Tag: christotelic

Being Human — Chapter Ten — On mean(ing)s and end(ing)s

This is an adaptation of the tenth talk from a 2022 sermon series — you can listen to it as a podcast here, unfortunately, due to a technical error, there was no video for this week.

It’s not unhelpful to think of this series as a ‘book’ preached chapter by chapter. And, a note — there are lots of pull quotes from various sources in these posts that were presented as slides in the sermons, but not read out in the recordings.

We have put ourselves in various moments in time this series—imagining the past, and the future. This time round I want to take you all the way to the end.

How is the world going to end?

Now, of course, as Christians, we have an ending described for us in the book of Revelation. Jesus is coming; he will reward his people with life with him and the tree of life (Revelation 22:12–14). But I am wondering how much difference that ending makes in how we think about being human—and how you live.

What difference would it make to your life without that ending? If you believed every part of the Christian story to be true but there was nothing about the future—about what happens after death or at the end of the world—how would you live? If you knew God revealed himself and his character in the crucifixion, but we had no resurrection or return, would you live differently today?

You might be here this morning still not convinced about the whole Christian story. This might actually be where you are at. I am going to suggest this end makes all the difference—that it is the end of the world’s story and the human story as we know it—and this is meant to shape how we understand being human.

And just for a moment I am going to try to put us in the minds of people who do not buy that ending, using Douglas Adams’ Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series, where in book two there is a time travel service that will take you to the restaurant at the end of the universe, so you can sit and watch the world end with a ‘Gnab gib’ — the opposite of a big bang — and go back to your life knowing that all that comes after death and after history ends is the void; oblivion. The point of this book series is to offer a deliberate guidebook to a technological world without God. He creates a galaxy to show how if life in time and space is all there is, the hunt for meaning is meaningless. It is not “42;” it turns out that is the answer to the wrong question—and the whole point of the books is pointlessness. It is to stop people looking for meaning, so that we are not crushed when we find out there is none. There is this device, a Total Perspective Vortex in the books, that shows you as a tiny dot in an infinite universe, and it crushes anyone who thinks there should be a meaning in life or the world—anyone not totally self-centred. You are better off not looking.

The ideas of the end of the world and the purpose of our lives in it are deeply integrated.

When we see the world ending with the void—or life ending with death—and no God in the picture, we are left figuring out what our own life is for; how we should use it. I reckon most of our neighbours reckon we are facing the void, or just adopting the “she’ll be right, mate” idea that everything is going to pan out. And so life in the modern, disenchanted world ends up being the expressive individualism we have talked about, where you are responsible for making your own purpose, even if that comes from connecting yourself to some bigger agenda. Adams ends up being a prophet for this disenchanted world.

In theology land the way we talk about the end of the world is with the word eschatology—it is from the Greek word for last. And the way we talk about the purpose of human life—the ends, like in “the ends justify the means”—is the Greek word telos, which means something like living towards the fulfilment of a purpose. If you are a Presbyterian and I say “the chief end of man is…” you will say “to glorify God and enjoy him forever.” That “chief end”—that is a telos. It is the built-in purpose that guides our actions.

That guy Alisdair MacIntyre, who says we are story-telling animals who “need to know what story we are living in to know how we should live, as we saw last chapter “can only answer the question ‘what am I to do?’ if I can answer the prior question ‘Of what story or stories do I find myself a part?’”; he also reckons we have been left feeling like life is meaningless because we have lost a sense that our lives are headed towards a telos. This ‘end’ or purpose for our lives came from understanding our lives as living in a story that came from beyond ourselves, that was pointed somewhere beyond ourselves, but life facing the void, where we are left trying to make meaning and find a purpose from within ourselves—maybe, like the author of Ecclesiastes suggests—that sort of life is meaningless, if it just ends in death.

“When someone complains that his or her life is meaningless, he or she is often and perhaps characteristically complaining that the narrative of their life has become unintelligible to them, that it lacks any point, any movement towards a climax or a telos.”

— Alisdair MacIntyre, After Virtue

The Christian story suggests life is not meaningless, that it has a telos. We might be inclined just to look back to our origin story, to Eden, to figure out what we are made for—and we will do that—but we have also got to look to the end of the story to find our ends. So we are going to try to hold this tension—these furious opposites—and maybe see how the Bible holds it for us, because when we integrate our lives with God’s story, its beginning and its ending, we find our telos; we find life; we find what it means to be truly human.

Back in Genesis we saw how the image of God is not just a static thing in us (Genesis 1:26); it is not just a noun that describes us; it is a verb we are made to be; a vocation. It has a telos built in—to be truly human is to rule his world, representing his rule, his kingdom.

This idea is built from what images of gods were in the ancient world, and off the work of scholars like John Walton who suggest what it meant to be something in the ancient world was not just to have material qualities, it was to belong in a system, with a function; it was to have a telos.

“People in the ancient world believed that something existed not by virtue of its material properties, but by virtue of its having a function in an ordered system.”

— John Walton

But not only is the image of God not just a static thing in us, it is not a static thing only defined in Genesis; our understanding of what it means to bear God’s image, this function, develops with the story of the Bible. We do not just look back; we work out what it looks like as we see characters breaking it; it is frustrated as people sin—falling from this function—and are exiled from God’s presence. And we see it restored, and developed, as God creates a priestly people, Israel, to represent him in the world, and then kings who are meant to be representative rulers of his image-bearing people.

And so we come to Psalm 8—which we looked at lots in our Genesis series—where we are told it is a Psalm of David; where we are told humans have been crowned with glory and honour (Psalm 8:4–5). That God made us rulers over the work of his hands; there is a Genesis 1 reference happening here (Psalm 8:6).

Now, we have this tendency to democratise the Psalms, to jump to making this about us—there are just a couple of steps I think we need to take before we do that. We can also democratise it by looking back to Genesis, but we should be careful here too.

Now, I have quoted stacks of scholars this series, and they can feel distant and overwhelming. So today I am quoting a biblical scholar who is the opposite of distant. In this article by Doug Green, our Old Testament scholar in residence (well, not quite — note for readers, Doug is an elder in our church), Doug invites us to consider that with this Psalm of David, which could be a Psalm about David, we are meant to imagine David wearing a crown like the first readers would. So these words are not so much about all humans, but the dignity and worth and glory and honour of true humanity: humans living and ruling in a way that represents God, which is Israel’s role in the world, and David’s role in Israel as the true human.

“Psalm 8 is less interested in the dignity and worth of humanity in general, and more concerned with the dignity and worth, the glory and honour, of the true humanity, Israel, and the true human, David (and his descendants).”

— Doug Green, ‘Psalm 8: What is Israel’s King, That You Remember Him’

Doug reckons the Genesis creation story works to teach Israel what true humanity looks like; how to live as replacement Adams—humans—after Adam and Eve’s failure. Israel is a new humanity, but more than that Israel’s Davidic king is presented as an image-bearing ruler.

“But this story is a background for the real focus of the Old Testament: Israel’s role as the replacement for the First Humanity of Genesis 1, and David’s role as the replacement for the First Human (Adam) described in Genesis 2 and 3.”

— Doug Green

This king will either lead people to life with God, or death and exile. And this Psalm is about someone—it could be a son of Adam—crowned with glory and honour, which is, as Doug points out, royal language.

“The Davidic king was thought to be a second Adam, Adam reborn, as it were… True Man is crowned—can you hear the royal language?—with God’s glory and honour!”

— Doug Green

Doug reckons as we read this Psalm knowing David’s failures we are meant to read it eschatologically—wondering where in the future we will meet a true human, a divine image bearer. Someone who fulfils the purpose, the telos, humans are made for.

“But once I interpret this psalm in connection with Israel and especially Israel’s king, I am now bent in an eschatological direction. The stories of Israel and David are covenantal stories and therefore stories with a telos, or destiny.”

— Doug Green

Our idea of an image bearer gets developed in contrast with the failures of would-be image bearers as we keep waiting for a true human to turn up at the climax of history.

“The primary thrust of Psalm 8 is not creational and static (what all humans are in Adam) but re-creational and eschatological (what Israel and ‘David’ will become at the climax of history).”

— Doug Green

The writer of Hebrews reads it this way too; when they quote this Psalm (Hebrews 2:6, Psalm 8:4), they say, you know we do not see this everywhere, it is not the general pattern for human life. But we do see it in Jesus, the fulfilment of this Psalm; a true image-bearing human crowned with glory and honour, because he suffered death—that is the whole cross-shaped kingdom thing from last week.

“But we do see Jesus, who was made lower than the angels for a little while, now crowned with glory and honour because he suffered death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone.”

— Hebrews 2:9

He is the Son of David, the Son of Adam, the true human image bearer, who does not fall to the powers. And he brings many sons and daughters—many true humans—with him to our glorious telos; to being able to function as those who represent God (Hebrews 2:10). The telos, the purpose of humanity, is to reflect—to radiate—God’s glory. Hebrews calls Jesus the pioneer of our salvation, made perfect—these are significant words. The word here for pioneer could be translated author in your Bible; it is this word archegos—it means first, or model, or archetype. And this word perfect—it is the word teleiosai—it is the word for fulfilling your telos; being made complete according to your purpose. Jesus is the model telos-fulfilling human, the true human, through his suffering and his resurrection, through representing God’s glory.

Hebrews will come back to these same two words when it talks about how we should live; how we should run our race towards an end, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter (Hebrews 12:1), the model and telos-fulfiller, the true human, the new David, the new Adam, who because of the joy set before him—not because the cross revealed God’s character, but because of the glory to follow—endured the cross, and then sat down at the right hand of God, crowned and glorified.

These words come up a few more times in the New Testament. John uses these same words in our passage in Revelation, where Jesus does not just say he is the first and last and beginning and end (Revelation 22:13), but arche—the model—and the telos—the fulfilment (Revelation 22:14). And the last in verse 13 is actually eschatos; he is the fulfilment of the human—our telos—and the eschatological human who brings the new creation. He is the one the Scriptures have been waiting for since Adam.

We covered 1 Corinthians 15 earlier in the series—where Paul says the first man Adam was a living, breathing image of God, and Jesus is the last Adam, literally the eschatological Adam, who brings God’s Spirit (1 Corinthians 15:45). Those who are united to Adam, that old image, die, disintegrating into dust. But those who see the fulfilment of the image in Jesus, seeing his true humanity, those belong to him as the new David, the king—we will follow him into his glorified life, bearing his image (1 Corinthians 15:49). When we are united to Jesus, his story becomes ours—we live under his rule, waiting for our new life to be made whole; for the Spirit working to produce fruit in our mortal bodies to be matched with spiritual, immortal bodies, waiting for the defeat of the last enemy, literally the eschatological enemy: death (1 Corinthians 15:24–26). This will happen when Jesus returns to make all things new.

Living in this story—with this ending and telos—shifting from the old Adam to the new, is how we become truly human, images of God. It is how we share in his glory, which is what Paul is on about in Romans 8 (Romans 8:16–17). Our becoming truly human as we receive the Spirit and are re-created and liberated, in a way that gives our life meaning, even when we suffer.

The Spirit, Paul says, makes us heirs of God, his children, his image-bearing people who will share in the glory of Jesus. We become truly human as our telos becomes to become like Jesus, and our future is secured. And this gives meaning to our sufferings now, both as we take up our cross, following Jesus’s example (Romans 8:18–19). Suffering is not an end in itself; it is not our telos; our destiny. We might hear it said that “to be human is to suffer well,” to bear the weight of being. But to be truly human is to suffer with the hope of glory; that is our new destiny. Our suffering—whatever it is, whether it is the cost of curse, or what we experience as we follow our crucified king—is not our purpose or destiny. It is incomparably small compared to the glory that is ours as we become truly human through Jesus.

Our lives are shaped by a new image of the fulfilled human life where death leads to resurrection, and a new destiny that is not just for us, but for the world. Creation itself joins in the expectation of liberation from bondage to decay, as it is brought into the freedom and glory we are brought into (Romans 8:20–21). Just like creation itself is anticipating liberation, we live hoping for the redemption of our bodies. We live lives shaped by hope, knowing that God is working for our good, that he has called us according to his purpose—that is actually a different word to telos—that we have been chosen to be conformed to the image of his Son, to become truly human, so that Jesus might be the first of many brothers and sisters, bringing us to glory as we are conformed into his image (Romans 8:23–24, 28–29). This is the trajectory we are now on—as chosen and justified people with failures forgiven, one where we are re-created as true humans and glorified (Romans 8:30). So that Jesus’s present and future becomes ours, so in him we are more than conquerors, people who cannot be destroyed by death, or demons, or the present or future, or the powers that we have seen at work in the world. Nothing will be able to separate us from Jesus, from God’s love, from being truly human (Romans 8:37–39). Because, as Doug puts it:

“It is only as we are united to Christ and indwelt by his Spirit that we humans can claim to be bearers of the divine image, crowned with glory and honour.”

— Doug Green

Now—we are on the home stretch in this series. And here are our take-homes for today, and for the series. Being truly human means living lives integrated with God’s story. This story gives us, and the world, a telos—to be an image bearer is not simply to suffer, even as we take up our cross—it is to reflect God’s glory, to glorify God and enjoy him forever you might say. And we see this telos fulfilled in the end of our story. The Bible’s story about humanity, this story tells us who we were made to be, and what our destiny is, and invites us to be truly human. This ends, and this ending give us meaning, and the means we should employ as we become characters in God’s story.

We are not hitchhikers in the galaxy, facing oblivion at the restaurant at the end of the universe. In Jesus we are sealed, and seated at the banquet at the end of the universe, and it lasts forever. We are not insignificant, finite nothings, just made to suffer and die, but immortal and glorious and loved by God.

C.S. Lewis talks about this in his sermon The Weight of Glory. He reckons we are too quick to embrace self-denial and suffering as ends, as though that is our purpose, when we are actually made to follow Jesus into glory and to have our desires satisfied.

“The New Testament has lots to say about self-denial, but not about self-denial as an end in itself. We are told to deny ourselves and to take up our crosses in order that we may follow Christ; and nearly every description of what we shall ultimately find if we do so contains an appeal to desire.”

— Lewis, The Weight of Glory

Lewis says we need to live knowing we are not small and insignificant, but that we will outlast anything earthly. Nations, culture, art — those things that seem big and significant are tiny compared to our glorious future.

“Nations, cultures, arts, civilization—these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit…”

— Lewis

This means it is actually other people — those with God’s Spirit — immortals — who are truly significant. We should see ourselves this way, as gloriously beloved by God, and it should change the way we see others. This capacity is in every human, and already at work in those gloriously united with Jesus.

He says that other than when we recognise Jesus in the sacrament — which is what’s happening, in his theological frame, during communion — other than the presence of Jesus in us, your neighbour is the holiest object in your life, holy in the same way as Jesus because Jesus, the glorifier and the glorified, the archetype and the telos, is hidden in them.

“Next to the Blessed Sacrament itself, your neighbour is the holiest object presented to your senses. If they are your Christian neighbour they are holy in almost the same way, for in them also Christ the glorifier and the glorified, Glory Himself, is truly hidden.”

Lewis, The Weight of Glory

But what difference does all this talk of glory make? I reckon we can be a little obsessed with still seeing ourselves as sinners — and we are — but not as those being re-created and liberated by the Spirit — which we are.

Killing our sin — what gets called mortification — is part of our transformation, but we could do more to remind ourselves that this is who we are in Jesus; holy and being made glorious and being transformed by God’s Spirit in us. We might see our new life not just as putting sin to death, but also cultivating new life, in what gets called vivification. You — if you belong to Jesus — are no longer a slave to the flesh; no longer the old Adam. You are the new Adam, and God’s Spirit is at work in you conforming you to the image of Jesus, revealing God’s glory in your life. That’s your telos, and where your story is going.

And this means our lives can be marked by hope — not just in the face of death, but hope about the future that we enact in our life now. We can see our longings — our desires — as parts of us pulling us towards our end goal.

Both C.S. Lewis and his friend Tolkien had this hope in ways that made their stories remarkably different to The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. That was disenchanted science fiction about purposeless life in a material universe that ends in the void, while Lewis and Tolkien wrote fantasy set in enchanted worlds, shot through with longing for glory. Tolkien talks about how our longings are a product of life exiled from Eden, and his stories are about finding the answer to these longings.

“Certainly there was an Eden on this very unhappy earth. We all long for it, and we are constantly glimpsing it: our whole nature… is still soaked with the sense of ‘exile’.”

— Tolkien

Lewis talks about passing beyond the natural world into the glorious splendour where we will eat from the tree of life — straight out of Revelation:

“We are summoned to pass through Nature, beyond her, into that splendour which she fitfully reflects. And in there, in beyond Nature, we shall eat of the tree of life.”

— Lewis

This is an image he evokes at the end of The Chronicles of Narnia, where the characters enter a new eternal story:

“All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and the title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story, which no one on earth has read: which goes on for ever: in which every chapter is better than the one before.”

C.S Lewis, The Last Battle

As they go further up and further in into a garden paradise:

“Further up and further in… So all of them passed in through the golden gates, into the delicious smell that blew towards them out of that garden and into the cool mixture of sunlight and shadow under the trees…”

C.S Lewis, The Last Battle

Tolkien has Frodo and the Elves sailing to a land in the west featuring white shores and beyond them a far green country under a swift sunrise. And in his brilliant short story Leaf by Niggle, he describes Niggle — a painter — finding life in the garden paradise of his painting coming to life, as he goes further and further upwards towards the mountains:

“He was going to… look at a wider sky, and walk ever further and further towards the Mountains, always uphill.”

— Tolkien, Leaf By Niggle

Both Tolkien and Lewis had more than an inkling. They understood how the end of our story should shape our desires, and their stories — like their lives — were attempts to evoke these desires in us, to pull us further up and further in. We would do well to soak our imagination in enchanted stories of hope, because this is our story.

And cultivating the hope of glory has to shape how we live as a hopeful witness to those following the old Adam towards a destiny of dust and death. Some people reckon thinking eschatologically runs the risk of having us so set on heaven we are no use on earth, but the theologian Stanley Hauerwas reckons how we see the end of the world — eschatology — is the basis for Jesus’ ethical teaching, as he calls us to our telos; our re-created purpose.

“…we mainline Protestants have charged eschatological thinking with being ‘other worldly,’ ‘escapist,’ ‘pie-in-the-sky-by-and-by’ thinking… the biblical evidence suggests that eschatology is the very basis for Jesus’ ethical teaching.”

— Stanley Hauerwas

Hauerwas says Christian ethics — how we live — is built on Jesus being the eschatological Adam, the new David, who launches God’s kingdom in the world now, and that the Sermon on the Mount describes the end of the world as it was — the world of Adam and Satan, that ends with his crucifixion and resurrection — and a new way of life, the ends we should live towards.

“There is no way to remove the eschatology of Christian ethics. We have learned that Jesus’ teaching was not first focused on his own status but on the proclamation of the inbreaking kingdom of God… In the Sermon [on the Mount] we see the end of history, an ending made most explicit and visible in the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus… The question, in regard to the end, is not so much when? but, what? To what end?”

— Stanley Hauerwas

Hauerwas reckons living in this story makes us resident aliens, as he calls us — an adventurous and hopeful colony, a community living in a society of unbelief. In his diagnosis our culture has not just lost a telos, but a sense of adventure, because we have turned in on ourselves as we have lost this big story.

“The church exists today as resident aliens, an adventurous colony in a society of unbelief… As a society of unbelief, Western culture is devoid of a sense of journey, of adventure, because it lacks belief in much more than the cultivation of an ever-shrinking horizon of self-preservation and self-expression…”

— Stanley Hauerwas

This community, embodying and telling this story, is where Christian ethics makes sense. The world tells us being truly human is about self-expression, because this is all it is, but our eschatological messianic community tells us that to be truly human involves self-denial with our eyes fixed on the eternal rule of King Jesus, and being united to him.

This community — the church — is where we tell each other the Gospel; truthing in love.

“The ethic of Jesus thus appears to be either utterly impractical or utterly burdensome unless it is set within its proper context — an eschatological, messianic community, which knows something the world does not and structures its life accordingly… A person becomes just by imitating just persons. One way of teaching good habits is by watching good people, learning the moves, imitating the way they relate to the world.”

— Stanley Hauerwas

This community is where we find examples to imitate as we learn what a life shaped by our ends, shaped by Jesus the true human, looks like. It is where we are formed in order to be sent into the world. It is where we run the race together as we learn to fix our eyes upon Jesus.

It is hard for us to set our eyes on Jesus in a literal sense, given that he is seated in heaven. We can do that in prayer, and in what Paul calls the eyes of our heart, but we can also fix our eyes upon Jesus in a way that teaches us to be human by looking at one another, finding examples who are living in this story to imitate.

Before they say this, the writer to the Hebrews has just told the church to keep meeting together, spurring one another on, before they say run the race by fixing our eyes upon Jesus.

Part of pursuing our telos is seeking to be those who follow the example of Jesus, and this might involve watching and observing and imitating those around us who already are. Those whose lives are marked by hope, those whose lives express the fruit of the Spirit, those who are living adventurous lives of self-denial because their hearts are set on heaven, and because they know that to be truly human, in Christ, is to have conquered the powers, and anything in creation that wants to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus.

Ends.

September 11, 2025 Add Comment

Reading the Bible (and life) as the story of God ‘re-creating’ and ‘re-vivifying’ broken images of God: Part 2 — ‘he lays me down’

Back in 2015 I posted one part of a planned two part epic ‘By the rivers of Babylon’, I didn’t ever post the second part, and nobody seemed to mind. Until today.

To recap, I posted some quotes from ancient near eastern rituals to do with the creation of ‘images of God’ — particularly idol statues — and looked at comparisons with Genesis 2, to suggest that there’s a conceptual link; that in the Genesis creation story we see God creating living, breathing, representatives of the divine, in deliberate contrast to rituals, creation stories, and an understanding of humanity in the ancient near east where man created dead, breathless, statues of gods and then had to develop a cognitive dissonance to be able to encounter that statue as though it was a representative of divine life. We have existing accounts, from the ancient world, of the creation of a divine image and its revivification or rededication after an idol had been captured by an enemy or removed from its sanctuary. I have written bits and pieces expanding on this theme, but thought it’d be nice to come back and finish the ‘epic’ as promised.

I suggested the parallel between the Genesis type scene of creation and re-creation of a divine image (which repeats itself through the Old Testament), mirrors these ancient rituals in the following ways, where an image (tselem) is:

Formed and fashioned, near water (and symbolically, in a sense, moved through water, it’s interesting that God places the man in the garden twice, once before the mention of the water, and once after) (Genesis 2:6, 8, 10-15)
Inspired, or given ‘breath’ so that it the image is vivified. It is to be thought of as a living representation of the God whose image it bears. (Genesis 2:7)
Declared fit for purpose within a system, and via connection to God. (Genesis 1:26-31)
Placed (or enthroned) in the Temple/garden sanctuary and given a job within the Temple. (Genesis 2:8-9, 15)
The images are provided for with food and drink. (Genesis 2:16-17)
The image fulfills a function in representing the God behind the image (Genesis 2:19-20)

I pointed out that this pattern repeated itself with Noah, in the creation of Israel as a people, and was anticipated by the prophets about Israel’s return from exile — where God’s people would be recommissioned as his image bearers. And then promised a follow up post to connect this to the rest of the story of the Bible.

Recap over.

One of my favourite bits of Biblical Theology — perhaps because it was one of the first pieces to grip my imagination about how the Bible might work — comes from connecting Psalm 23 to Jesus, the good shepherd.

The Lord is my shepherd, I lack nothing.
He makes me lie down in green pastures,
he leads me beside quiet waters,
he refreshes my soul.
He guides me along the right paths
for his name’s sake.
Even though I walk
through the darkest valley,
I will fear no evil,
for you are with me;
your rod and your staff,
they comfort me.
You prepare a table before me
in the presence of my enemies.
You anoint my head with oil;
my cup overflows.
Surely your goodness and love will follow me
all the days of my life,
and I will dwell in the house of the Lord
forever. — Psalm 23

It’s a beautiful Psalm as a standalone. But now read it against that number list. The narrator (first David) is:

Placed by waters in the sanctuary of green pastures;
His Soul restored — literally this is ‘nepesh’ in Hebrew and ‘psuche’ in the Greek translation of the Old Testament — the words used for the ‘breath of life’ breathed in to Adam in Genesis 2. It’s a recreation. The ‘restored’ word is the same word used to describe return from exile in places like Deuteronomy 30:3, 1 Kings 8:34, and Jeremiah 30:3
He is guided along the right paths by God for his name’s sake (a purpose within a system, where the ‘for his name’s sake’ is the purpose, connected to image bearing representation and the failure to live for his name is what lead Israel to exile, to no longer being ‘image bearers’, which is a breaking of the 3rd commandment).
He is taken to a place where there is a table, but at the end ‘dwells in the house of the Lord forever’ (placed in the temple)
He is fed, and his cup overflows (the images are provided with food and drink).
He is anointed with oil — which presumably has some connection to fulfilling a function to represent the God behind the image, alongside the ‘his name’s sake.’

Now. In terms of the Biblical theology thing, i’d often simply connected The Lord as shepherd to Jesus as shepherd — Jesus as the provider who specifically does all these things for people, or promises to, as the good shepherd. Look at what Jesus says around the feeding of the 5,000 as recorded by Mark (Mark 6, where the people are ‘like sheep without a shepherd) and John, where the feeding of the 5,000 comes before passages about the gift of the Spirit as living water that brings eternal life — in fact, the whole of John’s Gospel essentially unpacks that re-creation schema. But the Biblical theology connection that makes Jesus ‘the Lord who is the shepherd,’ with the feeding of the 5,000 in the mix, goes something like:

He places people by water, on green pastures (Mark 6:39, John 6:10)
He feeds them with ‘overflowing’ provision (Mark 6:42-43, John 6:12-14)
The people are ‘sheep without a shepherd’ (Mark 6), and Jesus calls himself ‘the good shepherd’ (John 10).

There’s a degree to which I think this is still a legitimate line to draw from Old to New Testament. But there’s a better story, a better line through the Old Testament story of God creating and revivifying broken images that involves Jesus being the ‘new Adam’ — the new ‘image’ — through whom we are restored as we are united to him; an a reading of Psalm 23 that places Jesus in the narrative schema as the first ‘restored Israelite’, the one whom David points to, who can say ‘the Lord is my shepherd’ — I owe much of this reading to Doug Green, whose paper ‘The Lord is Christ’s Shepherd. Psalm 23 as Messianic Prophecy’ is brilliant.

He says, amongst other things:

“… it is appropriate to read the whole of the Psalter in a prophetic and eschatological direction. More specifically, all of the “Psalms of David” should be read as messianic psalms that describe different dimensions of the life — and especially the suffering — of Israel’s eschatological King.”

“In other words, the apostolic authors adopted not simply a general Christological approach to reading the Psalter, wherein Christ could be “seen” in the psalms, but more specifically a decidedly Christotelic approach, reading it in connection with Israel’s great narrative of redemption, which from their perspective had reached its surprising climax (Greek telos, “end” or “goal” in the story of Jesus, the Messiah.”

Green describes the structure of the psalm as a move from “pasturage to wilderness to temple” that can be described as paralleling “promised land -> exile -> restoration” or “Eden -> Exile from the Garden -> New Jerusalem”. He says:

“Even in their grammatical-historical context, verses 4 and 5, with their images of escape from the threat of death and (possibly) return from exile, tell an incipient resurrection story. Read prophetically, these verses echo the story of the Isaianic Servant as they depict the Messiah’s journey through some kind of suffering, which will subsequently change into his enjoyment of the blessed life, and more specifically to an eschatological banquet…

“If Jesus Christ is indeed the telos, or goal, of Israel’s story, and more specifically the fulfilment of the OT’s messianic prophecies — including the Psalter understood as a prophetic book — then Christian interpretation of the OT must be an exercise in reading backwards, of rereading earlier texts so that their meanings cohere with what God has actually done in history in Jesus Christ.”

He concludes “the eschatological David has been brought from the valley of death into the heavenly house of the Lord, to reside there.” Green, I think rightly, describes this as “the story of those who have been united to Christ by faith” — we’re brought into the story through our union with Christ.

If this Psalm is messianic in this sense, then in some way the Lord’s anointed — who is shepherded by God — somehow leads God’s people through exile from God — or death — into restoration and the temple. If Jesus comes as the restoration moment promised in the prophets, and this Psalm, and he does this by being the true image bearer but his restoration into being an image bearer through exile and death is also grounds for our restoration.

So, that’s a fun reading of Psalm 23 that connects it to the fulfilment of Old Testament prophecies — where Jesus is the king who ends our exile from God, but there’s more to this story that is explicitly connected to the proposed metanarrative of the Bible; that it’s about God re-creating and revivifying divine image bearers (where idolatry transforms us into the image of dead idols rather than the living God).

My suggestion is that the Gospels, in depicting Jesus as a new Adam, and new Israel, also follow the pattern of establishing Jesus as an image bearer — according to those Old Testament (and Ancient Near Eastern) types — and that this is applied to the church both through union with Christ, baptism, and the indwelling of the Spirit — the things that mark out our transformation into the image of Jesus, from being broken idol-worshipping images. Jesus is “the image of the invisible God” (Colossians 1:15) and the “exact representation of God’s being” (Hebrews 1:3), but there are also ways the Gospels follow the script.

Jesus is, in a particular sense, ‘formed’ or fashioned near water at his baptism — if crossing the Jordan was Israel’s path to nationhood and part of how Exodus paints them being presented as God’s image bearers — his children, then Jesus’ baptism in the waters of the Jordan mark his calling in the same way. All four Gospels include the baptism of Jesus.
Especially if the Spirit descending on Jesus is the ‘breath’ of God marking him . — if this is Jesus symbolically being given a certain sort of ‘breath’ as Adam was (though Adam receives the ‘psuche’ and Jesus the ‘pneuma’ in Greek — and that distinction is interesting particularly because Paul makes it a distinction between Adam the ‘psucheikon’ (or natural/breathed/souled image) and Jesus the ‘pneumatikon’ (or breathed/spirited image) in 1 Corinthians 15:44 as he reflects on and quotes from Genesis 2 and the resurrection, see below). Pneuma and psuche are used in a way that, at a glance, looks interchangeable for breath and Spirit throughout the Old Testament.
Jesus is declared ‘fit for purpose’ in connection with God in the words that speak from heaven — “You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased.” (Mark 1:11), “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.” (Matthew 3:17), “You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased.” (Luke 3:22), while John’s Gospel has John the Baptist say, of Jesus, ‘The man on whom you see the Spirit come down and remain is the one who will baptize with the Holy Spirit.” (John 1:33 — which is significant if the bringing of the Holy Spirit is connected to the end of exile and the restoration of God’s image bearing people).
Jesus is the Temple — or the dwelling place of God — but he also goes in order to prepare an eschatological temple, and in order to transform God’s new image bearers into human temples. This one takes some unpacking. He is also the living representative of God (Hebrews 1), and if we see him we’ve seen the father (John 14:9). He is the “word of God” in flesh, and he “is God” ‘tabernacling’, or ‘dwelling’ in the world in the flesh (John 1:1-14). In John 2, as he cleanses the Temple (which has not ever had God’s spirit come to dwell in it after exile in the way that it did before exile) he speaks of his body as the temple (John 2:22). But he also speaks of his “father’s house” (John 2:16). In John 14:1-3 Jesus says: “My Father’s house has many rooms; if that were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am…” this has often been understood as being about the heavenly city-temple — a new Eden — that John sees coming down to earth in Revelation 21, but in an immediate sense of fulfilment of the ‘place for you’ and the going and coming, Jesus says the Spirit is him ‘coming back’ — “But you know him, for he lives with you and will be in you.I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you.” (John 14:17-18) and then “you heard me say, ‘I am going away and I am coming back to you.’ If you loved me, you would be glad that I am going to the Father, for the Father is greater than I.I have told you now before it happens, so that when it does happen you will believe.” (John 14:28-29). The ‘coming back’ might purely be eschatological, but it seems to both immediately describe the resurrection, the ascension (as part of the “going”), and the coming of the Spirit as part of the “return” to them (and the end of the exile that ‘restores their souls’ — and ours).In John 16, in the same extended episode of teaching, Jesus explains more of the going and coming — “Jesus saw that they wanted to ask him about this, so he said to them, “Are you asking one another what I meant when I said, ‘In a little while you will see me no more, and then after a little while you will see me’? Very truly I tell you, you will weep and mourn while the world rejoices. You will grieve, but your grief will turn to joy” (John 16:19-20)… then, following Jesus death, and their grief, and his resurrection, John records the following: “The disciples were overjoyed when they saw the Lord. Again Jesus said, “Peace be with you! As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.” And with that he breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit…” (John 20:20-22). When Jesus breathes into his disciples and commissions them in John 20:22 it uses the same Greek word for what God does to breathe life into Adam in the LXX.
The point at which the disciples understand Jesus’ reference to his body as the temple, we’re told, back in 2:22, is the resurrection: “After he was raised from the dead, his disciples recalled what he had said. Then they believed the scripture and the words that Jesus had spoken.” When this happen — the disciples become the ‘many rooms’ of the house of God, his Temple — as Jesus has been already, as marked by the Spirit descending on him at his baptism (a sort of symbolic end of the exile — God dwelling with his people again).

Luke does a fun thing with this in Acts 2, where he has the Spirit being poured out on God’s new temple (and I think given Luke’s Gospel ends with the followers of Jesus meeting daily in the temple, and given Acts 2 ends with a reference to the followers of Jesus meeting daily in the temple, and given the festival of Pentecost is a public gathering and there are many witnesses from the Jewish diaspora there, that the events of Pentecost probably happened in the Temple courts, not the upper room mentioned as the setting of the events in Acts 1). God’s new temple — his re-created image bearers — receive the Spirit, in an echo of the glory of his presence coming in to the first temple — with clouds and noise and flaming glory — in the courts of the temple building Jesus had condemned — the temple whose curtain tore when Jesus died as an expression of a sort of judgment on that building and a new way of access to God’s presence…

Jesus is also positioned as a new Adam in his temptation, especially as recorded in Luke’s Gospel, where the temptation follows the baptism, and genealogy (which goes back to “Adam, the son of God”. There’s some fun stuff going on with gardens, both Gethsemane, and at the resurrection where he is mistaken for ‘the gardener’ — where Adam’s original task in the garden was to ‘work and keep’ the garden.

The rest of the New Testament makes explicit what this point makes implicit, and draws us into the story through our union with Christ by the Holy Spirit — so that we too become temples of the Spirit, and we are transformed into the ‘image of Jesus’ rather than Adam.
If Doug Green’s schema for Psalm 23 is correct, and it depicts Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection as the movement from Eden, to exile, to restoration in a new Eden, then there’s something nice about the resurrection appearance being in a garden, and being followed by Jesus eating with his disciples — but also, this becomes something fulfilled in Jesus’ ascension to heaven where he dwells with the father forever, and where there is a new Edenic orchard of food available (near running waters). The new creation is the ultimate re-creation, and Jesus, the Lamb, occupies a particularly central place in this new garden sanctuary — the ‘forever’ house of God.

“Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, as clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb down the middle of the great street of the city. On each side of the river stood the tree of life, bearing twelve crops of fruit, yielding its fruit every month. And the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations. No longer will there be any curse. The throne of God and of the Lamb will be in the city, and his servants will serve him.” — Revelation 22:1-3
The imperative that follows the baptism, and later the transfiguration, where Jesus is revealed as God’s son, with whom he is well pleased is “listen to him” — Jesus is God’s representative. The word made flesh (John 1), the way God speaks (Hebrews 1). The ‘image of the invisible God’ (Colossians 1). this point seems the least controversial.

There’s a difference between us, and Jesus, in this metanarrative — where the story of the Bible is the story of broken images being restored — we are broken by our sin and idolatry so that we bear the image of our counterfeit gods, as the Psalms put it the result of idolatry is that “those who worship them will become like them.” Sin — idolatry — leads to exile from God, curse, and death. De-creation even. The coming undone of the image we were created to bear. Romans 1 fleshes out how this works with regards to our exchanging the creator for created things. Our restoration comes through Jesus restoring us as worshippers (ala Romans 12) — through his sacrifice, his resurrection and the outpouring of his Spirit which is our ‘baptism’, the moment (depicted as receiving ‘living water’) that recasts us into his image as it re-creates us (see Paul on our being baptised into the death and resurrection of Jesus in Romans 6, such that we, as we receive the Spirit, become children of God again, conformed to the image of his son (Romans 8)). Jesus is a broken image restored because he takes our sin on his body at the cross — he is scourged and scarred and moves through death (God’s image lives and breathes but he breathes his last for us). The resurrection is his re-vivification, and the source of ours – where we move from death in Adam to life in Jesus (1 Corinthians 15) as our ‘psuche’ — the ‘breath of life’ in Genesis meets its ‘end’ or ‘telos’ — the life of God by his Spirit making us immortal images.

Where Paul says: “it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body” the word natural is psuchikon (ψυχικόν), while the word ‘spiritual’ is pneumatikon (πνευματικόν). Paul then quotes Genesis 2:7 to contrast Adam, the living being (ψυχὴν ζῶσαν) — something like ‘a living soul’, but I think it’s better rendered ‘a breathed being’ — in part because in Genesis 1:30 the animals also have ‘the breath of life’ in them’ which, in the LXX, also uses “ψυχὴν ζωῆς”) — with Jesus who is a ‘life-giving Spirit’ (πνεῦμα ζωοποιοῦν). God re-creates us, by the Spirit, through replacing Adam with Jesus in our genetic makeup… so that we share in the resurrection of Jesus rather than the death of Adam.

“And just as we have borne the image of the earthly man, so shall we bear the image of the heavenly man.” — 1 Corinthians 15:49

It’s probably become clear now from much of the scaffolding above that the six elements of that ‘re-creation’ story also apply to us, in Christ, in ways that make the grand story our story. But here are some fun connections…

We are formed via ‘water’ — Baptism is our visible picture of salvation — a picture of what the Spirit does for us as our ‘hearts are circumcised’ — as we are brought from exile away from God, from death and the dead future of our idols to life with God forever.
We receive life by God’s breath — When we receive the Spirit it is ‘breathed into us’ by God as a gift of immortal life that changes who we are — moving us from Adam’s image of God to Jesus’ image of God.
We are declared fit for a purpose within a system — When this happens and we are adopted as children of God, being transformed into his image we have a new purpose — the ‘great commission’ is a new ‘creation mandate’ — a call to be fruitful and multiply, filling the earth. We are also “God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works” (Ephesians 2:10) — Ephesians 2:10 uses the same pair of words for created and ‘handiwork’ that Romans 1:20 uses for ‘what has been made’ (and these are the only times that ‘handiwork’ word is used in the New Testament) — that which is meant to ‘reveal the divine nature and character of God’ — the things declared ‘good’ for that purpose in Genesis 1.
We become priests/images/temples — The job Adam was given in the garden was priestly, Israel’s job was to be a ‘nation of priests’, and that is now the job of the church — the priesthood of believers in/as his temple. Our bodies are the ‘temple of the Spirit’ (1 Corinthians 6:19).
We are fed/provided for — We receive ‘the bread of life’ and ‘living water’ and are invited to eat at God’s table — a reality we celebrate as we break bread together and remember Jesus’ sacrifice in anticipation of the heavenly banquet. There’s a fun thing with the Lord’s Prayer as it relates to all this (and the Psalm 23 stuff about God’s name) as it is a prayer for ‘the bread of tomorrow today’ — the Spirit — which arrives at the feast of bread, Pentecost — but you’ll have to wait for my boss to write his book on that for more…
We are united by the Spirit to be God’s representatives in the world — his image bearers — transformed into the image of Christ as the ‘body of Christ’… Together. Think 1 Corinthians 12, 2 Corinthians 3-5, Romans 8, Romans 12, Ephesians 4, Colossians 3… and heaps of other places…

It’s fun seeing how this plays out in something like the account of the church in Acts 2, where this recreation process seems to be happening en masse as a fulfilment of the prophets, through Jesus’ ascension and the pouring out of the Spirit, and it’s fun drawing a line from there through to Revelation 21 and 22, then asking where in this narrative any particular passage sits, and considering the mechanics by which we become part of the narrative (via union with Christ).

January 12, 2019

Friendship and Redemption in Hell’s Kitchen: Daredevil, Job, and Jesus

“Though I cry, ‘Violence!’ I get no response;
    though I call for help, there is no justice.
He has blocked my way so I cannot pass;
    he has shrouded my paths in darkness.
He has stripped me of my honour
    and removed the crown from my head.
He tears me down on every side till I am gone;
    he uproots my hope like a tree.” — Job 19:7-10

The writers of Daredevil sure know their theology.

In season 1, Matt ‘Daredevil’ Murdoch went toe-to-toe with Wilson ‘Kingpin’ Fisk with both initially identifying themselves as the ‘good samaritan’ — reaching out to help the beaten and bloodied citizens of Hell’s Kitchen out of a ditch… only for Kingpin to end up declaring himself the ‘man of malicious intent’ (identifying with the characters in Jesus’ famous parable who put the poor, bloodied, citizen in a ditch, before the good samaritan came by). Plenty of people ‘generalise’ the figure of the Good Samaritan, as a picture of the ‘good neighbour’ — the sort of heroic person we’re all called to be, but this heroic figure who does what the religious leaders of Israel can’t, or won’t do is the archetypal good neighbour in Luke’s Gospel — a Christ figure; a picture of the despised outsider who pulls broken humans out of the ditch to restore them… This was pretty sophisticated stuff identifying Matt Murdoch with a certain messianic vision – superheroes are often thinly veiled Jesus figures, with Daredevil the veil is essentially transparent.

In season 2, Daredevil identified himself with the ‘suffering servant’ — taking the pain and suffering of his people on his own shoulders; sacrificing and suffering to deliver his people, believing there was some good in them, where The Punisher and the sinister ‘The Hand’ were more hellbent on slaughter. Isaiah’s ‘suffering servant’ is another messianic/Christ figure. Daredevil has consistently been Christlike in his Netflix iteration — right up to his apparent ‘victorious’ sacrificial death on behalf of his team, and the city, in The Defenders.

This is the opening image of season 3 — where a cross visually resolves itself into Matt’s cruciform body, emerging from flames, through water, and back into the land of the living. Matt has been through his own personal crucifixion. Death. Hell. Resurrection. But has he kept his soul? That’s in many ways, the driving question behind the narrative in this season.

Season 3 of Daredevil is every bit as theologically rich as the first two outings, while there’s a fascinating problem with a show being both deliberately theologically astute, and having a messianic protagonist who occupies the place of Jesus in the narrative (who can’t turn to Jesus to understand God’s character and plan)… this season links Matt to the Old Testament character of Job, in order to consider suffering, the question of God’s apparent absence, and the place of friendship.

Across three seasons Daredevil invites us to connect Matt Murdock, and so, by extension, Jesus, with the Good Samaritan, the Suffering Servant, and now Job. This is a rich reading of the narrative unity of the Bible — in fact, it’s cutting edge Old Testament scholarship to see a connection between Job and Isaiah’s servant — and if the writers aren’t making that connection deliberately, they are certainly providing rich fodder for viewers to explore how the Bible holds together… so long as Matt manages not to lose his soul.

Old Testament academic (and now faculty member here in Brisbane, who, disclosure, is also a friend and member of my church), Dr Doug Green, gave a series of guest lectures in Brisbane while I was at college where he proposed a link between Job and Isaiah’s suffering servant (I wrote his lecture up here). He points out several linguistic links between the portrayal of both the Servant, Job, and righteous, God-fearing, Israelites in exile — those who shared the fate of disobedient Israel, and suffered, while still being faithful. He also makes the case that Job’s restoration is framed as a ‘return from exile’ — a resurrection. Job, and the suffering servant, become the figure who will lead Israel out of exile from God — death — and into life. A shared resurrection. The Good Samaritan is this sort of figure too — if the person in the ditch is also exiled Israel. In his lecture notes (that he provided, which were received in thanks) Doug says:

“Just as the Suffering Servant points forward to the intercessory – and more deeply, the atoning work of Christ – the same is true for Job. And because of this parallel to the Suffering Servant, as we see Job praying for his friends, we get a faint picture of Christ’s intercession on our behalf. In fact, Job’s prayer on behalf of his friends finds an echo in Jesus’s prayer for those who crucified him: “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do” (Luke 23:34).”

“…we should not interpret Job as a stand-alone piece functioning as a sourcebook for theological reflection on the general problem of human suffering. Instead it should be interpreted in close connection to Israel’s covenantal history. Combine this with the numerous connections to Isaiah’s prophecy of the Suffering Servant, and that inclines me to understand Job (the character) as a righteous Israelite who experiences suffering (a metaphor for exile) but is brought out the other side to experience a double blessing (a picture of the end of Exile and the Age to Come). And ultimately this experience of inexplicable suffering in some way makes him fit to function as an intercessor (or mediator) for those who are the object of God’s anger…

… this intertextual and prophetic reading of Job as Suffering Servant allows us to at last draw a connection between Job and the eschatological suffering Servant, Jesus Christ (and ultimately to Christ’s Suffering people). It allows us to go back and read it as a pre-told story of Christ – the truly righteous and blameless one who suffers “unfairly,” as it were.”

This framework makes Daredevil‘s theological arc, across three seasons, particularly rich, and yet, having Matt operate as the Jesus-figure, participating in an essentially Christ-less Christianity, in the story creates a mind-bending paradox. There are plenty of crucifixes on display around the place, so it’s not that Daredevil invites us, visually speaking, to ignore the place of Jesus in Christian practice, but he is curiously absent from the overt displays of religion — he’s not mentioned in Father Lantom’s homily, he’s absent in Matt’s musings about the place of suffering for the righteous, and, in many ways, he’s absent from Matt’s messianic vision — beyond bearing the suffering of the innocent while punishing (though not executing) the redeemable guilty. Matt, as ‘the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen’ doesn’t embody the cruciform pattern of Jesus life — though Matt the lawyer, the Matt who looks for non-violent solutions and justice, is perhaps closer to the mark.

When we’re tackling questions of theodicy — God’s relationship to suffering, evil, and violence, in the real world — you just can’t do it without appealing to God’s self-revelation in Jesus; Daredevil’s answer is profoundly theocentric (particularly centered on God the father) and anthropocentric (particularly centered on humanity’s position with regards to evil and suffering). Jesus, in his full divinity and full humanity holds those two aspects of any answer to the question in tension. He’s more than just ‘God’s soldier’ acting in suffering, in the cross, God himself suffers. What Daredevil is good at, so long as we recognise the big answer to the big question of suffering involves this tension, is focusing on the humanity of suffering — and how Jesus is an archetypal sufferer. The servant. The Samaritan. Job. Daredevil. They are all ‘types’ that provide anticipation or echoes of the human life of Jesus. It’s legitimate for us to ask why suffering and evil happen, and where justice will be found if God appears to be stepping back — questions Daredevil explores — but, these questions are profoundly answered in the life of Jesus. The experience of Job, and righteous Israelites suffering in exile (the suffering servant), anticipate the suffering of Jesus.

Job is not just an account of suffering — but of exile from God, and restoration. It’s not just a theodicy, but is specifically connected to the suffering of the righteous. It’s legitimate for us to ask why the righteous suffer — as Matt does… but we have to consider that none of us can claim the righteousness of Job. But on with the show… which is also most rewarding if it’s not just about suffering — but about whether Matt is able to function as a hero while he is in exile from God.

At season’s opening, Matt has lost his mojo — more specifically, his powers that he saw as part of God’s calling, what made him a ‘soldier’ for God; capable of delivering justice, opposing evil, facing death, and helping the residents of Hell’s Kitchen out of their ditch. His loss of these abilities, and questions about what happened to Elektra in The Defenders’ finale, sets up a conversation with the nun looking after him in his convalescence (another Good Samaritan; though it turns out this nun has significant vested interests in his wellbeing, both spiritual and physical). Matt frames his crisis as ‘finally understanding’ where he stands with God. And he launches into a retelling of Job with himself as the ‘telos’ of the narrative; the one Job’s experiences point to… he is a new, and different, Job.

“The book of Job. The story of God’s perfect servant Job, who prayed every day at dawn with his knees on the ground and his face in the dirt. Slaughtered ten goats. One for each of his children, and burned them at the altar in God’s honour. Of all God’s soldiers, Job, he was the most loyal.

Sister: I know the story Matthew.

Matt: Well, then, you know what happens next. God murdered all ten of his children in cold blood, scorched every inch of Job’s land, lashed at his body until his skin was covered in bloody welts. God rained shit and misery on the life of his most perfect servant, and still, Job would not curse him. You know what I realised. Job was a pussy…

See. That was me sister. I suffered willingly. I gave my sweat and blood and skin without complaint, because I truly believed I was God’s soldier. I don’t any more. I am what I do in the dark now. I bleed only for myself… I’d rather die as the devil than live as Matt Murdoch.”

Matt has lost his connection to God; he’s now explicitly not a Christ figure… or at least, he bleeds ‘for himself’ and not for God… but somehow still wants to heroically bleed for others. He is not God’s ‘suffering servant’… He is not Job; or he is, but a different kind of Job. A Job who can’t fathom God’s plan and so, in his suffering, in God’s apparent absence — in exile — Matt turns his back on God… or tries to.

In the story of Job, Job is visited by a bunch of friends who try to explain Job’s suffering. Friends who visit him in his misery, and, rather than being a comfort, pile on more misery… mostly by giving horrible advice. Job’s friends speak as ‘wise’ voices from the nations around Israel… all except Elihu; who speaks with the pious, naive, voice of an Israelite who claims to speak for God. These friends seek to uphold God’s goodness, and blame Job… while Job defends his righteousness. Job is ultimately vindicated by God, he is a ‘righteous sufferer’ — a ‘suffering servant’. He is not suffering because he did something wrong. God has not abandoned him. And yet… he suffers.

Where Job, for the most part, is devastated, bemused, and conflicted by his suffering — and afflicted by his friends — while remaining confident of God’s goodness even in suffering, Matt goes another way, losing confidence with God… and where Job’s friends are useless in guiding him to a right way of understanding his suffering, Matt’s friends are redemptive and useful. And it’s his friends and their relentless presence with him in his suffering — and their good advice — that chart the path to redemption; in their faithfulness to Matt, they start to taste redemption for themselves.

The central moral dilemma in this season is the question of what should happen to Kingpin. There’s lots to this season around the development of a foe for Daredevil — Bullseye — who, incidentally, is the only character to don the red leather suit in this season — and there’s the thread around the mysterious nun and her interest in Matt… but Matt’s real dilemma isn’t how to take down Bullseye, or how to deal with the secrecy around this nun; it’s whether to stray from the path of righteousness; to truly enter the darkness.

In an interaction Karen Page has with Father Lantom while taking refuge in the church building, Father Lantom, Matt’s priest, articulates Matt’s theological vision — “whatever it is that you’ve done, or haven’t done, it can still be redeemed” — Karen says “I’m not so sure I believe that.” As Matt embraces the darkness he tries to push his friends away — he isolates himself from their counsel — like most of us do with our wise friends, or even that internal voice that says ‘stop’ as we embrace sin… he has decided to kill Kingpin, and doesn’t want to be told otherwise. He says he’s pushing them away in order to protect them from what he might become, to keep them ‘innocent’… While Karen and Foggy Nelson, Matt’s two friends, are initially convinced that Matt’s vigilante justice is not the answer, and that he should go ‘through the system,’ Karen starts to think that Matt should kill Kingpin. But Foggy… Foggy knows what straying from the path of righteousness would do to Matt’s soul — and, what it would do to their friendship as a result. His friends are true friends in the face of suffering — they won’t let him go, even when he tries to push them away, they are determined to be there for him, and to lead him out of darkness into the light — not just because he depends on that, but because their friendships do. His friends are faithful.

Foggy: Matt’s Matt because he believes that everyone deserves a shot at redemption.
Karen: Except Fisk.
Foggy: Everyone. It’s a Catholic thing. That’s why he doesn’t kill people. If he crosses that line Matt will never be able to forgive himself.
And being around us will just remind him of who he was and what he’s done.
Karen: Yeah, we’d really lose him, wouldn’t we? — Forever, this time.

From this point, Matt’s friends are relentless in their counsel that this would be disastrous; profoundly because it would represent him truly abandoning God, and his claims to be a righteous, suffering servant… for Matt to kill Fisk would represent his becoming Fisk. The visuals throughout this series on this note, where Fisk is presented in white (and as obsessed with a particular white artwork) and as a ‘warrior of the light’ — operating under 24/7 scrutiny as an FBI informant, while Matt dons the black, and occupies the shadows, are compelling. The tension in the narrative, shaping Matt’s decision, is the question ‘is there anything ‘white’ in Fisk? Is there anything that can be redeemed? And once he decides that there is, he can’t kill him — and in this, Matt finds his own redemption.

Matt’s showdown with Fisk is his apocalypse — it reveals who he truly is, and where God really is in suffering — that God is at work in redemption, forgiveness, and friendship. Where he has Fisk truly at his mercy, in that crucible moment, he stays his hand.

God knows I want to, but you don’t get to destroy who I am.

From this moment on the tension in the series is resolved; it’s the denouement, much like the epilogue at the end of the book of Job. Matt is restored. His relationships are mended. His rediscovery of his faith — his compass — doesn’t just put him back on the path of light, but Karen and Foggy are now linked with him again, sharing in the light and life of Matt’s discovery. He returns to the light. Bloodied. But restored. Truly resurrected. He has listened to his wise friends — and in his restoration, his redemption, they are all redeemed. They all discover the power of forgiveness and reconciliation. Much like Job ends up making sacrifices to restore himself and his friends to relationship with the life-giving God. And much like Jesus, the suffering servant, offers himself as a sacrifice to restore us to life and relationship with God and one another…

Matt connects his suffering to the moment that made him — the moment he was blinded as a child. There’s still no Jesus explicitly found in his theodicy, but there is the answer Job receives from God amidst his questions; that God is the artist and architect of this world, and our sight, like Matt’s, is human and limited.

See, I was pretty angry at God and bitter towards his world.
How could a loving God blind me? Why? Anyway, he told me God’s plan is like a beautiful tapestry.
And the tragedy of being human is that we only get to see it from the back.
With all the ragged threads and the muddy colors.
And we only get a hint at the true beauty that would be revealed if we could see the whole pattern on the other side as God does.

Matt realises that God’s redemptive plans for the world might involve a suffering servant; that they might involve a faithful Job, a Good Samaritan… it’s not just an ‘everything happens for a reason’ trite answer, but rather a discovery of who he — and we image bearers — were made to be in a world where suffering and evil exist. That we were made for life-giving friendships that allow us to enter in to the suffering of others, and to stand against evil, as we reflect God’s presence in his world.

“I realise that if my life had turned out any differently, that I would never have become Daredevil. And although people have died on my watch, people who shouldn’t have, there are countless others that have lived. So, maybe it is all part of God’s plan. Maybe my life has been exactly as it had to be.”

Matt realises that his priest, Father Lantom, modelled sacrificial love — the death of self — and that this sort of posture is freeing; that it drives out fear in the face of suffering. Matt can be the ‘man without fear’ again. Matt is now free to be Job; free to trust God. Free to suffer. Free to be a servant. God’s soldier… He is truly restored. Finally resurrected.

But Matt’s answer would be richer and fuller if he wasn’t totally occupying the place of Jesus in the story; if he, like Job, could respond to suffering — even suffering as one who is righteous by trusting God as redeemer, looking forward, like the rest of the Old Testament, to the truly righteous suffering servant; the Good Samaritan. Light in the darkness. God’s true answer to suffering, and the moment we see the real picture woven in the tapestry of our existence. Jesus.

I know that my redeemer lives,
    and that in the end he will stand on the earth.
And after my skin has been destroyed,
    yet in my flesh I will see God;
I myself will see him
    with my own eyes—I, and not another.
    How my heart yearns within me! — Job 19:25-27

In Jesus we see real redemptive friendship. We see God. We see God, our friend, stepping in to our suffering — and taking on suffering, death, hell and exile, for us, to bring not just his resurrection, but ours, to end our suffering, exile from God, and death, by giving us life with God forever, so that we might face what comes without fear. Because our redeemer lives, and so shall we.

November 18, 2018

A political theology

A while ago I sketched out some basic elements of a political theology (at least the theology part); a way to think about how Christians should engage in politics. I’d been asked to write a paper for a committee meeting for our national denomination and those preliminary thoughts were part of the building blocks for this bigger paper. It’s long, and has footnotes, so here it is as a PDF

Here’s the summary (the conclusion actually, so you don’t have to wade through all that other stuff).

My contention is that it is the Gospel itself that provides a political theology; that our engagement with the world should be shaped by our anthropology — including an understanding of the effect of sin and the idolatrous replacement of creator with creation at the heart of worldly power — and that our political speech and action should be the cruciform proclamation of the crucified king; that we on one level we should not expect this to be persuasive, and indeed should expect a degree of ridicule or persecution, but also that in a truly secular democracy having our beliefs properly understood is our best chance to have them understood, ‘represented’ or recognised by our laws and lawmakers. Our anthropology — our understanding that all people are essentially religiously motivated, worshipping, image bearers means that this approach is actually politically legitimate in a way that transcends different governments and cultures; it is the approach we might expect Paul to adopt in the Roman Empire (as indeed he does in Acts), that the early church adopted in that same context, and that we might expect faithful witnesses and ambassadors for Christ to adopt in both western democracies and other contexts throughout the modern world.

February 27, 2018