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I go to a church in which the Bible is referred to as “the Word of God” and it’s inerrancy is upheld as the basis (or foundation) of our belief. Here, Christians are basically people who decided to trust the Bible and arguments on Doctrine or Practice can be solved by consulting and quoting of Scripture.
Many of my brothers and sisters know the Bible very well and can quote chapter and verse (of which I am envious) but I have several issues with this “high” view of Scripture which have brought me into some conflict in the past with some of the pillars that be. Read the rest of this entry »
I remember how visibly shocked an atheist friend of mine was when I told him that the core message of Christianity was NOT a moral one. Perhaps you are shocked and are sure that Christianity’s chief concern is our morality. Perhaps you are well past personal moral striving (self-righteousness) and into justification by faith but still sure that the whole point is our moral dilemma before God and that Jesus is the solution for our guilt as a result of our immorality. I hope to offer a glimmer of a much bigger plan which Jesus announced and is still being unveiled.
Consider the following two candidates for the title of “The Gospel”:
- Jesus died to pay for your sins so that you can go to heaven and escape hell apart from moral attainment.
- Jesus is the Messiah, God’s anointed King. Through Him God is restoring and renewing all creation.
As Christians we believe both these statements but which is the “Gospel” Jesus and the apostles proclaimed? Both these messages are, in different senses, good news. Let us consider both messages from a Christian (believing) perspective. Read the rest of this entry »
Yeah, Christians Do Some Unexplainable Things
In his book, My Jesus Year, the Jewish author Benyamin Cohen makes a journey along the fringes of fundamental Christianity in America, particularly the Bible Belt. The result is an exposé of the strange things happening today under the banner of Christianity. This book is obviously following in the footsteps of Religiolous and other attempts at exposing Christianity as a crazy sect or farce but as with most caricatures they can sometimes backfire.
Although Cohen says “the churches inspires him to be a better Jew”, a possible sideswipe, he perhaps misses the point that Christianity is something which grew out of Judaism and bears the kind of resemblance we find between child and father or grandfather. Jesus was a Jew, indeed The Jew and all the apostles were Jews, the New Testament authors (possibly excluding Luke) were Jews – Christianity is the Following of the True Jew Jesus. Read the rest of this entry »
The Relevance of Christ to All of Life
Nicky Gumbel begins his bestselling introduction to Christian belief, Questions of Life, with the following threefold critique of Christianity: Boring, irrelevant and probably untrue. However, both he and I discovered at conversion that there was definitely something real and momentous out there. This left us marked men but I have to admit I am still grappling with the idea of how Gospel applies to all of life.
Is Christianity Just Escapism?
A typical conception of Christianity is that of Escapism: Christians are fervently trying to believe in a heavenly life after death in order to escape this tiresome and troublesome world. Well, there is truth in that critique and I myself have, in the not too distant past, thought fondly of death as a gateway into paradise and wondered why on earth I should remain here in this sweet but ultimately imperfect life.
But the idea that Christian beliefs are only relevant in some spiritual sphere with no overlap in the “real” world was first challenged when I began too look seriously at arguments for and against the veracity of the Bible’s claims. Although I was seriously challenged by non-Christian beliefs, arguments and persons I found without exception that these attacks were lacking in substance and that Christianity is a rock solid case with some seriously bad PR.
Gospel as Key to Life’s Problems
Next I began listening to Tim Keller, a Presbyterian preacher in New York City, talk about the idea of Gospel-centred ministry. According to him, and he gets this from Martin Luther, failure to believe the Gospel is at the heart of most, if not all, of our personal and global problems. But, if everything from the macro-vices (e.g. 3rd World Debt and the Arms Race) to the micro (e.g. addictions and self-hate) is tied to mankind’s failure to believe in Jesus we need to take a serious look at what Jesus was all about and ask ourselves, believers and unbelievers alike: Have we really understood what this man stood for?
Idolatry in Modern Times
Think of a sin, any sin, and ask yourself what is the motivation behind this? Sooner or later you will arrive at some form of idolatry. Making money, sex, power, entertainment, technological progress or even security your ultimate goal, your Ultimate Good (Summum Bonum) is just another way of making it your idol, your god. When you do this you are, as Paul puts it, “falling short of the glory of God” in that you were made to reflect His Glory in becoming fully human and in worshipping false idols you lose your humanness. We become like what we worship and we all worship something.
Behind every evil in our world therefore is idolatry, says Luther, and behind that, says Keller, is failure to believe the Gospel. Now the Gospel, as preached since Jesus appeared, is simply this:
Good News:
God is back and His plan
for restoring creation
is being revealed by his Chosen King
Jesus.
Gospel as the Announcement of Messiah
Think of that, the creator of the universe is not sitting idly by and watching creation go to wrack and ruin but has called his Chosen King from a tiny state of Israel, a peasant named Jesus of Nazareth! No, his surname is not “Christ”, that’s his title – “Christ” just means “Messiah” or “Chosen King”. Jesus was crucified by the Jewish authorities because he claimed to be Messiah and by the Romans because he was a would-be rebel King rapidly gathering support in the mutinous masses.
And that’s where the story would have ended. Jesus was not the only Messiah-claimant in the first century (there were a dozen or more contemporary within a hundred years or so) and yet no other claimant even remotely gathered such a following. Jesus did not at all meet the Jewish expectation of Messiah – he had no major military victory, was not a powerful earthly King, like David, did not crush the pagan oppressors (Rome), did not restore the temple and was not crowned in glory. Jesus was what first century Jews would have called a failed Messiah. He was a poor pacifist who chased a few money-changers out of the temple and then got scourged and crucified wearing his underwear and a crown of thorns. An ironic end to his brief public career.
The Mystery of the Christian Movement
Indeed, the story should have ended there – it did for many other messiah-claimants – but instead a worldwide movement was started which, although brutally persecuted, continues in strength to this day. Any theory that the institutional church made a small sect into the world religion it is today simply cannot take on board the historical fact that the church was an underground oppressed and powerless movement which only gained official Roman support in the middle of the 4th century some 300 years after it’s leader was crushed.
Relevance for Today’s World
How is all this relevant today? We have plenty of religions and self-help books – how is Christianity supposed to help the world in it’s current enlightened (yet somehow darkened) state? To understand this we need to understand what happened when Jesus arrived on the scene and how the 1st century was the turning point for all of history and for all creation.
Briefly summarising what otherwise takes a whole Bible to explain, Christian and Jewish thought is based on 3 key events:
- Creation: God made the universe and it was good
- Fall: Mankind rejected God’s rule and fell from grace
- Salvation: God rescues mankind and restores creation
Whilst modern Jews are still waiting for the Messiah and Salvation, Christians have identified Jesus of Nazareth as the one through whom God has and is working to “put the world to rights”.
It is important to note that point 3, like point 1, is a process with a beginning, middle and end. The world was made in 6 days or eras (the Hebrew word “yom” can mean both) and then God rested. Mankind then messed things up and God called Israel to be a light for the world, the means by which salvation would come. Israel rebelled in spectacular fashion, rejected the calling until the true “Son of Man” arrived from within their ranks and took the world’s woes upon himself. Jesus came not only to pay the bill mankind had racked up in destroying their planet and degrading their humanity, he came to initiate it’s restoration. Jesus did not come to solve all problems but to initiate the restoration of creation in an unexpected way. This is manifest in 3 ways today:
1. The Fullness of Life
We all experience life as a bitter-sweet symphony of good and evil, beauty and ugliness, joy and sorrow and wonder how we could obtain happiness and fulfilment and why nobody has figured it out yet. We see technological progress improving some areas of life whilst making others worse than before. We see resources unfairly distributed and the situation only worsening. Bad news clouds in on every side. Yet a 1st century peasant called Yeshua (Jesus), from a tiny backward corner of the Roman empire, claimed to have come “that [we] may have life and have it to the full” (John 10:10).
Now, either Jesus was crazy, a conniving con-man or the Christ the Jews were waiting for and we need to take another look. Christians today speak of the indescribable peace and fulfilment their life has since they have encountered God through what Jesus did. Sure, Jesus is not physically here but he’s moving and working in a way which is in some ways more real than what we experience in the physical world. Jesus kept his promise and we experience life in a new and joyful dimension. We can’t show you Jesus except what he has done in our lives.
2. A New World Order
Christian’s having dreamy religious experiences is one thing but what does that mean for the world? As Christians we recognise that Jesus life and death were ultimately unique in the history of humankind. Not only did Jesus make claims no one else had made, he backed them up with deeds, natural and supernatural which were unprecedented and unrepeated. Nowhere in history do we find a comparable combination of outrageous claims, humble compassion and purported miracles and resurrection. You may find one or even two of these things if you search the myths, legends and asylums of this world but you won’t find claim, compassion and credibility coming together in this one-time climax of history.
What this means today is that we have reason to believe that the creator God has chosen humility, compassion, servitude and suffering as opposed to escapism, military might or comfy compromise, as the vehicle for the ushering in of his new world order. God the creator is at work again and it is no accident that Jesus’ resurrection was the first day of the week. The Sunday we call Easter was the first day of a New Age and the Friday on which Jesus was hung out to dry the last day, the 6th and final day of the old broken creation.
As Christians we believe that Jesus work and teaching were the one-off announcement of God’s reign returning to earth – the thing for which Jews prayed and, for centuries, anticipated. God has no favourites and offers each person, regardless of social, ethnic or class a share in this inheritance, a place in the new order which is being established. Christianity is relevant here and now. The Gospel is an invitation to all to get on board.
3. Personal Salvation
This is the point which is usually emphasized and I hope by moving it down the list to have put it’s importance in perspective. We are not Christians because want to escape the world and go to heaven. We are Christians because we want to shape the world in accordance with God’s plan and have his heavenly rule come down here (“Thy Kingdom come”).
The personal aspect is key and should not, however, be neglected. God is creating a new world by first dealing with the heart of the problem: Man’s Heart. The Jews expected a Messiah who would come and slaughter the pagans and put Israel on the map as a political force to be reckoned with. God has other plans. God rained down judgement on the nation which was brutally crushed in a last-ditched attempt at military rebellion in 70 AD. But God does not only judge an destroy; at the same time God was spreading the good news (Gospel) of Jesus’ resurrection through people like Paul of Tarsus and other apostles. People’s hearts were being changed from stony ego-centered organs to spirit filled other-centered love machines. God’s new world starts with a changed heart – yours and mine.
Conclusion
Unless we are severely mistaken God has chosen a surprising and subversive way to solve the worlds problems. If there is a God, He’s not a magician who can snap his fingers and dissolve the worlds evils. Indeed if he did, who of us would be left standing? Instead the creator God is a being so vast and transcendent that he cannot fit into the neat frameworks we expect reality to conform to even though, so often, it does not. If God is real we should expect that He is surprising and that there is no racial, intellectual or ethnic barrier to Him other than the choice we make to seek Him or hide from Him. God’s world is broken but under construction and the project manager is a poor Jew who was betrayed by his friends and hung on a tree. It all began in a garden around a tree and that’s where it ended.
It strikes me that much of our apparently modern western insight or social morality is a restatement of things we have unconsciously learned from the Bible and sometimes modified or watered down:
- Don’t worry, be happy
- The Golden Rule
- Think Positive
- Basic human rights
- Save the planet
- Love as the greatest virtue
Don’t Worry be Happy
Jesus said “Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life?” and “Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself.” in Matthew 6:25-34 referring to our tendency to worry about our worldly needs. The modern meaning however is almost the opposite where we are encouraged to amass worldly goods and insurance whilst neglecting all deeper reflection which science cannot answer.
The Golden Rule
Jesus said “Do to others as you would have them do to you” as part of a longer exhortation in Luke 6 to empathy and self-sacrifice. Moderns chopped off the bits about turning the other cheek, minding our own business and forgiveness whilst keeping the pragmatic part which best garantees individual freedom and some measure of social justice.
Think Positive
The 20th century must go down as the century of the self – “solve it with self esteem” we have been told. The Bible speaks about faith which is trust in that which is good and worthy. All the positive thought in the world is not going to make a false thing true or an impossible act possible but faith in a worthy concept or trustworthy person is the key to the power of God to make the humanly impossible possible (Matthew 17:20, Matthew 19:16-27 or any of the hundreds of verses which speak highly of faith).
Basic Human Rights
The idea that all human beings deserve such basic things as justice, dignity, education and so on has only recently been incorporated into legal systems. As recently as last century the USA, arguably the pinnacle of modernity and democracy, wrestled with segregation and slavery is still in effect in many parts of the world. Jesus taught, in Matthew 25:40, that “whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me”. God values each life and considers ill-treatment of any human a personal affront. True Christian charity and service has never been something for insiders only but intended as a light to the whole world.
Save the Planet
We’re all trying to become more environmentally friendly especially when it hits our wallets. Jesus came to literally save the entire planet starting with the hearts of men but extending to the whole of creation. A key aspect of Christianity is the new earth which is God’s restoration of goodness to all the created order. Aside from this man was created as a steward of creation, intended to be a dutiful, responsible master over all that lives and answerable to the Creator (Genesis 2).
Love as the Greatest Virtue
Most music, literature and artistic expression attempts to embody and elevate love as the greatest passion/emotion/activity man can attain. Hollywood has perhaps mutated the word into a synonym for copulation but most people recognise the power and benevolence of love. The Bible teaches that love (of God, neighbour and self) is the greatest commandment (Matthew 22), something we need to major in, and that love is the greatest of all virtues without which no good act is truly of value (1 Corinthians 13).
Others
Parents are encouraged to spend time with and listen to their children instead of shooing them off (Matthew 19:14). Loyalty in marriage, truth-telling are basic biblical commands. Anyone who works in sales or customer service is regularly encouraged to “go the extra mile” which comes almost directly from Matthew 5:41. The motivation for salesmen is not love of customers personally of course but a recognition of the fact that customers treated this way tend to be loyal which brings me to my final point: cherry picking the religions for good tips on worldly success leaves much worthwhile by the wayside. Indeed failing to see the underlying principle (love) and only grasping for the fruits we miss out on really changing our world for the better.
So What?
Much of what makes our western society stable, free and attractive to outsiders comes from it’s Christian roots which are sadly being forgotten. Jesus was a pacifist who praised peacemakers and went a route unheard of in world history. Jesus did not fit into any of the 3 categories available to leaders of the time:
- He did not retreat from the world to remain holy and hope for escape in the next life (the religious quietest “holy man”route).
- He did not sharpen his sword, gather an army hope for a chance to revolt against Roman oppression (the revolutionary Zealot route).
- Neither did he conform to the world, disappear in the crowd, and make himself as comfy as possible, getting the most out of life and waiting for whatever happened (the worldly route taken by Jewish leaders of the time).
Jesus came with an agenda so radical and unique it bordered on foolishness and was rejected as such by most of his contemporaries.
The modern world’s agenda has been revisionist in nature: pick what feels right or works best from the world’s philosophers and cultures and discard the rest. In the process Jesus’ real radical message which carries with it power for lasting peace has been whittled away to a few hollow platitudes which bear only a faint echo of the wisdom of which they are but a shadow.
I’ve discovered N.T. Wright recently and have been enthralled by the man’s knowledge, lucidity and dignified manner in the few talks I have been listening to. I wonder if he’s not the modern day C.S. Lewis which would be a coup because Lewis’ work changed and progressed my life more than any other author and this is what Christianity is all about (or at least it’s mechanism): being transformed by the renewing of our mind as we get to know God and his works more deeply.
Wright is the Anglican Bishop of Durham and I was almost disappointed that he does not have the Yorkshire accent I adore but rather the Oxford english I might have expected and possibly also shared by Lewis. The bishop is, like Lewis, a prolific writer: (a caller, apparently, upon being told that the Bishop was busy writing a book replied “It’s OK, I’ll hold”) - I’m going to have to excercise some self-control at Amazon over the next few days.
What most attracted me was that which drew me to Lewis – a fresh, contemporary and profound yet honest rendering of the Christian narrative which leaves you feeling empowered and hungry for more of the depths which are to be searched in discovering God and His purposes.
I read somewhere that Wright is one who puts things in categories no one is comfortable with. This seems to be his trademark and I for one can appreciate it because it shows that the inter-doctrinal battles are in the truest sense Beside the Point. This comforts me greatly as I’ve been exposed to some Hyper-Calvinists lately and it rocked my boat. I imagine that Wright, if pressed say on any matter of controversy, would begin something like “When one understands this within the framework of…” and you can picture the questioner’s brow furrowing as he is forced to look at the issue from a new and deeper perspective and will not be getting a juicy quote to stir up trouble. I do wonder if the ambiguity we discover in the Bible is just that: us not getting the deeper meaning much like our inability to comprehend wave-particle duality because it doesn’t fit into our simplistic understanding of matter as “hard stuff” (actually it’s 99.9999% nothing).
Listening today to Wright’s talk on Romans for the second time I was glad I was not physically present but cauld pause and rewind my MP3 player to get what he was saying again. If I wasn’t driving at the time I would have been reaching for pen and paper the information content is that dense and brilliant.
…and yet, somehow we are unaffected. We read a wise saying, think “that is so true”, nod meaningfully and click or page on to the next news story. Which brings me to the next item in apparently endless supply today: Bad News. This week has been particularly full of natural disaster (China, Burma), xenophobic violence (South Africa), general mayhem (Iraq) and hunger (Somalia, Zimbabew, Haiti etc.). But this is business as usual and even local papers are filled with stories of accidents, rapes, murders and hooliganism. No News may be Bad News but apparently so is All News. But even bad news, really bad news, fails to affect us. We page on to the adverts and look for stuff to buy…
As far as I can tell, good advice does not change the world, and neither does bad news because it fails to move the heart, the center of a persons being. What I do know is that good news has and does change people and lives because of the power of hope which it brings. The word “Gospel” is just a synonym for “Good News” and if you understand the difference betwen Good News and Good Advice you understand the difference between Christianity and all other religions.
Good advice is information about something good and beneficial you should do but have not yet done. Telling a ship’s captain to “mind the icebergs” would be good advice. Good news is information about something good and beneficial which has already happened like “the ship arrived safely”. The tragedy is that many have turned the Gospel (Good News) into a religion (Good Advice) and modern people know good advice is cheap and easily available without sitting through a sermon on Sunday and have given up seeking true good news as a dream, some sort of wish-fulfillment.
But Jesus of Nazareth proved once and for all that ultimate Goodness (Love) is also ultimate reality (God) and thus we have reason to hope. This is not some warm, fuzzy, feel-good hope but a real, evidence based, experiential hope in a person who said he was God’s Son and the solution to all our problems and whose miraculous ressurection provided the final proof of these outrageous claims.
If you think you need to make a huge leap of faith to believe that Jesus existed and is accurately reflected in the New Testament then think again. Don’t let a TV mini-series or popular pseudo-wisdom hide the real facts of the matter from you. The historical evidence is reliable and undeniable – Jesus was not just a sage but the Son of God and the future King of all who died to pay your debt and save you from destruction. He’s done it all (that’s the Good News) and all you have to do is accept the gift he offers today.
Religion and Morality
Morality is a great thing and it really helps society when people play by the rules – Good Rules, that is. However, the Gospel is not about morality (surprised?) it’s about marriage (perplexed?).
Most people think that religions, however they came about, are ways of getting people to live good lives – and, to a certain extent they’re right. However, the Gospel is not religion, if it were, it would be Bad News and not Good News. The world did not need another or a better moral system and Jesus (himself anti-Religion and anti-Establishment) did not come to establish a new religion but his teaching was to highlight, through extreme examples, what should have been plain to all people: Give people a better moral standard and they’ll just fail all the more miserably. Lower the standard (as we moderns do) and they’ll be happier for a while but society decays as values erod. Humans simply cannot be good enough to establish just societies and install peace on earth for very long as history shows.
Still, we foolishly hope that this New Technology or that Social Policy will change things. We say “We’re learning” and “To be human is to err” – but these are unfortunately not harmless errors and our failed ideologies and methods are the cause of our worlds dismal state. Are we really learning and progressing?
“Gospel” Means Good News
The Gospel really is Good News because it says that the peace and justice and love and beauty and morality we all crave – indeed everything Really Good, comes from a perfect, eternal being (God) who is the source of all of these things, and freely gives them without any payment or merit (that is, by Grace) to any and all who want them and would ask (that is, by Faith).
God freely offers lasting peace, eternal justification, final justice, unending and unconditional love, eternal beauty and freedom from sin to everyone, for free, paid in full by his own son.
That’s the Gospel you don’t hear so often but it’s the only one the Bible teaches. This perhaps explains why most church-goers look so unhappy – they’ve never heard or understood the Good News and are being preached moralism and religiosity. The ironic truth is that you don’t need to clean up your act to come to God (classical religion) but that you need to come to God to clean up your act.
The Futility of Self-Salvation
As anyone who has tried to clean up their act will confirm, you only get only so far on effort – perhaps far enough to ease your conscience, feel good or be more socially acceptable but never, on your own steam will you live up to God’s standard of perfection (Mat 5:48 – Sermon on the Mount) and the glory for which he made you, which was in his own image. All fall short (Rom 3:23) and God does not grade on a curve or accept 50% or higher (or even 90% or higher) as a pass rate. Sound unfair? Well, only if you think of Final Judgment as a kind of entrance exam into a leisure lounge of fluffy white clouds and free cocktails amid harp music. That’s NOT what the God of the Bible is offering for eternity. God doesn’t want a roommate, he wants a wife.
The Intimacy God Desires
The Old and New Testaments are filled with images of how God sees Man and the image is consistently that of a Husband and his (unfaithful) wife. The whole Bible is a love story of a Husband (God) trying to woo his lover (humanity) back to Him in faithfulness – not just back to him. The book of Hosea makes it particularly clear when God makes the prophet marry a whore in order to show him what He (God) feels like at Israel’s rebellion and unfaithfulness in idolatry. God promises to win his people back to himself in the Old Testament which documents his faithfulness and commitment and mankind’s rebellion and shocking ingratitude. Continuing into the New Testament, the body of believers (a.k.a. the Church) is portrayed as the fulfilment of this promise, it is described as a spotless bride presented to God for a happy-ever-after together. The ultimate dowry for this eternal bliss (Heaven) is paid when God Himself, in the person of Jesus, dies in order to win his lover’s heart back. God would die to be with us forever in love and did just that.
The Perfection God Demands
If it were the case that God was proposing sharing his home (as room mates) with us we might expect that he’d accept us warts and all – we could move in with some of our dirty laundry – but marriage, in God’s eyes, is different. Marriage, in God’s eyes is a union of the most intimate nature in which man and wife become one body (Gen 2, Mat 5). Sex is the ultimate physical expression of this unity and intimacy and the Bible even uses this imagery in driving home the point.
But God is holy and perfect and will not marry – that is, commit Himself to a union – with a sinful, rebellious wife, darting her eyes in every direction for another man (or idol). God, perfect and holy, cannot share his bed with a whore. Nevertheless, he is courting us which is what this life is all about. We were made by and for God and yet we are loving other things, making stuff into gods, replacing our true Love with cheap lovers.
The Choice We Will Make
God’s bride has to be won over, He will not force her into marriage and, as with any proposal, she has 2 options: accept or reject. A “maybe” is, eventually, the same as a “no”. Thus Jesus is right in saying there is only one way, through Him we become cleansed and righteous and worthy (not by our works, but by His!) of His presence and glory and inheritance. Jesus offers an eternal return to God, a reversal of the Fall, which we can accept or reject – there is no compromise and no way out. God is so good that an eternity with Him is, by definition, Heaven and without him, Hell.
