A correspondent has written to me recently urging that I identify the Temple of God, so as to be sure I am worshipping God in the right way and in the right place. This struck me as a very interesting concept. Many of my Christian friends find a church building a very worship-inspiring place, and of course in this country of ours there are some architectural masterpieces. The church in my village, for instance, was built in the 14th century, and I grew up under the shadow of what some think of as the finest cathedral of them all, at Durham.
So I was moved to think about the phrase 'Temple of God'. In the Old Covenant which God made with the people He chose to have a special relationship with, there was first a portable temple, because they were a nomadic people. Then they were settled in the land God had promised them, so their king thought it right to build something on the same lines in stone. But even Solomon recognised the inappropriateness of thinking that God could be contained in a building: "But will God indeed dwell on earth? Behold, heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain thee: how much less this house which I have built?" (1 Kings 8:27 RSV).
In the gospels we read that Jesus foretold that the temple rebuilt in Jerusalem by Herod would be destroyed, and this took place when the Romans crushed the rebellion of the Jewish nationalists some thirty or so years later.
Christians have always recognised that in the New Covenant, offered to men and women of every race, there is no longer any special priesthood class: 'No longer will a man teach his neighbour, or a man his brother, saying "Know the Lord," because they will all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the Lord.' (Jeremiah 31:34 NIV). In fact in the writings of the apostles we are told that we Christians are all priests (e.g. in 1 Peter ch. 2), that we are the very stones of the metaphorical temple of God (1 Peter 2:4), and even that our bodies are the temple of God, since He lives within us through His Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 3:16, 6:19). Paul puts it very bluntly "We are the temple of the living God." (2 Corinthians 6:16).
If people can get some idea of what God is like through observing my life, my responses to situations, my choices, my words, then I am fulfilling a priestly role in presenting God to those who do not know Him.
This to me is a far more demanding challenge than mere words can express. I know my failings only too well, better than anyone else on earth, and yet I know that God is reaching out to others through me. Phew!
I agree with Solomon about buildings. To suppose God could be so diminished that He could dwell inside something built by men, in a particular location, is to reduce God to something men may control, which is the very basis of all idolatries.
Monday
In search of God
Quite recently there has been a series of three radio interviews on BBC Radio 4 called 'Humphrys in search of God'. In each a leading representative of Christianity, Islam, and Judaism was interviewed by the broadcaster John Humphrys, well-known for his acerbic style of interviewing, and regarded as the interviewer most feared by politicians.
John Humphrys presents himself as one who remembers his faith when a child (brought up as an Anglican) but now finding it impossible to believe in a loving God when so much misery is allowed to happen without God's intervention. The transcripts of the interviews are available on the www.bbc.co.uk website. Having not originally heard all of the radio broadcasts I did a search on 'John Humphrys faith' and was able to find the pages and download the transcripts. They make fascinating reading.
Humphrys challenged all three leaders with the questions "Is God an intervening God?", "What does it mean when you pray?", and "How can a loving God allow things like Auschwitz to happen?", in varying forms.
One of three leaders spots that the very basis behind these hard questions means that Humphrys is really thinking God's thoughts. In other words there only is a problem if there really is a loving God, who cares about us mere mortals. The questions presume God's existence. They can only be asked by someone who believes in God enough to regard them as problems. Yet as each interview concludes the impression one has is that Humphrys is not convinced, that he must still continue with his search for faith. In reality I think it entirely possible he has more faith than he realises. He is asking the right questions, which would not be possible without a faith he is perhaps unconscious of.
I am writing this in the Christmas season, and I believe that the message of this season has perhaps a hint as to how to answer these questions. Christians believe that God has intervened in human affairs, by taking upon Himself our very nature: the Eternal Word, Creator of everything, 'became flesh and lived for a while among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the only begotten who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.' (John 1:1-14). When God intervened two millenia ago it was as a vulnerable child, in very danger of his life. And the intervention came to an Auschwitz-like climax, with that man being tortured to death, nailed on a cross. God aligned Himself with those who were also tortured to death in Auschwitz and other similar places. If "where was God in Auschwitz?" is the question, "alongside all the victims," is the answer.
Since the Bethlehem intervention, and following the victory over death this intervention achieved, God's intervention has continued, but in a different way. He is working through all who have given their lives to the Son. However imperfectly, and the imperfections are all too easy to pinpoint, God is working through His people. There are those who tend the sick, feed the hungry, and comfort the sufferers in whatever practical way is possible. It is a war between good and evil, between light and darkness, and though it has gone on for two millenia already we are promised an eventual end. There will be a final intervention, we know not when.
The very nature of this final intervention leaves one torn between, on the one hand, asking 'How long, O Lord?' and praying for the intervention to be soon, so that there may be an end to suffering, and on the other hand not daring to be found unready and unprepared. This final intervention will sweep away the physical universe as we know it, and bring in the Age to Come. There are some uncomfortable words about those who will be left behind. It is a very brave man who says to God: "Please intervene now."
Whether what I have written will help John Humphrys (or any like him), who knows? For each of us whatever faith we have is a gift from God. Both he and I will be judged on how well we have worked out in our lives the measure of faith given to us. From those to whom much is given, much will be required.
John Humphrys presents himself as one who remembers his faith when a child (brought up as an Anglican) but now finding it impossible to believe in a loving God when so much misery is allowed to happen without God's intervention. The transcripts of the interviews are available on the www.bbc.co.uk website. Having not originally heard all of the radio broadcasts I did a search on 'John Humphrys faith' and was able to find the pages and download the transcripts. They make fascinating reading.
Humphrys challenged all three leaders with the questions "Is God an intervening God?", "What does it mean when you pray?", and "How can a loving God allow things like Auschwitz to happen?", in varying forms.
One of three leaders spots that the very basis behind these hard questions means that Humphrys is really thinking God's thoughts. In other words there only is a problem if there really is a loving God, who cares about us mere mortals. The questions presume God's existence. They can only be asked by someone who believes in God enough to regard them as problems. Yet as each interview concludes the impression one has is that Humphrys is not convinced, that he must still continue with his search for faith. In reality I think it entirely possible he has more faith than he realises. He is asking the right questions, which would not be possible without a faith he is perhaps unconscious of.
I am writing this in the Christmas season, and I believe that the message of this season has perhaps a hint as to how to answer these questions. Christians believe that God has intervened in human affairs, by taking upon Himself our very nature: the Eternal Word, Creator of everything, 'became flesh and lived for a while among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the only begotten who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.' (John 1:1-14). When God intervened two millenia ago it was as a vulnerable child, in very danger of his life. And the intervention came to an Auschwitz-like climax, with that man being tortured to death, nailed on a cross. God aligned Himself with those who were also tortured to death in Auschwitz and other similar places. If "where was God in Auschwitz?" is the question, "alongside all the victims," is the answer.
Since the Bethlehem intervention, and following the victory over death this intervention achieved, God's intervention has continued, but in a different way. He is working through all who have given their lives to the Son. However imperfectly, and the imperfections are all too easy to pinpoint, God is working through His people. There are those who tend the sick, feed the hungry, and comfort the sufferers in whatever practical way is possible. It is a war between good and evil, between light and darkness, and though it has gone on for two millenia already we are promised an eventual end. There will be a final intervention, we know not when.
The very nature of this final intervention leaves one torn between, on the one hand, asking 'How long, O Lord?' and praying for the intervention to be soon, so that there may be an end to suffering, and on the other hand not daring to be found unready and unprepared. This final intervention will sweep away the physical universe as we know it, and bring in the Age to Come. There are some uncomfortable words about those who will be left behind. It is a very brave man who says to God: "Please intervene now."
Whether what I have written will help John Humphrys (or any like him), who knows? For each of us whatever faith we have is a gift from God. Both he and I will be judged on how well we have worked out in our lives the measure of faith given to us. From those to whom much is given, much will be required.
A homepage
My apologies for having gone so long without adding any meditation. I write as the Lord moves me, and if I have nothing new to say, then I keep my peace. Since the spring of this year the Lord has opened up a new area of working for me, and now at last the dust of this activity is beginning to settle, and I have more time to just think about life - and its challenges.
One of my correspondents let me know recently that she uses Netcaster's opening page as her homepage on the Internet. In other words, when she turns her browser on, this is the page she sees. I was thinking about this, and the whole idea of a default homepage for one's browser, and decided the sort of page I would like. I though I would like to see the date, and have a small clock to remind me of the time. Then I thought I would like to see a different verse from the Bible every day, to give me some prompting for my thinking.
So I designed a date mechanism and a clock mechanism. This was the easy part. The way it works depends on the inbuilt clock of your PC, so if this is wrong, the data on the screen will be wrong too. Right click on the very bottom right of your PC screen, where the digital time indicator is, and you can correct it if it is wrong. I chose a clock design from a website of the company that makes clocks and watches to the design of the Swiss Railway clocks, at www.mondaine.com. The design is recognised as something rather special.
Then I looked, using my favourite search engine, for a site that had a different Bible quotation every day, which I could perhaps link to. There are some 'near misses' for what I actually wanted, and in the end I decided to do the work myself. So I am building 31 separate pages, one for each day of the month, and linking to each one depending on what day of the month it is. It took me a little while to work out the Javascript technique for this, and you need to have Javascript enabled on your PC for it to work.
I have found selecting the 31 passages a wonderful challenge. I must try to provide a balanced overview of the faith. All the passages are from the New Testament, and I have decided to use the Revised Standard Version as the translation. This has the cadences of the oldest versions, while avoiding the errors and changing meaning of words that diminish the value of the old versions. There is a balance between the words of Jesus (which I always introduce with "Jesus said:") and other passages. I have typed out all the passages myself, which has been a wonderful exercise. Let me know if you find any typos. In the end I also decided not to give the reference for each quotation, as I wanted the words to stand alone. Any small omissions from a passage, for the sake of continuity, had been shown by the usual three dots. All the words are pure scripture, with no additions or changes.
If you are not sure how to set a live page from the Internet as your browser's home page, here is the method for MS Internet Explorer. Go to the page, using the link you have below. Then select 'Tools' and 'Internet Options' and you will see a button to select the current page as your homepage. Click this button, then 'Apply'. For Firefox it is virtually the same, except at the end click 'OK'.
To get there click on homepage.htm. The page will open in a new window. I pray that this daily word from God will be a great blessing to you.
One of my correspondents let me know recently that she uses Netcaster's opening page as her homepage on the Internet. In other words, when she turns her browser on, this is the page she sees. I was thinking about this, and the whole idea of a default homepage for one's browser, and decided the sort of page I would like. I though I would like to see the date, and have a small clock to remind me of the time. Then I thought I would like to see a different verse from the Bible every day, to give me some prompting for my thinking.
So I designed a date mechanism and a clock mechanism. This was the easy part. The way it works depends on the inbuilt clock of your PC, so if this is wrong, the data on the screen will be wrong too. Right click on the very bottom right of your PC screen, where the digital time indicator is, and you can correct it if it is wrong. I chose a clock design from a website of the company that makes clocks and watches to the design of the Swiss Railway clocks, at www.mondaine.com. The design is recognised as something rather special.
Then I looked, using my favourite search engine, for a site that had a different Bible quotation every day, which I could perhaps link to. There are some 'near misses' for what I actually wanted, and in the end I decided to do the work myself. So I am building 31 separate pages, one for each day of the month, and linking to each one depending on what day of the month it is. It took me a little while to work out the Javascript technique for this, and you need to have Javascript enabled on your PC for it to work.
I have found selecting the 31 passages a wonderful challenge. I must try to provide a balanced overview of the faith. All the passages are from the New Testament, and I have decided to use the Revised Standard Version as the translation. This has the cadences of the oldest versions, while avoiding the errors and changing meaning of words that diminish the value of the old versions. There is a balance between the words of Jesus (which I always introduce with "Jesus said:") and other passages. I have typed out all the passages myself, which has been a wonderful exercise. Let me know if you find any typos. In the end I also decided not to give the reference for each quotation, as I wanted the words to stand alone. Any small omissions from a passage, for the sake of continuity, had been shown by the usual three dots. All the words are pure scripture, with no additions or changes.
If you are not sure how to set a live page from the Internet as your browser's home page, here is the method for MS Internet Explorer. Go to the page, using the link you have below. Then select 'Tools' and 'Internet Options' and you will see a button to select the current page as your homepage. Click this button, then 'Apply'. For Firefox it is virtually the same, except at the end click 'OK'.
To get there click on homepage.htm. The page will open in a new window. I pray that this daily word from God will be a great blessing to you.
More about Grace
My last piece was about grace and this has provoked a comment or two. How much easier is the doctrine of legalism. There are those who would say that grace is the one doctrine unique to Christianity. Many other religions believe in a creator god, even in an incarnated god. Many promise rewards in the next life, and many prescribe rules to be followed in this. But only Christianity offers grace.
The contrast is simple: in most religions the focus is on the rules, and there is a broad universality about them. In 'The Abolition of Man' C S Lewis listed the common agreement about the natural law (the Tao) recognised by nearly all of mankind. Buddhism has its well defined path to enlightenment, Hinduism has its doctrine of karma, and the Jewish and Islamic rules are well known, especially regarding diet and other everyday things. And there are some who want to represent Christianity as a set of rules to be followed, with 'pie in the sky when we die' as the prize to be earned.
This approach satisfies our natural sense of fair-play. By contrast Jesus told a story (Matt 20:1-16)about a man who went out to hire labourers, and agreed a day rate with them. Three hours later he saw that there will still some men not yet hired, so he told them to go and work in his vineyard too. Similarly more men were set to work six hours later, and even nine hours later. At the eleventh hour of the day, with just one hour left for work, he hired a final few. When the day was done he started paying off the men, beginning with those hired last. He paid these men a full day's wage, and those who had worked longer noticed this. The man paid each worker the same, and those who had worked the full day complained because they had received exactly the same as those who had worked much less. 'But I have paid you what we agreed,' the hirer said. 'I can do what I will with my own money. Do not criticise my generosity.'
In the Psalms we meet the Hebrew word, hesed, which explains all this. It is best translated as 'steadfast love' or 'unchanging love'. Read the whole of Psalm 89, which begins: 'I will sing of thy steadfast love, O Lord, for ever; with my mouth I will proclaim thy faithfulness to all generations.' Later the psalm speaks of the covenant God has made with David and his descendants, and we read: 'If his children forsake my law and do not walk according to my ordinances ... then I will punish their transgressions with the rod and their iniquity with scourges; but I will not remove from him my steadfast love, or be false to my faithfulness.' (translation is the RSV).
Legalism focuses on us and what we do. Grace focuses on God and who He is.
It was Jesus who taught us to approach God as our Father in Heaven. Although not all fathers on earth are perfect models of fatherhood, it is as a Perfect Father that we should approach God. He will not allow us to remain satisfied with anything less than perfection. He will not pass over our follies as if they did not matter, but above all else He is constant. His love is the given, the certain, the absolute and unchanging constant, that we can rely on. It is (to quote a well-loved hymn) the love that will not let us go.
We have our weaknesses and God knows about them and has an agenda for dealing with them. Paul had an affliction (we know not what, whether it was physical or moral) and he prayed three times for this 'thorn in the flesh, a messenger of Satan' to be removed. But God's answer was: 'My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.' (2 Cor 12:7-9) This led Paul to 'boast of my weaknesses, that the power of Christ may rest upon me ... for when I am weak, then I am strong.'
As Christians we can rejoice at our weakness, knowing that the steadfastness of God is the foundation on which our relationship with Him is built. Our whole lives are an exploration of His unchanging love. And to quote Paul again (Rom 8:19) 'nothing in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.'
The contrast is simple: in most religions the focus is on the rules, and there is a broad universality about them. In 'The Abolition of Man' C S Lewis listed the common agreement about the natural law (the Tao) recognised by nearly all of mankind. Buddhism has its well defined path to enlightenment, Hinduism has its doctrine of karma, and the Jewish and Islamic rules are well known, especially regarding diet and other everyday things. And there are some who want to represent Christianity as a set of rules to be followed, with 'pie in the sky when we die' as the prize to be earned.
This approach satisfies our natural sense of fair-play. By contrast Jesus told a story (Matt 20:1-16)about a man who went out to hire labourers, and agreed a day rate with them. Three hours later he saw that there will still some men not yet hired, so he told them to go and work in his vineyard too. Similarly more men were set to work six hours later, and even nine hours later. At the eleventh hour of the day, with just one hour left for work, he hired a final few. When the day was done he started paying off the men, beginning with those hired last. He paid these men a full day's wage, and those who had worked longer noticed this. The man paid each worker the same, and those who had worked the full day complained because they had received exactly the same as those who had worked much less. 'But I have paid you what we agreed,' the hirer said. 'I can do what I will with my own money. Do not criticise my generosity.'
In the Psalms we meet the Hebrew word, hesed, which explains all this. It is best translated as 'steadfast love' or 'unchanging love'. Read the whole of Psalm 89, which begins: 'I will sing of thy steadfast love, O Lord, for ever; with my mouth I will proclaim thy faithfulness to all generations.' Later the psalm speaks of the covenant God has made with David and his descendants, and we read: 'If his children forsake my law and do not walk according to my ordinances ... then I will punish their transgressions with the rod and their iniquity with scourges; but I will not remove from him my steadfast love, or be false to my faithfulness.' (translation is the RSV).
Legalism focuses on us and what we do. Grace focuses on God and who He is.
It was Jesus who taught us to approach God as our Father in Heaven. Although not all fathers on earth are perfect models of fatherhood, it is as a Perfect Father that we should approach God. He will not allow us to remain satisfied with anything less than perfection. He will not pass over our follies as if they did not matter, but above all else He is constant. His love is the given, the certain, the absolute and unchanging constant, that we can rely on. It is (to quote a well-loved hymn) the love that will not let us go.
We have our weaknesses and God knows about them and has an agenda for dealing with them. Paul had an affliction (we know not what, whether it was physical or moral) and he prayed three times for this 'thorn in the flesh, a messenger of Satan' to be removed. But God's answer was: 'My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.' (2 Cor 12:7-9) This led Paul to 'boast of my weaknesses, that the power of Christ may rest upon me ... for when I am weak, then I am strong.'
As Christians we can rejoice at our weakness, knowing that the steadfastness of God is the foundation on which our relationship with Him is built. Our whole lives are an exploration of His unchanging love. And to quote Paul again (Rom 8:19) 'nothing in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.'
More or Less
I was looking the other day in a Christian bookshop for a book on the subject of grace, and found one I really took to. The reason for my attraction to it was the first two lines on the back of the book:
There is nothing you can do to make God love you more.
There is nothing you can do to make God love you less.
The doctrine of grace is at the very heart of the Christian message. God has taken the initiative in our salvation, out of pure love for us, not because we have done anything to deserve it. Salvation is the gift He offers us, and by salvation is meant simply His kind of life. We can ignore this gift, or we can receive it with open arms and embrace it.
In the opening of each letter Paul wrote to his new converts around the Roman Empire he wishes them 'grace and peace' or (occasionally) 'grace, mercy, and peace'. And to the Ephesians he spelt out the doctrine of grace in very explicit terms: "But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions - it is by grace you have been saved. And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus. For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith - and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God - not by works, so that no one can boast." (Eph. 2:4-9). No one can boast. No one can say 'because I did this, or this, or this, God has saved me.'
There is nothing you can do to make God love you more. This is the message we celebrate every Christmas, when we remember the greatest gift God had at His disposal: His own Son, born into the weakness of human flesh, the total dependency of a little child.
Let us expand the thought a little. There is nothing I can do to make God love me more means that wherever I am, He loves me perfectly. I need no special building, no special intermediary, no special form of words, to bring me into a state whereby God can love me more. I cannot earn His love, or bargain for His love, or even deserve His love. It comes because He is love.
There is nothing I can do to make God love me less. This means that when I sin, and disappoint Him, and grieve Him, by what I do (or more likely fail to do), He is still there loving me no less. Jesus told the story of the father whose son took his share of the family property, then went off and wasted it all. The father was waiting for this son's return all the time, and when the son finally came to his senses, and returned confessing all, the response was simply 'prepare a feast, for my son was lost and is found, was dead and is alive again.' Thus God waits for us whenever we stray, and wherever we stray, and however we stray.
Any teaching that claims to tell us how we can make God love us more, what we must do to earn God's blessings, is a denial of what is central to the gospel Jesus preached, to the grace of God in His gift of salvation. Once restored into God's family, we do need to understand what sort of people He wants us to be. The pattern of Paul's letters was always first to proclaim the basis on which we have been saved, and then guidance on how to live the Christ-life that has been breathed into us. Our sins will grieve the Holy Spirit, sure enough, but God's willingness to forgive us is constant.
So this Christmas, amid all the present giving and receiving, remember the child in the crib:
God's gift to us
There is nothing you can do to make God love you more.
There is nothing you can do to make God love you less.
The doctrine of grace is at the very heart of the Christian message. God has taken the initiative in our salvation, out of pure love for us, not because we have done anything to deserve it. Salvation is the gift He offers us, and by salvation is meant simply His kind of life. We can ignore this gift, or we can receive it with open arms and embrace it.
In the opening of each letter Paul wrote to his new converts around the Roman Empire he wishes them 'grace and peace' or (occasionally) 'grace, mercy, and peace'. And to the Ephesians he spelt out the doctrine of grace in very explicit terms: "But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions - it is by grace you have been saved. And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus. For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith - and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God - not by works, so that no one can boast." (Eph. 2:4-9). No one can boast. No one can say 'because I did this, or this, or this, God has saved me.'
There is nothing you can do to make God love you more. This is the message we celebrate every Christmas, when we remember the greatest gift God had at His disposal: His own Son, born into the weakness of human flesh, the total dependency of a little child.
Let us expand the thought a little. There is nothing I can do to make God love me more means that wherever I am, He loves me perfectly. I need no special building, no special intermediary, no special form of words, to bring me into a state whereby God can love me more. I cannot earn His love, or bargain for His love, or even deserve His love. It comes because He is love.
There is nothing I can do to make God love me less. This means that when I sin, and disappoint Him, and grieve Him, by what I do (or more likely fail to do), He is still there loving me no less. Jesus told the story of the father whose son took his share of the family property, then went off and wasted it all. The father was waiting for this son's return all the time, and when the son finally came to his senses, and returned confessing all, the response was simply 'prepare a feast, for my son was lost and is found, was dead and is alive again.' Thus God waits for us whenever we stray, and wherever we stray, and however we stray.
Any teaching that claims to tell us how we can make God love us more, what we must do to earn God's blessings, is a denial of what is central to the gospel Jesus preached, to the grace of God in His gift of salvation. Once restored into God's family, we do need to understand what sort of people He wants us to be. The pattern of Paul's letters was always first to proclaim the basis on which we have been saved, and then guidance on how to live the Christ-life that has been breathed into us. Our sins will grieve the Holy Spirit, sure enough, but God's willingness to forgive us is constant.
So this Christmas, amid all the present giving and receiving, remember the child in the crib:
God's gift to us
The X-Factor
I have observed in myself (predominantly) and in many others whom I know well enough a principle of human nature.
We all have certain aptitudes, things which make us who we are. In fact what distinguishes one human from another is the range and diversity of aptitudes they have or lack. By 'aptitude' I mean any particularly strong personality trait, the area of human activity where, comparatively at least, we excel. In myself, for instance, I have noted a capacity to focus on a task or project. When younger, while computer programming (which I did for a living for a good number of years) I managed quite often to surprise myself by noting at three o'clock in the afternoon that having started at nine in the morning I had worked through without pausing, or even noticing the passing of my usual lunchtime. Let us call this an aptitude.
But with every aptitude there seems to be tacked on the capability of taking it to an extreme. The power of focus, taken to its extreme, becomes a tendency to ignore what should not be ignored, especially other people and their needs. I have noted this too in myself, and in my better moments regret this fault, which it certainly is. So the aptitude which could be thought of as good becomes a fault when the X-Factor (being taken to the extreme) intrudes.
There are many virtues like this. Concern for others is a great quality, which we all need, but it can be taken to an extreme, such that the person interferes and makes themselves a nuisance even.
Another type of X-Factor is when a person tends to use their good quality to exploit others. This is the temptation with every meritorious quality, that I use it more for my own benefit and end up finding myself not caring how much this may be exploitative.
A further type of X-Factor is when we do a particular kind of good, but only for a limited few. Here we are guilty of excluding a group of people, whether deliberately or unconsciously. It is another X-Factor that sullies any beautiful quality we may have if it intrudes.
So each of these three key concepts (extremeness, exploitation, and exclusion) adds a layer of blemish to what would otherwise be a worthy characteristic of our personality. And sometimes two or more of them can come in unison. The X-Factor can take every good quality we have and turn it into something less than beautiful, or even - at its worst - into something ugly.
We will never know how far we owe heredity or our upbringing for the qualities and aptitudes we detect in ourselves. Certainly it is some of both. Was Mozart the musical genius he was because of his father or in spite of his father? Each of us grapples with the fact that we are different from our parents, yet owe them so much, physically, emotionally, intellectually. And we are different from each other. It is no use us saying 'I want to be like so-and-so.' We have our own unique bundle of physical, emotional, and intellectual characteristics. Our task is to use what we have.
God knows that each of us is an individual, each with our unique bundles, and with each of our good qualities tarnished to some degree by the X-Factor. What is His plan?
I believe He does not intend that we should all end up the same, as if there were a model human being prototype to which we will all one day be conformed. He Himself has taken on human flesh, and He knows how easy it is for us to be diverted from the best our good qualities can produce. He was without sin Himself, but He knows what strong impulses there are towards letting the X-Factor spoil things for us. His agenda is for us to be set free from the X-Factor in ourselves, and so become more the person we have the capacity to be, not less. Yes, He wants us to be Christ-like, but I believe we will be so in a multitude of different ways, when God's perfect will for us has eventually been achieved.
Meanwhile, on the way in this life towards that destination, we have a duty to look at our character traits very objectively. They exist, first of all, and we do no good by suppressing them, or pretending they don't exist, let alone presuming that the X-Factor does not matter. I believe we must be true to ourselves and be the person we know we are. We will not get rid of the X-Factor simply by will-power. We need God's help. So we need to live our lives openly, allowing Him to see how far we really understand ourselves, and all the time allowing Him to shine His light on the totality of who we are. To hide away is foolish, as well as - ultimately - impossible.
We all have certain aptitudes, things which make us who we are. In fact what distinguishes one human from another is the range and diversity of aptitudes they have or lack. By 'aptitude' I mean any particularly strong personality trait, the area of human activity where, comparatively at least, we excel. In myself, for instance, I have noted a capacity to focus on a task or project. When younger, while computer programming (which I did for a living for a good number of years) I managed quite often to surprise myself by noting at three o'clock in the afternoon that having started at nine in the morning I had worked through without pausing, or even noticing the passing of my usual lunchtime. Let us call this an aptitude.
But with every aptitude there seems to be tacked on the capability of taking it to an extreme. The power of focus, taken to its extreme, becomes a tendency to ignore what should not be ignored, especially other people and their needs. I have noted this too in myself, and in my better moments regret this fault, which it certainly is. So the aptitude which could be thought of as good becomes a fault when the X-Factor (being taken to the extreme) intrudes.
There are many virtues like this. Concern for others is a great quality, which we all need, but it can be taken to an extreme, such that the person interferes and makes themselves a nuisance even.
Another type of X-Factor is when a person tends to use their good quality to exploit others. This is the temptation with every meritorious quality, that I use it more for my own benefit and end up finding myself not caring how much this may be exploitative.
A further type of X-Factor is when we do a particular kind of good, but only for a limited few. Here we are guilty of excluding a group of people, whether deliberately or unconsciously. It is another X-Factor that sullies any beautiful quality we may have if it intrudes.
So each of these three key concepts (extremeness, exploitation, and exclusion) adds a layer of blemish to what would otherwise be a worthy characteristic of our personality. And sometimes two or more of them can come in unison. The X-Factor can take every good quality we have and turn it into something less than beautiful, or even - at its worst - into something ugly.
We will never know how far we owe heredity or our upbringing for the qualities and aptitudes we detect in ourselves. Certainly it is some of both. Was Mozart the musical genius he was because of his father or in spite of his father? Each of us grapples with the fact that we are different from our parents, yet owe them so much, physically, emotionally, intellectually. And we are different from each other. It is no use us saying 'I want to be like so-and-so.' We have our own unique bundle of physical, emotional, and intellectual characteristics. Our task is to use what we have.
God knows that each of us is an individual, each with our unique bundles, and with each of our good qualities tarnished to some degree by the X-Factor. What is His plan?
I believe He does not intend that we should all end up the same, as if there were a model human being prototype to which we will all one day be conformed. He Himself has taken on human flesh, and He knows how easy it is for us to be diverted from the best our good qualities can produce. He was without sin Himself, but He knows what strong impulses there are towards letting the X-Factor spoil things for us. His agenda is for us to be set free from the X-Factor in ourselves, and so become more the person we have the capacity to be, not less. Yes, He wants us to be Christ-like, but I believe we will be so in a multitude of different ways, when God's perfect will for us has eventually been achieved.
Meanwhile, on the way in this life towards that destination, we have a duty to look at our character traits very objectively. They exist, first of all, and we do no good by suppressing them, or pretending they don't exist, let alone presuming that the X-Factor does not matter. I believe we must be true to ourselves and be the person we know we are. We will not get rid of the X-Factor simply by will-power. We need God's help. So we need to live our lives openly, allowing Him to see how far we really understand ourselves, and all the time allowing Him to shine His light on the totality of who we are. To hide away is foolish, as well as - ultimately - impossible.
The legacy of legalism
These thoughts are prompted by a correspondent who is emerging from a legalistic cult. This cult has very clear rules, not only in areas of morals, but also regarding everyday (non-alcoholic as well as alcoholic) drinks and clothing. These rules are applied as if they had divine origin, and the adherent must keep them in order to qualify for admission to the cult's temples. There is thereby an earthly sanction for failing as well as the implied eternal consequences of disobedience.
By contrast standard Christian ethics seem rather vague and imprecise. The New Testament does not prescribe any specific clothing to be worn, and give no list of drinks which may not be consumed. Instead we Christians have to interpret the precept that we love our neighbour as ourselves in all the myriad of daily circumstances in a society which operates rather differently from that of the first century. God's inner voice through the Holy Spirit is the moment by moment guide we have, but unless you are experiencing this, it is hard for this to be explained in mere words.
Within a legalistic framework there is a clearly understood pattern of cause and effect: keep the rules and you are 'in', break the rules and you are 'out'.
In a sense it all makes the same sort of sense that parents understand when they make rules for their young offspring. They set boundaries for their children when they are young because this is what young children need. Good parents want the children to grow up, and to reach the point when the principles behind these rigid boundaries are understood, and the children do not need the 'rules' any more because they naturally make right choices freely, having understood and accepted the reasoning behind the principles used to establish the 'rules' in the first place.
To a legalist it seems that Christians are lacking in morals, because they lack these same sort of rules as they have. But the reverse is true. Christians are supremely moral, because a morality based on love is the highest possible morality. But love goes beyond a set of rules defining 'loving' behaviour. Life is too full of unpredictable events for this to be remotely possible.
And what about the sanctions for failure? For a legalist the concepts of confession and forgiveness are equally difficult to comprehend. It seems to them almost as an invitation to sin, because all impending punishment (another legalistic term) can apparently be forestalled simply by asking to be forgiven. Paul addressed this problem in his letter to the Romans, chapter six. It is best to read the whole chapter to get the whole solution. As a Christian I have 'died to sin' (to use Paul's expression), and therefore am invited to 'offer myself to God'. As a Christian I now have the potential to say No to sin, and am promised that 'sin shall not be your master'.
This is where the deep contrast with legalism lies: Christianity promises power not to sin, and this goes beyond what legalism demands. Legalism says 'here are the rules - keep them or else.' Christ offers us His quality of life (zoe in Greek), which enables us to be what we could not be without Him. And, as the last verse of chapter six tells us, this zoe is a gift.
But to step forward into this new life in Christ, there is so much for a legalist to adjust to that it perhaps more challenging than if they had never lived by all the cult's rules beforehand; so much to unlearn; so many new concepts for someone who thought they were already pleasing God perfectly by keeping all the cult's rules.
I know Christ's love reaches out to my correspondent, just as when on earth He encountered so many who thought their own rules (every bit as detailed as those of any modern cult) were the way to God. He talked about these rules as a 'burden', a 'heavy load', and invited all who felt these burdens to come to Him, as the One who would set them free, and take all these burdens away. (Matt 11:28-30)
By contrast standard Christian ethics seem rather vague and imprecise. The New Testament does not prescribe any specific clothing to be worn, and give no list of drinks which may not be consumed. Instead we Christians have to interpret the precept that we love our neighbour as ourselves in all the myriad of daily circumstances in a society which operates rather differently from that of the first century. God's inner voice through the Holy Spirit is the moment by moment guide we have, but unless you are experiencing this, it is hard for this to be explained in mere words.
Within a legalistic framework there is a clearly understood pattern of cause and effect: keep the rules and you are 'in', break the rules and you are 'out'.
In a sense it all makes the same sort of sense that parents understand when they make rules for their young offspring. They set boundaries for their children when they are young because this is what young children need. Good parents want the children to grow up, and to reach the point when the principles behind these rigid boundaries are understood, and the children do not need the 'rules' any more because they naturally make right choices freely, having understood and accepted the reasoning behind the principles used to establish the 'rules' in the first place.
To a legalist it seems that Christians are lacking in morals, because they lack these same sort of rules as they have. But the reverse is true. Christians are supremely moral, because a morality based on love is the highest possible morality. But love goes beyond a set of rules defining 'loving' behaviour. Life is too full of unpredictable events for this to be remotely possible.
And what about the sanctions for failure? For a legalist the concepts of confession and forgiveness are equally difficult to comprehend. It seems to them almost as an invitation to sin, because all impending punishment (another legalistic term) can apparently be forestalled simply by asking to be forgiven. Paul addressed this problem in his letter to the Romans, chapter six. It is best to read the whole chapter to get the whole solution. As a Christian I have 'died to sin' (to use Paul's expression), and therefore am invited to 'offer myself to God'. As a Christian I now have the potential to say No to sin, and am promised that 'sin shall not be your master'.
This is where the deep contrast with legalism lies: Christianity promises power not to sin, and this goes beyond what legalism demands. Legalism says 'here are the rules - keep them or else.' Christ offers us His quality of life (zoe in Greek), which enables us to be what we could not be without Him. And, as the last verse of chapter six tells us, this zoe is a gift.
But to step forward into this new life in Christ, there is so much for a legalist to adjust to that it perhaps more challenging than if they had never lived by all the cult's rules beforehand; so much to unlearn; so many new concepts for someone who thought they were already pleasing God perfectly by keeping all the cult's rules.
I know Christ's love reaches out to my correspondent, just as when on earth He encountered so many who thought their own rules (every bit as detailed as those of any modern cult) were the way to God. He talked about these rules as a 'burden', a 'heavy load', and invited all who felt these burdens to come to Him, as the One who would set them free, and take all these burdens away. (Matt 11:28-30)
Rewards
I want to turn to a particular topic, rewards, and will begin with the definition of a reward from my dictionary: a reward is 'that which is given for good (sometimes evil), or in recognition of merit, or for performance of a service.'
What does the Bible, particularly the New Testament, have to say on this subject?
The first occurrence of the word comes in Matthew's gospel, from Jesus' Sermon in the Mount, where he says: "Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven ..." (Matt 5:12-13).
Great is your reward in heaven! Immediately we can see that heaven is not the reward itself, but the place where God's rewards will be received. In the next chapter the word comes again twice: "So when you give to the needy, do not announce it with trumpets, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and on the streets, to be honoured by men. I tell you the truth, they have received their reward in full. But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that giving may be in secret. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you." (Matt 6:2-4)
When Jesus sent out the Twelve preaching he said: "He who receives you receives me, and he who receives me receives the one who sent me. Anyone who receives a prophet because he is a prophet will receive a prophet's reward, and anyone who receives a righteous man because he is a righteous man will receive a righteous man's reward. And if anyone gives a cup of cold water to one of these little ones because he is my disciple, I tell you the truth, he will certainly not lose his reward." (Matt 10:40-42)
In contrast with rewards, which are given very much at the discretion of the giver, the New Testament also refers to wages. Wages are what we have earned by our own effort. Here is the most telling contrast between what is earned and what is given: "For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus or Lord." (Romans 6:23)
Paul talks about ministries, his own and those of others, in 1 Corinthians chapter 3, and concludes by saying of someone who minsters for God: "If what he has built survives, he will receive his reward. If it is burnt up, he will suffer loss; he himself will be saved, but only as one escaping through the flames." (1 Cor. 3:14-15)
It is clear that for all those who are saved there will be a reckoning; some will receive a greater reward, for their work stood the test, and some will receive less, for their work did not stand the test. But all who are saved are still saved.
What sort of things will be in any reward we who are saved may receive in heaven?
Almost certainly they will be beyond our current imagining. It would be foolish to suppose that the kind of things rewards in this life consist of, money, luxuries, bodily pleasures, are going to be dished out in heaven. In a parable Jesus told, where various servants were given different sums of money to use wisely on their master's behalf, when the master returned and each was invited to settle their accounts, the way in which those who had done well were praised reads: "Well done, good and faithful servant! You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things. Come and share your master's happiness!" (Matt 25:21)
I think this is the reward we may all hope for: the invitation to share our Lord's happiness. And if we have discharged responsibilities well in this life, it seems that possibly there will be commensurate responsibilities in the next life too. Responsibility as a reward. Now there's a thought.
What does the Bible, particularly the New Testament, have to say on this subject?
The first occurrence of the word comes in Matthew's gospel, from Jesus' Sermon in the Mount, where he says: "Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven ..." (Matt 5:12-13).
Great is your reward in heaven! Immediately we can see that heaven is not the reward itself, but the place where God's rewards will be received. In the next chapter the word comes again twice: "So when you give to the needy, do not announce it with trumpets, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and on the streets, to be honoured by men. I tell you the truth, they have received their reward in full. But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that giving may be in secret. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you." (Matt 6:2-4)
When Jesus sent out the Twelve preaching he said: "He who receives you receives me, and he who receives me receives the one who sent me. Anyone who receives a prophet because he is a prophet will receive a prophet's reward, and anyone who receives a righteous man because he is a righteous man will receive a righteous man's reward. And if anyone gives a cup of cold water to one of these little ones because he is my disciple, I tell you the truth, he will certainly not lose his reward." (Matt 10:40-42)
In contrast with rewards, which are given very much at the discretion of the giver, the New Testament also refers to wages. Wages are what we have earned by our own effort. Here is the most telling contrast between what is earned and what is given: "For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus or Lord." (Romans 6:23)
Paul talks about ministries, his own and those of others, in 1 Corinthians chapter 3, and concludes by saying of someone who minsters for God: "If what he has built survives, he will receive his reward. If it is burnt up, he will suffer loss; he himself will be saved, but only as one escaping through the flames." (1 Cor. 3:14-15)
It is clear that for all those who are saved there will be a reckoning; some will receive a greater reward, for their work stood the test, and some will receive less, for their work did not stand the test. But all who are saved are still saved.
What sort of things will be in any reward we who are saved may receive in heaven?
Almost certainly they will be beyond our current imagining. It would be foolish to suppose that the kind of things rewards in this life consist of, money, luxuries, bodily pleasures, are going to be dished out in heaven. In a parable Jesus told, where various servants were given different sums of money to use wisely on their master's behalf, when the master returned and each was invited to settle their accounts, the way in which those who had done well were praised reads: "Well done, good and faithful servant! You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things. Come and share your master's happiness!" (Matt 25:21)
I think this is the reward we may all hope for: the invitation to share our Lord's happiness. And if we have discharged responsibilities well in this life, it seems that possibly there will be commensurate responsibilities in the next life too. Responsibility as a reward. Now there's a thought.
The problem with words
I have been talking with some one about 'our Heavenly Father' and you would think this would be edifying and helpful. But there is a problem. It is not an obvious one either. You see, we each have quite separate concepts, and this difference might never be discovered. In our case, though, it has been.
So I have felt challenged to express in simple words what Christians believe about God.
The authority for describing God as 'our Heavenly Father' comes directly from Jesus. He gave this pattern for prayer:
'Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.' (Matthew 6:9-13, using the New International Version translation)
So Christians pray to God, the Creator of everything, as 'our Father in heaven', our heavenly Father, because Jesus taught us to. But Jesus taught also as follows, in a conversation with a Samaritan lady about which was the correct place to worship God: ' ... a time is coming and has now come when the true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshippers the Father seeks. God is spirit, and his worshippers must worship in spirit and in truth.' (John 4:23-24, also NIV - but emphasis mine)
The nearest we get to knowing God's name in the Old Testament is the occasion when Moses was commissioned by God to lead His people out of their enslavement in Egypt. Moses asked (quite reasonably) 'Suppose I go to the Israelites and say to them, the God of your fathers has sent me to you, and they ask, "What is his name?" Then what shall I tell them?'
He got this reply: 'I am who I am. This is what you are to say to the Israelites: "I AM has sent me to you."' (Exodus 3:13-14)
Above every other description we could ever hope might help us understand who God is (for this is what a 'name' is) we are taken back to this simple, yet profound, thought. God simply is. Words cannot do him justice, they will always be less than the whole truth. As Isaiah was moved to proclaim: 'For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord. As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.' (Isaiah 55:8-9)
This transcendence of God, who is the source of everything physical and so beyond everything that is physical, would cut us off from Him, were it not for the incarnation of His Son, God in human form. 'The word was with God, the word was God, everything was made through him ... the word became flesh and lived for a while among us' as John tells us in the opening of his gospel. Which is why Jesus could say: 'I and the Father are one.' (John 10:30), and when asked by Philip to 'show us the Father, and that will be enough for us', replied: 'Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say "Show us the Father"? Don't you believe that I am in the Father, and that the Father is in me?' (John 14:8-10).
We who are physical, who have bodies, needed the physical to help us perceive the One who is spirit, who is beyond the physical. But we must always remember that this time of the Son's physical life was intended to be swallowed up in something beyond physicality. It was only 'for a while'. We now have the risen Lord. So Paul reminds us to keep focused '... not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.' (2 Corinthians 4:18)
So we are no nearer having a description of God; no adequate 'names'. But some help is offered with human ideas, especially that of the most perfect father any human could ever be, and the knowledge that the source of all being (the word) 'became flesh and lived for a while among us.' Those of us who wish to have a picture in our mind of 'the Father' must look to the Son. We know nothing of the physical appearance of Jesus, nor can we ever. The gospels do not even mention his height, his weight, the colour of his hair or eyes, nothing. But all his actions and all his words, they speak volumes to us about the very Father He taught us to address like children.
So I have felt challenged to express in simple words what Christians believe about God.
The authority for describing God as 'our Heavenly Father' comes directly from Jesus. He gave this pattern for prayer:
'Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.' (Matthew 6:9-13, using the New International Version translation)
So Christians pray to God, the Creator of everything, as 'our Father in heaven', our heavenly Father, because Jesus taught us to. But Jesus taught also as follows, in a conversation with a Samaritan lady about which was the correct place to worship God: ' ... a time is coming and has now come when the true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshippers the Father seeks. God is spirit, and his worshippers must worship in spirit and in truth.' (John 4:23-24, also NIV - but emphasis mine)
The nearest we get to knowing God's name in the Old Testament is the occasion when Moses was commissioned by God to lead His people out of their enslavement in Egypt. Moses asked (quite reasonably) 'Suppose I go to the Israelites and say to them, the God of your fathers has sent me to you, and they ask, "What is his name?" Then what shall I tell them?'
He got this reply: 'I am who I am. This is what you are to say to the Israelites: "I AM has sent me to you."' (Exodus 3:13-14)
Above every other description we could ever hope might help us understand who God is (for this is what a 'name' is) we are taken back to this simple, yet profound, thought. God simply is. Words cannot do him justice, they will always be less than the whole truth. As Isaiah was moved to proclaim: 'For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord. As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.' (Isaiah 55:8-9)
This transcendence of God, who is the source of everything physical and so beyond everything that is physical, would cut us off from Him, were it not for the incarnation of His Son, God in human form. 'The word was with God, the word was God, everything was made through him ... the word became flesh and lived for a while among us' as John tells us in the opening of his gospel. Which is why Jesus could say: 'I and the Father are one.' (John 10:30), and when asked by Philip to 'show us the Father, and that will be enough for us', replied: 'Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say "Show us the Father"? Don't you believe that I am in the Father, and that the Father is in me?' (John 14:8-10).
We who are physical, who have bodies, needed the physical to help us perceive the One who is spirit, who is beyond the physical. But we must always remember that this time of the Son's physical life was intended to be swallowed up in something beyond physicality. It was only 'for a while'. We now have the risen Lord. So Paul reminds us to keep focused '... not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.' (2 Corinthians 4:18)
So we are no nearer having a description of God; no adequate 'names'. But some help is offered with human ideas, especially that of the most perfect father any human could ever be, and the knowledge that the source of all being (the word) 'became flesh and lived for a while among us.' Those of us who wish to have a picture in our mind of 'the Father' must look to the Son. We know nothing of the physical appearance of Jesus, nor can we ever. The gospels do not even mention his height, his weight, the colour of his hair or eyes, nothing. But all his actions and all his words, they speak volumes to us about the very Father He taught us to address like children.
Love
February is the month of St Valentine, when the word love is used in a particular way. English is an impoverished language compared with some, especially the language (Greek) in which the New Testament was written. Here there are four separate ideas, all of which get to be translated as 'love' in English. If you want to pursue research here, a good place to start is 'The Four Loves' by C. S. Lewis.
Even the word 'testament', as in 'new testament', is an archaic word we are stuck with, and it would be better to refer to the 'new covenant'. The old covenant was the one God had made with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and the legal side of it was enshrined in the Law of Moses, especially the ten commandments.
But God had promised His people a new covenant (Jeremiah 31:31-34).
The old covenant had hundreds of laws, with major moral principles, instructions on worship, and details about diet and clothing and a whole lot else to regulate communal life in an initially nomadic society. The new covenant would be quite different. People would know what God wanted from within.
The old covenant had priests who would be intermediaries between the people and God. The new covenant would need no intermediaries, because every one would have direct access to God.
The old covenant had sacrifices for sin repeated over and over again. The new covenant would deal with sin completely, so that no more sacrifices would be needed.
Jesus declared at the Last Supper that His death was inaugurating the new covenant. He also gave them a new commandment: love one another as I have loved you. When asked by the legal experts of the day what was the greatest commandment He answered: Love God with all your heart, soul and mind; and love your neighbour as yourself.
So the new covenant is a break with the legalism of the old. The good news is that Jesus Christ has died for my sin, and now lives within me through the Holy Spirit to transform my character, and fill me with love. Love is the only thing that matters. The new covenant specifies no special ceremonies, no special places, no special diet, no special clothing, and as for priests, we Christians are all priests now, bringing God to those who do not yet know Him. But all through love. Whatever is done without love is worthless.
Paul knew this and wrote as follows about love (1 Corinthians 13).
There is no better definition of love than that given by Paul here:
Patient
Kind
Not envious
Not boastful
Not proud
Not rude
Not selfish
Not irritable
Not revengeful
Not prurient
Truthful
Protective
Trusting
Optimistic
Persevering
This is why, when Paul lists the fruits of the Spirit, his list begins with love: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control (Galatians 5:22-23). All these are the fruit (the natural by-product) of the Holy Spirit dwelling in some one who has given their heart to God through Jesus.
This is God's agenda for each one of us. Each of us, in very different ways of course, through God's Holy Spirit, is having our character moulded to become full of these qualities. At the beginning of each day we hardly need to ask 'what, with God's help, shall I do?'. It is enough to ask 'what, with God's help, shall I be?'
Even the word 'testament', as in 'new testament', is an archaic word we are stuck with, and it would be better to refer to the 'new covenant'. The old covenant was the one God had made with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and the legal side of it was enshrined in the Law of Moses, especially the ten commandments.
But God had promised His people a new covenant (Jeremiah 31:31-34).
"The time is coming," declares the Lord ,
"when I will make a new covenant
with the house of Israel
and with the house of Judah.
It will not be like the covenant
I made with their forefathers
when I took them by the hand
to lead them out of Egypt,
because they broke my covenant,
though I was a husband to them,"
declares the Lord .
"This is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel after that time," declares the Lord .
"I will put my law in their minds
and write it on their hearts.
I will be their God,
and they will be my people.
No longer will a man teach his neighbour,
or a man his brother, saying, 'Know the Lord ,'
because they will all know me,
from the least of them to the greatest,"
declares the Lord .
"For I will forgive their wickedness
and will remember their sins no more."
The old covenant had hundreds of laws, with major moral principles, instructions on worship, and details about diet and clothing and a whole lot else to regulate communal life in an initially nomadic society. The new covenant would be quite different. People would know what God wanted from within.
The old covenant had priests who would be intermediaries between the people and God. The new covenant would need no intermediaries, because every one would have direct access to God.
The old covenant had sacrifices for sin repeated over and over again. The new covenant would deal with sin completely, so that no more sacrifices would be needed.
Jesus declared at the Last Supper that His death was inaugurating the new covenant. He also gave them a new commandment: love one another as I have loved you. When asked by the legal experts of the day what was the greatest commandment He answered: Love God with all your heart, soul and mind; and love your neighbour as yourself.
So the new covenant is a break with the legalism of the old. The good news is that Jesus Christ has died for my sin, and now lives within me through the Holy Spirit to transform my character, and fill me with love. Love is the only thing that matters. The new covenant specifies no special ceremonies, no special places, no special diet, no special clothing, and as for priests, we Christians are all priests now, bringing God to those who do not yet know Him. But all through love. Whatever is done without love is worthless.
Paul knew this and wrote as follows about love (1 Corinthians 13).
If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing.
Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when perfection comes, the imperfect disappears. When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me. Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.
And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.
There is no better definition of love than that given by Paul here:
Patient
Kind
Not envious
Not boastful
Not proud
Not rude
Not selfish
Not irritable
Not revengeful
Not prurient
Truthful
Protective
Trusting
Optimistic
Persevering
This is why, when Paul lists the fruits of the Spirit, his list begins with love: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control (Galatians 5:22-23). All these are the fruit (the natural by-product) of the Holy Spirit dwelling in some one who has given their heart to God through Jesus.
This is God's agenda for each one of us. Each of us, in very different ways of course, through God's Holy Spirit, is having our character moulded to become full of these qualities. At the beginning of each day we hardly need to ask 'what, with God's help, shall I do?'. It is enough to ask 'what, with God's help, shall I be?'
The big problem
I have been discussing with a correspondent what I have chosen to call 'the big problem'. If God is good, why does He allow evil? In the case of my correspondent, the question boils down to: "If He loves me, why did He allow ... to happen? Why did He not stop it?" The omitted detail refers to some actions taken by another person against her when she was young and vulnerable.
There are some interesting assumptions behind this sort of question, and these assumptions are at the heart of every legalistic religion, whether Eastern religions which believe in reincarnation, or Judaism (for instance) which does not. The assumption made was very common at the time of Jesus, and is one He often challenged. The assumption is that good fortune (riches, good health, success) are a reward, and that suffering and misfortune are a punishment.
Legalism teaches that all good things have to be earned by obedience to the rules applying, and in Hinduism (to put it very simply) there is karma which ensures that a good life is rewarded by a higher status in the next, and that a wicked life is punished by a lower status - not necessarily human - in the next. The corollary of this is that if you are a rich man, you must be very virtuous and your virtue is being rewarded by this prosperity you enjoy, and conversely if you are suffering misfortune this is a punishment for some previous sin, or a sign of divine disfavour.
So Jesus told a story about a rich man enjoying great prosperity, and a beggar with great suffering. Here is the account:
This story raises many issues. For instance we are not told why Lazarus was taken to Abraham's presence. I do not think we can conclude that it was simply because he was poor. We do not know why the rich man was in hell (the Greek word here is actually 'Hades'), but we may believe it might have a lot to do with what he didn't do - it was only his dogs who seemed to care about the beggar at his gate. There is much left out of the story.
But one thing at least is clear. The rich man was not enjoying God's approval, and eventually knew it, and feared his brothers were in the same condition. Notice he is not named, while we are told the beggar's name, Lazarus. The rich man is on the way to oblivion, Lazarus to a fuller identity than he enjoyed on this earth. His name matters. It is a colloquial form of Eleazar, which means 'God has helped'.
The story also refers to an impassable boundary ('a great chasm'). This is a key, I think. There are boundaries that are impassable, even for God. He has made us 'in His own image', like Himself. So we have choices, else we are no longer human. God can only deal with us on this basis. He cannot turn us into robots. This applies not just to me, but to everyone who has the power to hurt me. If I ask for God's protection, He is limited to what he can do. If a man attacks me with an axe, God cannot freeze that attacker in the middle of the blow; my attacker is human too. There are many who suffer for no fault of their own - one only has to think of the Holocaust that came upon the nation God had made a special covenant with. Their cry of 'why?' is understandable.
God's answer includes two elements: the first is that He shares all human sorrow and suffering - it hurts Him too; and the second is simply this: He too suffered innocently, on the cross, two thousand years ago. Whatever you or I suffer, He has suffered worse.
There are some interesting assumptions behind this sort of question, and these assumptions are at the heart of every legalistic religion, whether Eastern religions which believe in reincarnation, or Judaism (for instance) which does not. The assumption made was very common at the time of Jesus, and is one He often challenged. The assumption is that good fortune (riches, good health, success) are a reward, and that suffering and misfortune are a punishment.
Legalism teaches that all good things have to be earned by obedience to the rules applying, and in Hinduism (to put it very simply) there is karma which ensures that a good life is rewarded by a higher status in the next, and that a wicked life is punished by a lower status - not necessarily human - in the next. The corollary of this is that if you are a rich man, you must be very virtuous and your virtue is being rewarded by this prosperity you enjoy, and conversely if you are suffering misfortune this is a punishment for some previous sin, or a sign of divine disfavour.
So Jesus told a story about a rich man enjoying great prosperity, and a beggar with great suffering. Here is the account:
"There was a rich man who was dressed in purple and fine linen and lived in luxury every day. At his gate was laid a beggar named Lazarus, covered with sores and longing to eat what fell from the rich man's table. Even the dogs came and licked his sores.
"The time came when the beggar died and the angels carried him to Abraham's side. The rich man also died and was buried. In hell, where he was in torment, he looked up and saw Abraham far away, with Lazarus by his side. So he called to him, 'Father Abraham, have pity on me and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue, because I am in agony in this fire.'
"But Abraham replied, 'Son, remember that in your lifetime you received your good things, while Lazarus received bad things, but now he is comforted here and you are in agony. And besides all this, between us and you a great chasm has been fixed, so that those who want to go from here to you cannot, nor can anyone cross over from there to us.'
"He answered, 'Then I beg you, father, send Lazarus to my father's house, for I have five brothers. Let him warn them, so that they will not also come to this place of torment.'
"Abraham replied, 'They have Moses and the Prophets; let them listen to them.'
" 'No, father Abraham,' he said, 'but if someone from the dead goes to them, they will repent.'
"He said to him, 'If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, they will not be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.' "
This story raises many issues. For instance we are not told why Lazarus was taken to Abraham's presence. I do not think we can conclude that it was simply because he was poor. We do not know why the rich man was in hell (the Greek word here is actually 'Hades'), but we may believe it might have a lot to do with what he didn't do - it was only his dogs who seemed to care about the beggar at his gate. There is much left out of the story.
But one thing at least is clear. The rich man was not enjoying God's approval, and eventually knew it, and feared his brothers were in the same condition. Notice he is not named, while we are told the beggar's name, Lazarus. The rich man is on the way to oblivion, Lazarus to a fuller identity than he enjoyed on this earth. His name matters. It is a colloquial form of Eleazar, which means 'God has helped'.
The story also refers to an impassable boundary ('a great chasm'). This is a key, I think. There are boundaries that are impassable, even for God. He has made us 'in His own image', like Himself. So we have choices, else we are no longer human. God can only deal with us on this basis. He cannot turn us into robots. This applies not just to me, but to everyone who has the power to hurt me. If I ask for God's protection, He is limited to what he can do. If a man attacks me with an axe, God cannot freeze that attacker in the middle of the blow; my attacker is human too. There are many who suffer for no fault of their own - one only has to think of the Holocaust that came upon the nation God had made a special covenant with. Their cry of 'why?' is understandable.
God's answer includes two elements: the first is that He shares all human sorrow and suffering - it hurts Him too; and the second is simply this: He too suffered innocently, on the cross, two thousand years ago. Whatever you or I suffer, He has suffered worse.
Obedience
Obedience is about as unpopular a word as one can find. How politically correct it is these days to emphasise that children should be taught to question everything and how far are they from being simply taught obedience instead.
We can seek an explanation for this in all the tyrannies there ever have been depending on mindless obedience (often only of a few). How easy to excuse brutality by saying that one was only carrying out orders, an excuse that will not be accepted by the victors in any conflict.
So obedience is understandably suspected, and shunned.
And this is to be regretted if it leads us away from a great good. At the heart of the Ten Commandments is the command that we honour our parents, and when young this means obeying them, and those who stand in their place. Paul is quite explicit in his letter to the Ephesians: "Wives, submit to your husbands ... Children, obey your parents .. Slaves, obey your earthly masters." But he says this by way of giving examples of the general principle (Eph. 5:21) "Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ."
Dare we examine these thoughts, and not dismiss them as wholly out of date?
Suppose instead of 'submit' or 'obey' we had the word 'trust'. Then it would sound all right (wouldn't it?) for wives to trust their husbands, children to trust their parents, and employees to trust their employers. For the corollary would also be in place: that husbands, parents, and employers should be trustworthy.
I have been an employer (a hirer and firer), and still am a husband and a father. I have felt all along that part of my being a Christian husband, father, and employer has been to be trustworthy - to be everything a good, kind, generous, reliable, responsive, understanding, husband, father, and employer should be.
Once trust is in place, obedience follows naturally. Imagine you are lost in a strange city; you ask a perfect stranger for directions to the station; he says "walk along in that direction, take the second left, then the first right." You trust the stranger, so you obey his directions.
We need to live in a community where trust comes naturally. Yes, it will make us vulnerable from time to time, and we must not be naive. We must warn our children of situations where trust of strangers is too dangerous.
But deep down we all want to live in such a society where trust is the cornerstone of all important relationships. If we invite obedience from any one we must be committing ourselves to be totally trustworthy. Trust is the key. It is no small thing to be trustworthy, but it is vital to others, and ultimately to ourselves too.
We can seek an explanation for this in all the tyrannies there ever have been depending on mindless obedience (often only of a few). How easy to excuse brutality by saying that one was only carrying out orders, an excuse that will not be accepted by the victors in any conflict.
So obedience is understandably suspected, and shunned.
And this is to be regretted if it leads us away from a great good. At the heart of the Ten Commandments is the command that we honour our parents, and when young this means obeying them, and those who stand in their place. Paul is quite explicit in his letter to the Ephesians: "Wives, submit to your husbands ... Children, obey your parents .. Slaves, obey your earthly masters." But he says this by way of giving examples of the general principle (Eph. 5:21) "Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ."
Dare we examine these thoughts, and not dismiss them as wholly out of date?
Suppose instead of 'submit' or 'obey' we had the word 'trust'. Then it would sound all right (wouldn't it?) for wives to trust their husbands, children to trust their parents, and employees to trust their employers. For the corollary would also be in place: that husbands, parents, and employers should be trustworthy.
I have been an employer (a hirer and firer), and still am a husband and a father. I have felt all along that part of my being a Christian husband, father, and employer has been to be trustworthy - to be everything a good, kind, generous, reliable, responsive, understanding, husband, father, and employer should be.
Once trust is in place, obedience follows naturally. Imagine you are lost in a strange city; you ask a perfect stranger for directions to the station; he says "walk along in that direction, take the second left, then the first right." You trust the stranger, so you obey his directions.
We need to live in a community where trust comes naturally. Yes, it will make us vulnerable from time to time, and we must not be naive. We must warn our children of situations where trust of strangers is too dangerous.
But deep down we all want to live in such a society where trust is the cornerstone of all important relationships. If we invite obedience from any one we must be committing ourselves to be totally trustworthy. Trust is the key. It is no small thing to be trustworthy, but it is vital to others, and ultimately to ourselves too.
Choices
I have been thinking about choices recently. Every day we take a myriad of decisions. It is what makes us human. We classify the animal kingdom in terms of choices: the higher the quality of choices that a creature makes, the higher we rate that animal. Our pets are all animals that make choices, and the greater any animal's capacity for choices, the more likely we are to consider it suitable to be a pet. It is more 'human', more like us, more suitable as a companion, on this basis alone.
We believe in moral responsibility, accountability, because we believe the choices we make are real. If we were just automata, marionettes on the ends of strings, mere puppets, we could not believe in 'judgment', to use a theological term, because the puppet-master alone could be judged.
We believe in judgment because we believe that our actions are free choices we make, but we must not take this idea too far.
First, our choices are limited by what is available. We in the West live in a society rich in choices. We choose food, we choose activities, careers, partners, hobbies, from a vast range of possible options. But there are other societies, where such a range of choices is out of the question. In some societies there is virtually no choice of what to eat, what to do, whether to marry or not, whether to have children or not, how to bring up one's offspring. The range of options is pitifully small, circumscribed by climate, culture, and other immovable obstacles to choice.
Second, our choices are limited by factors we are not responsible for. Very often the most significant of these are things others did to us, or for us, when we were young and dependent on them. Their choices have left me a different person from what I might have been had they acted otherwise. Different, for better or for worse. A good teacher is one who looks for the 'better', while an abuser cares not what effect their actions may have on their victims. And each of us in adult life is the person we are, to a certain extent, because of what others have done, or not done, over which we had no control.
You remember the account (it is in John's Gospel, chapter 8, verses 1 to 11) of how the religious leaders brought to Jesus a woman caught in adultery, and demanded he approve that the official punishment of stoning to death be carried out. Jesus was at first silent, and began writing words on the ground in the sand. When they insisted on an answer, he said, 'Let him who is without sin among you cast the first stone,' and resumed his writing. Then each, from the eldest to the youngest, slunk away, leaving only the woman and Jesus. 'Has no-one condemned you?' Jesus asked. 'No-one, sir,' she replied. 'Then neither do I condemn you. Go, and sin no more.'
Was this woman the local prostitute? Had all the accusers been at some point her clients? What choices did the woman have, in a society where a woman needed the protection of either a father or a husband? We shall never know. But what really interests me are the final words Jesus said to her: 'Go, and sin no more.' Was this more than a pious instruction? Was it an empowering? Was Jesus giving to her the ability to sin no more?
I think this has to be what we must all hope for. If God's forgiveness of my sins is to make any real difference in my life, it has to be that I am strengthened to 'sin no more', for surely He will not command what I am unable to perform. And when I ask His forgiveness, it is something less than real unless I am also asking for His empowering command. And in this prayer I am asking for the widening of my choices, for the power to make the right choices, and so become more truly human.
We believe in moral responsibility, accountability, because we believe the choices we make are real. If we were just automata, marionettes on the ends of strings, mere puppets, we could not believe in 'judgment', to use a theological term, because the puppet-master alone could be judged.
We believe in judgment because we believe that our actions are free choices we make, but we must not take this idea too far.
First, our choices are limited by what is available. We in the West live in a society rich in choices. We choose food, we choose activities, careers, partners, hobbies, from a vast range of possible options. But there are other societies, where such a range of choices is out of the question. In some societies there is virtually no choice of what to eat, what to do, whether to marry or not, whether to have children or not, how to bring up one's offspring. The range of options is pitifully small, circumscribed by climate, culture, and other immovable obstacles to choice.
Second, our choices are limited by factors we are not responsible for. Very often the most significant of these are things others did to us, or for us, when we were young and dependent on them. Their choices have left me a different person from what I might have been had they acted otherwise. Different, for better or for worse. A good teacher is one who looks for the 'better', while an abuser cares not what effect their actions may have on their victims. And each of us in adult life is the person we are, to a certain extent, because of what others have done, or not done, over which we had no control.
You remember the account (it is in John's Gospel, chapter 8, verses 1 to 11) of how the religious leaders brought to Jesus a woman caught in adultery, and demanded he approve that the official punishment of stoning to death be carried out. Jesus was at first silent, and began writing words on the ground in the sand. When they insisted on an answer, he said, 'Let him who is without sin among you cast the first stone,' and resumed his writing. Then each, from the eldest to the youngest, slunk away, leaving only the woman and Jesus. 'Has no-one condemned you?' Jesus asked. 'No-one, sir,' she replied. 'Then neither do I condemn you. Go, and sin no more.'
Was this woman the local prostitute? Had all the accusers been at some point her clients? What choices did the woman have, in a society where a woman needed the protection of either a father or a husband? We shall never know. But what really interests me are the final words Jesus said to her: 'Go, and sin no more.' Was this more than a pious instruction? Was it an empowering? Was Jesus giving to her the ability to sin no more?
I think this has to be what we must all hope for. If God's forgiveness of my sins is to make any real difference in my life, it has to be that I am strengthened to 'sin no more', for surely He will not command what I am unable to perform. And when I ask His forgiveness, it is something less than real unless I am also asking for His empowering command. And in this prayer I am asking for the widening of my choices, for the power to make the right choices, and so become more truly human.
The meaning of Salvation
Salvation in the religious sense is a widely used term. Each religion defines it differently, however. Hinduism and Buddhism define it as an escape from the endless cycle of birth-death-rebirth into union with the universal, impersonal, Absolute. The Hindu word is 'samsara' (Sanskrit for 'migration') and the Buddhist word is 'nirvana' (Sanskrit for 'blowing out'). This hoped for merging of the self into the Universal One would be an end of self-consciousness, an ultimate release into oblivion.
The great monotheistic religions, by contrast, promise not an escape from existence but an escape into existence, not an end to the individual's self, but an enhancement of it.
Of course both opposing views can easily be belittled and parodied. The classic parody of the Christian view of Heaven is to call it 'pie in the sky when you die'. It is easy to suppose that Christians believe that they (and only they) are going to be rewarded, and the rest punished with eternal fire in a place called Hell. An even worse parody is for one group of Christians (whom others will refer to as a sect) to suppose that membership of their particular group is an essential, and that all other flavours of Christianity are condemned to eternal perdition simply for having failed to join the right group.
So salvation is an important doctrine, and understanding what the Bible teaches about it is essential if we are to avoid the distortions that will prevent us from responding to the Good News of the gospel.
The root of the word comes from the Latin for health, so the metaphor we are using with the word 'salvation' is illness and healing. What sickness are we in need of being healed from? The Bible throughout has a simple but unpopular word for it: sin. We are fallen from the high place God intended for the human race, and now suffer from a tendency to do evil things. Those who are most aware of this are also most aware of how difficult it is to combat this tendency in one's own strength. Such people long for a transformation deep within that will enable them to desire better things, and to have the power to do those better things too.
The transformation we need is so total that a good metaphor for it is 'new birth'. As Jesus said to a leading man of his day, Nicodemus, 'I tell you the truth, unless a man is born again he cannot see the Kingdom of God.' And the footnote to this verse (John 3:3) adds a possible alternative translation as 'born from above'. We need the birth from the womb ('born of water') and also the birth of the Spirit. John 3:8 'Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit.'
Christianity is unique at this point. It describes two kinds of 'life': there is 'bios' (simply being alive in the way all animals are) and there is 'zoe' (eternal life). Zoe is a new quality of life, much more than a biological life with no physical death to follow. When Christians talk about eternal life they are not thinking in temporal terms (how long? for ever). Rather they are thinking qualitatively (what sort? of the spirit).
It is also important to think of salvation as having three tenses. Christians find themselves saying: 'I have been saved', 'I am being saved', and 'I will be saved.' It may seem confusing, but all three tenses are right.
In the first instance (the past tense) we are looking at God's intervention through Jesus Christ, who died for us. In the second (the continuous present) we are thinking of the Spirit of God beginning the transforming process that enables us to start to share in the character of Jesus Christ. In the future tense we are thinking of the promise that the death of our physical bodies will not be the end of us, but that we will share in the resurrection of Christ, and we too will rise to live with Him where He is now.
The key thing to avoid is any mechanistic view of salvation, as if there were some formula, do this and you will be saved. If a Christian thinks he is being saved by receiving communion he is much mistaken. Communion is the symbolic remembrance that Christ's body was broken, Christ's blood shed, for us. Wearing a Victoria Cross medal does not make any one brave. The medal commemorates the bravery that has already been demonstrated. Wearing a golf club's badge on one's blazer does not make one a member of that club. Being a member entitles one to wear the badge. This principle is true of all the 'badges' there are. Christians call the badges sacraments. Baptism is an important badge, but the reality it is symbolising is what matters. The symbol (as Paul explains in Romans 6) is of dying with Christ, being buried (submerged under water) with Christ, and then arising with Him, as He rose from the dead. Unless there is a real union with Christ, both in His death and in His resurrection, any amount of water (or bread and wine) and any amount of special words uttered by people supposedly authorised to utter them, will be much the same as pinning a badge on a tailor's dummy. It will be no more than decoration.
Salvation is not a lottery prize which God decides to give some, but not others. Nor is it a reward awarded to the good but withheld from the bad. And thank goodness for that. Which of us dares hope to be good enough to deserve it?
Salvation is the healing of our sickness, the transforming of our total being, and is a process which we are either experiencing or not. My guess is that most folk who are experiencing it are as frustrated as I am that I seem to be responding so poorly, and the progress (through my own fault) is so slow. How I long for the better things. How frequently I fall in the mud and get dirty, like a child.
Salvation began at a point of time in history, in a particular place, because 'God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.' (John 3:16) It continues in the here and now, as we open our hearts to the Saviour to be filled with his Holy Spirit. And we think of the future, beyond the grave, when we shall be like Him, having shared in His resurrection. We long for this, knowing how much better it will be. But the life we live now, frustrating as it is, is the arena where we fight the battles we are called to fight, and ask God to be patient with our failings.
The great monotheistic religions, by contrast, promise not an escape from existence but an escape into existence, not an end to the individual's self, but an enhancement of it.
Of course both opposing views can easily be belittled and parodied. The classic parody of the Christian view of Heaven is to call it 'pie in the sky when you die'. It is easy to suppose that Christians believe that they (and only they) are going to be rewarded, and the rest punished with eternal fire in a place called Hell. An even worse parody is for one group of Christians (whom others will refer to as a sect) to suppose that membership of their particular group is an essential, and that all other flavours of Christianity are condemned to eternal perdition simply for having failed to join the right group.
So salvation is an important doctrine, and understanding what the Bible teaches about it is essential if we are to avoid the distortions that will prevent us from responding to the Good News of the gospel.
The root of the word comes from the Latin for health, so the metaphor we are using with the word 'salvation' is illness and healing. What sickness are we in need of being healed from? The Bible throughout has a simple but unpopular word for it: sin. We are fallen from the high place God intended for the human race, and now suffer from a tendency to do evil things. Those who are most aware of this are also most aware of how difficult it is to combat this tendency in one's own strength. Such people long for a transformation deep within that will enable them to desire better things, and to have the power to do those better things too.
The transformation we need is so total that a good metaphor for it is 'new birth'. As Jesus said to a leading man of his day, Nicodemus, 'I tell you the truth, unless a man is born again he cannot see the Kingdom of God.' And the footnote to this verse (John 3:3) adds a possible alternative translation as 'born from above'. We need the birth from the womb ('born of water') and also the birth of the Spirit. John 3:8 'Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit.'
Christianity is unique at this point. It describes two kinds of 'life': there is 'bios' (simply being alive in the way all animals are) and there is 'zoe' (eternal life). Zoe is a new quality of life, much more than a biological life with no physical death to follow. When Christians talk about eternal life they are not thinking in temporal terms (how long? for ever). Rather they are thinking qualitatively (what sort? of the spirit).
It is also important to think of salvation as having three tenses. Christians find themselves saying: 'I have been saved', 'I am being saved', and 'I will be saved.' It may seem confusing, but all three tenses are right.
In the first instance (the past tense) we are looking at God's intervention through Jesus Christ, who died for us. In the second (the continuous present) we are thinking of the Spirit of God beginning the transforming process that enables us to start to share in the character of Jesus Christ. In the future tense we are thinking of the promise that the death of our physical bodies will not be the end of us, but that we will share in the resurrection of Christ, and we too will rise to live with Him where He is now.
The key thing to avoid is any mechanistic view of salvation, as if there were some formula, do this and you will be saved. If a Christian thinks he is being saved by receiving communion he is much mistaken. Communion is the symbolic remembrance that Christ's body was broken, Christ's blood shed, for us. Wearing a Victoria Cross medal does not make any one brave. The medal commemorates the bravery that has already been demonstrated. Wearing a golf club's badge on one's blazer does not make one a member of that club. Being a member entitles one to wear the badge. This principle is true of all the 'badges' there are. Christians call the badges sacraments. Baptism is an important badge, but the reality it is symbolising is what matters. The symbol (as Paul explains in Romans 6) is of dying with Christ, being buried (submerged under water) with Christ, and then arising with Him, as He rose from the dead. Unless there is a real union with Christ, both in His death and in His resurrection, any amount of water (or bread and wine) and any amount of special words uttered by people supposedly authorised to utter them, will be much the same as pinning a badge on a tailor's dummy. It will be no more than decoration.
Salvation is not a lottery prize which God decides to give some, but not others. Nor is it a reward awarded to the good but withheld from the bad. And thank goodness for that. Which of us dares hope to be good enough to deserve it?
Salvation is the healing of our sickness, the transforming of our total being, and is a process which we are either experiencing or not. My guess is that most folk who are experiencing it are as frustrated as I am that I seem to be responding so poorly, and the progress (through my own fault) is so slow. How I long for the better things. How frequently I fall in the mud and get dirty, like a child.
Salvation began at a point of time in history, in a particular place, because 'God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.' (John 3:16) It continues in the here and now, as we open our hearts to the Saviour to be filled with his Holy Spirit. And we think of the future, beyond the grave, when we shall be like Him, having shared in His resurrection. We long for this, knowing how much better it will be. But the life we live now, frustrating as it is, is the arena where we fight the battles we are called to fight, and ask God to be patient with our failings.
The path of courage
My newspaper tells me that today is day 7 of the war in Iraq. I expect nearly every one who has access to news media in the whole world is wondering how it will all turn out. Now for something of a confession: I have possibly given it much less attention than most. I have attended no rallies. I actually think that the greatest good of the greatest number is likely to be served whenever a cruel tyrant is deposed. I write this sentence knowing that some will think I am referring to Saddam Hussein, and some that I am referring to George W. Bush.
Who can judge?
Ultimately only the one given real authority to judge. As a Christian I believe that the Creator of the universe has made such an appointment, and that there will be one day a real and climactic judgment. Meanwhile what do ordinary folk do. Brave men and women will take responsibility, and will make decisions that will affect the lives of others very deeply, even permanently. Those who have sought such responsibility need our prayers. We whose daily lives have so little impact on others would be wise simply to pray that such men and women be given true courage to follow their conscience, to take those decisions with real insight into what will be 'the greatest good of the greatest number', knowing that there will be injury and loss of life for the innocent notwithstanding.
So I make no judgment on the rights and wrongs of this conflict, other than to feel glad that such responsibilities have not been given to me. I pray for those who find themselves burdened with these responsibilities. May they indeed seek wisdom from the Source of all wisdom. May they continue to have courage to follow the path that their conscience tells them is the right path to follow. May there be no compromises this time, no fudging.
Any one reading these timid remarks will probably work out what I might do if I were in such a position of responsibility myself, and I do not deny that I do have a view. But I draw back from condemning those with a different view.
May wisdom prevail, for the world is seeing a very important precedent being created. It may lead to a much better world, with greater freedoms. We all of us gladly say we are praying for peace. But what path leads to peace? Only the path of courage, methinks.
Who can judge?
Ultimately only the one given real authority to judge. As a Christian I believe that the Creator of the universe has made such an appointment, and that there will be one day a real and climactic judgment. Meanwhile what do ordinary folk do. Brave men and women will take responsibility, and will make decisions that will affect the lives of others very deeply, even permanently. Those who have sought such responsibility need our prayers. We whose daily lives have so little impact on others would be wise simply to pray that such men and women be given true courage to follow their conscience, to take those decisions with real insight into what will be 'the greatest good of the greatest number', knowing that there will be injury and loss of life for the innocent notwithstanding.
So I make no judgment on the rights and wrongs of this conflict, other than to feel glad that such responsibilities have not been given to me. I pray for those who find themselves burdened with these responsibilities. May they indeed seek wisdom from the Source of all wisdom. May they continue to have courage to follow the path that their conscience tells them is the right path to follow. May there be no compromises this time, no fudging.
Any one reading these timid remarks will probably work out what I might do if I were in such a position of responsibility myself, and I do not deny that I do have a view. But I draw back from condemning those with a different view.
May wisdom prevail, for the world is seeing a very important precedent being created. It may lead to a much better world, with greater freedoms. We all of us gladly say we are praying for peace. But what path leads to peace? Only the path of courage, methinks.
A Christmas thought or two
I write this with recollections from a few days ago of a local Primary school's 'Christmas Celebration', in which through dramatic word and song, not to mention a few carols as well, the traditional Christmas story was presented in our local church (for the school has the good fortune to be a church school).
The production was called 'Holy Joe', to focus very much on Joseph's part in all these events, though none of the other characters was omitted in the process. I thought of the habit in the time of J S Bach for the local choir and musicians, under his direction, to present the words of the New Testament accounts of significant events in song and music. 'Holy Joe' was not baroque of course, but contemporary, but there was a time when baroque was 'contemporary', so I think the great composer would have approved.
What came through strongly from the dramatic presentation of the events was the human response to it all. It was made stronger in impact (to my mind at least) because the actors were eleven years old or younger. Likewise the choir. So none of them had the inhibitions most adults have. This is a powerful factor in gripping the audience with material where there is nothing novel or unexpected.
So here we had the representation of a young man, a carpenter, with skills and a position of value in his local community, whose family have agreed with another local family for him to be engaged to their teenage daughter. And now he hears that she is already pregnant. In those times, and in that community, betrothal was as binding as marriage, and so to have become pregnant before the culmination of the process into formal marriage vows was deemed as disgraceful adultery. But Joseph was a 'just man, and unwilling to put her to shame', and so resolved to bring the engagement to an end 'quietly', as the best way to extricate himself from a terrible predicament.
And then he has a dream.
What do you do with dreams? Rationalise them? Assume that you have just eaten too much cheese with your evening meal? There must have been something very compelling about this dream, but it still takes a huge amount of courage to obey the instruction given in the dream to go ahead and marry the lass, for something well outside of normal human experience has taken place to cause this conception. It takes courage to obey an instruction that has all the potential for local disgrace to two families. God needs people with courage to accomplish good things.
Or consider the bride-to-be. There you are, alone with some household task indoors, and suddenly you find a shining being addressing you. This shining figure tells you that you are a 'highly favoured' one, and that 'God is with you.' You are 'greatly troubled at these words and wonder what kind of greeting this might be.' It gets worse. The messenger has more than a few simple words of encouragement: 'You will be with child and will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus.'
The protest is natural: 'How will this be, since I am a virgin?'
Would you, dear reader, believe the answer we know she got? 'The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be called the Son of God.' Would you have the courage to believe this? You are not daft; you know what all the villagers will say, and how could your fiancé be expected to believe a tale as extraordinary as this. All the difficulties are flooding through your mind, all the imagined repercussions, all the inevitable problems and difficulties. But if you do have the courage then it is possible to say: 'I am the Lord's servant. May it be to me as you have said.'
God needs people with courage ...
So this Christmas I thank God for all those who in the long ago past, and down through time, have had the courage to believe what God has told them, and so to become part of His plan. He may have plans for me too, nothing on this scale of course, but perhaps some little things I may be entrusted with. May I too have courage.
The production was called 'Holy Joe', to focus very much on Joseph's part in all these events, though none of the other characters was omitted in the process. I thought of the habit in the time of J S Bach for the local choir and musicians, under his direction, to present the words of the New Testament accounts of significant events in song and music. 'Holy Joe' was not baroque of course, but contemporary, but there was a time when baroque was 'contemporary', so I think the great composer would have approved.
What came through strongly from the dramatic presentation of the events was the human response to it all. It was made stronger in impact (to my mind at least) because the actors were eleven years old or younger. Likewise the choir. So none of them had the inhibitions most adults have. This is a powerful factor in gripping the audience with material where there is nothing novel or unexpected.
So here we had the representation of a young man, a carpenter, with skills and a position of value in his local community, whose family have agreed with another local family for him to be engaged to their teenage daughter. And now he hears that she is already pregnant. In those times, and in that community, betrothal was as binding as marriage, and so to have become pregnant before the culmination of the process into formal marriage vows was deemed as disgraceful adultery. But Joseph was a 'just man, and unwilling to put her to shame', and so resolved to bring the engagement to an end 'quietly', as the best way to extricate himself from a terrible predicament.
And then he has a dream.
What do you do with dreams? Rationalise them? Assume that you have just eaten too much cheese with your evening meal? There must have been something very compelling about this dream, but it still takes a huge amount of courage to obey the instruction given in the dream to go ahead and marry the lass, for something well outside of normal human experience has taken place to cause this conception. It takes courage to obey an instruction that has all the potential for local disgrace to two families. God needs people with courage to accomplish good things.
Or consider the bride-to-be. There you are, alone with some household task indoors, and suddenly you find a shining being addressing you. This shining figure tells you that you are a 'highly favoured' one, and that 'God is with you.' You are 'greatly troubled at these words and wonder what kind of greeting this might be.' It gets worse. The messenger has more than a few simple words of encouragement: 'You will be with child and will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus.'
The protest is natural: 'How will this be, since I am a virgin?'
Would you, dear reader, believe the answer we know she got? 'The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be called the Son of God.' Would you have the courage to believe this? You are not daft; you know what all the villagers will say, and how could your fiancé be expected to believe a tale as extraordinary as this. All the difficulties are flooding through your mind, all the imagined repercussions, all the inevitable problems and difficulties. But if you do have the courage then it is possible to say: 'I am the Lord's servant. May it be to me as you have said.'
God needs people with courage ...
So this Christmas I thank God for all those who in the long ago past, and down through time, have had the courage to believe what God has told them, and so to become part of His plan. He may have plans for me too, nothing on this scale of course, but perhaps some little things I may be entrusted with. May I too have courage.
The meaning of faith
The letter to the Hebrews, chapter 11, is one of my favourite chapters in the whole Bible. It begins with a simple definition of faith as 'being sure of what we hope for, and certain of what we do not see' (NIV), and then goes on to give examples of how 'by faith' many patriarchs and leaders of the Old Testament times achieved great things. Eventually the writer realises that the list is going to be too long, and concludes his summary by referring without name to those 'who through faith conquered kingdoms, administered justice, and gained what was promised ...'
I think it is right to try to distinguish between belief and faith. There is no great merit in belief. Even the demons believe in God, we are reminded (James 2:19) and shudder! Belief is merely a factually correct opinion about something. Faith goes further. By faith 'Noah ... built an ark (Heb 11:7) ... Abraham obeyed and went (11:8) ...' and so on. The formula of the whole chapter is 'by faith x did y.'
The New Testament is full of reminders of the importance of faith. By grace we are saved, through faith, and this not of ourselves, it is the gift of God (Eph 2:8). We are justified by faith in Christ, not by observing the law (Gal 2:16). We live by faith in the Son of God, who loved us and gave Himself for us (Gal 2:20). And these few quotations are but a sample of the many statements about the centrality of 'faith', one of the three qualities that 'abide' (faith, hope and love).
So let us understand what faith is: it is the response we make to the revelation we receive. Every revelation by which God draws near to us is an undeserved gift (which is what 'grace' means); we will all receive this in different ways; how we respond is what makes the difference. Will we build a barge in the middle of nowhere, miles from the sea, to the ridicule of all our neighbours, because we have heard God's voice telling us to? Will we uproot ourselves and our family, and travel to a new land because we have heard this instruction to go? By faith Noah built, and Abraham went. And those were just two examples of those who by faith conquered kingdoms, and so on.
There is a wonderful picture, 'The Light of the World', in St Paul's cathedral illustrating the famous saying 'Behold I stand at the door and knock; if any one hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in ... (Revelation 3:20). To 'hear' is belief; to 'open' is faith. The picture shows that the door Christ is knocking on has no handle on the outside. It can only be opened by the one who is inside.
I think it is right to try to distinguish between belief and faith. There is no great merit in belief. Even the demons believe in God, we are reminded (James 2:19) and shudder! Belief is merely a factually correct opinion about something. Faith goes further. By faith 'Noah ... built an ark (Heb 11:7) ... Abraham obeyed and went (11:8) ...' and so on. The formula of the whole chapter is 'by faith x did y.'
The New Testament is full of reminders of the importance of faith. By grace we are saved, through faith, and this not of ourselves, it is the gift of God (Eph 2:8). We are justified by faith in Christ, not by observing the law (Gal 2:16). We live by faith in the Son of God, who loved us and gave Himself for us (Gal 2:20). And these few quotations are but a sample of the many statements about the centrality of 'faith', one of the three qualities that 'abide' (faith, hope and love).
So let us understand what faith is: it is the response we make to the revelation we receive. Every revelation by which God draws near to us is an undeserved gift (which is what 'grace' means); we will all receive this in different ways; how we respond is what makes the difference. Will we build a barge in the middle of nowhere, miles from the sea, to the ridicule of all our neighbours, because we have heard God's voice telling us to? Will we uproot ourselves and our family, and travel to a new land because we have heard this instruction to go? By faith Noah built, and Abraham went. And those were just two examples of those who by faith conquered kingdoms, and so on.
There is a wonderful picture, 'The Light of the World', in St Paul's cathedral illustrating the famous saying 'Behold I stand at the door and knock; if any one hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in ... (Revelation 3:20). To 'hear' is belief; to 'open' is faith. The picture shows that the door Christ is knocking on has no handle on the outside. It can only be opened by the one who is inside.
God's grief
There is a caricature of God as vengeful, vindictive, and a great punisher of evil. There are some passages in the Old Testament, especially taken out of context, where it is possible to misunderstand the nature of God in this sort of way.
Recent events in the Cambridgeshire town of Soham have forced me to ask how God views the abduction and murder of two young girls. I know that each day after their abduction, and before their ultimate fate was known, I listened eagerly on the radio for news, hopefully good news. Alas none came.
At the time of writing this, a man has been arrested, and his female partner charged, and already people are making judgments. But I want simply to ask the question: how does God view all this? Is He angry (as we all are) that such a deed has been done? Of course ascribing any emotion to God in human terms is anthropomorphic, and will fall short of the full truth. But our humanity is surely 'in His image', and must be some sort of clue about how He responds to events. So, given these provisos, how does God respond to events like this?
I know I feel grief, and I believe God does too. In fact anger and grief go hand in hand. Most Sunday mornings the congregation where I worship will sing 'Forty years long was I grieved with this generation ...' (referring to the generation that was miraculously delivered from slavery in Egypt) from Psalm 95 verse 10. 'Grieved' is the Coverdale and King James Version word. The RSV gives us 'loathed', and the NIV has 'was angry with'. The writer to the Hebrews quotes this psalm too (Heb 3:10) and uses a Greek word whose root means 'to be heavy laden'. The word conveys a very deep emotion, of loathing coupled with suffering.
It is clear from the Bible that all our evil actions grieve God. Paul exhorts us not to 'grieve the Holy Spirit' (Ephesians 3:30) and in the preceding and following verses we get some mention of the kind of actions that do grieve the Holy Spirit of God. They are precisely what you would expect, the list concluding with ' ... every form of malice.'
The grief of God is a powerful concept. I know what it feels like to suffer grief, though I have not suffered this emotion very often, or even very deeply, I suspect, compared with some. It is worth remembering that only those who love can grieve. It is only love that makes us vulnerable in this way. No indifferent person ever grieves.
I dare not consider the couple charged with crimes regarding these two young girls, and I am truly glad not to be part of the system of justice by which society will deal with them. The parents of the two girls will know the greatest grief, because theirs was the greatest love. But all of us ordinary folk, having no contact with the events except as spectators of the news reports, have felt something. And God has felt the deepest grief of all, I am pretty sure.
So today I ask God for His grace and help, so that what I do, or fail to do, does not grieve Him.
Recent events in the Cambridgeshire town of Soham have forced me to ask how God views the abduction and murder of two young girls. I know that each day after their abduction, and before their ultimate fate was known, I listened eagerly on the radio for news, hopefully good news. Alas none came.
At the time of writing this, a man has been arrested, and his female partner charged, and already people are making judgments. But I want simply to ask the question: how does God view all this? Is He angry (as we all are) that such a deed has been done? Of course ascribing any emotion to God in human terms is anthropomorphic, and will fall short of the full truth. But our humanity is surely 'in His image', and must be some sort of clue about how He responds to events. So, given these provisos, how does God respond to events like this?
I know I feel grief, and I believe God does too. In fact anger and grief go hand in hand. Most Sunday mornings the congregation where I worship will sing 'Forty years long was I grieved with this generation ...' (referring to the generation that was miraculously delivered from slavery in Egypt) from Psalm 95 verse 10. 'Grieved' is the Coverdale and King James Version word. The RSV gives us 'loathed', and the NIV has 'was angry with'. The writer to the Hebrews quotes this psalm too (Heb 3:10) and uses a Greek word whose root means 'to be heavy laden'. The word conveys a very deep emotion, of loathing coupled with suffering.
It is clear from the Bible that all our evil actions grieve God. Paul exhorts us not to 'grieve the Holy Spirit' (Ephesians 3:30) and in the preceding and following verses we get some mention of the kind of actions that do grieve the Holy Spirit of God. They are precisely what you would expect, the list concluding with ' ... every form of malice.'
The grief of God is a powerful concept. I know what it feels like to suffer grief, though I have not suffered this emotion very often, or even very deeply, I suspect, compared with some. It is worth remembering that only those who love can grieve. It is only love that makes us vulnerable in this way. No indifferent person ever grieves.
I dare not consider the couple charged with crimes regarding these two young girls, and I am truly glad not to be part of the system of justice by which society will deal with them. The parents of the two girls will know the greatest grief, because theirs was the greatest love. But all of us ordinary folk, having no contact with the events except as spectators of the news reports, have felt something. And God has felt the deepest grief of all, I am pretty sure.
So today I ask God for His grace and help, so that what I do, or fail to do, does not grieve Him.
Revelation
We live in a world where the word 'scientific' is used to endorse something, often with very little justification.
The scientific method is fairly easy to define, but the definition is sometimes forgotten. Scientific explanations are those which have been tested to such an extent that no alternative is possible. Furthermore, testing has to assume the possibility of falsification. If no combination of data can be contemplated which would disprove a theory, then it cannot be tested scientifically.
There are many examples of science claiming veracity when it should not; the supposed age of the universe is a good example - as evidenced by the observation that every decade or so it is revised in the light of some new 'discovery'. How reliable can the current estimate be if all previous ones have been already abandoned. How long will the present scientific view of the age of the universe last? Similarly with evolution: yes there are examples of small changes in the fossil evidence of some species; if you assume that progress is taking place, you line them up in a progression, dating the least developed as earliest and the most developed as latest; you could prove the opposite by the same method if you chose to, for rocks are only to be dated from the fossils found in them. Not many people realise how unscientific this is, as a method of dating, and those who do would face ridicule if they said so publicly. Psychology and psychiatry claim the endorsement of being 'scientific', despite the fact that in most fields quite contradictory views can be held, each claiming to be scientific. As Karl Popper observed, there is no potential falsification in this field at all.
No Christian can possibly be opposed to knowledge that comes from rigorous data collection, and well devised testing procedures. There is no threat from this kind of scientia (the Latin word for knowledge). But there are scientists who say that no truths exist outside those that can be established by the scientific method. This is an a priori assumption, an act of faith. This doctrine is best summed up as 'scientific materialism'. It is certainly materialistic. It is certainly not scientific.
Christians differ. We believe that there is more than what we mortals can view with our senses. This also is an a priori assumption, an act of faith. It is also more than an intellectual stance; it is an experience going beyond the five senses we recognise our bodies as possessing. We do actually experience that which is beyond the physical senses. In fact we Christians regard the world of the senses as essentially impermanent, a transitional state: so we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal. (2 Cor 4:18)
The essence of all this is that we believe that some truths can only be learnt from revelation. We believe that God has revealed Himself - to some very directly, and to others more indirectly as the accounts of these men and women are studied through the written record of these revelations. All scripture is 'God-breathed' (θεοπνευστος) wrote Paul to his younger friend Timothy (2 Tim 3:16), and in that single Greek word emphasised the nature of the Bible. It was written by humans (whose knowledge and experience and understanding of the world was not being suspended) being given insights into the nature of God they could not achieve on their own. Sometimes there were visions, sometimes even audible voices, but far more often simply the conviction that God was speaking through them. These are the Scriptures that Paul tells Timothy are able to make any one 'wise for salvation' (2 Tim 3:15), and also should be used to teach, rebuke, correct and train.
Such a doctrine is, of course, very dangerous. It has led some (in nearly every century of the church's history) to claim that they too have a special revelation, something beyond the writings of those specially appointed apostles who had the personal authorisation of the Lord Jesus Christ to be the channel of revelation. The New Testament contains several warnings that this would happen, and a stern prohibition in its very last book against either adding or taking away anything (Rev 22:18-19).
There is another sort of danger too: that of unwarranted literalism. We need to remember that each channel of revelation was a child of his time. Paul gave rules for the treatment of slaves, in a society where slaves were as taken for granted as machines are in our day; today we would want to teach about their liberation. Moses received ten commandments and many subsidiary laws and regulations that were couched in terms to be understood in a nomadic society, largely subsisting in herding of flocks, and soon to begin for the first time the experience of sowing crops. In those days it was right not to covet (desire to appropriate wrongly) my neighbour's manservant, his maidservant, his ox or his donkey. Only a fool would say that since my neighbour has no manservant, maidservant, ox or donkey, that commandment no longer applies. The principle applies; the detail is locked into a prior historical era. Much more of the Torah of Moses needs similarly enlightened updating, and one doubts the wisdom of those who follow their prescriptions literally when the passing of centuries has made that intial style of living no longer applicable. God invites us to worship Him with our minds too.
Finally we need to remember that what we have as revelation is incomplete. The best we can hope for, because of our own limitations, is to see 'a poor reflection as in a mirror.' (1Cor 13:12) Moses was reminded of this human limitation on the mountain of Sinai:
The impact of this experience of Moses was to leave his facing shining impossibly brightly, to the discomfort of his fellows.
So we need always to remember that even a perfect revelation will have been received by an imperfect human, and will be understood differently and imperfectly by those humans who read of it in future years.
Nevertheless, God has spoken. Formerly by prophets, and latterly through His Son (Hebrews 1:1-2). Those of us given the faith needed to recognise Scripture as the record of revelation have a great responsibility. We must hold fast to what we have received. We must acknowledge the duty of understanding it with prayerful insight. We must communicate it both confidently and sensitively to others. We have this food for our souls, this doorway to the unseen world, these intimations of immortality and the sheer glory of the unseen world beyond our senses. Thanks be to God.
The scientific method is fairly easy to define, but the definition is sometimes forgotten. Scientific explanations are those which have been tested to such an extent that no alternative is possible. Furthermore, testing has to assume the possibility of falsification. If no combination of data can be contemplated which would disprove a theory, then it cannot be tested scientifically.
There are many examples of science claiming veracity when it should not; the supposed age of the universe is a good example - as evidenced by the observation that every decade or so it is revised in the light of some new 'discovery'. How reliable can the current estimate be if all previous ones have been already abandoned. How long will the present scientific view of the age of the universe last? Similarly with evolution: yes there are examples of small changes in the fossil evidence of some species; if you assume that progress is taking place, you line them up in a progression, dating the least developed as earliest and the most developed as latest; you could prove the opposite by the same method if you chose to, for rocks are only to be dated from the fossils found in them. Not many people realise how unscientific this is, as a method of dating, and those who do would face ridicule if they said so publicly. Psychology and psychiatry claim the endorsement of being 'scientific', despite the fact that in most fields quite contradictory views can be held, each claiming to be scientific. As Karl Popper observed, there is no potential falsification in this field at all.
No Christian can possibly be opposed to knowledge that comes from rigorous data collection, and well devised testing procedures. There is no threat from this kind of scientia (the Latin word for knowledge). But there are scientists who say that no truths exist outside those that can be established by the scientific method. This is an a priori assumption, an act of faith. This doctrine is best summed up as 'scientific materialism'. It is certainly materialistic. It is certainly not scientific.
Christians differ. We believe that there is more than what we mortals can view with our senses. This also is an a priori assumption, an act of faith. It is also more than an intellectual stance; it is an experience going beyond the five senses we recognise our bodies as possessing. We do actually experience that which is beyond the physical senses. In fact we Christians regard the world of the senses as essentially impermanent, a transitional state: so we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal. (2 Cor 4:18)
The essence of all this is that we believe that some truths can only be learnt from revelation. We believe that God has revealed Himself - to some very directly, and to others more indirectly as the accounts of these men and women are studied through the written record of these revelations. All scripture is 'God-breathed' (θεοπνευστος) wrote Paul to his younger friend Timothy (2 Tim 3:16), and in that single Greek word emphasised the nature of the Bible. It was written by humans (whose knowledge and experience and understanding of the world was not being suspended) being given insights into the nature of God they could not achieve on their own. Sometimes there were visions, sometimes even audible voices, but far more often simply the conviction that God was speaking through them. These are the Scriptures that Paul tells Timothy are able to make any one 'wise for salvation' (2 Tim 3:15), and also should be used to teach, rebuke, correct and train.
Such a doctrine is, of course, very dangerous. It has led some (in nearly every century of the church's history) to claim that they too have a special revelation, something beyond the writings of those specially appointed apostles who had the personal authorisation of the Lord Jesus Christ to be the channel of revelation. The New Testament contains several warnings that this would happen, and a stern prohibition in its very last book against either adding or taking away anything (Rev 22:18-19).
There is another sort of danger too: that of unwarranted literalism. We need to remember that each channel of revelation was a child of his time. Paul gave rules for the treatment of slaves, in a society where slaves were as taken for granted as machines are in our day; today we would want to teach about their liberation. Moses received ten commandments and many subsidiary laws and regulations that were couched in terms to be understood in a nomadic society, largely subsisting in herding of flocks, and soon to begin for the first time the experience of sowing crops. In those days it was right not to covet (desire to appropriate wrongly) my neighbour's manservant, his maidservant, his ox or his donkey. Only a fool would say that since my neighbour has no manservant, maidservant, ox or donkey, that commandment no longer applies. The principle applies; the detail is locked into a prior historical era. Much more of the Torah of Moses needs similarly enlightened updating, and one doubts the wisdom of those who follow their prescriptions literally when the passing of centuries has made that intial style of living no longer applicable. God invites us to worship Him with our minds too.
Finally we need to remember that what we have as revelation is incomplete. The best we can hope for, because of our own limitations, is to see 'a poor reflection as in a mirror.' (1Cor 13:12) Moses was reminded of this human limitation on the mountain of Sinai:
Then Moses said, "I pray You, show me Your glory!"
And He said, "I Myself will make all My goodness pass before you, and will proclaim the name of the LORD before you; and I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show compassion on whom I will show compassion."
But He said, "You cannot see My face, for no man can see Me and live!"
Then the LORD said, "Behold, there is a place by Me, and you shall stand there on the rock; and it will come about, while My glory is passing by, that I will put you in the cleft of the rock and cover you with My hand until I have passed by.
"Then I will take My hand away and you shall see My back, but My face shall not be seen." (Exodus 33:18-23)
The impact of this experience of Moses was to leave his facing shining impossibly brightly, to the discomfort of his fellows.
So we need always to remember that even a perfect revelation will have been received by an imperfect human, and will be understood differently and imperfectly by those humans who read of it in future years.
Nevertheless, God has spoken. Formerly by prophets, and latterly through His Son (Hebrews 1:1-2). Those of us given the faith needed to recognise Scripture as the record of revelation have a great responsibility. We must hold fast to what we have received. We must acknowledge the duty of understanding it with prayerful insight. We must communicate it both confidently and sensitively to others. We have this food for our souls, this doorway to the unseen world, these intimations of immortality and the sheer glory of the unseen world beyond our senses. Thanks be to God.
On making judgments
Every judgment we pass on other people's work is a revelation about ourselves. If I say about a piece of music or a painting that I do not like it, it is a statement about myself, and my ability to appreciate or enjoy a particular example of such an art form. If I put down a book because I am not enjoying reading it, it is a revelation of my own capacity (or rather lack of it) to gain any benefit from this sort of book. Others may enjoy the book I am discarding, and I may simply not be in a position to do so, from the background of previous reading, previous studies, I have made thus far in my life.
The more I progress in life the more I become wary of expressing my dislike for anything or anyone.
Some examples of art forms can be dismissed without fear of error perhaps, but we are always potentially capable of error in the matter ourselves. When we consider how rarely a great artist or a great composer (judging greatness by the eventual verdict passed on them) was recognised as such in his lifetime, we can begin to learn the lesson about premature judgments. Very often greatness has turned out to be just too far forward to be appreciated by those alive at the time, but the next generation perceives that these works were exactly what was needed at the time to make the process of music-making or painting (or whatever) advance as it later did. The person turning the corner first is only appreciated fully later.
So now I begin to recognise certain things in terms of 'things I am not yet ready for'. I recognise I may never be ready for them. It may be the case that no one will ever be, because they are inherently worthless. But who am I to know?
So we make decisions: read or not read; listen to or not listen to; view or not view; and so on. But we do well to remember that in discarding something we may well be diminishing the potential for eventual enjoyment of something really worthwhile.
So far I have referred to art forms, as the orbit within which we all make judgments. But what about people, especially people in the public eye, such as political or religious leaders, or organisations (groups of people structurally united in some way)? We make decisions inevitably: join or not join, support or not support, and so on. Let us make these judgments warily, with what wisdom we have, with what knowledge we have. But let us always remember that with more knowledge, and perhaps with more wisdom, we might well decide otherwise. Let us press forward to gain more knowledge, and certainly more wisdom, with every passing year, remembering the dictum of Socrates, that the wiser he got the more he realised how little he knew.
When we come to moral matters, again we are in perilous territory. 'Judge not, that ye be not judged'. We are unlikely to know all the circumstances, all the predisposing events, the strength and persistence of the temptation. We may pass judgment on the act, recognising the murder as a murder, the rape as a rape, the theft as a theft, the lie as a lie, but we do well to say of the murderer, the rapist, the thief, the liar, 'there but for the grace of God go I.'
The more I progress in life the more I become wary of expressing my dislike for anything or anyone.
Some examples of art forms can be dismissed without fear of error perhaps, but we are always potentially capable of error in the matter ourselves. When we consider how rarely a great artist or a great composer (judging greatness by the eventual verdict passed on them) was recognised as such in his lifetime, we can begin to learn the lesson about premature judgments. Very often greatness has turned out to be just too far forward to be appreciated by those alive at the time, but the next generation perceives that these works were exactly what was needed at the time to make the process of music-making or painting (or whatever) advance as it later did. The person turning the corner first is only appreciated fully later.
So now I begin to recognise certain things in terms of 'things I am not yet ready for'. I recognise I may never be ready for them. It may be the case that no one will ever be, because they are inherently worthless. But who am I to know?
So we make decisions: read or not read; listen to or not listen to; view or not view; and so on. But we do well to remember that in discarding something we may well be diminishing the potential for eventual enjoyment of something really worthwhile.
So far I have referred to art forms, as the orbit within which we all make judgments. But what about people, especially people in the public eye, such as political or religious leaders, or organisations (groups of people structurally united in some way)? We make decisions inevitably: join or not join, support or not support, and so on. Let us make these judgments warily, with what wisdom we have, with what knowledge we have. But let us always remember that with more knowledge, and perhaps with more wisdom, we might well decide otherwise. Let us press forward to gain more knowledge, and certainly more wisdom, with every passing year, remembering the dictum of Socrates, that the wiser he got the more he realised how little he knew.
When we come to moral matters, again we are in perilous territory. 'Judge not, that ye be not judged'. We are unlikely to know all the circumstances, all the predisposing events, the strength and persistence of the temptation. We may pass judgment on the act, recognising the murder as a murder, the rape as a rape, the theft as a theft, the lie as a lie, but we do well to say of the murderer, the rapist, the thief, the liar, 'there but for the grace of God go I.'
Hell
I concluded the previous meditation - about Heaven - emphasising that either we are constantly making choices that bring us closer to God, and that this process continues after the biological death of our bodies, or we are making choices that take us further and further away from God. Neither Heaven nor Hell are places, in the way that Yorkshire is a place. But the process of receiving God's gift of 'zoe' continues until we are indeed eternally in the presence of God, which is the spiritual universe beyond this physical one, and called by Paul (though implied throughout scripture) 'the third heaven'.
This physical universe seems so real to us, but physicists know that this is an illusion. What we call solid, or tangible, is a collection of invisible forces, called protons and neutrons and suchlike, whirling round each other in complex orbits. Christians believe that the greater reality is what lies beyond the reach of our physical senses, and is eternal and imperishable. There is an eternal part of every one of us, which we call the soul (psyche in Greek, anima in Latin). The eternal condition of our souls is what this is all about.
All our choices become the fabric of our souls, and all our choices have eternal consequences, and this is what Christians understand about Judgment: 'this is the judgment, that light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than the light, because their deeds were evil' (John 3:19 RSV). The word 'judgment' here is translated 'verdict' in the NIV (the Greek is 'crisis'), and as you can see, the verdict is the one we pass on Light, not the one passed on us.
Just as I emphasised in the previous posting that Heaven is not a reward, a prize, awarded to some and withheld from others, so it is important to understand that Hell is not a punishment, which some are deemed to deserve, while others are 'let off'. Hell will involve pain and anguish, certainly, but only those who choose it will receive it. We can choose it by rejecting the gift of 'zoe' offered to us by the Saviour of all mankind Himself.
Hell is the English translation of the Greek 'Hades', the place of the departed in Greek mythology. In this sense the Apostles' Creed speaks of Jesus as 'crucified, dead and buried. He descended into Hell.' When Jesus spoke of the Church He was building, and that the 'gates of Hell would not prevail against it' the NIV rightly translates the word as Hades (Matt. 16:19). There is another word translated as Hell, and this is Gehinna, which was the rubbish tip outside Jerusalem where the rubbish was burnt. It is a wonderfully dramatic metaphor to say that those who reject God will be consigned to an eternal rubbish tip, and there is a 'consigning' or 'casting' or 'disposal', as is clear from these words of Jesus: 'do not be afraid of those who kill the body and after that can do no more ... fear him who, after the killing of the body, has the power (authority) to throw you into hell' (Luke 12:4-5).
The best description of the state of those whose choice is to move further and further away from God is that given by Paul writing to the Thessalonians: 'they shall suffer the punishment (literally 'judgment' or 'sentence') of eternal destruction and exclusion from the presence of the Lord ...' (2 Thess 1:9 RSV). To every one who persists in a determination to live their life away from God, the awful truth is that they will eventually succeed. God will finally grant their wish. This is described in the chilling phrase as 'the second death' (Rev 20:14).
We can experience a foretaste of both heaven and hell in this life, which is why we read so much pictorial language: that heaven is filled with light and music and dancing and rejoicing; that hell is filled with darkness and fire and pain and suffering. But let us not be simpletons. Most of our comprehension of things eternal is the childish thinking Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 13 we need to leave behind. 'Now we see blurred reflections ... then (when we have passed through the gateway we call death) we will know perfectly, even as we are known.'
We will all eventually 'know' - and that knowledge will be either the making or the unmaking of us, the perfecting or the destruction of us, eternal joy or eternal sorrow, heaven or hell.
This physical universe seems so real to us, but physicists know that this is an illusion. What we call solid, or tangible, is a collection of invisible forces, called protons and neutrons and suchlike, whirling round each other in complex orbits. Christians believe that the greater reality is what lies beyond the reach of our physical senses, and is eternal and imperishable. There is an eternal part of every one of us, which we call the soul (psyche in Greek, anima in Latin). The eternal condition of our souls is what this is all about.
All our choices become the fabric of our souls, and all our choices have eternal consequences, and this is what Christians understand about Judgment: 'this is the judgment, that light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than the light, because their deeds were evil' (John 3:19 RSV). The word 'judgment' here is translated 'verdict' in the NIV (the Greek is 'crisis'), and as you can see, the verdict is the one we pass on Light, not the one passed on us.
Just as I emphasised in the previous posting that Heaven is not a reward, a prize, awarded to some and withheld from others, so it is important to understand that Hell is not a punishment, which some are deemed to deserve, while others are 'let off'. Hell will involve pain and anguish, certainly, but only those who choose it will receive it. We can choose it by rejecting the gift of 'zoe' offered to us by the Saviour of all mankind Himself.
Hell is the English translation of the Greek 'Hades', the place of the departed in Greek mythology. In this sense the Apostles' Creed speaks of Jesus as 'crucified, dead and buried. He descended into Hell.' When Jesus spoke of the Church He was building, and that the 'gates of Hell would not prevail against it' the NIV rightly translates the word as Hades (Matt. 16:19). There is another word translated as Hell, and this is Gehinna, which was the rubbish tip outside Jerusalem where the rubbish was burnt. It is a wonderfully dramatic metaphor to say that those who reject God will be consigned to an eternal rubbish tip, and there is a 'consigning' or 'casting' or 'disposal', as is clear from these words of Jesus: 'do not be afraid of those who kill the body and after that can do no more ... fear him who, after the killing of the body, has the power (authority) to throw you into hell' (Luke 12:4-5).
The best description of the state of those whose choice is to move further and further away from God is that given by Paul writing to the Thessalonians: 'they shall suffer the punishment (literally 'judgment' or 'sentence') of eternal destruction and exclusion from the presence of the Lord ...' (2 Thess 1:9 RSV). To every one who persists in a determination to live their life away from God, the awful truth is that they will eventually succeed. God will finally grant their wish. This is described in the chilling phrase as 'the second death' (Rev 20:14).
We can experience a foretaste of both heaven and hell in this life, which is why we read so much pictorial language: that heaven is filled with light and music and dancing and rejoicing; that hell is filled with darkness and fire and pain and suffering. But let us not be simpletons. Most of our comprehension of things eternal is the childish thinking Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 13 we need to leave behind. 'Now we see blurred reflections ... then (when we have passed through the gateway we call death) we will know perfectly, even as we are known.'
We will all eventually 'know' - and that knowledge will be either the making or the unmaking of us, the perfecting or the destruction of us, eternal joy or eternal sorrow, heaven or hell.
Heaven
This is to be part one of a two part theme, and - yes - you've guessed that the next part is to be about Hell. Heaven and Hell are probably the two most misunderstood words one can come across, and the two most misused as well. So quite a lot of what I must write down is linguistic, and necessarily detailed. But bear with me, as there is a worthwhile purpose, I trust.
In the old testament the word is actually plural (Hebrew: shamayim) and means literally 'heaved up things'. The English translation varies from a singular 'heaven' to a plural 'heavens'. It is used of what we would call the atmosphere (or the sky), in phrases such as 'the birds of the heavens', or even space: 'the stars in the heavens' and so on. So when Moses is commanded to 'stretch forth thy rod towards heaven' (Exodus 10:21) it does not necessarily mean anything more than 'upwards'.
The trouble comes when we get to phrases which seem to treat Heaven as God's own place, and this is carried into the New Testament: in Matthew's gospel the 'Kingdom of Heaven' is used where the exactly equivalent phrase in Luke's gospel is the 'Kingdom of God'. When we say today 'Heaven forbid!' we mean simply 'God forbid!'. Paul talks about 'the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places' (Ephesians 6:12). This helps us understand a third essential meaning for 'heaven': in contrast to earth (the physical universe) there is heaven (the spiritual universe). As recorded in the gospel of John (3:12) Jesus says to Nicodemus: 'I have spoken to you of earthly things and you do not believe; how then will you believe if I speak of heavenly things?'
So there is a first heaven (the sky - the atmosphere - where birds fly), the second heaven (space - where stars and planets are), and a third heaven (outside, beyond, not of this physical universe). We do well to remember these threefold uses in the Bible.
This is what Solomon said when he dedicated the building he had built where God might be worshipped in Jerusalem: 'O Lord, God of Israel, there is no God like you in the heaven above or on the earth below ... But will God really dwell on earth? The heavens, even the highest heaven, cannot contain you. How much less this temple I have built?' (1 Kings 8:22-27)
And Paul writes of his own 'out of body' experience: 'I know a man in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught up to the third heaven. Whether it was in the body or out of the body I do not know - God knows ... He heard inexpressible things, things that man is not permitted to tell.' (2 Corinthians 12:2-4).
The trouble comes when we start talking of Heaven as a place, or worse, as a reward, where the 'good' go after they die. This leads to all sorts of silly thoughts about who is going to get an entrance ticket, and on what basis, which is a total parody of the 'good news' of the Christian message.
Let us be quite clear: we are all going to exist for ever. That is the core belief of the vast majority of the human race in all history; it is only in relatively recent times that an ideology has come into popularity that asserts that death is the end not only of the body but also of the spirit, the essence, the identity, of any human. It is singularly popular in post-Christian materialism; it certainly does enable a believer in this doctrine to say: 'eat, drink, and be merry; for tomorrow we die.'
The ancient Greeks believed in an afterlife, with Hades, and the river Styx, and the Elysian Fields, and so on. The three major monotheistic religions (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam) all believe in an afterlife, and in their own distinctive way, Hinduism and Buddhism also believe in a continuity of the soul beyond the death of the body. So to assert that death brings an absolute end, like the snuffing out of a candle, is to depart from the majority position. It is an act of faith, as much as to believe that death is not an absolute end is an act of faith. In many ways the belief that death is not an absolute end is more difficult, not less difficult: that there is a continuation implies that what I do in this mortal life has eternal consequences, really matters, in other words. Life matters, eternally. This is the doctrine which calls us to take it more seriously, to consider the eternal as well as the temporal, the heavenly (which will last for ever) as well as the earthly (which will pass away).
Now there is a certain approach where a reward, a paradise, in one doctrine asserted to be literally full of pleasures like eating, and the presence of beautiful women (houris), are promised to those who earn it. A dangerous doctrine indeed, when young men (and women) can be persuaded that going into a crowded place with a bomb strapped to them and detonating said bomb, to achieve their own death and those of many unsuspecting others, will ensure such a reward. What sort of a God rewards His followers in this way?
The Christian view never proclaims Heaven as a reward. Quite the contrary: if we are to get what we deserve, says the Christian gospel, it were far kinder to give us extinction. What Jesus Christ offered was 'life', not 'bios' (biological life) but 'zoe' (spiritual life). When we are released from this earthly body, there will be a better body awaiting us, imperishable and glorious. This is the message that Christians celebrate at Easter, that the last enemy has indeed been conquered: 'So it is with the resurrection of the dead. The body that is sown is perishable, it is raised imperishable. It is sown in dishonour, it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness; it is raised in power; it is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body.' (1 Corinthians 15:42-44)
Those who desire the presence of God within their lives in the here and now will find that choice has determined the 'then' too. Similarly, those who prefer to leave God on the outside now are choosing an eternal 'outside'. The choices we make every day matter - eternally. Something more than we can ever earn or deserve is offered, and it is a gift that is ours for the taking. Only the fool wants rewards, his just deserts, what he has earned. Alas, that is just what he will get.
In the old testament the word is actually plural (Hebrew: shamayim) and means literally 'heaved up things'. The English translation varies from a singular 'heaven' to a plural 'heavens'. It is used of what we would call the atmosphere (or the sky), in phrases such as 'the birds of the heavens', or even space: 'the stars in the heavens' and so on. So when Moses is commanded to 'stretch forth thy rod towards heaven' (Exodus 10:21) it does not necessarily mean anything more than 'upwards'.
The trouble comes when we get to phrases which seem to treat Heaven as God's own place, and this is carried into the New Testament: in Matthew's gospel the 'Kingdom of Heaven' is used where the exactly equivalent phrase in Luke's gospel is the 'Kingdom of God'. When we say today 'Heaven forbid!' we mean simply 'God forbid!'. Paul talks about 'the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places' (Ephesians 6:12). This helps us understand a third essential meaning for 'heaven': in contrast to earth (the physical universe) there is heaven (the spiritual universe). As recorded in the gospel of John (3:12) Jesus says to Nicodemus: 'I have spoken to you of earthly things and you do not believe; how then will you believe if I speak of heavenly things?'
So there is a first heaven (the sky - the atmosphere - where birds fly), the second heaven (space - where stars and planets are), and a third heaven (outside, beyond, not of this physical universe). We do well to remember these threefold uses in the Bible.
This is what Solomon said when he dedicated the building he had built where God might be worshipped in Jerusalem: 'O Lord, God of Israel, there is no God like you in the heaven above or on the earth below ... But will God really dwell on earth? The heavens, even the highest heaven, cannot contain you. How much less this temple I have built?' (1 Kings 8:22-27)
And Paul writes of his own 'out of body' experience: 'I know a man in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught up to the third heaven. Whether it was in the body or out of the body I do not know - God knows ... He heard inexpressible things, things that man is not permitted to tell.' (2 Corinthians 12:2-4).
The trouble comes when we start talking of Heaven as a place, or worse, as a reward, where the 'good' go after they die. This leads to all sorts of silly thoughts about who is going to get an entrance ticket, and on what basis, which is a total parody of the 'good news' of the Christian message.
Let us be quite clear: we are all going to exist for ever. That is the core belief of the vast majority of the human race in all history; it is only in relatively recent times that an ideology has come into popularity that asserts that death is the end not only of the body but also of the spirit, the essence, the identity, of any human. It is singularly popular in post-Christian materialism; it certainly does enable a believer in this doctrine to say: 'eat, drink, and be merry; for tomorrow we die.'
The ancient Greeks believed in an afterlife, with Hades, and the river Styx, and the Elysian Fields, and so on. The three major monotheistic religions (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam) all believe in an afterlife, and in their own distinctive way, Hinduism and Buddhism also believe in a continuity of the soul beyond the death of the body. So to assert that death brings an absolute end, like the snuffing out of a candle, is to depart from the majority position. It is an act of faith, as much as to believe that death is not an absolute end is an act of faith. In many ways the belief that death is not an absolute end is more difficult, not less difficult: that there is a continuation implies that what I do in this mortal life has eternal consequences, really matters, in other words. Life matters, eternally. This is the doctrine which calls us to take it more seriously, to consider the eternal as well as the temporal, the heavenly (which will last for ever) as well as the earthly (which will pass away).
Now there is a certain approach where a reward, a paradise, in one doctrine asserted to be literally full of pleasures like eating, and the presence of beautiful women (houris), are promised to those who earn it. A dangerous doctrine indeed, when young men (and women) can be persuaded that going into a crowded place with a bomb strapped to them and detonating said bomb, to achieve their own death and those of many unsuspecting others, will ensure such a reward. What sort of a God rewards His followers in this way?
The Christian view never proclaims Heaven as a reward. Quite the contrary: if we are to get what we deserve, says the Christian gospel, it were far kinder to give us extinction. What Jesus Christ offered was 'life', not 'bios' (biological life) but 'zoe' (spiritual life). When we are released from this earthly body, there will be a better body awaiting us, imperishable and glorious. This is the message that Christians celebrate at Easter, that the last enemy has indeed been conquered: 'So it is with the resurrection of the dead. The body that is sown is perishable, it is raised imperishable. It is sown in dishonour, it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness; it is raised in power; it is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body.' (1 Corinthians 15:42-44)
Those who desire the presence of God within their lives in the here and now will find that choice has determined the 'then' too. Similarly, those who prefer to leave God on the outside now are choosing an eternal 'outside'. The choices we make every day matter - eternally. Something more than we can ever earn or deserve is offered, and it is a gift that is ours for the taking. Only the fool wants rewards, his just deserts, what he has earned. Alas, that is just what he will get.
Fear
OK, so 'fear' is not the most instantly appealing and attractive title for any piece, but there are good reasons for me to be looking in this direction. Two of my correspondents are very aware of the presence of fear in their lives, and I doubt if any human is totally devoid of fear.
To begin with we deal with words. There is a good fear, the natural fear of danger and risk from all sorts of sources: crossing the road, cooking with a naked flame, changing a fuse (it's smart to turn the electricity off first), and so on. We call this good fear 'caution' and it is right to be cautious about lots of things.
But there is an unreasonable fear, and we tend to call that a phobia; there is claustrophobia (fear of being in an enclosed space) and agoraphobia (fear of being in an open space) and a dozen other sorts of irrational fears. However much the mind gives one the message that there is no real danger, the paralysing fear kicks in, and the sufferer can go into a catatonic state with absolutely no control over the matter.
There will be those who believe a phobic can be cured by counselling, and certainly this should be tried. But all this is not the area I really want to address here.
I want to talk about God and the release from fear, because deep down fear has to do with my psyche (my soul) and I believe that only God can deal with 'soul' problems fully. At best counselling is a palliative, at worst a blind alley, for all that deeply troubles us.
John the apostle, in his first letter, talks about fear, and writes memorably that 'perfect love casts out fear' (1 John ch 4, v 18). This is so important that I am going to include a long section of what John wrote that leads up to this verse:
As a Christian I know that what I am is because God loved me first; gave His Son to save me; gave His Spirit to strengthen me; and lives every moment of every day in my heart. And none of this is because I have done anything to earn this as a reward, to deserve such wondrous love; it is simply that He loves me, however hard it is for me to understand why (and believe me it is hard to understand).
Paul said more or less the same thing (Romans ch 8 v35-39)
The enemy of our souls seeks constantly either to prevent us getting to this place of certainty, or to take away this confidence if we should ever reach it.
The most subtle way that the enemy of souls works is to create a whole structure of religion, whereby the adherent is constantly challenged to earn his or her way into God's favour. This is the religion of rules. Rules about actions, rules about work, rules about rest, rules about giving, rules about clothing, rules about diet, rules about ceremonies, all offered as a certain method - if obeyed faithfully - of making the adherent worthy of God's blessing. This creates a daily questioning: am I working hard enough to please God, and so earn His blessing?
Dear friends, please observe the contrast between the two passages quoted and this subtle trap of legalism. There is nothing we can do to make us more the object of God's love than we already are; and there is nothing we can do to make God cease to love us.
God did give His people rules to start with, and the ten memorable special rules are descriptions of the kind of people we will become when we respond to God's love. But the people who received these rules found that rules - by themselves - are not enough. Rules do not, cannot, change people. And it is transformation that we need most. So God promised them a new covenant (formal relationship). This is the new covenant God offers all people (Jeremiah ch 31 v 31-34):
The new basis has in a sense to do with rules, however no longer written in stone, but in hearts and minds. And there is an end of priestly intermediaries, with special buildings, because we all now have direct access to God Himself, wherever we are. And an end of repeated sacrifices, because a single perfect sacrifice makes it possible for God's forgiveness to be applied to every sinner who asks for it.
This is the very heart of the gospel (the good news). As a Christian I rejoice in the freedom from fear it gives me to know that God's love for me is unconditional, that nothing will ever separate me from the Love of God. If you do not know this freedom from fear yourself then do not make the mistake of thinking you are outside the scope of God's love. Even through these words, He is reaching out to you.
To begin with we deal with words. There is a good fear, the natural fear of danger and risk from all sorts of sources: crossing the road, cooking with a naked flame, changing a fuse (it's smart to turn the electricity off first), and so on. We call this good fear 'caution' and it is right to be cautious about lots of things.
But there is an unreasonable fear, and we tend to call that a phobia; there is claustrophobia (fear of being in an enclosed space) and agoraphobia (fear of being in an open space) and a dozen other sorts of irrational fears. However much the mind gives one the message that there is no real danger, the paralysing fear kicks in, and the sufferer can go into a catatonic state with absolutely no control over the matter.
There will be those who believe a phobic can be cured by counselling, and certainly this should be tried. But all this is not the area I really want to address here.
I want to talk about God and the release from fear, because deep down fear has to do with my psyche (my soul) and I believe that only God can deal with 'soul' problems fully. At best counselling is a palliative, at worst a blind alley, for all that deeply troubles us.
John the apostle, in his first letter, talks about fear, and writes memorably that 'perfect love casts out fear' (1 John ch 4, v 18). This is so important that I am going to include a long section of what John wrote that leads up to this verse:
Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us. We know that we live in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit. And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Saviour of the world. If anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in him and he in God. And so we know and rely on the love God has for us. God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him. In this way, love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgment, because in this world we are like him. There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.
As a Christian I know that what I am is because God loved me first; gave His Son to save me; gave His Spirit to strengthen me; and lives every moment of every day in my heart. And none of this is because I have done anything to earn this as a reward, to deserve such wondrous love; it is simply that He loves me, however hard it is for me to understand why (and believe me it is hard to understand).
Paul said more or less the same thing (Romans ch 8 v35-39)
Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? As it is written:
"For your sake we face death all day long;
we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered."
No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
The enemy of our souls seeks constantly either to prevent us getting to this place of certainty, or to take away this confidence if we should ever reach it.
The most subtle way that the enemy of souls works is to create a whole structure of religion, whereby the adherent is constantly challenged to earn his or her way into God's favour. This is the religion of rules. Rules about actions, rules about work, rules about rest, rules about giving, rules about clothing, rules about diet, rules about ceremonies, all offered as a certain method - if obeyed faithfully - of making the adherent worthy of God's blessing. This creates a daily questioning: am I working hard enough to please God, and so earn His blessing?
Dear friends, please observe the contrast between the two passages quoted and this subtle trap of legalism. There is nothing we can do to make us more the object of God's love than we already are; and there is nothing we can do to make God cease to love us.
God did give His people rules to start with, and the ten memorable special rules are descriptions of the kind of people we will become when we respond to God's love. But the people who received these rules found that rules - by themselves - are not enough. Rules do not, cannot, change people. And it is transformation that we need most. So God promised them a new covenant (formal relationship). This is the new covenant God offers all people (Jeremiah ch 31 v 31-34):
"The time is coming," declares the Lord , "when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah. It will not be like the covenant I made with their forefathers when I took them by the hand to lead them out of Egypt, because they broke my covenant, though I was a husband to them," declares the Lord . "This is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel after that time," declares the Lord . "I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people. No longer will a man teach his neighbor, or a man his brother, saying, 'Know the Lord ,' because they will all know me, from the least of them to the greatest," declares the Lord . "For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more."
The new basis has in a sense to do with rules, however no longer written in stone, but in hearts and minds. And there is an end of priestly intermediaries, with special buildings, because we all now have direct access to God Himself, wherever we are. And an end of repeated sacrifices, because a single perfect sacrifice makes it possible for God's forgiveness to be applied to every sinner who asks for it.
This is the very heart of the gospel (the good news). As a Christian I rejoice in the freedom from fear it gives me to know that God's love for me is unconditional, that nothing will ever separate me from the Love of God. If you do not know this freedom from fear yourself then do not make the mistake of thinking you are outside the scope of God's love. Even through these words, He is reaching out to you.
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