The Cross Before Me by Wilbourne and Gregor
“But that’s just it: if only we knew what we wanted! We are like arrows ceaselessly seeking a target. Yet the search for happiness is irrepressible.” – Wilbourne and Gregor
If only we knew what we wanted.
Right now many people around the globe think they know what they want. They want things back the way they were.
People want to go to the gym. People want to sit down in Star Bucks and read the New York Times while drinking their venti concoction. People want to go to the movies again. Date again. Visit friends again. Laugh again. And mostly, not live in fear again.
But what did we want when just several days ago we had all that?
We wanted more time with family. Maybe a break from work. Perhaps a few rest days from our workout routine. I bet some people even wanted to do a retreat to isolate themselves and seek God for what is next in their lives. I know because the ladder was me.
“We are like arrows ceaselessly seeking a target. Yet the search for happiness is irrepressible” (p. 15).
In this week’s book for Tim Challies 2020 reading plan, I am reviewing Rankin Wilbourne and Brian Gregor’s book, The Cross Before Me: Reimaging the Way to the Goodlife. Published last year, this book has already found its way on multiple best-selling lists and is highlighted in the Top 10 books in 2019 according to The Gospel Coalition.
God's timing is always perfect. As I sit tempted to think about my problems, God providentially placed this book on my reading plan.
Rankin Wilbourne is not your typical Los Angeles reformed pastor. Before attending Princeton Theological Seminary, he was a commercial banker in the private sector. Now pastoring Pacific Crossroads Church, he is becoming a well known reformed author and active Gospel Coalition member and writer.
Brian Gregor is the current Assistant Professor of Philosophy at California State University and teaches several courses in religious studies. He is an avid student of Kant, Kierkegaard, Bonhoeffer, and Ricoeur and those that they significantly influenced.
Wilbourne and Gregor team up to produce one of my new favorite books on a theology of the cross. In The Cross Before Me, the authors state their hypothesis unapologetically, “Happiness is communion with God. And the way to that communion is the way of the cross” (p. 19).
Cruciform.
This is the word that Wilbourne and Gregor use often, which simply means, “cross shaped” (p. 20)
According to the authors, “our book revolves around one question: What does the cross—the most iconic religious symbol in the world—have to teach us about the way to happiness and the good and beautiful life?” (p. 20).
Time to jump in. I could talk at length about the many spectacular aspects of the book. But I will hold myself to the consistent comparison the authors use between a theology of glory and of the cross, which they borrow from Martin Luther’s famous Heidelberg Disputation.
Theology of Glory
“The theology of glory prefers good works to suffering, strength to weakness, wisdom to folly, and, in short, glory to the cross” (p. 64).
A theology of glory is very American.
American Christianity has been intertwined with manifest destiny and our particular brand of individualism. Why would God call us to suffer? Or experience pain? Doesn’t following and obeying God naturally lead us to financial blessing and physical health?
Wilbourne and Gregor explore how the theology of glory takes God’s good gifts, meant to be used to serve Him, and uses them to become self-sufficient.
Rankin Wilbourne
Reason, prosperity, self-improving, self-making, and spirituality are all good and godly pursuits when desired to find our satisfaction in God Himself. The theology of glory takes these good desires and makes them the source of our happiness. And they will always disappoint.
“The problem with the therapeutic turn in Christian preaching and teaching is that it makes God nothing more than the means to our flourishing. God is not the means. God is the end. He is not merely the way to happiness. God is our happiness. Seek God, not happiness! Our flourishing lies in God. The cross is the way to this end” (p. 72-73).
In contrast to modern Christian individualism, Wilbourne and Gregor remind us that “The cruciform life means giving up our self-salvation projects. It means letting go of our stories as we have always understood them” (p. 74).
The books following seven chapters explore the cruciform life, specifically how a theology of the cross informs our work, humility, freedom, love, suffering, glory, and daily living. These chapters are the theoretical and practical implications of a sound theology of the cross.
Theology of the Cross
“Historically the notion that all knowledge of God must be interpreted in light of the cross has been called the theology of the cross” (p. 24).
While I enjoyed every one of the seven subject chapters, two that have been burned into my mind. Cruciform work and freedom.
In my work, I want to matter.
I want to leave a legacy.
Brian Gregor
Janelle and I were just discussing this the other night. If I am not making a distinct difference where I am at, then what is the point of being there?
But then I have to ask myself, is that the theology of the cross thinking, or theology of glory?
“It’s not about being recognized. It’s the satisfaction that comes from playing our small part, without comparison, as our Master assigns to each one of us. We must learn to say in our work, “Master, I’m here to do your bidding. Every talent I’ve been given is from you and for your glory. So I surrender the results of my best efforts to your wise providence” (p. 79).
After I read that I immediately thought, “but shouldn’t we pursue our work with resolve, determination, and a fierce ambition?”
Wilbourne and Gregor addressed my questions head-on. And while it took several pages, eventually they answered it, and like Jesus, it was in the form of a question.
“[But] whose glory are you seeking? Whose praise? Because—make no mistake—we are living for glory; we can’t help it. But whose glory? (p. 83).
My own.
That is often the honest answer to that painful question.
Second to Cruciform Work was Cruciform Freedom.
“Do we have free will, or are our choices determined for us?” (p. 125).
The question stated above is among the most polarizing questions in Christianity.
In usual philosophical style, the authors argue for a true sense of freedom as opposed to what we often drink from in our American culture.
“It turns out that true freedom takes the shape of the cross. True freedom comes not through breaking away from all constraints but by living according to the true order of things” (p. 127).
Our natural inclination is to think freedom means to do what I want when I want, how I want. Freedom is refusing to live by someone else's standards or regulations.
Or is it?
Wilbourne and Gregor point to the everything is awesome, Lego Movie, to illustrate their point. The master builders are those who live free from the "directions." They build what they want when they want, and how they want to. Or so it seems.
Once a crisis hits, it is clear, they are still bound by the rules and regulations of what they consider as freedom. Batman only builds with black pieces and Astronaut Rocket dude can’t get past a Spaceship.
“Their freedom is a union of possibilities that open and constraints that close: freedom within boundaries is the LEGO way” (p. 131).
This fun illustration hits a serious point. We are all following an idea of freedom within a particular way. The American Way. The Liberal Way. The Conservation Way. The Social Agenda Way.
But the argument from God’s word, and these two authors, is there is only one way that will bring true happiness. The cruciform way.
Wilbourne and Gregor additionally point to the consistency of historical theology on this perspective. They cite Augustine who said, “The only genuine freedom is that possessed by those who are happy and cleave to the eternal law.”
The authors comment on this quote saying, “notice what Augustine is saying: only the happy are free. And who are the happy? They are those who cleave to the eternal law… Freedom can’t be defined solely as what I am free from. Real freedom also involves a clear sense of what I am free for” (p. 135-136).
Our current circumstances have us questioning our previous conceived notion of freedom.
As a resident of California, I have been ordered to stay home. A virus has effectively deglobalized our world and made many people prisoners in their own homes.
Bill Gates, one of the most financially free people on earth, released 14 things he believes COVID-19 is doing to us.
I love the irony and honesty found in his 5th point.
“It is reminding us of how materialistic our society has become and how, when in times of difficulty, we remember that it’s the essentials that we need (food, water, medicine) as opposed to the luxuries that we sometimes unnecessarily give value to.” – Bill Gates
Gates, one of the wealthiest men on earth, is able to see that even he is bound to the fate of a microscopic virus.
He calls this virus the great corrector.
I don’t claim to know God’s reason for our current situation. But I know God has used it already to help correct my concepts of work and freedom from a theology of glory to align with a theology of the cross.
I highly recommend The Cross Before Me, especially to read and think through in our current climate.
John Owen came from Welsh descent, was educated at Queens College, and became a renowned Puritan theologian, Oxford professor, and passionate pastor who lived from 1616 to 1683. In 1647, he wrote the exhaustive treatise The Death of Death defending Limited or Definite Atonement against the Arminian view of Universal Atonement or Unlimited Atonement.