westerners. Culturally a generation has emerged in the United States that knows a little about religion but lacks a strong commitment to any particular creed. In his book, Uniqueness of Jesus (Thinking Clearly Series), Chris Wright offers the analogy of a trip to the supermarket cereal aisle as an insight into the popular conception of the question of the world religions. If one goes looking for a new cereal, the number of choices available is almost bewildering. Cereals today come in all shapes, colors, and sizes. Yet at their core, a cereal is a cereal. Each one has been vitamin fortified and most will provide a person a certain percentage of key vitamins and minerals. Wright argues that most people view religion in this way: all religions are essentially the same. Individuals then choose the one that best fits their personal and cultural preferences. Reading the Scriptures for the world invites the interpreter into this context of pluralism. The wise reader of the Bible must now be aware of other Scriptural traditions and forms piety found in other faith expressions. The audience for missional interpretation will no longer merely be women and men familiar with the Gospel, but not personally connected to it. Increasingly, we will be communicating the Gospel to persons who are more acquainted with other religions or with no religion. The starting point and assumptions that a communicator will need to make in the emerging 21st century Western context are vastly different than they were only a generation ago. It is vital for interpreters to study and reflect on the religious and philosophical assumptions of their audience.

Contested truth claims – avoid straw men. When we only preach to insiders, it is easy to paint the world in broad, brush strokes. We can make claims and blanket statements that may appeal to and be acceptable to insiders, but which will befuddle if not completely close down the communication of the Gospel to those who do not share the worldview and assumptions of insiders. It is always a temptation to oversimplify complex issues and problems. This does not mean that the biblical interpreter must somehow sanitize the Gospel. Scripture is clear, “The message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing…”(1 Cor 1:18). The issue is not a watering down of the Gospel; the issue is the needless offense of listeners with careless statements that are peripheral to the Gospel. A missional hermeneutic is all about presenting clearly and compellingly the biblical call to conversion. If the audience is to be offended, it must be the Gospel that does the offending, not the carelessness of the communicator.

Ignorance of the biblical message. Communicators must constantly strive to explain the biblical text clearly and cogently. This is an area in which we find a real overlap with reading the Bible for the Church. Preachers and teachers must embrace this reality as an opportunity to proclaim anew the Gospel of Jesus Christ for our generation.

Political correctness/sensitivity. The Western world of the 21st century is acutely aware of the abuses of past generations. Westerners have learned to be more sensitive about issues of social justice as related for example to race, culture, gender, and age. The Old Testament is the product of the Iron Age. The New Testament arose during the 1st century A.D. in the Roman Empire. Certain parts of the Bible sound barbaric in comparison to 21st century sensibilities. In the world of the Bible, slavery is commonplace. Capital punishment exists for a plethora of crimes. Women do not share equal rights with men. Animals are used for sacrifice. Outsiders may raise legitimate concerns about these elements. For an extreme example of a reading highly skeptical of Scripture and the God that it presents, consider the words of scientist and committed atheist Richard Dawkins:
The God of the Old Testament is arguably the unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty, ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomanical, sadmasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully. (Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion (London: Bantam, 2006), 31.)
Dawkins is guilty of anachronism and a deconstructionist reading against the grain and trajectory of the biblical story, but he does illustrate how an outsider may hear or read the text. This

Elephants in the room. Outsiders don’t know the rules. Outsiders aren’t afraid to ask tough questions. Outsiders are seeking honest answers. This means that interpreters can’t skirt around controversial texts or gloss over difficult words or phrases. This is a positive development. In our 21st century missional reality, the clear communication of Scriptural truth is a necessity. It places certain demands and expectations on the interpreter. If the Scripture is read in public, its content must be engaged. When outsiders hear a controversial text read and have a question, they will raise it. Thus, we as interpreters must learn to read the text through the lens of an outsider. Erwin McManus of Mosaic in Los Angeles calls this “reading the text in 360 degrees.” (Notes from Origins Regional Conference, Orlando 2006) He argues that too often believers have a tendency to read the Bible only through the eyes of the faithful protagonists in the story. We are always David and Israel rather than Goliath and Egypt. However if you are on the peripheries of the community you may sympathize with the antagonists in the biblical narratives more than the heroes. The sensitive interpreter needs to be aware of these counter-intuitive (from the insider perspective) ways of reading and recognize that many in our audience will be raising questions in their minds that need to be addressed. This means that interpreters must address any difficult or potentially controversial element in our texts rather than merely skirting around them. Ask questions such as these: What in this text is potentially offensive? What part of the passage do I wish was not present?

Necessities:
The interpreter must: 1) address the obvious issues, 2) answer objections, 3) not assume that the audience understands the contours of the Gospel, 4) make sense of the text within its Scriptural context, 5) be sensitive to the modern context, and 6) trust the Holy Spirit is working in the midst of the community

What do you think? I would value your feedback publicly or privately brian(dot)russell at asburyseminary(dot)edu

© 2010 Brian D. Russell

One of my theses for my forthcoming book on missional hermeneutics is that missional leaders must read the Scripture in the borderlands where the Church and World intersect so that both Christ followers and non-Christians can hear the Gospel when the word is proclaimed or taught.

Yet each of these contexts present different challenges for the interpreter. Here is a bare bones sketch of some of my ideas about the challenges presented by each.

Challenges for hearing the Scriptures in the Church:
1) over-familiarity with the text
Hearing the message of the text can be hindered at times from an (supposed?) over-familiarity with the Bible.
2) fear of sounding heretical:
3) Reading the Bible in the Church creates a tendency to play it safe with the text.
4) the boxes that we build theologically:
5) Predestination, freewill, belief that there are no actual tensions between texts, etc.
6) ignorance of the text in the Church
While some in the Church are over-familiar with the Bible, there are countless others who are ignorant of its basic teaching.
7) emphasis on discipleship as the attainment of knowledge rather than the shaping of person for deployment in God’s mission
There has been an overemphasis on stressing knowing the details of the Bible without reflecting adequately on the function of the details or the demand of a given text on the life of its readers.

Challenges of Reading for the World
1) Religious/cultural pluralism
2) Contested truth claims – avoid straw men
3) Ignorance of the biblical message
4) Political correctness/sensitivity
5) Elephants in the room - can’t avoid problem passages

What else would you add?