On How To Read Barth or: Why The Tamed Cynic Is Wrong

Posted on July 12, 2016 by taylormertins

Back in February of 2013, Jason Micheli (The Tamed Cynic) proposed an invitation to read Karl Barth’s writings over the following two years. Throughout this time Jason periodically reflected on what he read for the whole world to read on his blog. I like Jason a lot. I’ve written about him here on the blog, I’ve used him as an example in a number of sermons and devotionals, and I genuinely believe he is one of the most faithful followers of Jesus I’ve ever known. Because I like Jason, and I grew up listening to his sermons, I like Karl Barth.

Barth is most well known for his writings in the theologically shattering Epistle to the Romans and his dialectical approach in his Church Dogmatics. Reading his work over the last few years has profoundly shaped the way I understand what is means to be a Christian and how to read scripture.

When Jason invited me to start reading Barth from afar I was already familiar with The Epistle to the Romans, I had read sections from Church Dogmatics, and had read a number of his sermons from other compilations (Deliverance to the Captives and The Early Preaching of Karl Barth). Though relatively familiar with Barth’s style and larger project, I was excited to read Jason’s “Tips for Reading Karl Barth”:

Barth is the opposite of the social media, fast food age. Read slow. Barth’s thought frequently unfolds in long clauses and sentences that double back almost like music. It’s better to focus on a page or a long paragraph and understand it than try to read everything I’ve scheduled in the given week.
Barth uses the term “being” a lot. IT’s a freighted philosophical term that would be better translated for you as “character.”
Whenever Barth speaks of the “Word of God” he’s usually referring to Jesus NOT scripture. This will be obvious in the next sections.
The footnotes. Skip over them. You can read them if you want but don’t let them slow you down or intimidate you.

Jason’s “tips” are on point when the daunting task of reading Barth is open on the table. Barth’s Church Dogmatics is divided into fourteen volumes and takes up the entirety of one of my bookshelves. I fully agree with his first three “tips” but I respectfully and wholeheartedly disagree with the fourth: “The footnotes. Skip over them.”

If theology is like jazz, then Barth’s footnotes are his greatest improvisational work over the larger melody.

Reading Barth is challenging and requires patience. There are times when you will come to the end of a long paragraph and have no recollection of what you just read. There are times that you are sure you know what he is driving at only to have him turn the whole topic upside down and address it from a different angle. But it is in his footnotes (or excurses) that he exegetes the biblical texts that brought him to the conclusions in the rest of the text. The excurses are where Barth does the true work of theology.

For example, in part III.1 The Doctrine of Creation, Barth makes the claim that “Creation is the external basis of the Covenant.” He breaks down arguments for the watchmaker analogy as if God created the Earth like a watch and is not sitting back and watching the hands go round and round and instead posits that God, as the divine creator, created freely in love and is forever bound with creation. This is all good and true, but it is the long excurses on Genesis 1 that the brilliance of Barth’s theology comes to light.

In it he goes through the scripture with a fine-toothed comb and provides reflections on each day of the creation story. He looks at the presence of light and darkness: “The best analogy to the relationship between light and darkness is that which exists between the elected and the rejected in the history of the Bible: between Jacob and Esau; between David and Saul; between Judas and the other apostles. But even this analogy is improper and defective. For even the rejected, even Satan and the demons, are the creation of God.”

He spends a great amount of space analyzing the power of created water and its relevance throughout the entirety of scripture: “The Old Testament ranks a sea voyage with desert-wandering, captivity and sickness as one of the forms of extreme human misery; of the misery from which it is the gracious and mighty will of God, which we cannot extol too highly, to redeem us. It is thus the more note-worthy that the most striking Messianic deeds of Jesus are His walking on the sea in royal freedom, and His commanding the waves and storm to be still by His Word.”

All of this and much more can only be found in the places that Jason suggested skipping over. The more I have read Barth, the more I am convinced that the most important parts to read are his footnotes where he dives deeply into the strange new world of the bible.

Therefore, over the next few weeks, I will be posting reflections on some of my favorite excurses from Church Dogmatics including Barth’s thoughts on Creation, the Tower of Babel, and the Doctrine of Election.

Jason’s proposal to read Barth was a great challenge, and I am grateful for his “tips”, but the ripe fruits of Barth’s work should not be skipped over.

Devotional – Galatians 6.2

Posted on June 27, 2016 by taylormertins

Devotional:

Galatians 6.2

Bear one another’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ.

One of my friends has incurable cancer. He’s in his 30’s, married, has two kids, serves as a pastor, and his cancer will never go away. When he shared the news of his diagnosis, I was speechless; as far as I could tell he was in perfect health and it felt like I was smacked in the face. And then I did something that I’m ashamed of: I avoided him.

The days became weeks, and the weeks became months, and every time I picked up the phone to call him just to check in, I couldn’t muster the courage to dial the number. As a pastor, I spend time in hospitals and rehab centers almost every week with people from the church community who are suffering through cancer, or a major surgery, or depression. But when it came to Jason, I just couldn’t do it.

Maybe it was my own selfish need to believe that nothing was wrong with him; I wanted to keep the image I had of him in my head, instead of seeing his bald head and weakening body. Or perhaps his cancer hit too close to home and made me fear for my own health. Or maybe his cancer was just another frightening reminder of the fragility of life.

While I was ignoring him, my little sister was doing the opposite. When Jason needed to go for chemotherapy treatments, Laura-Paige volunteered to drive him and sit with him through the whole procedure. She told me that she never felt pressured to talk or console him, because the only thing he really needed was for someone else to be there.

Paul wrote to the church in Galatia and called for them to “bear one another’s burdens.” For by bearing the burdens of the people around us we can fulfill the law of Christ. It took me a long time to finally pick up the phone to call Jason and apologize for my lack of presence during his treatments and I still feel guilty for abandoning him in the midst of his pain. But I give thanks for my little sister and the countless others who bore his burdens during his fight against cancer.

In church we like to pretend that we’ve got everything together in our lives. So long as we can get on the right outfit, sit in the right pew, and offer the rights prayers we can appear however we want toward the people around us. The truth however, is that we are all broken and suffering through something. This week, let us take the time to reach out to just one person in our lives and start bearing their burden. Maybe we can attend an AA meeting with a friend who suffers from alcoholism, or we can sit with a neighbor going through chemotherapy, or maybe we can just ask how we can be present for someone in the midst of their life right now. And in so doing, we will fulfill the law of Christ.

Devotional – Isaiah 9.2

Posted on December 22, 2014 by taylormertins

Devotional:

Isaiah 9.2

The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who lived in a land of deep darkness – on them has light shined.

This Wednesday (at 3pm and 7pm) our church will welcome a number of people for whom church attendance is limited to Christmas Eve and Easter. In the church community these people are often referred to as “Chreasters” or the “C and E crowd.” I can remember as a child how wonderful it felt to be at church on Christmas Eve and see all sorts of people from the community worshipping together who never attend for any other occasion. Christmas Eve is one of the profound worship experiences that brings all sorts of people together to praise God for coming into the world as a baby in a manger.

One of my friends, and former pastor, Jason Micheli has this to say about the “Chreasters” who only attend church on a limited basis: “The dirty little secret is that often the way preachers and church people talk about ‘Chreasters’ makes them sound like the bad guys, like we want to make them feel guilty for not being regular church-going people. Which doesn’t make any sense to me because I gotta think ‘Chreasters’ are exactly the sort of people Jesus would prefer to hang out with… So rather than looking down on them with guilt-inducing contempt. We should, like the Lord we adore, simply welcome them in the thrill to be with them.” (you can read more of Jason’s thoughts about ‘Chreasters’ here: Tamed Cynic)

For this one night, we have the privilege to sit beside weary travelers on the roads of life who, for whatever reason, have decided to worship the Lord. It is nothing short of a blessing to find churches filled with people on Christmas Eve because it is a time for us to proclaim that wonderful and great truth: God is with us. Many will come because they feel suffocated by the darkness of life’s burdens, and we will be there with them as they experience the light of the world.

This Christmas Eve, wherever you worship, I encourage you to open your eyes to ALL who gather to celebrate the new born king. Do not look down on the “Chreasters” with contempt for their limited worship, but instead give thanks to God for putting them in your life. Above all, be fully present with those around you and rejoice knowing that the light of the world shines in the darkness.

Merry Christmas.

God and Relationships – Part 2

Posted on October 30, 2013 by taylormertins

One of my favorite theological blogs belongs to my friend and mentor Jason Micheli (www.tamedcynic.org). Recently, Jason produced a number of posts about the importance of being in relationships. In a similar vein, I have decided to post a few of my thoughts on the theological virtues of relationships.

“To say ‘I love you’ one must first be able to say the ‘I.’”

So says the fictional Howard Roark to Dominique Francon in Ayn Rand’s behemoth novel The Fountainhead. Though Rand herself was staunchly opposed to all forms of religion, I believe her quote, in a way, speaks profoundly to the importance of what it means to be in relationship with another.

To use Rand’s language: To say “I love you” one must first be able to say “I.” And, perhaps, more importantly, to say “I do” in marriage, one must first be able to say “I.”

Will Willimon writes, “Most people think that the toughest part of marriage is deciding who we ought to marry, making the right choice, and preparing for the decision. We say we are deciding whether or not we are “in love” with this person. Curiously the church has traditionally cared less about our emotional attachments. What the church cares about is not who you have deep feelings for but rather whether or not you are a person who is capable of sustaining the kind of commitment that makes love possible.”

In today’s culture people (young and old) often commit to a romantic and marital relationship before ever experiencing what it means to be an individual. Young people are maturing later and further delaying the ability to find sense in individuality and therefore seek identity in others. Yes- there must be sacrifice in all relationships, but not at the expense of losing whatever it is that makes you, you.

Before a couple can fully appreciate the depth of what it means to covenant their life to someone else, they have to know who they are in order to give themselves over.

But here’s where it gets a little complicated…

You will never fully know who you are.

As a pastor, when I stand in front of a couple leading a wedding ceremony, the question is not “Jack, do you love Jill?” Instead the question is, “Jack, will you love Jill?” There, in that precise moment, we discover that, according to the church, love is something you commit to, something you promise to do, a future activity, the result of a covenantal marriage rather than its cause.

As Stanley Hauerwas famously put it, “we always marry the wrong person.” This is to say that we never marry the right person because marriage and life changes us. There will come a time when you realize that the person you have been living with is no longer the person you married or met at the coffee shop or knew from high school.

No one can fully know what he or she is getting out of a husband or a wife. There is a lot to be said about preparing for marriage (meeting with professionals, discussing the future, etc.) but there is an element of unpredictability that must be respected. We can never prepare for marriage in totality, but we can prepare ourselves for a lifetime of commitment to someone who is always changing (ourselves included).

This is exactly why it is so important to understand what you say, when you say “I.”

You will change in ways that you cannot predict just as your partner will change. But, as Christians, we have been adopted into a new identity through water and the Spirit that sustains us throughout the many changes of our lives.

Christ is alive through us, in us, and with us.

If we hold on to that identity, love can be the result of our relationships rather than the requirement.

Weekly Devotional – 10/28/2013

Posted on October 28, 2013 by taylormertins

Devotional:

Luke 6.27-31

“But I say to you that listen, Love your enemies, do good to those who abuse you. If anyone strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also; and from anyone who takes away your coat do not withhold even your shirt. Give to everyone who begs from you; and if anyone takes away your goods, do not ask for them again. Do to others as you would have them do to you.”

I have a friend in ministry who once had this passage play itself out in his life in an interesting way. Though an ordained methodist, Jason experimented one Lenten season with wearing a clergy collar out in public. He was surprised to note how many people eyed him suspiciously at the local Starbucks and many strangers were willing to talk to him about their trials and tribulations in public locations. One week, while working on a sermon at a Barnes & Noble, Jason noticed a homeless man sleeping uncomfortably in one of the seats. It was clear that the man had not bathed in some time as many of the other patrons left a quarantine zone of empty seats between themselves and the man. Like many of us, Jason was used to seeing people in need and knew that somebody else could help this man. However, the more he attempted to work on his sermon, the more he realized that most of the people in the mini restaurant were staring at him, waiting for him to do something. Remember: he was wearing a clergy collar, everyone knew he was a Christian. So Jason reluctantly made his way to the counter, purchased a sandwich, and dropped in on the table in front of the homeless man. “Gracias” muttered the man under his pile of clothes while preparing to begin eating. “What’s your name?” Jason asked. “Jesus” the man replied.

Upon later reflection Jason wondered whether or not he would have given that man food if it were not for the fact that he marked himself as a Christian and therefore strangers had expectations of what he should do in the situation.

Jesus regularly challenged his disciples to change their lives in strange and uncomfortable ways. It is not easy to live into a new reality where we are called not to react to everything but instead continually act according to the kingdom principles of love, forgiveness, and generosity.

So, the next time you’re out in public and you see someone in need, or you’re being ridiculed by someone at work, know that following Christ’s commands are not always easy. But think about how you would act differently if everyone around you knew that you were a Christian and had expectations of you according to that identity. How would you act differently?

The answer to that question is what discipleship is all about.

(You can find out more about Jason and his ministry at www.tamedcynic.org)