By most accounts, condescension is considered a negative in today's language.  Condescend has been re-defined as a tone of superiority that patronizes another.  This is not it's original meaning however.

John Wesley once wrote, "God himself has condescended to teach the way: for this very end he came from heaven. He hath written it down in a book. O give me that book! At any price give me the Book of God!" God's condescension is not patronizing, it is rather his making himself known to us on our level of understanding.  God has let himself down into mankind out of love and respect for his creation.  This takes place mainly in The Word–the Logos of God–that is Jesus Christ, through scripture, and through his Holy Spirit.

How beautiful and good is it that the Lord of the universe should come to us then on our own level, where we are at?  God strips away the barriers that keep us from him, and does so in order to pull us towards him.  As Karl Barth notes:

Sin is obviously the negation, the opposite of what God does for us in Jesus Christ in condescending to us, in humbling Himself, in becoming a servant to take to Himself and away from us our guilt and sickness.  This is the grace of God in its first form: God gives Himself to us, He makes Himself responsible for our cause, He takes it into His own hand.  And the commandment is clear–it is necessarily a matter of our basing our being and activity on the fact that God is ours, that we are the recipients of this gift which is so inconceivably great.  Sin in its first form is pride.  When God condescends to man, when He makes Himself one with Him in order to be truly his God...

Rather than a force of oppressive weight, God's condescension is our very means of salvation.  As followers of Christ then we are recipients of the salvation because of our identification within the community that is the Body of Christ.  As co-recipients of that grace we are then drawn into God through the same love that binds God the Father, Son, and Spirit as one.  Not only are we bound to God, but to each-other in God as the Body of Christ.

So, next time you think of the word condescend you might have a different perspective.

A few weeks back we did something different; we allowed people to anonymously text in questions to be answered live on stage. I was able to take part in that panel and for the first time out of the gate it went pretty well.

Here is the audio

There is book floating around called 'The Great Emergence' by Phyllis Tickle.  I haven't read it for myself, but in the world of blogging it is not a prerequisite to actually have read something before making bold and audacious claims about said book.  Infact I believe it is encouraged in the blogging community to, 'shoot from the hip' as it were; perhaps with an image of Clint Eastwood from one of his spaghetti westerns in your mind.

But I digress, the reason this book seems to be getting so much play around the blogosphere, is that asks the question, "where now is our authority?"  Now having watched numerous videos with Ms. Tickle in which she summarizes the content of her book I have to say that I don't really have a problem with the question.  I don't even really have much to disagree with in regards to most of her assesments.  At least in the Nazarene/Methodist/Anglican world we have forgone the idol of Sola Scriptura all together, so that is not really a huge issue for me.  In many ways when we are forced into discovering The Word, i.e. Jesus as the source of all truth, vs. what is written (inspiration or otherwise) about him, it helps us form a better Christological focus from which we then live out the gospel in our contexts.

Here is my caution in all of this.  There will be some that will go the way of the classical progressive/liberal track and try to engender that as being the 'emerging' culture, when in fact it is old school liberal theology with a shiny name.  This is no different than the denominational hijacking of the word 'missional'.  In regards to authority however we must be careful because when we swing the pendulum too far we end up with legalism.  If we set up a 'Sola Scriptura' idol we fall into legalism, we will have indeed as Phyllis exhorts exchanged Christ for an idolotrous reverence for the Bible.  On the other end we have classic liberalism, which for all it's claims of liberty is simply a set of rules set in opposition to the other side.

Either way, when humans start trying to 'decide' where the authority comes from we end up with some form of legalism; either conservative or liberal, but both legalists to the end.  I think asking "Where now is our authority" is a lot like asking why gravity works, or why water is wet.  At the core we know the authority, the only true and lasting authority lies in God Almighty.  We have his authority as it is revealed to us by his Son Jesus Christ and the experiences of the first Christians.  We already know where the authority comes from.  The real question, the underlying question that Phyllis is asking is, who gets to decide who is a Christian and who isn't?  Who get's to decide orthodoxy/praxy, etc.?

That is where grace comes in for us humans.  The New Testament gives us a pretty clear picture of who Christ was and what he was here to do.  It gives us a generally agreed upon source from which to become a people of love, charity, and grace.  There is a lot of our faith that God has chosen to leave to personal discernment of the Scriptures and their meaning for our own moral context.  Because of our free will and fallible intellects we have the ability to mis-interpret and mis-appropriate scripture and misapply it to our lives (and other peoples lives as well.)

I say all of that to say that the way of the Cross transcends the either/or legalism of the conservative and liberal debates.  If you have read anything Brian McLaren has ever written on anything than you would have heard that before.  I would add that what we actually 'do' (our practice and relationships) as a people of Christ says a lot more about where we look for authority than what we 'say' (human ideas about who God is) about Christ, scripture, etc.

It's entirely possible to give the Bible the complete authority of your life and to never know Jesus Christ in the way he intended you to.  It's also possible to be smug and arrogant as you squash the conservative imbicles in the name of Christ.  If you want to find out where God's authority lies, then I suggest you do less theologizing and more watching.  Look for the fruit of the Spirit and that is where you will find the authority you seek.

Our next stop in the book of Job takes us to Job 14.  Job has become increasingly dispondant.  Yet, he has a secret hope revealed here that I want to touch on.

Job is convinced that even the trees have more hope than he does, saying that a branch if planted can grow again.  He longs for deliverance, even from death itself.  Yet he is convinced that it is impossible.

Indeed Job is dispondant, but he hopes for redemption.

So what do we take away from this?  Job still doesn't have the 'full picture' (as if we do?) Also, this isn't 'the end' of Job's story.

The next passage I want to deal with is Job 10:18-22.  In the previous post I stated that as the book of Job progresses, his view of the after life becomes increasingly fretful.  Whereas before he saw Sheol as a place of solice, a place of rest from the wicked that attacked him, he now begins to describe the grave as a "land of darkness, of utter gloom."

He speaks of the grave as place in which the dead are hidden, where everything lies in cofusion.

In the post on covenant I noted that there was a belief that sheol was temporary, as people awaited a resurrection and judgment.  Job (both the narrative or the person he is modled on) predates this understanding.  It is of note that there is no attempt by later scribes/teachers to rectify this dissonance.  Job was limited in his understanding, and in his understanding there was nothing to look forward to now, even in death.  In this passage death/the grave/Sheol is a place of non-existence in which he becomes as though he never was, he dissapears like a stream in a drought.

Despair is despised in our culture, not that I believe it a virtue; however in our culture despair is something that we avoid talking about, embracing, or dealing with in a healthy way.  We often medicate the symptom while ignoring the root cause.  We can apply a topical solution, but until the roots are wrended from the ground and burnt there is no cure.

Job embraces his despair as real and tangible.  He doesn't try to placate his friends with a good facade.  He was most likely sitting in a room, nearly naked, covered in ashes and soot as he wrythed in physical pain and mental torment.  That is about as hellish a vision as I can conjure up.  Job embodied his dispair in a humbling way.

So what do we take away here?  Job embodied his dispair, he didn't hide it before others or God.  Job had a limited understanding of God's eternal plan.  This is not the end of Job's story.