tabletalk

Not Threatened By the State

Recently, I received an email inviting me to a discussion with a number of other pastors who are concerned about protecting the institution of marriage. In the header it suggested that we were in danger of being forced to perform wedding ceremonies that would violate the biblical values of marriage as an exclusive covenant partnership between one man and one woman. I believe this is the biblical value. But I was puzzled and in disagreement with my colleagues on several points.

The first is a practical point. I am not a servant of the state when it comes to performing a wedding ceremony. I don't have to unite anyone in marriage if I don't want to. It's my call. So from the beginning, their advertising was misleading and alarmist. Pastors can choose not to marry anyone.

But it's not true that we can perform weddings for anyone. In our Presbyterian church, we are bound by our constitution which says that marriage is a covenant agreement between one man and one woman. We are not free to go outside those bounds. My ordination is with the church not the state. Even if my conscience is open, as a representative of the church I am not open. I have restrictions which I agree with.

So what needs protecting? Well, I do believe in benefits and rights being the same for all domestic partnerships. I believe it is prejudicial that we don't allow single people to designate a family member or a dependent member of their household to get the same benefits afforded married people. This along with universal healthcare seem to be rights that we should protect and foster. We need to protect and encourage people to make commitments. If you are on my life insurance policy and my health benefits policy and my social security benefits, I'm committed to you. Commitment of caring for others is a good thing regardless of any kind of sexual, social, ethnic, or whatever orientation you can come up with. I know it will cost us something, but the costs are greater in the long run if we ignore it.

What about protecting marriage? First, I don't believe it needs protecting - at least not in the way that my colleagues have surmised. Marriage is a God thing. It is "created by God, blessed by the Lord Jesus Christ, and sustained by the Holy Spirit," at least that is what the marriage ceremony I use says. That means God protects it not me. We uphold it, but don't protect it.

Well, what if the state says that marriage is any two people who want to be together with a license? My response is still, "I'm not a servant of the state." I would argue against using the term marriage to mean something other than one man and one woman bound together. But, if the state, and our society is becoming more rapidly secular all the time, wants to call something marriage other than what the biblical standard is, then I am prepared to qualify what I do as Christian marriage. In fact, it already is that. For myself, if the state decides that same sex unions are to be considered marriage, then I'll stop representing the state in the marriage. People can get a marriage license, like they do in most of Europe. They can be married - but if they want recognition in the church of their marriage as a Christian union, then I will be happy to perform a Christian marriage. I'll stop being a representative of the state of California, even though I am licensed to be.

Maybe it is time we stop serving as cultural chaplains and become servants of the Kingdom of God. Oh I know, we'd lose an income source. So?

Just a thought from out there somewhere.

Questions From Without: Hell and the Bible 1

My friend, Scott Truman, wrote a comment to the previous post and suggested three passages where he wants me to apply McLaren's matrix. Scott thanks for the thoughtful response. We'll use your texts for conversation.

The matrix McLaren suggests is to: Identify the Passage; Identify the Behavior it addresses; What is the Consequence; What's the Point the text is making.

Passage: Matthew 13:24ff - The Parable of the Sower and the Seed
Behavior: Being weeds and bearing no fruit, no harvest. Everything that causes sin, all who do evil are
included in this passage. Being either counter to the Gospel or unproductive.
Consequence: Thrown into the fire, weeping and gnashing of teeth.
Point: Bear fruit; hear and respond to the message, the good news.

Let's start at the end to think about this passage. Jesus wants his hearers to repent, turn, receive the good news of his coming and bear the fruit of relationship with him. The fruit is that others will come, not that they be turned away.

I had a professor in seminary who said that the purpose of this passage was to find the good soil and only sow the Gospel in that receptive ground. My hand flew up in protest and I was summarily dismissed. I believe the greater context of this passage is to say that God's message and salvation is so abundant in grace and mercy it can be spread over all kinds of soils in the attempt that it will find a place to grow. There is abundance not scarcity in this passage. Abundance of what? Grace and Good News.

I believe with McLaren that the intense language of the New Testament as regards hell and judgment, is intended to cause us to take seriously Jesus admonitions. I don't believe it is intended to create a kind of scenario that results in a "turn or burn" mentality. God is not interested in our burning, he is interested in our turning. God doesn't give up on those who reject him, but he warns us that we are in a serious and perilous spot.

So many times Christians use these passages to support our separation from those who don't believe. We quote them or hold on to them to justify our position as being right and good. We're safe, those sinners are in trouble, just like Jesus says.

Jesus however uses these illustrations to motivate those on the inside of the faith. The message is a positive one: bear fruit. It isn't the judgment against the world that Jesus is talking about, it's against those who seem to think that they know him. Can we hear his voice? Every time I preach or teach the Bible, once I understand the context of the passage, I consider the fact that it is first a word to me before it is a word to others. It is what is called "standing under the Word." Take the log out of your own eye before you take the speck out of your neighbor's eye.

I believe we'll discover that these passages are more like this, than they are condemnation for the lost. Jesus came to seek and save the lost. It seems his harshest criticism is for those who say "I see, I hear, I speak" and are blind, deaf and dumb.

Questions From Without: Hell and Reading the Bible

Anytime someone reads the Bible they come to it with a set of expectations. Every single person brings prejudices, insights, wisdom, ignorance, good methods and bad to reading the Bible. Many times in our 21st century existence we forget that there are 20 centuries between us and those who wrote the texts we read. Often we simply lift the texts out, transporting them over the centuries into our modern existence without any translation or context. This can cause us to go horribly wrong in our interpretations. We all want it to speak to us. Often all of these expectations and methodologies end up keeping us from understanding. Every approach has its limits. There is no "right way" to read the scriptures. But there are better ways to read it than ohters. This requires great discernment and good mentors and a lot of honesty.

We are going to look at a way of reading the passages on Hell, suggested by Brian McLaren in chapter 19 "Homework Assignment" in The Last Word and the Word After That. It's a method that I believe allows us to let the passages to speak for themselves. This is Lewis's point, let the text speak and learn from it without imposing your expectations and needs on it. We can't do this perfectly but we can approximate it. Here is McLaren's method:

"Make a table with four columns, headed 'Passage,' 'Behavior,' 'Consequence,' and 'Point.' Read through Matthew, and note each passage that deals wit the subject of judgment (not just the passages that explicitly mention hell of Gehenna or Hades). Then note the behavior that will be judged, along with the consequence that follows that behavior. Then try to identify the point: what is the rhetorical purpose of the passage?
Here's what I think you'll find.
1. Our contemporary modern Western conservative Protestant gospel would say this:
Behavior: Not accepting Jesus Christ as personal savior, not being saved or born again, not asking Jesus
into your heart so your sins can be forgiven, etc.
Consequence: Being sent to hell.
Point: Accept Jesus as your personal Savior.
2. Not one passage from the Gospels says anything remotely like this."

We're going to use this method. If you would like to try it on your own that would be exceptional, but if you trust McLaren not to misquote the scripture, then we'll simply use his table from the above chapter.

The next few blogs will look at how this works. One of the things to know is how the people of Jesus' day viewed hell. Each of the principle religious groups of Jesus' time had a different way of approaching this concept. Hell was in no way accepted by all the religious people of that time. It took centuries for it to become something like what we have today. Remember we can't simply understand a text in our own time without understanding it first in Jesus' time. We will need to know how the Sadducees look at a text and how the Pharisees would view it. There are other groups like the Herodians and more. So I will comment on them as their views are addressed in different texts.

The hard thing for us is to set aside our agendas so we can listen to the biblical agenda. Wouldn't it be best to get close to what God wants of us, rather than to make God get close to what we want?

Questions From Without: Before Deconstruction

Deconstruction in some circles is a dirty word. For many it means making changes for change sake. For others it means throwing the baby out with the bath. Still others believe it is simply a reaction to the status quo by anarchists who want their own way to be put in place. Some of you are puzzled right now by the use of the word and what I'm saying.

It's a simple word. We're going to, as McLaren says, deconstruct Hell.

Let me give you an analogy. I've worked on many cars over the years. I've rebuilt engines a couple of times. I'm very methodical when I work on an engine. The manual is always next to me. As I pull things off the engine to examine the trouble, I lay them out neatly on the garage floor, usually on some sort of tarp, taking care to remember and organize the parts in the order that I have removed them. When I find the parts that don't work, worn rings, charred valves, whatever...I replace those things with new parts. Then I reassemble the engine with the new and original parts. Careful again to put everything back that is needed. If there are extra parts when I reassemble...then I have to go back and start over. I don't want to do that.

Deconstruction is a little like that, though we may decide that there are extra parts in our engine that we can do without. Things that simply inhibit the running of the engine. Or there are better designs to our current concerns.

Before we begin deconstructing Hell, let me remind us of one of C.S. Lewis's points in Experiment in Criticism. Again, I believe this is a must read for any teacher or preacher. I think it is a must read for anyone who wants to know how to view art or read a book. This little book, though quite literary in scope, outshines Adler's book How to Read a Book.

The point I want to take away from Lewis is this: allow the book to tell you about itself. As much as you can, surrender to the text. Don't read into it (which in hermeneutics we would call eisegesis). Literature like art, Lewis says, will communicate itself. Good, bad, enduring, superficial, it comes out in the reading of it. It is difficult to surrender to a book sometimes. Sometimes we're at odds with the author and their method. Sometimes it is over our heads. Sometimes there is such historical distance that we are unfamiliar with the context. All of this happens when we read the scriptures.

How does this apply to Hell? What we know of Hell is often informed by everything but the teaching of Jesus. We hold dear lots of opinions that simply don't come from Jesus. In order to know what it is, we also need to know what it is not. McLaren does the heavy lifting here. In his chapter "Homework Assignment" he outlines the Gospel's teachings on Hell in a way that allows us to examine closely what they are about, and he gives us a way of seeing what they are not about. You may disagree with his method or conclusions, but in the end we must at least take a look at the scriptural passages and determine whether our interpretations are broken or not. If they are, what needs to be done to fix the problem?

So, my encouragement: Be open to reading the text of scripture and surrendering to it alone. We can never be fully objective. But surrender means we will look, and read and wait until the truth or lack thereof, comes out at us. We also don't do this in isolation. There are reputable and faithful saints who have gone before who inform our reading. But for right now, let's put all the opinions aside and see if we can't simply take Jesus at his word without Dante or Milton or Luther jumping in. And let's be honest when they do jump in to not let what we've always held onto get put into Jesus' mouth.

Deconstruction is next.

Questions From Without: Hell, Damn It's Leaking

You have permission within the bounds of these blogs to say out-loud both 'damn' and 'hell'. We just won't damn anyone or anything to hell, how's that?

In this short blog I want to give you an image from McLaren. P.143 in the chapter "Up Toward the Stars", there is this: "You can't leave a sinking ship until you begin to construct a seaworthy one. Hell is one of the leaks of your sinking ship. You're trying to patch the hole. During your days here, I'd recommend you try to imagine a new ship, a seaworthy one. Put your energy there. You may find that the hell problem sinks with the old ship, then, and you won't solve it, but you'll leave it behind."

This in short is what I will attempt to do, with the help of more learned and faithful people than I. When we deconstruct something, like a value we've held, or an opinion that needs to be changed or behavior that needs to stop, it isn't helpful to simply do away with the old. Because what we take out of one, the nuggets of truth, need to have a place to go. If we're going to examine hell as a concept that Western Christianity has made about the future as a response to its insecurity about the future (which I hope to demonstrate), then there needs to be a seaworthy vessel for the scriptures we look at. There needs to be some kind of construct in the making. You can't simply take all the pieces apart and not build something.

We also don't want to tear something apart just to be new. But when something doesn't work, in our jobs, or families, or lives, or our faith, we can't keep pretending that it does work. If we have made the concept of hell a servant of our anxiety, then it ceases to serve us well. If it is something from God, in the form we have, then we better pay attention. But it seems to me that we have taken the Hebrew understanding or lack thereof of an afterlife and made something of eternity and salvation and punishment that Jesus doesn't make. So while we take things apart to examine, let's also build something up that will take care of our anxiety for the future. Let us build something that is seaworthy for the challenges of life - all of them, not just a few anxious thoughts that get our attention. My feeling has often been that we get tired of trying to contain the complex and we short-cut our arguments and beliefs just to have something. It's a bit like getting a job just to have work without attending to your passions and interests and abilities. (Believe me - getting work if you need it to survive, well, we can't stand on ceremony.) But you get the drift. We're better off recognizing what we're doing and not confuse our anxiousness with vocation. Just settling something to relieve our anxiety, well, it doesn't work. We must take the anxiety full on.

Maybe I'm off subject because of my own anxious life. But I still believe that most of us who have an idea of hell that is evangelical and more conservative in nature, have it rooted not in the text, but in our anxiety. So this is not wasted words. We are anxious for our future. If I can get my ticket into the next life - I'm clear. Goodbye anxiety. Problem is, I've been with too many people who punched their ticket and the anxiety remains to the point of death.

If I read the "Sermon on the Mount" right, then God takes care of his children, we need to trust that basic promise and not be anxious for tomorrow for it isn't real. Today is real. It doesn't mean I don't plan or prepare - that's today's work, but I live in the now not in tomorrow. We've made salvation and promise and punishment all about tomorrow in our Western culture. It's time we stop. So let's build a seaworthy ship for now, for the day, for reality and not the anxiety of tomorrow. That anxious ship will leak.

I want to begin with a reiteration of Lewis's understanding of reading a text, like the Bible. In my next blog we will revisit that. Because it is the biblical witness that gives us guidance here. Our problem is that we let Milton (Paradise Lost) and Dante (The Divine Comedy) overshadow Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. And we are terrible of letting go of the familiar. But it is time to let go.

Questions From Without: A Preface on Hell (Damn)

Let me begin up front and say that what I write about hell will lean heavily on those I read. Obviously, I'll give you Lewis. Maybe even as obvious I'll give you Brian McLaren. Much of what I will comment on will not be original (maybe nothing is - it isn't my point). McLaren's book, The Last Word and the Word After That, is going to be the must read and expanded text for my short writings. Read the whole thing, but if you don't you can read along here and I'll give chapter and verse.

But I begin with a preface. This is my own. Original, well, as I said....

In recent months I've been working hard at staying in the moment. Being present to what I feel, what I think, who I am, what is happening to me in the course of my now is becoming increasingly important. I've tried to do this over the years, but it has become more intentional and necessary in my life at this juncture. Why? Well as one person put it to me recently, right now is the only reality I have. Next Saturday is a fantasy. It doesn't exist. The events that lead up to the future haven't happened, so next week, next month, next year isn't real. In quoting Henri Nouwen to me, my friend tried to remind me that to project myself into the future brings only greed and anxiety. To live out in the future is to foster anxiety and greed. (See Nouwen's book - The Way of the Heart in my book list.) 'What ifs' rob us of the ability to be attentive to here and now concerns. And here and now is the only reality. It may not seem profound, but it is hugely profound for living. When we get ahead of ourselves we can miss the reality of now. In fact, we often use the future precisely to avoid the here and now.

I believe that the Western form of Christianity we live in can breed and does often breed anxiety and greed. I believe it is in no small part because we want to secure our future. This I think is fed often by our theology of heaven and hell and salvation and judgment.

My underlying belief in this set of blogs is that God is fundamentally concerned with reality, the here and now. God is certainly the God of past and future as well as present, but we only know it in the here and now. Remember, we are called to knowledge of God as in knowing a person, not in the accumulation of knowledge for our heads. Biblical knowledge isn't Bible trivia (which I hate) it is relationship, intimate relationship, with our Creator. All we know of God, even if it is past information, is intended to be present to us now. It is not a treasure to be kept locked up but information that is to used to help us pay attention now.

What has this to do with hell, you ask? Ah, my point. We have made things like salvation, hell, heaven, and many others to be mostly concerned with the future. I believe this is a giant cultural mistake driven by our need to secure that future. I believe the discussion of heaven and hell isn't ultimately about an anxious unreal future, as it is about who we are here and now. God is the God of here and now. We often abandon that in the face of the seeming contradictions we face in things like the problem of evil, where we look around us and don't see the evidence of God's rule (Kingdom language). This causes us to shrink back from asserting the fact - God is in charge. A faith statement to be sure, but one that has evidences in the present and should be argued from the present, not only the past. Argued from our lives and our actions.

This means to me that Jesus' teaching on hell is concerned more in the here and now, the present, than in a future. God is very present. In the blogs to come we will unfold this with biblical material and questions and simply try to look at things differently. Lewis's Experiment in Criticism will be helpful for how we approach the text of scripture and allow it to speak afresh to us. We have so many cultural layers to peel off that it may take some time before this will be a conversation and not a reaction.

If Jesus' teaching is more concerned with the present than the future, then typical evangelical language and use of the images of heaven and hell will have to be evaluated. McLaren, love him or hate him, provides some stimulating challenges to the way things have always (ok the last 300-400 years) been. Our present positions are not that old compared to the faith. (And remember, if you are not an evolutionist, you don't believe that things get progressively better...that would include biblical insight!) Don't write me about this last line, I'm not making any kind of statement except to say be open to the fact that we might have gotten it wrong!

(Maybe I should subtitle this series "Damn"? Vote?)

Questions from Without: Hell Is Up Next

It's hard in an email to just throw out these questions when they represent 30 years of my emotions and deep concerns. Just last night I had another question come up in my thoughts during the night. Could you go over Hell? (Don't laugh.) This question of Hell is one that is always a part of a religious discussion here. What I mean is the idea that if someone doesn't believe in Jesus as their savior and lord then they won't have eternal life. I've always responded that yes Jesus is the way the truth and the life but God is the ultimate judge of a man's soul. This was how it was asked of me.There is only a certain percent of the population that is Christian. Do you mean to tell me that all of these other people are going to hell? It says that to be a Christian you have to believe that Jesus was raised from the dead and only those that believe in that are going to have eternal life. What about the rest of us? What about all of the people that went before us that didn't believe. That's a lot of lives not having eternal life in heaven. Craig this is the kind of thinking that is real to some non believers. I always say God is the judge of a man's soul.

These are the coming questions. I wanted to let you all know what is next. Damn.

Questions From Without: The Lord's Prayer

My friend writes: I'm in the chapter of how to pray in Simply Christian. I love the Lord's Prayer and it captures everything needed to pray.

This is from a person who has been outside the church for a long time. It shows great insight that every Christian should adopt. I want to encourage my friend. I want her to know that when it comes to trusting God and knowing God and walking with God that the Lord's Prayer may be the first place to begin and the last resort all in one. There is only one other prayer that I have deep affection for and that is Jesus' prayer - "Not my will, but thine be done."

I know people who will make prayer into everything but what the Lord has directed and taught. It is interesting to me that some years ago The Prayer of Jabez became so popular. It isn't surprising, because the translation of that prayer basically said that if you ask for a lot you'll get a lot. It feeds our consumptive society and panders to our need to accumulate as evidence of God's blessing. This isn't a biblical notion and I believe it is a misreading of the prayer itself.

So why do we not take seriously the Lord's Prayer? It's because if we do, it counters our cultural assumptions. Often in worship, I will lead the prayers of the church simply by using the statements in the Lord's Prayer as a guide for our daily prayers. Let me suggest this as a way of praying the Lord's Prayer. Not as a formulaic, rote prayer that we do without thinking, but as a prayer that suggests the ways we come before God.

Our Father: Two things off the top - God is ours, not someone else's. We are God's children and God is our parent. When we say our we mean "the world's" (for God so loved the world...) The best of parents. The parent that we should know and model ourselves after and trust and allow to parent us.

Who art in heaven: I don't use the term "which art", the pronoun is too impersonal...God is a "who" not a "which". In heaven doesn't locate God in a place and stick God there away from us. Instead God is both near to us and also above, behind, around, within, beyond...bigger than we are. If ever we get too familiar and think of God as a buddy, then remember God is outside of us and greater than we can imagine.

Hallowed be Thy name: Holy be God's name. Like the commandment that instructs us to not take God's name in vain, this phrase reminds us that God's name is to be set apart. It isn't an instruction on swearing, though it may include it, but it is much deeper than that. To be holy is to be set apart. God's name is not to be invoked casually but with tremendous respect.

Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done: The rule of God. That's what the Kingdom is about. God is in charge and we want God's rule to be extended everywhere "On earth as it is in heaven."

Give us this day our daily bread: This cuts to the heart of our consumptive culture. When will we ever learn to be satisfied with what we have? When will determine we have enough? When will we denounce "more" as being the point? When will we ask for what we need? When will we say "enough cake" I simply desire my bread. Dale Bruner makes a great point, that when we pray for our daily bread, the pronoun "our" is plural. It means we pray not for "me" but "us". Which means that we pray for all the hungry people in the world. This should change our hearts and behavior. When will we give away more?

Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors: The only condition in the prayer. Debt and debtor are the closest to the Greek. We understand being in debt and indebted. We enter the world in debt. We will leave it owing. In relation to each other, why do we become so self-righteous? It is the complaint of so many outside the faith. God forgives our debts in the same manner that we forgive those who are indebted to us. It is true that our hearts are changed when we understand that we are indebted to God's love and forgiveness. It is how we learn to forgive. But it seems to be equally true, that God intends to hold us to his standards. "Learn from me" says Jesus..."I am meek and lowly of heart." O that we would be so humble. Instead of standing over and against, can we be with each other.

And lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil: This is the last line in the original text. It is a caution. It says that evil is real, but God is capable of delivering us. God deliver me.

Pray this prayer and it is enough.

(just a note: Simply Christian by N.T. Wright is worth picking up. See it in my book list and order it now.)

Witness 6: What about Christians turns off your non-Christian friends?

My Sixth Question:

"What about Christians turns off your non-Christian friends?"

The responses: Pushiness; being preached at; being judged; hypocrisy; being told how to live; being chastised for doing wrong; not participating in everything they do; not allowed to have fun; fanatically conservative and judgmental; being judgey and 'stuck up'; unaccepting; our whole life is about church; like we're geeks or something; holier than though attitude; self-righteous; superficial - say one thing do another; the word 'Church!' its preachiness; long sermons; we don't look like God's people in the way we act.

Ouch! The long sermon quote got to me. But I'll recover.

Truthfulness seems to be the one thing missing in most perceptions of witness. Telling the truth about what we know. Not saying more than we know. We are not experts in God, we are followers. Many of us are new at this. The Gospel is about a relationship with a person, not about information of relgious ideas. If we know the truth of the Gospel and our lives, then we know we are saved by grace. We have no cause to be egotistical or self-righteous. Our righteousness comes from God. We ourselves have doubts and fears and misunderstandings. We know we say we will do certain things and end up not doing them. We know we are fickle. So where does this get us?

To the level of truth tellers. Let your yes be yes and no, no. Be honest about God and Jesus and your life in him and you'll gain a hearing, an honest to God hearing. And the offense will be with Jesus himself and not with us.

It is the story everyone must know, we've no right to keep it to ourselves.

Witness 5: What keeps you from sharing your faith?

My fifth question:

"What keeps you from sharing your faith?"

The responses: I wonder how it will be received; my peers not wanting or caring about the world; pressures from society, people, not thinking I could answer all the questions; don't want to offend people; not knowing enough; I'll set myself up to be a hypocrite; the fear that I will not be accepted because of my beliefs; fear of rejection; not having the answers; sounding completely nuts or condescending; not knowledgable enough; the place we live in; never the right time or place; I don't know a lot about the religion, so what if people have questions I can't answer; being judged negatively; insecurity, fear.

One of the primary concerns these students have in sharing their faith is that they risk being ostracized by their peers. There is an irony to this response. One of the things they mostly value about being a Christian is the community that allows them to be themselves, accepted unconditionally. If you had that community in reality, it ought to make sharing your faith a little easier, knowing that if you are taken down a notch by your secular friends, you have a community of faith that will support you and build you back up. Are we connecting the dots?

The other main fear is the lack of knowledge. Our students suffer from the modern idea that the faith is about information not relation. A great gift we can give ourselves and these students is the security of relationship in Christ as being the core of the Christian life - it is the Christian life. We witness to what we know. Actually we witness to whom we know.

Many of the fears of sharing the faith can and are conquered by being in community - a real community of care and love.

Lesslie Newbigin in his book A Walk Through the Bible, suggests that after the resurrection:

"Jesus rallies his disciples, sends them out to proclaim what the world must know: that death, sin, the devil have been finally conquered and that Jesus is the Lord of all. Because the world must know who is in charge, to whom all men and women are ultimately responible. Everyone must know - we have not right to keep that secret to ourselves. And so the news spreads." p.71

Even if we are hypocritical in our actions, we are only hypocritical if we claim a kind of perfection or know-it-all status. If we proclaim grace, then we need not fear our lack of knowledge or imperfections or disobedience, because we only claim the mercy and grace we've received from Jesus. It is no excuse for sloppy living, which must be overcome, but it gives us a place to stand firmly - not in our knowledge but in our Lord.