CNN, FOX, MSNBC, CNBC, etc.

What does it mean to be a Christian in an environment that emphasizes crisis over content? We have an economic crisis that threatens millions of people, not just Americans, who are at risk of becoming working class instead of middle class. Meanwhile, millions more are at risk of starving because the food, the basic staples of life, have become too expensive for them to buy. These people, no less valuable than the millions of those suddenly put at risk of downsizing from luxuries to necessities, are not rising up. They are not suddenly seeing their electronics being taken away from them. They are not seeing one less night of eating out. They are not seeing discomfort being counted as a loss of a basic human right. These people, these people who never have known anything better, aren't strong enough to rise up. The ones who are strong enough to rise up are those who have been trained to believe that the comforts that come from a system that says that they deserve it more than any other, must contend at best, and battle to the death if need be, those who are their competitors. Thus, the poorest of the poor must be demonized and dehumanized in order to allow their becoming "collateral damage" without an overwhelming sense of guilt. Most revolutions have been waged by those who have manipulated those who already had, so that they thought some other group was angling to get "their' goods. Divide and conquer is a tried and true technique from time immemorial.

Case in point: It's those Romans subjugating our homeland! It's those Jews threatening our empire's peace. It's those 'dirty' Italians (make sure to to emphasize the "eye" in 'I'talian) listening to their marching orders from the Vatican. And remember, the Irish were subhuman in English eyes until they came to America and got to be "white" for the first time in competition with blacks. Nowadays, it's Arabs (please make sure to pronounce the "A" in Arab!) as the convenient scapegoat. As long as we have someone, anyone, to see as the "other" we can avoid looking too closely at ourselves and what we've done or not done.

Whatever you do, pay no attention to that person dying on your doorstep. And if you can, please ignore that person, that man, that woman and that child, who is in the gunsights of missiles guided perfectly in their direction. Their life doesn't matter. They're the enemy. All of these wars are being fought for you.




What are you (am I) going to do?

Chris Buckley

I feel sorry (but only in one way) for Chris Buckley. He tried thinking as an independent. He may be wrong. He may be right. Apparently, he may not think or dare express his thoughts outwardly. I grew up learning from his father and his urbane and insightful temperament. Chris, while quite obviously different from his father, nonetheless has inherited his father's penchant for independent thinking. Kudos to him! I respect that Chris Buckley has decided that thinking through the issues is more important than going along with the party line. As an heretical democrat and republican, I say, welcome to the ship of the politically damned. In the long haul, it's a good place to be.

Welcome to the new capitalism

Our government is considering the possibility of partially nationalizing our banking industry. Those on the far right would say this is because of the governmental impulses of those who would say that only our elected officials, those in government, can get the job done and save us, are actually totalitarian socialists who have, all these many years, awaited this moment in order to sway us towards their dark, nefarious ways. They would argue that these "forces" are working to keep god out of our schools, government, and whatever other public institution we seem to think belong by rights to us.
If Billo, Rush, Sean, or any of the other talking point right tell us these essentials to all that is right and good and true, then I can rest assured, and need not think beyond their pronouncements. If I dare come to a contradictory conclusion, then I risk being seen, and of course declared, an enemy of the people.
Nonetheless, as a Christian, I look at what is happening, and cannot help but wonder at whether we are seeing the dawn of a new darkness, a period of coercion and moral cowardice that generations forward will look at in disgust and derision.
Last night, we read a passage from Kings that described what Elijah went through when the vast majority of Israel was apostate and he felt completely alone. God assured him that there were others who had not bowed the knee to baal. There were literally thousands of others who, even though not seen, were faithful to the one true God and what he had declared. It was true then. It is true now.
The reality is, our government is fundamentally in bed with the corporate interests that have so spectacularly failed in recent days. This isn't socialism. This isn't even unfettered capitalism. It's the economic prostitution ring of government serving the interests of the corporate Johns that have paid their whores for their services.
Now we see these distraught "customers" stepping away from the one who has "serviced" their needs for so long.
Let the recriminations begin. They are well deserved.

Teddy and Franklin Roosevelt as examples

In light of the current situation, with our politicians seeking to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that they can't be trusted, and our economic "leaders" on Wall Street and elsewhere doing everything in their power to once again prove that they can't be trusted; we need leadership, whether political or otherwise, that's willing to point out that a combination of public and private malfeasance has given us what we have today.

In years past, we have had leaders, imperfect as they were, who nonetheless understood that strong measures were necessary to overcome the excesses that they had to confront. In the case of Teddy Roosevelt, the great Republican president who gave us both our national parks and who broke the "trusts" that held a stranglehold on American commerce, he confronted moneyed interests by breaking up the "Robber Barons" that essentially gave America a new slavery as pernicious as the one we supposedly eradicated in the mid 1800's.

His answer to this economic tyranny was to establish an equally strong federal power that stood as an antagonist, correcting and controlling the most rapacious impulses that these corporate interests clearly exhibited in the years preceding his administration.

Was he jingoistic? Yes. Did he advocate for American imperialism? Yes. Are these wrong for someone claiming the mantle of "Christian"? Yes. Does this tarnish his legacy? Yes. Does this tarnish his legacy any more than any other president? No. He was an American president. That was his job. Nothing more. Nothing less. To the degree he "used" Christian terminology and imagery to advantage American interests over and against what Christ actually declared His mission for His church, every political leader (Roosevelt included) should be judged.

Nonetheless, was he wise in his dealings with business interests in the time in which he lived? Yes, he was. He understood that concentrated power (whether political or economic) uncorrected is inherently dangerous and leads inexorably to tyranny. He understood this as a Lincoln Republican. Modern Republicans do not seem to understand this anymore. They see corporate interests as being essentially good, in the way that modern liberals see governmental agencies under Democrats (of course!) as being essentially good.

Teddy Roosevelt knew better. He was a Republican in the Lincoln mold. He understood that each and every human was impacted by a duality of impulses, both positive and negative.

A generation later, his cousin, Franklin D. Roosevelt, was confronted with not only corporate malfeasance, but fascism and communism abroad, and the same at home, if left untended. The second Roosevelt decided, in his upper class way, to attend to working class needs. He recognized that democratic capitalism, if it was to survive in any way, needed to be regulated in a responsible way. He inaugurated public works programs to give millions work when nothing else was available. He established social security, which we now assume as a right.

These two examples of aristocratic leaders who nonetheless saw that the greater public good was best served by meeting the needs of the working class and those most at risk gives us an example for today. Sadly, in the last few days, we see nary an example so far of anyone who embodies that spirit. Maybe they're out there. I'm sure they are. But they aren't being heard. And now is when they need most to be heard.

Augustinian "democrat"?

In the first post I described in basic terms what I meant by Augustinian. And since that seems to lead inexorably towards some form of conservatism, and to which, of a type, I admit I hold to, this post is dedicated to explaining why I've chosen to use the ideologically loaded term "democrat." Obviously, in the modern American context, "democrat" usually means someone who holds to an ideology which presupposes a modernist and materialist viewpoint which automatically negates any religious and/or spiritual content guiding the various views which shape and impact public policy. It is in two directions that my concerns lie. On the left, my concern is that there is a reality of antagonism towards any religious belief, especially of those who espouse any type of orthodoxy, whether Christian, Jewish, or Muslim (I specify these three major religions because they are each monotheistic, thus exclusive (in their traditional form) in their truth claims). On the right, my concern is that there has been an assumption that to be "on God's side" is to be a conservative in the modern cultural context of America, which has meant, by and large, being a Republican. Yet, if we were to look first and foremost to what the writers of scripture wrote, both in the Hebrew writings (OT) and the New Testament writings, we would see a concern for issues that would both overlap and contradict both of the major political ideologies driving our modern political discourse. Modern liberals love the Hebrew prophets' concern for the poor and outcasts of society and they likewise love the moral imperative of Jesus' commands in his sermon on the mount. But if Jesus says he's the only way, then that's just not a passage we're going to preach on, or if we have to, then we'll need to redefine it so that "his way (of doing things) is the only way" therefore ordaining whatever political palliative we've declared sacrosanct. And by the way, this is true too of modern conservatives! They're just as theologically "liberal" as their cultural antagonists, even if they're much more culturally conservative in their policy pronouncements. Whenever we "use" Jesus for our political ends, we inevitably devalue his atoning work in order to emphasize his exemplary work. That's not to say that Christ as example is unimportant. It is. Eternally so! Yet many moral teachers have provided comparable examples of moral behavior for us to follow. That's why in popular "spirituality" Jesus is one of many avatars of ascended humans, such as Gandhi, Krishna, Mohammad, Moses, and so on, who have "shown the way" to ultimate reality. As an aside, the issue of working together with others from different religious traditions, even though disagreeing deeply on fundamental issues, is worth considering. But that's a separate discussion. The problem with focusing primarily on Jesus as example to the exclusion of his atoning work is that we evacuate any power from his example. If God is righteous, if God requires perfect obedience in order to be in right relationship with him, if God requires a sacrifice to pay for not being in right relationship with him, then God is one who would both require perfect obedience and a perfect sacrifice. Guess what? Jesus fills the bill. He obeys. He pays.
This whole concept is offensive to any modern ideologue. Any of them, whether liberal of conservative, will gladly take the moral teachings (up to a point). But the particularity of Christ will ALWAYS be offensive to anyone seeking to make Christ a means to an end and not the end of our means.
So, what does any of this have to do with being a small "d" democrat? After all, I'm writing this in order to defend the term over and against other competing terms that might go well with Augustinian. We've already seen how conservative might go well. Even liberal might work, depending upon which meaning you attach to the term, historical (better) or modern (worse) American.
When I think of the term democrat, I think of the meaning that adhered to the ancient Greeks; I think of the term as it applied to the earliest Americans, which saw in the term a breaking down of old hierarchical divisions inherited from old allegiances from the old country. The term democrat means that each person is equal before the law. The term democrat means that the old dividing walls of class hostility are removed. The term democrat means that each of us is seen as standing equally just and unjust before the bar of justice. The term democrat means that every human institution is equally infiltrated by human fallenness, whether individual (most favored by modern conservatives) or corporate (whether economic, through the owners of capital or union bosses, or government corruption).
Thus, in this understanding of democrat as well as Augustinian, my hope is to provide a prism which sheds a more accurate light of both our human condition and our commonality which that theological and anthropological reality declare.
I believe that this understanding has political and public policy consequences. That's why this site exists.

An Augustinian Democrat?

What does it mean to be an Augustinian Democrat? Since the term starts with Augustinian, I'll explain what that means and why I've chosen it as the modifier of democrat. To be Augustinian is to say something particular about at least two issues; first, about anthropology or the nature of the human condition, and second, it speaks a particular word about theology, or about who and what God is. To be Augustinian is to have a high regard for the 'awe'ful sovereignty of God, especially in His dealings with mankind. The human side of that equation concerns itself with understanding accurately what it means to be human in our current state. Saint Augustine understood humans to be magnificent creations in their original estate, yet subsequently fundamentally broken. As image bearers of God's own visage, we share moral qualities that elevate us to nearly god-like stature, yet because of our fall from innocence, we now inherit and perpetuate a sinful nature that is continually at odds, not only with God and His revealed will, but also with other humans, the rest of nature, and even ourselves. This diagnosis of our human predicament, both theologically and anthropolically, is, at first blush, a seemingly 'conservative' argument, and in once sense, of course, it is. This underlying anthropology is what lies behind many of my conclusions regarding public policy issues. Yet, this very anthropology, which is actually fundamentally theologically 'conservative' nonetheless leads me towards decisions that quite often appear to be 'liberal' or 'progressive' in the current cultural context. Part of the difficulty in describing these terms adequately is that even though the terminology may be the same, their meanings have changed substantially and may in fact mean something fundamentally different than what they did in different cultural contexts and what is now intended when used. To be 'conservative' theologically is something altogether different than to be conservative culturally or even ideologically. And even within these various domains of conservatism, the term means something different depending upon the time and place of its use. To be ideologically conservative in 1789 America (or England more so!) is something radically different than to be conservative in 2008 America. And of course, since we do live in present day America, even modern conservatism is a contested term, as to what content should adhere to being conservative, being fought out in various journals, blogs, and talk shows. For the sake of clarity, my 'conservatism' is theological more than cultural or ideological, and is born out of the Augustinian tradition exemplified by the Protestant reformers John Calvin and Martin Luther. If you look to their grid of theology and anthropology, you will see my starting point for how I reach my conclusions. Now, it should be added, that even they are fallible humans and are not deserving of uncritical obedience. Yet I believe that they got two key doctrines correct; God and man. The first consequence of this understanding was obviously on man's relationship with God. That's why I adhere so strongly to a reformational view on salvation. Because they got God and man right, they therefore understood much more clearly what was at stake in how we are to be right with God. It is in this area that I am the most conservative. I believe firmly that they got soteriology (salvation doctrine) right because they got anthropology (the doctrine of humankind) and theology (the doctrine fo God) right. The question now becomes, if these views of God and the human condition have impacted the view of salvation, could they impact other views as well? Here is where we enter the political domain. And it is here I hope to explicate what I mean by using the term 'democrat' and why I choose to use it. In the next post I hope to better explain that.

Sun Myung Moon

It seems that Sun Myung Moon was slightly injured in a helicopter accident (a hard landing) either earlier today or sometime yesterday. I've just been reading a book about him and his influence over American politics called "Bad Moon Rising" written by John Gorenfeld. He has also created a short documentary called "King of America" that is just wild. Anyone interested in being faithful to the call of Christ, especially as it relates to being a Christian in America here and now, should see this documentary and read his book.

Wounds

How many wounds must
I inflict,
before You
afflict me
with Your wounds?
You sear me with
Your hands and feet.
Your brow bleeds
onto me.
As You look down
from above.
I hate You.
You are killing me.
I know You must.
I know why.
I also know
that You love me.
And You're bleeding
into me.
So that I might
bleed too.

Into others,
just like me.

Why is this Your way?
Why must You suffer?
Why must You die?
Why must I?

I know.
You've already told me.
And all those before
and after me.

It's who You are.
It's what You do.
Thank You.

New article about Obamacons

Here it is. I'm not much of a fan of Novak, but it's intersting to see behind the right wing vale a little bit.

We're all Hussein

I just read an intersting article in today's NY Times about Obama supporters informally taking his middle name as their own in order to show solidarity. I like it.

The Strange Irony of American Evangelicalism

THE STRANGE IRONY OF AMERICAN EVANGELICALISM

One of the tenets of Evangelicalism is that God’s word is final. Scripture is supposed to be our final arbiter of all that is true and good. One of these truths is that human beings in their current state are basically sinful. If that’s true, then that means that every human institution is therefore infected with this basic human malady.

Herein is the rub.

This is where political ideology and the Christian gospel immediately find themselves at odds. If you’re on the left, your immediate assumption is that the guilt lies within those who belong to the social class that owns the means of capital. In that case, leftist anthropology is thoroughly (yet, ironically only selectively) Augustinian. Yet when it comes to a government owned and operated “by the people” (properly administrated of course through the proper party officials), their view of the human condition becomes suddenly sanguine (to use another Christian term, Pelagian). This expression of power, as opposed to any other expression of power, has been expunged of any selfish motivations. Therefore these public servants can be trusted to provide a pure expression of unsullied motivations, all of which are for our common good.

Needless to say, this is not a consistent expression of the human condition, nor is it a consistent (or accurate) analysis of that human condition’s development into public policy.

I would like to say that this is not true of Evangelicalism as it is practiced.

However, American Evangelicalism seems to suffer from some (well, all) of the same maladies that have infected other political ideologies that have preceded it. Positively, American Evangelicalism, as in a mirror image of its nemesis, secular humanism, has presented a view of governmental ineptitude that is an exemplar of human failings. It has also illustrated the point that human self-will is constantly seeking to aggregate power to itself at any cost. Government, whether democratically elected or imposed from some powerful elite, seeks to increase its own power constantly through coercive means. In fact, the Constitutional founders understood this reality so much that they intentionally created a government that was divided into three parts in order to keep any one part from tyrannizing the public. It’s worth reading the Federalist Paper number 10 to understand more fully their Augustinian framework.

Yet this same assessment of the human condition seems to fall by the wayside when it comes to certain economic and corporate interests involved in the equation. The profit motive is seen as nearly sacrosanct. Meeting the bottom line is seen as being something close to our highest calling. The quarterly dividends are seen as being an expression of the loaves and the fishes. A 401K is merely casting our bread upon the waters.

Is this what Christ has called us to?

Much of American Evangelicalism would have us believe that we should elect certain political figures in order to bring about revival. In 2000 it was assumed that this meant George W. Bush. Right now, depending upon your political persuasion, it might mean John McCain or Barack Obama (or some other political savior).

NAVIGATING A DIFFICULT MIDDLE GROUND

As Christians, whether we’re American or not, we should be most concerned with enacting Christ’s Kingdom in our midst according to His word and His means. The temptation in the midst of this political campaign is to give ourselves over to a partisan spirit that says God is on one side over another. Are there issues in this campaign that are mentioned directly in Scripture? Yes, there sure are. Do some of those issues tend to favor one party over another, while other issues end up favoring the opposing party? Yes, this is also true. We can’t help but see some of those issues lived out in our midst as we decide which is the best course to take in the days and years to come.

Abortion, immigration, idolatry, sexual expression, stewardship, injustice, poverty, just to name a few.

Ultimately, we must decide whether our allegiance is to a party or ideology that would have us swear ourselves to some god that cannot deliver, some sorry deity that stands cold and lifeless before the Creator of the universe.

If we would call ourselves Christian, then we must be willing to stand against our own ideological and political foundations, and stand only and always on the one foundation that can actually save us.

One of the most pressing problems facing Christians in America is the sense of what it even means to be Christian in America.

To be an American Christian is to travel a road that navigates between the poles of nationalism, individualism, and ideological idolatry, the deifying of political ideologies, both left and right. To be an American Christian is really not that more difficult than being a Russian or British or Chinese or Egyptian Christian. Each of them has their own particular challenges. Each of them has to decide, in their particulars, what it means to be faithful to Christ’s gospel.

Every culture has its points of agreement and conflict with Christ’s demands.

Every culture has its own idolatries, every culture, even our own.

This is a difficult concept for many American Christians to accept. Part of the mythologizing of America’s supposed Christian foundations dovetails what it means to be Christian with what it means to be American. Therefore, if America, as a culture is guilty of a particular idolatry, such as racism, nationalism, rampant individualism, and so on, then this mythologized America has to be reconciled with an equally mythologized Christianity.

One tactic is to deny these idolatries in the first place in order to make America more Christian in its history. Many history books, whether produced by earlier generations of public schools, or more recent revisionist “Christian” histories produced through numerous home-school curricula, present a picture of American history that is half true at best, and in some cases is intentionally untrue.

Another tactic is to plunder the Christian Scriptures in order to ordain certain national and ideological prerogatives as God-given-from-on-high. Declaring slavery righteous by quoting obscure passages from Genesis, using other passages to “prove” that women are weaker and therefore should not have the right to vote or even hold property, or the ever popular America is the new Israel and all the inhabitants before it are beastly savages in need of conversion, or if need be, extermination, since they are the modern equivalent of the ancient Canaanites. There are, unfortunately, many other examples, but these should suffice.

As stated earlier, the secular left is no less guilty of this kind of manhandling and ham-fisted manipulation of Scriptural language. It’s just that, at least in more recent times, they haven’t been nearly as good at using religious lingo as the political right. The modern secular left, similarly to most modern journalism, just doesn’t “get religion”, and so they have ended up embarrassing themselves when they try to utilize religious language in order to win votes or influence public opinion.

In earlier years however, religious liberals and their secular, political counterparts were quite able to sway public opinion with religious rhetoric that invoked salvation language, even if it was robbed of any doctrinal content related to Christ on the cross. The Social Gospel of the turn of the century was a conscious attempt to wed Christian terminology and imagery with the dominant political and scientific ideologies prevalent at the time.

The seeds of the Social Gospel, just like the more recent Religious Right, were both born out of the Americanized Christianity of the mid-1800’s. This was a Christianity that emphasized an internal experience over any traditional practice or doctrinal control. This was also a Christianity that eschewed any oversight by ecclesiastical authorities that might restrain its more radical impulses. This was also a Christianity that fed at the intellectual trough of modern rationalism, informed most recently by the brilliant insights of an explorer son of a minister who revealed the deep truths of evolution.

Whether “evolution” as a scientific theory is true or not is less important than its impact upon American social thought. Darwin’s influence extended far beyond his merely scientific theories concerning how species came into their current form. His ideas were so radical (and convincing) that they were immediately appropriated by many others, far and wide, for purposes social, not to mention spiritual.

Here we see both the left and the right, politically using both the recent theory of evolution as well as Christian language, in order to advance their particular agendas. On the right evolution and certain Scriptural passages dovetailed nicely in order to once again “prove” that social and racial hierarchy was not only God-given, but naturally “ordained” as well.

The left, both religious and secular, on the other hand, was using the newly ordained scientific priesthood of evolutionary teaching to offer up a new millennial vision which would bring us into the new realm of human cooperation through international organizations such as the League of Nations, later to be called the United Nations. It should not be a surprise to anyone that a passage from the prophet Isaiah decorates the wall outside the U.N. headquarters in N.Y.C. declaring that nations shall turn their swords into plowshares.

Religious, transcendent language, it seems, is essential to getting the public to go along with uncomfortable and sometimes dangerous public policy.

It seems that governments and social movements, both minor and major, need religious and transcendent language in order to galvanize the public. Whether it’s a “crusade” or a “jihad” or a “czar”, it seems we need certain terminology to get the public, the masses, behind whatever policy is being propounded. Playing the public by tapping into its reservoir of interior anxieties works in the short term. But the long-term consequences are hell.

I guess my question to American evangelicals is this: What the hell are we doing unleashing these dark impulses for short-term political gains?

Where is the gospel?

Where is the self-sacrifice?

Where are the actual actions of Jesus?

Are we going and doing likewise?

If we did, might it make a difference in how we interact with both the Republican and Democratic parties?

Might we finally be able to speak with authority to those before us, as though they held political authority?

The gospel judges everyone.

Everyone.

Chuck Hagel as VP?

I heard Friday evening when I got home that Chuck Hagel would be willing to consider running as Obama's VP in the general election. I've always respected Hagel's record, especially his firm rejection of Bush's Iraq war. Obviously, Hagel, being overall much more conservative than Obama, would be an awkward fit on several issues. But being on the ticket would be a huge statement that Obama really is serious about reaching across the political aisle. I know it's not likely, but I can hope can't I?

Andrew Bacevich's case for Obama

Andrew Bacevich is one of my favorite writers, writing as he does from a traditional conservatism that hasn't eaten from the poisonous neocon apple. Back in March he wrote an essay in the American Conservative arguing why it makes sense to vote for Obama over McCain. It's good to see others out there who struggle with the same issues I have struggled over. Is Obama ideal? No, of course not. But he's far better than McCain on key issues that are too far reaching to ignore. I say this as someone who used to support McCain. I even gave money to his 2000 campaign. The John McCain of today is nearly unrecognizable from who he was eight years ago. I would still vote for the earlier McCain, but I can't in good conscience vote for who he is now.

Being an Obamacon

I just read an article in The New Republic that descrides various conservatives who nonetheless have decided to support Barack Obama. I like the crowd, and I think they're describing what has made me move towards Barack too.

HIDDEN IN YOUR WINGS AM I

The comfort you give is beyond what words can share.

My downcast mind is staid by your unfailing love.

I cannot comprehend the love you have for me.

My questions,

My doubts,

Are laid waste by your great love, poured out for me.

Hidden in you wings am I.

Resting finally from all my works.

Your solace calms my nerves by your hand,

Which restores my soul.

My legs, hands, feet, are weak,

Unable to do your work,

Which you have called me to,

But which you have done for me.

It doesn’t make sense that you should do what is required of me.

And yet you do.

You are my obedience.

You are my holiness.

You are my Adam, as I fall into you.

How can you be my all?

How can I stand in you?

And yet everything I am is because of you.

May I be hidden in you?

Will you hide me in you?

Who I am already is all because of you.

Because of you I am already hidden in you.

Hide me in your love.

Cadence and Rhythm

Times of testing,
given over to the gentiles
of my heart.
Shape my desires in such a way
that new reservoirs of hope
open up my eyes.
These are days of hope,
that spring from
depths of despair.
God has given me
all that I might need.
So that I might search for him
in all that I desire.
Search me out
and seek me now
so that I may be found
in you.
Cadence and rhythm
are only found
in you.

Lord of All

Lord of elements, wind and rain,
calm the tumult of my soul.
Speak peace into chaos, calm
into raging waves.
Speak words of rest into
restless hearts filled with
clouds of doubt and pain,
such as mine.

Lord of spirits, reign supreme
over rebels, con-men, hustlers,
windswept mists driven by
powers of deceit.
Restore the child in my heart
by a truthful word spoken
to a lie believed too soon
such as mine.

Lord of the heavens, brought down low,
lift our hearts above the clouds.
See into our darkness, open our eyes
to the beauty all around.
Lift our feet upon the Rock
that stands beneath our strength,
and splits open tombs held closed,
such as mine.

Lord of the earth, bridge between
the spirit and the flesh.
Join together my longing grasp
with Your consummating touch.
Fill with life the desolated emptiness
that speaks with muted cries
of a heart longing for reunion,
such as mine.

When Temples Go Bad, Next on Fox!

Digging through the walls

Temples are places where the divine meets the human. Temples have been around since the beginning of human history. They’re as natural as anything we’ve ever known or done. It’s a part of who we are as human beings that we seek to connect or reconnect with some sense of the divine. We seem to have ingrained in us some sense that we need to meet up with the gods or a particular god. Thus we build temples. Years ago I went to Arizona to attend a conference on church growth and evangelism. One day I had enough free time that I was able to drive north towards the Grand Canyon. I didn’t make it to the Grand Canyon, since it was further away than I thought. That and I got caught in a snowstorm halfway up there. So I ended up turning around and stopping at Red Rock Canyon in Sedona instead. I drove through the town, noticing that there were numerous ‘new age’ type stores, but didn’t pay much attention to it, as I was headed for the park. Once I got to the park, I parked my rental car and hiked up the path to one of the peaks overlooking the area. There were some other tourists around along the pathways, so I found my way off the beaten path and headed up to an unpopulated area near the top of a peak. I remember that it was spectacular. The soil is really red. As you look around you, all you see are the surrounding peaks of the other mountains. As I drove up I could imagine the early people riding across the valleys, hunting deer, living off of the land. As I found a secluded spot near a mountaintop, I rested and just sat, enjoying the splendor of the surrounding scenery. But as I wandered a bit more, I came across something that I hadn’t seen in years, not since my childhood on Staten Island. In a clearing on one of the plateaus was an altar. It had been set up by someone else who had climbed the same mountain. They had climbed up seeking a place alone. They had sought a place to meet the divine. They had set up an altar. It wasn’t much. It was a simple collection of stones set up in an unmistakable arrangement. It was built with the idea that it would help in the establishing of a connection with spiritual reality, whatever that reality might be. Maybe it was offered to a god the supplicant or supplicants knew by name. Maybe it was seen as an impersonal force that nonetheless needed a structure to help in the sending and receiving of spiritual signals. Maybe it was seen as a way to communicate with previous generations passed on before. I wondered if anything had been sacrificed when the altar was built. I don’t recall seeing any remains. I think there were items that had been left on the stones, personal items of importance to those who had climbed up high, hoping to somehow connect with some ‘other’ or others. Beckoning to some great unknown, hoping that there is someone or even something there to listen to words spoken, words cried out, words unsaid, needing to be said. I’m sympathetic to their need. I know that I want there to be someone or something ‘out there’ who can hear me ‘down here’ and maybe even give an answer or two. We all climb hills. We all instinctively climb upward, seeking to find answers that seem not to reside in us. I am sympathetic to there needs. But I still destroyed the altar.

Would you drink water from a spring near Love Canal? Would you dare risk putting a cup to your mouth, knowing what might be in the water? Maybe it’s clean. It probably isn’t though. It’s probably been polluted by the nearby toxic waste that will not stay put. The pollution has seeped down and out into the soil and underground springs. Deep waters normally safe are no longer safe. If I were to block up a spring I knew to be polluted, yet nearby others cried out from thirst, I would, at first glance seem heartless, cruel even. Drinking waters from broken cisterns is a double tragedy. The cisterns are useless for what they’re intended. They can’t hold the water needed so badly. But the water that gives life is spilt. Is falls to the ground, unused. Energy spent to no end.

Temples meet us in the heights. They lift us up. They fill a need. The issue isn’t whether temples are needed or not. We cannot avoid temples no matter what we do. The question is what temple and to what end? The Jewish and Christian scriptures are filled with temples, both sacred and idolatrous. As we’ve seen before, the first temple was the Garden in Eden. It was a place set apart from the surrounding environment. It was a place of life, cultivation, name-giving, and authority. It was the place where God dwelled more tangibly than anywhere else. It was where He rested after His great creative work. We, through our primordial ancestors, the first couple, were called into His presence, breathed into and given life. We were called to bring order out of and into the chaos of the surrounding world. We were called to be the intersecting point between heaven and earth and spread the garden outward. Remember, we are soil and spirit, and we are very good.

When sin entered into the picture, when sin entered into our experience and we entertained sin, sin entered into us. We knew sin. Sin knew us. God recognized sin. God acknowledged sin’s presence, even in the garden. God warned our parents, our human representatives, of its presence, and of its consequences if partaken of by them. When our parents were bedazzled by the delights of knowledge and thought that being in the garden would automatically keep them safe, they took, ate, knew, and were blinded to God’s presence even as they saw their own nakedness. Then they were expelled.

We’ve been climbing hills ever since. It didn’t take long for the death predicted by God to fully enter into the picture. Only one generation after our first parents two brothers competed over a sacrifice to God. One’s was accepted, the other’s wasn’t. Words came to blows. Blows came to an end. One brother lays dead. One brother offers up meat. It’s accepted. Another brother offers up grain. It’s rejected. One offering from the soil is inadequate to the task at hand. It seems God wants more. The other offering takes a life as a first-fruit. God is pleased. If God won’t accept a grain offering, but wants an offering of blood, then he’ll get blood. Since death entered into the picture in the garden, death has spread out into the surrounding environment ever since. Abel’s blood still cries out and the soil still groans beneath our feet.

Throughout human history, there are two basic types of temples gone bad. The first type is the one that starts out bad. Like the tower at Babel, built to reach up to the heavens. But we also see it in Pyramids, various smaller hilltop sanctuaries, Pantheons, Monoliths, and any number of other meeting places of the gods. In each of these, the gods intersect with humanity, usually through a vice regent. Either it’s a priest or a king. Sometimes it’s both in one person. Usually that person is seen as a direct descendent of the gods himself. Sound familiar? Scary? It should sound familiar. But it shouldn’t be too scary. Again, even though there are numerous similarities between the Hebrew/Christian writings and the surrounding cultures they inhabited, common language and common imagery do show neighborly relationship but not necessarily total dependence. Again, the surrounding cosmologies had their similarities to the Hebrew narrative, but their differences were also quite striking. It’s in seeing both of these that we can better discern how to be on our guard to any idolatries that might make a claim to our spiritual loyalties.

In a little bit, we’ll look at the problem of when good temples go bad, and how that needs to be understood accurately. But for now, we should see how ‘out of the gate’ bad temples distort God, humanity, creation, and our relationship to God.

HAVE IT YOUR WAY

Ready made gods serve our whims. But these same gods do eventually want something, or better yet, someone, in return. The light gleams brightly and my eyes are dazzled. Its’ sharpness is almost painful. But it’s a pain that gives me that immediate rush I love. Every ounce of my being quivers in delight at the filling I’m feeling. Rushing torrents of power course through me and I feel so alive. I have the gods in my hands. I control them. I am their master. Our gods are the ones we seek after. They’re us, but more manageable. They’re us, but more powerful. They’re us, but more of what we wish we were. They’re us, and that’s why we hate them so much. Our gods are always too much and not enough. They always promise us more than they can deliver. As we gaze into their awful visage, we are transformed into their image. We ultimately become what we most fervently dwell on, or more accurately, dwell in.

My needs are many and my wants are even more. I want love. I want sustenance. I want meaning. These are all good, legitimate wants, even needs. But my wants go beyond my needs. My wants stretch out my needs until they don’t fit me anymore. My wants need more than my needs ever wanted. I’ve become super-sized in my appetites. And I need a super-sized god who can feed that yawning emptiness. But the strange reality is that this god of my understanding ends up being lesser than anything I could ever actually need. My super-sized god gives me fast food spirituality. He, she, it, ends up mal-nourishing me as I gorge myself on its paltry poisons masquerading as food for my soul. Instead my soul becomes the food fed to my gluttonous appetite god.

Our idols sell us to the highest bidder. We bid ourselves out to those who promise us everything, but in the end take us for all we’re worth. That’s the irony of idolatry. We sell ourselves for such a cheap price, when the One who made us tells us we’re priceless and offers Himself as the only payment worthwhile, just so that we’ll be able to take freely from the table prepared before us.

In days of yore, our ancestors built towers, shrines, and various other temples to reach out and placate deities afar off. Our modern totems speak volumes of what our idols are today. We have our towers. We have our shrines. And of course we have our many temples that speak to our ‘gods’, whether they are traditional spirit beings or our recent tendency towards material satisfactions. Being sold a bill of goods until you’re sold off as a bill of goods isn’t very good. But to our culture of consumerism, everything is a product including us, especially us. Walk through a mall sometime. Visit the latest incarnation of the oldest faux temples. It’s striking how much has stayed the same.

BEHIND THE WALLS

I titled this essay “Digging through the walls” because in Ezekiel, he is told to dig through the walls of the Jerusalem Temple. When he does so, he finds that they hide an untold number of abominations and idolatries. These are the hidden things of the priesthood. These are the secreted away corners that they don’t want anyone to see or find out about. The Jerusalem Temple was commanded by God Himself to be built by David’s son Solomon. The true God of Israel, Yahweh, not the false gods of the surrounding peoples, called for this temple to be built to honor His name above all other names. And yet this same temple had become corrupted. It held detestable things inside it. It had become a haunt of wickedness and rampant immorality. This temple that God had commanded to be built and had commended to His people was now a hateful thing in His eyes.

This is a work in progress, so I'll hopefully wrap it up soon. But since I'm moving right now, we'll see when that'll happen!

Building the Third Temple

BUILDING THE THIRD TEMPLE

What does it mean to build the third temple? Should we be looking about for a red heifer, in hopes that it might cleanse some future temple in Jerusalem? As the previous weeks have shown, the Old Testament tabernacles and temples all hearkened back to the Garden of Eden. Then we saw that when Jesus came, He was God “tabernacling” in the flesh. John uses the most explicit temple imagery regarding Jesus. Jesus is the new temple. He replaces the old, temporary, hand-made temple that stood in Jerusalem. While Herod’s temple stood as the second “incarnation” of God’s dwelling place in Jewish history, God’s kingdom was still a far off hope, not yet realized. Herod’s temple was a temple built from violence. It was a temple that reflected more his own quest for glory than the dwelling place of the shekinah glory of God.

When Christ came and began proclaiming that the kingdom of God had been inaugurated with Him, He spoke of the promises of the prophets being fulfilled in Himself and His ministry. The prophets promised that a new temple would come that would not be made with hands. Instead, the final temple would be built by God Himself, and this temple would be the perfect embodiment of where righteousness would dwell. This temple would be built with living stones that would cry out praise to God and proclaim His faithfulness to all the creation. Christ was the Cornerstone of this new temple that would spread out across the world. The stone would be the Cornerstone that would become a mountain that would fill the whole earth.

That building project has been going on for two thousand years now, and each new believer and the sanctifying presence of God within them has spread out God’s recreating work until the day when God says “It is done” and all of normal human history will be wrapped up and all things will be reconciled and made new. As we have become believers, the temple has been built. And with each new believer, the building project continues. But the temple grows in other ways too.

As the primordial garden brought order into chaos, life out of death, fertility out of desolation, and the direct rule of God through His appointed vice regents, the new, third temple inaugurated by Christ has the same effect on the surrounding world, even to today. It will reach its climactic pinnacle at the end of history when God, through Christ, will radically intervene into our mundane history and set things right. Christ will vindicate those who have put their trust in Him and have been willing to suffer for His name’s sake, even unto death.

The new third temple, like the previous temples, and the garden before them, will have a dual focus in enacting its God-given purpose. It will minister to its own, the covenant people called by God’s own name, in order to sanctify them through and through. This ministry of sanctification, of making a holy people unto Himself, is not an end in itself. The point of making a people that are holy, set apart to do the Lord’s work, is to have them get about the work at hand! We are made holy in order to be used by God to bring in righteousness. We are called to be light shining in the darkness. We are called to be salt that preserves. We are called to follow in the footsteps of our master, friend, and older brother, Jesus, and take up our cross, kneel low to wash feet, turn over tables in holy places defiled by lust and greed, and more. Jesus even says that we will do greater things than He did during His ministry. That’s hard to imagine. But He did say it. Do we believe Him? Can we trust His word? Are we yet fulfilling His word for us?

This third temple is to be the place where righteousness dwells. It is the place of the New Covenant people. We are the ones the prophets spoke about when they said that hearts of stone would be made flesh. In the New Testament witness, we see the most explicit temple imagery in the letter to the Hebrew Christians and in Peter’s first letter to the exiles spread out over modern day Turkey, not to mention John’s Revelation. All of the New Testament writers understood that Christians, those who trusted in Jesus as Messiah, were the true heirs of the Old Testament promises. Their words were no more radical than anything the Old Testament prophets had said concerning the people of their own day. Jeremiah made it abundantly clear that just saying “the temple of the LORD, the temple of the LORD, the temple of the LORD” as some magical incantation, would then, nor will it now, protect a rebellious people from God’s righteous judgment.

The New Covenant, New Living Temple people of God, made up of believing Jews and gentiles, are to be the temple of God on earth. And being the temple on earth means doing the work of the temple. Remember that the temple of God is where God dwells directly. It is where God reigns directly. It is where God does the work of bringing reconciliation to the world broken by sin and rebellion. Thus it is the place where sacrifice happens. In the garden God dwelled. God reigned directly. God cultivated an oasis in a land of chaos. When rebellion occurred in the garden, God expelled the offenders, but also clothed them with an animal skin to cover their nakedness. The tabernacles and subsequent temples also served those same purposes. Christ comes in the flesh as the embodiment of God’s presence and reign. He finally fulfills the garden mandate. He obeys as Adam and Eve had not. He becomes our covering, sacrificed for our sin, covering our nakedness.

Since Christ fulfills the reason for the garden, the tabernacle, and the temple, and we are in Him, we reside, spiritually now, fully at His return, in the place of rest that is His body. The work has been done. It is finished. Now the kingdom spreads like a fertile vine in a land already full of weeds. It springs up with life giving water, feeding all those who would drink from this One Spring. Wrapped in His cloak, we are hidden in His life because we have already shared in His death. And unlike the kings and kingdoms of this fallen world, we set out to spread the kingdom of God by following after our greatest example, Jesus.

To know how best to bring about the kingdom of God means that we need look no further than the life of Christ. He alone is our standard. He alone is our starting point and goal. He leads us to the cross, only to see us through to the broken open grave. The consummation of the kingdom of God, when the kingdoms of this world will be the kingdom of Christ, will not fully come about until His return. But what will be seen in fullness then, vindicated then, finalized then, is now seen only in part.

The temple image is very physical. It immediately brings to mind brick and mortar. It’s very ‘this world’ in its impact. But the kingdom of God being spread out across the world through the ministry of the church doesn’t seem so physical, since we have no physical holy place in Jerusalem, Rome, or Athens. This lack of a physical building is often thought of as being more ‘other-worldly’ because of that difference. After all, we’re the ‘heavenly’ people of God, whereas the Jews were the ‘physical’ people of God. At least according to the dispensational understanding. But if the dispensational view that sets apart the Jew from the gentile is wrong, and I believe it is, then how should we see the temple at the end of time? What is the temple in Revelation?

REVEALING THE HIDDEN TEMPLE

The temple in Revelation is seen in different imagery from chapter 1 through to chapter 22. The fact that Revelation itself is written in a seven-fold manner attests to a very Jewish, Zechariah influenced literary motif. Revelation uses much, if not most of its imagery from Jewish apocalyptic writings such as Daniel, Zechariah, and Ezekiel. All three of these Jewish apocalyptic writings are very temple oriented themselves. Since they were all written during the exile, when the first temple had already been destroyed, and the hope for a new temple was only on the horizon, or at best only getting started, as in Zechariah.

The seven lamp-stands that are featured in chapters one through three are symbolic of the fullness of the presence of God’s Spirit dwelling in their midst. The lamp-stands are menorahs, which are standard temple décor. So already, John is linking the churches and the presence of God together in a way that hearkens back to the Jerusalem temple. As a side note, whether John wrote his revelation before or after the destruction of the Jerusalem temple in 70 AD does not dramatically change the importance of the imagery he uses throughout the book. If he wrote it before the destruction, and the temple was still standing, his temple imagery would point out to those reading it that they were the true Jews, the true priesthood, and the true temple of God, not the unbelieving Jews who were persecuting them. If he wrote it after Titus’s army destroyed the temple, then his temple words and images would simply be a way of pointing out that the old Jerusalem temple was done and over with and that the only true temple left was the one made up of those who belonged to Jesus Christ.

John also would want to make it clear that no other temple would suffice in revealing God’s holy presence. The Roman emperors had temples to their own glory set up all throughout the Roman provinces, and any good Jew or Christian that these were idolatrous and blasphemous competitors to what God had commanded. Much of what John wrote was concerned to keep his readers strong in the faith in the face of severe persecution and temptation to give in to the ‘little pinch of incense’ that the emperor demanded.

Most likely John was writing to a community fighting a two front war. On one side were the other Jews who did not believe in Jesus and who were accusing Christians of every possible crime against the empire, and on the other side was the empire itself, trying to either co-opt or wipe out this still young community of Jewish and gentile believers in this Jewish Messiah. The Revelation was given to give hope to a desperate band of believers, warning to others among them, and a promise that God, through Christ, and in a mysterious way His church, was going to overcome and defeat the kingdoms of this world. I believe that the book was written later, so that the Jerusalem temple had already been destroyed by Titus’s army. Thus the temple language used by John spoke to a temple that was currently hidden from sight, but “real” nonetheless. The temple in Revelation is in the heavens until its “revelation” later on when it descends to earth.

Chapter 4 of Revelation is a scene of the throne room of heaven where the four living creatures, as in Ezekiel 1, continually praise God. Chapter 5 has the prayers of the saints in bowls of incense. Chapter 6 has the souls of saints under the altar asking how long before their blood would be avenged. Chapter 7 has the 144,000 Israelites sealed and the great multitude from every nation praising God who “serve him day and night in his temple”. John continues to reside in the heavenly temple courts seeing these fantastic visions of what was soon to come.

Chapter 11 has the most temple language so far, and has John being told to measure the temple, the altar, and those who worship there, but not the outer court. That’s left to the nations to trample for a season. Interestingly, the outer court of the temple is also referred to as the ‘holy city’ in this same passage. At the end of chapter 11, the heavenly temple is opened and the ark of the covenant is displayed for all to see. Chapter 14 has the Lamb on Mount Zion with his 144,000 ready to do battle. Chapter 15 has the sanctuary of the tent of witness being opened and the fiery judgments of God ready to be poured out on earth.

To be continued...

The Temple in Scripture

God's House
The Temple of God. It's where God lives. He's present there in a way that He isn't elsewhere. But how can that be? God is omni-present isn't He? He is. But even at the very beginning of creation, God decided to build a place where His presence would dwell more tangibly than anywhere else. That first place is the garden. It's the first temple of God. God walks around its environs freely and nothing in that holy place is disturbed by His immediate presence. He takes a creature out of the ground outside of the garden and fashions a man, adam, from adama, which means dirt, soil, earth. He then brings him into the garden, breathes life into him so that he is now a living being, and places him in charge of the garden. Up to this point every thing has been 'good' but now adam is standing there twiddling his thumbs and God says for the first time that something isn't quite right. He even says that this situation is 'not good'. First God brings all the critters that He had made before adam up to adam in order to name them (an act of dominion by the way. We name that which we have power over). But none of the animals is quite right for what adam 'really' needs. Adam needs someone like himself. God knocks him out, splits his side, builds a woman, and then adam sees another living being just like him, but different. Humanity version 2.0! Now that's very good!

So they get to work. It's not hard. All they have to do is tend the garden and do like the rest of the critters by being fruitful and multiplying. Eventually, even if there were no rebellion,the garden would have had to grow beyond it created space. All these critters, plants, and humans multiplying would have led pretty quickly to some mighty cramped quarters. And besides, outside the garden was barreness and chaos, and it needed to be restored (if you hold to an angelic fall preceeding the human one) or organized/ordered in order to reflect the heavenly/cosmic temple. Either way, this primordial couple had some work to do, and they were God's vice regents in charge of getting it done.

Shiny Serpents
But even in this primordial paradise, there were other creatures that had other ideas. A creature that can be seen as a spirit being also lurks in this garden. He speaks to the woman first, asking her about what God had said previously. Did God really say...? Something in this line of questioning must have tickled the ear of Eve (the name means the mother of all living), so that the words sunk down into her. She listened to these accusing, questioning words. But so did the man, Adam, standing next to her. They both gave in to the impulse to take the shiny serpent's word over that of the One who had created them. Somehow they didn't take seriously the warning that they would 'die' that very day if they disobeyed God's command.
This shiny serpent (I use the term 'shiny serpent' because the Hebrew, nachash, can be translated either as a noun, serpent, or as an adjective, shiny one. Since later Scripture describes our great adversary, Satan, as being both, I lean towards a both/and rather than an either/or approach to translating the term) gets them to take the first bite. Their eyes are opened now. They see they're naked in a different way than before. Before this moment they knew they were naked, but they were OK with it. They weren't ashamed. Now they were. Something had changed. Now they had something to hide. Something, or better yet, someone, had to die.

Eviction
They hear God walking around nearby. They're scared. They run and hide. They cover up. God asks His own questions. He isn't so much interested in finding out what happened. He knows full well what just went down. He wants to know their 'story'. How are they going to explain themselves. Thus from this moment on, we find our own story told for the first time here. It's not my fault! God asks the man. It's the woman's fault who 'You' gave me (bad move!). God asks the woman. It's the shiny serpent's fault. God doesn't ask the shiny serpent anything. All three get judged. The man has to work harder to get the same or lesser results. The woman gets painful childbirth and submission to the man. The shiny serpent gets thrown to the ground and a death sentence that is irrevocable, even if somewhat delayed in the sentencing phase.
Meanwhile, the first couple get their walking papers. They get the very first pink slip from the royal residence. They're evicted from the garden. Their charge, their responsibility, is still intact, but now they get to share in the primordial chaos surrounding them. That chaos is now in them. They now are that chaos.
God was pleased to have them dwell in His midst as long as they 'dwelled' in His Word, His command. But now that they had decided to follow a different path, He sent them out from His midst. A flaming sword made sure that they could not turn back to where they had come from. They were now 'separated' from God because of their rebellion, their sin. Their relationship with God had been ruptured. They were no longer on speaking terms. The honeymoon was over. The sweet communion was over, it was dead. And soon they would be too. And the dying began.
Every time someone in Scripture is confronted with the immediate presence of God since then, they always cry out "Woe is me! For I am undone!", "Get away from me, a sinful man!", "I fell as a dead man." To be in the presence of God without some sort of mediation was and is a very dangerous thing. In fact, it's deadly. All of the Biblical writers knew that. We would do well to know that too. To entertain God glibly is to invite His holy wrath. Strange fire still burns deadly. God will not be mocked. But God was also pleased to provide a way. More temples will show up.

The greatest 'cover up' in history!
Something, or as I put it earlier, someone, had to die. An animal, we don't know what kind, was sacrificed in order to provide a covering for the man and the woman. This second 'skin' would protect them until something better came along. Temples throughout the world have, almost to a one, a sacrificial system in place to appease various deities. A pinch of incense here, a pure virgin there, a grain offering can't hurt. Somehow, we have to get those angry gods off our backs. That, and they always seem to have these temples on hilltops and mountaintops where high priests and kings intercede between us and them. The Bible also talks about temples on mountains, gardens, sacrifices, and being 'right' with God. Why is it all so familiar? Did all of these pagan religions and cultures 'borrow' these ideas from God's people? Worse yet, did the Hebrews 'borrow' these ideas from their pagan neighbors? Which came first, the sacrificial chicken or the fertility egg?
These kinds of questions scare us. Can I hold on to my faith in what the Bible says when I find out that there were/are religions that speak of almost all the same themes? In reading about the Temple and its importance to the church's ministry, I was surprised at how much overlap there was between the Biblical witness and the imagery and even content of the surrounding cultures. The Ancient Near East (ANE) is filled with creation narratives and judgments from the gods on humanity. Yet in each of these accounts, there are also striking differences between the Biblical account and what the ANE describe.
While to our modernistic and materialistic ears the Biblical account of creation and the fall may seem quite fantastic, it is surprisingly tame and materially coherent compared to the surrounding narratives of the ANE. The striking similarities between the Biblical narrative and the surrounding culture is counterbalanced by the wildly fantastic differences found in some of those other stories. Yes, they all have similar creation narratives. But unlike the Biblical narrative, which sees the physical realm as inherently good, the surrounding tales find the physical creation being born out of conflict and violence. We, as physical beings, exist because of war. We are the offspring of violence. In other words, what's the matter with matter? In the Hebrew Scriptures, nothing. In much of the surrounding narratives, everything.
Thus the 'end' or 'purpose' of our story in the pagan world is to either escape this inherently flawed world (think gnostics) or duke it out on the ground level in imitation of the pantheon of gods vying for head man (or woman) on the totem pole. In either case, we escape or we compete violently to get the upper hand.

A Violent Peace
But what about the blood? Many people get queasy at the sight of blood. Some Christians do too. Blood seems, well, so bloody. The whole idea of blood sacrifices seems like something more akin to a vampire movie than to anything modern Christians could believe. But it's our modernism that's the problem, not the blood. Christianity has always acknowledged the importance of blood. After all, it's the blood of Jesus that washes away my sins isn't it? Nothing but the blood? We sing it, but it still makes us uneasy. Blood implies violence. But isn't the gospel about peace? Is the gospel message about God reconciling a people to Himself. He makes peace with us, His enemies. But how does God, at least the God of the Hebrew/Christian Scriptures, make peace?

Before we get to how God makes peace, let's get a better idea of why there needs to be peace in the first place. If we need peace, maybe that's because there is currently war. But if we need peace because there is already war, then how did we get war? War came about because of rebellion. Back at the beginning, as we saw earlier, there is a rebellion. There is a rebellion of humans against God. But there is also a rebellion of the angelic realm against God too. We know that not only from the Genesis account with that nachash character asking all the wrong questions, but because of other accounts that tell us about an earlier (apparently) cosmic rebellion. Isaiah alludes to it in chapter 14:12-14 when he speaks of the fall of the king of Babylon. Ezekiel too speaks the same way when he describes the fall of the king of Tyre in chapter 28:11-19. While this is a lament against the king of Tyre, verse 14 seems to point pretty strongly towards something or someone beyond and before a mere mortal king. By the way, it's in this passage that we see the garden of God, Eden, also being described as the holy mountain of God. There are several other passages that also describe the cosmic rebellion, but the main concern here is to bring out that there was a spiritual rebellion among these angels and other spirit beings that occurred before the human fall. One of the characteristic features of these descriptions of the cosmic fall is that these powers are always violent and perpetrate injustice. They are unholy, both in their idolatry and in their impurity.

Meanwhile, back to the blood. One day Abraham gets told by God to sacrifice his son Isaac. Go up to this mountain and offer him up as a burnt offering. Again, this is hard stuff. We recoil at this idea. We always breath a sigh of relief when God intervenes through His angel by providing a lamb/ram tangled in a thicket nearby. "God Himself will provide a lamb." That was the promise to Abraham. He did provide Himself a lamb to Abraham. The Son of promise lived so that a still later Son of promise might die.

To be holy is to be in the presence of God. To be holy is to have the presence of God in your midst. To be holy is to dwell with God. To be holy is to have God dwell with you.

In the Mean Time
God meets people in all kinds of interesting places. He meets them on roads to Damascus. He meets them when they're asleep. He meets them out in open fields while they tend flocks of sheep. He meets them in burning bushes. He just shows up. Sometimes a particular person is looking for God. Many times they're not. In fact, sometimes they're running headlong in the other direction. But each time God meets someone, they remember the spot they wer at when it happened. It's kind of like "Where were you when 9/11 happened?" We all know. It's seared into our memories because ot was such a traumatic event. Well, meeting God is traumatic too. You don't soon forget that moment either. That is, of course, if you live to tell about it.

Each time someone met God in the period of the patriarchs, they set up altars, usually a collection of stones, in order to commemorate the event. It also set aside that spot as a sacred space, holy ground. It's the place where God met with us. Heavenly-earthly intersections. Portals to the spiritual realm that had a dangerous, special significance. Take off your shoes. Treat this spot with care. God was here. These stones remember that. These meeting places are heavenly footsteps, spiritual impressions left behind that somehow still resonate with a shimmer of His presence. He keeps showing up. First with the first couple in the garden. Then with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Even more so with Moses. We see a much more developed scene of the heavenly realm when God talks to Moses. He even commands Moses to build a tabernacle that corresponds to the heavenly original! He gets the specs direct from God! That way, whenever they moved, God's special presence (His shekinah glory) moved with them. He traveled with them as they sojourned through the wilderness. Eventually, they would make it to the promised land. But not yet. Even more temples were to come. A king would need to build a more permanent structure. But the temples soon to be built left something to be desired. They were too handy so to speak. That's not the kind of temple God really wanted anyway. But it's a good pointer to the real deal.

The first Temple; that is, the Temple of Solomon, was commanded by God. He had commanded David, but David was a man of war, so he couldn't lawfully construct the temple (1 Kings 5:3). Only a man of peace could build the temple. David's son's name Solomon means "peace." It's a variant of the Hebrew word shalom. God's Temple could only be built by a man of peace, during a time of peace or rest. Thus David could not, but his son, Solomon, could and would. God commanded the Israelites to build Him a Temple in order to make His name known (1 Kings 5:5). But even Solomon seemed to acknowledge that what he built was wholly inadequate for the task at hand.

Looking for God in all the wrong places
There were other "temples" too. Human beings can't help but be religious. We have to worship something! Either it's going to be the God who actually created all that is, or it's going to be other spiritual beings in the heavenly realm, or it's going to be a creation itself, or it's going to be the most available candidate for worship, ME! As Bob Dylan says, "ya gotta serve somebody."
Temples, towers, shrines, altars. They all evoke images of sacred space, holy ground, places of worship. All of human history is filled with these places in one form or another. According to the Biblical account, the prototypical idolatrous temple is the tower of Babel. It's the original rebellious power. All other images of rebellion and idolatry hearken back to that original act and place. Whether it's the Assyrians, the Baylonians themselves, the Chaldeans (another name for the same people), or the later Persians, Greeks, or Romans, they all speak of setting up a counterfeit version of what God intended. It's what I like to call the "evil twin skippy" effect. It looks like the real thing, but it's a counterfeit. It has to approximate the real thing in order to be able to pass itself off as the real thing, and I'm not talking about Coke!

The idolatries and false temples of the Old Testament, and of the other parts of the world even up to today all speak to this copy-cat tendency.