The Current

Dr. Craig Keen - Acts, Nonviolence, and the Journey of Faith

• Chris Nafis • Season 1 • Episode 17

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Join us for an insightful conversation with theologian Dr. Craig Keen as he shares how the Book of Acts became a beacon of guidance in his life during the turbulent year of 1968, amidst the Vietnam War. Reflecting on his journey of faith within a conservative environment, Dr. Keen reveals the profound impact Acts had on his understanding of nonviolence and pacifism. We uncover his introspective exploration of scripture, which shaped his life decisions and spiritual commitments amidst societal challenges.

Our dialogue extends beyond traditional notions of violence, exploring its subtleties in power dynamics and political processes. Dr. Keen and I discuss the essential role of grace in striving for nonviolence while navigating a world riddled with complexities. The conversation emphasizes the delicate balance between confronting violence when necessary and adhering to a life inspired by the gospel. We reflect on the concept of Shalom, advocating for peace that intertwines with justice and community, and the practical challenges of living these ideals daily.

We also dive into the intricate relationship between independence and interconnectedness, examining how societal notions of freedom can lead to isolation. Through stories of community and the church's mission to embrace marginalized individuals, we highlight the beauty and challenges of unity. Inspired by the early Christian community in Acts, our discussion underscores the transformative power of welcoming those who seem different and the irresistible joy that stems from a life of faith and shared purpose.

Chris Nafis:

Hi and welcome back to the Current. This is Pastor Chris Nafis of Living Water and today very glad to have Dr Craig Keene join us. Craig is a theologian, taught theology at various universities for 30-plus years. He's been a member of Living Water Church for a long time sort of theology in residence for us and just a sort of profoundly deep thinker. Today we start by talking about the Book of Acts, which had a profound influence on his life and the direction of his life. In theology we talk about passivism, commitment to nonviolence. We talk about the messiness of life together and the calling to live life as a prayer. I hope that this will be an inspiring, challenging and enjoyable conversation here. It is Well, craig. It's always really good to see you and glad to see you healthy and just to get a chance to just to talk, I mean it's always good talking, theology with you how are you doing today?

Dr. Craig Keen:

I'm doing well. I think I'm very much on the mend from a significant heart procedure.

Chris Nafis:

Yeah, yeah, well, you look well, like you said before we started, you look like you've got color back a bit and, yeah, it's really good to see you. So, as you know, we've been working through the Book of Acts. So on this podcast I've been interviewing people who are doing interesting things in the world and who are in academia or like doing practical things in the world that are interesting, and then on my own, I've been going through the Book of Acts. You happen to have like some interesting things that are in both of those things, and so we were thinking we would start out by just talking about Acts and how it affected. You've told the story in my presence a number of times, but how reading Acts was like a kind of a crisis, pivotal moment in your life and in your theology. Could you just share a little bit about that?

Dr. Craig Keen:

Yeah, I'd be very happy to, and this will give some insight into a very crucial moment in my personal history, just sort of generally speaking. The moment was in 1968. It was after my freshman year. The summer after my freshman year, I was working in the desert of Southwest Texas in a little town called, actually just outside of Goldsmith Texas, and I was rooming with a close friend of mine, Arvis Wells, at a nearby town of Kermit Texas, a much larger town.

Chris Nafis:

Kermit sounds large, sounds like a big town. A big green town, I think Okay.

Dr. Craig Keen:

And so I would work changing oil and greasing Phillips Petroleum Company cars all day, and then I would join Arvis and Kermit and we would, you know, hang out and sleep and go back to work the next day.

Dr. Craig Keen:

And so we decided that it would be a good time. We went to the same church and all that in Hobbs, new Mexico. We're going to larger and larger cities and we both decided that it would be a good moment for us to sort of get more serious about our Christianity, and so we thought we would study the Bible together. So two 18-year-olds who were extremely naive, no critical skills, and we decided we would read the Bible. The next question was what are we going to read? And we decided it would be something in the New Testament, and the most obvious choice would be something from the Gospels, probably. But we decided that the moment was very important for us to figure out what we are to do, and, of course, the Gospels are about Jesus, and Jesus is God, and so let's read the book of Acts, which is about people. I mean, that's how naive we were.

Chris Nafis:

I mean, it's a surprisingly wise decision for a couple of naive 18-year-olds. It's a good choice.

Dr. Craig Keen:

And so we started reading the book, and it was one of those very intense kind of naive studies. So we would read a phrase, at most a sentence, and stop and ask what is that saying to us? And of course we would talk about it very seriously and reach conclusions that were pivotal for our lives. I mean we were deciding what we would do with our lives, the rest of our lives. I mean it was a very, very serious time. And so we slowly worked our way, verse by verse, phrase by phrase, through Acts. I'm not sure how far we got by the end of the summer, but that's how we proceeded. Got by the end of the summer, but that's how we proceeded.

Dr. Craig Keen:

And again, this was 1968, which was the heat of the Vietnam War. And so it was impossible to go anywhere or do anything without being confronted by headlines and newscasts. And at that time they say that the television news was not too careful about protecting the public from the gory and bloody aspects of war. And so we were just constantly confronted by the reality of violence in this violent world. And it became impossible, certainly for me and I think also for Arvis, to escape the question while we're reading the Book of Acts. Would it be faithful for us to join the US forces in Vietnam and fight for our country and for freedom and for democracy and all those other one-liners that were thrown around?

Chris Nafis:

How would you have thought about that before you started reading Acts Like where you came from? You're from Oklahoma, I'm from Oklahoma.

Dr. Craig Keen:

My parents are both from Oklahoma. I was raised in a very conservative home. I mean it was a working class home. I mean I don't think classy conservative, I think down home, like grease under the fingernails, conservative America and very patriarchal patriarchal, I think actually, it's true but patriotic household. My father was a veteran of World War Two, which very deeply affected him. He was constantly bringing up vague references to his time in the war. He was stationed in North Africa during the Second World War. The whole time. He was in the whole time until Southern Europe was liberated. Then he came home in 1944.

Dr. Craig Keen:

And so I went into this thinking very patriotic patriotically it's very hard to keep that word straight that it was my duty, when the time came, to put myself at the beck and call of my nation to serve America any way I could, and that would include, for an 18 year old, once I finished college or whatever, being a part of that conflict and perhaps I would need to drop out of college and go do it. I mean it was very serious about doing what is responsible, what is ethical, what is my duty. But here we were, confronted by the war in Vietnam. My own inclination was to think that it was a noble and just war. It's not like I was doing lots of reading about how unjust this war was. It's not true. Was doing lots of reading about how unjust this war was. It's not true. It's too naive to think things like that.

Dr. Craig Keen:

And I began to ask myself, not what would Jesus do in this case, but what would the apostles do? And although I had no trouble imagining kind of the villains of Acts, you know, engaging in bloody warfare, I could not find any way at all to imagine any of the faithful characters in the Book of Axe letting themselves be shipped overseas to fight for some nation state. And so I struggled with that, agonized over it, thought over it, arvis and I talked about it and we both came to the conclusion that to be faithful in the way someone like Stephen in the book of Acts is faithful is to resolve never to shed blood, certainly not for the sake of a nation state. Of course I didn't know what the term nation state meant. So it would be not for the sake of america, right, and the ideals of america, which I very much still loved and respected. But I could not see a way to faith to kill faithfully to god, to the gospel and so out of that I.

Chris Nafis:

So where did you go from there? Because you hadn't really started school in a serious way in studying theology yet.

Dr. Craig Keen:

That's right, my freshman year was very rowdy.

Chris Nafis:

Yeah.

Dr. Craig Keen:

I hardly went to class. I mean, I became shocked in my first semester to find that I had three D's and an F at midterm time. So I had to scramble to get my grades up and all that. So I was very my freshman year was very much. I was very much sort of a party. I mean imagine there I wasn't in a fraternity but if you would imagine, sort of animal house or something, that's kind of my freshman year okay. But yeah, I became much more serious. But I was a biology major at this time. So I went back my sophomore year to continue the study of biology. I thought I might be a doctor or a dentist or something, but I knew is that I liked biology.

Dr. Craig Keen:

I continue to have very serious questions about what all of life might mean. I found that I was now a pacifist. I found out what that word was for, what I decided life was about. And I found when I went back to college and it was a conservative college of the Church of the Nazarene what's now called Southern Nazarene University was Bethany Nazarene College in Oklahoma City raised the question of pacifism to my Christian friends, which were a minority of my friends actually. They would become very anxious and think that there was something seriously wrong with my thinking. But I found that my non-Christian friends, many of whom were hippie-ish, were very willing to listen and think and some of them just agreed with me, and so that sort of lured me in the direction of the counterculture very slowly. I was still very conservative. In fact, had I voted in the presidential election in 1968, and it was not legal for an 18-year-old to do that in 1968, I would have voted for Richard Nixon. You know the conservative candidate at the time. And of course if Nixon were around now he would be wildly liberal. But in those days he was a very conservative politician and so I gravitated toward the counterculture.

Dr. Craig Keen:

I continued as a biology major, but the following year, my, my June, my junior year. Then I changed my major to philosophy because of these questions that I had. They were theological questions, but I didn't know that. I mean, I didn't know that I probably should be a religion major because I figured that's just for people who are planning to be a preacher, and I had no intention at all to be a preacher.

Dr. Craig Keen:

But I decided I'd be a philosophy major and so I went back and did another semester at Bethany and Azarine College, I met the person who would be my wife in a few months after that, alicia, and after the end of my first semester at Bethany, I decided to transfer away from this sort of den of vipers, this school of hypocrites, and we weren't sure what we're going to do. So I enrolled in a state school in the panhandle of Texas and then decided in the middle of that semester that I just needed to be a religion major, because my questions were all about God and that was the only place I could do that. So at the end of that semester we returned to Bethany Nazarene College, this time as I went back as a religion major and my vocational goals were so ambiguous that when they asked me on one of those forms what I was planning to do after I graduated, I put down I will be an apostle.

Chris Nafis:

Interesting. So yeah, so no vocational.

Dr. Craig Keen:

No sort of job plans at all. Yeah.

Chris Nafis:

Well, and how did so? As you came back and began to study philosophy, religion, like, how did you so? I mean, I feel like one of the primary ways that you're known in theology. Well, you have like a very distinct sort of style in your theology. I don't know if style is the right word, like a very distinct sort of style in your theology. I don't know if style is the right word, but a big part of it, at least among Nazarenes, is this commitment to nonviolence. And so how did that get like? Was that just like there once you read Acts that one summer? Or did that get kind of entrenched as you searched with these questions, as you went along, like, how did you kind of fall into that.

Dr. Craig Keen:

I sometimes describe my becoming a pacifist as my first theological act, and that's because I put into practice something that occurred to me to be both counterintuitive and demanded by the gospel. And so I mean I certainly had all these sort of quote-unquote theological ideas before that. I mean I've been attending Nazarene churches since I was about eight years old, not with my parents, they didn't go with me, they dropped me off. So that's another oddity about my biography. But it became a significant theological act because everything I learned got filtered through it. Now, it's not that I stopped thinking about the question of pacifism, whether or not it was in fact a kind of sound conclusion to reach from the gospel, but I mean I continued to examine it critically. But it was sort of a test case for ideas that came my way. And it was because of the sort of ramifications of nonviolence that I came slowly to understand the significance of grace, because I mean, if you're going to approach an extremely violent world nonviolently and not do it with a, you know, with sort of a rosy view of the world, thinking that people will see your kindness and return your kindness with kindness, I mean when you understand that to be a pacifist is to step into your own mortality and those of the people around you, then it's a very significant sort of sends a shockwave through your whole system and in my case, since I'm inclined to engage in probably overly serious thinking, it sent a shockwave through all of my thinking and it took a long.

Dr. Craig Keen:

I'm still working through what those implications are, but everything I encountered seemed both to call pacifism into question and also to reinforce it at the same time. I mean it called it into question because it's a very impractical approach to life. Right, the world is set up for the inhabitants of the world to be violent. I mean maybe subtly violent, and I think much of the social fragmentation of America is a way to keep us as nonviolent as possible while under the thumb of a very violent political order. But it is a violent world. Teens, early 20s, stepping out into my adult life believing that everything henceforth would be tinged with a significant amount of insecurity, that my security would have to come from God. Thus the importance of grace for me.

Chris Nafis:

Yeah, and I think like just to pause on that for a minute because I think that's something significant. I see that's different in what I read and hear from you than maybe what I read and hear from other sort of nonviolent spaces, because I feel like a lot of people approach nonviolence, pacifism from like a strategic standpoint.

Chris Nafis:

Like this is the way that we accomplish things. It's more helpful to be nonviolent than it is to be violent, and I feel like you know you kind of confess that that's just not true, or at least it doesn't need to be true. Could you say a little bit about that? Yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean.

Dr. Craig Keen:

I'm not against people being careful, I'm not against people making plans. In fact, I think we have to make plans. We have to determine which things are relatively good and we have to aim for those. Avoid the things that are relatively bad, try to avoid those. And we imagine a future taking in everything we have to take in around us. We imagine a future that will perhaps be better, or at least no worse than the present that we're involved in now.

Dr. Craig Keen:

I think all that is true and I support, you know, policy changes and I support political movements that want to put together certain kinds of policies in local and state and federal government and elsewhere. But my hope is not built on any of that, and so I think all of that strategizing will partake to some degree in the violence of this violent world. Even if it's a very subtle thing like voting is extremely subtly violent, but it is so violent. I mean, it's a contest in which I want my side to prevail over your side and we count votes to determine who wins. I mean, and there are political campaigns and the metaphors we use about these things are largely military metaphors, but I understand that this is, you know, this is largely sublimated violence, and so it's kind of gentle and although people get angry and upset and there isn't that much bloodletting surrounding elections although there certainly is some- and I would say that January 6th, I think, is just sort of some of that previously subtle violence breaking out into the open.

Dr. Craig Keen:

I think that's kind of how we operate, but we're usually more polite than those insurrectionists were.

Chris Nafis:

Right, and so just to pause, it seems like you're using violence in a way that not everybody might Like. When people hear violence, I think they're thinking physical violence, killing, I don't know punching. You know there's particular images that come to mind for me when I hear the word violence and I feel like you're using a little more broadly. I think those, the threat of those things, sort of underlies a larger power system. The threat of those things sort of underlies a larger power system.

Dr. Craig Keen:

Yeah, that's true. I mean I should say that when I and I don't like the word violence actually to speak of nonviolence or violence, I think that's it's not quite nuanced enough. I mean you walk into a room, you have a significant impact on the people. Well, I mean more or less significant. I mean you affect the people in the room and in ways that they have no control over. So I don't think nonviolence is just sort of allowing the other to be a free moral agent or something like that. I mean we impose things on each other, so there's something violent about that and I don't object to that. I think there's this kind of violence which is actually very humane. I mean I want people to get into me, I want people to break in, and when I don't necessarily want them to, I mean I want to be, I want the unwanted. You know that's what I'm trying to say.

Dr. Craig Keen:

But when I do speak of the kind of nonviolence that I pursue, I am finally thinking of avoiding killing. I mean killing is sort of the paradigmatic case. But the question is what kinds of activities and attitudes and ideas incline to killing? I mean, which ones of these things, if we gave them free reign, would result in death, the death of other human beings, and that I think we have to kind of play with. I mean, since we are in a very violent world and since our options are always limited, I do think we have to flirt with violence. I think it's unavoidable. And again, there are some very positive things, like if someone confronts me, tells me my ideas are off or that I've said something rude and I need to ask for forgiveness, or whatever. I mean, it sort of breaks into me and jars me a bit and I'm grateful for that. There's a certain violence to that, but I'm happy about that. And if I had to hurt someone to stop them from hurting or killing someone else, I would do that. And even then there's the danger of hurting the person too much, so the person's incapacitated or killed. But just the nature of life is that these kinds of things will happen.

Dr. Craig Keen:

But the task that the gospel calls us to, I think, is to live a life that will not kill. And I need to put this differently because I don't want to set this up as if I am trying to formulate some kind of basic ethical principle or something. In fact, I do think that the gospel calls us to a kind of life that many profoundly ethical people would find to be unethical. Not only the bad Romans hated the gospel. Good and noble and just Romans hated it too. Not only the bad emissaries of the temple in Jerusalem hated the gospel. The good and faithful ones hated it too. So we need to remember that. So I'm not setting up some kind of morality here, although what I am talking about is morality adjacent.

Dr. Craig Keen:

I think what I want to say is that, in a violent world, we proceed with the call of the gospel ringing in our ears, and that is a call to step out into the grace of God, and that means to live by faith. And the question is, what does that mean? It means, of course, trusting the grace of God, and that means to live by faith. And the question is, what does that mean? It means, of course, trusting the grace of God, being faithful to God's faithfulness to us, but it means most of all, I think, that we are to live prayerfully, in other words, live out toward the one whom we trust, taking steps, calling out to the God who calls out to us, making plans, calling out to the God who calls out to us, recognizing that if this God responds significantly perceptibly, let's say. That's a problematic term, but let's go with it.

Dr. Craig Keen:

If this God responds perceptibly, it may be in ways that I don't expect at all, and so that's one of the reasons why our plans have always to be tentative. We must make plans. Life is set up in such a way that we have to make plans. I would never find my way out of the room if I didn't know where the door was, if I didn't aim for an open space to go out to the hall, etc. I've got to determine what is good, what is to be done, but those plans are to be held very loosely, because the response of God's grace may be no, may be this way, and if my response is, but there's a wall there, the response of God may be, I know, but my response is to be okay, and I don't know what that means. As I hit my head against the wall, I may call out again how long, oh Lord how long, and so this kind of nonviolence that I'm talking about is a nonviolence of prayer.

Dr. Craig Keen:

So what am I to do now? I'm aiming toward no bloodletting, I'm aiming toward no killing. I'm aiming toward letting in my neighbor, my enemy, letting them into me in ways that will unsettle, perhaps hurt me, perhaps seriously incapacitate me, perhaps kill me. But my prayer is that I will move out into that, and that's not to say that I will always be faithful either. I mean, this is not, this is not what I'm talking about, is not sort of, you know, about ramping up your willpower or something you know. Be determined that, no matter what, I will not do X, y and Z. I've thought about these things and I know that these things I must never do. I mean, I think that certain ideas, imagining certain situations, is a very wise thing to do and to imagine what I might do there.

Dr. Craig Keen:

But the thing about prayer is that it doesn't make demands. It lays out my imagined future before God, and it asks and waits but never demands and always ends with, nevertheless, not what I want, but what you want, god, and the gospel is all about this. I mean, that's precisely what Jesus is praying in the Garden of Gethsemane before his crucifixion. I mean, he doesn't want to go, he doesn't want to be crucified, he doesn't want to be humiliated, he doesn't want to be turned into the very thing which the covenant of Israel declares God cannot love. He doesn't want to be turned into something despicably unclean, disgustingly profane, something that has been turned into a defiled mass of mutilated flesh.

Dr. Craig Keen:

But he says nevertheless, your will be done, and that is the prayer I think of every step of the way, which means that even my first theological act is to be held loosely and I will not make the demand of God never put me into a situation in which I will not be tempted, beyond what I can bear, to kill. I have to be open to everything, otherwise it's not faith and it's not grace. So what I'm trying to say here, I guess, is the kind of nonviolence if I may use that unfortunate phrase the kind of pacifism. That's a better phrase, but I wish there were a shalomism, I mean, I'd be much happier with that. But the kind of pacifism that I'm advocating here is a pacifism that is also a prayer without demand. I don't demand that God keep me free from violence, but I live my life praying that God will keep me free from violence and will keep everyone close to me free from violence, and that the world will come to be free from violence.

Chris Nafis:

And when you say free from violence, you mean free from committing acts of violence, as well as free from having violence done to you.

Dr. Craig Keen:

Yeah, it's both, and that's another thing about the gospel I think we have to learn at least most of us, I think, have not learned it that the gospel is not just about what Jesus did and willed and what he was determined to do and all that. The gospel is about what was done to him. I mean, if we can use the words active and passive here, he was both an actor and a patient. I mean, he's an agent and a patient, an actor and a recipient of action, and the action done upon him is indistinguishable from who he is. We can't think of him apart from his crucifixion, and he didn't nail himself up there. He may have set his face on Jerusalem, he may have gone into Jerusalem expecting to be crucified, but he did not crucify himself. That was done to him, and his resurrection is also a gift given to him by his father. He is fully human and fully God because his father embraces him.

Chris Nafis:

Yeah, yeah, and of course that's the human experience, right, like we're both actors and recipients of, like whatever the world throws at us.

Chris Nafis:

And I guess like where my mind goes with this. So I feel like you've been one of the primary theological influences on me. Influences on me and a big part of your work has been working away from like an abstract theology that has. You know, that's sort of primarily metaphysical it's, it's like imagined ways of the world is is structured in cosmic ways and stuff and really like a push towards like an embodied theology and in some ways like even your theology itself. It sometimes feels like it kind of floats, like the concepts are so large that it's like there's this gap in some ways between the possibility of doing the things that you're saying we need to do and like the actual ability to live in the flesh and blood with other people and all the frustrating things.

Chris Nafis:

Like you know, I like the. I like the. I don't think I've heard you talk about Shalomism, but I like that because there's like a peace that like Shalom is this word that has like, it has body to it.

Dr. Craig Keen:

Yes, it does, there's like a wholeness.

Chris Nafis:

There's a communal nature to it. It's not like peace as a lack of violence. It's peace as like a positive thing that you experience in the world with one another. You know, there's like some pretty vivid images of shalom that we can find in scripture Peace is not the absence of violence, but the presence of justice.

Dr. Craig Keen:

Yeah, yeah, yeah, as it's said by Martin Luther King Jr, among others. Yeah, I like that a lot.

Chris Nafis:

So I guess you know how do you get from like the conceptual. I got to give myself away. I've got to live as a prayer. I've got to walk into a wall to like all right, I also need to like cook dinner for the kids tonight. You know how do you do it. How do you bridge those gaps? As a theologian who also has a body and lives in the world.

Dr. Craig Keen:

As you know, by far the most significant thinker to me is Soren Kierkegaard. I discovered him as a young graduate student. I tried to write a master's thesis on him once. I failed to finish it but at least I did a lot of work and I found him to be a very apt guide, and in part because he was a pietist and I, you know, being raised indirectly, not from my folks but at least when I attended church in the Church of the Nazarene, a profoundly pietistic tradition I found that those two, the Church of the Nazarene, john Wesley for example, and Kierkegaard, sort of fed each other in my work.

Dr. Craig Keen:

But Kierkegaard was extremely good at sort of putting flesh and bones onto very lofty concepts and one of his many foci focuses is this conflict between the kind of I don't know kind of the abstract and the concrete, or as he put it. I mean there's a tension between infinity and finitude, there's a tension between freedom and necessity. I mean there's certain things that are just going to happen, but you know, there's this other side of us that's like I'm not going to do that and there's a sense in which we are kind of wrapped up in the eternal but there's no getting out of time. I mean it's not just a timeline, I mean we're like moments of time, it's like the past. Moments are clinging to me Now. I can't shake them off, I can't scrape them off. They've got their roots into me. You can't unscramble the egg from the cake batter or something. It's in there. And the future is so profoundly important to me that I can't remove it also from the present that I'm living. In fact, that sort of I don't know kind of earthy past and earthy future are so much a part of me that they seem more real even than what I want to call the present, or at least, what I call the present is so wrapped up in those that we should not distinguish the three or something.

Dr. Craig Keen:

So Kierkegaard is all about that and the way he talks. He talks about it in various ways, but one of his books, called Fear and Trembling, is probably his most widely read book. It's a book that deals with the story of Abraham and in particular Abraham's taking his son, his only son, his child of old age, his only heir, his only hope of immortality, taking his son up to the mountain in Moriah to sacrifice him to God because God has asked him to. And so Kierkegaard talks about the faith of Abraham and how very strange that faith is. I mean he trusts in God and God has promised to create from Abraham a mighty nation. You know descendants more numerous than the grains of sand on all the beaches of all the world. And here God has asked him to remove the hope of his future, to remove his future from his life, to end his life in despair, without any heir, without any descendant.

Dr. Craig Keen:

And so Kierkegaard talks about how Abraham makes both of these movements at once. He calls them the movement of finitude, which is he's right there with Isaac. I mean he takes Isaac with him on like a three-day journey to the place of sacrifice, and that's living on the ground. I mean that's as concrete as you get. You know they gather firewood and all that, but every step of the way Abraham is expecting that he will sacrifice Isaac, he will kill him, and we talk about you know that. You know how horrible it is for a father to kill a son, and it is I mean the Kierkegaard knows that but it's also a suicide. I mean this is not like individualistic America, where you have your own identity and your children have their identity, and if you kill a child. That's just this horrible thing you've done to a child.

Dr. Craig Keen:

No in this case, who Abraham is is completely inseparable from who Isaac is. So for Abraham to kill Isaac as horrible as it would be for any father to kill a son, and Kierkegaard knows that it is also a suicide. And so Abraham makes both of these movements, this movement of infinity, where he throws everything away, he renounces everything in his life, his whole future, and he's there with his son. I mean, if his son were to fall off his horse and cut his arm, he would wrap it up and put medicine on it or whatever would help him up the mountain or whatever. And so every step of the way, it's that concrete, that earthy, that particular, that finite. And when it comes down to it, and Abraham has his son bound on the altar and is raising his knife, I mean think of all the finitude of that, all the concreteness of that. You know tightening muscles in the arm, the grip of your fist on the handle of the knife. You know the momentum of raising your arm, getting ready to bring it down, and suddenly God says never mind.

Dr. Craig Keen:

That shows the sort of horror and what majesty or something, of living before a free God, living by faith, living by prayer.

Dr. Craig Keen:

And so every step of the way Abraham is praying, anticipating a future, hoping in a different future, but expecting a future much more tragic than what he's hoping for, and the end is given to him. And so that's how you do it. I mean, and there is no how-to manual to pray, and everybody who's had like an impending tragedy and prays you know pending tragedy and prays, you know mightily, with tears and with trembling and sleepless nights toward this event understand something of that, especially if you've learned that the outcome is not dependent upon the intensity of your faith and prayers, it's dependent on God. And so if you know, if someone's obviously dying from something horrible and at the last minute the doctors come in and say, wow, all the signs of the disease are gone We've heard those stories Then it's time to rejoice and praise God for that. But most of us find that the person does not get better and all of our intense prayers are followed by a very sad outcome.

Dr. Craig Keen:

And it should be added that nobody gets out of here alive. So, no matter how many times God has intervened to save some loved one from some terrible disorder you know has prevailed, contrary to the doctor's wishes, Eventually that person is going to be dead. And how do we approach that? Well, you know, the same way Jesus approaches Good Friday in the Garden of Gethsemane, you pray and you act and you work and you hope and you expect and you say nevertheless.

Chris Nafis:

Yeah, so you're talking about the Kierkegaard story, the Abraham story. Ellen Davis, who I had on here a couple episodes ago, has a chapter in one of her books on that story and she points to these two. Rembrandt, have you seen the Rembrandt depictions of the binding?

Dr. Craig Keen:

of Isaac.

Chris Nafis:

Yeah, the first one, rembrandt maybe I can put a picture on there. Uh, for those who are watching this on youtube, you can google them. The first one is was done in his youth as an artist and it's full of drama and movement and and abraham is sort of full of like zeal. And the second one is done, I think, late in rembrandt's life and it's and it's just, it's black and white, if I think it might even be an etching, and you just see this look of just like just exhaustion and distraughtness on abraham's face as he like does this thing and you can almost see like the relief as like the angel grabs his, his arm and stops him from, uh, you know, thrusting the knife.

Chris Nafis:

And I don't know there's something in that second one, particularly of like this kind of faithful life of hope that's so filled with stress. I don't know, like you know there's something in trying to live out, like to live into the faith. You know there are these moments of zeal and I feel like sometimes in my and I even as I get older, like my younger days, it was easier to be full of zeal and hope that like, yeah, I'm going to live this life. That's alternative to the life that I would have lived, otherwise right, if I had not heard the gospel, if I had not given my life to Christ. You know, I can imagine this whole different life that I would have had, and as I get older I feel like I'm more in that. You know, there's like something exhausting about it, but there's also like a relief and a hopefulness of it.

Chris Nafis:

Because you're hoping in something that is that like almost has to be I mean, it's a miracle, right Like it has to be impossible in some way. I don't know what I'm trying to say.

Dr. Craig Keen:

I think what you're saying is right. I mean this shalom-ism that I was talking about. I mean in the gospel. This is a huge thing too. Sometimes this is turned into just sort of like added drama to the notion of peace or something. But shalom, peace in the gospel passeth understanding. I mean it ruptures understanding. To use another image, it's all over the gospel Shalom.

Dr. Craig Keen:

I mean when Jesus walks into the upper room with his body still shredded. I mean, put your hands in the wounds, thomas. The marks of crucifixion are all over him, the marks of scourging we have to imagine, also all over him. He walks into the room and we should think of a bloody mess, I mean leaving footprints of blood, you know. So we should think of. And he says to his disciples peace, be unto you. And although that's very often interpreted as his sort of saying oh, I hope you. Hope you're feeling pretty good. If you're not, I hope you feel better soon. But what he's saying is here I am, I am peace, I have come unto you.

Dr. Craig Keen:

And what kind of peace is this? It's a mutilated body. What kind of peace could that be? Well, I could never understand that as peace. But it is peace. It's a peace that passeth understanding and so when we agonize and it's fine to talk, use that kind of language. I mean, the Buddhists were not that far wrong when they said life is suffering. I mean it's not only suffering and we need to also recognize that laughter is wonderful and I think we need to learn to laugh when other people would cry even. I think laughter is a wonderful thing. Sometimes I would say we're saved by grace through laughter. But life is hard. My father was not very philosophical, did not talk very often. He was a very quiet eastern Oklahoma man. I think I got my ASD from him, assuming I have ASD, I'm not sure but one of the things he would say and he so believed it he would say it like with his jaw set or something. Life is hard. You know he'd be silent for a long time. Be doing something.

Dr. Craig Keen:

Life is hard to be silent again for a long time it just is, and one of the dangers of America is that it works over time to convince us that life isn't hard. It has fractured us into little, lonely bodies, separated from each other, because there we're easier to manage. We're given all kinds of tools for distraction, we're given things to level out our moods, make us feel happier, but that's because life is hard. And as long as we refuse to admit that and think that life is supposed to be placid, calm, then I think we will live lonely, lonely lives.

Chris Nafis:

Yeah, I mean, I think you're really right on that. We've been talking about that some in church and Bible studies and things, because there's this myth that we can—I think so many things have become easier with technology that we begin to set our expectation that everything will be easy.

Dr. Craig Keen:

Yeah.

Chris Nafis:

I think we have this really deeply embedded belief that, like the more, I can just have what I want in any moment that I want the easier life will be, which, if you think about it for a few minutes, is pretty clearly not true.

Chris Nafis:

It's a lot harder sometimes to have a million choices all the time than it is to not, to have a million choices all the time than it is to not, and we tend to make choices that feel good for us in the moment, that make us a little bit more happy or whatever right now, but that in the long term, are going to cost us. They cost us relationships, they cost us connection, they cost us meaning. It's easier to be lazy than it is to be in good shape. It's easier to be alone for many of us that are introverted than it is to actually have deep friendships and community lives.

Chris Nafis:

Yeah, that's very true. And you know there's so much to embracing the hardness of life, and I think this is maybe especially true in the world of the church, where so much of the message people get is aimed at trying to say like if you follow Jesus, your life will be just so good and it'll be so easy. And there's like this constant celebration when I don't even know if that's even the right. I don't even think that's like, I don't even want to say it's the opposite of that, because it's not. There is like a deep goodness in following Christ. There's like a meaningfulness to your life. There's something significant about that. But it's not about making it easy or not easy, Like sometimes the harder thing is the better thing, it's the more meaningful thing.

Dr. Craig Keen:

I totally agree with that, and this goes back to that Martin Luther King Jr and others. He didn't make it up. If we understand peace well, it's about the presence of justice, and we need to be careful with that word too, because that is one of the favorite words of America, and in America the symbol of justice is this blind woman, blindfolded woman, holding scales and a sword. And so justice in America is getting even. I mean, you can take that in the most negative way or the most positive way. It's balancing the scales, but it's also, you know, cutting somebody's head wide open with a sword to get even. And so the justice of the gospel is not about getting even. The word justice, as it's used in scripture, is a synonym of the word righteousness. These words are the same. Our problem is that we have turned justice into something that the police and judges take care of, and righteousness is all about my private inner devotional life or something. But in fact, righteousness is as out there as justice is, and justice is as in there as righteousness is. And so the coming of the reign of God is the coming of a justice that is righteousness and a righteousness that is justice. And so that means that the call of the gospel is a call to righteousness, slash justice.

Dr. Craig Keen:

And if you're living righteously and justly, you're living a social life and you're working toward things in this strange sort of twofold sense of making plans with expecting the plans to be disrupted by God. You're living that way and life gets complicated. I mean, if you want to discover joy, love someone. If you want to discover suffering, love someone. I mean life becomes very, very complicated and it's. I mean. I remember I haven't heard this cliche in a long time, but when I was a kid it was not uncommon for marriage to be described as that old ball and chain. So you get married and all of a sudden you are chained down in place. You can't do all the things you used to do, and so it then becomes well, I don't know if I'm ready for that.

Dr. Craig Keen:

I'm a little afraid of getting married because I don't want to be chained down. But I think really the fear of marriage, just as the fear of a committed friendship, is the fear of the unknown. It's the fear that my life is going to get complicated. It's the fear that all the joy that I encounter in this other person a close friend or a spouse or whatever other person, a close friend or a spouse or whatever that all of that joy is also going to involve a lot of pain, and it does. I mean the people I love most are the people who hurt me the most.

Dr. Craig Keen:

But that's I mean. I would say it's worth it, but that's the wrong metaphor because it's not about some economic exchange, it's just. This wonderful thing is also painful.

Chris Nafis:

Yeah, it's really, I mean, I think that's a really perfect image for it, because I really do think that you know so people are waiting really long to get married. In fact, I play on the soccer team and they're a lot younger than I am and someone on our team had gotten married and they're, you know, kind of like I can't believe.

Chris Nafis:

they're just, they're just sort of in shock that uh, someone that age I think she was like 27, which is pretty old historically but for our age is pretty young, would get married and she got pregnant right away and and you know, and I think there's for those who were left, who are still single, and kind of one of them had just got back from a trip from Europe and you know all this stuff there's like a lack of autonomy in that marriage that you're settling into this life that you no longer control and that you don't, you can't. It's kind of exactly what we're just talking about. You can't just do what you want when you want it all the time. But I think the idea that that is the ideal life is is a myth and I think that we're finding, uh, more and more like that's.

Chris Nafis:

There's people, everyone's depressed, everyone's miserable, everyone's lonely, because our ideals have set us to trying to maintain this really unhealthy set of independence. In a certain kind of way, that does this tremendous harm not only to us as individuals. It does hurt us as individuals, but it's also fragmenting us as a community and as a society. And you know, in some ways and I see this in church too, like you know I was thinking like, how do we put flesh and blood on some of these ideas? Well, at Living Water, you know, we've tried to step into this call to like towards the marginalized right and to be in deep community with people who are really struggling in life. And as you do it you learn like this is really hard because people are messed up.

Dr. Craig Keen:

You know they're messed up and they're gonna make it hard, even if it doesn't have to be the poor you have with you always, and it may be the same seven poor people that you have with you always yeah, yeah and, and, but there's still something.

Chris Nafis:

There's this like I don't know worth. It's maybe the wrong way to say it, but like it feels like a prayer, you know to live this life with people. It is yeah uh, yeah, uh, what do you gotta say yeah?

Dr. Craig Keen:

I love dogs, dogs, dogs, the creatures, the animals, yes, yes, uh, you probably didn't expect me to say that not at that moment, no, but I didn't know that about you.

Dr. Craig Keen:

Yeah, um there have been. Human beings have lived with dogs for at least 10,000 years, maybe multiples of 10,000 years, maybe 20, 30,000 years. I mean, the timeline of our time with dogs keeps getting expanded. So I love dogs so much that I often say that you can't really be a human being if you don't have a dog. Not really, and it's for a similar reason. You can't be a human being if you don't hang out with other people, if you don't live a social life of some kind. It's just the way we're wired. I mean, you don't even have to be a theologian to say something like that Just the way we've been. And so you know why did dogs and human beings ever get together? Well, it appears that they found themselves sort of mutually supported by each other, and so human beings threw their garbage around and this is going to disgust everyone, so maybe your brother will cut this one out. Apparently there is the same amount of protein in chicken as there is in human excrement. So dogs also benefited from that. Various things we threw away they made use of, and so dogs kind of wandered around where people went, and so people started having them hang out with them and there's more and more intimately connected, and human beings actually never had a good night's sleep until they had dogs, because they didn't know what might be approaching the campfire. The dogs would bark and wake them up if something, an animal or some other people with violent designs were on their way and life was really, really hard. I mean, you needed the help of dogs. You already had the help of other human beings, without whom you wouldn't be able to make it a week. All of the work that you engaged in was work that needed someone else to help you. There weren't adequate tools or resources for you to put together to make shelter adequately, day after day, week after week, year after year, without having help. If you try to do it alone, you do it for a while, making use of skills you learned from other human beings anyway, and so we've always lived this.

Dr. Craig Keen:

I describe it as a precarious life, which means not only a dangerous life, but it comes from a word meaning prayer. So we've lived a life in which we've stepped out into a future that is very, very uncertain and calling out to something. I mean, the gospel tells us the one to call out to, but you know, people have always called out to something, because life is precarious and it is only when let me put it this way human life expectancies have been low forever. Human life expectancies have been low forever. I mean about 30. Decade after decade, century after century, millennium after millennium, until about 1870. No-transcript lived to about 30. That's the average huge child mortality rates. But you had some older people. But 30 was a good ripe age. I've lived to 75 and I'm told I've lived a full life. If you made it to 30, you'd lived a full life, like in the year 1800. But in some places where soil was bad, prospect of drought and flood, pestilences of various kinds, just sort of very terribly subsistence, agrarian lives, you know, you may never meet anyone over 30.

Dr. Craig Keen:

But in 1870, something happened and life expectancy started, for the first time in the history of the world, to get longer. For the first time in the history of the world to get longer. And now we assume that in a modern, industrialized nation, even one struggling to figure out what to do with health care like this one, you will live. If you make it to 70, you're going to be like just about everyone else, but then you probably will make it to 75. You make it to 75, you probably make it to 85, you make it to 85, etc. So it's not hard to imagine what's already happening.

Dr. Craig Keen:

More and more and more people every year make it to 100. And that's because life is very protected, very sheltered. We're kept in safe spaces, we're given what we want when we ask. But this is, I mean we're talking about, you know, 150 years, in fact less than that, because most of the last 150 years life was still hard, even though life expectancies were getting higher. And so if we take ourselves out of the situation where the prospect of death becomes more and more abstract and put ourselves back in the whole previous, entire history of the world and think that death is something that we encounter all the time, I mean, if you live in a city, you will encounter someone dying every week at least. In a village, maybe not quite so often, but that's only because you may have only 50 people there, but everybody, you see, if you're young's going to be dead before you are that kind of life.

Dr. Craig Keen:

There is no question, but that you have to lean on others. There are no individuals. You know, I've got a name, you've got a name. We know the difference, but we aren't individuals. We're not undivided from each other. We are so entangled in one another that there is no hope for me without you. And so for us now to live as if we were individual identities is to go, if nothing else, contrary to the entire history of the world before 1870 and much of it after that. But in the case of the gospel? The gospel calls us to live a kind of life where we are absolutely dependent upon others who are absolutely dependent upon us as we together, pray, pray together like congregational prayer out into God's future. That will inevitably surprise us.

Chris Nafis:

Yeah, and of course I mean we are like if there wasn't someone harvesting wheat right now.

Dr. Craig Keen:

I wouldn't have any food in a couple of months.

Chris Nafis:

You know like we are completely interdependent on one another. I mean, if someone didn't replace the valve in your heart?

Dr. Craig Keen:

a few weeks ago, we might not be having this conversation, and the cow that graciously donated that to me.

Chris Nafis:

Yeah, but we just don't. It's all hidden from us. You know, like we have this again.

Dr. Craig Keen:

It's like a myth, you know, a myth in the most negative way that we're independent people that just make our own decisions. Very important book for me the book by William Cavanaugh entitled Torture and Eucharist makes the case that it is the modern nation state that invented the category of the individual. Now I think it's way more than the nation state, I think it's modern economy and many other things, but the case he makes is a very interesting one that we only come up with the idea of the individual when a powerful body over us puts us in our places, make sure that we are scared to do anything contrary to what will keep things relatively quiet, and then will tell us we will take care of you if you stay in that place. And I think that's largely what has happened. We are put in our little quiet place. I mean the statistics for how many people live alone, yeah, I mean they're just rising every year.

Dr. Craig Keen:

So stay in your little apartment, go out to the bar occasionally and hang out with some people you kind of know, have some pleasurable relationships with people. But retreat to your safe space where no one can hurt you, and we'll give you the chemicals you need. We'll give you the sort of the kind of outside distractions that you need. We'll keep you busy there and you'll go to work and we'll make sure that every little drop of efficiency is squeezed out of you so that you put in your eight hours or whatever, however many hours, go home exhausted and look for any distraction you can find. I mean, that's the way we are being trained to live and we think that's the way to live, but I mean it's true that it's, you know, kind of. There's less and less what should we call it? Sort of acute pain, but there's more and more and more dull, aching pain that sort of stays down below the surface. Give me something to make me no longer aware of what's going on down there.

Chris Nafis:

Right, right, right. And to bring it full circle, I think the calling of the gospel is to risk being out there in the world. I mean, I think part of what we're afraid of is just the violence, the difficulty, the suffering of life lived together. The call is to go to step into that life, together and interdependent on one another.

Chris Nafis:

interdependent on one another but without this sort of protection of like a violent ability to make my will done in that community, but to give up at least a part of that so that we can actually live well with one another, aiming for the peace of God, the shalom of God in this kind of unified life that we hopefully call the church right.

Chris Nafis:

I don't know how well we actually ever do that Like if that ever actually happens in a way that's recognizable, but like I think there are ways that in most little communities that are trying to do that you can see some semblance of like this kind of hope and prayer of a life together.

Dr. Craig Keen:

I think it's very true and I think you know I almost always advise people if you're looking for a church, find a little crappy one, you know, one that doesn't seem to be making any significant impact on the world. If it's little, you won't be able to hide, and the more you get involved, the more of the life of that church you will let into your body and that body will let you into. And I think I think I mean, when we think of justice and righteousness, we should think of people letting each other into their bodies yeah, and, of course, bringing it back to acts.

Chris Nafis:

I mean, that's what we see happening again and again because people who are unified in ways that are like shocking as you read them, like what they? They sold all their stuff and shared it. They were spent their entire life together feeding and taking care of the poor and each other and continually inviting in more and more people who would have seemed like a threat to them, who would have seen kind of religiously, socially, politically, other than them that we should not keep. Why are we going to let Paul back in this community?

Dr. Craig Keen:

He was just trying to kill us last week.

Chris Nafis:

I know, or why should we let these Gentiles in? Or how we're going to go to this new place and this new people is full of like idolaters and the people that we think of as the worst of the worst. This is the scary community that we've tried to insulate ourselves from for thousands of years. This is who we are as a people. We are not them. I know, and then to say nope, they are invited into this work of Christ. We're going to give up our sort of defense of ourselves and our identity.

Dr. Craig Keen:

It's an abandonment of identity. I give myself away to the future that is disclosed in the glorified, mutilated body of Jesus.

Chris Nafis:

Man, it's good, it's hard, it's a challenging calling, but there's something so beautiful about it that it's irresistible and it's important to learn to laugh through it.

Dr. Craig Keen:

I think it's very important to do that.

Chris Nafis:

Yeah, well, I think we've made it, maybe completed the circle all the way through and back to the life of pacifism, peacemakingaking, and into the book of Acts. Maybe it's a good. Hopefully you'll join me again on this sometime and we can talk about other stuff, just let me know but we should probably give our listeners a break and let them, you know, do something else for a moment sounds good, but Craig, thank you so much. It's always just a joy a challenge, a pleasure.

Chris Nafis:

It's so engaging talking to you about really about anything, so thanks for doing it publicly with me.

Dr. Craig Keen:

You're very welcome. I'm glad to do it. I love you and it's really nice to be with you. Thanks, greg, love you too.

Chris Nafis:

All right, See you later For those who are listening. We'll catch you next time and thanks for joining us.

People on this episode

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Chris Nafis

Host
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Dr. Craig Keen

Guest