جمعه ۲۳ شهریور ۰۳ | ۲۱:۰۰ ۱۰ بازديد
labeled as a “Pastor Appreciation Dinner,” and Sully was
to be part of the entertainment. I thought perhaps it was
a kind of payback for all those pagans who decided to
invite the Christians to the Coliseum to entertain them.
So naturally, I tagged along.
We rode to the event together in the pastoral
minivan, and on the way, we discussed what jokes were
and were not appropriate. Most of Sully’s material landed
firmly in the “not appropriate” category, but in the end,
he assured us that he could sterilize a list that would pass
Jerry Falwell’s all-points inspection.
And surprisingly, it worked.
For the first fifteen seconds of Sully’s act, not a
single sketchy reference slipped through. Then all hell
broke loose. As I looked up at the stage I could see him
perspiring heavily as he looked out on a room that was
practically brimming with non-alcoholic beverages. I
could read his mind: Why did I say yes to this?
Then somewhere amid the nervousness, in this room
of very conservative preachers and their wives, a word
slipped out. And then another. It was happening in slow
motion. And as it happened, I could hear the air being
sucked out of the room. This was going to end badly! I
started preparing to warm up the pastoral minivan.
Unfortunately, it wasn’t over.
Further into his routine, Sully got more nervous
and a couple more words slipped out, along with some
jokes that were hardly clean by Christian standards.
People weren’t laughing now. Not even a little bit. And
Sully didn’t look so good. After all, these were his tame
jokes! They always worked. They always got laughs! But
not tonight. And at some point, toward the end, it was
as if he said “forget it—I’m going with my usual routine!”
They cut his mic.
Afterward, most folks were surprisingly polite. One
lady even tried to pay Sully a compliment by telling him
that when she was an “unbeliever” she would never
have had the courage to come to an event like this. Sully
didn’t think of himself as an unbeliever. He believed in
lots of things, just not basic Christian doctrines. He was
offended, and he asked about it later: “What the [bleep]
is an unbeliever?!”
Later, as Brianna and I drove home, we alternated
between fits of nervous laughter and feelings of embar-
rassment. I hate watching people bomb. Because I’ve
bombed. And it stinks. Then as I lay awake in bed, I
thought strangely about something that happened at
Pentecost with the fiery tongues.
The Scriptures say that when Jesus’ Breath blew into
the lives of his followers, a crowd of people gathered to
see what had happened. And it wasn’t just a crowd of
locals. They were Jews from various different countries
and languages, all gathered for the feast. Yet they had
come together now because they had heard the disciples
speaking to them in their own language (see Acts 2:6).
The Bible calls this cross-cultural communication
“speaking in tongues,” but I imagine it was something
different from the apparently self-induced hysterics of
some Christian cable shows. In Acts 2, these tongues
appear to be real (human) languages with real words.
They were native languages that made sense to the
people gathered from their far-flung lands. They made
so much sense, in fact, that the people wondered how a
bunch of backwater-types from Galilee could communi-
cate the Jesus-story so clearly. It was a miracle, and after
my night at the R-rated pastor’s dinner, it seemed like an
even bigger one.3
Why I Want to Speak in Tongues
For many of us, it isn’t long after being converted that
we lose much of our ability to communicate the Jesus-
story to people like Sully. We no longer speak the same
language. And before long, we just stop hanging out with
those who aren’t like us. That’s the way it often goes, and
it’s tragic, because somewhere along the line even our
compliments start to sound offensive. We start to say
things like: “You’re pretty brave, for an unbeliever.”
And folks like Sully have just as much trouble
communicating with us. They don’t know our rules.
What is acceptable? What is offensive? And if they do,
the rules seem arbitrary. I know that Sully felt this way
because somewhere in the middle of a blog post about
the debacle at the pastors’ dinner, he asked why it was
okay for evangelicals to make fun of Catholics (one of the
biggest laughs of the night had been a fairly innocuous
Catholic joke), but for some reason, saying a four-letter
word for “poop” could get you in big, big trouble. After
all, he thought, aren’t Catholics people? And isn’t poop
just poop?
He didn’t get it. And for many of the pastors, the
feeling was mutual. Around the room with our dinner
rolls and our sensible shoes, many of us looked a lot
alike. We looked like Sully. Most of us were middle-
class Americans with mortgages, kids in braces, and a
weakness for fried food. But despite the similarities, we
spoke a different language. It involved many of the same
vowels and consonants, but it was different nonethe-
less. It was different enough that most of us had about
as much chance of communicating the gospel meaning-
fully to Sully, as we had communicating it meaningfully
to a golden retriever. It wasn’t going to happen, and that
night it hit me.
So for the first time in my Christian existence, I
prayed that God would allow me to speak in tongues.
Not exactly like the big-haired TV preachers. But in a way
analogous to how they did at Pentecost. I prayed that
Jesus would breathe his Breath into me and grant me the
ability to communicate his story in ways that make sense
to Cretans, Arabs, and stand-up comedians. I prayed for
a language that outsiders could understand. And even as
I prayed this, I had to admit that if it does happen, it will
be a miracle.
But then again, I believe in those.
Step Two Must Die
Unfortunately, for all of its importance, the day of
Pentecost lasts only twenty-four hours. It comes like a
flash flood in Acts 2, and it’s over by chapter 3. It is one
day, and although it alters human history forever, it is
barely a blip on the chronological radar. The fire-tongues
and Spirit-Breath are impressive, but after the emotion
of the church’s birthday subsides, the baby needs to
grow up. And if my seventh-grade yearbook picture is
any indication, growing up involves some awkwardness
in the transition.
For the early church, the primary growing pain
involved a difficult question: Would Christianity be
open to all cultures and ethnicities, or would it remain
the private property of a select few? Would the Jesus-
revolution remain a race-and-tribe-based club, or would
it grow into the fulfillment of God’s promise to Abraham
that all nations would be blessed?
The question arose because the earliest disciples
were members of a single cultural and religious heritage.
They were Jewish. And they did Jewish things. They
worshipped at the Jewish temple, ate Jewish (*******her)
food, and read extensively from the Jewish Scriptures.
They were children of Abraham, and in this sense, their
faith was a family thing. In the minds of some folks
(called the Judaizers), you could join the family, but that
required a two-step process.
Step #1: Leave your old allegiances (to money,
power, idolatry) and place your faith in
Jesus.
Step #2: For Gentiles, leave your cultural heri-
tage (the ethnic identity you were raised
with) and become a Jew.
Both steps were difficult. The first step was hard
because it involved acknowledging the authority of
a new Ruler (or Lord) at a time when many false gods
(including Caesar) demanded one’s worship and alle-
giance. The second was difficult because it involved
rejecting one’s heritage, one’s culture, and in essence,
one’s identity. And if this were not enough, for adult
males, step two meant going under the knife for an
operation that would make even a linebacker cry like a
baby: circumcision.4
It was step two that was keeping non-Jews out of
the Jesus-movement, and for good reason. The shame
of publicly renouncing one’s ethnic and cultural heritage
brings to mind some of the worst chapters in human
history: genocide, lynch-mobs, ethnic cleansing. It
brings to mind the old photographs of Native Americans
forced to cut their hair and put on choking neckties in
order to be Christianized—by which was meant: be made
white. Such ethnocentrism dredges up the memories of
African slaves who were caught and shipped like cargo to
a foreign land where they would be given Christian names
for life in a Christian country.
We may cringe at such practices today, but the
church’s biggest conflict after Pentecost revolved around
this question: Should following the God of Jesus (the
God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob) require the rejection
of one’s original ethnic identity? Did it require a person
to become Jewish, by virtue of the law of Moses, in order
to become a Christian? In other words: What should be
done with step two?
What the early Jesus-followers did with the so-called
second step is truly astonishing. In the face of numerous
Old Testament rules on everything from circumcision,
meat, and table fellowship, the young leaders of the
church eventually reached a startling conclusion: step
two must die.
The requirement that Gentiles must adhere fully to
the Jewish law had to be rubbed out in the hearts and
minds of Jesus-followers. It had to die. And with it,
dozens of scriptural laws that were meant only for the
Israel chapter would be set aside, not because they were
bad, but because they had been fulfilled in Christ.
If this sounds like blasphemy to you, then you know
precisely how some early Christians felt. Tough ques-
tions arose within the church: Are not those commands
on circumcision and food laws still in the Bible? Isn’t
Scripture God’s unchanging Word? What gives us the
right to ignore some laws—the ones against eating pork,
or getting your penis snipped—while still holding on to
other laws: like the ones on murder and monotheism?
Their answer went something like this: while God never
changes, certain commands belong to certain chapters in
his plotline.5 Thus, strange as it sounds: God doesn’t want
us to do everything the Bible says.
Why You Shouldn’t Do Everything the Bible Says
If that statement disconcerts you, let me clarify: you
shouldn’t obey all the commands in Scripture, not because
the Liberal-progressive-revisionists-who-probably-live-
in-California say so, but because the Bible does.
In our chapter on Israel, we made the case that
Yahweh handed down some laws for a rather subversive
reason. He gave them to preserve his people culturally
even as they refused to stand out morally. As the Old
Testament makes clear, Israel’s hearts were no better
than those of the nations. All humans stand enslaved
to sin. Therefore, it was because God’s children were no
different on the inside (with regard to their hard hearts)
that God preserved them by making them different on
the outside. This is one reason for the proliferation of
religious rules on everything from pork to penises.
But surface differences (on everything from food to
fabrics) were never the Creator’s ultimate desire. God’s
desire was that Israel would stand out because of her
love and fidelity to him. She was to care for the widow,
the orphan, and the fatherless. She was to worship God
alone, because all other gods will leave you high and dry,
and Yahweh alone is worthy. In other words, God wanted
Israel to express love for him through well-ordered love
for others. That’s it. This has always been God’s one
desire, in every phase of human history. Yet all of us
have failed. Like all of us, Israel went her own way, she
did what she thought best, and she became part of the
problem rather than a part of the solution.
So (as we have seen) the Creator made a brilliant and
surprising move. If Israel would be no different from the
neighbors morally, then God would make her different
culturally. And by this creative twist, God would sustain
his family until Someone came along and lived out the
heart of the commandments right down to the last punc-
tuation mark.
Quite simply, Jesus filled that role. His life kept the
soul of the Torah (the ancient law of Moses), his death
paid the debt of sin, his resurrection proved his victory,
and his bodily ascension made space for a new body here
on earth—the church—his corpus filled with his Spirit.
Now, by grace alone, it is our job to continue the work of
renewing creation through the same Spirit that hovered
over the chaotic waters back in Genesis 1.
This is why some of the Old Testament laws on every-
thing from circumcision to animal sacrifice no longer apply,
not because they were bad, but because they belong specifi-
cally to another chapter in God’s Story. They are like grand
sailing ships once used to carry travelers from England to
America. They were essential for the journey, but unnec-
essary upon the newfound land. Their good purpose wa
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