Saturday 11 March 2017

Atonement and the Cross

When I read this article by Benjamin L. Corey last year, I had an epiphany.
The year I became a Christian, one book played a huge role in my conversion: C.S. Lewis' The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe. For those of you unfamiliar with the story, I'll give a quick summary:

Four London children are sent to the English countryside during WW2. They're staying in a big old house, and one day, while playing hide-and-seek, they discover a wardrobe that is a doorway into a fantasy world called Narnia. Narnia is under the domination of an evil White Witch; but all Narnians are expecting to be liberated by Aslan the Lion. At some point, one of the children is seduced by the Witch and betrays his siblings as well as all Narnians. He eventually rejoins them, but the Witch then reminds Aslan that traitors belong to her by law, and that she has a right to demand the boy's blood.

Aslan does not deny that, but he offers his own life for the boy's. The Witch gleefully kills Aslan, not realizing that there is a "deeper magic" at work, causing "death to work backwards". Aslan then comes back to life and goes on to defeat the Witch.

Of course, this is clearly an allegory of the Christian faith and of Jesus' death, Aslan representing Jesus in the world of Narnia, and his taking the place of the boy is a metaphor of the Cross.

Coming back to Benjamin Corey's article: in many Evangelical circles, Jesus's death on the cross is explained as follows. God his perfectly just and cannot abide the evil things we do ("sin"). He loves us, but He cannot simply forgive us without punishing sin. Jesus, God's Son incarnate, dies a horrible death on the cross - and what He does there is take upon Himself the punishment for sin, taking on the wrath of God upon Himself so we can be forgiven. This is called penal substitution atonement. Corey wrote a whole series on why he thinks, based on his studies, that theology of atonement is not only incorrect and reductive, but toxic.

In the article I mentioned at the beginning of this post, Corey looks at the word Jesus Himself uses when talking about His death: a ransom. Corey then goes on to argue that a ransom is paid to, say, kidnappers by the parents of a child. The ransom is NOT paid TO the parents. A ransom is paid to an evil character, not to a just and good one. Therefore, he sees the death of Jesus as a ransom not paid to God, but to the devil.

And at that point, I had my epiphany. I remembered Aslan's death in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, and the thought struck me like a flash of light.

God is not the Witch.
It had been right there all along, in the one book that helped me understand Christianity. It had been staring at me in the face all along.


God is not the Witch.

Friday 10 March 2017

Islam - no way out?

Sometimes I hear a sentence that just startles me and makes me want to scream in frustration. Maybe that makes me a "snowflake", but there are things that I cannot let pass.

Recently, a Christian friend and I were discussing Islam and I explained someone I know was contemplating converting to Islam. I saw it as a positive, because the lady in question came from an atheist background and embarked on a spiritual search. My friend, however, did not see it quite in the same way.

"I wonder if she realises that once converted to Islam, she has no way out - all schools of sharia law prescribe either imprisonment or death for apostasy".

My initial reaction was to want to bang my head against the wall. There are so many things that are wrong with this statement I don't even know where to start...


First and foremost, we live in Belgium, where religious freedoms are protected by law: people may not only choose their religion, but change it if they wish. This means if my friend became a Muslim, she could change her mind afterwards. Moreover, if her Muslim friends are open-minded, they will respect her choice either way. I personally know a young girl who converted to Christiniaty from a Muslim background, and her family respected and supported her choice.

I love and respect the Muslims I've come to know. I feel blessed to count them as friends, and I get sad and angry when people tar them all with the same brush. When they ask me about my faith I always tell them I am a Christian. I have never felt any hostility from them, quite the opposite. They are some of the most respectful and hospitable people I have ever met. In addition, I have great respect for their piety. Who among us Christians prays 5 times a day, or fasts for 40 days, or learns significant portions of Scripture by heart? Their devotion is an inspiration. Of course, this doesn't mean I want to become a Muslim myself - I have explained before how and why I chose to follow Jesus.

"All schools of sharia law prescribe either imprisonment or death for apostasy" is a blanket statement that fails to consider the diversity that exists within Islam. True, some fringes of Islam want to impose sharia law throughout the world, which includes severe punishment for apostasy. But the key words here are "some fringes". Not all Muslims are Wahhabi - the fundamentalist, often violent branch of Islam who want to "spread purified Islam through the world, both Muslim and non-Muslim", only making up 0.5% of the global Muslim population (source: Wikipedia). There is a lot of diversity in Muslim doctrine (just like there are many branches of Christianity), from the most fundamentalist to the most progressive, and from decidedly violent to completely non-violent.

Finally, I think such talk about Islam goes against the teachings of Jesus. Equating the whole of Islam with violent fundamentalism is a narrative that, sadly, I have heard in some churches. In fact, I used to believe it… It presents Islam as a frightful threat, and Muslims as would-be invaders who want to take over the world, by violent means if necessary. As I’ve outline above, not only is it untrue, but it also has a perverse effect. It instils fears and therefore hostility within the hearts of Christians. How can we be effective witnesses of Christ if we feel fear and hostility towards a whole group of people? How can we love them as ourselves if we see them as dangerous enemies? Some Christians’ fear of Muslims is already turning to hatred, and politicians are using it to their advantage. Instead of welcoming the stranger as the Bible commands, many self-professing Christians openly reject them and even claim the need to protect ‘Christendom’ from the ‘Muslim invasion’, by force if necessary… while Christ teaches us that His Kingdom is not of this world anyway.

When confronted to a teaching in church, I try to look at the fruit that teaching produces. Does it bring love, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness? Or does it instil fear, hatred, selfishness, conflict and discord? Ask yourself this.