Prof. John Stackhouse’s Weblog

As 2008 dawns in the midst of the Twelve Days of Christmas, how we long for peace: for shalom, that great Biblical word for the flourishing of each individual, each relationship, and the cosmos as a whole in harmony with God.

Christians celebrate the birth of Jesus as the one foretold to be “the Prince of Peace” (Isaiah 9:6), the one who came to bring “shalom on earth,” as the angels declared to the shepherds (Luke 2:14). And it is only as we look to Jesus that we will have the peace he promised (John 14:27).

One doesn’t need to be a Christian, of course, to long for peace, to work for peace, and to enjoy seeing peace on earth–in part, here and there, for a while. And let’s acknowledge that we Christians are as capable of wreaking “non-peace” as anyone else.

The fundamental Christian hope, however, is of the “peaceable kingdom” to come, when Jesus returns to set things finally right. And the Christian joy is to experience something of that peace already in the present age of tumult and trouble.

So my kids are wondering, having spent the last week or so at home full-time with Professor Papa, why the theologian doesn’t radiate peace, why I don’t characteristically walk into the room as a soothing breeze of calm and delight, trailing clouds of quiet happiness in my wake.

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Irshad Manji, a Canadian activist who cajoles and confronts her fellow Muslims from the theological left of Islam, recently asked some of her acquaintances what we thought of a case in the Sudan that received international attention.

An English teacher in that country invited her 7-year-old students to name their class teddy bear. The overwhelming choice was “Muhammad,” so they were then all sent home with assignments regarding their mascot.

But a staffer at the school complained that the 54-year-old teacher, Gillian Gibbons, intended to insult the Prophet. Charges were laid, Ms. Gibbons was put in prison and threatened with flogging, she was tried and found guilty, and then Sudan’s president pardoned her after considerable diplomacy at a high level and angry demonstrations on street level. (Read about it here.)

Ms. Manji, now living in New York, got into a vigorous discussion with a Sudanese cab driver about it all. (Vigorous discussions are Irshad’s stock in trade!) She blogged about it, and asked a few of us for some responses–especially asking the interesting Christmastime question, “What would Jesus do?”

I replied instead to the related question of “What would Jesus have me do?” and Irshad excerpted a bit of my answer on her blog. As for what Jesus would have done if he had been on site in Sudan, well, here are some thoughts on that question, also.

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Hear the word of the Lord from Isaiah:

“Arise, shine; for your light has come, and the glory of the LORD has risen upon you. For darkness shall cover the earth, and thick darkness the peoples; but the LORD will arise upon you, and his glory will appear over you. Nations shall come to your light, and kings to the brightness of your dawn.”

There is no Yuletide sentimentality in Advent. Peace will not come by wishing for it. Peace will not come by imagining it. Peace will not come by God waving a magic wand over it.

No, peace will come by God wielding a scepter—and a sword. Peace will come only in the drastic rearranging of the deranged, and if that sounds violent, it is. Today’s passage follows a prophetic promise of doom in chapter 59, that God’s justice will arrive like a hurricane.

So today’s promise of light, the almost-unbelievable promise that we ourselves can shine as we reflect the brilliance of the shaft streaming down on us from God’s kindly face, is breathtaking. Indeed, it is breath-giving as life and light come to the dying and dark.

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Over the last few weeks, various Christians have contacted me because they are troubled over encountering my name amidst dozens of other signatories listed in a recent New York Times advertisement as supporting a public statement of support for a recent document from moderate Muslims, “A Common Word between Us and You.” (I’m glad to say that others have contacted me to express their appreciation that I did sign it.) The statement of support, entitled “Loving God and Neighbour Together,” was drafted by several professors at Yale Divinity School, including my friend Miroslav Volf, founder and director of the Yale Center for Faith & Culture and Henry B. Wright Professor of Systematic Theology.

(For all of the relevant documents, see the pertinent press releases and links here.)

It was Miroslav who e-mailed me to ask if I’d like to sign the statement for the NYT publication. I read the original Muslim statement and the Yale response, and didn’t sign right away. I was concerned that differences between the faiths, particularly about the divinity of Christ and God’s triune nature, were not as clearly set out in either statement as I would have preferred. Had I drafted the statement myself, I would have made changes elsewhere as well.

But I wasn’t being asked to help draft it. The thing was done, and the question now was a simple, binary one: Sign or not?

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During my commute today, I listened to a lecture on CD by colleague Iain Provan, professor of Old Testament here at Regent, on the story of Jacob. That’s not a typical Advent story, of course, but it’s interesting to consider it in a Christmas context.

Brother Provan, superb expositor that he is, notes that God reiterates the Abrahamic promise to Jacob during Jacob’s famous dream of a ladder reaching to heaven: “the land on which you lie I will give to you and to your offspring; and your offspring shall be like the dust of the earth, and you shall spread abroad to the west and to the east and to the north and to the south; and all the families of the earth shall be blessed in you and in your offspring” (Genesis 28).

But when Jacob eventually responds to God’s extravagant promise, he mentions nothing about gaining an entire land, or having numberless offspring, or being a blessing to the whole world. Here’s what he says instead: “If God will be with me, and will keep me in this way that I go, and will give me bread to eat and clothing to wear, so that I come again to my father’s house in peace, then the LORD shall be my God.”

Provan points out the shocking disjunction between what Jacob wants and what God offers. And as I listened, I was suddenly struck by the shameful disjunction between my own paltry desires and God’s great promises.

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An article in this month’s Commentary, by Peter Wehner and Yuval Levin, speaks of “Crimes, Drugs, and Welfare–and Other Good News.” Apparently not everything in our culture is going to hell (as I suggested in my blog entry of September 24, 2007). Indeed, Wehner and Levin point to decreasing numbers of teenage pregnances, increasing test scores in schools, lower numbers of abortions and divorces, and a drop in violent crime.

The authors suggest that a combination of opinion-shaping and policy-making are responsible for the changes. Well, maybe. But not perhaps the opinions and policies they have in mind.

I don’t mean to be ungrateful for their tidings. It certainly is good news that there is some good news.

Some of us historical types have been warning for quite a while, to be sure, that history does not proceed in single, straight lines–or circles. Just as some “leading cultural indicators” have shown that some aspects of contemporary North American culture are worse–from unthinking boorishness in parks and cinemas to a widespread acceptance of fornication–other indicators have shown for a generation that some aspects of culture are better, such as how our society treats handicapped people, or people of other races, or people without property, or people who aren’t men.

Still, the question is why–why some things are improving. And I’d like to know why Wehner and Levin do not even mention the provocative thesis of economist Steven Levitt et al., popularized in his book Freakonomics (2005).

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I don’t easily find books for spiritual reading. So I’m always glad when someone recommends a book that he or she has found helpful.

One such book I’ve just finished is a collection of sermons by the late James S. Stewart, formerly the Professor of New Testament Language, Literature, and Theology at Edinburgh University (the post now held by a friend of mine, Larry Hurtado). The publishing arm of Regent College recently released a reprint of this fine anthology, Walking with God, edited by Gordon Grant.

Stewart has been lauded by many fine preachers, including such disparate pulpiteers as Lloyd John Ogilvie (former chaplain to the U.S. Senate), Gardner Taylor (dean of African-American preachers), and William Willimon (former chaplain to Duke University and now a Methodist bishop). His sermons are couched in the elegant language of a bygone generation, replete with aphorisms from his wide reading in classical and British literature (I would say “English literature,” but he was a Scot, and quoted Robbie Burns as often as Shakespeare, it seems). His messages are always directed to both piety and practice, and I have found many a passage to be provocative–whether to compunction or to comfort.

Herewith a bouquet of quotations plucked from these pages:

“We think of ourselves–ourselves who get so worried, so hectic with life’s load of care; who carry our fever with us, and wince at pin-pricks, and get flurried and fussy and nervous, and can’t relax; who feel that everything is getting on top of us, and life is too much for us, and quite lose our interior peace. There is no real remedy for that condition but this–a closer walk with God” (16-17).

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A month ago I showed my film-making son Trevor the bizarre and troubling movie by Terry Gilliam, Brazil. Trevor recently wrote about how much he disliked the film, especially its ending, and how, a month later, he’s still thinking about that film and its message. And he’s glad he saw it after all.

Check it out here.