Many Christians felt a bit concerned with Harry Potter when it first appeared. All the witches and wizards surely cannot be good for the souls of our children, despite the fact that some decidely Christian authors such as C S Lewis have not been scared of having a little magic in their works.
As the series has progressed the mood has changed, I must confess that I have warmed to it. The tale has a certain morality to it, it talks about the importance of love, it talks about sacrifice, and has the challenge that living out love and friendship brings sacrifices. It warns of the dangers of giving yourself over to evil. It at times it communicates effectively a message that perhaps we as a church should be communicating. At times it has a certain Sunday School feel, an old fashioned conservatism, that we did not expect to come from an author who does not appear to have Christian tendencies, and perhaps with the treatment she has had from some in the church who can blame her.
However, a lot of our problems with Harry Potter come from the fact that J K Rowling was once one of Britain's most famous single mothers. The image of a woman pushing around a baby and writing stories on benefit is not (however accurate or inaccurate), to our mind, going to equal something Christian and edifying.
However, take a second look (well a Wikipedia look) and you realise that that really is a lot of hocus pocus. J K Rowling states "I believe in God, not magic." (American Prospect). She was educated at a Church of England primary whose Headmaster inspired Dumbledore. She did not want to discuss her Christian faith because if people knew that it might give too much away. In reality, though J K Rowling may be a different character from C S Lewis or J. R. R. Tolkien, she broadly shares the same worldview.
In terms of sources and influences the story of Harry Potter is deeply influenced by the Christian story.
The problem is not with J K Rowling but ourselves and our worldview. Magic in fiction can help us to see the world in a different way, a way that is more real not less. It is a literacy device, and though the occult holds many dangers, there is a difference between something that uses magic as a device and something that is occultic.
We live in a world where there is a battle between good and evil. Evil does stalk the land and our battle as Paul reminds us is not with flesh and blood but with powers and principalities.
In all of this could it actually be that Harry Potter is on the side of the angels? Paul reminds us that the battle for our earth is not one of flesh and blood, but of rulers and powers and authority and the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. That battle is fought out in culture, and I have to say that I do think that the values that Harry Potter emphasises are good, and that I therefore would put it on the right side.
Praise God for Harry Potter?!
Saturday 8 December 2007
Sunday 25 November 2007
Called to be family
We are called to be family.
What does it mean to be church? There is a temptation to think and talk about it like we would any other organisation. It has members, it has leaders, it has meetings, it has activities and mission statements.
I think there is a danger of this being so strong, that we fail to understand the upside down nature of the church and the radicalism of Christ.
Mt 12:46 While Jesus was still talking to the crowd, his mother and brothers stood outside, wanting to speak to him. 47 Someone told him, “Your mother and brothers are standing outside, wanting to speak to you.”
Mt 12:48 He replied to him, “Who is my mother, and who are my brothers?” 49 Pointing to his disciples, he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers. 50 For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother.”
Being a Christian is joining Jesus' family.
1Pe 2:9 But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light. 10
Please note it does not say that some of you are priests, but the whole of the church are priests. Peter being a Jew knew what he meant by being a priest it was a very special and important position, and yet Peter was saying that everyone was a priest. We tend to weaken the idea of the Priesthood of all believers to a form of equality, however when Peter talks about being a Royal Priesthood, he knew the power of what he was saying.
Paul takes a functional view,
1Co 12:27 Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it. 28 And in the church God has appointed first of all apostles, second prophets, third teachers, then workers of miracles, also those having gifts of healing, those able to help others, those with gifts of administration, and those speaking in different kinds of tongues. 29 Are all apostles? Are all prophets? Are all teachers? Do all work miracles? 30 Do all have gifts of healing? Do all speak in tongues ? Do all interpret? 31 But eagerly desire the greater gifts.
Again Paul knew exactly the power of what he was saying when he called the church the body of Christ. Please note that he does not use terms priest, father or leader. Apostles are special messengers, and are people who are given a special task. It is not a role designed to operate within one local church but one that has a ministry across an area (that could be geographic, demographic, cultural etc.) The next is prophets, which is interesting because our perception of the Old Testament prophet is not connected with church life, but the person who lives in the wilderness. The importance of prophecy is that prophets are people who call people to follow Christ. Teachers are people who teach.
It is easy to see how such gifts rather than competing for importance build up the body of Christ. Paul talks about miracles and gifts, but then goes on to talk a long time about the greater gifts and emphasises love in 1 Cor 13.
The Jews saw themselves as one big extended family, and therefore we see this in both the Jews addressing the Christians, "Brothers, what must we do to be saved," and also the apostles addressing the Jewish people, Ac 3:17 “Now, brothers, I know that you acted in ignorance, as did your leaders."
So when Peter calls them a people, he may have in mind the story of Ruth. Your God will be my God, and your people will be my people.
The community of the early church demonstrates this idea not just in theology but in action. They loved and cared for each other and sold their possessions to look after each other. It was commented about them, "
Loving one another is a big theme of the New Testament, of the whole Bible.
In a broken and hurting world, that struggles to do biological family, we are called to be a supernatural family.
These are incomplete thoughts, because the subject is so big, but it is such a challenge to us and to every age. We are called to relate to each other in a radically different way, based not on what I can get, and my own self-realisation, but on the needs of others and on serving God.
We are called to be different.
What does it mean to be church? There is a temptation to think and talk about it like we would any other organisation. It has members, it has leaders, it has meetings, it has activities and mission statements.
I think there is a danger of this being so strong, that we fail to understand the upside down nature of the church and the radicalism of Christ.
Mt 12:46 While Jesus was still talking to the crowd, his mother and brothers stood outside, wanting to speak to him. 47 Someone told him, “Your mother and brothers are standing outside, wanting to speak to you.”
Mt 12:48 He replied to him, “Who is my mother, and who are my brothers?” 49 Pointing to his disciples, he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers. 50 For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother.”
Being a Christian is joining Jesus' family.
1Pe 2:9 But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light. 10
Please note it does not say that some of you are priests, but the whole of the church are priests. Peter being a Jew knew what he meant by being a priest it was a very special and important position, and yet Peter was saying that everyone was a priest. We tend to weaken the idea of the Priesthood of all believers to a form of equality, however when Peter talks about being a Royal Priesthood, he knew the power of what he was saying.
Paul takes a functional view,
1Co 12:27 Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it. 28 And in the church God has appointed first of all apostles, second prophets, third teachers, then workers of miracles, also those having gifts of healing, those able to help others, those with gifts of administration, and those speaking in different kinds of tongues. 29 Are all apostles? Are all prophets? Are all teachers? Do all work miracles? 30 Do all have gifts of healing? Do all speak in tongues ? Do all interpret? 31 But eagerly desire the greater gifts.
Again Paul knew exactly the power of what he was saying when he called the church the body of Christ. Please note that he does not use terms priest, father or leader. Apostles are special messengers, and are people who are given a special task. It is not a role designed to operate within one local church but one that has a ministry across an area (that could be geographic, demographic, cultural etc.) The next is prophets, which is interesting because our perception of the Old Testament prophet is not connected with church life, but the person who lives in the wilderness. The importance of prophecy is that prophets are people who call people to follow Christ. Teachers are people who teach.
It is easy to see how such gifts rather than competing for importance build up the body of Christ. Paul talks about miracles and gifts, but then goes on to talk a long time about the greater gifts and emphasises love in 1 Cor 13.
The Jews saw themselves as one big extended family, and therefore we see this in both the Jews addressing the Christians, "Brothers, what must we do to be saved," and also the apostles addressing the Jewish people, Ac 3:17 “Now, brothers, I know that you acted in ignorance, as did your leaders."
So when Peter calls them a people, he may have in mind the story of Ruth. Your God will be my God, and your people will be my people.
The community of the early church demonstrates this idea not just in theology but in action. They loved and cared for each other and sold their possessions to look after each other. It was commented about them, "
Loving one another is a big theme of the New Testament, of the whole Bible.
In a broken and hurting world, that struggles to do biological family, we are called to be a supernatural family.
These are incomplete thoughts, because the subject is so big, but it is such a challenge to us and to every age. We are called to relate to each other in a radically different way, based not on what I can get, and my own self-realisation, but on the needs of others and on serving God.
We are called to be different.
Thursday 15 November 2007
Saved by grace
I read an article in The Guardian recently (Sat 27 October, see The sins of the father) about Simon Crowhurst and how he lost his father at sea.
Donald Cowhurst was the final entrant in the Sunday Times' Golden Globe race, a round the world sailing trip with a £5,000 prize - a lot of money in 1968. He was an amateur but he managed to get sponsorship to do it on the basis that he would complete the journey.
At first it went disastrously badly, but then reports began to come in that he was doing much better. However, not far from the final finish line, two policeman appeared at the family home.
It turned out that in reality he had been lying, rather than sailing all around the world, he had decided to loop back to the start. He was only trying to finish the race and save him and his family from bankruptcy. Though in reality his backers were prepared to release him from that and he probably would not have been ruined if he had stuck to the race.
The problem was he cheated, he knew he had cheated, and yet he was on line for winning the race. He knew that as soon as his voyage was checked he would be found out, and therefore he threw himself overboard and drowned.
You can imagine what would happen to the family next. The disgrace at the suicide, the financial ruin, and what that would do to the family.
Except when you read the article you discover that Simon is a research technician at Cambridge, married with children, and when talking about his father seems to have his head firmly on his shoulders.
So what happened? What went right?
Donald Cowhurst did not win the race Robin Knox-Johnston did, however he donated his £5,000 prize money to the Cowhurst family saving them from financial ruin. Simon comments that, "He's an incredibly generous man - a real hero."
The history that would have happened did not happen, Simon Cowhurst and his family were saved by grace. His father did not win the race, but Knox-Johnston who won donated the £5,000 prize money that saved his family.
The term saved by grace generally means little to most people today, but I hope this illustration from real life helps.
Donald Cowhurst was the final entrant in the Sunday Times' Golden Globe race, a round the world sailing trip with a £5,000 prize - a lot of money in 1968. He was an amateur but he managed to get sponsorship to do it on the basis that he would complete the journey.
At first it went disastrously badly, but then reports began to come in that he was doing much better. However, not far from the final finish line, two policeman appeared at the family home.
It turned out that in reality he had been lying, rather than sailing all around the world, he had decided to loop back to the start. He was only trying to finish the race and save him and his family from bankruptcy. Though in reality his backers were prepared to release him from that and he probably would not have been ruined if he had stuck to the race.
The problem was he cheated, he knew he had cheated, and yet he was on line for winning the race. He knew that as soon as his voyage was checked he would be found out, and therefore he threw himself overboard and drowned.
You can imagine what would happen to the family next. The disgrace at the suicide, the financial ruin, and what that would do to the family.
Except when you read the article you discover that Simon is a research technician at Cambridge, married with children, and when talking about his father seems to have his head firmly on his shoulders.
So what happened? What went right?
Donald Cowhurst did not win the race Robin Knox-Johnston did, however he donated his £5,000 prize money to the Cowhurst family saving them from financial ruin. Simon comments that, "He's an incredibly generous man - a real hero."
The history that would have happened did not happen, Simon Cowhurst and his family were saved by grace. His father did not win the race, but Knox-Johnston who won donated the £5,000 prize money that saved his family.
The term saved by grace generally means little to most people today, but I hope this illustration from real life helps.
Saturday 10 November 2007
Still running for the bus
I was late leaving the house this week, and though I ran at points I was still a distance from the bus stop when I saw the bus driving up. I was not yet late, but the bus was early. I broke my ankle a while ago and it is still not right, and therefore I was not quite quick enough. I did run for the bus, but it drove off just as I got to the back of it.
I was discussing this with a colleague at work and he told me that he no longer ran for the bus. He had run too many times and it seemed like the bus drivers took a perverse pleasure from driving off just as he was almost in reach.
It struck me as an image of lost hope and disappointment.
Bill Clinton famously said, "I still believe in a place called hope." (well he was born there), but sometimes it is difficult to hope.
People talk about clinging onto hope, but the image that we have of hope from the Bible is of something far more certain.
1 Cor 13v7 says about love "It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres." (NIV)
The passage later states, v13 "And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love." (NIV)
Do we have a hope that remains?
There are other famous passages on hope,
Psalm 25
3 No one whose hope is in you
will ever be put to shame,
but they will be put to shame
who are treacherous without excuse. (NIV)
Great as a promise but what exactly does it mean?
Psalm 62 provides an incredible image.
Man is shown as a leaning wall, as a tottering fence. That does not sound like a very hopeful image. Leaning walls and tottering fences have a tendency to fall down.
David though refers to God as my rock, my salvation and my fortress. Those are all images of strength and images of hope.
Hope in itself is not the issue. If I put my hope in the things of this world then I am looking for trouble. If I hope that I will get the bus then too many times I will end up being disappointed.
If my hope is in God then I will never be disappointed.
We can give great rhetoric about how we should not lose hope, about how we should always keep running for that bus, always keep believing. My friend is being quite sensible though, don't put your hope in something that is going to disappoint you. Buses and bus drivers are not great things to put your hope in.
There is and there has to be something more. Don't put your hope in the number 20 bus, put it in your rock, your salvation and your fortress.
Don't place your hope in buses, place your hope in God.
I was discussing this with a colleague at work and he told me that he no longer ran for the bus. He had run too many times and it seemed like the bus drivers took a perverse pleasure from driving off just as he was almost in reach.
It struck me as an image of lost hope and disappointment.
Bill Clinton famously said, "I still believe in a place called hope." (well he was born there), but sometimes it is difficult to hope.
People talk about clinging onto hope, but the image that we have of hope from the Bible is of something far more certain.
1 Cor 13v7 says about love "It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres." (NIV)
The passage later states, v13 "And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love." (NIV)
Do we have a hope that remains?
There are other famous passages on hope,
Psalm 25
3 No one whose hope is in you
will ever be put to shame,
but they will be put to shame
who are treacherous without excuse. (NIV)
Great as a promise but what exactly does it mean?
Psalm 62 provides an incredible image.
3 How long will you assault a man?
Would all of you throw him down—
this leaning wall, this tottering fence?
4 They fully intend to topple him
from his lofty place;
they take delight in lies.
With their mouths they bless,
but in their hearts they curse.
Selah
5 Find rest, O my soul, in God alone;
my hope comes from him.
6 He alone is my rock and my salvation;
he is my fortress, I will not be shaken. (NIV)
Man is shown as a leaning wall, as a tottering fence. That does not sound like a very hopeful image. Leaning walls and tottering fences have a tendency to fall down.
David though refers to God as my rock, my salvation and my fortress. Those are all images of strength and images of hope.
Hope in itself is not the issue. If I put my hope in the things of this world then I am looking for trouble. If I hope that I will get the bus then too many times I will end up being disappointed.
If my hope is in God then I will never be disappointed.
We can give great rhetoric about how we should not lose hope, about how we should always keep running for that bus, always keep believing. My friend is being quite sensible though, don't put your hope in something that is going to disappoint you. Buses and bus drivers are not great things to put your hope in.
There is and there has to be something more. Don't put your hope in the number 20 bus, put it in your rock, your salvation and your fortress.
Don't place your hope in buses, place your hope in God.
Wednesday 24 October 2007
Though he slay me
Job 13v15 Though he slay me, yet will I hope in him;
I will surely defend my ways to his face.
One lesson I have learned in life is that some things have unexpected consequences. You take a path and it does not always take you where you expected it to take you. Another lesson that is obvious but that I struggle to learn is that even though this happens on a regular basis, I often fail to learn from it, and instead like the goldfish perpetually swimming around the same bowl, I'm still surprised.
Theology matters, by this I do not mean academic theology, but instead what we really believe about God, and what we believe we are here on earth for.
If you believe that God is a man with a big smile on his face who put us on earth to be happy, you are going to have severe problems with reality.
If you believe that God is a strict puritanical God who does not like people to have fun, and put us on earth to do worthy things then it is not likely that you are going to be much fun to be around.
If you believe that God is distant, then most likely while he is far away you are not going to take much notice of what He would think about your behaviour if He was closer by.
As human beings it is quite normal to like pleasure and want to avoid pain. Given the choice between a well paid job, a happy family, a nice house and trying to survive in a slum we would pick the former, and because we would do so we would expect that if we follow God and are obedient that God would do so to.
Solomon was a good boy and he got everything. David well, he misbehaved a bit but the Psalmist became Israel's great King, who thought he could get away with murder. Abraham was blessed materially, so was Jacob, so was Joseph (eventually).
God is nice and he likes us. All true, well depending on your definition of nice, but that does not mean he wants us to be happy - as if God's sole purpose in existing was to make mankind happy.
The problem is with this theological outlook, is that good fathers do not want their children to simply spend the rest of their lives bouncing on daddy's knees going gurgle gurgle. A good father wants them to grow up.
Perhaps I need to grow up a bit. I struggle at times and get angry with God because life has not constantly drawn me a happy lot with everything easy. Indeed trying to follow Jesus tends to make life awkward rather than easy. There are choices, there are prices to be paid, there are at times sacrifices.
And for people who have an attachment to the give away God, the idea that I might have to make some sort of sacrifice - that it might not all come easily and ready on a plate for me to bung in the spiritual microwave is a bit of a shocker. I mean Jesus paid the price to give me free entry to the party, an access all areas pass - didn't he? Isn't all I need to do is to take the pre-prepared and warm it up a bit and enjoy?
The problem is that life can be very tough and it does not always have easy happy endings. This real life, not the Waltons.
If we believe too strongly that we are meant to be happy, we can be vulnerable to the temptation that says I must find my happiness elsewhere. Therefore rather than working it through with God, we walk away to find something else to feed on.
It may be cheesy to say that what God gives us satisfies and nothing else can fit that God shaped hole, but in this case it happens to be true. There is no back-up replacement God for those times when the Almighty seems far away - indeed that is exactly what the people of Israel wanted when the demanded a golden calf.
God is a bit far away a bit distant while idolatry and temple prostitution and the like provide instant gratification. However, God is quite clear that there is no place for idols. We come to Christ, and as the famous phrase goes Christ alone. There is no place for substitutes, no easy quick fixes.
The early Christians were known as the people of the way, Jesus did not invite people to an instant destination, but to an onward journey. We are not called to love the world, not called to pitch our tent and build our castle here, we are just passing through. This is not home, this is not our comfort, we are as T. S. Elliot puts it in the journey of the magi.
All this was a long time ago, I remember,
And I would do it again, but set down
This set down
This: were we lead all that way for
Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly,
We had evidence and no doubt. I have seen birth and death,
But had thought they were different; this Birth was
Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.
We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,
But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,
With an alien people clutching their gods.
I should be glad of another death.
There is something haunting in Elliot's words (written following his conversion) it is a recognition that it is not all found in this world. Life is bigger than this life because God is life and He is bigger than this life.
Therefore trying to be satisfied here in the things of this world is not just missing the point, not just bad theology, but mission impossible. It is when we die that we live, it is when we give everything to God, really give everything to God, that we find what we really have - what really matters.
Christian life therefore is also Christian death - the two are not in this case different. It is through not just Christ's death that we find life, but also our own.
The problem is that without faith, without a belief in something more, without belief in God - then it is all so much hocus pocus. We are called to choose a road which is a tough road to travel, a difficult journey. We are called to walk past the thousand stalls of sin that are set to entice us and call us away, to call us to stop the journey and stay where we all - the problem being that if we do so we may never make our final destination.
We live in a world that worships pleasure, and if I am entirely honest, at times that includes me. I want happiness that is here and now, I want the sun to always shine, and I don't want any clouds to spoil it. Yet God calls me to die to self and to truly live.
It is not, in the end, all about my pleasure, though he slay me, yet will I hope in him.
I will surely defend my ways to his face.
One lesson I have learned in life is that some things have unexpected consequences. You take a path and it does not always take you where you expected it to take you. Another lesson that is obvious but that I struggle to learn is that even though this happens on a regular basis, I often fail to learn from it, and instead like the goldfish perpetually swimming around the same bowl, I'm still surprised.
Theology matters, by this I do not mean academic theology, but instead what we really believe about God, and what we believe we are here on earth for.
If you believe that God is a man with a big smile on his face who put us on earth to be happy, you are going to have severe problems with reality.
If you believe that God is a strict puritanical God who does not like people to have fun, and put us on earth to do worthy things then it is not likely that you are going to be much fun to be around.
If you believe that God is distant, then most likely while he is far away you are not going to take much notice of what He would think about your behaviour if He was closer by.
As human beings it is quite normal to like pleasure and want to avoid pain. Given the choice between a well paid job, a happy family, a nice house and trying to survive in a slum we would pick the former, and because we would do so we would expect that if we follow God and are obedient that God would do so to.
Solomon was a good boy and he got everything. David well, he misbehaved a bit but the Psalmist became Israel's great King, who thought he could get away with murder. Abraham was blessed materially, so was Jacob, so was Joseph (eventually).
God is nice and he likes us. All true, well depending on your definition of nice, but that does not mean he wants us to be happy - as if God's sole purpose in existing was to make mankind happy.
The problem is with this theological outlook, is that good fathers do not want their children to simply spend the rest of their lives bouncing on daddy's knees going gurgle gurgle. A good father wants them to grow up.
Perhaps I need to grow up a bit. I struggle at times and get angry with God because life has not constantly drawn me a happy lot with everything easy. Indeed trying to follow Jesus tends to make life awkward rather than easy. There are choices, there are prices to be paid, there are at times sacrifices.
And for people who have an attachment to the give away God, the idea that I might have to make some sort of sacrifice - that it might not all come easily and ready on a plate for me to bung in the spiritual microwave is a bit of a shocker. I mean Jesus paid the price to give me free entry to the party, an access all areas pass - didn't he? Isn't all I need to do is to take the pre-prepared and warm it up a bit and enjoy?
The problem is that life can be very tough and it does not always have easy happy endings. This real life, not the Waltons.
If we believe too strongly that we are meant to be happy, we can be vulnerable to the temptation that says I must find my happiness elsewhere. Therefore rather than working it through with God, we walk away to find something else to feed on.
It may be cheesy to say that what God gives us satisfies and nothing else can fit that God shaped hole, but in this case it happens to be true. There is no back-up replacement God for those times when the Almighty seems far away - indeed that is exactly what the people of Israel wanted when the demanded a golden calf.
God is a bit far away a bit distant while idolatry and temple prostitution and the like provide instant gratification. However, God is quite clear that there is no place for idols. We come to Christ, and as the famous phrase goes Christ alone. There is no place for substitutes, no easy quick fixes.
The early Christians were known as the people of the way, Jesus did not invite people to an instant destination, but to an onward journey. We are not called to love the world, not called to pitch our tent and build our castle here, we are just passing through. This is not home, this is not our comfort, we are as T. S. Elliot puts it in the journey of the magi.
All this was a long time ago, I remember,
And I would do it again, but set down
This set down
This: were we lead all that way for
Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly,
We had evidence and no doubt. I have seen birth and death,
But had thought they were different; this Birth was
Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.
We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,
But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,
With an alien people clutching their gods.
I should be glad of another death.
There is something haunting in Elliot's words (written following his conversion) it is a recognition that it is not all found in this world. Life is bigger than this life because God is life and He is bigger than this life.
Therefore trying to be satisfied here in the things of this world is not just missing the point, not just bad theology, but mission impossible. It is when we die that we live, it is when we give everything to God, really give everything to God, that we find what we really have - what really matters.
Christian life therefore is also Christian death - the two are not in this case different. It is through not just Christ's death that we find life, but also our own.
The problem is that without faith, without a belief in something more, without belief in God - then it is all so much hocus pocus. We are called to choose a road which is a tough road to travel, a difficult journey. We are called to walk past the thousand stalls of sin that are set to entice us and call us away, to call us to stop the journey and stay where we all - the problem being that if we do so we may never make our final destination.
We live in a world that worships pleasure, and if I am entirely honest, at times that includes me. I want happiness that is here and now, I want the sun to always shine, and I don't want any clouds to spoil it. Yet God calls me to die to self and to truly live.
It is not, in the end, all about my pleasure, though he slay me, yet will I hope in him.
Tuesday 2 October 2007
Five loaves and two fish
You just discover that you have five thousand people turn up for lunch and all you have to offer them is five loaves and two fish.
Compared to the challenge the reality is that you have nothing to offer. Five loaves and two fish is not going to go very far.
It looks like everyone is going to have to go home hungry.
Sometimes in life we face big challenges with few resources. It is tempting to look at the problem and write it off as mission impossible without even thinking about it.
David had faced lions before but he had never faced combat with an enemy like Goliath, and Goliath could see the funny side of it and yet....
Gideon had just three hundred men and they were up against the multitudes of the Midianites, and yet....
Daniel was in a foreign land, with foreign God and the lions were feeling hungry and yet....
Miracles are possible.
Jesus manages after a hard day at work - healing and preaching, to feed the five thousand with just five loaves and a couple of fish.
David defeats Goliath.
Gideon beats the Midianites.
Daniel doesn't get eaten by the Lions.
We may not have much to offer. We may face impossible odds, except if God is on our side, the odds don't actually matter.
Five loaves and two fish is enough to feed the five thousand if that is what God intends.
The question is not what do we have, but to stand in the place of faith and hope and love, and listen as Jesus asks you the question what do you have and be prepared to be part of a miracle.
I can't help but notice that at the end their were twelve baskets full of broken pieces. At the end there were not twelve baskets of loaves and fish but of broken pieces.
There is something about miracles that changes everything and that mends that which was broken and breaks that which was not. There is change and there are often broken pieces left over.
Tomorrow we will face challenges that we may feel that we do not have the resources to face, however if God can use five loaves and two fishes to feed five thousand then he can use us and whatever resources we have to do his will.
Compared to the challenge the reality is that you have nothing to offer. Five loaves and two fish is not going to go very far.
It looks like everyone is going to have to go home hungry.
Sometimes in life we face big challenges with few resources. It is tempting to look at the problem and write it off as mission impossible without even thinking about it.
David had faced lions before but he had never faced combat with an enemy like Goliath, and Goliath could see the funny side of it and yet....
Gideon had just three hundred men and they were up against the multitudes of the Midianites, and yet....
Daniel was in a foreign land, with foreign God and the lions were feeling hungry and yet....
Miracles are possible.
Jesus manages after a hard day at work - healing and preaching, to feed the five thousand with just five loaves and a couple of fish.
David defeats Goliath.
Gideon beats the Midianites.
Daniel doesn't get eaten by the Lions.
We may not have much to offer. We may face impossible odds, except if God is on our side, the odds don't actually matter.
Five loaves and two fish is enough to feed the five thousand if that is what God intends.
The question is not what do we have, but to stand in the place of faith and hope and love, and listen as Jesus asks you the question what do you have and be prepared to be part of a miracle.
I can't help but notice that at the end their were twelve baskets full of broken pieces. At the end there were not twelve baskets of loaves and fish but of broken pieces.
There is something about miracles that changes everything and that mends that which was broken and breaks that which was not. There is change and there are often broken pieces left over.
Tomorrow we will face challenges that we may feel that we do not have the resources to face, however if God can use five loaves and two fishes to feed five thousand then he can use us and whatever resources we have to do his will.
Friday 21 September 2007
Sheep without a shepherd (Compassion 1)
Matt 9v36 When he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. (NIV)
One of the things that is fascinating me at the moment is sight - how we see the world and how that impacts how we behave in the world. If we see the car coming we will not step into the road before it. Or if we watch our steps we will not trip on the last step and fracture our ankle, and I wouldn't be sitting her with my leg in a cast.
How we see influences how we behave.
If we see people positively we behave to them in a friendly manner, if we see people less positively then we may feel uncomfortable around them.
It says "When he [Jesus] saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd."
I wonder how we would have seen that crowd if we had looked upon them?
The crowds came because Jesus had been teaching and healing. The dead girl, the sick woman, the blind and the mute and every sickness and disease, and so the people were coming to Jesus.
It would have been easy just to see a crowd, more work, hadn't he done enough, wasn't he tired. He comments that,
37 Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few. 38 Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field.”
However, this was not a moan of self-pity. The start of Chapter 10, he does something about it, he sends out the 12.
Jesus has compassion, but what does compassion mean? The word used is to have the bowels yearn, to feel sympathy, to feel pity, to be moved. The Jews thought that the bowels were the seat of sympathy. The idea is that this is not just some mental note, some thought of "Oh these poor people." Jesus was physically moved, it was so to speak a gut reaction.
Why was he moved?
He saw them as they were.
The launchpad of his mission (see Chapter 10) was his sense of compassion for the lost. He really did feel their pain, their misery, their suffering.
We see the idea of sheep without a shepherd in terms of leadership, we look at the Pharisees and we see that spiritually speaking they were blind guides and therefore they were unable to lead.
However, if we take a step back we can see the image of a sheep without a shepherd in a different way. The shepherd that Jesus was thinking about was not the sort of one man and his dog, who drives them through the gates to try and win the points. This was the shepherd of the 23 Psalm, which we can believe reflects David's glimpse of God's longing for His people.
The shepherd who cares for the sheep who leads it beside still waters, who brings it into pasture, who protects the sheep from danger, who cares for the sheep, who is even prepared to lay down his life for his sheep. Instead these people are like sheep without a shepherd, they have no one to tell them where the water is, no one to tell them where the good fresh grass is, and no one to protect them when the wild animals attack. Therefore they wander not knowing where to go, and are picked off by the wild animals.
To be a sheep without a shepherd - to be a sheep that no one wants or cares for - is a terrible predicament and Jesus is moved to compassion. He looks at these people and sees them through eyes of love, he identifies with them, and cares for them.
The word compassion comes from the Latin which comes from com meaning together and pati meaning to suffer - therefore to suffer together, to suffer with, or to feel the pain.
As Christians we are called to feel the pain. The together element of it matters, for the first question of compassion is connection, it is a connection with the pain of others and therefore we need to be able to connect, to sense our togetherness.
In Genesis 4 we hear of Cain and Abel. Cain goes out into the field and murders Abel because he is a better man, and God asks him, "Where is your brother?" and Cain lies to God and says, "I don't know, am I my brother's keeper?"
It is the question that humanity has been asking ever since, for if we truly saw each other as brothers and sisters then we would not behave to each other in the manner that we do.
Christianity needs to be a rediscovery of brotherhood, not just of the people within the church, but of everyone. If we just see the world as us and them we will never connect and never truly have compassion.
We live in a world that has been described as tribal, with a culture that is so diverse and fragmented that the "us" in "us and them" can seem incredibly small - and we look after our own.
Jesus calls us to a totally different perspective - not of us and them, but of universal compassion, of universal togetherness.
We live in a world with sheep without a shepherd and it is easy to look at programmes, services, plans and ideas - but if we do so without compassion we have missed the point. We need to be moved by others, we need to feel it in our bowels. The world is lost, Wesley described there as being "here and about ten thousand souls going headlong into hell."
We can celebrate action, but God does not want action heroes, he wants people who see and do, people who feel and act, people who are moved. People who see the suffering around them and are changed, who become people who act. Not because they ought to, but because God's love compels them to act.
Mission begins not with meetings and plan and strategies, but a crazy little thing called love. It all starts with compassion. He took pity on them, He saw their suffering, He felt their pain, and in our disconnected world we need to as well.
One of the things that is fascinating me at the moment is sight - how we see the world and how that impacts how we behave in the world. If we see the car coming we will not step into the road before it. Or if we watch our steps we will not trip on the last step and fracture our ankle, and I wouldn't be sitting her with my leg in a cast.
How we see influences how we behave.
If we see people positively we behave to them in a friendly manner, if we see people less positively then we may feel uncomfortable around them.
It says "When he [Jesus] saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd."
I wonder how we would have seen that crowd if we had looked upon them?
The crowds came because Jesus had been teaching and healing. The dead girl, the sick woman, the blind and the mute and every sickness and disease, and so the people were coming to Jesus.
It would have been easy just to see a crowd, more work, hadn't he done enough, wasn't he tired. He comments that,
37 Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few. 38 Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field.”
However, this was not a moan of self-pity. The start of Chapter 10, he does something about it, he sends out the 12.
Jesus has compassion, but what does compassion mean? The word used is to have the bowels yearn, to feel sympathy, to feel pity, to be moved. The Jews thought that the bowels were the seat of sympathy. The idea is that this is not just some mental note, some thought of "Oh these poor people." Jesus was physically moved, it was so to speak a gut reaction.
Why was he moved?
He saw them as they were.
The launchpad of his mission (see Chapter 10) was his sense of compassion for the lost. He really did feel their pain, their misery, their suffering.
We see the idea of sheep without a shepherd in terms of leadership, we look at the Pharisees and we see that spiritually speaking they were blind guides and therefore they were unable to lead.
However, if we take a step back we can see the image of a sheep without a shepherd in a different way. The shepherd that Jesus was thinking about was not the sort of one man and his dog, who drives them through the gates to try and win the points. This was the shepherd of the 23 Psalm, which we can believe reflects David's glimpse of God's longing for His people.
The shepherd who cares for the sheep who leads it beside still waters, who brings it into pasture, who protects the sheep from danger, who cares for the sheep, who is even prepared to lay down his life for his sheep. Instead these people are like sheep without a shepherd, they have no one to tell them where the water is, no one to tell them where the good fresh grass is, and no one to protect them when the wild animals attack. Therefore they wander not knowing where to go, and are picked off by the wild animals.
To be a sheep without a shepherd - to be a sheep that no one wants or cares for - is a terrible predicament and Jesus is moved to compassion. He looks at these people and sees them through eyes of love, he identifies with them, and cares for them.
The word compassion comes from the Latin which comes from com meaning together and pati meaning to suffer - therefore to suffer together, to suffer with, or to feel the pain.
As Christians we are called to feel the pain. The together element of it matters, for the first question of compassion is connection, it is a connection with the pain of others and therefore we need to be able to connect, to sense our togetherness.
In Genesis 4 we hear of Cain and Abel. Cain goes out into the field and murders Abel because he is a better man, and God asks him, "Where is your brother?" and Cain lies to God and says, "I don't know, am I my brother's keeper?"
It is the question that humanity has been asking ever since, for if we truly saw each other as brothers and sisters then we would not behave to each other in the manner that we do.
Christianity needs to be a rediscovery of brotherhood, not just of the people within the church, but of everyone. If we just see the world as us and them we will never connect and never truly have compassion.
We live in a world that has been described as tribal, with a culture that is so diverse and fragmented that the "us" in "us and them" can seem incredibly small - and we look after our own.
Jesus calls us to a totally different perspective - not of us and them, but of universal compassion, of universal togetherness.
We live in a world with sheep without a shepherd and it is easy to look at programmes, services, plans and ideas - but if we do so without compassion we have missed the point. We need to be moved by others, we need to feel it in our bowels. The world is lost, Wesley described there as being "here and about ten thousand souls going headlong into hell."
We can celebrate action, but God does not want action heroes, he wants people who see and do, people who feel and act, people who are moved. People who see the suffering around them and are changed, who become people who act. Not because they ought to, but because God's love compels them to act.
Mission begins not with meetings and plan and strategies, but a crazy little thing called love. It all starts with compassion. He took pity on them, He saw their suffering, He felt their pain, and in our disconnected world we need to as well.
Saturday 8 September 2007
Mercy street
I read in the news today of some women accused of prostitution who had been beheaded in Pakistan by Islamic militants.
When Jesus was confronted with the woman caught in adultery, he said let him who is without sin cast the first stone. The crowd melted away. For they saw in the woman something of themselves, they had all been caught may be not so publicly as the woman they all deserved judgement, they all needed mercy.
Normally I presume that this encounter with Jesus was life changing for the woman. She met Jesus, she was shown mercy and she did leave her life of sin. However, the Bible does not cosily tell us how she gave up her sinful life and lived a saintly life from then on.
We think surely if people encountered the love of God, the mercy of God, then they would change - but that is not always the case. For we have encountered the mercy of God, and how much have we changed?
The truth about God's mercy is that it is based on unconditional love. Jesus showed love not because He was an optimist who thought that every individual who met Him would be changed, but because God shows mercy to sinners with His eyes open - and He gives us the opportunity to change.
Mercy is truly mercy, because it is not based on some certain formula that says mercy means change, mercy is shown to sinners that they might have the opportunity to change - but God knows that does not always happen. God shows us mercy as sinners, far off, dirty, gritty, sinful, and He loves us.
Our faith needs to have a gritty realism to it that faces the reality of life on earth. Jesus came he showed perfect love and yet we crucified Him. He showed mercy and forgave those who sinned against Him, and some were impacted and changed, but some went on to try and destroy His followers.
Some of our ideas of mercy are skewed by images of merciful gods that are not really that merciful. However the facts challenge this, God offers forgiveness and mercy to even those who crucify Him, and He knows full well that they are not all going to suddenly change. Some will, but many will not.
We need to face our own sinfulness, and then receive mercy and the church needs to become a place of mercy. We are called to offer mercy to the perishing - many of Jesus warns will continue to perish and some of whom will persecute us for giving them the good news.
The church needs to become a mercy street, and it is there the reward is - lend and don't expect to get it back. We will have our reward in heaven, mercy often does not get a reward on this earth.
As we are confronted by those whose need for mercy is particularly evident, we need always to remember, as Jesus reminded the crowd, that we are not the morally superior looking onto the inferior but that we are all sinners. We show mercy as people who have been shown mercy. Everyone needs mercy.
When Jesus was confronted with the woman caught in adultery, he said let him who is without sin cast the first stone. The crowd melted away. For they saw in the woman something of themselves, they had all been caught may be not so publicly as the woman they all deserved judgement, they all needed mercy.
Normally I presume that this encounter with Jesus was life changing for the woman. She met Jesus, she was shown mercy and she did leave her life of sin. However, the Bible does not cosily tell us how she gave up her sinful life and lived a saintly life from then on.
We think surely if people encountered the love of God, the mercy of God, then they would change - but that is not always the case. For we have encountered the mercy of God, and how much have we changed?
The truth about God's mercy is that it is based on unconditional love. Jesus showed love not because He was an optimist who thought that every individual who met Him would be changed, but because God shows mercy to sinners with His eyes open - and He gives us the opportunity to change.
Mercy is truly mercy, because it is not based on some certain formula that says mercy means change, mercy is shown to sinners that they might have the opportunity to change - but God knows that does not always happen. God shows us mercy as sinners, far off, dirty, gritty, sinful, and He loves us.
Our faith needs to have a gritty realism to it that faces the reality of life on earth. Jesus came he showed perfect love and yet we crucified Him. He showed mercy and forgave those who sinned against Him, and some were impacted and changed, but some went on to try and destroy His followers.
Some of our ideas of mercy are skewed by images of merciful gods that are not really that merciful. However the facts challenge this, God offers forgiveness and mercy to even those who crucify Him, and He knows full well that they are not all going to suddenly change. Some will, but many will not.
We need to face our own sinfulness, and then receive mercy and the church needs to become a place of mercy. We are called to offer mercy to the perishing - many of Jesus warns will continue to perish and some of whom will persecute us for giving them the good news.
The church needs to become a mercy street, and it is there the reward is - lend and don't expect to get it back. We will have our reward in heaven, mercy often does not get a reward on this earth.
As we are confronted by those whose need for mercy is particularly evident, we need always to remember, as Jesus reminded the crowd, that we are not the morally superior looking onto the inferior but that we are all sinners. We show mercy as people who have been shown mercy. Everyone needs mercy.
Wednesday 15 August 2007
Peer Pressure
Cheshire Chief Constable Peter Fahy spoke about the alcohol related problems that led to the death of Gary Newloves. He decries the alcohol culture of young people and how this leads to anti-social behaviour. He proposes more expensive alcohol, more restraints on the sale and consumption of alcohol.
As a nation we are being changed by circumstances. While some of the suggestions sound very sensible and the call for a national debate is wholly to be welcomed, in that debate some difficult questions need to be asked.
Why is it that our young people go out and get drunk. I was discussing this with my wife. What is it that makes people follow their peer group and what is it that makes them rebel against it.
I was talking about how on alcohol and other matters I rebelled against peer pressure and how can I teach my children to do so, and why did I?
We have a tendency to want to please the people that are important to us. That is what drives children to drink, they want to be seen as someone. They want to be accepted by their peer group.
Why then did I not?
One answer is thatI did. I wanted to be admired by the people who were important to me. The question is who was important to me.
Of course, I could say that God was important to me, and that would be very true. I read the Bible regularly and in that and in prayer I met with God. It was about a personal encounter with the divine who loved me and understood me in a way no one else every could or ever would.
I was accepted, I was forgiven, I was loved. That gives us an incredible freedom, and the power to walk away when everyone else says go.
However, if I was going to say the people who matters to me who I wanted to please it was not those my age at school. I belonged to a loving Christian community who I wanted to please.
Now of course they never saw what went on when I was out with my friends, but they had the Holy Spirit, and I wanted God's blessing on my life. I knew that if I wanted God's blessing then I was not going to get it by doing the things that displeased Him.
When tempted to walk away I thought where do I want to be, where do I want to go. I met wonderful older people who were more alive not just to God but to life, than many of my contemporaries. I met few others who really drew me.
You want to please who you love. If we love God we want to please Him. However the church has a really important role to play as well if we love and we respect each other we can provide tangible encouragement to people not by moaning or decrying but just by loving people and believing the best - by being grace in action.
Perhaps what people need most is people to love them and believe in them, and then they will respond to the power of love, rather than the pressures of the world. The problem is that we need the power of God if we are going to be really effective in standing against the pressures. Of course our love can point people to that source, can point people to God.
As a nation we are being changed by circumstances. While some of the suggestions sound very sensible and the call for a national debate is wholly to be welcomed, in that debate some difficult questions need to be asked.
Why is it that our young people go out and get drunk. I was discussing this with my wife. What is it that makes people follow their peer group and what is it that makes them rebel against it.
I was talking about how on alcohol and other matters I rebelled against peer pressure and how can I teach my children to do so, and why did I?
We have a tendency to want to please the people that are important to us. That is what drives children to drink, they want to be seen as someone. They want to be accepted by their peer group.
Why then did I not?
One answer is thatI did. I wanted to be admired by the people who were important to me. The question is who was important to me.
Of course, I could say that God was important to me, and that would be very true. I read the Bible regularly and in that and in prayer I met with God. It was about a personal encounter with the divine who loved me and understood me in a way no one else every could or ever would.
I was accepted, I was forgiven, I was loved. That gives us an incredible freedom, and the power to walk away when everyone else says go.
However, if I was going to say the people who matters to me who I wanted to please it was not those my age at school. I belonged to a loving Christian community who I wanted to please.
Now of course they never saw what went on when I was out with my friends, but they had the Holy Spirit, and I wanted God's blessing on my life. I knew that if I wanted God's blessing then I was not going to get it by doing the things that displeased Him.
When tempted to walk away I thought where do I want to be, where do I want to go. I met wonderful older people who were more alive not just to God but to life, than many of my contemporaries. I met few others who really drew me.
You want to please who you love. If we love God we want to please Him. However the church has a really important role to play as well if we love and we respect each other we can provide tangible encouragement to people not by moaning or decrying but just by loving people and believing the best - by being grace in action.
Perhaps what people need most is people to love them and believe in them, and then they will respond to the power of love, rather than the pressures of the world. The problem is that we need the power of God if we are going to be really effective in standing against the pressures. Of course our love can point people to that source, can point people to God.
Thursday 26 July 2007
Grace and Ungrace
How do we deal with imperfections and failure? It seems to be that there are various different methods but they can be classed in one of two camps grace and ungrace.
When we encounter failure we can take over. We can give the message it is okay, I'm here, I'll make sure it is okay. I know what I am doing. The problem is that rather than helping others to discover their potential we instead paralyse them into believing that they cannot get it right. I have worked for bosses who believed that everything I did was wrong, after a while you end up paralysed and doing silly things because it undermines your self worth and your confidence in making a decision. You refuse to ask a perfectly sensible question because you know that it will just receive that sigh and that look, and therefore because you did not ask the perfectly sensible question you flail and fail because you cannot read minds. One person's view of perfection can be incredibly subjective.
I am conscious as I write this that I am writing about other people and other situations and circumstances, and in some ways it can be good to look at other people's faults - if and only if - we realise that we have faults that we are as unconscious of as them. We can be blind to our own faults. Have I made other people feel like a failure because they have not lived up to my standards? I am very conscious that in the past I have. There was no choice of another path, they did not go "God's way*" (*as defined by me) and therefore they went the wrong way - and there is probably some truth in that, but making a big issue out of it probably does not really help, and from based on the evidence it does not seem to have helped.
This can lead to another approach to failure a kind of dejected acceptance. I fail, you fail, we all fail, and we forget to look up at the sky and we forget to believe that God can actually change lives because we all fail. Failure does not have to be the whole story. We do have choices, choices that we can make for good or for evil.
I have been through that phase. Well I fail, I am imperfect, look at the Bible, we all fail and you focus on the failure. It is the response of disillusionment. Things should be better, things could be better, but in reality (we say) we are always going to fail. Maybe we have tried hard and still failed.
Jeff Lucas comments in today's (26 July) Lucas on Life, "To err is human but not to learn from the errors of our ways and so continue in destructive patterns is madness."
We are not perfect, but that is the message of the cross. We fail, but Jesus can save us, and that is why He died. He died not because He believed that we were perfect, and nor did He believe that we would become perfect in these earthly days. He was not just the Son of God, but He had walked this earth for his 3 and 30 years (give or take a year or two) and He had spent three year's travelling with a group of men who were far from perfect and one of which was to betray Him. Jesus was not blinded by Peter, and yet to the man who was going to deny Him, the guy who would continue to make mistakes, He said, "You are Peter and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hell shall not prevail against it."
There is grace for sinners, and grace is not simply a sticking plaster for sin, or some divine blotting paper, it is about power to change.
God does not come to us and say you have failed against you snivelling little humans, God does not come to us and say you've failed again accept it you are a failure, God does not come and say, let me do it all. God comes with grace.
The issue of Christianity is not that we can believe in God, but that God believes in us. Despite the failures and the difficulties, despite the apparent reasons for throwing in the towel, God has not given up on humanity. He still believes, He still hopes, because
1Co 13:7 It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
1Co 13:8a Love never fails.
The issue is not that we believe in God, but that God still believes in us.
God does not come with a big stick, or a to nullify us and to take over, God comes with the open arms of love, because in the end it is love that changes people not big sticks or big change.
Grace gives us the chance to work it through, to deal with the issues, to start again, and we want it for us, but the challenge is we need to give it to others as well. We want a chance, but we need to be people who give others a chance.
Grace tells me that I do not have to live in the never never land of sin and guilt, grace tells me that tomorrow can be different, that I can be different. Grace tells me that because Jesus died I live in a world of endless possibilities, Grace tells me that I am free. I can make the choices, the chains are broken, I can leave the prison. I can taste the sunlight.
The challenge is that we need to believe that this is true not just for us, but for everyone who lives in darkness who needs to see the light.
This summer it seems that it has been raining and pouring, we have seen the floods, and we have seen little of the sun. We have been living in darkness but we believe that the sun can shine.
We live in a people walking in darkness, and yet the Son of God has shone upon us. We need to accept the Son into our lives for He can drive the darkness away. The light has dawned, and the new age of grace has dawned, free and abundant and available to all that will come, but we need to take hold of the fact that it is not just for us, it needs to be for the world.
When we encounter failure we can take over. We can give the message it is okay, I'm here, I'll make sure it is okay. I know what I am doing. The problem is that rather than helping others to discover their potential we instead paralyse them into believing that they cannot get it right. I have worked for bosses who believed that everything I did was wrong, after a while you end up paralysed and doing silly things because it undermines your self worth and your confidence in making a decision. You refuse to ask a perfectly sensible question because you know that it will just receive that sigh and that look, and therefore because you did not ask the perfectly sensible question you flail and fail because you cannot read minds. One person's view of perfection can be incredibly subjective.
I am conscious as I write this that I am writing about other people and other situations and circumstances, and in some ways it can be good to look at other people's faults - if and only if - we realise that we have faults that we are as unconscious of as them. We can be blind to our own faults. Have I made other people feel like a failure because they have not lived up to my standards? I am very conscious that in the past I have. There was no choice of another path, they did not go "God's way*" (*as defined by me) and therefore they went the wrong way - and there is probably some truth in that, but making a big issue out of it probably does not really help, and from based on the evidence it does not seem to have helped.
This can lead to another approach to failure a kind of dejected acceptance. I fail, you fail, we all fail, and we forget to look up at the sky and we forget to believe that God can actually change lives because we all fail. Failure does not have to be the whole story. We do have choices, choices that we can make for good or for evil.
I have been through that phase. Well I fail, I am imperfect, look at the Bible, we all fail and you focus on the failure. It is the response of disillusionment. Things should be better, things could be better, but in reality (we say) we are always going to fail. Maybe we have tried hard and still failed.
Jeff Lucas comments in today's (26 July) Lucas on Life, "To err is human but not to learn from the errors of our ways and so continue in destructive patterns is madness."
We are not perfect, but that is the message of the cross. We fail, but Jesus can save us, and that is why He died. He died not because He believed that we were perfect, and nor did He believe that we would become perfect in these earthly days. He was not just the Son of God, but He had walked this earth for his 3 and 30 years (give or take a year or two) and He had spent three year's travelling with a group of men who were far from perfect and one of which was to betray Him. Jesus was not blinded by Peter, and yet to the man who was going to deny Him, the guy who would continue to make mistakes, He said, "You are Peter and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hell shall not prevail against it."
There is grace for sinners, and grace is not simply a sticking plaster for sin, or some divine blotting paper, it is about power to change.
God does not come to us and say you have failed against you snivelling little humans, God does not come to us and say you've failed again accept it you are a failure, God does not come and say, let me do it all. God comes with grace.
The issue of Christianity is not that we can believe in God, but that God believes in us. Despite the failures and the difficulties, despite the apparent reasons for throwing in the towel, God has not given up on humanity. He still believes, He still hopes, because
1Co 13:7 It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
1Co 13:8a Love never fails.
The issue is not that we believe in God, but that God still believes in us.
God does not come with a big stick, or a to nullify us and to take over, God comes with the open arms of love, because in the end it is love that changes people not big sticks or big change.
Grace gives us the chance to work it through, to deal with the issues, to start again, and we want it for us, but the challenge is we need to give it to others as well. We want a chance, but we need to be people who give others a chance.
Grace tells me that I do not have to live in the never never land of sin and guilt, grace tells me that tomorrow can be different, that I can be different. Grace tells me that because Jesus died I live in a world of endless possibilities, Grace tells me that I am free. I can make the choices, the chains are broken, I can leave the prison. I can taste the sunlight.
The challenge is that we need to believe that this is true not just for us, but for everyone who lives in darkness who needs to see the light.
This summer it seems that it has been raining and pouring, we have seen the floods, and we have seen little of the sun. We have been living in darkness but we believe that the sun can shine.
We live in a people walking in darkness, and yet the Son of God has shone upon us. We need to accept the Son into our lives for He can drive the darkness away. The light has dawned, and the new age of grace has dawned, free and abundant and available to all that will come, but we need to take hold of the fact that it is not just for us, it needs to be for the world.
Sunday 15 July 2007
Understanding why we do church as we do church
Years ago people lived in communities (some of which were probably quite dysfunctional) but the masses were not educated. Therefore church had quite an educational feel and tended to be driven from the front.
Today people are educated (though whether mass education today challenges people to think for themselves enough is another question) but most people do not live in communities. Therefore churches today have house groups, and often the stopping for a coffee is seen as important as the service itself.
Our environments effects how we do church, and that is an advantage rather than a reason for concern. Just like the Sabbath was created for man not man for the Sabbath so church was created for man not man for church.
Life is different and therefore people's needs are different, and therefore how we do church will be different. Church must meet people where they are, and church must reflect the environment that it is in.
The problem is that often we try to reflect the world in matters that really only scratch the surface (music style etc.) rather than understanding the drivers and the deeper issues. For instance we live in a more emotional age and therefore you might say that we should be more emotional to follow the style of the age. However, we need to ask deeper questions. An over emphasis on the emotions and on feelings is dangerous in all walks of life. The approach to marriage that says it's all over because I don't feel anything any more is worrying and applied to Christianity as dangerous as it is as applied to the rest of life. We need to exercise discernment in our interaction with our culture.
In a world of feelings then our worship may be more emotional, because that is where we are. However we need to be careful about the dangers that brings about and steer clear of emotionalism. We also need to look at why we are becoming more emotional and address that. Are people looking for something more, are people dissatisfied with cold science and longing for something more - of course they are. We need to recognise we were created to be more than just rational machines! I also think that there are tensions within society that cause cracks and these are shown by a greater amount of emotional expression.
Princess Diana died and the reaction was worrying, but that was ten years ago, and there is a greater awareness today that perhaps we got a little carried away, there is a move towards greater conservatism (though that could prove to be temporary - the exuberant Blair has been replaced by the dour Brown). In the church we too often respond to what has happened, rather than what is happening, we need to be prophetic rather than just historic.
The church needs to meet people where they are, and meet the needs of the contemporary world remembering that the greatest need we have is for God.
Today people are educated (though whether mass education today challenges people to think for themselves enough is another question) but most people do not live in communities. Therefore churches today have house groups, and often the stopping for a coffee is seen as important as the service itself.
Our environments effects how we do church, and that is an advantage rather than a reason for concern. Just like the Sabbath was created for man not man for the Sabbath so church was created for man not man for church.
Life is different and therefore people's needs are different, and therefore how we do church will be different. Church must meet people where they are, and church must reflect the environment that it is in.
The problem is that often we try to reflect the world in matters that really only scratch the surface (music style etc.) rather than understanding the drivers and the deeper issues. For instance we live in a more emotional age and therefore you might say that we should be more emotional to follow the style of the age. However, we need to ask deeper questions. An over emphasis on the emotions and on feelings is dangerous in all walks of life. The approach to marriage that says it's all over because I don't feel anything any more is worrying and applied to Christianity as dangerous as it is as applied to the rest of life. We need to exercise discernment in our interaction with our culture.
In a world of feelings then our worship may be more emotional, because that is where we are. However we need to be careful about the dangers that brings about and steer clear of emotionalism. We also need to look at why we are becoming more emotional and address that. Are people looking for something more, are people dissatisfied with cold science and longing for something more - of course they are. We need to recognise we were created to be more than just rational machines! I also think that there are tensions within society that cause cracks and these are shown by a greater amount of emotional expression.
Princess Diana died and the reaction was worrying, but that was ten years ago, and there is a greater awareness today that perhaps we got a little carried away, there is a move towards greater conservatism (though that could prove to be temporary - the exuberant Blair has been replaced by the dour Brown). In the church we too often respond to what has happened, rather than what is happening, we need to be prophetic rather than just historic.
The church needs to meet people where they are, and meet the needs of the contemporary world remembering that the greatest need we have is for God.
Thursday 12 July 2007
The Paradox Machine
Okay so this is getting worryingly dominated by Doctor Who at the moment.
At the end of the last series of Doctor Who the Master returned and turned the TARDIS into a paradox machine. The Paradox is that it brings people back to interfere with their own past which means that they should cease to exist. It is therefore a paradox, they should not be there, it should not exist.
By the end of the final episode the earth was practically destroyed millions killed, the whole of Japan wiped out and the Master about to start galactic war. However the people chant the name of the Doctor and he gains the strength to reverse the paradox and therefore time reverses to just before the time the aliens invaded and the future, the destruction, the murder, and all that pain did not happen. Of course the Doctor and the others with him know what has happened but for everyone else it literally did not happen.
It struck me that sometimes we are paradox machines. We do things which we know we should not do. We know that what we are doing is wrong. We know that certain things are wrong, and by like the Pandora's box we open it and taste the forbidden fruit. The problem is that once we do so it brings in it's wake destruction.
The problem is in real life you cannot just reverse the paradox, in real life you cannot turn back the clock and undo the destruction. However much we may want to, however much we may hope and pray that we could. In the media there is something unsatisfying about it as a literary device, because in real life it does not happen.
In real life we are "paradox machines," praising God and doing all the right things, and then yet at times we blow it all. The religious parallels were striking, the Master was smooth talking and convincing, as these baddies often are - and yet he carried with him death and destruction.
Sin is subtle and attractive but deadly. Jesus came to heal a broken world, but the damage sin causes cannot simple be reversed. We and the rest of the world still have to live with the consequences.
At the end of the last series of Doctor Who the Master returned and turned the TARDIS into a paradox machine. The Paradox is that it brings people back to interfere with their own past which means that they should cease to exist. It is therefore a paradox, they should not be there, it should not exist.
By the end of the final episode the earth was practically destroyed millions killed, the whole of Japan wiped out and the Master about to start galactic war. However the people chant the name of the Doctor and he gains the strength to reverse the paradox and therefore time reverses to just before the time the aliens invaded and the future, the destruction, the murder, and all that pain did not happen. Of course the Doctor and the others with him know what has happened but for everyone else it literally did not happen.
It struck me that sometimes we are paradox machines. We do things which we know we should not do. We know that what we are doing is wrong. We know that certain things are wrong, and by like the Pandora's box we open it and taste the forbidden fruit. The problem is that once we do so it brings in it's wake destruction.
The problem is in real life you cannot just reverse the paradox, in real life you cannot turn back the clock and undo the destruction. However much we may want to, however much we may hope and pray that we could. In the media there is something unsatisfying about it as a literary device, because in real life it does not happen.
In real life we are "paradox machines," praising God and doing all the right things, and then yet at times we blow it all. The religious parallels were striking, the Master was smooth talking and convincing, as these baddies often are - and yet he carried with him death and destruction.
Sin is subtle and attractive but deadly. Jesus came to heal a broken world, but the damage sin causes cannot simple be reversed. We and the rest of the world still have to live with the consequences.
Saturday 30 June 2007
The essential story
Doctor Who is back and is back on form. I had a theory about why Doctor Who became rubbish and disappeared. It was because we no longer really believed in good or evil. We stopped believing in evil, or that there was anything really worth hiding behind the sofa for. Everything was relative, evil was just something that happened when people did not live in good enough conditions. Better housing, a better environment and suddenly everyone would be good. Nothing really mattered, and in a world where nothing really matters it is difficult to have a good yarn, and therefore Doctor Who went down hill. We never really believed in good either that was relative, so try having a story about the battle between good and evil when you don't believe in either, and it is not going to work. Doctor Who never relied on special affects or big fight scenes and therefore it just slowly died, and it was the lack of the story that was the enemy that finally killed off the Doctor.
However, whether or not September 11th changed the world, it and other such events changed our view of the world. Doctor Who disappeared before Kosovo, before the bodies started floating down through Burundi. When we were not really aware of what was happening in the Congo. While we still thought Zimbabwe would sort itself out. While here in the UK violence has increased, so that it is not just over there it is over here again. Till again we believe in evil, till again we believe that there is something worth hiding behind the settee about. J K Rowling has made an incredible success about the battle of good against evil in Harry Potter, and it is a battle where the goodies don't just get away scot free either, but are marked.
To have a good good versus evil story you have to believe in good. It is here again where changing in culture and outlook appear interesting. Both Doctor Who and Harry Potter show a leaning towards ideas of good and heroism that I once thought had disappeared for good in a cynical age. Of course both are family entertainment and have children in mind, there is still much that is unremittingly bleak and dark, where "heroes" just shoot and kill, and it would be very much premature to announce the death of the anti-hero. However there is a resurgence of the idea of goodness and that it might be so to speak a good thing. There is at least a small call to what we might even call traditional morality.
We have lived through the me generation and in one sense looking after yourself is such a part of human nature that it is never going to disappear, but the harshness of some of the self-centredness has been based on the idea that I can get on on my own. I don't need you, you don't need me. I can fight my battles on my own. However when life gets really difficult we turn to others not just because it is the warm and cosy thing to do, but because we have to. We might be a national of individualists but when it comes to fighting something as big of Nazism, you have to work together. When evil is out there and armed and dangerous, you have to alter your behaviour.
One of the interesting questions that is being posed and that I heard on the radio today was the discussion about how much you sacrifice individual freedoms for the interest of collective security. The fact that we live in a world with dangers, with an enemy does have an impact on how we may behave - though we need to ensure that we do not manage to imprison ourselves because of the threats of others.
The world of course has not changed, we have lived in a world of sin since the days of Adam and Eve - there is nothing new under the sun. However the fact that our thinking is in flux matters, really matters. Much of the way that we live is based on the idea that in the end everything will all turn out okay, whatever we do, that life does not really have consequences - that it will be all right on the night.
Car bombs and drunken louts remind us that the reality is very different, that in truth our actions do have consequences and as Iraq demonstrates it is far easier to cause problems than it is to solve them, far easier to set things in motion than to stop them once they are in motion. Our actions do have consequences, the war that we hatch in someone else's country can come home to roost, and of course our actions in terms of pollution and how we treat the planet do have consequences and if we are not careful they can have dire consequences, melting icecaps and rising sea levels and climate chaos.
In the end the battle of good and evil matters because it is the human story and it has consequences. I think sometimes the church has something to blame, we can treat religion as the ultimate panacea - bring it to Jesus and it will all be okay; just believe; just pray - but our actions have consequences. The choices we make matter. There may not be angels and demons on our shoulders shouting or gently reasoning with us to choose a certain direction, but what we do matters - it matters to us and it matters to other people.
Christianity and the church have been seen as irrelevant because the story that we told about good and evil did not matter any more. We lived in a world that not only did not believe in God and the devil, but did not believe in good or evil either, anything went between consenting adults and if you did not like it you could switch over. However we have reaped what we have sowed and perhaps whether or not it makes a difference to people's attitude towards God and Christianity or not, people's attitudes are changing - and as much because of fear as anything else.
History has lessons for us and one of those lessons is that sometimes terrible things can happen, and that once they begin to happen it can be too late to stop them. Events like the French Revolution remind us that nothing is eternal and that sometimes reaping the injustices that we have sown can be a very bitter pill. Mario Antoinette had an idealised peasant village built where she could hide from the world and enjoy the simple peasant life, but it was fantasy, in reality the peasants lived in poverty and many of the city dweller lived in squalor and her rural retreat could not save her from the reality.
Good and evil matter, and therefore Christianity deals with the essential story of humanity, that of the battle between good and evil. This is played out in every aspect of our lives, and that is why morality matters. Easy sex has become part of the British way of life, and sex has become disconnected from marriage, so that the majority of children are born outside of wedlock. The problem is that while easy sex has a certain appeal, the reality that giving in to our passions and desires opens the door to much that is not good. In the end bringing up children and building families and communities is about hard work and self-sacrifice and dedication. The reason why marriage makes sense is that if you cannot commit yourself to someone for life then really you should not be bringing a child into the world, and though your child will be influenced by you and by your genetics, you do not get to choose your child. In the end as the last Harry Potter film finished, the time is coming when we will all have to choose between what is right and what is easy. The time of that choice is now, and indeed is always now.
The reasons why God sets good laws is that we may be blessed by living good lives, but God's laws make sense and can be summed up very simply love God and love one another. In a sense therefore God's rules for our relationships with each other are love. The reason for rules surrounding sexual restraint are because that is the loving thing to do, rather than exploiting and demeaning others.
As Christians we can often become uncomfortable with ideas of goodness. We do not like to teach it in case it makes us out to be boring, or to be the people who like to say no. However if we fail to share what it means to be good, then people will make mistakes and will hurt themselves - and others. People are into experience but the problem is that if we wait to learn from experience we may cause incredible damage both to ourselves and others in the meantime.
The other problem is that when we rely on experience we are limited by our experiences, i.e. we may not know any better, we may lack the empirical data that shows us the other choices that we missed. It is like deciding to go somewhere and not asking for directions but hoping that we will eventually stumble upon where we need to be. We need to take a look at the directions, we need to understand where we are going. The problem is that there are dangerous places, cliffs that we can drop off, bogs that we can sink into, objects that will block our paths - just setting off in hope is not enough. One of the images that I struggle with is the idea that the Bible is a map book, but the image that often we have is that we need to consult it at all times, like something that we carry in a case around our necks. However we know that is not the case, we know the way to go to the shops without needing a map, but there is a reason for that we have been shown, we have learned the way. It is like that with the Bible on much of it we just need to hear and obey, and once we have learned it and obey it we do not need to keep on looking up what to do in a certain circumstance we know because the Bible tells us.
There is a story of goodness and love, we need to learn it by heart, we need it to ring in our ears and to become our story. Not that we have to look at it nervously every day, but that we need to learn to live it out every day. Of course it is not a simple story and therefore we will still learn new things about it and we need to come back to it when fresh experiences challenge or where we find ourselves in uncharted territory. I'm not saying that we do not need to keep learning, of course we do, but we need to learn new things, not just to repeat by rote what we learned in Sunday School. It is about learning new things, and struggling with new terrain.
We live in a world of a battle, where there are real casualties, where what we do matters and has real consequences. In this world Christianity is 100% relevant and it is this message that the church needs to be unafraid to proclaim, it matters, it is the essential story.
However, whether or not September 11th changed the world, it and other such events changed our view of the world. Doctor Who disappeared before Kosovo, before the bodies started floating down through Burundi. When we were not really aware of what was happening in the Congo. While we still thought Zimbabwe would sort itself out. While here in the UK violence has increased, so that it is not just over there it is over here again. Till again we believe in evil, till again we believe that there is something worth hiding behind the settee about. J K Rowling has made an incredible success about the battle of good against evil in Harry Potter, and it is a battle where the goodies don't just get away scot free either, but are marked.
To have a good good versus evil story you have to believe in good. It is here again where changing in culture and outlook appear interesting. Both Doctor Who and Harry Potter show a leaning towards ideas of good and heroism that I once thought had disappeared for good in a cynical age. Of course both are family entertainment and have children in mind, there is still much that is unremittingly bleak and dark, where "heroes" just shoot and kill, and it would be very much premature to announce the death of the anti-hero. However there is a resurgence of the idea of goodness and that it might be so to speak a good thing. There is at least a small call to what we might even call traditional morality.
We have lived through the me generation and in one sense looking after yourself is such a part of human nature that it is never going to disappear, but the harshness of some of the self-centredness has been based on the idea that I can get on on my own. I don't need you, you don't need me. I can fight my battles on my own. However when life gets really difficult we turn to others not just because it is the warm and cosy thing to do, but because we have to. We might be a national of individualists but when it comes to fighting something as big of Nazism, you have to work together. When evil is out there and armed and dangerous, you have to alter your behaviour.
One of the interesting questions that is being posed and that I heard on the radio today was the discussion about how much you sacrifice individual freedoms for the interest of collective security. The fact that we live in a world with dangers, with an enemy does have an impact on how we may behave - though we need to ensure that we do not manage to imprison ourselves because of the threats of others.
The world of course has not changed, we have lived in a world of sin since the days of Adam and Eve - there is nothing new under the sun. However the fact that our thinking is in flux matters, really matters. Much of the way that we live is based on the idea that in the end everything will all turn out okay, whatever we do, that life does not really have consequences - that it will be all right on the night.
Car bombs and drunken louts remind us that the reality is very different, that in truth our actions do have consequences and as Iraq demonstrates it is far easier to cause problems than it is to solve them, far easier to set things in motion than to stop them once they are in motion. Our actions do have consequences, the war that we hatch in someone else's country can come home to roost, and of course our actions in terms of pollution and how we treat the planet do have consequences and if we are not careful they can have dire consequences, melting icecaps and rising sea levels and climate chaos.
In the end the battle of good and evil matters because it is the human story and it has consequences. I think sometimes the church has something to blame, we can treat religion as the ultimate panacea - bring it to Jesus and it will all be okay; just believe; just pray - but our actions have consequences. The choices we make matter. There may not be angels and demons on our shoulders shouting or gently reasoning with us to choose a certain direction, but what we do matters - it matters to us and it matters to other people.
Christianity and the church have been seen as irrelevant because the story that we told about good and evil did not matter any more. We lived in a world that not only did not believe in God and the devil, but did not believe in good or evil either, anything went between consenting adults and if you did not like it you could switch over. However we have reaped what we have sowed and perhaps whether or not it makes a difference to people's attitude towards God and Christianity or not, people's attitudes are changing - and as much because of fear as anything else.
History has lessons for us and one of those lessons is that sometimes terrible things can happen, and that once they begin to happen it can be too late to stop them. Events like the French Revolution remind us that nothing is eternal and that sometimes reaping the injustices that we have sown can be a very bitter pill. Mario Antoinette had an idealised peasant village built where she could hide from the world and enjoy the simple peasant life, but it was fantasy, in reality the peasants lived in poverty and many of the city dweller lived in squalor and her rural retreat could not save her from the reality.
Good and evil matter, and therefore Christianity deals with the essential story of humanity, that of the battle between good and evil. This is played out in every aspect of our lives, and that is why morality matters. Easy sex has become part of the British way of life, and sex has become disconnected from marriage, so that the majority of children are born outside of wedlock. The problem is that while easy sex has a certain appeal, the reality that giving in to our passions and desires opens the door to much that is not good. In the end bringing up children and building families and communities is about hard work and self-sacrifice and dedication. The reason why marriage makes sense is that if you cannot commit yourself to someone for life then really you should not be bringing a child into the world, and though your child will be influenced by you and by your genetics, you do not get to choose your child. In the end as the last Harry Potter film finished, the time is coming when we will all have to choose between what is right and what is easy. The time of that choice is now, and indeed is always now.
The reasons why God sets good laws is that we may be blessed by living good lives, but God's laws make sense and can be summed up very simply love God and love one another. In a sense therefore God's rules for our relationships with each other are love. The reason for rules surrounding sexual restraint are because that is the loving thing to do, rather than exploiting and demeaning others.
As Christians we can often become uncomfortable with ideas of goodness. We do not like to teach it in case it makes us out to be boring, or to be the people who like to say no. However if we fail to share what it means to be good, then people will make mistakes and will hurt themselves - and others. People are into experience but the problem is that if we wait to learn from experience we may cause incredible damage both to ourselves and others in the meantime.
The other problem is that when we rely on experience we are limited by our experiences, i.e. we may not know any better, we may lack the empirical data that shows us the other choices that we missed. It is like deciding to go somewhere and not asking for directions but hoping that we will eventually stumble upon where we need to be. We need to take a look at the directions, we need to understand where we are going. The problem is that there are dangerous places, cliffs that we can drop off, bogs that we can sink into, objects that will block our paths - just setting off in hope is not enough. One of the images that I struggle with is the idea that the Bible is a map book, but the image that often we have is that we need to consult it at all times, like something that we carry in a case around our necks. However we know that is not the case, we know the way to go to the shops without needing a map, but there is a reason for that we have been shown, we have learned the way. It is like that with the Bible on much of it we just need to hear and obey, and once we have learned it and obey it we do not need to keep on looking up what to do in a certain circumstance we know because the Bible tells us.
There is a story of goodness and love, we need to learn it by heart, we need it to ring in our ears and to become our story. Not that we have to look at it nervously every day, but that we need to learn to live it out every day. Of course it is not a simple story and therefore we will still learn new things about it and we need to come back to it when fresh experiences challenge or where we find ourselves in uncharted territory. I'm not saying that we do not need to keep learning, of course we do, but we need to learn new things, not just to repeat by rote what we learned in Sunday School. It is about learning new things, and struggling with new terrain.
We live in a world of a battle, where there are real casualties, where what we do matters and has real consequences. In this world Christianity is 100% relevant and it is this message that the church needs to be unafraid to proclaim, it matters, it is the essential story.
Wednesday 30 May 2007
I need you like the rain (on a Bank Holiday weekend)
Perhaps the worship leader did not want to go to the church BBQ. Perhaps he wanted a quiet weekend. As the rain poured down, and we sang "I need you like the rain" and I sat there thinking how nice it would be to see the sunshine again, I wondered if anyone else was thinking what I was thinking.
As far as I know there is not a song entitled, "I need you like the sunshine." Now, I know we need the rain, but sitting there on a damp Bank Holiday Sunday morning with things that I wanted to do which involved going outside, I did not particularly feel like I needed the rain. Or rather perhaps I did need the rain, just not here, not now.
Was I therefore trying to say to God, I need you, just not now, not here, not today - dear God please can I have a weekend off??? Today couldn't I have some sunshine....
Some people will be uncomfortable about me saying this, aren't I being slightly silly, a bit ridiculous, a little mocking of things that are spiritual, rather indeed unspiritual. Perhaps I am being slightly provocative, and it's not just that I think we should think seriously about the words that we sing it is something bigger than that.
Jesus came that the relations with Him and the relationships with others that sin has broken might be healed. I once had a boss who commented particularly negatively about some witticism that I had made in a meeting - people had laughed and enjoyed it, and I do not think there had been any negative feedback - it was just that she was rather lacking in the humour department. Her comment was not just that I should not say it, I should not think it. Well she was not exactly what I would describe as a friend, she was a particularly unpleasant boss.
However sometimes Christians can give that impression, don't say it, don't even think about it. Like the Emperor's New Clothes, we do not question the ridiculous - we submit, we love, we trust. What though we end up with is a pale imitation of a relationship. We are called to call God Father, but I can have a joke with my Dad - that is part of having a good relationship. I have said before that there ought to be a programme called Christians do the silliest things, and that is okay. However we need to be able to talk about it, to walk with each other, to travel together and to discuss.
Of course part of the problem is that Jesus did not do ridiculous things, so we do not have examples of how the disciples dealt with Him with spiritual ridiculousness. However Jesus himself had some tough words for the Pharisees and their ridiculous rules and some of that could be seen as mocking the spiritual and quite unspiritual. We know that His language upset them rather. Jesus had a taste for highlighting the ridiculous, for debunking the apparently spiritual. Jesus stood for truth and honesty, and sometimes we need to be more honest.
So God I need you like the sunshine on a bank holiday weekend, but I praise you Lord that you do exist. I need you like the dry ground needs rain. I need you like the plants need sunshine. I need you as a child needs a father.
At times we need to take ourselves rather less seriously. God likes it when we laugh together. Perhaps we need to review of understanding of God, I do not believe that God is the serious school master with a big red pen who delights to mark down our mistakes.
Perhaps He does have a big red pen, perhaps He does mark crosses all over our mistakes, and by it He marks the words, "Paid in full". He has done it because He wants us to live again, to laugh again, to rediscover the joy of living and loving.
As far as I know there is not a song entitled, "I need you like the sunshine." Now, I know we need the rain, but sitting there on a damp Bank Holiday Sunday morning with things that I wanted to do which involved going outside, I did not particularly feel like I needed the rain. Or rather perhaps I did need the rain, just not here, not now.
Was I therefore trying to say to God, I need you, just not now, not here, not today - dear God please can I have a weekend off??? Today couldn't I have some sunshine....
Some people will be uncomfortable about me saying this, aren't I being slightly silly, a bit ridiculous, a little mocking of things that are spiritual, rather indeed unspiritual. Perhaps I am being slightly provocative, and it's not just that I think we should think seriously about the words that we sing it is something bigger than that.
Jesus came that the relations with Him and the relationships with others that sin has broken might be healed. I once had a boss who commented particularly negatively about some witticism that I had made in a meeting - people had laughed and enjoyed it, and I do not think there had been any negative feedback - it was just that she was rather lacking in the humour department. Her comment was not just that I should not say it, I should not think it. Well she was not exactly what I would describe as a friend, she was a particularly unpleasant boss.
However sometimes Christians can give that impression, don't say it, don't even think about it. Like the Emperor's New Clothes, we do not question the ridiculous - we submit, we love, we trust. What though we end up with is a pale imitation of a relationship. We are called to call God Father, but I can have a joke with my Dad - that is part of having a good relationship. I have said before that there ought to be a programme called Christians do the silliest things, and that is okay. However we need to be able to talk about it, to walk with each other, to travel together and to discuss.
Of course part of the problem is that Jesus did not do ridiculous things, so we do not have examples of how the disciples dealt with Him with spiritual ridiculousness. However Jesus himself had some tough words for the Pharisees and their ridiculous rules and some of that could be seen as mocking the spiritual and quite unspiritual. We know that His language upset them rather. Jesus had a taste for highlighting the ridiculous, for debunking the apparently spiritual. Jesus stood for truth and honesty, and sometimes we need to be more honest.
So God I need you like the sunshine on a bank holiday weekend, but I praise you Lord that you do exist. I need you like the dry ground needs rain. I need you like the plants need sunshine. I need you as a child needs a father.
At times we need to take ourselves rather less seriously. God likes it when we laugh together. Perhaps we need to review of understanding of God, I do not believe that God is the serious school master with a big red pen who delights to mark down our mistakes.
Perhaps He does have a big red pen, perhaps He does mark crosses all over our mistakes, and by it He marks the words, "Paid in full". He has done it because He wants us to live again, to laugh again, to rediscover the joy of living and loving.
Friday 25 May 2007
Send the Bus???
This originates from an exercise in writing a Psalm in church, except the Psalm writing led me to have an idea that was not really a Psalm at all. With apologies to General Booth.
Lord, Send the Bus.
I'm hungry and I'm cold
I feel like I am growing old
I've been waiting here so long
I started to write this song
Lord, send the bus, send the bus, send the bus
Lord, I am still waiting here
And it feels like a passing year
The battle needs to be won
It's time for me to move on
Lord, send the bus, send the bus, send the bus
I'm tired of all this waiting
The transport procrastinating
The world seems to be passing me by
It makes me want to cry
Lord, send the bus, send the bus, send the bus
I have been waiting here so long
Perhaps my method has been wrong
It's time to stop the talking
I'd be better to set off walking
Lord, send me, send me, send me.
We live lives waiting for God to do something, for God to send some magical transport to get us from where we are to where we feel we ought to be or where we are called to be. So we wait at the heavenly bus stop doing nothing but waiting. But God wants us to stop behaving like passengers and start using the transport he has given us and start acting like followers.
Lord, Send the Bus.
I'm hungry and I'm cold
I feel like I am growing old
I've been waiting here so long
I started to write this song
Lord, send the bus, send the bus, send the bus
Lord, I am still waiting here
And it feels like a passing year
The battle needs to be won
It's time for me to move on
Lord, send the bus, send the bus, send the bus
I'm tired of all this waiting
The transport procrastinating
The world seems to be passing me by
It makes me want to cry
Lord, send the bus, send the bus, send the bus
I have been waiting here so long
Perhaps my method has been wrong
It's time to stop the talking
I'd be better to set off walking
Lord, send me, send me, send me.
We live lives waiting for God to do something, for God to send some magical transport to get us from where we are to where we feel we ought to be or where we are called to be. So we wait at the heavenly bus stop doing nothing but waiting. But God wants us to stop behaving like passengers and start using the transport he has given us and start acting like followers.
Monday 21 May 2007
A rose by any other name
Back to Genesis Ch1
Ge 1:5 God called the light “day,” and the darkness he called “night.”
In Genesis everything gets given a name, it is not just people who have names but the day and the night. We get to verse five and God starts to give things a name. Pure science can cope with descriptions, but the poet demands words. The omnivorous quadruped is called a rabbit, and things have a greater sense a greater meaning. Every hair on your head is numbered. Not a sparrow falls to the ground but He knows it.
God is a God who watches over His garden and delights over it. We give names to things we value, so people name their cars and assert to them personalities, it is a sign of affectation - if not affection. God does not just look and observe, he gets involved. When we give something a name we enter into a relationship with it, it becomes more real. So God uses words and gives names.
There is something mystical about creation and the relationship that God has towards it. So often we treat the planet like these are just routes to somewhere else, and we spend life travelling to somewhere not knowing that where we are matters. God though gives names like a tourist taking snaps shots. This I call day, this I call night. Like a artist naming his works, this is not just a splash of paint, this is "A Sunflower", "Water Lillies", or a "Madonna Col Bambino"
Names matter, they give the opportunity of distinction and description. The world finds not just a physical but a literary form. It is not just a flower, it is a rose.
" What's in a name? that which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet;" Romeo and Juliet.
But if Juliet could only call Romeo, him over there, and could not have nouns and descriptors then the whole of the play might be spent in trying to describe Romeo so that he could be identified. Of course if we did not have variety, if everyone did look just the same then it really would be very difficult to identify who they were. Names give us language they enable us to communicate and interact.
Of course the problem is that God did not call day, he called it something else in a language that we do not entirely understand or is perhaps beyond language, since of course there was no man to hear God's utterances.
Words matter, the gospel of John begins, "In the beginning was the Word". Words have a certain significance. Words matter, God says let there be light and there is light. Words matter in our relationship with one another, and words matter in our relationship with God.
We live in a world created by the Word, we need to start talking God's language.
Ge 1:5 God called the light “day,” and the darkness he called “night.”
In Genesis everything gets given a name, it is not just people who have names but the day and the night. We get to verse five and God starts to give things a name. Pure science can cope with descriptions, but the poet demands words. The omnivorous quadruped is called a rabbit, and things have a greater sense a greater meaning. Every hair on your head is numbered. Not a sparrow falls to the ground but He knows it.
God is a God who watches over His garden and delights over it. We give names to things we value, so people name their cars and assert to them personalities, it is a sign of affectation - if not affection. God does not just look and observe, he gets involved. When we give something a name we enter into a relationship with it, it becomes more real. So God uses words and gives names.
There is something mystical about creation and the relationship that God has towards it. So often we treat the planet like these are just routes to somewhere else, and we spend life travelling to somewhere not knowing that where we are matters. God though gives names like a tourist taking snaps shots. This I call day, this I call night. Like a artist naming his works, this is not just a splash of paint, this is "A Sunflower", "Water Lillies", or a "Madonna Col Bambino"
Names matter, they give the opportunity of distinction and description. The world finds not just a physical but a literary form. It is not just a flower, it is a rose.
" What's in a name? that which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet;" Romeo and Juliet.
But if Juliet could only call Romeo, him over there, and could not have nouns and descriptors then the whole of the play might be spent in trying to describe Romeo so that he could be identified. Of course if we did not have variety, if everyone did look just the same then it really would be very difficult to identify who they were. Names give us language they enable us to communicate and interact.
Of course the problem is that God did not call day, he called it something else in a language that we do not entirely understand or is perhaps beyond language, since of course there was no man to hear God's utterances.
Words matter, the gospel of John begins, "In the beginning was the Word". Words have a certain significance. Words matter, God says let there be light and there is light. Words matter in our relationship with one another, and words matter in our relationship with God.
We live in a world created by the Word, we need to start talking God's language.
Wednesday 16 May 2007
Lost in Ibiza?
I was wandering through San Antonio Bay in Ibiza on holiday with the family. We walked past a group of males just as a group of women came up to them. One of the males spoke to the women, "Hello Ladies" he said, but the women just walked off.
What really struck me was the inevitability of the situation, indeed, what made the situation almost tragic was the fact that the guy who said, "Hello Ladies," tone of voice seemed to be a meditation on hopelessness. He knew that he was sober and they were sober and it was not going to happen. He was lost in Ibiza looking for something, he probably would not call it love, but something, and he knew that though he was seeking it there was an inevitability about the fact that he was not going to find it.
We live in a world that is failing by its own standards. Often we try and measure the world by God's standards and the world cannot understand it because it does not understand God's standards. The issue though is that the world is failing by its own standards.
The world says that if you go for it, you will find it. Go out there and get it, but the problem is that those who do go for it - do not get it. The world may deliver for a short amount of time, like the drug dealer who is trying to get you hooked, but it does not deliver in the long term. The Bible warns that, in Proverbs 14
12 There is a way that seems right to a man,
but in the end it leads to death.
We need to better understand how sin works. If we were dealing with a disease we would look at the infection risks, look at how the virus or other cause of the disease operates and try to work towards a cure. That would appear to be a sensible way to operate. The problem is that many people go into denial and do not accept that they have a problem, which is exactly what happens with sin.
The reason most people are not interested in Christianity is that they do not believe they have a problem. You only need a cure if you have a problem and they do not have a problem. There is the problem of pride. I do not need religion, I do not need God. That is a lie.
I have heard of people dying of treatable cancer because they denied the symptoms, by the time they made it to the doctor it was too late.
We have a problem it is called sin, but there is a cure. Sin causes alienation from ourselves and God and ourselves and each other. There is a cure that offers the opportunity not only for reconciliation with God, but to also start to find reconciliation with ourselves and others.
God has come to us, He has said Hello, He has offered us new life, the question is will we just walk away not interested.
What really struck me was the inevitability of the situation, indeed, what made the situation almost tragic was the fact that the guy who said, "Hello Ladies," tone of voice seemed to be a meditation on hopelessness. He knew that he was sober and they were sober and it was not going to happen. He was lost in Ibiza looking for something, he probably would not call it love, but something, and he knew that though he was seeking it there was an inevitability about the fact that he was not going to find it.
We live in a world that is failing by its own standards. Often we try and measure the world by God's standards and the world cannot understand it because it does not understand God's standards. The issue though is that the world is failing by its own standards.
The world says that if you go for it, you will find it. Go out there and get it, but the problem is that those who do go for it - do not get it. The world may deliver for a short amount of time, like the drug dealer who is trying to get you hooked, but it does not deliver in the long term. The Bible warns that, in Proverbs 14
12 There is a way that seems right to a man,
but in the end it leads to death.
We need to better understand how sin works. If we were dealing with a disease we would look at the infection risks, look at how the virus or other cause of the disease operates and try to work towards a cure. That would appear to be a sensible way to operate. The problem is that many people go into denial and do not accept that they have a problem, which is exactly what happens with sin.
The reason most people are not interested in Christianity is that they do not believe they have a problem. You only need a cure if you have a problem and they do not have a problem. There is the problem of pride. I do not need religion, I do not need God. That is a lie.
I have heard of people dying of treatable cancer because they denied the symptoms, by the time they made it to the doctor it was too late.
We have a problem it is called sin, but there is a cure. Sin causes alienation from ourselves and God and ourselves and each other. There is a cure that offers the opportunity not only for reconciliation with God, but to also start to find reconciliation with ourselves and others.
God has come to us, He has said Hello, He has offered us new life, the question is will we just walk away not interested.
Saturday 28 April 2007
Do we have too big a but?
I was walking through the City Centre today and there were some people who I presume were Christians who had just done a Bible reading, and someone was now standing to talk from it. I started off really well, "God loves you." I love to hear that proclaimed on the streets. It is the good news.
However it did not end there, "God loves you but..."
The problem is that this is how so many people see God's grace, God loves you, but... and at times it seems like a very big but.
God loves you, but you have to deal with sin.
God loves you, but there is judgement.
God loves you, but...
Of course it is true that God is concerned over sin, it is true that there is a day of judgement, it is true that we have to face the issue called sin.
God loves you full stop end of story. God loves you and He sent His son into the world not to condemn the world but to save it through Him.
God loves you and does not want anyone to perish, of course you cannot avoid the but, but sometimes I think we need to transform our buts into ands.
God loves you and therefore He sent His son into the world to save you.
Hear me out on this one, but God does not have a problem with sin, we do!
Sin is sin, it is a killer, it is the ultimate killer, without sin, no death, no pain, we would live in paradise and the power of sin leads us to the road of death. God does not have a problem with sin, it is simply that He sees sin as it is, sin is a killer. God has the antidote to sin, it is grace, love, mercy, forgiveness, new life.
We have a problem with sin because we often fail to escape it and we tend to fall into it, and we do not come up smelling of roses.
God loves you, and therefore He sent His son to save you from Sin.
We may sometimes be deluded into seeing sin as something attractive and therefore we see God as a cosmic killjoy who does not want us to enjoy ourselves. Therefore we preach as if sin was something good and God wants the best for us, and therefore does not want us to enjoy ourselves too much because He knows that it is bad for us.
Like the diets we think we can have a few sins, but so long as we are generally good we will be okay.
However the problem is that sin destroys, it is death. Sin destroys relationships (take lust, jealousy, greed, envy), it destroys peace (the same again), it destroys identity (pride), it takes away hope (we can never change). That is not God's will, that is the very opposite of God's will.
The problem is that the devil has been superb at creating problems and then blaming them on God. The truth is that God wants the best for us.
God loves you, and therefore He does not want you to throw your life away in sin but to live the best possible life. That is all positive and not a but in sight.
God loves you, He wants you to have a good time. God loves you He wants you to party. God loves you He wants you to experience and enjoy all that is good in life. He calls Himself our Father, and Dad wants the best for His children.
He therefore calls to us, "Don't jump over the edge. Don't throw it away."
God's love is not one of buts, but of the possibility of new beginnings.
So often we have this big but, but perhaps instead we should have a big "and" instead.
However it did not end there, "God loves you but..."
The problem is that this is how so many people see God's grace, God loves you, but... and at times it seems like a very big but.
God loves you, but you have to deal with sin.
God loves you, but there is judgement.
God loves you, but...
Of course it is true that God is concerned over sin, it is true that there is a day of judgement, it is true that we have to face the issue called sin.
God loves you full stop end of story. God loves you and He sent His son into the world not to condemn the world but to save it through Him.
God loves you and does not want anyone to perish, of course you cannot avoid the but, but sometimes I think we need to transform our buts into ands.
God loves you and therefore He sent His son into the world to save you.
Hear me out on this one, but God does not have a problem with sin, we do!
Sin is sin, it is a killer, it is the ultimate killer, without sin, no death, no pain, we would live in paradise and the power of sin leads us to the road of death. God does not have a problem with sin, it is simply that He sees sin as it is, sin is a killer. God has the antidote to sin, it is grace, love, mercy, forgiveness, new life.
We have a problem with sin because we often fail to escape it and we tend to fall into it, and we do not come up smelling of roses.
God loves you, and therefore He sent His son to save you from Sin.
We may sometimes be deluded into seeing sin as something attractive and therefore we see God as a cosmic killjoy who does not want us to enjoy ourselves. Therefore we preach as if sin was something good and God wants the best for us, and therefore does not want us to enjoy ourselves too much because He knows that it is bad for us.
Like the diets we think we can have a few sins, but so long as we are generally good we will be okay.
However the problem is that sin destroys, it is death. Sin destroys relationships (take lust, jealousy, greed, envy), it destroys peace (the same again), it destroys identity (pride), it takes away hope (we can never change). That is not God's will, that is the very opposite of God's will.
The problem is that the devil has been superb at creating problems and then blaming them on God. The truth is that God wants the best for us.
God loves you, and therefore He does not want you to throw your life away in sin but to live the best possible life. That is all positive and not a but in sight.
God loves you, He wants you to have a good time. God loves you He wants you to party. God loves you He wants you to experience and enjoy all that is good in life. He calls Himself our Father, and Dad wants the best for His children.
He therefore calls to us, "Don't jump over the edge. Don't throw it away."
God's love is not one of buts, but of the possibility of new beginnings.
So often we have this big but, but perhaps instead we should have a big "and" instead.
Friday 20 April 2007
I do not want to be "healed"
The sermon at the church I attend last Sunday was on grief, and one of the leaders did not know what to say and about how we should pray in response to what had been spoken.
I asked if I could say something. I spoke about my own experiences of grief and it is an emotional subject, and perhaps therefore not the wisest of subjects to speak about off the cuff - there is that danger of speak first and repent later, even if you are praying that you will say the right thing.
I got to be passionate about what I was speaking about, and I said that "I am a broken person in a broken world with a broken Saviour and I did not want to be healed." Sometimes it is right to feel the pain, we cannot love without opening ourselves to the dangers of being hurt. There was an interesting comment on The Trap - What happened to our dream of freedom that a survey of mental illness said that a high proportion of people suffered from mental illness. The problem with the survey was that it had the opinion that we should not feel depressed or upset and therefore did not ask any questions about the interviewees circumstances. When if it had it might have found out that being depressed was a natural consequence of sadness or genuine pain.
We live in a world which struggles with its emotions. Being British we often speak about a stiff upper lip and that the British are emotionally reserved. However, actually there can be an honesty and a depth in that. We can avoid emotional intimacy and truth whether we show a lot of emotion or whether we show very little, what matters is that there is an emotional honesty. There can be a silent and shared truth that does not have to be shouted about, and there can be an open and emotional dishonesty. Shows like Trisha or the Jerry Springer Show for all their emotional head of steam do not necessarily take us any closer to the truth.
We live in a world that may no longer subscribe to the stiff upper lip, but does expect to be almost continually happy, and prozac is just one lifestyle drug you can take if you are not. The problem is that we end up living in the land of the bland. We have to be flat, not too happy, not too sad, and not too human.
Society offers a form of "healing" but the problem is that we are not actually healing just numbing the pain, and the pain exists for a reason.
For instance, in grief pain is the loss that we suffer when we connect to someone and give ourselves and enter into intimacy and then because of death we lose that on this earth. We are confronted with the fact that we have lost that person on this earth, we will not hear their words, feel the warmth and joy of their presence, feel the happiness of a shared joke with them, or the comfort of just sitting and chatting over a drink. It is gone, it is lost, and we hurt.
The answer if we want to avoid pain is therefore to avoid love, to become hard, to stop feeling. The problem is that we become less human. Jesus wept, and at Gethsemane - He struggled. He did not just say I'm okay, I have the resources, I can cope, Praise God! Looking to the future he felt the pain, and he wanted to have his friends around and in that vulnerable place, he asked them to stay awake and pray with Him, and when they did not He shared his pain. Jesus was the Son of God, and yet He was no plastic every smiling saint. He was real, and He calls us to be real too.
It feels sometimes that in the modern world we have given up on intimacy and love because they are too dangerous we might get hurt, and if we are not careful the dominant thinking of the world because the dominant thinking of the church. The problem is that God is committed to love, however much the modern world may deride it.
If we become the kind of plastic ever smiling self-sufficient dare I say it smug plastic saints, then we deny the intimacy that we would have if we truly shared how we truly felt, or perhaps going deeper if we truly allowed ourselves to feel. Instead we can live in a land of spiritual denial, everything is wonderful, great, Praise God, but this is not the truth. Deep down we know and we feel that things are not right, but we do not want to admit it in case we are not accepted, in case it is seen that we have let the side down. Of course things are not right here. We are called to be strangers and aliens. This is a broken world and it bears the scars of sin, Satan is still alive and well on planet earth. The battle may have been won, Jesus is Lord, but we live in the time before the final defeat of the enemy. Not only is the world fallen but we ourselves are fallen.
What worries me most about the I'm all right attitude, is that the truth is that we all struggle and we are called to stand with each other and pray for each other and support each other in our struggles. The problem is that we are all so "okay" that instead of dealing with our emotional and spiritual garbage we just sweep in under the carpet, and therefore we never deal with it.
Instead of exhibiting the emotional openness of the Psalms, the Prophets or Job we accept a closedness, and we close our hearts not just to our own pains and failure but to God and to one another.
Rather than seeing sadness and pain as an enemy, difficult as they can be, we should see it as a resource. We should feel pain and sadness as we look at the lost going headlong into hell, but we should not just sit around feeling depressed, or taking happy pills or their churchey equivalent we should use the pain as a springboard to action. We should weep over the lost, over the broken, over the hurting and set off to find the lost, set out to hold the broken, and to seek to bind the wounds of the hurting. Perhaps also the sadness is the message that we need to give ourselves a break, to deal with our issue, to find a different way of being.
The idea that we pray and the pain goes away is wrong on so many different levels. One issue that concerns me is that of course if people are easily healed then we do not have to walk with them through the sorrow. It can become an opt out, we pray that God will heal so and so, when perhaps what they really need is the healing touch of people giving them time. To listen to their pain. A good point of the service was the emphasis on spending time with the hurting and learning to listen. The problem is spending time with the hurting is a long term commitment, and we really struggle with that.
If we are going to be truly alive then we will feel pain, and if Jesus makes us truly alive that will probably be more pain rather than less.
The main threat of both Aldous Huxley's dystopia in Brave New World and in George Orwell's 1984 is that we become dead to feeling. In Brave New World it is the Soma, Aldous Huxley's prozac, and a whole society based on the denial of real emotion, for Orwell it is the deadness of a totalitarian state. There was research where half the children were brought up by individuals and half the children were brought up by anonymous carers, it is said that some of the children even died mainly because they were not attached to anyone.
Yet we live in an impersonal world, and yet we were created to be personal, personal with God and personal with one another. We should "rage against the dying of the light". If we do not accept pain, if we do not accept the reality of feelings then there can be no success or failure any pleasure, but in the end we become mediocre, in the end we become a mere shadow of what we could be, what we were created to be.
I do not want to be "healed" I want to still feel the pain, because if I do not I am less alive, and I have less of God. God did not remain happy in heaven, he felt the pain of the world, and moved by compassion came and dwelt amongst us and died for us. We have a broken saviour, broken for us upon the cross, and we live in a broken world, and we need to be a broken people if we are ever to reach the broken world.
When I was younger we used to sing regularly, "Spirit of the living God, fall afresh on me... break me, melt me, mould me, fill, Spirit of the living God fall afresh on me."
It is not just that to truly live we need to come to God in need of Him, but if we are truly to live we need to come to each other in need of one another. Communities are based on interdependency not self-sufficiency.
The aim of many people is to self-sufficient happiness, but what is more wonderful is to be connected to one another and to mourn with those who mourn and laugh with those who laugh (see Roman 12v9-21).
The Act of Love by Roger McGough tells the story of a sexual encounter after a party, the next morning "It's cornflakes and then goodbye"
So often church can be like that we encounter God, we encounter one another, but afterwards we just get on with the mundane and try to pretend that nothing really happened, and perhaps that is the truth. Perhaps nothing much really did happen, as Jeff Lucas puts it, "We are moved, but we are not changed." Or perhaps "It's coffee and then goodbye" and we never go deeper, indeed we feel embarrassed by the intimacy and try to pretend that nothing has happened.
We live in a dead world but we are called to be alive, the irony is that perhaps we do need healing. Perhaps we need to be healed so that rather than saying "Praise God, everything is wonderful" when clearly it is not we need to be healed so that we can acknowledge the pain, the failures, and the problems. Perhaps we need healing so that we can start hurting where we need to hurt, and crying where we need to cry. Perhaps I do need to be healed, perhaps I should still want to be healed.
I asked if I could say something. I spoke about my own experiences of grief and it is an emotional subject, and perhaps therefore not the wisest of subjects to speak about off the cuff - there is that danger of speak first and repent later, even if you are praying that you will say the right thing.
I got to be passionate about what I was speaking about, and I said that "I am a broken person in a broken world with a broken Saviour and I did not want to be healed." Sometimes it is right to feel the pain, we cannot love without opening ourselves to the dangers of being hurt. There was an interesting comment on The Trap - What happened to our dream of freedom that a survey of mental illness said that a high proportion of people suffered from mental illness. The problem with the survey was that it had the opinion that we should not feel depressed or upset and therefore did not ask any questions about the interviewees circumstances. When if it had it might have found out that being depressed was a natural consequence of sadness or genuine pain.
We live in a world which struggles with its emotions. Being British we often speak about a stiff upper lip and that the British are emotionally reserved. However, actually there can be an honesty and a depth in that. We can avoid emotional intimacy and truth whether we show a lot of emotion or whether we show very little, what matters is that there is an emotional honesty. There can be a silent and shared truth that does not have to be shouted about, and there can be an open and emotional dishonesty. Shows like Trisha or the Jerry Springer Show for all their emotional head of steam do not necessarily take us any closer to the truth.
We live in a world that may no longer subscribe to the stiff upper lip, but does expect to be almost continually happy, and prozac is just one lifestyle drug you can take if you are not. The problem is that we end up living in the land of the bland. We have to be flat, not too happy, not too sad, and not too human.
Society offers a form of "healing" but the problem is that we are not actually healing just numbing the pain, and the pain exists for a reason.
For instance, in grief pain is the loss that we suffer when we connect to someone and give ourselves and enter into intimacy and then because of death we lose that on this earth. We are confronted with the fact that we have lost that person on this earth, we will not hear their words, feel the warmth and joy of their presence, feel the happiness of a shared joke with them, or the comfort of just sitting and chatting over a drink. It is gone, it is lost, and we hurt.
The answer if we want to avoid pain is therefore to avoid love, to become hard, to stop feeling. The problem is that we become less human. Jesus wept, and at Gethsemane - He struggled. He did not just say I'm okay, I have the resources, I can cope, Praise God! Looking to the future he felt the pain, and he wanted to have his friends around and in that vulnerable place, he asked them to stay awake and pray with Him, and when they did not He shared his pain. Jesus was the Son of God, and yet He was no plastic every smiling saint. He was real, and He calls us to be real too.
It feels sometimes that in the modern world we have given up on intimacy and love because they are too dangerous we might get hurt, and if we are not careful the dominant thinking of the world because the dominant thinking of the church. The problem is that God is committed to love, however much the modern world may deride it.
If we become the kind of plastic ever smiling self-sufficient dare I say it smug plastic saints, then we deny the intimacy that we would have if we truly shared how we truly felt, or perhaps going deeper if we truly allowed ourselves to feel. Instead we can live in a land of spiritual denial, everything is wonderful, great, Praise God, but this is not the truth. Deep down we know and we feel that things are not right, but we do not want to admit it in case we are not accepted, in case it is seen that we have let the side down. Of course things are not right here. We are called to be strangers and aliens. This is a broken world and it bears the scars of sin, Satan is still alive and well on planet earth. The battle may have been won, Jesus is Lord, but we live in the time before the final defeat of the enemy. Not only is the world fallen but we ourselves are fallen.
What worries me most about the I'm all right attitude, is that the truth is that we all struggle and we are called to stand with each other and pray for each other and support each other in our struggles. The problem is that we are all so "okay" that instead of dealing with our emotional and spiritual garbage we just sweep in under the carpet, and therefore we never deal with it.
Instead of exhibiting the emotional openness of the Psalms, the Prophets or Job we accept a closedness, and we close our hearts not just to our own pains and failure but to God and to one another.
Rather than seeing sadness and pain as an enemy, difficult as they can be, we should see it as a resource. We should feel pain and sadness as we look at the lost going headlong into hell, but we should not just sit around feeling depressed, or taking happy pills or their churchey equivalent we should use the pain as a springboard to action. We should weep over the lost, over the broken, over the hurting and set off to find the lost, set out to hold the broken, and to seek to bind the wounds of the hurting. Perhaps also the sadness is the message that we need to give ourselves a break, to deal with our issue, to find a different way of being.
The idea that we pray and the pain goes away is wrong on so many different levels. One issue that concerns me is that of course if people are easily healed then we do not have to walk with them through the sorrow. It can become an opt out, we pray that God will heal so and so, when perhaps what they really need is the healing touch of people giving them time. To listen to their pain. A good point of the service was the emphasis on spending time with the hurting and learning to listen. The problem is spending time with the hurting is a long term commitment, and we really struggle with that.
If we are going to be truly alive then we will feel pain, and if Jesus makes us truly alive that will probably be more pain rather than less.
The main threat of both Aldous Huxley's dystopia in Brave New World and in George Orwell's 1984 is that we become dead to feeling. In Brave New World it is the Soma, Aldous Huxley's prozac, and a whole society based on the denial of real emotion, for Orwell it is the deadness of a totalitarian state. There was research where half the children were brought up by individuals and half the children were brought up by anonymous carers, it is said that some of the children even died mainly because they were not attached to anyone.
Yet we live in an impersonal world, and yet we were created to be personal, personal with God and personal with one another. We should "rage against the dying of the light". If we do not accept pain, if we do not accept the reality of feelings then there can be no success or failure any pleasure, but in the end we become mediocre, in the end we become a mere shadow of what we could be, what we were created to be.
I do not want to be "healed" I want to still feel the pain, because if I do not I am less alive, and I have less of God. God did not remain happy in heaven, he felt the pain of the world, and moved by compassion came and dwelt amongst us and died for us. We have a broken saviour, broken for us upon the cross, and we live in a broken world, and we need to be a broken people if we are ever to reach the broken world.
When I was younger we used to sing regularly, "Spirit of the living God, fall afresh on me... break me, melt me, mould me, fill, Spirit of the living God fall afresh on me."
It is not just that to truly live we need to come to God in need of Him, but if we are truly to live we need to come to each other in need of one another. Communities are based on interdependency not self-sufficiency.
The aim of many people is to self-sufficient happiness, but what is more wonderful is to be connected to one another and to mourn with those who mourn and laugh with those who laugh (see Roman 12v9-21).
The Act of Love by Roger McGough tells the story of a sexual encounter after a party, the next morning "It's cornflakes and then goodbye"
So often church can be like that we encounter God, we encounter one another, but afterwards we just get on with the mundane and try to pretend that nothing really happened, and perhaps that is the truth. Perhaps nothing much really did happen, as Jeff Lucas puts it, "We are moved, but we are not changed." Or perhaps "It's coffee and then goodbye" and we never go deeper, indeed we feel embarrassed by the intimacy and try to pretend that nothing has happened.
We live in a dead world but we are called to be alive, the irony is that perhaps we do need healing. Perhaps we need to be healed so that rather than saying "Praise God, everything is wonderful" when clearly it is not we need to be healed so that we can acknowledge the pain, the failures, and the problems. Perhaps we need healing so that we can start hurting where we need to hurt, and crying where we need to cry. Perhaps I do need to be healed, perhaps I should still want to be healed.
Sunday 8 April 2007
Riding on a donkey
Jesus rides into Jerusalem riding on a donkey. The Messiah, the King of Kings, comes not in a stately carriage, a white charger or even a chariot of fire, but on a donkey. The image is not just of humility, but a deliberate and stated refusal to play the world at its own games. The refusal to rule by power of force. God gives us free will and free choice, he forces us to make a decision. He does not brainwash us, he does not back us into a corner.
Yes our eternal destiny depend on it, yes it is a question of heaven or hell, but it is our question and we do, for good or evil, have a choice.
Jesus could have played the power game, and forced us to do his will. He could have said you will do it my way, and there will be no other choice. Instead he came in weakness. He was crucified, and he was killed, but he did not need all the power of heaven to save himself. He could have just chosen to manipulate the crowd. He was not just all powerful, he was all knowing as well. Jesus could have found a way out - but He did not, he chose to be silent like a sheep to the slaughter.
Let me repeat what I said about power games, and his refusal to play.
So what would you expect the followers of this suffering servant to be like, the one who declared that the "meek will inherit the earth"? The one who spoke about blessed are you when you are insulted?
Wouldn't you expect them to be people who were as humble and poor as a medieval monk? Who sought not power and prestige but rejected it? Who served the poor and one another? Who themselves rejected the power game?
It is interesting to note the early church. The apostles decided it was not good for them to wait on tables - but this is exactly what Jesus did and what He encouraged them to do. So they picked seven men to wait on tables, to do the practical service while they got on with the far more important work of preaching the gospel. Acts 6v1-7.
So who do we hear of next? Indeed who do we hear of next with the ministry of the word? Is it the disciples? No, it is Stephen the man who waited on tables. He gets to be the first Christian martyr. Why? Because He was effective, because God blessed Him. Now we always say that this is because the twelve were protected, but that argument does not appear in scripture. The fact was Stephen was being effective and His effectiveness got him noticed.
Stephen the man who could wait on tables, the man who did not get the plum job of preacher, the one picked to play second fiddle, the man picked for the B team, does not moan and complain - he gets on with it. Stephen becomes Stephen the martyr, the one whose wisdom they cannot beat and therefore they have to kill him. Stephen who sees heaven, and sets the grand example to us all. Stephen the waiter on tables. I cannot resist the comment that in the end God makes a powerful point.
So now back to the apostles? No, now to Philip, and who is Philip the Evangelist, well Philip the Evangelist is actually Philip who waits on tables. I think you may be getting the picture of the argument that I am developing? Philip picked to wait on tables but scattered because of the persecution goes off and starts a mission to Samaria. Again Philip is highly effective.
So when do we next hear of these Apostles, who were so important that they had no time to wait on tables?
Ac 8:14 When the apostles in Jerusalem heard that Samaria had accepted the word of God, they sent Peter and John to them.
Who is leading the action the Apostle's or those who wait on tables?
So why is it that status is so important for so many leaders? Why does authority and power become such a question in the church? Simple. The disciples constantly bickered about who would be the greatest, we humans like power, we like authority, we like a bit of greatness - and it would be wrong of me to cast the first stone. Of course it appeals, and since we always believe that we are right (and that is not a bad thing if we believed that what we are doing was wrong then we would be stupid to do it) we give it a spiritual spin. The real issue is that underneath it all, Lord Acton's maxim is true, "All power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely."
The problem with most churches is that we give our ministers almost absolute power over the life of the church, and then we cannot understand why things go wrong. The problem is that power is tempting, but that temptation can be subtle. In the Lord of the Rings, the Ring of Power destroys all it comes into contact with, and the aim is to destroy it, to keep away from it, and not to wear it.
So celebrate Jesus riding on a donkey, but don't be a donkey! Like Jesus refuse to play this world's power games because in the end you can only win by not playing.
Yes our eternal destiny depend on it, yes it is a question of heaven or hell, but it is our question and we do, for good or evil, have a choice.
Jesus could have played the power game, and forced us to do his will. He could have said you will do it my way, and there will be no other choice. Instead he came in weakness. He was crucified, and he was killed, but he did not need all the power of heaven to save himself. He could have just chosen to manipulate the crowd. He was not just all powerful, he was all knowing as well. Jesus could have found a way out - but He did not, he chose to be silent like a sheep to the slaughter.
Let me repeat what I said about power games, and his refusal to play.
So what would you expect the followers of this suffering servant to be like, the one who declared that the "meek will inherit the earth"? The one who spoke about blessed are you when you are insulted?
Wouldn't you expect them to be people who were as humble and poor as a medieval monk? Who sought not power and prestige but rejected it? Who served the poor and one another? Who themselves rejected the power game?
It is interesting to note the early church. The apostles decided it was not good for them to wait on tables - but this is exactly what Jesus did and what He encouraged them to do. So they picked seven men to wait on tables, to do the practical service while they got on with the far more important work of preaching the gospel. Acts 6v1-7.
So who do we hear of next? Indeed who do we hear of next with the ministry of the word? Is it the disciples? No, it is Stephen the man who waited on tables. He gets to be the first Christian martyr. Why? Because He was effective, because God blessed Him. Now we always say that this is because the twelve were protected, but that argument does not appear in scripture. The fact was Stephen was being effective and His effectiveness got him noticed.
Stephen the man who could wait on tables, the man who did not get the plum job of preacher, the one picked to play second fiddle, the man picked for the B team, does not moan and complain - he gets on with it. Stephen becomes Stephen the martyr, the one whose wisdom they cannot beat and therefore they have to kill him. Stephen who sees heaven, and sets the grand example to us all. Stephen the waiter on tables. I cannot resist the comment that in the end God makes a powerful point.
So now back to the apostles? No, now to Philip, and who is Philip the Evangelist, well Philip the Evangelist is actually Philip who waits on tables. I think you may be getting the picture of the argument that I am developing? Philip picked to wait on tables but scattered because of the persecution goes off and starts a mission to Samaria. Again Philip is highly effective.
So when do we next hear of these Apostles, who were so important that they had no time to wait on tables?
Ac 8:14 When the apostles in Jerusalem heard that Samaria had accepted the word of God, they sent Peter and John to them.
Who is leading the action the Apostle's or those who wait on tables?
So why is it that status is so important for so many leaders? Why does authority and power become such a question in the church? Simple. The disciples constantly bickered about who would be the greatest, we humans like power, we like authority, we like a bit of greatness - and it would be wrong of me to cast the first stone. Of course it appeals, and since we always believe that we are right (and that is not a bad thing if we believed that what we are doing was wrong then we would be stupid to do it) we give it a spiritual spin. The real issue is that underneath it all, Lord Acton's maxim is true, "All power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely."
The problem with most churches is that we give our ministers almost absolute power over the life of the church, and then we cannot understand why things go wrong. The problem is that power is tempting, but that temptation can be subtle. In the Lord of the Rings, the Ring of Power destroys all it comes into contact with, and the aim is to destroy it, to keep away from it, and not to wear it.
So celebrate Jesus riding on a donkey, but don't be a donkey! Like Jesus refuse to play this world's power games because in the end you can only win by not playing.
Tuesday 27 March 2007
Created for Intimacy
"And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed." Genesis 2v25 KJV
There are various statistics about the number of searches on the internet that relate to sex and pornography, certainly a large amount of spam relates to it. Go into any newsagent and you will see that sex sells. Sexual temptation can destroy marriages and relationships and we live in an age where it is not uncommon for 12 and 13 year old's to be experimenting with sex. In such a world it is easy for the church to be different, but how should we respond?
First question. Why is sex and pornography such a strong driver?
C S Lewis argues that the devil cannot create anything, so instead he takes what God has created and misuses it and abuses it and turns the good into something bad. We were created to have intimacy with God and intimacy with one another. We were created to walk with God and walk with each other, to share our lives and to share ourselves.
God created woman because man needed company.
18 The LORD God said, "It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him." NIV
The problem is that there are so many people who feel so alone, and therefore vulnerable to the false intimacies that the devil offers. We live in a world of full of lonely people, a world full of Eleanor Rigsbys. It is not necessarily that people do not have friends, but that friendships do not go deep. We live in a world where we teach people the biology of sex, but not the importance of real relationships. Indeed it is difficult to teach relationships, we tend to learn by having them. However if you are born to parents who do not relate to each other it puts you at a disadvantage.
We need intimacy, and even in our damaged world, I believe that God is the answer and the healer. I do not believe that we are fully human unless we truly connect with each other. Sin therefore makes us less human. God however can and does restore the broken image.
We were created for intimacy, we were created to connect, and with God's help we can in a real way as God intended.
There are various statistics about the number of searches on the internet that relate to sex and pornography, certainly a large amount of spam relates to it. Go into any newsagent and you will see that sex sells. Sexual temptation can destroy marriages and relationships and we live in an age where it is not uncommon for 12 and 13 year old's to be experimenting with sex. In such a world it is easy for the church to be different, but how should we respond?
First question. Why is sex and pornography such a strong driver?
C S Lewis argues that the devil cannot create anything, so instead he takes what God has created and misuses it and abuses it and turns the good into something bad. We were created to have intimacy with God and intimacy with one another. We were created to walk with God and walk with each other, to share our lives and to share ourselves.
God created woman because man needed company.
18 The LORD God said, "It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him." NIV
The problem is that there are so many people who feel so alone, and therefore vulnerable to the false intimacies that the devil offers. We live in a world of full of lonely people, a world full of Eleanor Rigsbys. It is not necessarily that people do not have friends, but that friendships do not go deep. We live in a world where we teach people the biology of sex, but not the importance of real relationships. Indeed it is difficult to teach relationships, we tend to learn by having them. However if you are born to parents who do not relate to each other it puts you at a disadvantage.
We need intimacy, and even in our damaged world, I believe that God is the answer and the healer. I do not believe that we are fully human unless we truly connect with each other. Sin therefore makes us less human. God however can and does restore the broken image.
We were created for intimacy, we were created to connect, and with God's help we can in a real way as God intended.
Saturday 10 March 2007
Happiness - The greatest gift that I possess?
There is the Ken Dodd song that has the words, "Happiness, happiness, the greatest gift that I possess I thank the Lord that I possess more than my fair share of happiness."
We live in a world that still more than anything else wants to be happy, the pursuit of pleasure and the avoidance of pain. This involves living in peace with other people, by which we mean the absence of open conflict.
I sometimes feels I live in a culture that is not pursuing life, but living death. Aldous Huxley in Brave New World has a dystopian vision of a world living on Soma, a drug which keeps everyone happy - but by doing so removes meaning from the world. Probably most of the population of Britain would be happy with that idea. We seek happiness in pleasure, in material possessions, in the sexual possession of people, and in being comfortable. We live in a feel good world, and we want to feel good.
When we enter the church we do not leave this baggage at the door, because we do not even think of it as baggage. Indeed, it is very hard to identify baggage that has been with us for so long that we see it as us. Therefore when we come to church we want a church that will make us happy, that will make us feel good, that will keep us from pain, and that will make us comfortable.
We argue that God will help us to be happy far better than the devil's ways, but we do not question whether indeed we are pursuing the right goals, and how "Don't worry be happy!" really fits with, "If anyone wants to come after me, let him deny himself, pick up his cross and follow me." Matt 16v24. Now of course it is easy to pick out one verse and take it too far, but there are other verses and there is the life of those followers of Jesus who are recorded in the Bible. One of the most comprehensive summaries being Hebrews 11v32-39. Just a short extract says, "36Some faced jeers and flogging, while still others were chained and put in prison. 37They were stoned[f]; they were sawed in two; they were put to death by the sword." v36-37a.
Really being a Christian what more could you want? What is even better the passage states, " 39These were all commended for their faith, yet none of them received what had been promised." Great, really great. So you get sawed in two, you get killed, and you still do not get what you were promised.
Reminds me of the old quip attributed to St Teresa of Avalla when having a bad day, "God, if this is how you treat your friends, it's not surprising you have so many enemies." Not really a case of keep taking the happy pills.
Following Jesus is not easy, and does not automatically lead to increased happiness. Moses suffered alienation from his own people and from the Egyptians, and the years spent tending sheep cannot have been easy. Joseph had done his time in Jail. David seems to have never really enjoyed what really matters, when you take a step back he had a heart after God, but he was perhaps a pretty dysfunctional creative genius. Jesus was rejected and crucified, Paul had a very difficult time, and probably ten out of the remaining Eleven Disciples were martyred.
If life is just about material happiness then Christians are losers. Paul comments, 1 Cor 15:19 "If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are to be pitied more than all men."
We believe, whether we like it or not, in something that is bigger than life itself. We cannot escape the fact that either we have a hope of heaven, or our sufferings are in vain.
How we believe affects how we behave, indeed conversely sometimes how we behave tells more about what we believe than what we say we believe. We need to regain a sense of eternity, we need to regain a sense that we have a God who is bigger than life itself. That the concerns of this current age, or not ultimately our concerns, we were created for more and we have been redeemed for more.
Church buildings used to awe people with a sense of something bigger than themselves, today tiny in comparison with the shopping centres that instead block out the light in our City Centres we have lost sight of the fact that there is something bigger than all this. The answer to the plight of the church is not that God can make you happy, but that there is not just something bigger than happiness but someone.
Happiness is not and cannot be pursued as an end in itself, happiness for happiness sake makes us emotionally paralysed, happiness is a by-product not an end-product. Paul talks about joy, he talks about contentment, intermingled with suffering. Jesus is focussed on love, He promises peace and joy, but also a cross.
Ultimately we were created for something bigger, for something more. In a world that is addicted to happiness, it is easy for us as Christians to sing from the world's hymn sheet and say Jesus can make you happy. Except sometimes following Jesus can be very hard, and it forces us to put aside the things that in worldy terms we think make us happy. The Church therefore must point the world, like the Spire on a traditional church, heavenwards. To a world that is addicted to the moment, to the here and now, we present eternity. The Kingdom of Heaven is near, that it can and does break through into our reality.
We live in a world that still more than anything else wants to be happy, the pursuit of pleasure and the avoidance of pain. This involves living in peace with other people, by which we mean the absence of open conflict.
I sometimes feels I live in a culture that is not pursuing life, but living death. Aldous Huxley in Brave New World has a dystopian vision of a world living on Soma, a drug which keeps everyone happy - but by doing so removes meaning from the world. Probably most of the population of Britain would be happy with that idea. We seek happiness in pleasure, in material possessions, in the sexual possession of people, and in being comfortable. We live in a feel good world, and we want to feel good.
When we enter the church we do not leave this baggage at the door, because we do not even think of it as baggage. Indeed, it is very hard to identify baggage that has been with us for so long that we see it as us. Therefore when we come to church we want a church that will make us happy, that will make us feel good, that will keep us from pain, and that will make us comfortable.
We argue that God will help us to be happy far better than the devil's ways, but we do not question whether indeed we are pursuing the right goals, and how "Don't worry be happy!" really fits with, "If anyone wants to come after me, let him deny himself, pick up his cross and follow me." Matt 16v24. Now of course it is easy to pick out one verse and take it too far, but there are other verses and there is the life of those followers of Jesus who are recorded in the Bible. One of the most comprehensive summaries being Hebrews 11v32-39. Just a short extract says, "36Some faced jeers and flogging, while still others were chained and put in prison. 37They were stoned[f]; they were sawed in two; they were put to death by the sword." v36-37a.
Really being a Christian what more could you want? What is even better the passage states, " 39These were all commended for their faith, yet none of them received what had been promised." Great, really great. So you get sawed in two, you get killed, and you still do not get what you were promised.
Reminds me of the old quip attributed to St Teresa of Avalla when having a bad day, "God, if this is how you treat your friends, it's not surprising you have so many enemies." Not really a case of keep taking the happy pills.
Following Jesus is not easy, and does not automatically lead to increased happiness. Moses suffered alienation from his own people and from the Egyptians, and the years spent tending sheep cannot have been easy. Joseph had done his time in Jail. David seems to have never really enjoyed what really matters, when you take a step back he had a heart after God, but he was perhaps a pretty dysfunctional creative genius. Jesus was rejected and crucified, Paul had a very difficult time, and probably ten out of the remaining Eleven Disciples were martyred.
If life is just about material happiness then Christians are losers. Paul comments, 1 Cor 15:19 "If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are to be pitied more than all men."
We believe, whether we like it or not, in something that is bigger than life itself. We cannot escape the fact that either we have a hope of heaven, or our sufferings are in vain.
How we believe affects how we behave, indeed conversely sometimes how we behave tells more about what we believe than what we say we believe. We need to regain a sense of eternity, we need to regain a sense that we have a God who is bigger than life itself. That the concerns of this current age, or not ultimately our concerns, we were created for more and we have been redeemed for more.
Church buildings used to awe people with a sense of something bigger than themselves, today tiny in comparison with the shopping centres that instead block out the light in our City Centres we have lost sight of the fact that there is something bigger than all this. The answer to the plight of the church is not that God can make you happy, but that there is not just something bigger than happiness but someone.
Happiness is not and cannot be pursued as an end in itself, happiness for happiness sake makes us emotionally paralysed, happiness is a by-product not an end-product. Paul talks about joy, he talks about contentment, intermingled with suffering. Jesus is focussed on love, He promises peace and joy, but also a cross.
Ultimately we were created for something bigger, for something more. In a world that is addicted to happiness, it is easy for us as Christians to sing from the world's hymn sheet and say Jesus can make you happy. Except sometimes following Jesus can be very hard, and it forces us to put aside the things that in worldy terms we think make us happy. The Church therefore must point the world, like the Spire on a traditional church, heavenwards. To a world that is addicted to the moment, to the here and now, we present eternity. The Kingdom of Heaven is near, that it can and does break through into our reality.
Thursday 1 March 2007
Creating a habitat for humanity
Alain de Botton in his series The Perfect Home gives the example of Marie Antoinette who built for herself an idealised rural village - a false pastiche. She wanted to escape Versailles and the artificiality of court life and reconnect. The problem was it was nothing like a real peasant village. We may say what is wrong with living in a world of delusions?
The need, as demonstrated by the French Revolution, is to be able to connect with the world, deal with the issues and resolve the problems. Nietzsche made the point that often such coping mechanisms create a worse mess than the problem that they are trying to resolve.
So what has this got to do with the church?
The point that he makes is that the modern British house shows nothing about who we are and where we live, it represents an escape into a rural idyll that never existed. It is a form of delusion and it is created by our unease, our alienation from the modern world.
It is a sign of our insecurity with our actuality, our lack of connection - and it creates bad housing. What is interesting is the programme starts off to say how housing affects the soul, but talks more about how the soul affects what we build and where we live.
I was listening to a recording of Jeff Lucas today speaking about Joseph in Egypt and saying that we cannot keep God as a Deity who lives in the church car park. We need to escape the separation of the spiritual and the none-spiritual.
God is interested in where we live. He created a wonderful world, and I wonder if he puzzles sometimes at why we then choose to live in such small boxes surrounded by small gardens - that reflect little of the creators creativity.
Housing can be seen as unspiritual, we are just passing through, where we live now has no lasting significance. We can get excited about the poor and their need for good housing, but we seem to have lost our heart to dream of a better world. One that is better not just in terms of justice and equality, but one which has better houses, great art, wonderful books and terrific music.
We are not just called to reflect God love as if it can be distilled as pure love like some clear liquid with all the colour removed. We are called to reflect the creativity of a creative God. When we think of the coming of the Kingdom of God, when we think about Redemption we need to see that not purely in terms of the soul - but in terms of the whole of our being. Heaven will not be a pale distillation of what is good, but a fulfilment of what earth was created to be. Heaven will not be less, but more.
As Christians we need to think about whatever we do be great at it. Whatever our job and our role is be great, but we need to go beyond the roles that society defines for us. We are now the out breaking of the Kingdom of Heaven on earth, we need to get involved in transforming the world.
We tend to shy away from the idea that the environment affects the person wanting people to take responsibility for their own lives - which of course is important and can be the beginning of finding liberation. However, we need to look at transforming the environment. Christians in all societies need to be fundamentally involved in making the world a better place, and sometimes we can help people more by working in business at creating jobs than we can by doing worthy things to reduce poverty. We can sometimes do more to help people by improving their environment, then by just looking at their problems. We need to do this in a partnership approach where everyone can participate rather than having a holy us approach.
It is easy to say that God could have created a black and white world with few pleasures instead he created an earthly paradise (which we then set out to spoil) - but I'm not sure if that is true. I'm not sure that God could have created a boring world - it would just be so much out of character.
There are limited resources and the plight of the poor must always be in our hearts, but it needs to be not either justice or beauty - but both.
The call of the church is not just to be just, but to make the world a more beautiful place for people to live in.
The need, as demonstrated by the French Revolution, is to be able to connect with the world, deal with the issues and resolve the problems. Nietzsche made the point that often such coping mechanisms create a worse mess than the problem that they are trying to resolve.
So what has this got to do with the church?
The point that he makes is that the modern British house shows nothing about who we are and where we live, it represents an escape into a rural idyll that never existed. It is a form of delusion and it is created by our unease, our alienation from the modern world.
It is a sign of our insecurity with our actuality, our lack of connection - and it creates bad housing. What is interesting is the programme starts off to say how housing affects the soul, but talks more about how the soul affects what we build and where we live.
I was listening to a recording of Jeff Lucas today speaking about Joseph in Egypt and saying that we cannot keep God as a Deity who lives in the church car park. We need to escape the separation of the spiritual and the none-spiritual.
God is interested in where we live. He created a wonderful world, and I wonder if he puzzles sometimes at why we then choose to live in such small boxes surrounded by small gardens - that reflect little of the creators creativity.
Housing can be seen as unspiritual, we are just passing through, where we live now has no lasting significance. We can get excited about the poor and their need for good housing, but we seem to have lost our heart to dream of a better world. One that is better not just in terms of justice and equality, but one which has better houses, great art, wonderful books and terrific music.
We are not just called to reflect God love as if it can be distilled as pure love like some clear liquid with all the colour removed. We are called to reflect the creativity of a creative God. When we think of the coming of the Kingdom of God, when we think about Redemption we need to see that not purely in terms of the soul - but in terms of the whole of our being. Heaven will not be a pale distillation of what is good, but a fulfilment of what earth was created to be. Heaven will not be less, but more.
As Christians we need to think about whatever we do be great at it. Whatever our job and our role is be great, but we need to go beyond the roles that society defines for us. We are now the out breaking of the Kingdom of Heaven on earth, we need to get involved in transforming the world.
We tend to shy away from the idea that the environment affects the person wanting people to take responsibility for their own lives - which of course is important and can be the beginning of finding liberation. However, we need to look at transforming the environment. Christians in all societies need to be fundamentally involved in making the world a better place, and sometimes we can help people more by working in business at creating jobs than we can by doing worthy things to reduce poverty. We can sometimes do more to help people by improving their environment, then by just looking at their problems. We need to do this in a partnership approach where everyone can participate rather than having a holy us approach.
It is easy to say that God could have created a black and white world with few pleasures instead he created an earthly paradise (which we then set out to spoil) - but I'm not sure if that is true. I'm not sure that God could have created a boring world - it would just be so much out of character.
There are limited resources and the plight of the poor must always be in our hearts, but it needs to be not either justice or beauty - but both.
The call of the church is not just to be just, but to make the world a more beautiful place for people to live in.
Wednesday 28 February 2007
Special features commentary
I wonder what it would have been like if you could watch creation. Everything starts off with darkness, and then there is light. Then after the light appears, the blur starts to separate, shapes and forms, sky, water and earth. Then from this barren earth, out from the very mud plants emerge, and not just one plant but many different species. The sky is shaped, the stars of the sky, the moon the sun. Then fish start swimming in the sea, and then the birds and then the animals on the land and then mankind.
Imagine if you were to watch it unfold on a DVD and you could see it all happening, it would be wonderful. It's great, but we may want to know what the Director had in mind, how did they achieve this wonder? Then you would go to the menu, click on special features and the Director's commentary and we would hear those familiar words from Genesis, "In the beginning..."
And we realise that the film of life has a Director, and that He is interested in the plot and suddenly it all means so much more. We understand, but then we continue to watch.
The action changes from the good world without death, without a shade a pain, things start to go wrong. There is the fall, there is murder, there is death, and without the commentary you are lost. Why has all this happened? What has gone wrong?
You watch the tape, but you do not understand, and because you do not understand you do not see it coming.
It is interesting in the Sixties, people said they wanted free love, none of the restraints of society they wanted love without restraint.
The seventies was the decade of consent, what did it matter so long as there was consent. What went on between consenting adults was no one else's business. So long as no one was hurt.
By 1984 Tina Turner was proclaiming, "What's love got to do with it?"
It was about me and my pleasure.
By 1998 it was not ice creams and deck chairs, but "Sex on the beach."
We live in a selfish generation where it is no longer so long as no one gets hurt, we know that people get hurt but heh it's a tough world. Consent is debatable, so long as the other does not object too strongly. The family breaks down and we ask the question where is love.
It is like we are playing the film in reverse. We have switched off the commentary and ignored the warnings.
Paul in Ephesians 4v19 comments,
Having lost all sensitivity, they have given themselves over to sensuality so as to indulge in every kind of impurity, with a continual lust for more.
Or as the Rolling Stones put it in 1965 "I can't get no satisfaction."
We can make our world without God but it is formless and dark, but as John comments at the start of his gospel, writing perhaps in prison in an occupied country far from home,
"The light shines in the darkness."
If we turn from God we soon find ourselves far from God, there is a certain inescapable inevitability about the decline of culture without God. The problem with British society is not essentially drink, drugs, family breakdown - the essential problem is that we are fallen human beings and that without God's help we quickly collapse, and that affects the whole of our lives and our culture.
However God is a God of redemption and victory. In the 18th Century following the realisation of what it all meant, either John or Charles Wesley wrote a rather different song
Long my imprisoned spirit lay,
fast bound in sin and nature's night;
thine eye diffused a quickening ray;
I woke, the dungeon flamed with light;
my chains fell off, my heart was free,
I rose, went forth, and followed thee.
Jesus comes into our lives, and there is light!
Imagine if you were to watch it unfold on a DVD and you could see it all happening, it would be wonderful. It's great, but we may want to know what the Director had in mind, how did they achieve this wonder? Then you would go to the menu, click on special features and the Director's commentary and we would hear those familiar words from Genesis, "In the beginning..."
And we realise that the film of life has a Director, and that He is interested in the plot and suddenly it all means so much more. We understand, but then we continue to watch.
The action changes from the good world without death, without a shade a pain, things start to go wrong. There is the fall, there is murder, there is death, and without the commentary you are lost. Why has all this happened? What has gone wrong?
You watch the tape, but you do not understand, and because you do not understand you do not see it coming.
It is interesting in the Sixties, people said they wanted free love, none of the restraints of society they wanted love without restraint.
The seventies was the decade of consent, what did it matter so long as there was consent. What went on between consenting adults was no one else's business. So long as no one was hurt.
By 1984 Tina Turner was proclaiming, "What's love got to do with it?"
It was about me and my pleasure.
By 1998 it was not ice creams and deck chairs, but "Sex on the beach."
We live in a selfish generation where it is no longer so long as no one gets hurt, we know that people get hurt but heh it's a tough world. Consent is debatable, so long as the other does not object too strongly. The family breaks down and we ask the question where is love.
It is like we are playing the film in reverse. We have switched off the commentary and ignored the warnings.
Paul in Ephesians 4v19 comments,
Having lost all sensitivity, they have given themselves over to sensuality so as to indulge in every kind of impurity, with a continual lust for more.
Or as the Rolling Stones put it in 1965 "I can't get no satisfaction."
We can make our world without God but it is formless and dark, but as John comments at the start of his gospel, writing perhaps in prison in an occupied country far from home,
"The light shines in the darkness."
If we turn from God we soon find ourselves far from God, there is a certain inescapable inevitability about the decline of culture without God. The problem with British society is not essentially drink, drugs, family breakdown - the essential problem is that we are fallen human beings and that without God's help we quickly collapse, and that affects the whole of our lives and our culture.
However God is a God of redemption and victory. In the 18th Century following the realisation of what it all meant, either John or Charles Wesley wrote a rather different song
Long my imprisoned spirit lay,
fast bound in sin and nature's night;
thine eye diffused a quickening ray;
I woke, the dungeon flamed with light;
my chains fell off, my heart was free,
I rose, went forth, and followed thee.
Jesus comes into our lives, and there is light!
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