Meditations of a Net Caster

Delusion

2007-07-02T12:51:00.000+01:00

I am currently reading Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion, having been given it as a present. I doubt if I would have bought it myself, but having been given it, one can hardly refuse to read it.

After having read about a quarter of it, I am moved to comment. Dawkins can cite all sorts of examples where religious people have done vile things in the name of their religion. But these are irrelevant to his main theme that there is no God. It boils down to the belief that nothing can exist which cannot be examined by the scientific method. This is a belief system which cannot be dealt with scientifically, simply because it would be impossible to devise a means of falsification of this hypothesis. This central belief of Dawkins is either true or false (a delusion?), but it cannot be examined by the scientific method. For if God is, by definition, beyond this physical universe, outside it as well as able to communicate with it, then there is, also by definition, no way to disprove this, or to prove it.

As a Christian I do not ever try to prove the existence of God to others, though I am aware of all sorts of 'arguments' that have been devised, in the hope of giving intellectual support to a belief in God. Try a Google search on 'ontological' and you will see what I mean.

And the God I believe in has been very explicit about the difference between the physical universe, the things that science can observe and measure, or - to use a Biblical phrase - the 'things that are seen', and that which is beyond the physical universe, the 'things that cannot be seen'. This comes in Paul's second letter to the Corinthians, and it is good to check out the different translations. 'The things that are seen are temporal (AV) / transient (RSV) / temporary (NIV), but the things that are not seen are eternal (AV/RSV/NIV). Which is why Paul urges that we should 'fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen.' [2 Cor. 4:18]

I have never seen God, and again the Bible tells us that this is something no one from inside this physical universe has ever done, rather implying that it can never be done. The apostles remind their followers about this: 'Though you have not seen him, you love him.' [1 Peter 1:8]. 'No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us ...' [1 John 4:12]

So I am just one of a vast body of people who experience God in a way that no scientific method could ever examine, or measure. 'We know that we live in him, and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit.' [1 John 4:13]

This internal experience is where we Christians come from. In some way which is totally real, but also totally impossible to prove to anyone else, and very hard even to explain to anyone else, we experience God. But there is certainly one condition that I must fulfil for this experience to be possible: I must open myself to God. The Psalmist expressed it thus: 'O Lord you have searched me and you know me ... before a word is on my tongue you know it completely ... search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts ...' [Psalm 139 extracts].

I have written elsewhere how this adventure began for me, how I was challenged to open my heart and innermost being to the Lord. Nearly fifty years later the reality of it all is so familiar that Professor Dawkins' certainties leave me cold, and I think it will take real scientists (and I do not claim to be one) to demonstrate to him where the boundaries of science are.

The Temple of God

2007-06-25T14:13:00.000+01:00

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.

In search of God

2007-06-25T14:11:00.000+01:00

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.

A homepage

2007-06-25T14:07:00.000+01:00

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.

More about Grace

2007-06-25T14:04:00.000+01:00

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.'

More or Less

2007-06-25T14:00:00.000+01:00

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

The X-Factor

2007-06-25T13:57:00.000+01:00

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.

The legacy of legalism

2007-06-25T13:55:00.000+01:00

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)

Rewards

2007-06-25T13:52:00.000+01:00

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.

The problem with words

2007-06-25T13:50:00.000+01:00

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.

Love

2007-06-25T13:47:00.000+01:00

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 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

2007-06-25T13:42:00.000+01:00

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:

"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

2007-06-25T13:39:00.001+01:00

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.

Choices

2007-06-25T13:36:00.001+01:00

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.

The meaning of Salvation

2007-06-25T13:33:00.001+01:00

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 path of courage

2007-06-25T13:29:00.000+01:00

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.

A Christmas thought or two

2007-06-25T13:26:00.000+01:00

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 meaning of faith

2007-06-25T13:23:00.000+01:00

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.

God's grief

2007-06-25T13:20:00.000+01:00

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.

Revelation

2007-06-25T13:14:00.000+01:00

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:

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

2007-06-25T13:12:00.000+01:00

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.'

Hell

2007-06-25T13:09:00.001+01:00

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.

Heaven

2007-06-25T12:42:00.001+01:00

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.

Fear

2007-06-25T12:36:00.000+01:00

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:

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.

How God speaks to us

2007-06-25T12:29:00.000+01:00

This will make more sense if it is seen as a continuation of the thoughts I have been recording these past few months, and I have reached the point of understanding God's interventions in day-to-day affairs as being through those men and women who can hear His voice and be moved to carry out His will.

So how can we hear His voice?

It begins with being born of the Spirit, to use a phrase from the Bible. This is essentially a response to God's voice heard through preaching or read from the written word of God (or both, of course). As we open our hearts to His voice, and invite the Saviour into our hearts, so that part of us that was dead (again I am quoting the Bible) becomes revived, and our spirit becomes a living part of our life.

To begin with we are spiritual babes, and need the sort of food that babies can digest. This is how Paul spoke (with some obvious regret) about some of the church at Corinth: 'I could not address you as spiritual men, but as men of the flesh, as babes in Christ. I fed you with milk, not solid food, for you were not ready for it.' (1 Cor ch 3 vv 1-2).

Notice the word 'flesh'. This is all part of the Bible's description of the tripartite make-up of every human: body, soul, and spirit; with 'flesh' referring to all those physical parts of us, all the senses, the natural (and unnatural) appetites.

I have already written on this subject, and it will do no harm to read the definitions of body, soul, and spirit once more. The key thing is that there is a fundamental difference, a total new birth, when a man or a woman opens their heart to God, and receives this 'quickening' of the spirit. It is through the spirit we can hear God's voice.

But we need to address our spiritual growth with as much care and concern as we naturally do our bodily and intellectual growth. We need to be spiritually fed, and I know of no Christian who has felt able to dispense with a daily diet of reading and pondering on the word of God, and of opening their heart to listening (all alone and uninterrupted) to the voice of God through prayer. This need to be alone with God was experienced by Jesus too, and it is as essential to the spirit as food and water (and sleep!) are to the body.

God is pretty sparing in His use of angels these days. He really does want His people to be giving Him their full attention by the simple means already provided; and there is even greater strength in numbers: 'where two or three are gathered together in My name, there am I in the midst of them'.

So we feed our spirit, and come to rely more and more on this 'inner voice', in other words we learn to 'live by the spirit'. And this is the crucial thing I am learning and want to share with you all.

There is a great deal of emphasis these days on human psychology, and on 'therapy' and 'counselling' as the response to all the problems human beings can encounter. It is the new religion, intellectually respectable and more or less unchallenged. It may do some good, but it cannot reach down to the real problem we all face. Let me define the problem for myself, and so perhaps for you too, dear reader.

In terms of personality analysis one can do all sorts of psychometric tests and personality typing, and come up with some interesting answers. In Myers-Briggs terms of definition, for those who would understand all this, I am ISTJ. This means more Introverted than Extroverted; more reliant on the Senses than iNtuition; preferring Thinking rather than Feeling; wanting to make Judgments and go beyond just Perceiving. And this analysis would propose a further 15 types, with the diametrically opposite to ISTJ being ENFP. Now I find that all this is helpful in making me stop and think about personality in general, but I am also brought up with the thought that it does not go deep enough.

Here is why, expressed in the words of Paul: 'I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate...it is no longer I that do it, but sin that dwells within me, that is in my flesh. I can will what is right, but I cannot do it. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do...Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?' (Romans ch 7 vv 15-24).

I really do not think that Paul, and Ovid (43 B.C. to 17 A.D.) 'video meliora proboque, deteriora sequor (I see the better things and approve them; but I follow the worse things)', and I are the only three humans to have experienced this dilemma. I believe we all do. And Paul records the answer: 'The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set me free from the law of sin and death...To set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace' (Romans ch 8 vv 2-6).

The Bible, as ever, does not mince words. We are all in a terminal condition, spiritually. We need help, and that help comes not by a tinkering with what have got naturally ('the body, the flesh, the physical'). That part of us is not where we should look for the answer; it is itself the problem!

I hope this does not sound glib. For nearly fifty years, since being 'born of the Spirit' at the age of 21, I have found 'walking not by the flesh but by the spirit' (to use Paul's phraseology again) to be the hardest thing there is; and there are times, many times, when I have failed, and fail still. In my heart, though, there is the certain knowledge that I belong to God, and that 'the life of the spirit' is all He is offering me, or asking of me. And 'the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.' (Galatians ch 5 vv 22-23). This is what every ISTJ needs, I can assure you. How about you?

How God intervenes (cont'd)

2007-06-25T12:24:00.000+01:00

Having thought, no doubt rather superficially given the space I have allowed myself, about God's interventions in judgment, past and future, and in the wonderful intervention which the birth in Bethlehem represents, I move on to the more mundane. How does God intervene in our day-to-day lives? Assuming we believe He does at all.

In olden, pre-scientific, times it was easy to believe in a God who dealt in thunderbolts, in a God who might be moved to strike one dead. Now, with our scientific understanding, we do not believe in such a God. Actually many folk do not carry their scientific rigour all that far, and will happily subscribe to horoscopes, alien spaceships, lucky numbers, and all sorts of paranormal nonsense. But nobody who lives in a community based on scientific knowledge believes in a God who intervenes by striking people down with a thunderbolt.

So does God intervene at all, and if so how?

In the denomination whose services I attend, there are set prayers at most services, some inherited from a time long since past, with a turn of phrase that sounds quite like Shakespeare. Every Sunday we pray for the monarch of our country, and those who exercise political power, wishing God's blessing on them. What actually do we think God will do as a result of this praying, or would fail to do if we all stopped praying these prayers? I doubt if many of the hundreds of thousands who recite these prayers have asked this question. And we all, regardless of denomination, will continually pray to God to bring peace to this world, to feed the hungry, clothe the poor, give health to the sick, and comfort to the bereaved.

I repeat the question: what do we think God will do in response to such a prayer, or would omit to do if we failed to make the prayer?

Our answer, if we have one at all, will depend on how we answer the main question, about the way God intervenes in our day-to-day lives.

I am not saying I have the answer. In fact, I wish I had not thought of the question. But I did, and I cannot pretend otherwise. What follows is but a groping after an answer, knowing it will be imperfect and incomplete, but daring to hope it will not be misleading.

Let us begin with 'guiding principles', observing patterns from the record of Scripture, and hoping to make sense of these patterns. The first pattern to notice is that God's interventions do not contradict the natural laws of cause and effect that we can observe by the scientific method.

Here is a simple example: the leader of the embattled Israelites, Gideon, is facing a far superior foe; God does not zap this enemy army with a miraculous 'killer ray'; rather, He directs Gideon to choose a very small force of dedicated men, to attack by stealth, with cunningly contrived psychological terror, causing the enemy to panic in the night and set upon each other. Unless Gideon had followed the given instructions perfectly, the outcome might have been otherwise. This example is chosen because Gideon is mentioned as one of many who 'by faith ... conquered kingdoms, enforced justice, received promises, ... put foreign armies to flight ...' (Heb. ch 11, vv32-38). This passage makes it clear that 'faith' is the following of instructions, however improbable they might seem, because the source is recognised to be from God.

A further example is that of Noah: he lived miles from the sea, and probably had never seen a boat or a barge; he got a lesson in boatbuilding; the dimensions he was instructed to build to are proportionally exactly what today's barges use for maximum stability and carrying capacity. 'By faith Noah, being warned by God of things not yet seen, took heed and constructed an ark ... ' (Heb. ch 11 v7), no doubt to the great amusement and ridicule of his neighbours. God's intervention was to give an instruction, and then to look for the response of faith to that instruction. The ark (barge) was built by Noah, with instructions as precise as he needed, right down to waterproofing techniques he would never be able to devise by trial and error; they had to be right first time.

Which thought brings me to another significant point: God sometimes uses intermediaries for the passing of these instructions. God has created physical beings (flesh and blood) and spiritual beings (ethereal); and the spiritual beings are called 'messengers'. Unfortunately we consider them so special that instead of translating the Greek word for messenger (angelos) we transliterate it: 'angel'. But it might have been more useful to talk of 'the messenger of the Lord' rather than 'the angel of the Lord'.

Instructions are messages, and hence the need for messengers.

This is the essential way God works, massively simplified of course. He invites men and women to listen to His voice, and to do the things instructed. The prophets of old were those used to proclaim a message from God to a whole community of people.

And then God spoke through His Son, and from this time forward there is a new covenant or dispensation. God's people are the extension of the incarnation, His sons and daughters here on this planet, with a gospel (good news) to proclaim and tasks to perform.

So if I pray to God for the hungry to be fed, I am really praying that the men and women able to supply those needs will be truly obedient to His call that such hungry people have food taken to them, and the means to grow their own food provided. If I pray for peace (say in Northern Ireland) I am praying that all God's people will hear His call to abandon enmity and hatred, and to open their hearts to all members of whatever side of the political divide they belong to. This is how God intervenes in day-to-day events: through those who hear His voice and 'by faith feed the hungry, bring hatred to an end ... etc.'

Praying for others can be pretty dangerous: it may be me that God sends to be the answer of that prayer; if I want to be 'safe' from that outcome, I had better stop praying.

A closing thought: some of the paragraphs (sentences?) here really need whole chapters, even whole books, to do them justice. But with a 'meditation' one can dare simply to suggest lines of thinking, and invite the reader to do the hard work.

The intervention we date our years by

2007-06-25T12:19:00.000+01:00

As I sit down to continue the theme of 'how God intervenes in human affairs' it has suddenly hit me what a loaded question it is. Think of the connotations of 'intervene'. We use it to refer to some one or something 'outside' gaining entrance, getting 'inside'. How anthropocentric! As if we humans can define the inside into which God may, or may not, be inclined to intrude. As if this planet, this solar system, this physical universe, were somehow 'ours', our sphere of existence, and we ask whether and how God inserts Himself into this territory of ours.

The reverse is surely nearer the truth. The universe is God's (He made it) and we are given both the permission and the privilege to inhabit it, as are ants (much more numerous than humans) and antelopes (much more graceful than humans) and anemones (much easier on all the senses than humans). But we have it on good authority that although not a sparrow will fall to the ground without it being an important event in the mind of the Creator, we are of more value than sparrows.

We share the image of God; we are God's expression of Himself in flesh and bone, fashioned - literally - out of the very stuff of nature, and with life breathed into us. And the message of Christmas is that God 'became' one of us too, in Judea, some two thousand or so years ago.

There is a sense in which this may be called an 'intervention', but let us cast aside all thoughts of intrusion. The spirit of the Universe took on physicality, the heartbeat of the Universe took on a heart, the mind of the Universe took on a brain, the message giver of the Universe took on vocal chords, the pointer of the Universe took on fingers.

This is the message, the exhortation, of Christmas:

"Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross." (Philippians 2 v. 5-7 RSV)

The key word is 'emptied'. It is such a powerful word. The source of all power left most of those powers aside, and accepted the limitations of flesh and blood. To see, the Creator of light now needed eyes; to hear, the Creator of sound now needed ears; to speak, the eternal Word (who was from the beginning and made all things) now needed a tongue; he could be hungry and tired, as we are; as a baby defenceless and dependent; and as a grown man the victim of cruelty and injustice, 'even death on a cross'.

If this is the extremity of the solution, it should give us some indication of the extremity of the problem.

We cannot do justice to the nature of the problem, nor to the true meaning of the solution, unless we take a right view of how extreme was this 'emptying'. God is always the Giver. At Christmas we celebrate the awe-inspiring realisation that He gave Himself - for us humans and for our salvation.

This is why Christianity is so offensive, so hard to accept. God is worshipped as Creator in many creeds; God as the inspirer of prophets is common ground, and acceptable to many - while only disputing who are the prophets most to be trusted. But that God should 'become flesh and live among us', that is a real stumbling block, that is a real point of division (or 'crisis' to use the Greek word).

The Christmas message is not cosy - or comforting. It is a challenge more than anything, and a warning: this is how extreme the problem was, and is. I pray that my eyes may be truly opened to understand the depth of my need, as well as the depth of His love, that even this self-emptying was not shunned, for my sake.

God intervenes with judgment

2007-06-25T12:15:00.000+01:00

It is clear (to those with faith) that God has intervened in judgment, and promises to do so further. We must look in more detail at some aspects of this topic.

For me it is a maxim that whatever God does, whether in blessing or in judgment, He does within the same framework of divine love. God does not get tetchy or irritable, as we humans do. His anger will be as much a response of love as His praising. So we must look for the love principle whenever we consider His judgments on individuals or groups.

The first recorded act of judgment was the expulsion from the Garden of Eden - and access to the Tree of Life - of Adam and Eve. No longer would their life be the ease of the garden, but the toil and labour of a natural environment more resistant than before. The 'thorns and thistles' would keep the human race well occupied - a judgment of love for a race now possessed of the 'knowledge of good and evil' through their own disobedience. It's all in Genesis chapter 3.

The love principle behind this judgment is quite evident: man in total leisure would have little restraint on his capacity for inventing evil things to occupy himself with; but being forced to work hard for survival would ensure that he would be compelled to concentrate on productive activities. And history is full of examples of just how far astray men can go when leisure (or power) gives them this freedom from the survival incentive.

The next act of judgment comes many generations later, and the record begins in Genesis chapter 6. God saw 'that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually'. This is the backdrop to the flood from which Noah and his family were given prior warning and the means to survive.

Any one who has read 'The Genesis Flood' by Whitcomb and Morris (1961) will know that we are dealing here with history as well as myth. The means by which the flood was delivered was the canopy of cloud that had hitherto covered the planet. The canopy was released as precipitation, and the physical evidence of this is thoroughly established by scientific observation.

Before the flood, the lifespan of humans was reckoned in the several hundreds of years. After the protective canopy was removed, the sun could now penetrate the earth's atmosphere more directly. Light refraction from the sun now occurred for the first ever time. The rainbow was the symbolic headline of what God had done, the sign He gave that such a flood could never happen again. The canopy was no longer there.

The protective canopy was no longer protecting mankind from the ageing process directly connected with how the sun's rays affect us physically. The ozone layer still provides a lesser degree of protection. Now men lived till just over a hundred (Abraham and Moses, for instance) but before long the average span came down to seventy years. This reduction in the lifespan of a race whose imagination 'was only evil continually' was (I venture to suggest) the main purpose of the flood. God modified the living conditions of the planet to put a limit on how evil a man could become. It was a judgment of love.

Obviously the thoughts on this page are very slightly presented, for such a massive conclusion. I have not presented the whole case, intentionally, but rather given a starting point for personal research and reflection. The principle is what I want to establish, because there is a further - and final - intervention promised (or threatened, depending on where one stands in relation to the Lord of Life). We are told on the best possible authority that 'heaven and earth will pass away' (Matthew 24 v. 34). It will be just like in the days of Noah (v. 38), a human race totally oblivious of the judgment about to descend. Some will be removed, some will not (v. 40-1). The result is described in awesome terms: 'the heavens will pass away with a loud noise ... the elements will be dissolved with fire ... the earth and the works that are upon it will be burned up.' (2 Peter 3 v. 10)

But all this will not be an act of revenge, but of love. The final termination of the kingdom of evil will be delayed until that evil has reached such a peak that not to intervene would be callous. Then the God of love will destroy one universe to replace it with a 'new heaven and a new earth' (Revelation 21 v. 1).

I am fully aware that this whole topic is a minefield. Many sects have been founded on the basis of a claim to predict the precise moment of God's final intervention. The warnings our Lord gave (read the whole two chapters Matthew 24 and 25) were that there would be such deceptions, often with compelling 'signs and wonders', that many false prophets would arise. I do not wish to add to any such speculations regarding timing. But I do want to spell out the essential message: God is a God of Love; God does intervene in judgment; God does so to limit evil, and ultimately - in a final intervention - to destroy it.

How does God intervene?

2007-06-25T12:09:00.000+01:00

This is a continuation of the question posed in my last piece (what does God do all day?) and we have reached the point where it is right to think about how God intervenes in our lives.

Obviously I have skipped through the question: does God intervene in our lives? This is another maxim, an absolute assumption, a matter of faith. The revelation of the Bible is very much that God has intervened, does intervene, and will intervene. If all this is wrong, then we are left with a 'Cosmic Spectator' God. Such a God would not command my respect, nor yours I dare say.

But the record of the Bible tells us much about how God has, does, and will, intervene, and I want to look at this in some detail.

It is possible to categorise God's interventions into the creative, the cataclysmic (of which there is one on record and one promised), the pivotal, and the mundane. All very unsatisfactory words, but then that goes with subject matter; there are rarely big enough words in everyday language for what is eternal and very much beyond our experience.

It is a matter of the Biblical record and of faith that God is the Creator of all that is: without Him was not anything made that was made. As written to the Hebrews (ch 11 v 3), by faith we understand that the universe was formed at God's command.

The record in the first three chapters of Genesis is the only detail we have, but it is worth a meticulous study. With much trepidation I offer the comments that follow, knowing they are inadequate, as must any human effort to understand the mind of God be. But here goes.

We are told that 'God is Light' (1 John 1,5). We are told that God's first creative command was 'let there be light' (Genesis 1,3). The conjunction of these two statements in my view reveals the very nature of creation. Creation is not 'ex nihilo' (out of nothing). God, who is Light, commands 'let Light be'. God gives of Himself, giving an autonomous existence to what previously was part of God, namely Light. Creation is a sort of diminishing process, a giving process, an emptying (the Greek word - kenosis - is used most significantly in another passage, explaining the incarnation - Philippians 2,7).

This makes much more sense to us who have a scientific view of life. 'Ex nihilo' creation would seem to us to be contrary to the most fundamental rule of the observed universe. But if God, before His creative acts, was the sum of 'all that is', then the process of creation is to gives a new independence to part of this sum of all that is. Before the first command there was God - who is Light. After the first command, there was God and Light.

It is interesting that from a scientific point of view, we know remarkably little about light. Is it energy (whatever that means)? Is it to be thought of as particles, or waves, or both?

The more physicists try to define what 'matter' is, the more they discover how the horizon of knowledge is constantly retreating. An atom (literally meaning the 'indivisible') is made up of electrons and neutrons, which themselves are made up of ... (as soon as another 'indivisible' element is added, the search for the definition of what is inside that begins).

And Genesis was written in such a way as to be understood by the earliest of literate humans, with no scientific language at their disposal.

From the single opening command by which Light is given an existence of its own, all that follows is a process of differentiation. Light is separated from non-light (darkness), and with that simple statement we have what we now call 'space'. Light is concentrated into sources of light, stars and planets, and suchlike. One particular planet has its fundamentals differentiated (solids and liquids). God (who is Life) gives differentiated life-forms their particularity, along with the means of propagation. The means of propagation (seeds) become the food for higher forms.

And finally God gives a life-form which is 'like Himself, made in His own image'. Interestingly, in these sentences God is not a male or female entity, but plural. Male and female forms share the likeness, the image, of God.

God has given His/Her own likeness to creatures, maleness and femaleness, what makes a human a human is the reality of possession of God's own nature.

So I reach this simple (but huge) conclusion: that God's first intervention was a sequence of acts of giving, giving of Himself, emptying of Himself. This is the first characteristic of God's intervention.

I ponder the enormity of this concept, and invite you to do so too.

What does God do all day? [2]

2007-06-25T12:00:00.000+01:00

This is a continuing of the theme I started last month, and if you have not read that page, please do so. The key point is that the question is one I cannot make go away, and that I know my answer will be incomplete and probably wrong. But I am compelled to face up to it, and I ask you to do so too.

There are very few things of which we can be certain, but here is one: that our choices are real.

This statement is axiomatic, and not dissimilar to the answer Descartes gave when he faced the question 'what can we be certain of?' His answer was - 'I think, therefore I am'. If my choices are not real, if my actions are controlled by another being, or if my actions are random and not controlled even by myself, then even the questions I ask are unreal, even what I am writing here is unreal, and I just do not believe that is so. If I am wrong (and the reality is that I am just someone's puppet) then I am not a human at all, and all the moral problems are imaginary. So I conclude that to be human means to be making real choices, for which I am actually responsible.

It is of course a leap of faith to believe that this 'humanity' I possess is God-given, that this 'humanity', poor though it may be and full of faults, is because I am made 'in the image of God'. Yes, this is a belief and not a demonstrable fact. But it is easier (more logical, and less a leap of faith) to believe that it is something given by a power capable of giving it, than to believe in a massively long progression of events, from some inert and simple chemical structure (obviously not capable of 'choices') being converted by mutational accidents into a being capable of making 'choices'. At what point in this alleged chain of accidents did 'animality' (from the Latin - animus - for a mind) arrive, and how? This question demands more faith than I am capable of. It is not obvious that those who do believe in the progression from inert chemical to 'animality' by a series of accidents have really faced up to the difficulties. For them the alternative difficulties (to believe that we have received our humanity as a gift) present moral problems as well as intellectual ones. The attraction of 'evolution as the whole answer' is that it leaves no lurking moral challenges, no 'Giver' who might care how 'His' gift is used.

So now I have two axioms, two affirmations: that my humanity is real; that my humanity is a gift. And this is where I can begin to answer the question: what does God do all day? I believe that He who gave me humanity (this 'likeness' to Himself) will not take it away. He will not turn me into a puppet. His interventions (if there are any) will leave me with real choices. And we must think about interventions in due course.

Because I am human, I believe He cares about us humans, because I know that (weakly, imperfectly, and not continuously) I do too - homo sum; humani nil a me alienum puto as the poet Terence put it some 150 years before Christ: 'I am a man; I consider nothing human to be alien to me'. If Terence, and I, and everyone else I know, can be moved by the joys of others (to rejoice with them) and by the sorrows of others (to be sad with them), then I have part of the answer to my question: God has divine joys and divine sorrows, the nature of which I can only guess at, but which are real joys and real sorrows.

Today some of things I will do (or not do) may give the Source of all Joy something to be glad about, and some may give the Source of all Sorrow something to be sad about. But He is not indifferent, of that I am sure. Nothing human is alien to Him either.

But does God intervene? Is He bound up helplessly as a passive observer, and nothing more? And - if He does intervene - how does He intervene? These are the next questions, and they will be attempted at my next posting. Till then let us, dear reader, hang on to one simple idea: that God is bound up, involved, in what we do, and don't do. Just the conscious awareness of this makes a difference - at least it does to me.

What does God do all day? [1]

2007-06-25T11:43:00.000+01:00

It is more than three months since I last posted something here, but that is not because my commitment has waned. Yes, I have been very busy on an internet project that may be significant, but the basic reason for this long interval is that I have been struggling to answer a question.

The question is that posted in the title at the top of this page. The question came into my mind in exactly these words, and the question sounds almost irreverent. We might ask a question in this form about somebody whose role we are unable to understand. To ask it about God is consciously anthropomorphic: God does not measure time in days as we do. I have tried to dismiss the question, but have been unable to do so. And so, knowing that I do not know the answer, I am sharing the question and my questioning with you here. Perhaps trying to explain the question to myself and any readers will help us both find our way through to some sort of answer.

We know the answer will be at best imperfect and incomplete. We are dealing with the God who says "My ways are not your ways, and My thoughts are not your thoughts." The great heroes and heroines of faith (some are listed in the eleventh chapter of the Letter to the Hebrews) had met with God, and had followed His instructions. But we are told remarkably little about how they had received those instructions. Read this chapter, and then follow up by looking at the accounts in the Old Testament, asking yourself all the time: how did they know what God wanted them to do? You may not get very far forward, but it will became very apparent that one of the things God does is give instructions to men and women of faith. "Go here ... " "Do this ..." " Say that ..."

In other words, God does involve Himself in the affairs of mankind. God does want certain things to happen, and others not to happen. But God delegates the influencing of events to others, to men and women, young and old, who will hear His voice (however) and act in obedience to that voice.

This morning, twelve days after the tragic events of September 11th, all over the world people will be praying to God to do all sorts of things. Even without the focus of these recent events, we have all prayed - have we not? - for God to feed the poor, heal the sick, give deliverance to the oppressed, and bring peace to our world. How deeply have we thought about how we expect God to fulfil these petitions we make?

I will return to this question again (I don't know how often and in what depth) but I wanted simply to share the question with you, dear reader, and invite you to join with me in asking: what does God do all day?

The testing we must do

2007-06-25T11:34:00.000+01:00

Last month I spoke of 'the only test', referring to the test by which we all will be tested in the fullness of time. If you have come straight to this page, by the way, you need to read last month's page first. But there is a testing process which we are expected to carry out ourselves, and that is what I am going to write about this month.

While we all need to remember the exhortation 'Judge not ... that ye be not judged', it is worth while emphasising that 'judge' in this sense means 'condemn'. We dare not stand in judgment to condemn another's motives for lots of good reasons, among which is the fact that we do not have the competence. We do not have the authority either, but mainly we dare not through ignorance. Only One can look into the heart and see all there is to be seen, all the difficulties, all the influences, all the true intentions, in the deeds and lives of others. We are even in not too good a position to judge ourselves, so let us refrain from judging others.

But we do have to test others. Yes, we have a responsibility to avoid being deceived.

Our Lord has placed all the community of His people, regardless of the human organisation we adhere to, in a brotherhood in which there are ministries: he has given ' ... some to be apostles, some to be prophets, some to be evangelists, and some to be pastors and teachers ... ' (Ephesians 4 v11) There are other more general terms, such as elder (presbuteros), overseer (episcopos), and steward (diakonos), while the term 'priest' is used of all believers (and only of all believers) in 1 Peter 2 v9 ' ... you are ... a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God ...'

Different organisations use different translations of the original Greek words, or sometimes transliterations, such as presbyter, but the reality of the ministries in the list from Ephesians, for church founding and building (apostleship), speaking forth the word (prophecy), proclaiming the gospel (evangelism), counselling and teaching, is what every part of the Lord's Church should experience, regardless of the terminology used.

But along with the promise of provision of ministries, there are warnings. 'At that time [the last days] many will turn away from the faith, and will betray and hate each other, and many false prophets will appear and deceive many people.' (Matthew 24 v10-11).

It is consistent with these warnings that John writes (1 John 4 v1-3) 'Dear friends, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world ... every spirit that does not acknowledge Jesus is not from God.' I have added a page with links to sites where assistance in this testing is offered.

So we have a situation where prophecy (literally 'speaking forth', not necessarily about the future) is part of the way God guides His people, and the warning that there will be many false prophets, and we must make every effort not to be deceived. Last month I listed the five most prevalent modern organisations, each claiming to be the sole depository of truth, and named the founding prophetic figures (three men and two women) each organisation reveres. Now I have close friends or relatives in all these organisations bar one, and admire their many fine qualities. Logically four out of five of these founding prophets must be false, and all five out of five may be false. How are we to decide? By which organisation is numerically the greatest, or the most geographically widespread? Or by some other criterion?

Let me tell you what I think about prophecy.

Its purpose is to proclaim an already established (but in danger of being forgotten) truth, or to direct action into a particular sphere, such as when Barnabas and Saul were sent off to evangelize the island of Cyprus. Read Acts 13 v1-3 and you will see the connection straight away. Prophetic insight will always bring the focus back to the Lord, '... that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow ..' (Philippians 2 v10) If a claimed prophetic ministry enhances the glory of the prophet I want none of it, but if it enhances the glory of Jesus, then I will listen intently. That is my test.

Check it out for yourself: if you hear the name of the prophet more often than the name of Jesus, then your doubts are justified. If the prophet wants to remain simply a voice directing attention to the Saviour, then listen to that voice. And draw nearer to the Saviour. If the prophet's word is true, it is Jesus' voice you are really hearing. So that is the test: if you are drawn nearer to Jesus, and sense His peace and love more completely, and enjoy a sweeter communion with Him, then praise Him for the human means that may have been used. But the true prophet wants none of your praise, nor any of your allegiance.

There is one, and only one, reliable source of information about the true Jesus, and that is from those who knew Him when he lived on this earth. The collection of their writings is called the New Testament. If any sect or denomination wants to keep you away from these writings, then they want to keep you away from the true Jesus too. If any sect or denomination wants to explain these writings to you, to provide you with the 'key' that will unlock them, please be suspicious. There is only one way to find out what the first generation of those who knew Jesus directly wrote about Him, and that is to read their writings for yourself, without human additions and commentaries. To help make this a more approachable task, I offer you a reading plan. It simply suggests a sequence for reading every word of the New Testament. The arrangement in the published editions of the New Testament is not a proposed reading sequence. The reading plan offered here is no more than an alternative - and carefully considered - sequence, which you are invited to follow. Please click the link, and you will see what I mean ...

Reading Plan

The only test

2007-06-25T11:29:00.000+01:00

I have not added to the site for about six months, because these last several months have been a time a great creative activity for me (with work on another site) and this has somehow pushed my 'Meditations' rather into the background.

On a few occasions I had the germ of a theme, but somehow it did not press for attention enough, and the opportunity went by. But now some interesting events have caused me to take up the reins again.

For whatever reason I am coming quite often into contact with people who have a faith, or at least a set of religious principles and a mode of devotion, that is at variance from my own. When asked about my religion, I always simply describe myself as a 'Christian'. Not as an Anglican, though that is the community of worship where I attend on a Sunday. But there are those who call on doors, or are otherwise described as belonging to a particular sect, with whom I do come into contact from time to time, apparently by chance.

When ones meets such folk as these, the most obvious characteristic is the certainty of their beliefs. They do not seem willing to consider any ideas outside their own body of convictions, and to this I always respond in the same way: I look for the bedrock of what we share, the tenets we have in common, and rejoice with them over the way in which these beliefs bring peace and focus into our lives.

But deep down I am hoping that our encounter will help them understand that there are those outside their clearly defined circle of adherents who also have met 'the living God' and are utterly involved in 'working out our salvation', relying on His grace and strength to do so.

Just as meeting them inspires me to ask myself why I can be sure that the revelation I have received of the Almighty is reliable, I am silently praying that they are asking the same question too. I do not particularly want them to leave the body they are joined to, but I do want them to move closer to God from within that body.

For at the heart of my own theology is the conviction that the body (sect, church, denomination, call it what you will) we say we belong to is essentially a human organisation. I found God myself through the ministry of an Anglican clergyman, having lived socially in an Anglican environment from my birth, with the old Book of Common Prayer's cadences wafting through my conscious and subconscious mind from the time I could understand words at all. At my first school we prayed 'Lighten our darkness we beseech Thee, O Lord ...' (the third evensong collect) at the close of every day. During the most energetic period of my life I found myself searching for a deeper spirituality by moving to other groups of worshipers, each seeming more devoted (which is not difficult when the comparison is with traditional Anglicanism). I have known the charismatic movement and the house-church movement from within, and have a huge regard for the integrity of many I am glad to call brothers and sisters in Christ, who belong to groups such as these.

But getting inside such an organisation one discovers that there are all the usual problems of human fallibility to contend with, often most obviously caused by those who are leaders wishing to exercise more control than perhaps is appropriate. We all of us experience our own fallibility. It is only common sense to presume that it exists in a similar measure in others too.

Regarding sects and denominations, one formula for success (that is to say, defining growth in numbers as success) seems to be to demand allegiance, obedience, and a financial commitment far greater than that required by organisations with a much greater age behind them. And often the new adherents are such as I was, travellers from another denomination seeking greater spirituality. Another formula for success is to have some focal belief that is utterly distinctive, something that really distinguishes this body from all others, and to hang on to that distinctiveness - that exclusivity - in a totally uncompromising way.

All the four or five major worldwide sects (most being founded in the nineteenth century) have much to be proud of, whether it is their behaviour under persecution or the closeness and uprightness of their family lives. I do not wish to sound as though I am standing in judgment on either their founders or their subsequent leaders or any member I meet. There are striking similarities, however, as well as mutual exclusiveness, between the organisations founded by Joseph Smith, Charles Taze Russell, and Mary Baker Eddy, not to mention the Seventh-Day Adventists (who believe in the prophetic teachings of Ellen G. White) or the Christadelphians (founded by John Thomas). You could also include the modern examples, where dynamic preachers have gathered a strongly committed body of adherents, even to their early demise in Waco or the Amazonian rain forest - or the adherents of the Church of Scientology, founded by L Ron Hubbard (which may or may not be a religion). The parallels are worthy of note.

So there is a question we all need to ask: am I relying for salvation on membership of a particular organisation, or on something else?

I do not know on whom God's mercy will rest, and who will be able to receive the forgiveness every human needs. All I ask for myself is this: that God gives me the grace to go on seeking - literally every day - the forgiveness I know I need, not because of any deed I do, or because I belong to this or that body of believers, but simply because of His Love and my need. So I do not think there is a membership test, or a doctrinal test (at best we know in part, after all), but if there is a test it must be this: the genuineness of our desire to become the man (or woman) God wants us to be. For salvation is the realisation (the reality-becoming) of that desire.

Focus and Blur

2007-06-25T11:26:00.001+01:00

Since these pages are directed towards the Internet community, I hope I may be permitted a little jargon and insider-speak once in a while. You see, these past several weeks I have been developing some software that needed to use the JavaScript events 'onFocus' and 'onBlur'. The point about focus with regard to a web page is that it is something you can set, or remove. The result of removal is blur.

These two words kept coming into my mind as very powerful concepts, and surely a parable or metaphor of the human condition. We talk about focused people, and it is true, surely, that we have always something on which we are focusing our attention.

The other topic that has also been at the forefront of my mind (in focus!) has been counselling. What sparked it off was some widely reported comments by George Carey (the Archbishop of Canterbury) that counselling was tending to become a new religion, a false god, or substitute for religion. He also put consumerism and education in the same bracket.

Counselling can be a false god if it offers something inherently beyond its powers to offer. It is difficult to make the case that counselling does actual harm, since those who practise it would reject very strongly the accusation that their intention is to do harm at all. Quite the reverse, they would contend: our sole aim is to do good.

I respect all this. Some one I know well is training to become a counsellor, and I know that her motives are entirely to do whatever good she can.

An interesting statistic is that there are currently in the UK approximately the same number of accredited counsellors as there are clergy: a figure of around 25,000 for both categories. Among counsellors there are competing methodologies (transactional analysis, psychodynamic analysis, person-centered, and so on), just as in the sphere of religion there are different denominations.

The key 'problem' - as I see it - for counselling is the question of focus. Any one who goes to a counsellor will find their focus drawn more and more inward; they will focus on themselves, their problems, the causes of these problems, and the cure for these problems. They will encouraged to talk about themselves (a counsellor is essentially a paid listener) and their problems. The counsellor is trained to get this focus working overtime.

But what if this inward focus is the very problem itself?

Counselling sets out to offer happiness, and peace of mind; to take away irrational fears; to banish depression; to deliver inner contentedness. What a Faustian temptation!

The message of Jesus Christ was a perfect antithesis to this. He challenged men and women to focus, not on themselves, but on others. From the Torah of Moses he took the command 'Love your neighbour as yourself', and added 'Love your enemy!'

The summary of His whole message is that we will only find peace and joy for ourselves if we are focusing on giving peace and joy to some one else, and forgetting about ourselves.

Do I focus on myself? Then I will be off to the nearest counsellor, and seek advice on how to become a happier person. Do I care about other people? Then I will see how I can make their lot easier. I will supply what needs I can supply. I will focus on what they need. And as a happy bi-product, in forgetting about myself, and my own needs, I will find the sort of blessing that only comes to those who are not looking for blessing at all.

Faith (yes again!)

2007-06-25T11:21:00.000+01:00

A little while ago my wife and I were talking in the garden (after a barbecue lunch) with a neighbour. This neighbour, and I forget how the conversation turned this way, commented that he admired my faith. But the detail of his comment revealed that he saw faith as the ability to believe in something contrary to one's intellect. Faith, in his understanding of it, was the ability to suspend disbelief, to control the mind, to exercise a belief system contrary to all normal intellectual rules of evidence.

It made me realise how very difficult faith is to understand, for a typical unbeliever. Modern society has won all the intellectual battles, and children are taught as if it were fact that everything we see has evolved over billions of years, and that no one with any intellectual respectability actually believes in God any more. Religion is seen (and by many unbelievers even valued) as a preservation of traditional ceremonies, and acceptable, much as concert going is acceptable, as a way of bringing cultural stability into a person's life. It does not matter whether the building is a church, a synagogue, a mosque, or a temple. It is acceptable to modern society as being equivalent to, or simply an alternative of, a concert hall or theatre. The religious drama, performance, recital, of one's choice is just a matter of cultural taste, by which one defines oneself. A rock concert, or a classical symphony, are much the same, in principle.

So I am addressing what I see as a profound misunderstanding, and will try to explain what faith is like, when seen from the inside, looking out. 'Faith' happened to me. I was not seeking it. Just the reverse. It was in my second year at university, when as a convinced atheist I was introduced to a clergyman. He invited me to debate with him, and suggested I read St John's Gospel, so that we could focus on a particular text. I agreed to read that book. And with every expectation of finding much ammunition for my anti-Christian arguments, and every intention of using them in debate against this clergyman, I read the book.

Totally to my surprise, I found something quite different from what I was expecting. I remember distinctly (though it is now above 40 years ago) phrasing my conclusion: simply this, that Jesus was 'real'. I had no theology yet. That was all I could express. But the clergyman, seeing my change of heart, invited me to commit my life to this 'real' Jesus. I did so, audibly, in his room.

Then has followed a lifetime of learning, reading, teaching even, but mostly learning. My mind has embraced scientific books, about creation, about psychology and therapy. I have read many religious writers, of just about every century of human record, and many anti-religious writers. I have studied all the world's major religions, in sufficient depth to get beyond the merely superficial.

My mind, intellectually, supports my faith in a 'real' Jesus. So faith is not a substitute for anything, nor counter to the evidence. It is not blind. On the contrary, it is well informed, and grows stronger as more and more evidence of human history, and the human condition, is examined openly.

I cannot explain how 'faith' happened to me. But I am aware that what happened is typical. To give just one example, the young John Wesley found his heart 'strangely warmed' in a small chapel in East London, and that experience set him off on a lifetime of faith. Many, many, more examples could be quoted. The common factor is an unexpected response to a proclamation, whether heard or read, of words.

'Faith comes from hearing the message', as Paul said to his friends in Rome (Rom. 10:17). But the same message will be heard in different ways. No preacher will ever know what it is that may cause the same message to fall, week after week, on deaf ears, then suddenly a hearer will receive it. A seed will be sown. A life will be transformed.

Faith is still for me a great mystery. Certainly it was a gift, not even - in my case - a gift I was even seeking at the time it came. And how I have used that gift, whether well or badly, is another matter, a matter for eventual praise or blame (more of the latter I fear).

Confused?

I doubt if this explanation will help many. But it is good for it to be on record. Who knows who may read it, in this rather unfrequented place, deep inside cyberspace. And I promise you this. If it happens to you, as it happened to me, you will recognise it straight away. You will know something 'real' has happened to you.

Anger

2007-06-25T11:19:00.001+01:00

One of the readers of these pages writes to me regularly, and has spoken recently about anger over a particular incident. This set me to thinking about anger, and to writing those thoughts here.

Just as it is possible to find four quite different definitions for 'love' (see C. S. Lewis's admirable 'The Four Loves') it is obvious that there are several types of anger. There is the anger we feel when we see some act of cruelty directed against a weak victim. We want to rush out and protect the suffering, and we feel a totally spontaneous rage against the person causing the hurt. We obviously feel the rage more intensely if the victim is some one close or dear to us, but we can feel the rage pretty strongly even if the victim is totally unknown to us.

At the other end of the scale there is the sort of resentment we feel when some one lets us down, cheats us, deceives us, belittles us, or insults us. This is the very human response we have to something that hurts us, and to the person that hurts us. Our anger can be very strong, even though in a more rational moment we recognise that the hurt was not actually deliberate.

Defence mechanisms, and anger like this is a sort of defence mechanism, are totally natural, and sometimes part of the way we survive as humans. The rush of adrenalin we need to respond to real physical danger is part of the anger response we feel towards an insult. In other words, some anger is perhaps purely chemical, and very difficult to control. No doubt this is why Paul of Tarsus gave us the advice 'Be angry, but do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger.' (Ephesians 4:26)

The immediate response is perhaps not controllable. But we can control how we deal with it. We can either allow it to stay, to let it fester, to let it destroy a relationship; or we can let it go, release the cause of our anger by an act of forgiveness (even if the forgiveness is not sought), and recognise the extent to which that anger was really a bit of wounded pride.

It is reassuring that the Bible recognises that anger is a natural, and sometimes legitimate, response to events. It is also good to be warned to keep it under control. If I hold on to my anger, I am beginning a habit of resentment, even hatred, which will harm me, and produce no good result. Ultimately we are all bound by the principle that we are 'to forgive, as we have been forgiven.'

Shortly after saying 'Be angry, but do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger', Paul goes on to say: 'let all bitterness and wrath and anger ... be put away from you, with all malice, and be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.'

If this sounds too much like a counsel of perfection, just settle for forgetting your anger before the day is done. Chemically, as well as spiritually, it is after all rather bad for you.

Reflections on a Funeral

2007-06-25T11:14:00.000+01:00

There has been a much longer gap between new postings than usual, and there has been a good reason for it. An event has taken place on which I have needed to reflect and digest.

Some one I knew very well forty years ago, and then have seen very little of for the last thirty years, died a few week ago. I sat at her bedside in the hospice and held her hand just days before she died of cancer, and we exchanged words in private that were deeply signficant to both of us.

At her funeral something strange happened. There was a tribute to her life which made no reference to any events in the ten years I knew her. It painted a somewhat unreal picture of the reality of her life.

The funeral was very Christian in intention, pointing out the certainty we could all have of her now enjoying all the blessings of heaven. Now I am very familiar with the precept de mortuis nil nisi bonum (concerning the dead, nothing but good), but what does our translation to heaven mean?

What does forgiveness mean in the context of eternity?

Let me pose a hypthetical case. What happens to a murderer who receives forgiveness? Does it mean that through all eternity that act of murder will be treated as if it never existed?

I think the answer has to be no. There will be a victim who knows otherwise. No, what forgiveness means for the murderer is that he will be rejoicing in his forgiveness throughout eternity. He will be, as a forgiven murderer, a testament to the grace of God, a living example of how God's love can transform us deeply flawed humans into truly glorious beings. He will be for ever a forgiven murderer. And he will be meeting (and rejoicing with) forgiven adulterers, forgiven thieves, forgiven liars, and forgiven coveters (just to use the list given in the Ten Commandments).

At my own funeral I would prefer people to remember me in as realistic a way as possible. I do not want all the (rather few) good points of my life paraded, and the rest ignored as if it never were. Rather let people rejoice that John, whose faults were all too obvious, has gone to the place where those faults will be forgiven faults, and he will be transformed into the being God wants him to be. John will be for ever a forgiven ... (but perhaps better not fill in the gaps just yet, as my life is not yet over).

So here is a very short meditation, but as challenging to write as any I have written, and I venture perhaps as challenging to read.

Counterfeits

2007-06-25T11:11:00.001+01:00

This is going to be another one of my rather philosophical rambles, but I was started off on a train of thoughts when I read a sentence about counterfeits in the realms of the spirit.

What is the enemy of 'good'? It is easy to answer 'evil', but that is misleading, because only rarely is 'evil' an effective opponent of 'good'. More often 'counterfeit good' is a much more effective opponent of 'good'.

This is a theme I invite you to explore with me.

We are currently in the middle of a debate about Section 28, which made it an offence for local authorities to promote homosexuality as a 'pretended alternative to family life', or some such phrase - for I am quoting from memory. I have a great respect and affection for those few open homosexuals I know as friends, and do not know if they perceive their chosen basis for sexual relationships as an alternative 'family life' or not.

Can two men, or two women, create a union that is equivalent to the union between a husband and wife? It is one thing to cover the relationship in law, and to allow rights that a common law spouse enjoys to be enjoyed by common law partners of such a homosexual partnership. Broadly speaking there is a sort of natural justice in this, and no doubt society can demand quite properly that such rights need to be established formally in law. But the nub of the issue that Section 28 enshrined in law is that a homosexual pair are not a family in the same way that a husband and wife are, and that young people need to understand this. Young people may need to be protected from influential protagonists wishing to mould impressionable minds in an unrepresentative way. To wish to protect the young from unfair influence is not to condemn individual homosexuals at all, but to seek to limit how and where they may promote their personal lifestyles.

The enemy of family life may not be a denial of family (the state taking over all upbringing of children is such a denial) but a counterfeit concept of 'family'. An apparent family, but not a real family. I am actually more worried about the state replacing parental authority and responsibility than I am about a partnership of two homosexuals wanting to adopt children. If the alternative is continued residence in a local authority 'home' for orphans then I would vote for their being adopted by a homosexual couple, assuming there were no childless families of loving husband and wife available.

This opening illustration of the effectiveness of the counterfeit as the opponent of the real may do more harm than good, and I do not want to press the point too far. Let us look at an area that I do feel strongly about. There is a most wonderful statement made by Paul, writing to his friends in Galatia: "The fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control."

If it is true that the only way we humans can experience real love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control is by opening our spirit to the Spirit of God, then any pretended love, joy, peace etc. are the true enemies. And I think we can detect some of the more obvious counterfeits.

The whole drug culture offers a counterfeit joy and peace, with one drug which some are arguing should be legalised actually called 'ecstasy'. The culture of sexuality offers a counterfeit love. The culture of counselling offers an even more enticing counterfeit of peace and self-control. If only our natural selfishness could be converted by conversation into true love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control, how relieved we would all be. This is not to say that all counselling is evil, but we need to know what its limits are. If it offers to supply true love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control, then it needs to be exposed as a counterfeit.

For the Christian message is that there is something so deeply 'wrong' with us that only from the gift of God can we receive true love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. And that not suddenly, like flicking a switch, but only through a total habit of 'living by the spirit' which becomes a gradual transforming force in one's life.

And every Christian I know, and I know myself best of all, realises that this process still has far to go in him, and that in truth it has only just begun, and he wishes he could enjoy more of its fruits sooner. The process will not be complete this side of the grave, for we have everything here 'in part' and only there will we be released to be transformed fully.

So this Sunday morning I ponder on the counterfeits I see around me, some more appealing than others, and I challenge myself not to be fooled by them.

The Future of the Church

2007-06-25T11:07:00.000+01:00

'Do you still want the church to exist for your children and grandchildren?'

This is the question that opens the current issue of my local parish newsletter. What is happening to the Church of England is happening to all the mainstream denominations, Roman Catholics, Methodists, United Reformed, and so on. Church attendance is dwindling, there is less income, fewer ordinations. Predictions are that in two or three decades all of these organisations will be effectively bankrupt.

The local parish I live in has a population of about 400, and the village I live in is technically a hamlet. The parish church is a mile away in a once proud neighbouring village, but decimated by the Black Death. The original huge rectory was sold, and made into offices. The modern building which the rector lived in when we came here nearly 30 years ago no longer houses a rector, and is an ordinary family house. Our rector has the pastoral care of two other parishes besides our own, all equipped with medieval church buildings, with proud spires. And predictably all three church buildings will have ceased to be in use every Sunday, as they still are now, and his job will have been rationalised away, before another 30 years elapse.

Does this mean that the church is dying?

It depends what you mean by the church. As a building, yes our local church is dying. It is fullest for weddings and funerals. On Sundays the dozen or so who attend have an average age of over 60, and the average age of the youngest three would be close to 50. As an organisation too the Church of England will have to abandon its parish system fairly soon. There will still be bishops and priests, and they will wear the same (or probably more ornate) distinctive clothing, but attendance at church will be even lower than at present as a percentage of the population.

Our local rector may believe that he is observing the decline of Christianity in England. But I think he is wrong.

If you read the New Testament you will find nothing about church buildings. You will read about apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers. You will read about the church in so-and-so's house, and about the overseer (episkopos - bishop), elders (presbuteros - presbyter), and stewards (diakonos - deacon). Full time ministers were very few, and even apostles might support themselves by an artisan trade.

Now I do not attend a house church, but I know a lot from first hand about the house church movement. Many of the people who might otherwise worship alongside me at my local C of E church are in a house group, or hired hall, locally. And they are not part of the statistics for the number of worshippers on a Sunday. Christianity seems to be recovering its origins, and with it its vitality. And the number who meet to worship on a Sunday, or to pray and study together mid-week, is almost impossible to count, for much of it is happening in ordinary houses.

I personally do not fret over how many people attend a church building on a Sunday, but I do care a lot for how Christians spend their time on a Sunday. I am writing this on a Sunday. I also know that the total number of Christians who celebrated the memorial of a saving death by breaking bread together today, both locally and nationally, is far larger than the number who attended a church building.

Society is changing around us. Forty years ago when I first taught in a school, perhaps only one child in 10 of a typical school class did not live at home with a mother married to their father. Now in some areas the number will be 5 out of 10 not living at home in a traditional two parent family, and in other areas the figure will be higher. It is not only the church that is changing. Two out of every five children born today will have been born to a mother not married to the father of the child.

Being a Christian is what I do with my life, not where I go on a Sunday. The number of true Christians in any community is hard to count (only God knows the real number). So the message my local parson needs is that while the church as an organisation may seem to be declining to the point of ineffectiveness, and his buildings may not be used any more in a decade or two, God has still the same purpose: through His people to be the salt that preserves, the light that shines. And many of them are recovering the principles of organisation that the first generation of Christians used, and recorded in their writings.

Levels of Honesty

2007-06-25T11:03:00.000+01:00

Have you noticed how little different life is in the new millennium? I tend to write the year in full now ('2000') when I write it on a letter or cheque, but apart from that, life is remarkably the same.

So I will carry on with my monthly meditations, firmly resisting any urge to talk about new beginnings, and such like. In fact I want to talk about a timeless theme, as you can see from the title of this page.

I am beginning to realise how dishonest I am, which is quite an admission for a man of my age. But work, and family, and social life, all bring challenges to one's honesty. And my thinking is moving on just fractionally from what I wrote last month, about ends and means.

In work, so long as we believe our intentions are for the best, we tend to shade the way we represent things to our colleagues. What we say will be factually accurate, but that only makes the dishonesty more powerful. I have noticed it, both when I do it, and when I find it done to me, that the best way to deceive is with the truth. I am defining a true statement as one that is factually accurate.

Suppressio veri, suggestio falsi (omission of the true, hinting at the false) is done most of all by people who have an aim they are sure is good. Politicians, whether in parliament, local councils, or men and women who use the media for political purposes (the most powerful group of all), will use facts selectively to distort and deceive. If you end up thinking what they want you to think, on whatever issue, they have succeeded. And a carefully selected range of facts is the best way to achieve this, for actual lies can be discovered and exposed for what they are.

Hence the famous saying about 'lies, damned lies, and statistics'. Politicians do it all the time, and now there is the professional fact presenter, whom we call a spin-doctor. His job is to present the right selection of the best set of facts, in the most compelling way, so that the public end up believing what the politician wants believed. If any trend is obvious in British politics, the rise of importance of the spin-doctor is very clear.

But we all do it, and that is my point. Sometimes it is simple politeness, and a wish to spare the feelings of a friend. Sometimes we 'know' a particular line of action at work is right, but a superior needs convincing. So we select the best set of facts, and knowingly omit others.

I expect I am as guilty as any one on this score, but I just wanted to set down the concern I am having about it. Is it becoming a habit? How far am I from being a manipulative deceiver? The line I draw is not telling lies. Is that a sound enough line?

Sorry. These are all questions I am asking. I wish I had more answers. But I am sure they are good questions, and ones we all need to face.

Does the end justify the means?

2007-06-25T10:55:00.000+01:00

Written originally December 1999

This is the last piece I shall write this century, and I want to take a parting look at the century, and somehow try to sum it up. I have been alive, and able to understand properly what was going on in it, for more than half of it. My father was born in 1902, so I have a close connection with nearly all of it.

What best characterises the moral temperament of the century? Quot homines, tot sententiae, no doubt. (However many people, that many opinions). My personal selection is the question I have put at the head of this page. An affirmative answer has been part of the philosophy of the two most influential (in terms of their effect on the world) state leaders of the twentieth century - Stalin and Hitler. Both were certain that the answer is 'yes'. Perhaps the verdict of history will be that dictators who believed that the end always justified the means is the characteristic of the twentieth century. Europe has had four, in Italy, Spain, Germany and Russia. Africa more than four. South and Central America, Asia, the count goes on. As we reach the end of the century one would be hard put to count the total there has been, and still are, of heads of state, effectively unchallenged in power, who hold firmly to this view. Do not forget that rarely does a person gain unchallenged power without widespread support at a certain point of this climb to power. To begin with they are nearly always leaders of a crusade of some sort or other. They appeal to need, to a problem they offer to solve. But do not examine the means too closely.

It is an age old question, and a very important one. It affects good people and bad people, and it may be that the answer a person gives to it is part of the way we discover whether they are good or bad.

Before I attempt an answer, some foundation laying is appropriate. Here is an important assumption I will base my answer on. It is the presumption of human fallibility. I believe we are all capable of making mistakes of judgment. We will never perfectly predict the outcome of our actions. This is part of human fallibility. Also, as a different sort of fallibility, I believe we are all morally flawed, to a greater or lesser extent. We cannot ever be perfectly sure of the singularity of our motives. Usually they are mixed. It is rarely possible to do some known good, for instance, without also, consciously or unconsciously, hoping for approval. Soon we may be more driven by the desire of approval than anything else.

Singleness of purpose, or purity, or holiness, to use more Biblical language, is what we are to strive for, but must let others judge how far we are attaining it. Most of us are in for some nasty surprises.

One of the most dangerous positions to be in, morally, is to be engaged in a crusade against evil. Here we can so easily convince ourselves that because our intentions are so obviously right, we can shade our perception of method a little. If the end is good, how can any means be bad? That is a position it is so easy to drift into. And more to the point, in some cases, the question we most need to ask is, can we be sure that our chosen means will actually deliver the hoped for end? Or will we be tripped up on the way by the Law of Unintended Outcomes.

Since these pages are directed at the aficionados of the Internet, let us talk about evil on the Internet. Most people immediately think of pornography as the great evil of the Internet. I think this is a mistake.

Pornography is the supply method for a demand. It has progressed over the ages, and we meet the pornography of former times in art galleries, libraries, and museums. Today's pornography is cheaper to produce, and easier to distribute, but essentially little has changed. The supply side is fuelled by greed, and the demand side by the strength of our sexual drive, and the difficulty of finding a safe outlet. Politicians who make marriage and the raising of children within marriage increasingly more difficult are probably doing more to contribute to the demand for pornography than any other group of people. Pornography would wither if demand could be influenced, and here is where energies may well best be focused. Meanwhile the reality we are faced with is the combination of profitable supply and a moral climate that fans the flames of demand.

But let us take as given that we want to reduce the evil of pornography on the Internet. How?

I would like every site that wishes to distribute pornographic images simply to have to provide a method of recognition of this fact, and that the duty of ensuring this be imposed on the owner of the server it resides on. Then all the means available for regulating access can be put in place by conscientious parents to protect their children from finding their way to such sites by chance (or intent). The trouble is the industry is in such a state of infancy that there is no agreed standard for this, and about half a dozen different methods have been defined by well meaning - but sadly competing - individuals and bodies. Progress towards fewer, eventually even a single global standard, would achieve much. The person who thought about the first proposal, and produced an improved second, intended good. So did the person who thought about the first two, and developed a third. A greater good was intended. Now with six or so to choose from, and no standard yet emerging, if you actually wanted to enhance the production of pornography it would be quite smart to invent yet another new and different method of controlling pornography. This would almost certainly defer control even further.

Next let us pass on to a greater evil, the entrapment and exploitation of the young. Messages in newsgroups are apparently totally beyond control, since their source cannot be identified. And it is in the newsgroups that predators lurk. A process does exist for moderating newsgroups, and this must surely be the path towards, if not control, then at least some equivalent of a rating system equivalent to the rating of sites. Chat rooms are like other sites, and should be required to advertise their intended content or focus, so that avoidance can be achieved in the same way as with ordinary sites. Responsibility for enforcing this should rest on the owner of the server where the chat room resides.

What does cause me concern is the known fact that some who wish to police the Internet engage in the practice of posing as minors (or potential victims), so that those intent on seeking an encounter with such a victim, having used the Internet to set the meeting up, will be lured into revealing themselves.

This is fighting exploitation (a very serious evil) with deception (an apparently less serious evil).

Few would condemn this, and most applaud it. But I have my doubts. The up side is obvious: some evil people will be caught and locked away, for the protection of society. But there is a down side. Some people, teetering on the brink of giving in to exploitation may be lured into it, may have their appetite for it stimulated by the very presence of the deceitful messages. For every exploiter caught, two may be drawn into exploitation by the very method used to catch that one, who would not otherwise have become exploiters.

This brings me back to human fallibility and the Law of Unintended Outcomes. It is so pervasive, but rarely recognised in anything but retrospect. I think it is possible that it may be recognised eventually that there is a better method than deceit. As humans we are notably bad at predicting the outcome of our actions. If we shade our natural reluctance with regard to, for example, deception, we may be relying too much on our ability to predict the good outcome we are hoping we will achieve. If we have been guilty of deception, we will have committed a known evil, nonetheless.

Do we simply expose evil then? Yes, most of the time. But we must come back to our own human fallibility. We will not always reliably recognise evil. We must remember that we have been warned about judging others, 'that you be not judged'. We will sometimes (if we are very good people), and often (if we are merely ordinarily good), makes mistakes about other people, and their motives. So our exposing must be honest, and open, and without deceit, and must be done in such a way as to leave room for the possibility that we are mistaken.

I pray for the Internet to be a place where the young and innocent can safely tread, and not have unpleasant and indecent images presented to them, or be exposed to the risk of exploitation. I acknowledge that as a medium it is capable of being used for deeply evil things as well as beautiful and good things. The responsibility rests which each one of us, who uses the Internet, to use it wisely and well. We will need to act with great wisdom to help this young communications medium to a better maturity, and a greater force for good rather than evil. Whatever means we use to achieve all these good ends, let them be beyond reproach, or else we are adding to the sum of evil, not reducing it. The end does not justify the means. And this us true of every aspect of life, not just the content and use of the Internet. I have chosen examples from the Internet, but the big picture, the principles, are far more important.

In fact in the larger picture of our total lives as human beings, in the 'real' world outside the Internet, we need even more to translate these principles. From history it can be learnt that the greater the apparent good (such as purity of doctrine) the greater the enormity (such as torture) that can be justified. It is a stark lesson, and an important reminder of how dangerous good causes potentially can be. I write these thoughts at the close of the second millennium, and after a century of almost constant warfare, much of which was defended as having the best possible intentions. Has the human race not yet learnt this fundamental lesson? The goodness of our intentions is best judged by the goodness of our methods of achieving them. And to goodness we will have to add wisdom as well, if we are to achieve good ends.

So I will be entering the new year/century/millennium with a simple enough resolution: not to forget my own fallibility and imperfections. Care to join me?

Faith

2007-06-25T10:32:00.000+01:00

Last month I mentioned faith in passing - and tried a very quick definition. This month I want to meditate about faith in a little more depth.

Paul tells us that faith is a gift from God.

For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith - and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God
(Ephesians 2,v8)

Any one who knows they have experienced faith will reinforce this. I know what sequence of events led up to my becoming a Christian (for you see I am a lapsed atheist).

It was at university, in my second year, and I had met a young lady who was a Christian. I was adamant about how nonsensical such a view was. She introduced me to a clergyman, and I offered to debate the matter with him. He agreed, but suggested we discuss something specific, and recommended I read the gospel of John. So to qualify for an argument, and with the strongest scepticism I could muster, hoping to find all sorts of nonsense in this ancient text, I began reading the gospel of John. And the barriers in my mind were assaulted. Somehow this story had the ring of truth. When I finally met with the cleric again, I had to confess I did not want to argue against the Man from that book. He suggested I followed Him instead, which I did, and with a simple prayer committed my life to Him.

Now I cannot explain how this conviction arose that what I had been reading had somehow the 'ring of truth'. But it had. I had to recognise this as an objective fact. Whether I liked it or not, there was a conviction in my mind, and I can recall it with great clarity forty years after it took place.

Another thing I cannot explain, but do experience, is the absolute conviction that the universe we live in is the direct result of the creative fiat of God. I have examined the scientific evidence extensively, both from the atheistic materialism viewpoint and from what is usually called creation science. My mind is convinced, intellectually, but beyond this there is a realisation that my faith in 'creation' is a gift. It goes beyond the examination of evidence, though not counter to it.

Who can explain faith? Take this narrative, for example, of an encounter with Jesus, which illustrates the power of faith.

A large crowd followed and pressed around him. And a woman was there who had been subject to bleeding for twelve years. She had suffered a great deal under the care of many doctors and had spent all she had, yet instead of getting better she grew worse. When she heard about Jesus, she came up behind him in the crowd and touched his cloak, because she thought, "If I just touch his clothes, I will be healed." Immediately her bleeding stopped and she felt in her body that she was freed from her suffering. At once Jesus realized that power had gone out from him. He turned around in the crowd and asked, "Who touched my clothes?" "You see the people crowding against you," his disciples answered, "and yet you can ask, `Who touched me?'" But Jesus kept looking around to see who had done it. Then the woman, knowing what had happened to her, came and fell at his feet and, trembling with fear, told him the whole truth. He said to her, "Daughter, your faith has healed you. Go in peace and be freed from your suffering."
(Mark 5, 24-34)

Who or what produced such faith in the mind of this woman? Only she knows. But the faith was real, and the outflow of power called forth by that faith was sensed by Jesus. Faith seems to have a power all of its own.

Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.

This is what the ancients were commended for.

By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God's command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible.

By faith Abel offered God a better sacrifice than Cain did. By faith he was commended as a righteous man, when God spoke well of his offerings. And by faith he still speaks, even though he is dead.

By faith Enoch was taken from this life, so that he did not experience death; he could not be found, because God had taken him away. For before he was taken, he was commended as one who pleased God.

And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him.

By faith Noah, when warned about things not yet seen, in holy fear built an ark to save his family. By his faith he condemned the world and became heir of the righteousness that comes by faith.

By faith Abraham, when called to go to a place he would later receive as his inheritance, obeyed and went, even though he did not know where he was going.

By faith he made his home in the promised land like a stranger in a foreign country; he lived in tents, as did Isaac and Jacob, who were heirs with him of the same promise.

For he was looking forward to the city with foundations, whose architect and builder is God.

By faith Abraham, even though he was past age--and Sarah herself was barren--was enabled to become a father because he considered him faithful who had made the promise.

And so from this one man, and he as good as dead, came descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and as countless as the sand on the seashore.

All these people were still living by faith when they died. They did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance. And they admitted that they were aliens and strangers on earth.

People who say such things show that they are looking for a country of their own.

If they had been thinking of the country they had left, they would have had opportunity to return.

Instead, they were longing for a better country--a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them.

By faith Abraham, when God tested him, offered Isaac as a sacrifice. He who had received the promises was about to sacrifice his one and only son,

even though God had said to him, "It is through Isaac that your offspring will be reckoned."

Abraham reasoned that God could raise the dead, and figuratively speaking, he did receive Isaac back from death.

By faith Isaac blessed Jacob and Esau in regard to their future.

By faith Jacob, when he was dying, blessed each of Joseph's sons, and worshiped as he leaned on the top of his staff.

By faith Joseph, when his end was near, spoke about the exodus of the Israelites from Egypt and gave instructions about his bones.

By faith Moses' parents hid him for three months after he was born, because they saw he was no ordinary child, and they were not afraid of the king's edict.

By faith Moses, when he had grown up, refused to be known as the son of Pharaoh's daughter.

He chose to be mistreated along with the people of God rather than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a short time.

He regarded disgrace for the sake of Christ as of greater value than the treasures of Egypt, because he was looking ahead to his reward.

By faith he left Egypt, not fearing the king's anger; he persevered because he saw him who is invisible.

By faith he kept the Passover and the sprinkling of blood, so that the destroyer of the firstborn would not touch the firstborn of Israel.

By faith the people passed through the Red Sea as on dry land; but when the Egyptians tried to do so, they were drowned.

By faith the walls of Jericho fell, after the people had marched around them for seven days.

By faith the prostitute Rahab, because she welcomed the spies, was not killed with those who were disobedient.

And what more shall I say? I do not have time to tell about Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, David, Samuel and the prophets,

who through faith conquered kingdoms, administered justice, and gained what was promised; who shut the mouths of lions,

quenched the fury of the flames, and escaped the edge of the sword; whose weakness was turned to strength; and who became powerful in battle and routed foreign armies.

Women received back their dead, raised to life again. Others were tortured and refused to be released, so that they might gain a better resurrection.

Some faced jeers and flogging, while still others were chained and put in prison.

They were stoned; they were sawed in two; they were put to death by the sword. They went about in sheepskins and goatskins, destitute, persecuted and mistreated--

the world was not worthy of them. They wandered in deserts and mountains, and in caves and holes in the ground.

These were all commended for their faith, yet none of them received what had been promised.

God had planned something better for us so that only together with us would they be made perfect. [Hebrews 11]

So if you sense the emergence of faith, sit up and take notice. Something real is happening in your soul. Seek out some one who understands faith, and listen to their advice. Your faith may need nurturing, and certainly will grow if nurtured. And you will count it a true blessing.

The Mind

2007-06-25T10:28:00.000+01:00

This month I am going to write a little about the Mind.

It is often wrongly supposed that Faith means operating contrary to the mind, believing in something you know is really not true. Faith, in the New Testament context, actually means operating consistently with your mind, especially when doing so is difficult. It means holding on to what has been revealed to you, when the reminders of that revelation have grown distant.

The Greek word for Mind is 'nous', and this has crept into a dialect word for common sense in today's language.

The key emphasis I want to make is that Christianity promotes the use of the Mind, the intellect, and not the reverse.

The very beginning of Mark's gospel (ch.1 v.14-15) records as follows:

After John was put in prison, Jesus went into Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God. "The time has come," he said. "The kingdom of God is near. Repent and believe the good news."

When you look at the Greek word translated 'repent' you find that it literally means 'get a new mind' or 'change your thinking'.

Throughout his ministry Jesus was to challenge much of the thinking of his contemporaries. He criticised the legalism of the traditionalists. He befriended the social outcast, the weak, the unrepresented. He was admired, and feared, for the sharpness of his mind, his skill in disputation against the scholars of his day. Just read the gospels and this theme will be crystal clear. They record the many times when he bettered those who sought to trap him in debate.

The sermon on the mount (Matthew ch.5-7) is one of the strongest exhibitions of revolutionary thinking ever recorded, and it was spoken and recorded nearly 2000 years ago. It is more intellectually challenging than anything equally old. In my opinion nothing, not the writings of Plato and Aristotle (a few centuries before) nor any since, is more intellectually challenging, than the teaching of Jesus. Just read those three chapters as a sample. And then read more.

Jesus was a true intellectual as well as a revolutionary. He was condemned to death for the words he had spoken, because of the affront they were to the orthodoxy of the day.

My own experience after an adult conversion to Christianity was a sharpening of intellectual capacity, and I still today, after 40 years of believing, regard fitness of mind as an important part of the balance of my life. My mind needs exercise as my body does.

It is a parody of Christianity to suppose that believing the good news means intellectual suicide. Just the reverse, in my experience.

So much of what passes for smartness these days is much more a denial by the intellect of what is known to be true. All the evidence points to the harm that drug-taking causes, but it is on the increase. All the evidence points to the conclusion that continual self-indulgence is counterproductive to happiness, but it is almost universally ignored. The ability of politicians to make decisions that have an effect exactly the opposite of what they intended is well known. 'The March of Folly' is the title of a book containing many notable historical examples. The newspapers chronicle many of the contemporary examples.

Sickness of the mind is truly a sad thing. Senile dementia is always distressing to those who suffer from it, and to the relatives and carers of the sufferer. I pray for the gift of a clear mind, the ability to go on being rational to the end of my days on this earth. I trust I will never willingly let anything reduce my clarity of thinking. I pray, dear reader, that you will embrace this challenge too.

Body Soul and Spirit

2007-06-25T10:21:00.000+01:00

This is an introduction to human psychology from a totally different standpoint from that based on atheistic and materialistic premises. It is well worth knowing that one of this century's most respected philosophers, Karl Popper, has some very deep criticisms to make of Freudian, and other other similar schools of psychiatry. He basically rejected their claims to be scientific. On page 41, for instance, of his autobiographical 'Unended Quest' he calls Freud's psychoanalytical theories pseudoscientific. For Popper they are not scientific in the way physics is scientific, for they do not present any objective means for validation by falsification. But you must read Popper's whole book to understand his position.

What I present here is not scientific either, but I want to emphasise that I am not unaware of alternative theories about the human psyche.

Let is begin with some etymology. The word 'psyche' is the Greek word usually translated 'soul'. The Latin equivalent is 'anima'. When Paul offers a prayer (1 Thess 5 v23) for the well-being of his friends, the Thessalonians, he says: 'may your spirit and soul and body be kept sound and blameless ...', and this tripartite description of the human condition is found regularly in the New Testament.

The Latin words used in the earliest translation, following the same order, are 'spiritus, anima, corpus' and the original Greek words are 'pneuma, psyche, soma'. There are many words in English derived from this trio, and no doubt many will occur to each reader. 'Psychosomatic' refers to reactions in the body from conditions of the soul, and such an illness is not to be cured by attacking a virus, but understanding that, for instance, acute anxiety can cause ulcers.

It is even, according to the writer to the Hebrews, a vital matter to distinguish rightly between soul and spirit.

So in this piece I am going to try to summarise, and put very simply, how the Bible talks about our Body, Soul, and Spirit, and what lessons we can learn from this. Much of what follows has been influenced by reading (more than once) the three volume book 'The Spiritual Man' by Watchman Nee (translated from the Chinese), and some of the books referred to in it.

Let us begin with Soul. This word is used to mean the 'real' me, who I am, what it is that identifies me uniquely, what of me will survive all the changes to my body. I am a living being, I am a soul. Everything else is what I have, especially my ever changing body. The Soul is not static either, but the Soul is the true me, the inward me, the core of my being. There is no word for any deeper part of me. All the other things are peripheral, whether we talk of mind, emotions, will, purpose, whatever. If you talk about my character you are really talking about what characterises me as me, hence my soul.

So what is the Body in relation to the Soul?

It is more than anything else the means by which the Soul experiences the Physical World.

Your body is a mobile set of instruments, to enable you to see, hear, smell, taste, and touch the objects that surround you. Through our bodies we experience light, colour, sounds, aromas, tastes, warmth, cold, hardness, softness, shape, through the way our body's nervous system responds to every physical stimulus. All the processes by which we nourish the body, rest it, respond to injury, or get rid of waste matter, are there to support what the body does. It provides us with a continual stream of sensory experiences.

It is easy to think that mobility is what distinguishes our body, but even a body totally paralysed, and trapped in a wheel chair, is undiminished in its range of physical experiences. Only sleep gives us a rest from this continual flow of experience, and many think we need this regular pause to enable us to digest the input. Our dreams often reveal the digesting process, which we recall on waking.

All our pleasures are a combination of these physical experiences: art, music, gastronomy, books, and much more, are fed into our souls by means of the senses of our body. The way our soul responds, pain or pleasure, happiness or sadness, surprise or boredom, and so on through all the range of emotions and states of mind we experience, are essentially a combination of the response of the soul to data provided by the senses. We know it is our brain than does a lot of the data processing, whether through optical nerves, or other responses, and we know also that our mind uses the brain for imagination, and mathematics, and memory, and all these other intellectual activities. It is possible to detect and measure activity in the brain, and its absence means our body has died.

In many ways the relationship between our mind (Latin 'animus' masculine) and our soul (Latin 'anima' feminine) is the nearest and most confusing, as implied by the proximity of the words in Latin. When we decide to 'think of a number', or whatever, it is the soul telling the mind to engage in a particular mental task. The one thing that Descartes was sure of was that because he could instruct his mind to think, he therefore had a soul. Which is a possible translation of 'cogito, ergo sum' - I think, therefore I am.

The soul is the seat of decision making, the soul is my will, my desires, my intentions. I am the sum of all my decisions, and the current me is the sum of all my desires. This is what defines me. This is what needs most help, too.

Do I look to my body for all pleasures? Is this what I am? If so, then I am very dependent on the well-being of my body, and it is designed not to last for ever.

Which brings us to the Spirit.

This aspect of my tripartite nature is the most difficult to be aware of, and for many the Spirit is effectively dormant. For the Spirit is to the Soul with regard to the unseen world what the Body is to the Soul for the seen world.

It is with my Spirit that I communicate with God and with my Spirit I listen to His voice. My Spirit is for seeing, hearing, experiencing, the unseen world in all its glory.

Paul describes this unseen world as the battleground of the Soul. He talks about principalities and powers and spiritual hosts, with whom we have to battle (Ephesians 5 v12). By the Spirit we become aware of God, and of all the reality of the spiritual world, good and evil. The New Testament speaks of the fruits of the Spirit, the gifts of the Spirit, and of living by the Spirit. Paul compares praying (and singing, and speaking) with his mind and praying (and singing, and speaking) with the Spirit (1 Corinthians 14 vv14-19). But to any one who has no experience of these things, it has little meaning. It is as if their own capacity to perceive spiritual things is defunct. We are told that unless God brings our Spirit to life, we cannot experience these things.

This is not a comfortable message, but it is the only one I have. If the world of spiritual things is lost to you, then understand what it is you need: the Spirit of God to quicken and enliven your spirit, so that spiritual eyes may be opened, for the reality of the spiritual world to become visible to you.

It is a simple prayer to make, and it will not go unheard.

Idolatry

2007-06-25T10:02:00.000+01:00

A meditation on idolatry may seem rather odd, but I hope if you read on you will understand better why it is here.

Idolatry can be seen as the absolute form of a tendency which is easy to define, but hard to avoid. If there is an absolute Source of All, a God of Creation, as many religions assert, the most natural tendency is anthropomorphism. By this we mean the assigning of human attributes and attitudes to God. If God be God, then we have to be very careful how we attempt to understand him. What does God's anger mean, for instance? Anger is a very human emotion. Are we saying that God gets cross, as we might, when events do not fall out as we expected, or people do things which hurt us?

But the problem goes deeper. For in a sense anthropomorphism is the only option we have. We can only really understand anything from the starting point of what we have already experienced. We begin with a God like us, because what else can we begin with. In fact there is some authority for believing that the human condition is a partial insight into the nature of the divine. If the Genesis account of creation has any truth in it, we humans are made as an image, a likeness, of the very Creator God.

But every time we reflect on the best we see in the human condition, any concept we have of human love, we must remind ourselves that this can only be but a pale shadow of what the love of the True God is like. In the Christian tradition, the saying 'God is Love' is both hugely important, yet still an impossible challenge to mere intellect. We need to be reminded that 'now' we understand only in part, but 'then' there will be direct experience, and we will understand fully. We will know, even as we are known.

Plato had a similar view of the extent to which the 'real' can be experienced by mere mortals, a shadow projected from behind on to the wall of a cave, when even the things making the shapes that are seen are only things within the cave. Meanwhile, outside the cave is the more complete reality, at two stages of remove.

We are wary therefore of trusting our own understanding of the Almighty, and, if we are wise, of forcing that understanding on others. But we must also remain true to what we have already experienced, and count it as 'real', in the sense that it is the best reality we can digest at this stage of our development. This is what faith is, counting as real what we know is not yet perfect, while waiting for the better understanding to be ours when we are ready for it.

When Moses asked for God to reveal Himself properly, he was told that that was not to be, for it would be the unmaking of him if it happened. He has allowed to be close to the presence of God, but protected by 'a cleft in a rock' while God passed by, but not allowed a direct view of God. And even this partial encounter cause his face to shine, we are told (Genesis 33 and 34), to the discomfort of every one else.

And this is where we meet idolatry in its most obvious form. For while Moses was receiving the Covenant (a relationship defining contract between the Almighty and the descendants of Jacob/Israel, the chosen nation of twelve tribes), the people demanded that Aaron, Moses' deputy, fashion them a likeness of the god who had delivered them from slavery in Egypt. So Aaron got them to pool their gold jewelry, and made them an image, a golden calf. The calf was always a potent fertility symbol.

We call them the Ten Commandments, and there indeed ten main themes, but a carefull reading shows them to be more than a list of ten forbidden things. And the main emphasis of the first four is a revelation of the nature of the Almighty who had rescued them. They should always be read in their entirety:

And God spoke all these words: "I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. You shall have no other gods before me.

"You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing love to a thousand [generations] of those who love me and keep my commandments.

"You shall not misuse the name of the LORD your God, for the LORD will not hold anyone guiltless who misuses his name.

"Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD your God. On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your manservant or maidservant, nor your animals, nor the alien within your gates. For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day. Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.

"Honor your father and your mother, so that you may live long in the land the LORD your God is giving you.

"You shall not murder.

"You shall not commit adultery.

"You shall not steal.

"You shall not give false testimony against your neighbor.

"You shall not covet your neighbor's house. You shall not covet your neighbor's wife, or his manservant or maidservant, his ox or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor."

The command to worship only the Almighty who had rescued them from Egypt was stated in henotheistic rather than monotheistic terms. Perhaps the people were not yet ready for the assertion that there is only one God, and so were required only to worship this one, and no others. Not making any images was easy enough to understand, but a massive challenge to those brought up in the Egypt of that day. Hence the golden calf. The third requirement was not to misuse, or take in vain, the name of God. This is rather hard to understand correctly. Taken literally it seems to forbid using swearwords. But it means much more, as we shall see. And the seventh day as a day of rest is stated as a memorial, a permanent reminder, of God's creative acts.

Suppose we take these as a progressive revelation. God is the God who acts in history (rescues nations), who cannot be represented by any image, who cannot be controlled (our oaths cannot bind him), and who is the creator of all things.

The remaining commandments also place values: on the family as the stabilising unit for society (loose this and you loose your security as a nation), on human life, on marriage, on property, on truth, and on right desires. So much could be said about all these, for we live in a time when they are all being ignored and flouted.

But I want to focus on the common ideas behind the second and the third commandments. To make an image of god, or to bind him with any special form of words, are together the essence of idolatry. Idolatry is the belief that one can control God. If you make a statue, you can put it in a prominent place, or in a cupboard out of sight. Oaths and curses have at their heart a belief that some special form of words can bind, hence control, God in some way so that the desired result is forced from him. But the God of all Creation cannot and will not be controlled.

This is the mistake that seems so prevalent among the religious. We must be careful, we who believe in God, not to suppose that He is to be bribed by our devotions, or forced by our incantations. When king Solomon dedicated the Temple, he knew that God could not be contained in any building. Bowing towards any symbol, such as a cross, or believing that special words uttered by particular people can effect any actual desired modification through some automatic miracle, is to be close to precisely the same mistaken view of God as those who made a golden calf to help them focus on their rescuer from Egypt.

It is so easy for religion to become for us the means by which we hope to control God, or to manipulate Him, and even, I fear it may be true for some, including me, to keep Him at a distance. If God be God, there is no part of my life He does not want to visit. I cannot confine Him to Sundays (if I am Christian), or to Saturdays (if I am a Jew), or to Fridays (if I am a Muslim). But how tempting sometimes to try to.

Sexuality

2007-06-25T09:49:00.000+01:00

An advertising truism is that there are three magic words, NEW, FREE, and SEX, and the greatest of these is ... (I think I need not complete this for you).

The age we live in is beginning to recognise how diverse sexual urges are, and accepting that human sexuality is more complex than has hitherto been understood.

We know things about ourselves that have to do with our 'urges' that nobody else knows, not even our nearest and dearest. Some of us may suspect that this hiddenness is not just true of us, but of every member of the human race.

Let us first establish what sex is for, and to do this we must look at one of the most neglected books, Genesis, the book of origins.

Nowadays there is a tendency to set up an Aunt Sally, to proclaim the Creation story of Genesis as disproved by science, and to dismiss it from all consideration.

This is such a shame, because its insights are unique, and desperately needed. If we do live in a universe in which biological life is just a chance rearrangement of chemicals, and there has never been anything other that a zillion other random events before now, and we are all going to a total extinction, with no purpose other than pleasure, then let us indeed eat drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die.

If you believe this is the sum of life, I cannot address you meaningfully. But if you think in your heart of hearts that what you know about humanity means that this materialist view does not explain everything, especially not your emotions, your perception of beauty, your sense of duty, and the strongest possible desires which seem to have no logic, you are at least asking the right questions.

The book of Genesis is trying to answer these questions. It is a sequence of books within a book. It is easy to spot this once you cotton on to the fact that the title of each mini-book comes at the end of it, not the beginning. We put titles at the beginning because we bind pages into a book. But when you have a scroll, pages stuck edge to edge in a continuous roll, the smart place to put the title is at the end, where you will see it first if you unroll an already read scroll.

All the titles in Genesis are in the form 'These are the generations of ...' to use the old-fashioned translation we are most used to. It comes out as 'This is the account of ...' in the more modern translation I am using here.

The first account is of 'the heavens and the earth', the second is of 'Adam's line', the third of Noah, and so on. The original Hebrew never had chapters and verses, for these were added in the middle ages to the then Latin translation. So the accounts actually end in the middle of a verse. But I am presenting the first two accounts without chapter and verse indications, so that their natural ending is clearer.

This is why there are overlaps. Adam's story mentions the birth of Seth, and then so does Noah's (Gen 4:25 and Gen 5:3-4), which also has the general statement that Adam had other sons and daughters not mentioned by name. It is as if each account was originally meant to be read on its own, and so key elements of the previous account are mentioned briefly at the beginning of the next. The first account can only have been given by revelation, but the later accounts may well have been family archives, oral or written we will never know.

The first account of origins is not a sequential, step by step, account, but a thematic story with the threefold cycle of light, then liquids and gases, finally solids, repeated. First without detail, then with more detail. The first and fourth segments deal with light as a force, and the sources of light. The second and fifth segments deal with the atmosphere and the oceans as entities, then their occupants. The third and sixth segments deal with solid earth, and then its occupants.

The word used for 'day' can mean any sort of division of time. The Greek word for story is 'myth'. Two pieces of etymology not to be overlooked.

With these introductory comments in mind, please now read the first account of our origins.

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.

And God said, "Let there be light," and there was light. God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness. God called the light "day," and the darkness he called "night." And there was evening, and there was morning--the first day.

And God said, "Let there be an expanse between the waters to separate water from water." So God made the expanse and separated the water under the expanse from the water above it. And it was so. God called the expanse "sky." And there was evening, and there was morning--the second day.

And God said, "Let the water under the sky be gathered to one place, and let dry ground appear." And it was so. God called the dry ground "land," and the gathered waters he called "seas." And God saw that it was good. Then God said, "Let the land produce vegetation: seed-bearing plants and trees on the land that bear fruit with seed in it, according to their various kinds." And it was so. The land produced vegetation: plants bearing seed according to their kinds and trees bearing fruit with seed in it according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good. And there was evening, and there was morning--the third day.

And God said, "Let there be lights in the expanse of the sky to separate the day from the night, and let them serve as signs to mark seasons and days and years, and let them be lights in the expanse of the sky to give light on the earth." And it was so. God made two great lights--the greater light to govern the day and the lesser light to govern the night. He also made the stars. God set them in the expanse of the sky to give light on the earth, to govern the day and the night, and to separate light from darkness. And God saw that it was good. And there was evening, and there was morning--the fourth day.

And God said, "Let the water teem with living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the expanse of the sky." So God created the great creatures of the sea and every living and moving thing with which the water teems, according to their kinds, and every winged bird according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. God blessed them and said, "Be fruitful and increase in number and fill the water in the seas, and let the birds increase on the earth." And there was evening, and there was morning--the fifth day.

And God said, "Let the land produce living creatures according to their kinds: livestock, creatures that move along the ground, and wild animals, each according to its kind." And it was so. God made the wild animals according to their kinds, the livestock according to their kinds, and all the creatures that move along the ground according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good. Then God said, "Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground." So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. God blessed them and said to them, "Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground." Then God said, "I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food. And to all the beasts of the earth and all the birds of the air and all the creatures that move on the ground--everything that has the breath of life in it--I give every green plant for food." And it was so. God saw all that he had made, and it was very good. And there was evening, and there was morning--the sixth day.

Thus the heavens and the earth were completed in all their vast array. By the seventh day God had finished the work he had been doing; so on the seventh day he rested from all his work. And God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it he rested from all the work of creating that he had done. This is the account of the heavens and the earth when they were created.

If the amount of detail given is any guide to the purpose of this story of origins, then the creation of humans is the climax and focus of the story, occupying about one fifth of the whole story. For this act of creation alone are ascribed purposes, duties, and promises.

The environmentalists are right. The most fundamental duty of the human race is defined here, as custodians of this planet and all that lives on it.

The planet is described as a unified design, with some living elements intended as the means of support for others. Each species is meant to interlock with the other species. The focus on design cannot be ignored, nor the verdict that everything made fitted into the plan (for what else can 'good' mean in this context?). And the method of reproduction is defined: seeds, reproducing 'according to their kinds'.

But in defining humans, the words 'let us make man in our image, in our likeness ... so God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them' are so emphatic. We are like God, we share His character, we are male and female.

We are not white and black, tall and short, strong and weak, fat and thin. We are male and female. This is the key piece of distinctiveness built into humanity. This is the big differentiator.

But both male and female are like God. God is both Father and Mother to us, whatever the linguistic habits are in various languages.

And because this is such a key concept the second story of origins focuses on the need of the man to have a 'suitable helper'.

When the LORD God made the earth and the heavens -- and no shrub of the field had yet appeared on the earth and no plant of the field had yet sprung up, for the LORD God had not sent rain on the earth and there was no man to work the ground, but streams came up from the earth and watered the whole surface of the ground -- the LORD God formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.

Now the LORD God had planted a garden in the east, in Eden; and there he put the man he had formed. And the LORD God made all kinds of trees grow out of the ground--trees that were pleasing to the eye and good for food. In the middle of the garden were the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

A river watering the garden flowed from Eden; from there it was separated into four headwaters. The name of the first is the Pishon; it winds through the entire land of Havilah, where there is gold. (The gold of that land is good; aromatic resin and onyx are also there.) The name of the second river is the Gihon; it winds through the entire land of Cush. The name of the third river is the Tigris; it runs along the east side of Asshur. And the fourth river is the Euphrates.

The LORD God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it. And the LORD God commanded the man, "You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die."

The LORD God said, "It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him." Now the LORD God had formed out of the ground all the beasts of the field and all the birds of the air. He brought them to the man to see what he would name them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name. So the man gave names to all the livestock, the birds of the air and all the beasts of the field.

But for Adam no suitable helper was found. So the LORD God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep; and while he was sleeping, he took one of the man's ribs and closed up the place with flesh. Then the LORD God made a woman from the rib he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man.

The man said, "This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called `woman,' for she was taken out of man." For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh. The man and his wife were both naked, and they felt no shame.

Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the LORD God had made. He said to the woman, "Did God really say, `You must not eat from any tree in the garden'?"

The woman said to the serpent, "We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, but God did say, `You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.'"

"You will not surely die," the serpent said to the woman. "For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil."

When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it.

Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.

Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the LORD God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the LORD God among the trees of the garden. But the LORD God called to the man, "Where are you?"

He answered, "I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid."

And he said, "Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?"

The man said, "The woman you put here with me--she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it."

Then the LORD God said to the woman, "What is this you have done?" The woman said, "The serpent deceived me, and I ate."

So the LORD God said to the serpent, "Because you have done this, "Cursed are you above all the livestock and all the wild animals! You will crawl on your belly and you will eat dust all the days of your life. And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel."

To the woman he said, "I will greatly increase your pains in childbearing; with pain you will give birth to children. Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you."

To Adam he said, "Because you listened to your wife and ate from the tree about which I commanded you, `You must not eat of it,' "Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat of it all the days of your life. It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return."

Adam named his wife Eve, because she would become the mother of all the living.

The LORD God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them.

And the LORD God said, "The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever." So the LORD God banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken. After he drove the man out, he placed on the east side of the Garden of Eden cherubim and a flaming sword flashing back and forth to guard the way to the tree of life.

Adam lay with his wife Eve, and she became pregnant and gave birth to Cain. ... Later she gave birth to his brother Abel. ...

Adam lay with his wife again, and she gave birth to a son and named him Seth...

This is a written account of Adam's line.

If you want a key verse from this account, it must be: 'for this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh.'

Our sexuality as humans is the most important feature of our lives. The first commandment addressed to humans in the Bible is: 'Be fruitful and increase in number'. This is the urge that defines us, the urge to beget, the urge to conceive.

Before the first disobedience 'the man and his wife were both naked, and they felt no shame'.

After the first disobedience, 'then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realised they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves'.

Even knowing they were naked was the indicator of that disobedience: 'who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree I commanded you not to eat from?'

What conclusions can we draw from this story? Many, no doubt, that there is no space for here. But this conclusion is safe: if there is any truth in this story, our sexuality is a hugely powerful force within us, by intention of our designer, and that departing from that design will cause us grief.

The western world, inasmuch as it is trying to deny the distinctiveness of male and female, and is trying to take away marriage and the family as the bedrock of society, is denying the very foundations of the human race's place in the designer's plan.

Individually we are responsible for the way we respond to this trend. Do we follow fashion, or challenge it?

Most of our desires are very logical and rational. Often they are simply a response to what our bodies need, in terms of food, water, and warmth. Our emotional needs of security, freedom from fear, the good opinion of others, explain a great many more. But there are two areas of desire that are less easy to understand: the craving that drug addiction brings, and the urges for sexual fulfilment.

I have nothing to say about the craving drug addicts suffer from. I smoked as a youth (in the 1950s when little was publicly known of the dangers) and gave up permanently at the age of 21. So that sort of craving is a distant memory now. I have no idea what other drug cravings might be like, and no intention of finding out.

But like every other human (I suppose) I know what sort of urges there are in my body, and what triggers them. I know why people will do things (especially if they believe they are unobserved) that they later feel a great degree of shame about.

And if any one is curious to know, one's urges do not seem to diminish with age in one's sixties, and if you wait ten years I will answer for the seventies too, if I am spared that long.

In the animal kingdom the sexual urges observable all seem to focus on a single objective: procreation. The male copulates with the female when the female is in her short period of fertility, and only then. This is true whether the fertilisation of the eggs is internal or external, whether penetration is required or not. Whatever urges they have built into them, the procreative urge is a tremendously powerful force.

With humans everything is much more complicated, not least because we seem to adopt the view that sex is mainly for pleasure, and pregnancy something akin to a disease. The Internet itself has more commercial activity associated with satisfying the 'sex for pleasure' urge than any other single commercial sector. It is streets ahead of Internet share trading (the desire for wealth?), which comes a very poor second.

All this would be a little easier to understand if it was always pointing in the direction of finding a desirable mate for the ultimate purpose of procreation. We are more complex than the animal kingdom in a host of other ways besides how we experience sexual urges.

But what can one say about sexual urges that deviate from this obvious goal of the begetting and conceiving of babies? What word even dare one use? Is 'deviate' acceptable? (It comes from Latin words meaning straying from the path) Dare I call attractions which cannot possible lead to procreation deviations? This may sound judgmental, arrogant, and certainly would be condemned by the proponents of political correctness.

Here the human race seems unique in all creation, that men and women seek to respond to urges that cannot possibly be explained by any fundamental instinct to procreate. Where do these urges come from?

The Bible mentions the two most obvious ones in Leviticus (of at least three thousand years ago), so there is nothing recent about this. The passage begins with the condemnation of incestual relationships, and we know there are good medical reasons for following these moral imperatives. And then other forbidden territory is defined:

No one is to approach any close relative to have sexual relations. I am the LORD.

Do not dishonor your father by having sexual relations with your mother. She is your mother; do not have relations with her.

Do not have sexual relations with your father's wife; that would dishonor your father.

Do not have sexual relations with your sister, either your father's daughter or your mother's daughter, whether she was born in the same home or elsewhere.

Do not have sexual relations with your son's daughter or your daughter's daughter; that would dishonor you.

Do not have sexual relations with the daughter of your father's wife, born to your father; she is your sister.

Do not have sexual relations with your father's sister; she is your father's close relative.

Do not have sexual relations with your mother's sister, because she is your mother's close relative.

Do not dishonor your father's brother by approaching his wife to have sexual relations; she is your aunt.

Do not have sexual relations with your daughter-in-law. She is your son's wife; do not have relations with her.

Do not have sexual relations with your brother's wife; that would dishonor your brother.

Do not have sexual relations with both a woman and her daughter. Do not have sexual relations with either her son's daughter or her daughter's daughter; they are her close relatives. That is wickedness.

Do not take your wife's sister as a rival wife and have sexual relations with her while your wife is living.

Do not approach a woman to have sexual relations during the uncleanness of her monthly period.

Do not have sexual relations with your neighbor's wife and defile yourself with her.

Do not give any of your children to be sacrificed to Molech, for you must not profane the name of your God. I am the LORD.

Do not lie with a man as one lies with a woman; that is detestable.

Do not have sexual relations with an animal and defile yourself with it. A woman must not present herself to an animal to have sexual relations with it; that is a perversion.

Do not defile yourselves in any of these ways, because this is how the nations that I am going to drive out before you became defiled. [Leviticus 18]

It should be interesting to measure your own reactions on reading this. You might be distracted by the reference to sexual activity during menstruation, and wonder who Moloch was (the god of a neighbouring tribe, actually), but I suggest you set aside those thoughts. The condemnation of homosexuality and bestiality is even clearer in the next but one chapter, if you are in any doubt.

It seems that God is perfectly aware the we humans can get it all wrong, and misdirect our sexual energies. In the nation he chose to be a living example of his design for humans, God wanted total purity, and set drastic sanctions. Leave aside the sanctions, for no one advocates them for today. But can we ignore the standards? Can we find true happiness in a path away from the designer's intentions?

But there can be deep friendships between two men, and two women, and these friendships can take on an importance in the lives of those involved as significant as any other bond between two humans.

When we read the words that King David spoke at the death of Jonathan, eldest son of King Saul, at the hands of the Philistines, once again the Bible becomes a reference point on a difficult topic:

How the mighty have fallen in battle!
Jonathan lies slain on your heights.
I grieve for you, Jonathan, my brother;
You were very dear to me.
Your love for me was wonderful,
More wonderful than that of women.
How the might have fallen!
The weapons of war have perished!

Each of us finds attraction in our own individual way. The only safe rule is that we treat sexual urges as an opportunity to give, rather than take. Those who exploit others, whether naturally or unnaturally, are dehumanising themselves, and cutting themselves off from any hope of real happiness.

Science

2007-06-25T09:44:00.000+01:00

There was a time once when people discussed Religion and Science, as though they were alternative ways of understanding the human condition.

For most thinking people this is no longer a valid debating point. Religion has been deemed irrelevant, and the discussion has moved on.

Well I want to bring it back. For the very good reason that having won the argument Science (with a capital 'S') has become a religion. If you don't believe me, consider how often you read a statement beginning with the words 'scientists believe...'. If this phrase does not hurt your ears a little, you have already fallen into the trap. Doh! What trap?

The basis of science is discovering the nature of things by hypothesis and experimental testing. By this means we get to know the truth, and 'scientia' is the Latin for knowledge, things I can 'scio', 'know'.

So the statement 'scientists believe' is no more useful (and no less useful) than 'milkmen believe', for the beliefs of any scientist are exactly those parts of their life not based on science.

There is another reason to suspect any statement couched in terms of 'scientists believe', and that is that any one who is a scientist usually calls himself a biologist, a chemist, a physicist, or whatever, but rarely simply a 'scientist'. Science as an academic discipline is just too huge for any one person to be a generalist: there are no thermo-nuclear-physicists who are specialists in any other branch of science.

So bear with me, as this matters. Where is 'Science' taking the human race, and do we really want to go there? And who are the high priests of this religion, who call themselves 'scientists'? Above all, what is this Religion called Science, and what are its beliefs?

The scientific method can be very simply stated: it is a verification process, that demands repeatability. If I propose a hypothesis, then my verification process must be watertight; all possible logical alternatives must be ruled out, and my experiments must be capable of being repeated with the same results every time. Even then Newton will be corrected by Einstein, and Einstein corrected by ..., and so on for a long time yet.

All the beneficial advances made in the last three centuries or so have been made possible because doctors, chemists, biologists, and physicists have found out the truth about blood circulation, viruses, bacteria, combustion, and a million other things by direct observation, and experimental verification. To give but one example, infant mortality was drastically reduced when doctors started washing their hands between observation of different pregnant mothers, and that not so long ago. The list is endless of how beneficial knowledge ('scientia') can be.

Knowledge replaces superstition, and sometimes (eventually) vested interests too. The pharmaceutical industry, the tobacco industry, and of course all the science used in the construction of warfare technology, have a legacy that is not entirely for the benefit of the human race. It needs to be remembered that science has given us both aspirins and heroin, both immunisation and nerve gas, and so on; the list is endless.

The rockets that propel our communication satellites into space, the internal combustion engine that takes us to work, and almost every appliance we take for granted, have all arrived on the basis of knowledge gained by scientific observation, measurement, and verification. Science is truly the basis for civilisation as we know it. But it is up to humans to determine whether any scientific advance is good for us or not.

Privacy

2007-06-25T09:37:00.000+01:00

The Internet community loves privacy, and in every respect so do I.

The Internet is responsible for the development of encryption techniques for individuals, and for security of communications, that give protection to those who might fear government intervention.

As stated in the opening 'meditation' on censorship, one of the most desirable aspects of the Internet is its ability to defeat those one-party states and dictators who would like to suppress all unfavourable comment, and keep their subjects in a state of total ignorance about conditions, both inside and outside their country.

My name is John, but you do not need to know more than this, or where I live. And the Internet gives me the privacy that this will continue. I suppose the police might be able to find out, but the content of this site will never gives them any cause to want to.

But some disturbed person, whom I might offend, will not be able to throw a brick through my window, and this helps me to be utterly free in what I say.

It is possible to do things with all this privacy that one would never dare do without it. And here is where we begin to open up certain moral issues. Anonymity can give a certain freedom, and normal reserves can be replaced by a courage to make a confession as one stranger to another that no one would ever make to a friend or relative.

There is an undoubted value about the confessional. There is a huge relief that one other mortal, at least, knows the worst of my frailties. On the Internet one can make such confessions more freely, if one is not using one's real name.

But privacy has another side. I can do things I would never dare do if it was certain I was being observed. The sailor in the foreign port, the holiday maker abroad, get up to things totally out of character, simply because the constraint of there being the risk of discovery seems to have been removed.

This is the danger of privacy on the Internet. Those who want to exploit the vulnerable, especially children, can offer images which are illegal, knowing that many will use anonymous surfing techniques to minimise the risk of discovery. The sex industry has taken to the Internet with massive resources, and is making massive profits, because people shelter behind the privacy of the Internet.

We naturally assume we are in a universe where genuine privacy is possible. Is it true that I, and I alone, know certain things I have done, or thought, in the privacy of my own soul?

There was one Teacher who said No to this question.

Meanwhile, when a crowd of many thousands had gathered, so that they were trampling on one another, Jesus began to speak first to his disciples, saying: "Be on your guard against the yeast of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy.

There is nothing concealed that will not be disclosed, or hidden that will not be made known.

What you have said in the dark will be heard in the daylight, and what you have whispered in the ear in the inner rooms will be proclaimed from the roofs. [Luke12:1-3:]

"There is nothing concealed that will not be disclosed, or hidden that will not be made known."

It is a good rule, and one I have discovered rather late in my life, that secretiveness is a fool's paradise. If it has to be secret, it is wrong. There are no private events in my life, especially the things I am sure nobody knows about. Everything I have done, and said, and thought, and wanted, will be "proclaimed from the roofs".

There is some comfort though, even for my guilty conscience. Every one who hears my secrets, in the fullness of time, in the better place we are going to, will not be gloating, or condemning, for they will have secrets of their own being proclaimed. We will live in a world of no secrets, ever. I will know, and be known. I think there is something to be desired here, rather than feared.

Don't you?

Perhaps unless I desire it, I will not be in such a place.

Who knows?

Censorship

2007-06-25T09:23:00.000+01:00

The Internet community hates censorship, and in many ways so do I.

But this rejection of censorship needs to be qualified.

Without doubt an indefensible use of censorship is that made by governments for political ends. All the one-party states in the world use censorship, and quickly realise that their continued existence depends on it. 'When war is declared, Truth is the first casualty', reminds us that even democratic countries justify censorship 'in the national interest.'

The Internet is a powerful defeater of censorship, as publication of sensitive material on the Net is very difficult for governments to prevent, particularly since the citizens of one country can read anything on the Net, regardless as to where it is being published.

The Cold War ended with a victory for capitalism more because the governments who most wished to finally were unable to prevent their own citizens discovering through all the media, including radio, what conditions in other countries were really like. The 'you can fool some of the people all of the time...' saying was once again demonstrated to be true.

Control of one's own nation's press and broadcasting media is useless for any dictator, if his imprisoned subjects have access to information by other means. Even the President of the world's most powerful country has been been made aware of the power of the Internet to provide a source of data he would rather have been able to suppress.

So the Internet's potential to defeat censorship is a great advantage to the progress of Truth, but is this the whole story...?

Without doubt there is a huge downside to the freedom which the Internet gives for people to present whatever they want for all to see. Things that would lead to prosecution if displayed anywhere else are to be found, all too easily, on the Internet. The newsgroups seem to give the opportunity for every possible (and some almost impossible) taste to be paraded. Some contributors seem to take a special delight in celebrating this freedom with every imaginable extreme.

It would be easy for moral indignation to respond to pictures of cruelty or abuse by suggesting censorship, and the pursuit of the perpetrators with all the vigour of the law.

But I do not believe this is the right answer. Not because it is not an appropriate response, but because it is ineffective.

I am old enough to remember the prosecution of the book 'Lady Chatterley's Lover'. Whatever it intended, it succeeded only in making a very boring book a best-seller. Mary Whitehouse managed much the same. She even had a girlie magazine named after her. Every attempt to curtail pornography succeeds only in giving it publicity.

So I am not an advocate of censorship being applied to the Internet, any more than to the cinema or the newsagent or the bookshop.

There is an obvious group one wants to protect, young children, but the best means of protecting them is by public opinion. If enough parents make enough of a response, locally, and boycott a newsagent, for instance, who displays items they do not want their children to see or buy, they are more likely to succeed than if they bring a lawsuit. The force of money is more effective than the law would be. One effect of the free availibility of porn on the Internet has been to reduce dramatically the sale of porn at the newsagent.

The only form of censorship which really works is that which I apply to myself. As a parent I must educate my children to treat other humans with respect, and not as objects. Medical education will help them understand enough of human anatomy to make what is called adult (a cynical use of the word, when it really means 'juvenile') simply boring. Human genitalia in a medical textbook are never particularly exciting, and the best antidote to pornography is to add medical labels to whatever is depicted.

So education is the first truly adult response to the huge sex industry. If my children turn away from pornography for the same reason as I do, partly because it is boring, and mainly because it is degrading of the person being depicted, which I find undesirable, I will have succeeded as a parent. Not because I have condemned it, but because they have found a good reason for rejecting it.

That is the moral dimension.

I am a person, a human being with a soul, and according to many philosophies intended for immortality. And so is every one else I will ever meet, face to face, or indirectly through pictures, films, or stories. I hope every one who has to do with me thinks of me as a person, not as a thing, presented to them for their pleasure. That is how I choose to think of them too.

Pornography will wither if enough people make these choices. There are far richer pleasures, and truer delights, in the world of real people.

Children do need to be protected, but the right agency for this is not any government, but their own parents.

Authority

2007-06-25T08:56:00.001+01:00

What do we mean when we say some one speaks with authority? An example will help. Suppose there is a speaker about mountaineering. He has read all the important books, and analysed them carefully. He has a multitude of maps of the best routes and climbs. He has met scores of successful mountaineers. He has studied the topic for many years. A great deal of what he has to say will be very useful. But compare such a speaker with an actual mountaineer, who has been to the top of Matterhorn or Everest. He will speak with an authority our theoretical expert can never possess.

So many in the modern world pay regard to the analyst, the specialist in the field with years of study behind them. They are given great respect and esteem. But when we meet another specialist in the same field, we give him (or her) the same respect too, regardless of whether the two agree or differ.

Too much credibility is given on the basis of academic study, in preference to direct experience. The Internet has a huge danger, because everything there is seen or read. We can build up a view of the world without being able to test the authority of the author. Is the author to be trusted? Does he or she know whatever is claimed by direct, personal experience? The warning is against relying on the immense fund of data, information, knowledge, to be found at our PC as the sum of all things.

If you study the life of Jesus of Nazareth in the Gospels, almost the first thing that hits you is the authority he had. It amazed every one. Here are just a few extracts with examples of this word as the key concept, which not only surprised, but even offended, his contemporaries.

After John was put in prison, Jesus went into Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God. "The time has come," he said. "The kingdom of God is near. Repent and believe the good news!"

As Jesus walked beside the Sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and his brother Andrew casting a net into the lake, for they were fishermen. "Come, follow me," Jesus said, "and I will make you fishers of men." At once they left their nets and followed him.

When he had gone a little farther, he saw James son of Zebedee and his brother John in a boat, preparing their nets. Without delay he called them, and they left their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired men and followed him.

They went to Capernaum, and when the Sabbath came, Jesus went into the synagogue and began to teach. The people were amazed at his teaching, because he taught them as one who had authority, not as the teachers of the law. [Mark 1:14-22]

A few days later, when Jesus again entered Capernaum, the people heard that he had come home. So many gathered that there was no room left, not even outside the door, and he preached the word to them. Some men came, bringing to him a paralytic, carried by four of them. Since they could not get him to Jesus because of the crowd, they made an opening in the roof above Jesus and, after digging through it, lowered the mat the paralyzed man was lying on.

When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, "Son, your sins are forgiven."

Now some teachers of the law were sitting there, thinking to themselves, "Why does this fellow talk like that? He's blaspheming! Who can forgive sins but God alone?"

Immediately Jesus knew in his spirit that this was what they were thinking in their hearts, and he said to them, "Why are you thinking these things? Which is easier: to say to the paralytic, `Your sins are forgiven,' or to say, `Get up, take your mat and walk'? But that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins...." He said to the paralytic, "I tell you, get up, take your mat and go home."

He got up, took his mat and walked out in full view of them all. This amazed everyone and they praised God, saying, "We have never seen anything like this!" [Mark 2:1-12]

Now when he saw the crowds, he went up on a mountainside and sat down. His disciples came to him, and he began to teach them, saying: "Blessed are..

You have heard that it was said to the people long ago, `Do not...
But I tell you ...

You have heard that it was said, `Do not...
But I tell you...

It has been said, `Anyone who...
But I tell you...

Again, you have heard that it was said to the people long ago, `Do not...
But I tell you...

You have heard that it was said...
But I tell you...

When Jesus had finished saying these things, the crowds were amazed at his teaching, because he taught as one who had authority, and not as their teachers of the law. [Matt 5-7 extracts]

When Jesus had finished saying all this in the hearing of the people, he entered Capernaum. There a centurion's servant, whom his master valued highly, was sick and about to die. The centurion heard of Jesus and sent some elders of the Jews to him, asking him to come and heal his servant. When they came to Jesus, they pleaded earnestly with him, "This man deserves to have you do this, because he loves our nation and has built our synagogue." So Jesus went with them.

He was not far from the house when the centurion sent friends to say to him: "Lord, don't trouble yourself, for I do not deserve to have you come under my roof. That is why I did not even consider myself worthy to come to you. But say the word, and my servant will be healed. For I myself am a man under authority, with soldiers under me. I tell this one, `Go,' and he goes; and that one, `Come,' and he comes. I say to my servant, `Do this,' and he does it."

When Jesus heard this, he was amazed at him, and turning to the crowd following him, he said, "I tell you, I have not found such great faith even in Israel." Then the men who had been sent returned to the house and found the servant well. [Luke 7:1-10]

When Jesus spoke again to the people, he said, "I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life."

The Pharisees challenged him, "Here you are, appearing as your own witness; your testimony is not valid."

Jesus answered, "Even if I testify on my own behalf, my testimony is valid, for I know where I came from and where I am going. But you have no idea where I come from or where I am going. You judge by human standards; I pass judgment on no one. But if I do judge, my decisions are right, because I am not alone. I stand with the Father, who sent me. In your own Law it is written that the testimony of two men is valid. I am one who testifies for myself; my other witness is the Father, who sent me." Then they asked him, "Where is your father?" "You do not know me or my Father," Jesus replied. "If you knew me, you would know my Father also."

He spoke these words while teaching in the temple area near the place where the offerings were put. Yet no one seized him, because his time had not yet come. [John 8:12-20]

The key issue, and the one for which, effectively, he was condemned, was the authority he claimed.

This aspect of Jesus' teaching is easily overlooked. It is fashionable to suggest that Jesus was a great moral teacher, remembering sayings like 'Love your neighbour' (which he was quoting, actually, rather than originating). The extent to which he offended his contemporaries is lost. But read any one of the Gospels, especially that of John, from start to finish, and a proper understanding of this factor will emerge.

A lot of the church has lost this offensive authority, and is seen by the majority nowadays as an irrelevance. Many of its spokesmen see themselves either as dedicated to providing an uplifting ritual for those already inside, or as political commentators, or social therapists.

Those few who have direct knowledge of the spiritual dimension, who have experienced things deeply which they know are not counterfeit, have a duty to speak about them with authority. If one is not challenging, one is not doing anything useful.

If you, dear reader, are outside, and want to find a true haven for your soul, search out those with authority. Test what they say carefully, and make sure their claims are not spurious. You are looking for some one who knows, some one who has been to the top of the mountain, not just an self-proclaiming 'expert'. You must turn away from your PC and meet real people at this point of your quest.

This is a dangerous road to travel on, of course, for there are many examples of those who claim authority when they do not possess it. But it is the only road to the ultimate source of all authority. His true followers have received (in a small measure, and in a fallible container) the essential authority He alone can give. If you recognise it at any point in your life, do not let it slip past you.

Please read this first

2007-06-25T08:41:00.000+01:00

In April 1999 I created a website called Meditations of a Net Caster, intending to post an article at about monthly intervals on spiritual topics, hoping to receive responses from correspondents. This was before blogs had been invented, or at least before I had heard of them.

Although the intended interval soon grew, I have gone on posting since then. Now I have decided that the blog format is more suitable, and am going to post the whole of my output over these eight years as a blog.

Please read it all, and respond in true blogging style. I will leave the original website up for the time being. You can check it out at http://netcaster.me.uk

Although each piece can be read on its own, some follow sequentially from the previous post, so try to read the whole of this blog in the order presented by the blog archive on the left.

I refer in some pieces to comments by others. These were addressed by email to me, as was invited on the original website. In a blog you can make comments for all to see, and respond to others' comments too.

Please recognise that these pages were written over a period of time. There are some anachronisms now present simply because you are reading as posted today something written several years ago. Some momentous events are referred to as if they had just happened. When I wrote, they had. However clumsy this may end up being, I have changed virtually nothing. A little patience may be needed consequently.

Sorry that the URL to get here is so long, by the way. If you want to come back again, I suggest you bookmark it.