on (re)thinking atonement-part II
I admit that trying to denounce substitutionary atonement is a quarrelsome thing.
It's something most of us grew up with, and, especially around Easter, something we hold dear. This is, after all, time to sing about "fountains filled with blood drawn from Emmanuel's veins". Clearly, there's still much good to be said about this perspective and many hold it well. It has only been in a subsequent conversation with a friend and colleague that I considered questions at the very heart of the issue. The question he asked was, loosely, "if blood was not required, then why the cross?" Trying to answer that question led to two larger realities that I'm still wrestling with.
What have we been saved from?
What have we been saved for?
So rewind to last night, as Jen and I made a bleary-eyed drive back from the local Steak-n-Shake across the rolling hills of North Paulding County. The sky was post-thunderstorm radiant, with gold gilding the underbelly of massive, swift-moving clouds. The grass looked greener than any green has ever been. Cows were dotted the landscape like pastoral troops re-emerging after the fighting had ceased. The iPod was on shuffle and Gabe was in the back, yelling any-time I stopped singing to talk to Jen-""Daddy...daddy!....DADDY! Ning!" (which is how Gabe says "sing").
Gabe doesn't really know how to sing. He mostly hums and sings (sometimes) along with whatever tune he starts hearing. Occasionally he'll substitute the words he does know (imagine hearing kid names for bodily functions to the tune of "On Christ the Solid Rock I Stand"--sacrilege? maybe, but still hilarious.)
So when Kyle Matthews "What in the World" came up next, I knew something good was happening. There was Gabe in the back, pushing out sounds and non-words at freakishly high decibels. There were Jen and I, singing along--every single word. I thought about the words of the song and how I've been thinking for weeks now how adoption is what God does with us.
It's not exactly normal adoption, mind you, because as bearers of God's divine image, we are not victims of a merciless father, but merely prodigals--people who ran our own course to do our own thing to (we hoped) bring us fulfillment. And when the gold rings of self-medicating greed turned our fingers green we came to our senses.
Paul says "For you have not received a spirit of slavery leading to fear again, but you have received a spirit of adoption as sons by which we cry out, "Abba! Father!".
That's an odd phrase "adoption as sons." It turns out, it appears only five times in the New Testament and is used exclusively by Paul. The first part is identical to the Greek word for sons (though it's normally in the feminine, so gender neutrality could be argued). The second part comes from another root, which is loosely translated as "to set, place" or "to establish". You almost as easily could say "to designate or name". We have been named sons. Once, in our rebellion, we would not have considered ourselves sons, yet we have been called "sons and daughters of God"
When that kind of adopting grace washes over you, it's hard to know how to respond.
When you were called wounded, outcast, despised and you are now called "son" and "daughter" it's only natural to feel compelled to do something.
I think most of us start with gratitude. The realization that someone, let alone our Creator, the one we kicked and screamed against--the one we told "I hate you" in our adolescence and walked out on--that that being would welcome us back with only love--well, we can't help but be grateful. I think many atonement models get us to this point.
I think most of us also start and stop with gratitude. Like fond memories of the kindness of a loved one or a stranger, we don't think about what was done for us until something triggers the memory. Here, gratitude oozes from remembrance, worn down by time and how far we've come.
I think we think we'll think about that when Easter gets around--or maybe Holy Week or Lent, depending on our liturgical devotion.
As the father to a newly-adopted three year old, I can tell you that very few moments go by that he doesn't call for Daddy or Mommy. The absence of just one of us, for any length of time, is enough to muscle its way to the forefront of his child-like consciousness.
For good or ill, Gabe hasn't quit responding. Maybe that will come someday (probably around 13 I'm guessing), but not today.
Today he cries only "Abba".
Today he cries only "Mommy".
And so as I sit here downstream of the torrent the Cross stirred up, I find myself wondering what this adoptive parent took me in for--what did God see in me that would make anyone think there's something worth holding onto here?
Or, as the song says it "Lord, what in the world have you saved us for?"
But that's not the first line of the song. The song is, in fact, rhetorical.
If we were not loved to love
If we were not touched to touch
If we were not lead to lead
If we were not fed to feed
If you did not sacrifice so we could have new life
fuller and deeper than before
then Lord, What in the world have you saved us for?
If we were not taught to teach
If we were not sought to seek
If we were not helped to help,
If we were not told to tell
If you'd not forgiven us to let mercy live in us,
so you could love through us once more,
then Lord, what in the world have you saved us for?
There's a reason we were brought to life
Lord you made us for this place and time
and you showed the way for us to find
our sacred purpose our place in your design
If you did not set us free so that our songs might lead
prisoners toward the open door,
then Lord, what in the world have you saved us for?
Paul says "All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men's sins against them. And he has committed to us the ministry of reconciliation."
We have been saved from that which is less, to rescue those who insatiably long for more.
We have been fed to feed those who starve on the crumbs of self-reliance.
We have not been saved to pay back blood-for-blood, but to make whole that which was broken.
We have been shown love in this way that we might tell others "it doesn't have to be like this."
We have been loved to love.
We have been touched to touch.
We have been adopted to adopt.
We have been shown grace to be grace.
We have been given Christ that we might be Christ.
