I am no expert on N. T. Wright’s theology, but I know enough to reject those charges of his critics that he is weak on “the substitutionary atonement.”  Here is the clincher for me, from one of his meditations in The Crown and the Fire: “Jesus, the innocent one, was drawing on to himself the holy wrath of God against human sin in general, so that human sinners like you and me can find, as we look at the cross, that the load of sin and guilt we have been carrying is taken away from us.”

To be sure, Wright has also been calling us to think more expansively about the atoning work of Christ. But he has never advocated doing away with substitution as an essential feature of Christ’s redemptive mission.

The more expansive context is nicely captured by Scot McKnight’s helpful golf clubs image. We need several clubs to play a good game of golf, McKnight observes, and the putter is one of many. But the putter is typically necessary to get the ball in the hole.

One of my colleagues responded to that image in a way that I found helpful. He pointed out that sometimes a golfer does make a hole-in-one, without the aid of a putter. And he observed that some folks in Young Life have reported that there are teenagers who have been brought to Christ by a strong emphasis on the Christus Victor theme. Kids into “Goth, “ vampires, witchcraft and the like often respond most positively to the idea that the powers of evil have been conquered by Christ’s encounter on the Cross with “the principalities and powers.”

A point well taken. But still, holes-in-one are not common occurrences. Normally, the use of the putter is necessary. It’s just one of the clubs, to be sure. But an important one.

Here’s my worry about contemporary talk, especially among some younger evangelicals, about atonement theory. They rightly say that the atonement is more than substitution. But they often proceed then as if it were less than substitution.

I was at a conference a while back where a younger preacher said rather forcefully that he seldom mentions the substitutionary work of Christ anymore in his sermons. Instead, he talks about how Christ encountered “the Powers” of consumerism, militarism, racism, super-patriotism and the like.  I left that conference troubled in my soul. I was driving a rental car to another city, and I turned on the radio which, as it happened, was tuned to “Christian radio.” I was about to search for NPR when I decided to stay tuned to the recording of a man who was telling his story to a group of fellow business folks. I’m glad I listened.

The man told about a time when he was increasingly successful in his business dealings, while increasingly dissolute in his personal lifestyle: drinking heavily, unfaithful to his wife, distant from his children, his marriage headed toward divorce. His wife and daughters were active in church life, but he never attended.

One Saturday evening, after he had downed several martinis, his 10-year-old daughter came to him and pleaded with him to come to church the next morning—she was part of a singing group that would have a role in the service. He reluctantly agreed—something he greatly regretted the next morning when he awoke hung over. But to church he went.

In his testimony he then described what he heard for the first time in his life in the sermon that morning: that he was a guilty sinner who needed salvation, and that Jesus had taken his sin and guilt upon himself on the Cross of Calvary. Weeping, the man said, he pleaded with God to take away his burden of shame, and from that point on his life took a new direction.

I’m glad the preacher had a putter in his theological golf bag that morning. The other clubs are, to be sure, important. But this is the one that made all the difference on that occasion. I hear a lot of creative stuff these days about Christ’s non-violent suffering, his incarnational love—again, all good and proper. But I find myself also listening for the theme that assures me that the whole story of atonement is being told: that I can say as a guilty sinner that “my sin, not in part, but the whole//is nailed to the Cross and I bear it no more.”

I resented Billy Berger (I’m changing his name here) for four decades. Sometimes, in the earliest years, the resentment felt like it approached outright despising. At the root of it, though, was envy.

Like me, Billy Berger was a preacher’s kid. In fact, our fathers served as pastors of the same congregation—with Billy’s dad serving first.  Billy was the same age as I, which meant that all the neighborhood kids, and just about everyone in my seventh and eighth grade classes at the local public school, knew Billy.

And they praised him a lot. So much so, that sometimes it really hurt. Betty Boyd (also not her real name) was a case in point. She liked to sketch plans for houses, and I had a bit of a crush on her. So she deeply wounded me when one day she proudly showed me a drawing and said: “This is the house that Billy Berger and I will live in when we are married.”

And then there was the time that Billy came back to town with his parents for a visit. It was summer, and we were on vacation when they visited. When I returned home, there was much talk about how wonderful it was to have seen Billy again. One young man whom I considered a good friend even told me that all the kids liked Billy Berger better than me. I cried myself to sleep that night.

Several years ago, I preached at a church in the Midwest. After the service I stood greeting parishioners at the door, and I saw one man, about my age, hanging back, waiting for the chance to speak with me when the others had passed.

When the time came, he thanked me for my sermon, and then went on, haltingly. “You have no reason to know who I am, but I’ve known about you for a long time. My name is Billy Berger, and my dad served at (——) Church before your dad. We knew all of the same kids in school.” I started to tell him that I did indeed know who he was, but he waved me off. “I have to confess something to you,” he said. “I have resented you for a long time. Once we went back to visit, and all my old friends told me how wonderful you were. Someone even said that Betty Boyd had a crush on you.” And then, some tears. “I’m glad I came to church today. It seems dumb to say it, but I feel like a burden has been lifted.”

The tears came to me too, and I told him that I too needed some burden-lifting. It was not a long conversation, but an important one. We hugged and he went on his way.

I’m not sure exactly what the spiritual lesson was in all of that. But that there was one, I have no doubt.

Phyllis and I have been talking lately about what we sometimes hear as a reason why people do not attend church.  It’s not that they have no interest in spiritual matters, they say. It’s just that they get their spiritual inspiration by “spending time in nature.” Walking in the woods, listening to birds sing, watching a sunset, reflecting along a shoreline—these are for them the ways they get in touch with the divine.

We don’t find these testimonies to be without merit. In fact, it has some attraction for us. A local nature reserve near our home offers Sunday morning Audubon-sponsored bird-watching walks, and we would like to go.  Furthermore, given the many church service times we have to choose from at our home congregation, we could do so without simply skipping church. And for us, the bird-watching walk would also be a way of connecting with God in nature.

I recently came across an Emily Dickinson poem that stimulated my thoughts on this subject:

Some keep the Sabbath going to church;
I keep it staying at home,
With a bobolink for a chorister,
And an orchard for a dome.

Some keep the Sabbath in surplice;
I just wear my wings,
And instead of tolling the bell for church,
Our little sexton sings.

God preaches,—a noted clergyman,—
And the sermon is never long;
So instead of getting to heaven at last,
I ’m going all along!

What is theologically and spiritually off-base in this poem is that the poet is treating her times listening to birds sing under the orchard’s “dome” as a legitimate substitute for church worship. Having said that, though, I still like the poem, especially if we take it as showing how time in nature can serve as an important spiritual supplement to corporate worship.

Here we can draw some encouragement from the Reformation era confessions. The Westminster Confession points us in the right direction when it tells us that “the light of nature, and the works of creation and providence… manifest the goodness, wisdom, and power of God.” Unfortunately, it quickly blunts the positive point it is making there when it immediately stipulates that all of this serves mainly “to leave men inexcusable”— since the things that are revealed in nature aren’t “sufficient to give that knowledge of God, and of his will, which is necessary unto salvation.”

The Belgic Confession is more helpful. While it also eventually gets around to the “without excuse” rider, it takes a little more time than the Westminster to get there. “[T]he creation, preservation and government of the universe,” it tells us, “is before our eyes as a most elegant book, wherein all creatures, great and small, are as so many characters leading us to contemplate the invisible things of God, namely His power and divinity.”

Emily Dickinson can be seen as a gifted reader of the “elegant book” that God has provided for folks who spend time in orchards listening to the birds sing. We would all do well to give careful attention to what that “book” is intended to teach us. But we do need the other Book—where the Lord tells us all of those things that are “necessary unto salvation”—including how best to honor, as his redeemed people, the “all creatures, great and small” that are also loved by the One who has saved us.

Phyllis made a good suggestion about how to integrate what goes on in both church services and nature walks. Someone should write a collection of biblically based devotionals, she said, for people who claim to get more out of spending time in orchards than they do in corporate worship. Such devotionals might even bring them back to church, as necessary supplement to their nature walks. A great assignment for someone who is skilled at carefully reading both “books”! Or maybe it has been done?

The Muslim scholar and I were sitting at dinner together, and he was telling me about his involvement in a Muslim project devoted to interfaith dialogue. “How about the faith and culture questions?” I asked. “The attempt in places like France to regulate how Muslim women dress in public—is that a big topic for you and your colleagues?”

“Ah, the burqa,” he said. “It’s too bad that is such a big issue. Especially since for many of us it ought not to be an issue at all. The Qur’an, you know, says nothing about that kind of thing. There is nothing in our Islamic tradition that requires women to cover themselves in that way!”

Part of me was pleased with his attitude. Like many Muslim intellectuals with whom I have talked, he is eager to encourage the Islamic community to find its proper place in larger pluralistic democracies. That kind of project is extremely important. And to the degree that the burqa is an expression of resistance to the call to live together with mutual respect, it is something that we should want to disappear.

But there is another part of me that resists the idea that we should be abandoning those forms of dress that are expressions of religious conviction that stand over against the dominant culture. A few days after my conversation with the Muslim scholar I was in an airport, sitting at the gate area, waiting for my plane. A young nun, wearing the habit of her community, was sitting nearby. A teenage girl passing by the nun stumbled and dropped some things she was carrying. The nun quickly stepped forward and helped her retrieve her belongings. I saw their eyes meet for a brief moment as the girl thanked the nun for helping. The nun smiled and wished her safe travels.

The teenager was wearing a tee-shirt bearing the Satanic symbol of a rock band, and had several tattoos and piercings. It was an interesting brief encounter. Two modes of dress that spoke very different messages.

I was glad that the young nun was wearing her habit. I felt the same way about two Mennonite women, wearing head coverings and long skirts, who passed by a few moments later.

In those brief moments in the airport, I resolved to live with some ambivalence about the burqa.