We'll Never Be Good Enough - Thank God.

Chapter 1: Refrigerator Art

Oddly enough, Crowe opens this chapter with a humorous analysis of why hanging kids’ pictures on the family fridge ever became a thing. Seems like a strange place to hang artwork, right? …Especially when the art is, perhaps not the most aesthetically pleasing. But parents display it proudly, in the part of the house that gets the most traffic and where it is sure to be seen by everybody.

This is where Crowe starts his discussion of what it means to be “in Christ,” writing that “in the end, the best I can offer God is nothing more than refrigerator art” (18).

To be in Christ also means that Christ is in you – what was once sinful, empty and spiritually dead, Christ redeems and brings to life. But it is through no merit of our own – instead, it is the grace of God that causes this change in us. As we’ve read in Romans this semester, “God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (5:8).  Even on our best days, we wouldn’t be able to accomplish what is necessary to make us on good terms with God. Crowe writes, “we have nothing to offer God but empty and messed-up lives without purpose. In other words, refrigerator art” (18).

Besides being a harsh criticism of refrigerator art, I’m not sure this analogy is quite appropriate for the nature of the situation he’s trying to describe. When I think of children’s art, I think of it as imaginative and genuine - perhaps “ugly” by certain aesthetic standards, but wholly pure and therefore beautiful in its own way. Regardless, Crowe uses it to bring in the idea that before we were redeemed by the act of salvation, “the best you could offer God was but filthy rags (see Isaiah 64:6). He’s using it to try to describe how God takes our messy, chaotic, “ugly” lives and somehow awards us the new identity of being “in Christ,” which is a place of the highest honor and favor.

Moving on, Crowe takes the rest of this chapter to explain three premises about what it means to be free and how we should approach our freedom:

·      The Reality of a Life Made Free: We Are New Creations

Here’s the big idea: our status as “new creations” means “no mere mending or improvement but an actual ‘creation’ . . . God created something completely new; he didn’t simply upgrade or improve on an already existing life” (19-20). This is significant because “the sacrificial love of Christ is not to reform morals but to transform, not to improve life but to grant life to all” (21). The old, sinful nature has passed away – we no longer have to be enslaved by the force of sin in our lives.

When I read this section, especially the quotation above about how Christ did not simply reform morals but transformed them, I was reminded of our discussions in class about Christ’s statement that he came not to abolish the law but to fulfill it. As we’ve discussed based on our readings of the Gospels, Christ “radicalizes” the commands – he brings what was created to the full expression of what it was intended to be, emphasizing the heart and not external behavior. I don’t think his purpose was to make the laws impossible to follow or to add more strict rules – instead he wanted to teach people that the purpose of the law was to change hearts.

Crowe expresses a distinction, however, in that while the creation that “took place ‘in the beginning’ was characterized by God’s all-powerfulness,” the “new creation of an individual spiritually is characterized by God’s grace” (20). My main problem with this distinction is that it may give the impression that the first creation was somehow detached from grace, and the act of making us new creations is somehow not a demonstration of God’s all-powerfulness. I don’t think Crowe intends for this interpretation to happen, but his writing is a little unclear here. What I found to be so beautiful after thinking about this issue is that in both acts of “creation,” God’s powerful and grace were working together. Afterall, it takes divine power to recreate a human heart.

·      The Reason for a Life Made Free: The Love of God

In this section, Crowe emphasizes the concepts of reconciliation and imputation. The main idea is that in Christ’s salvific work on the cross, God himself took the action necessary to reconcile us to himself. Crowe writes, “Because of imputation – or rather because of the debt and enmity that had been built up due to humanity’s transgressions and because of the demand of God’s holy law – reconciliation is God’s solution to humanity’s problem” (23).

·      The Responsibility of a Life Made Free: The Ministry of Reconciliation

This section describes the mission of the Christian as that of being an ambassador – one who, as a new creation and therefore free from the bondage of sin because of the imputation of Christ’s own righteousness, is charged with sharing the same message of reconciliation that he or she has found. Crowe asserts that “Christian freedom is not passive, but proactive” (24). When we are saved, we inherit a responsibility to help save others. This is the “ministry of reconciliation” (24). One of my favorite ideas of this section is related to the title of an ambassador: the “individual has all of the authority of the state he represents backing his presence in the country where he serves” (24). Crowe didn’t expand much on this statement, but I have read other writing by Corrie ten Boom, for example, which brings out that as ambassadors of Christ, we do not have any reason to fear the powers of this world – we represent the Almighty Lord.

Chapter 2: Meat, Idols, and Special Days

This is where Crowe really begins to address the issue of ethical controversy. I really identified with his opening narrative, where he described a friend of his who had grown up in a “very structured institutional church,” and “was taught that people could only pray certain sanctioned prayers and that proper behavior in church was anything but relaxed or joyful” (27). She was invited to a friend’s church when she was sixteen, and was shocked by the differences – the casual atmosphere, the worship music, the spontaneity and humor. However, though she recognized a sense of joy in the people who went there that she was unaccustomed to seeing at church, she thought it was irreverent and judged the people there for it. Crowe writes that she “allowed the traditions of her home church to prevent her from enjoying the company of other Christians. . . . She left the church building that day empty of the joy and freedom she observed in the others around her because she made mountains out of molehills”  (27).

I appreciated Crowe’s discussion of this, especially because during college, I’ve come to see the beauty and freedom that can exist in many different “styles” of church. For example, I have learned to love liturgy, but I also value the freedom of contemporary worship. “Structure” can still be conducive to freedom. The point is not that Crowe’s friend’s home church was “wrong” in its approach, but that his friend failed to see the common faith that united both churches and therefore missed out on the fellowship that she could have found. In Hays’s The Moral Vision of the New Testament, we’ve just read his chapter on other sources of authority besides Scripture alone, and I agree that tradition should be, to some extent, considered in our interpretation of scripture and our religious practice. However, Crowe’s example shows that there are some things that we may see as controversial which really shouldn’t be a big deal.

Crowe writes that “If we don’t seek to properly understand our freedom in Christ, we can cause division and hurt within the Christian community and be poor representatives of Christ to those outside the faith” (28). I was reminded by this of the beginning of Mere Christianity by C. S. Lewis, where Lewis writes that while it is good for Christians of different opinions should discuss these differences, they should never be brought up in the presence of nonbelievers, who will only see the division and be turned away from the faith.

Crowe then begins his discussion of “gray areas” by focusing on two “case studies” from the book of Romans: dietary restrictions, whether or not we should eat food offered to idols, and the issue of whether or not to observe special holy days. In Romans 14:1-12, Paul provides these as examples of issues that can cause disunity between those who are stronger Christians and those who are weaker Christians. Crowe emphasizes that the guiding principle of this discussion is that “strong believers bear a great responsibility to focus on community and not allow division to take place over a difference of opinions” (29). This section was interesting to me because the main point was that even though we have freedom in Christ, we should never distort this freedom to cause other Christians to stumble or doubt. Stronger Christians may realize that a certain behavior is not sin, but if they know that they are in a position where a weaker Christian (who does believe it to be a sin) would be confused, tempted, or discouraged by witnessing the behavior, stronger Christians should abstain.  In other words, there are some instances where what is sin for one believer might not be sin for another believer; however, what is important is that both are acting out of a desire to honor God, and each should be fully convinced of his or her own decision.

My favorite idea from this section is that Christ is Lord over every area of our lives, even in the so-called “gray areas,” and for this reason, Crowe believes that “there should never be any neutral or passive areas in a believer’s life” (32). There are of course issues of ethics that are obviously nonnegotiable based on God’s word, but “when it comes to decisions that are a matter of opinion, it still comes down to whether or not you do something in honor of the Lord. Attitude and purpose can take center stage on whether or not a decision is sin” (32). Crowe exhorts us to never go against our own conscience, but at the same time, we should not allow personal opinions to lead us into petty arguments which can undermine the unity God intends for his church to have. If I think of Crowe’s discussion so far in terms of the methods of ethical reasoning we’ve discussed in class, much of this seems to be fitting into the category of virtue ethics: it’s about knowing the kind of people we should be, and “being who we are.” The telos, or ultimate end, is to bring glory and honor to God in everything we do, so rather than placing the focus on a list of rules or moral imperatives, our focus in deciding issues of morality should be whether or not the end of the behavior will be God-honoring.

“Jesus is Lord in our social networking and when deciding what movie to watch. This simple fact means that when we focus on judging others or when we act arrogantly, we take away from the focus we should have – that He is Lord and we live unto him.” – Brent Crowe

The Elephant in the Room

“While some of these gray issues might seem trivial, they often become the elephant in the room – that big and attention-catching behemoth that no one wants to tackle or deal with, so everyone pretends not to see it. That way, no one has to be challenged to make decisions about it.” Brent Crowe, Chasing Elephants

With “Into the Gray,” I’ll be delving into Brent Crowe’s book, Chasing Elephants: Wrestling with the Gray Areas of Life. Perhaps the title is an odd combination of clichés, but it’s perfectly to the point: this is about dealing with the elephants in the room, the gray areas that usually make me, for one, cringe, because I’m either not sure where I stand, or I don’t know how to stand in the first place.

These so-called gray areas aren’t the kind of things you can search for in a Bible concordance, pick out select verses based on key words, and fit them neatly into a list of “dos and don’ts.” But even if they were, doesn’t that approach to morality seem inadequate, deeply flawed, superficial? Beyond acting morally based on compliance with specific rules, what does it mean to really think morally – to approach controversial topics from a certain, consistent worldview, rather than trying to look for answers that just won’t be found in the text of the Bible?

I chose to blog about Chasing Elephants for my book review project for Biblical Heritage, because Crowe appears to be addressing the same central concept that this class is addressing: developing “biblically informed perspectives on contemporary ethical issues” (straight from the syllabus). Crowe’s book deals with several key subjects that the Bible doesn’t necessarily address specifically, which, as we all know, includes most of the issues we encounter every day – from social drinking to social networking.

I first met Crowe when I was a high school freshman attending a Christian leadership conference for young adults, called Student Leadership University. Crowe is the vice president of SLU, and as a student at SLU 101, 201, and 301, I’ve had the opportunity to hear him speak on numerous topics over several years. I am impressed both by his deep convictions and by the way he presents them with humility.  As a student hearing him give presentations, I appreciated the way he discussed serious and controversial issues with respect and yet humor – he is adept at making subjects accessible and applicable.  Throughout this blogging project, I am interested to see the way his voice comes across in written form.

I’ve divided the book into roughly eight sections, beginning with the introduction, which is titled, “The Journey is Freedom.” Crowe opens his book with the idea that when it comes to making moral choices, sometimes life feels like a series of empty rituals, routines that have lost the significance they might have once had. In Crowe’s words, “For most of my life, I was taught what to believe . . . . Recently though, I awakened to an unfortunate reality: I have never taken the time to learn ‘how to believe’” (11).  In many ways, I identify with this predicament. Although I am, admittedly, a bit denominationally confused, I grew up in the Christian church. Although as a young adult I became committed to the Christian faith, I don’t remember when I first “gave my life to Christ,” because church was a given for my family. I am so thankful for that. But I’ve been listening to sermons every week and reading Christian books and going to youth groups for so long that sometimes it’s hard to know why I believe what I believe: are these convictions things I’ve inherited from my home, or do I really have an opinion? Perhaps surprisingly, the movement from a public high school to an out-of-state private Christian college (and the slew of different ideas I encountered as a result of that move) has made for some serious existential crises. Here, even surrounded by other Christians, I’ve never before encountered so many conflicting ideas. How is it that Christians can have such different perspectives on the same issues? If the outcome of our opinions (on, say, hot topics like abortion) can be so opposite, can we really be following the same Christ? I’ve been sincerely pursuing a life of righteousness since before I can remember, but sometimes I run into issues that don’t seem to have a right answer – or at least not an obvious one.

Crowe clarifies that when he speaks of his struggles with how to believe, he isn’t talking about “the main principles of the Christian faith but about hundreds of gray areas. Those matters of life that the Bible doesn’t specifically address and preachers don’t like to preach about” (11).  He believes adamantly, however, that the existence of these gray areas does not mean that we have to settle for a life of ambiguity.

So as Christians, what can we be sure of? The cross, and by extension, freedom. Crowe writes, “Christ has set us free to live a free life! Jesus both sets us free and enables us to live free. A proper understanding of this freedom can help us know what to believe in the gray areas of life and be fully convinced in our own minds,” so that we can “readily address them” (12). I have to admit, at this point I am ready for Crowe to define his terms. For me, “Freedom” is often one of those disembodied religious words that we Christians use all the time, but can’t seem to agree on what it means.

Thank goodness his next heading is titled, “Freedom Defined.” Here’s Crowe’s working definition of freedom based on Genesis 2:16-17, the story of Creation and “the very essence of this God-given gift of freedom” (12). In the Garden of Eden, freedom involved:

a.) respect for the authority of God’s words;

b.) responsibility to stay within the boundaries established by God’s words; and

c.) consequences for crossing said boundaries.

The Fall, Crowe writes, was a “picture of freedom mishandled and eventually lost” (13).

From the beginning of Creation, God’s intention for humanity was a life of perfect freedom in Paradise. Yet what made this a state of freedom was its existence within boundaries set by God. Even before the Fall, living in freedom did not mean anarchy, where each is “free” to do as he or she wishes. Freedom is sustained by protective boundaries. It is when these lines are crossed that our freedom is taken away from us – or rather, we give up our freedom when we reject God’s will in favor of our own.

But with the redemption given to us by the New Covenant of Christ, we can regain our freedom through grace. And grace doesn’t sync with legalism, the tendency we may have “to make knowing God more about morality than transformation,” reducing “Christianity to rules and regulations” that leave us feeling hindered, not free (14). In response to this problem of legalism, Crowe explains that the rest of his book is designed to help followers of Christ to “know how to believe with a deep sense of appreciation for freedom,” using Scripture to create a sort of grid through which to engage issues that seem ambiguous, rather than making assumptions about them based on popular thought or avoiding them altogether.

“If you desire to move beyond ‘what’ and ‘why’ to ‘how to believe’ . . . Then this book was written for you.” – Brent Crowe

I fit this definition. I'm looking forward to the rest of the elephant chase.