Nathan R. Hale

Non conformari

  • The Cross is the Throne

    The religious and political leaders around Jesus were right that his kingdom threatened theirs, because he was at every turn exposing the evil and destructive practices of those that thought their life was best when they pursued their desires at the expense of others.

    When they bring Jesus to their Roman ruler to do their dirty work, he tries to shield Jesus by giving them a choice to release Barabbas, whose name means “son of the father,” or Jesus, the man claiming to be the true Son of God.

    After all they had seen him do, after all they had heard Jesus teach, in the end worldly leaders choose Barabbas—the violent, failed insurrectionist. To them, his way is the way that makes sense.

    So Jesus, the one who healed, redeemed, liberated, and gave life, is condemned to death on the Cross. And because Jesus is committed to the Kingdom of life and peace and will not move forward with violence, he is met with violence, and that Cross becomes the Throne of heavenly grace, where he loves and forgives, offering grace upon grace even to those that crucified him.

    That love was the power that swallowed death in death, and it was the Spirit of Love that raised Jesus from the dead, never to die again, vindicating his kingdom of life and peace as the only eternally victorious kingdom.

    John’s apocalyptic vision proclaims:

    Jesus “…has freed us from our sins by his blood and made us a kingdom, priests to his God and Father…” (Rev. 1:6 ESV).

    Our objections to the way of Jesus, our blindness to the futility of violence, our inability to realize a better kingdom than the kingdoms we were born in–it’s all been dealt with on the Cross.

    The church has been made—by grace alone—the place where the Christ’s Kingdom of self-giving love is revealed first to the kingdoms of this world.

    As priests in this world, we are witnesses together, just like Christ, to the Truth of who God is in Christ, and what his eternal Kingdom is really like.

  • The Kingdom of Christ is fundamentally spiritual, but not merely spiritual

    What makes a good king different from a bad king is the kind of power used and the way that power is used.

    The thing that destines every king to fail is the unavoidable—and for every worldly king at some point irresistible—temptation to use their power to benefit themselves at the expense of others.

    Devotional writer Jane Williams says,

    “…what Jesus is offering as a description of his own kingship is truth—reality, you might say. Revelation calls it ‘the Alpha and Omega, who was and is and is to come’. If the actual reality of the world, from its creation to its end, is like Jesus, then this strange human obsession with power is an aberration. It has no ability to create, to redeem or to sanctify. Jesus’s challenge to Pilate’s kind of power is too slow and subtle for many of us, who long to use the weapons of worldly power to force victory for God. But if Jesus is the truth, then any other way is falsehood, and will fail. Reality, as it was and is and is to come, is shaped by a different kingship.”

    Jesus lives as King over a kingdom that is certainly powerful, but he draws on a power not from this fallen world.

    Jesus rules and reigns and fights battles in this world through the power of self-giving love and truth, which can only come from God himself.

    His Kingdom is fundamentally spiritual in that it is conceived, birthed, and animated by the Spirit of Love who is God the Holy Spirit, but it is not merely spiritual because this Spirit takes up residence in his subjects, his followers, for the sake of the world.

  • 7 encouragements for the deconstructing

    “Deconstruction” is the topic du jour in the Christian social media space right now. It’s the recognition that many former “evangelicals” America–especially younger ones, and in large numbers–are rapidly rejecting parts of their evangelical faith and culture.

    As someone who has had my own unique deconstruction journey (and in many ways continue that journey to this day) I want to say to those currently in the process:

    1. I see you, and you are not alone, as disorienting, scary, painful, and disturbing as the process can be

    2. I know you are probably in this for good reasons. We all have certain beliefs and values that need to be deconstructed and some that need to be outright rejected

    3. To the extent you are deconstructing beliefs and values that do not align with the Jesus presented in the Gospel and witnessed to by the church catholic, you are on the right track

    4. There is room within the Christian family for those who doubt, question, and explore

    5. You are loved by Jesus. He is secure enough to welcome your questions, and close enough bear your uncertainty, and kind enough meet you where you are in this moment

    6. No matter how much you feel like you are falling apart, there is hope and a path for “reconstruction” and most of all Resurrection because (see #5)

    7. I’ll say it again, you are not alone.

  • Pretty excited to release a collection of songs, p r o d i g a l, today.

    Hit the link or stream below.

  • Every opportunity to love

    So thankful today that Jesus did what I could never do:

    Every temptation, he resisted.
    Every sin, he rebuked.
    Every affront, he forgave.
    Every blow, he absorbed.

    Every opportunity to love, he loved.

    In this he condemned sin in the flesh,
    dragging it to death as he himself died.

    But sin, having been denied in him,
    could not destroy him, even by death of the body.

    The Divine Life in him consumed even physical death,
    so he was raised, Resurrected, his body healed,
    purfied, perfected–Spirit-soaked, through and through–
    by the Lord, the Giver of Life.

    So every mercy, he pours out.
    every grace, he gives.

    Every one, he saves.

  • A present friend

    Watched the Disney version of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe last night with the kids. Haven’t seen it since it released in theaters. Haven’t read the book since just before that.

    It’s far from perfect and the vfx are dated, but I still found it moving.

    There’s no doubt for me–after this latest revisit to Narnia–that Lewis set the stage for me to be an Anglican, to recieve a patristic understanding of the atonement, to find echoes of Christ in all the great myths, to understand the Gospel as world-changing and beautiful and mysterious and tangible.

    I think what was so moving for me this time around was a sense of gratitude for this childhood mentor that I never met and died before I was born, and still yet seems be a present friend.

  • I encourage our church to wrestle with the teaching of Jesus in the Bible.

    Here’s how I define “wrestle”:

    To acknowledge openly the difficulty and pain of what is being said as we feel challenged, and asking honest questions of Jesus, while nevertheless clinging to him in faith that his teaching is always true, and always for our good.

  • Updated my /now page.

  • “Over and over again the formation of a party, the growth of a clique, the promotion of a split have been justified as standing for the truth. It is said that, unless we divide, the truth cannot be safeguarded; the body from which we are dividing has rejected all truth, or this truth or that.

    But when Paul withstood Peter to the face over the really cardinal issue of the truth of the gospel (Gal. 2:14), he did not separate, form a party, send word to the churches he had founded that they were now a new denomination.

    The sad thing is that we who are born into a divided, wretchedly denominational situation are inured from birth to separation, and we have lost James’ realization that in Christian division, as in time of war, truth is the first casualty.”

    J. A. Motyer, The Message of James: The Tests of Faith, The Bible Speaks Today, (Leicester, England; Downers Grove, IL: Inter-Varsity Press, 1985), 133.

  • Just look at him

    A real problem with so much hand wringing over the future of the Church is that there’s so little re-centering of hope on the person and work of Jesus.

    The hope for the continued vitality of the church too often seems to be in getting our doctrinal ducks in row in either a conservative or liberal direction…

    The problem with that is getting our doctrinal ducks in a row IS NEVER enough.

    I’m not saying doctrine isn’t important, it’s just…

    It’s not even the right starting point!

    …

    Start again with Jesus.

    Point people to Jesus.

    Meditate on your experience of Jesus.

    Listen to catholic witness regarding Jesus.

    Lift up Jesus.

    Deconstruct what is not Christlike.

    Reform…

    …but not according to “progress,” or to the “early Church,” or a romanticized Protestant ideal, to Christ and Christ alone.

    There is unending hope for the future in this process, because while theological systems come and go, and even Communions fall apart…

    It is Christ himself that draws all people to himself.

    …

    Is this messy? Yes.

    Does it require faith that Christ will indeed truly build his church, even using our weakness?

    It absolutely does.

    …

    You may wonder which Jesus? Mormon Jesus, Muslim Jesus, Protestant Jesus, Roman Catholic Jesus? Jesus the meek and mild of the Anabaptists or the Gun ‘n’ God Jesus of the Christian Nationalists?

    I say, the one that defeated death with forgivess,

    the one that (amazingly!) we have good reason to believe is actually alive and reigning at the right hand of God,

    the one then that can and will DO SOMETHING in the present,

    the one that is most consistently attested to throughout the ages in the 4 canonical Gospels, and the worshipping life of the church in all places and and times,

    the one the holy martyrs placed their faith in,

    the one that restored divine glory to humanity and demonstrated fully the humanity of the divine,

    the one that convicts but never condemns,

    the one who loved, is loving, and will always love without reservation,

    And if you wonder what this Jesus thinks love is,

    Just look at him on the Cross.

    There is my only enduring hope for any church, for any person, and for myself.