Paul – Galla Placida Mausoleum, Ravenna, 5th century

I have just finished a very challenging yet satisfying read: The Future of the People of God: Reading Romans before and after Western Christendom, by Andrew Perriman.  Don’t let the length of the title put you off – while this scholarly book is not for the fainthearted, it is well worth the effort.

There is a whole movement in New Testament scholarship that I was barely aware of, but which corresponds closely to the perspective from which I have been trying to understand the Pauline epistles for some time.  The movement is rather loosely labeled “the new perspective on Paul” (which is a bit of a misnomer – there is not just one “new” perspective).  I don’t quite feel comfortable with that label for my own journey in getting to grips with Paul – as what I have been seeking is in fact a much older perspective on him.  The way I have read Paul has been mostly informed by variations of reformed theology (Luther and friends), which are frequently more abstract than practical, and which have often seemed uncomfortably anachronistic.  It has occurred to me that to really understand Paul it would make more sense to try and get under the skin of his first-century audience, to get some appreciation of their specific historical context , and to keep firmly in mind that  Paul was … a Jew.  It seems such an obvious thing to say, yet I have tended to cast Paul more in a role akin to that of a 16th-century European Christian reformer than a first-century Jewish rabbi, and I am aware that this may have warped my understanding of his message.

A crucial starting point of Perriman’s argument is that the message of Romans is both historical and eschatological, not in the vague, abstract sense in which we generally view the end of the world and the final judgement, but rather in an imminent and totally practical sense.  Paul was addressing a specific community of people who, in a very short space of time, would experience the pain of seeing their secure little world turned upside down.  Paul was writing in the middle decades of the first century, and within the space of twenty years, Jerusalem, the beating heart of Judaism, would be completely overrun by the Romans, the temple destroyed, hundreds of thousands of Jews killed, and many others sent into exile.   As for non-Jewish Jesus-followers, living in other parts of the Empire, they would suffer atrocious persecution under emperors such as Nero, Trajan and Diocletian.

There is a tendency to read Romans as a manual in theology, to help us get our heads around notions such as salvation, grace, faith and constructs like imputed righteousness amongst other abstractions.  I’m not suggesting this is wrong, but I doubt that first century disciples would have had the time or the headspace to deal in such conceptual theology.  When you live with the expectation of imminent and fierce persecution, you are not going to spend time arguing about predestination and free will, or whether doing good works has any value for our justification.  These believers had an immediate and pressing need for teaching that was going to help them get through the storm on the horizon, and Andrew Perriman argues in this book that this is exactly what Paul was giving them in Romans.  “Salvation” in Paul’s context, Perriman suggests, was simply survival from the wrath of God that would imminently be poured out – a means to avoid becoming “collateral damage”.  He consistently brings Habbakuk 2:4 to the fore – the righteous shall live by his faith, which could just as legitimately be translated the righteous shall survive through faithfulness, which corresponds better to Perriman’s argument.  Jesus is the ultimate example of this faithfulness by which we are saved.

We have had the immense privilege of hosting a Pakistani bishop in our home over the past few days, who is the head of a very significant ministry training and church-planting movement in his country, where the fires of persecution and oppression of Christians and other religious minorities is all too real.  I have heard him preach several times, and one of the things that strikes me is how intensely practical his teaching is.  His flock is daily confronted with false accusations of insulting Mohammed or the Qur’an, being rejected for employement, being mocked, having their houses burned down, being beaten and in some cases thrown in prison without cause, and in all too many cases, brutally murdered – for no reason other than the fact that they are followers of Jesus.  One of the things that has most struck me as I listen to him is that this man is living in a situation where the teaching of the epistle to the Romans (in fact, the whole of the New Testament) comes alive in a very immediate and tangible way.

The second major point that Perriman stresses in a variety of ways is that just as all storms pass eventually, so the goal of Romans is not only to assist suffering Christians to get through the time of tribulation, but also to declare the absolute victory of Christ over the manifold gods of the nations.  This would be expressed imminently in the decisive judgement of the Greco-Roman world of the time, and the vindication of the marginalised God of Israel.  Traditional evangelicalism (with all its inherent allergies to Catholicism) does not prepare us well for the kind of brain-bending implications of this, as we have a lot of difficulty accepting that this vindication was manifested in the establishment of Christendom under Constantine.  With the (dis?)advantage of hindsight, it is so easy for us to list the many and varied failings of Christendom that we miss the planet-shaking significance of the conversion of the entire Greco-Roman Empire to Christianity.   We have difficulty grasping that for those generations of Jesus-followers who experienced it,  the christianisation of the Empire was the clear fulfilment of many prophetic Scriptures, and a glorious demonstration of the faithfulness of God to his people.  We have also been conditioned to view eschatological judgement and restoration as an exclusively future reality, and resist the idea that some (not all) of Paul’s eschatology was firmly rooted in a period of time that is in our distant past, beginning in his own generation and being accomplished within three hundred years.

The next book on my pile is Paul within Judaism: Restoring the First-Century Context to the Apostle, which attempts to go beyond the “new” perspective.  It seems the “new” perspective is no longer that new. I finished The Future of the People of God feeling stimulated to explore further.  For example, it wasn’t clear to me how these “new perspectives” handle Israel, Judaism and the Torah.  At one point Perriman talks about Paul having “repudiated his Jewish heritage”, which confused me.  Paul certainly repudiated something, but what exactly?  I would also like to better understand the 21st century applications of this first century story – the last chapter of the book gives some tantalising pointers, including the following:

The threat to Western Christianity comes not from a repressive pagan imperialism that will herd defiant believers into the arena to be slaughtered, but from a culture that has supreme confidence in its right – if not always its capacity – to define personal and social good, safeguard the health and prosperity of humanity, manage the world’s material resources, process information and knowledge, determine the conditions and boundaries for truth, and regurgitate an endless stream of entertainments and distractions. 

One question I am left with is, what if it were only a matter of time before we began to experience the same kind of pressures in Europe that my Pakistani brother is currently confronted with in his own country?  And would it take something like this for us to truly understand the message of Romans, indeed the whole New Testament?

Photo Credit: Nick in exsilio cc

Saturday

A big day.  22 EPEE leaders turn up for a weekend of training in the Chapel with our friends Nadine and Elvire from Geneva, so it’s all hands on deck.  We take turns to care for the children, set up tables, attend the teaching sessions, pray for attendees.  More than once it occurs to me that I hope the noise isn’t disturbing the neighbours (they have subsequently assured us that “they don’t hear a thing”…I’m sure they’re just being polite, but we have a date to get together with them for drinks so we’ll sound them out about it).  Such a rich time – some major direction received for the coming months, people encouraged and strengthened in their gifts and calling.  And all that under a deep blue sky – perfect for picnicking in the garden.

Sunday

Quiet day today.  Worship service in the morning, but Heather and I have managed to make ourselves redundant for the day – nice not to be needed.  In the afternoon a bit of reading, a bit of gardening, a good chat with P. before his “watch” in the House of Prayer about different projects on the boil –   P. is positively overflowing with ideas, and he’s been a huge help getting Les Alouettes set up.  Isaac mows the lawn.  Manage to fit in a bit of DIY – hanging up a mirror, installing a light fitting – nothing too strenuous, but enough to feel I’m living up to my plan of doing a little bit each day to this house which sometimes feels it’ll never be truly finished.  Put a bit of polish on my halo anyway…

Drinks and a simple meal in the evening with the Alouettes families to celebrate Anna’s birthday.  Our goal is to eat together once a week.

Monday

Some of us leave for work in the morning, others work on site.  For Simon it’s a bit of both.  Today is a “home office day” – preparing lessons, catching up with paperwork.  Heather is translating and proofreading.  A new job comes in – we’re able to pass it onto C., a missionary friend who also does translation and language training.  We officially moved our business to Les Alouettes a few weeks ago, and love the idea of revenue-making activities being based at on site.  There are at least three other “micro-enterprise” projects on the boil, at various stages of development.

The Alouettes families gather for prayer at 5:00pm.  It’s not easy to find times that suits everyone, but we’re learning to persevere even if not everyone can make it.  A different person leads each time.  Today’s focus: practical needs affecting each of the families.

Tuesday

Healing Rooms night.  People are already waiting outside the gate at 7:25 pm, eager to get in.  They walk in past David busy repairing a bicycle for E., a local friend who is currently without work and is often here helping out with various jobs.  The bike repair workshop isn’t fully operational yet, but the stack of bikes to be repaired under David and Marion’s place is growing ever larger.

Our guests fill out their forms and then make their way to the Chapel – aka the “presence room” where they spend time with God with worship music playing.  Some have been before, but many are new.

The prayer teams are dispatched in various rooms around the big house.  D. is there for the third time.  The first time she mentioned that she didn’t believe in God – although by the end of the prayer time, with tears in her eyes she asked “Why did God take my daughter”.  What is doubly hard is that she is also suffering from cancer.  We offered her a Bible, but she declined to take it, saying she wouldn’t read it.  But she came back.  The second visit didn’t go so well – she seemed skeptical, unresponsive.  We thought we may not see her again.  But she came back.  This time, as she came down the stairs after receiving prayer, she had a Bible in her hands, and a radiant smile on her face.

We don’t know whether her cancer is healed yet, but we can see the visible evidence of how God is touching her life.  With J. it is more visible – she came in with audible congestion in her chest, coughing violently from bronchitis.  She left with clear airways, breathing easily.

Wednesday

L. turns up for a coffee and a chat.  Although in her forties she has been busy working towards getting her baccalaureate as an adult student, and wants some tips for English homework.  She’s also an artist, and can sometimes be found behind a canvas under the apricot tree when she needs a bit of space to paint.  We’re learning just to point people in the direction of the coffee and the teaspoons and leave them to it if we’re in the middle of something.

A young Rom guy from the squat down the road turns up wheeling a bicycle … would we have some tools to help him change an inner tube?  Nicolas (Didier and Odile’s son-in-law) saves the day.  A few hours later the same guy is seen leaving the property with various members of his family carrying a big bowl of cherries shaken off the tree at the bottom of the garden

Three young interns arrive from Bless – friends in Normandy who run a mission training ministry there.   Sam and Jorit are from England and the Netherlands, and Nicole is from Aruba (a quick geography lesson is required…).  It’s fun getting to know each other…

Thursday

Our three friends get straight to work on sorting, cutting and stocking wood, clearing messy bits in the garden, trips to the dump – even ironing!  Nicolas is the foreman for the day.  In the evening the guys head off to the young adults group with Maria, and Marcel comes over to pick up Nicole to visit women on the streets of Nantes who have become trapped in prostitution.

7:00pm there’s another “watch” in the House of Prayer – a time of worship and intercession.  We are coming to understand more and more the role of music in enabling us to sustain prayer and times in God’s presence for longer periods.  Two hours goes by so quickly now.  The focus this time was praying for the March for Jesus – a big ‘Jesus celebration’ planned for Saturday.  The Muslim world and victims of human trafficking in Nantes have also featured as themes for prayer recently.

Nicole returns all smiles, amazed at how open the women are, and delighted at having had the opportunity to listen to their stories.  The guys similarly enjoyed their time – especially marked by the worship.  We have a discussion about the passion that we are seeing here, and how worship is becoming a key feature of the identity of the French church.

Friday

Friday is a “sending” day – this time we are sending our own Laura into a new mission experience.  She flies out to Kenya and then Mozambique where she will be training with Iris Ministries for three months, followed by a two-week outreach working with Syrian refugees in an unprintable destination.  Feels weird knowing she will be away from phone and Internet contact for most of the next three months.

An exciting discovery: the pvc pipe sticking out of the ground by the garden chalet turns out to be 9 metres long, and as we pull it up we hear water sloshing around at the bottom.  Turns out we have pump access to a source of ground water that is going to be perfect for watering the garden.  We know from old town plans that there was a well on the site somewhere, but so far our search had been unfruitful.

After two days of hard work we take our three friends into town for some chill-time, soaking up some local cultcha – a free concert and a beer by the river.

Saturday

Heather is up early preparing a teaching for Sunday.  Nacer turns up around 9:00 with the van to pick up some chairs and a few cakes that church people have left for the snack after the March for Jesus.  We put on another pot of coffee…

Work friends of Odile’s turn up to borrow the trailer…

500 people at the march – a joyful celebration with lots of music, dance and testimonies in the streets of Nantes.  Home to a barbecue with the Alouettes families and other friends.   We are all keeping an eye on Timothée and Coline (both aged 2) so they don’t eat too many under ripe cherries.  Timothée manages to spill a glass of wine all over someone … it’s a bit chaotic, but all part of the fun.

We finish the evening in the House of Prayer again – a short time of worship and prayer for the three interns before Jorit heads back to Amsterdam in the morning.  He writes in the visitor’s book “my time here in Nantes was so fantastic!  I really felt connected with the community you built up here…”

It’s funny because we don’t really feel we know what we’re doing, we’re just figuring it out as we go along.  We are not aware of having built anything up – it seems that it’s God doing the building.  We’re just the ‘stones’, but it is very exciting as we begin to see what life here is going to be like.

You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength, and you shall love your neighbour as yourself… Luke 10:27

How can we reconcile the fact that on the one hand Jesus said he came to fulfill the law, that “not one iota, not a dot” would be removed from it, while on the other hand it is clear in the epistle to the Hebrews that the law is obsolete and being replaced?

Part of our problem is the cultural assumptions that we make about the concept of law.  We are accustomed to the rule of law, whereby we live under an agreed set of principles of right and wrong that are encoded in written law and applied by a government and a judiciary.  We assume that whenever the Bible talks about “the law”, that it is referring to the same kind of thing.  God is seen as a judge presiding over an immutable list of rules which must be followed.  This understanding of law can lead us into confusion when it comes to understanding the Old Testament.

The ten commandments we can grasp, as they are enshrined in our own laws.  You shall not commit murder is a law that is universally agreed upon in general terms (even though there is debate about the precise definition of murder).  But what are we to do with You shall not boil a young goat in its mother’s milk (Exodus 23:19), You shall not round off the hair on your temples (Leviticus 19:27), You shall make yourself tassels on the four corners of your garment (Deuteronomy 22:12) amongst other colourful “laws” that we find in the Bible ?

It is vaguely supposed that most of these commandments are not applicable for today, but we tend to avoid thinking about it too much because we are quickly confronted with a glaring inconsistency in the way we arbitrarily pick and choose which of God’s laws we will apply and which we will not.  An obvious example of such an inconsistency is in the standard approach to the instructions concerning the sabbath.  In Exodus 20 God clearly commands that one day in seven is to be a day of rest, a practice that is developed in considerable detail in the Torah.  The sabbath was clearly an important feature in Jesus’ own way of life, and it is also taught on at some length in the epistles.  Not only is it to be a day of rest, but this rest is precisely timed to begin at sundown on Friday, and to finish at sundown on Saturday.  Yet there are very few Christians that adhere consistently to this practice.  Does this mean we are flagrantly disobeying God, or is there something deeper going on here?

As is often the case, the inconsistency in our understanding is brought about by interpreting the Jewish Scriptures through the filter of 20 centuries of Greek-Western thinking.  If salvation is from the Jews (the words of Jesus in John 4:22), then we need to start learning to think like a Hebrew.  The Bible is their book first and foremost, so it makes sense to learn to understand it through their eyes.

For one thing, the word “law”, while not exactly a misleading translation, carries so much cultural baggage that it is not easy to see that the fundamental principal behind the way the Bible uses the word is not so much as a list of precepts to be obeyed, but rather as a series of covenants.  A covenant is simply a mutually beneficial agreement where two (or more) parties make some kind of commitment to each other.  The concept of covenant is absolutely central to understanding how God relates to people.  His relationship with his creatures is not primarily a judicial one, where he makes decrees and demands obedience. It begins rather with a declaration of commitment from a Father to his children.  Depending on how you count, there are up to eight specific covenantal declarations in the Old Testament, and all but one are unconditional.  This means that, contrary to a normal covenant or contractual agreement between people, where each party commits to certain conditions, God’s covenants are uni-directional, or one-sided, in the sense that God himself is the sole initiator and the one who carries the whole burden of the commitments stipulated in the covenant.

The exception to this is the Sinai (or “Mosaic”) Covenant, where God met Moses on Mount Sinai, gave him the decalogue, or “ten commandments” (not a Jewish concept by the way: the Hebrew says simply “ten words”, which has no judicial connotation), and a long and diverse series of laws and commands concerning how to apply the decalogue.  He made a conditional commitment to the people of Israel that was predicated on a big “if”: if you faithfully obey the voice of the LORD your God… all these blessings shall come upon you. … But if you will not…then all these curses shall come upon you (Deuteronomy 28).

This was unlike previous and subsequent covenantal declarations (to Adam, Noah, Abraham, David … etc.), and it had a unique purpose, which the apostle Paul would elaborate on centuries later when he wrote the law was our guardian until Christ came (Galatians 3:24).  It is important to understand that this “law” is specifically the Sinai Covenant.  This is also the covenant referred to in Hebrews where it talks about the covenant being set aside because it has become obsolete (Hebrews 7).

The other covenants have never, and will never, be abrogated or superceded, as they are unconditional.  For example, God will never cease to maintain the sunshine and the rain and to bring forth food from the earth, as he promised to Adam.  He will never again bring a flood to destroy every living creature, as promised to Noah.  He will never renege on his promise to give the land of Canaan to the descendants of Israel, and to make Israel a blessing in the midst of the earth, as promised to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, no matter what.

So what, then, was the purpose of the Sinai Covenant, and how does it apply to the Christian today?

To be continued…

Photo credit: StockMonkeys.com cc

To cut to the chase, we are in the process of becoming a community.  It is a residential community, in that we are moving onto a property with three houses, with two other families.  It is simply called Les Alouettes*, after the street where the property is situated.  It is a “kingdom” community, in that our goal is to experience the lordship of King Jesus in our relationships with each other and with the neighbourhood, and in all aspects of our way of life.  It is a “prophetic” community in the sense that in this age of individualism and fear for the future, there need to be places that point to another reality.  Some might say it is like a  modern “monastic” community, in that it has a dual focus centered around regular prayer, worship and study of God’s word,  and service to the wider community.

We are not experts in this community thing, far from it.  We have not done a lot of reading or research.  We have not made a five-year plan.  We are not good theorists.  Our core values are still under construction.  It is very much a “let’s work it out as we go” kind of community, although it does have firm roots of friendship and a common vision of heaven touching earth.

It’s a community that extends well beyond the three families – it’s a place that we hope many people will be able to feel they belong.  If the number of people queuing up to help us with the renovations is anything to go by, we must be off to a good start!

We have just launched a fundraising effort to help with the renovation of one of the “public” buildings on the property, part of which we are calling “the chapel”, which will serve as the prayer room.  There’s a page of information about it on our church website.  Click on the picture, take a look and see if you might like to be involved:

* An alouette is a “lark” in English – the feathered variety.

Cain and Esau fell into jealousy because while they were doing all that was humanly possible to earn God’s blessing, it seemed that their younger brothers received the blessing as a free gift.  It is not too much of a stretch to suggest that this same jealous spirit has infected the Arab nations of today with respect to Israel, and led to the irrational hatred that governs the relationship between these two peoples.

And yet historically and ethnically they are so very close.  The descendants of Ishmael and the descendants of Isaac are of the same stock.  They are both Semitic nations, but as a result of ancient fallings out they went their separate ways.  This painful history has divided them to the point that their languages and cultures now appear very different to the outsider.

During my two visits to Israel I have tried to go with an open heart toward both peoples, and the impression that they belong together is quite overwhelming.  They are like two pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, their destiny is intertwined.  The very air over Jerusalem is thick with the special affection that God has for both Arab and Jew.  One of my favourite Bible stories is where Esau and Jacob are reunited in Genesis 32 – 33.  When Jacob learns that Esau is coming to meet him with 400 men, he is terrified.  He divides his family and all his people into two groups, in the hope that if Esau and his army destroy one group, at least the other might get away.  During the night before the fateful meeting, Jacob has a powerful encounter with God.  He struggles with the angel of the Lord throughout the night, refusing to let him leave without blessing him.  For all his many faults, Jacob the younger brother was especially loved because he set the pursuit of God and his favour above every other priority.  It was through this night of struggle that Jacob received his new name, “Israel”, which means “one who strives with God”.

“Your name shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel, for you have wrestled with God and with men, and have prevailed.”  Genesis 32:28

With great fear and trembling, Israel goes out to meet Esau, who receives him in the most surprising way.  The story is worth quoting at some length:

But Esau ran to meet him and embraced him and fell on his neck and kissed him, and they wept. And when Esau lifted up his eyes and saw the women and children, he said, “Who are these with you?” Jacob said, “The children whom God has graciously given your servant.” Then the servants drew near, they and their children, and bowed down. Leah likewise and her children drew near and bowed down. And last Joseph and Rachel drew near, and they bowed down. Esau said, “What do you mean by all this company that I met?” Jacob answered, “To find favor in the sight of my lord.” But Esau said, “I have enough, my brother; keep what you have for yourself.” Jacob said, “No, please, if I have found favor in your sight, then accept my present from my hand. For I have seen your face, which is like seeing the face of God, and you have accepted me.  Please accept my blessing that is brought to you, because God has dealt graciously with me, and because I have enough.” Thus he urged him, and he took it.  Genesis 33:4 – 11

This is a powerful prophetic picture of the future.  A day is coming when the descendants of Israel will see the face of God in their Arab brothers, and fully embrace their identity as a people who are blessed in order to bless other nations.  In the same way the descendants of Esau (and Ishmael) will come to a point of accepting that God has favoured the Jews, and will willingly receive blessing from the hand of their “younger” brothers.  This will be a key to the restoration of all the nations, not only the Middle East.

Looking at the Middle East today, it seems totally naive to believe that this could ever happen.  But this is because we are looking in the wrong place.  To understand how this reconciliation could come to pass, we need to fix our eyes rather on Israel’s most illustrious son, Jesus of Nazareth, the one who said “salvation is of the Jews” (John 4:22)

Photo Credit: Tim Green aka atoach cc

Am I Charlie?

In France we are in the first week of “Post Charlie”.  #jesuischarlie is giving way to #onfaitquoi, in other words, “what do we do now?”  So far the characterising feature of most public discussion on the matter is confusion.  Am I Charlie, or am I not Charlie?  Is freedom of speech absolute or are there limits? Should increased security mean abandoning certain freedoms?  Is religion the problem?  Were the terrorists truly muslims?

In the midst of this confusion we need to get our head around the global reality of Islam.  My initial reactions to the tragic events of last week can be found in “We killed Charlie Hebdo” and “Ideas have consequences”, in which I propose that it is completely naive to say that these attacks had nothing to do with Islam, which is the public position of the French government.  The fact that the great majority of French Muslims condemn extreme jihadism does not alter the fact that this movement is consistent with Islamic doctrine.

This position is contested by those who would caution against saying that Islam is the problem, and the best recent article I have seen from this angle is from John Azumah, professor of theology at Columbia entitled Challenging Radical Islam.  His basic argument is that trying to draw a direct link between Islamic scriptures and terrorist events distorts the true nature of Islam.  While I don’t draw the same conclusion as he does, he raises some important issues.  He points out that the radical Islam is not characteristic of the whole religion, but springs rather from the Wahabist and Salafist schools, which consider the first three centuries of Islam as sacrosanct, and are suspicious of any Islamic teaching or doctrine from later periods.  The jihadist movements we know today, such as Al-Qaeda, IS, Boko Haram and others all appeal directly to the Wahabist interpretation of Islamic law, which makes it very simplistic to suggest that the recent violence has nothing to do with Islam.

But he then goes on to say that it is equally simplistic to suggest that these Jihadist groups represent the true face of Islam, on the basis that the terrorists violate the very law they claim to be following by taking it into their own hands, and not considering the very complex conditions required by Islamic law for the declaration of jihad.  Their rebellion against established Islamic governments is also a direct contravention of Islamic law, according to Azumah.

He argues:

Bear in mind that, in itself, quoting Islamic texts does not necessarily make one’s views and actions Islamic.

This is a very good point – does quoting the Bible necessarily make someone a Christian?  This raises an issue that Christians must face, as there are certain passages of our Scriptures that, when taken out of context, can also be used to justify barbaric behaviour.

Interestingly, sections of Azumah’s article have been removed since it was first published, including this point:

Those who argue that jihadi groups represent the “essence” of Islam actually reflect a very Western way of thinking. Wittingly or unwittingly, they presume a scripturalist interpretation of Islam, imagining that we can explain Islamic terrorism by drawing a straight line between authoritative texts and the actions of jihadists. To prove their point, these Islam-is-the-problem critics tend to link specific acts of jihadi groups to a string of references from Islamic scripture, traditions, legal texts, and Muslim scholarly opinions. Perversely, this sola scriptura approach is no different from the jihadists’ own “Qur’an and sunna alone” approach.

An opinion piece in the Washington Post argues that while there is nothing in the Qur’an about how to deal with blasphemers  the Bible is much more explicit:

Whoever blasphemes the name of the Lord shall surely be put to death. All the congregation shall stone him. The sojourner as well as the native, when he blasphemes the Name, shall be put to death.  Leviticus 24:16

(Thanks to Shevet Achim for the link to this article and thought-provoking commentary)

While there is no doubt that Islam has serious problems, I am challenged to be consistent in my thinking, and to compare apples with apples.  It is inconsistent to generalise about Islam by drawing a direct link between the Charlie killings and individual verses in the Qur’an when I am not willing for the Christian faith to be characterised by verses such as the blasphemy law in Leviticus.

So what should a Christian do about the hard sayings in the Torah, such as the verse above?  To be continued.

(Photo credit: InforJeunes Brabant Wallon)

The older son, on the other hand, was characterised by his search for his father’s approval through his work, and this demonstration of extravagant affection for his younger brother provoked extreme jealousy, similar to what we see in Esau particularly.  Even though their younger brothers were singled out to receive particular blessings, God never withdrew from Ishmael and Esau.  They were both sons of Abraham, and therefore both stood to receive the same inheritance as their younger siblings.  We see how Esau’s pride and jealousy morphed into anger against God, which led him to remove himself from God’s presence.  This is an important point – if we feel that God is distant, it is not God who has moved.  He remains accessible 100% of the time, but we often walk away.  The older brother missed out on the fulness of his father’s love and affection, because he didn’t embrace the fact that it was freely given, without conditions attached, and could not be earned.

If we go even further back in history we see this same older/younger brother dynamic playing out in Cain & Abel.  This is one of those Old Testament stories that people like to look at and say “oh that’s so unfair!”  God accepted Abel’s offering, but not Cain’s.  A superficial reading gives us the impression that Cain was just trying to do his best, but his best wasn’t good enough.  And that’s exactly the point.  Cain offered to God the fruit of his own labour of the soil, whereas Abel recognised that even his best efforts weren’t good enough to make an offering that was truly worthy of the Eternal One, so he made an offering of blood.  The significance of this is not the main point of this article and would take a lot of space to unpack, but suffice to say that blood represents the life that only God can give.  When blood is shed, God himself bears the cost, and the offering of animals was an object lesson for the Jewish nation to help them understand that there is only one solution for the sin that separates man from God, and that God himself had to provide that solution, as man is utterly incapable.  The Akedah – Abraham’s offering of Isaac – is an absolutely foundational event in Jewish history, which is a perfect illustration of this dynamic: God instructs Abraham not to lay a hand on his son, as he would provide the ram for the offering himself.  The idea that God required Abraham to sacrifice his son misses the whole point of the story.

There was no Jewish nation at the time of Abel, yet his sacrifice foreshadowed the temple system, and ultimately Jesus’ voluntary shedding of his blood to cover the sins of the world.  Cain’s reaction to his efforts not being accepted as a suitable offering provoked the same cycle of jealousy, anger and ultimately murder. The older brother failed to understand that the blessing of the younger brother was not a rejection of himself, but rather a signpost by which he also could discover the way to enter into God’s blessing and favour.

And this is where we come right back into the present and the torturous relationship between Arab and Jew, between the “older” and “younger” brothers.  Though “younger”, figuratively speaking, Israel was singled out for particular favour and blessing.  This has nothing to do with favouritism, and in no way suggests that the Jews are inherently superior to Arabs or any other nation, for that matter.  Jesus said “salvation is of the Jews” (John 4:22).  In the next post we will start looking at what that means, and how in all of these examples, Cain/Abel, Ishmael/Isaac, Jacob (Israel)/Esau and Arab/Jew, the key to the older brother’s peace, prosperity and fulfilment lies with the younger brother.

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Really?

Trying to dissociate the consequence from the idea that produced it in the interest of promoting unity is naive.  In the coming days every effort will be made by French politicians and the media to dissociate the terrible events of the last few days from Islam.  On one level this is quite understandable.  The soil of France was drenched with the blood of a century of civil war between two rival religions in the sixteenth century, and remarkably, five hundred years later, the memory of that is still raw.  There is a “never again” mentality which results in leaders who will say anything in an attempt to avoid an escalation of religious tension.

The intentions of Monsieur Hollande are undoubtedly noble.  His role as President is to unite, hence the call to a massive Republican march on Sunday that will probably see over 100,000 people in the streets of Paris, expressing their solidarity with the slain.

But what he says is not actually true.  These recent events have everything to do with Islam.  The three perpetrators of the killings were acting in a way that is entirely consistent with the commandments of the Qur’an.  It is estimated that there are over 160 references to jihad and the duty of the Muslim to eradicate unbelievers.

I will cast terror into the hearts of those who disbelieve. Therefore strike off their heads and strike off every fingertip of them. 8:12

The Qur’an, like the Bible, is open to widely varying interpretations.  But unlike the Bible in Christianity, it is not the only holy book in Islam.  There is an important concept in Islamic doctrine called abrogation, where later verses in the Qur’an replace earlier ones, and where the writings of later Islamic scholars, included in the Hadith, may be seen as carrying more weight.  This is how the great majority of Muslims (many of whom have very little familiarity with the contents of the Qur’an because reading it in any language other than Arabic is discouraged), manage to ignore the call to jihad, and how many French Imams are able to dissociate themselves with the actions of terrorists.

Muslims who do not wage jihad are peaceful, not because of their religion, but in spite of their religion.  The actions of the jihadists, on the other hand, is entirely consistent with the religious system they adhere to.  The idea that motivates them: the establishment of an Islamic theocracy in all of the nations of the world, through the destruction of all those who oppose it.  This is not some fringe doctrine.  It is a central concept of the Islamic system, even though it is quite true that the majority of Muslims do not adhere to it.

Isaac and Jacob are the fathers of the Jewish nation.  Ishmael and Esau are the fathers of other peoples of the Middle East (predominantly those we refer to as Arabs today), who many centuries later became Muslim.  Contrary to Jewishness, Islam is a religion, not a national identity.  Islam has superimposed itself upon many nations, and largely obliterated their ancient cultural identities.  The recent ravages upon archeological sites in Syria and Iraq at the hands of ISIS are clear examples of this cultural vandalism that is inherent to Islam (a criticism that could also be leveled at other religions, but that’s another topic).  As a result we often think of the terms “Arab” and “Muslim” as interchangeable, forgetting that a rich Arab cultural identity existed long before Islam came along in the 8th century.  We also forget that there are many Christian and secular Arabs who do not identify with Islam.

The roots of this identity crisis extend way back to Ishmael and Esau.  Both suffered rejection: Ishmael was repudiated by his stepmother, Esau missed out on the blessing that was his birthright as the older brother.  Esau’s case reveals how religion can stifle one’s true identity, in the same way that Islam stifles the Arab nations.  According to the well known story in Genesis 25, Esau “sold” his birthright as the older son to his younger brother Jacob in return for a bowl of soup.  The soup seemed like an easy solution to the immediate pressing need of assuaging his hunger.  Physical hunger is comparable to spiritual hunger – the hunger that people experience for what might be referred to as transcendence.  Whether we can put words on it or not, most of us yearn for a reality that is greater than our five senses and our intellect can perceive and understand.  This manifests itself in many different ways (Hollywood is an obvious place to start), but it all boils down to the fact that we are made for a relationship with God, who created us, and who is far beyond our ability to understand or put in a box.

The thing is that relationships are difficult.  They take time, effort, adaptation, patience.  We all need relationships, yet true and lasting relationships do not provide instant gratification.  If the gratification is instant, then it’s probably not the kind of relationship that we ultimately need.  True relationships do not depend only on us, therefore trust is required, and where there is trust there is also risk (some call it “faith”).

In a sense Islam (and religion in general) can be likened to Esau’s bowl of soup.  Prayer, almsgiving, fasting, pilgrimage and even jihad are all quite doable.  You don’t really need divine help to achieve them – they are quite within the realms of human possibility.  There are comparable activities in Christianity and other religions.  Accomplishing these religious activities can give us a temporary sense of feeling good about ourselves.  Even “secular religions”, such as environmentalism, have their lists of dos and don’ts: if I compost, ride my bike, sort my rubbish and refuse to eat at McDonalds then I can’t be a bad person.  In this way religion provides the same kind of instant gratification as Esau’s soup.

None of these activities are inherently bad (with the exception of the radicalised interpretation of jihad, which is clearly not accepted by many Muslims).  The problem is that an identity that is founded on what we do rather than who we are is very fragile.

The Judaic (and therefore Christian) traditions do not provide an easy road to transcendence.  The Torah calls for radical obedience and the constant pursuit of an intimate relationship with the Eternal, Almighty God.  This is the God who identifies himself with his children: he is the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.  Our identity is thus a filial one, determined by our relationship with our Father.  Jesus the Jew made this abundantly clear when he said “I and the Father are one”, and then prayed that his followers might be one with each other and with the Father just as he was (John 17).  This relationship is the context within which Jesus commanded his followers to accomplish works that are completely beyond the realm of human possibility, such as healing the sick and raising the dead.

In the next post we will develop further the concept that Isaac and Jacob represent an all out pursuit of God, while Ishmael and Esau represent instant gratification through religious activity.

I try to put myself in the shoes of a French Muslim.  If I were a Muslim I too would wish to identify with the victims.  But when such an attack is clearly a manifestation of Islamic extremism, I would find myself in a real quandary, as people may well be identifying me, rather, with the perpetrators.

In some quarters, identifying Muslims with such a barbarous act is almost seen as a more serious problem than the act itself.  In France it is hard not to have the impression that we are in the middle of a wave of senseless acts of murder in public places: first Dijon, then Tours, Nantes, and now Paris.  One of the most remarkable features of these events is how the first reaction of the media and many public figures is “il ne faut pas faire l’amalgame” – in other words, we mustn’t put Islam in the same basket as these “deranged extremists”.  Much is said about the supposed psychiatric problems of the perpetrators, on the flimsiest of evidence, and we see a parade of French people of North African extraction on the evening news at pains to distance themselves from these acts, and proclaiming again and again that Islam is a religion of peace.

This is starting to ring very hollow.  It is absolutely true that we mustn’t make an amalgam of today’s murderous act with Muslims in general, as many French Muslims are undoubtedly hurting as much as any French citizen trying to make sense of the senseless.   But it is simply wrong to say there is no connection between the events of today and Islam.

There is most certainly a connection. How naive of the reporter on tonight’s news to claim it was a terrorist act with “no religious motivation whatsoever”. These two killers were yelling Allahu Akbar as they made their getaway, an expression of worship, and then shouted in French for the benefit of anyone filming with a smartphone: We have avenged the prophet!  and We killed Charlie Hebdo!  This is the same prophet who commanded his followers to kill the infidel.  The infidels in question were caricaturists who dared to depict the aforementioned prophet in their newspaper.  Whether or not this was an acceptable or wise thing to do is a question worth debating, but one that I don’t intend to get into here.  In any case, today they paid for their decision with their lives.

It is no help at all to naively claim that there is no link between this kind of murderous barbarism and Islam.  The Islamic system sanctions what happened today.  This act is completely consistent with the demands of orthodox Islam.  According to Islamic morality, what these two Franco-Algerians did today was right.

It is not hatred to speak out against the Islamic system.  The comment of Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu that terrorism and “Islamophobia” in Europe are “interconnected”, effectively laying the blame for what happened today to those who criticise Islam, is totally indefensible.

It is time to start saying that while Muslims are welcome in Europe, indeed they are loved and respected members of society with a vital contribution to make, the Islamic system is not welcome. Islam is not an ethnic identity or a nationality, therefore criticising it cannot be racist.

A tree is judged by it’s fruit – Islam is not a religion of peace.

The psalmist touched on this when he wrote:

He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High will abide in the shadow of the Almighty. I will say to the Lord, “My refuge and my fortress, my God in whom I trust. Psalm 91:1 – 2

“The shelter of the Most High” and “the shadow of the Almighty” are among the many descriptions of heaven to be found in the Scriptures which show that the common view of heaven being the place we go when we die to be a gross oversimplification. The psalmist clearly believed that dwelling in “heaven” – in the shadow of the Almighty, was something to be experienced now. He also seems to indicate that a choice is required – we can only dwell in the shelter of the Most High if we choose to do so.

Another way of putting it is dwelling in God’s presence. God is in heaven – of that we can be certain. The Scriptures clearly indicate that it is normal for people to dwell in His presence. It follows then that, though on earth, we also in some sense can dwell in heaven. The Apostle Paul seems to indicate this when he writes:

God…raised us up with him and seated us with him (Christ) in the heavenly places. Ephesians 2:6

This is a present tense reality – there is no indication that we need to wait till death. It is also a spatial reality – heaven is a location, but where is it? We generally think of it as “up there somewhere” – Jesus ascended into heaven, and the heavenly Jerusalem comes down from heaven, so there is a notion of verticality. Yet many of the encounters with heaven that are recorded in the Scriptures actually happen on the earth.

What if heaven and earth occupied the same “space”? What if our four dimensions (height, width, depth and time) were an extension of a much greater multi-dimensional reality? If this is the case, most people in Western societies would be unaware of it. These multiple dimensions, or what the Bible might refer to as “the heavenly places” are blocked from our sight because of sin. However, the new norm that Jesus opened up for us at the cross is that we can now press into this reality and focus our spiritual sight in such a way that we learn to perceive it more and more as we grow in Him. This is an important aspect of “dwelling in the shelter of the Most High”.

God is a “fortress” for us in the sense that on his “ramparts” we have a protected vantage point from which to see spiritual realities, notably the spiritual forces of evil and their strategies. We see how they are constantly seeking to manipulate human affairs, and it is only as we dwell safely in the shadow of the Almighty that we are not duped by their many schemes.

There are many intersections between heaven and earth. When we draw near to God, we are in a very real sense “in heaven”. The book of Revelation shows us that the ultimate destiny of heaven is to be on (or at least close to) earth:

“Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. (Revelation 21:3)

Although this is not fully realised, we may live now in full anticipation of this future reality. The Lord’s prayer brings this future into the present:

May your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Matthew 6:10

The biblical concept of “righteousness” is primarily about identity, not  behaviour. While the biblical concept of “righteousness” includes behaviour, it is primarily about identity.  It was proposed in the previous article that being “righteous” is being like God. If we try to behave like God, we will fail.  We need his righteous identity to infuse our own so that righteous behaviour becomes the overflow of who we are.  This is what is meant in passages like Jeremiah 23:5, where God is called “the LORD our righteousness”.  Behaving righteously is becoming who we truly are, but paradoxically we don’t get there by trying to be righteous, but by coming to know Him who is truly righteous.

The problem with trying to be righteous is that we easily slip into a kind of performance-based religion where we set expectations for ourselves and others which, while not necessarily bad in and of themselves, make us judgmental and ultimately idolatrous.  Why idolatrous?  Because we turn our expectations and standards into the primary goal, and this replaces the only thing that can actually produce righteousness in us, which is worship of the Righteous One himself.

In Jesus we see the process of how a man becomes righteous.  The idea of Jesus ‘becoming’ righteous may seem incongruous – how can the Son of God ‘become’ like God?  Yet this is what the Scriptures clearly teach:

“Jesus learned obedience through what he suffered.  And being made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation to all who obey him.” Hebrews 5:8-9

He became perfect, but not through trying.  The closer he drew to his heavenly Father, the more like him he became.

Likewise, we become the righteousness of God, not by trying, but thanks to Calvary: what Christ suffered on our behalf.

For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.  II Corinthians 5:21

Walking in righteousness is something we learn, in the same way that Christ learnt it, through drawing close to God.  We acquire the reality of righteousness as we agree with God concerning what he says about us.  That’s basically what faith is, agreeing with God.  If God declares that I am righteous, then the road to righteousness cannnot begin with me analysing myself to see if I measure up, and dwelling on guilt and disappointment when I don’t.  This calls into question the truth of what God says about me, and ultimately makes him out to be a liar.  This is the point of the Garden of Eden narrative in Genesis 3.  Questioning God’s integrity will only lead us into sin, which is what separates us from God and makes righteousness completely unattainable.

Accepting God’s declaration that we are righteous, thanks to Christ, is completely counter-intuitive, and requires a substantial step of faith.  It requires abandoning completely my right to judge myself and others according to my own standards, and the egotistical sense of satisfaction derived from meeting these standards by my own efforts.  God’s standard of righteousness is so much higher than anything I could ever attain in and of myself, that my only hope is having Jesus’ own righteousness credited to my account.
Photo Credit: Alexander County EDC cc

Even though we have lost the word, we have retained the concept to a certain extent, when we talk of someone being “a good person”, a judgement that assumes the existence of “bad” people.  A “good” person is usually considered to be someone who is kind, generous, having a “good heart”, being fun to be around and so forth, values that are quite subjective, and have a lot to do with personal preference.  Someone who, for example, is extraordinarily generous, but who is taciturn and antisocial is not easily considered a “good” person, whereas a fun-loving extrovert with a great sense of humour but who cheats on his wife and fiddles his tax return may well be considered “good”.  So this distinction is not particularly useful.  One man’s good may be another man’s evil, so the only truly objective standard concerning whether a human being is “good”, or not, must come from outside of humanity.

In France there is a debate raging at the moment in educational circles concerning the teaching of “morality” in schools.  This has been touted as a solution for the increase in anti-social behaviour amongst young people.  As the influence of religion of any description upon public education is itself considered an evil, another standard must be found to determine what should be considered “moral”.  This is an extremely difficult exercise, because it is something that is nearly impossible to agree on.  Some educators have fallen back on the concept that training in morality should basically amount to showing young people how to arrive at their own conclusion about morality, and to live in a way that is consistent with their conclusions.  The total inefficacy of this approach barely requires comment (Kim Jong-un behaves in a way that is totally consistent with his vision of morality, so by this definition he is a “good” person).  Others  refer to an external standard, which is vaguely labelled “republican values”, but which in actual fact falls back on Judeo-Christian standards, thereby infringing la laïcité – the separation of church and state – which here is considered the cardinal sin, especially when it comes to public education.   French educators are thus faced with insuperable difficulties when it comes to the thorny question of teaching morality in schools.

The concept of righteousness is a biblical one, which in English we have divided into two words: ‘righteousness’ and ‘justice’, but they are in fact the same thing.  It basically means living ‘rightly’, the way that we were intended to live.  Being ‘right’ in this sense essentially means no more nor less than being like God.  This solves the moral subjectivity problem immediately, as the standard is external to humanity.  But it creates a whole new problem: it is a standard that is impossible to reach.  In God there is no darkness, no deceit, no selfishness, no double standard.  There is only good, all of the time.  And God created us to be like him – to live rightly, as he does.  If we have a problem with the idea of a Creator, then we necessarily have a conundrum when it comes to determining right and wrong, for by what standard can we judge, other than a subjective one?  We need an external standard.

To be continued…

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Beit Sahour – a view from Shepherd’s Field

“Peace on earth and goodwill to all men” has become a staple of Hallmark greeting cards at this time of year, but what does it mean? The first seems an unreachable goal, the latter an empty platitude. The reality is better than our wildest dreams.

There are so many wonderful truths inherent in this Christmas motto, not the least of which is the fact that angels exist.  Not the glittered cotton wool angels of Christmas kitsch, but real spirit beings who intervene in human affairs to bring important messages from heaven, such as that which came to the shepherds of Bethlehem. The main reason we have difficulty with this is that we have been brainwashed by that nonsensical claim that only that which can be seen truly exists.

I have never seen an angel, but this would be an absurd reason for me to claim that they don’t exist.  I haven’t ‘seen’ joy either, but I have felt its extraordinary power and seen its fruit.  And joy was the crux of the angels’ message: glad tidings of great joy.

What was there to be joyful about, at a time where the Jewish people were (again) suffering under the weight of an oppressive regime? The Roman authorities had no notion of the eternal importance of the land they had occupied, no sympathy for the aspirations of its native peoples, and no understanding of the role of the Jews to bring salvation to all nations.

The song of the angels came as a bright light in the midst of the darkness, and the words of their song echo to this day:

Glory to God in the highest and peace on earth among those with whom he is pleased.  (Luke 2:14 ESV)

This joyful song announces that peace is real: well-being, harmony, shalom – the state of everything being set to rights, and this kind of peace is our inheritance.  It also announces what every child yearns to hear from its father: “I am pleased with you.”  We don’t always recognise the truth hidden in this Christmas cliché as it has become so familiar.  To understand it we need to fast-forward thirty years to a crucial event in the life of Jesus, when he was baptised in the Jordan by his cousin John.  When he came up out of the water, a voice was heard from heaven:

You are my beloved son; with you I am well pleased. (Luke 3:22 ESV)

Hidden behind all the translation variants is a single concept in the original language, that of God being pleased.  So pleased with humankind, in fact, that he begins to consummate his eternal plan to dwell on earth with the children he created.  In view of the extreme difficulty that men and women experience trying to understand extra-dimensional heavenly realities,  he left his heavenly home and took on flesh and blood, becoming like us so that we might relate to this good, good news:

He is pleased with me. His favour is on me.

He desires that we should embrace our inheritance in this peaceful world where God and man dwell together.  This is joy.  Like angels, it is a reality that remains largely unseen, yet as we reach out for it in faith we can experience it more and more.

A Saturday afternoon walk on the edge of Saint Herblain, a town adjoining Nantes (where our son was born in fact) took us on a three hour circuit meandering through marshes, sunken lanes, woods, pastures, market gardens and charming little rural hamlets, giving the circuit it’s name: Les Villages. Hard to believe such a landscape exists only 10 minutes drive from our house. Click on the link below to view the photos.

What I love most about this kind of walk are the vestiges of a bygone age that you just stumble across. We had heard there was a ruined mill somewhere on the circuit, and sure enough we found not only the mill but the remains of the old farmhouse attached to it. The mill goes by the same name as another mill a few kilometres away that has been restored: le Moulin du Tertre Tombé.  A fire had obviously destroyed the roof at one point, and the ruined, blackened walls are largely covered in ivy and other invading greenery that will ultimately cover all traces of the life that was once lived out here by some unknown farmer and his family. A cursory hunt on the Internet didn’t yield any interesting information about the story behind this haunting place. It’s odd to think of the people who lived out their lives here, possibly through several generations. While this ruined house was once the centre of their existence, any connection they once had with the place has now been obliterated. The stone walls will stand for some time longer as a silent witness to the life that was once led here, but any record they may communicate of what went on is indecipherable to passers by enjoying a Saturday afternoon walk, whose only means of peering into the past is their imagination.

It makes you think about what we invest in in this life, and what kind of legacy we are leaving. Things that seem quite permanent, even “set in stone” may be much more ephemeral than we like to think, and the things we are building may be quickly forgotten.

God is love

God is light

We can’t experience communion with God if we are living in darkness, because God dwells in light.  The darkness is the place where we hide.  In their shame, Adam and Eve hid themselves in the garden, so that God might not find them.  ‘Walking in the light’ means being open to being known, being willing to live transparently.

Walking in the light refers not only to our relationship with God, but also with one another.

But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin.  I John 1:7

Living in purity means living in the light, which in turn means that we need to live together.  The Bible nowhere hints at a sanctification that is solitary.  The strategy of the enemy is to discourage us in our relationships so that we distance ourselves from one another, depriving ourselves of the protection and encouragement of friendships.  The lies of the accuser are manifold: they don’t like me; we’re not on the same wavelength; no one understands me; there’s no place for me in that group etc.

If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.  I John 1:8-10

To be pure,  we need to confess our sins, our weaknesses, our battles.  For the apostle John it was clear that confession was not only a private affair to be transacted between God and me.  If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.  (I John 1:9).  The context of this verse is the brotherly love of the Christian community; we must confess to one another.  And not only our battles.  Why not also confess or declare our vision, our desires, our dreams and our projects?  But confession can only happen in the context of relationships built on trust.  And trust needs to be built.

Living in the light means living in communion: not only with Christ, but also with my brothers and sisters.  To remain in the light, we need one another.  Whoever loves his brother abides in the light, and in him there is no cause for stumbling.  (I John 2:10).

No cause…!

But I have been disappointed so many times!  How can I trust?

That pain can be real.  But like any healing, the wounds of disappointment are healed by faith.  Jesus said: you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.  (John 8:32).  The truth that frees us from our disappointments in relationships is the following:

But whoever keeps his word, in him truly the love of God is perfected. By this we may know that we are in him.  (I John 2:5)

And again:

There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear.  (1 John 4:18)

The love of God is perfected in the one who keeps His word.  Who is the one that keeps the word?  The one who is born again into the kingdom, as a child of the King.  That is, the Christian brother or sister next to me.

‘A perfected love’, even though it is still in process.  This is a declaration of faith concerning our brothers and sisters, concerning what they are becoming.  If I judge my brother over what is lacking in his love, my thoughts are not aligned with the thoughts of God.  The only true love is that which comes from God – and this is the love that God has put in the heart of every believer.  I must therefore declare by faith that the love of my brother or my sister is perfected, because it comes from God.  Perhaps I don’t yet see the full manifestation of this love, but I see that it is a work in progress, and that perfect love is indeed present.

We are destined to be people who love as God loves. God frequently expresses this love through people.

Love believes all things!  (1 Corinthians 13:7).  So I refuse to imagine ulterior motives, veiled criticisms, accusing thoughts.  By faith I can declare that as this person is a child of God, who walks in the light, their love is perfected, so I can trust, and leave the results in the hands of the Father.

Is this easy?  No.  But God never asks anything of us without equipping us for the task.

If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all.  (Romains 12:18)

Although Jesus may be the only way to God, there is not only one way to Jesus.  This weekend I got out of my denominational comfort zone and played in a worship band for a large “ecumenical” healing conference, organised by a Catholic organisation by the name of “Arise Shine”.  I put the “e” word in inverted commas as it is a very loaded term in some circles, but as used by the organisers a simple reference to the fact that although the attendance is mostly Catholic, the speakers are from both Catholic and Evangelical Protestant circles.

Years ago I read a book entitled Unfamiliar Paths, written by a Baptist pastor about his journey in mentoring some young secular French guys who were awakened to the reality of Jesus, and their immediate reaction was to want to attend Mass.  Not without some degree of soul-searching, this pastor went against all his cultural and denominational conditioning, and encouraged these young guys by accompanying them to Mass.  He ended up being invited by the local priest to teach a series of Bible studies in his parish as an evangelical pastor.  One of his conclusions was that as a Protestant minister working in Catholic Europe, it is absolutely essential to be very intentional about how you position yourself with regards to the majority religion.  Although I was very struck by this book at the time, I’m afraid I put it in the “too hard basket”, and for want of any genuine opportunities to do anything about it, I have effectively ignored the issue until quite recently.

For years I have been saying “the church is bigger than we think”, and I have been aware of renewal happening in the Catholic church, but have never had the opportunity to engage with this renewal until fairly recently.  We have had the joy of having practising Catholic friends regularly attending some of our meetings, and one thing that has really struck me about them is their passion for worship.  But although we have frequently “invited them to our place” so to speak, until this week-end I had never “been to their place”.

Now, even with my limited experience, I suspect that this conference is not necessarily typical, and I’m not jumping to any conclusions as a result of one week-end, but what I saw really impressed me.  Sitting behind my piano on the stage I had an excellent view of what was going on in the meetings: a couple of thousand people perhaps, hands raised in passionate worship, and the presence of God was so tangible you could virtually see the Holy Spirit coming down upon people and doing his work.  From the very first chord we played there was a rush of young people and children to the front of the stage dancing and singing their lungs out to Jesus.  I even saw people in wheelchairs dancing.  I thought to myself that this didn’t really fit my stereotypical vision of Catholic worship.

Another thing that struck me was how Jesus-centred the preaching was.  I kept listening for something that would relegate Jesus to an inferior status to Mary (another ingrained stereotype perhaps?), and heard nothing to that effect.  Was it because of the “ecumenical” nature of the gathering, or is this normal?  The priests in their robes seemed to quote as easily from Protestant as from Catholic sources, the book tables were absolutely laden with books by evangelical protestant authors, and many of the worship team and several of the speakers were “Protestant” (although what we were “protesting” about was not immediately clear).  I couldn’t help but search my memory for the last time I was at an evangelical conference where there was a Catholic speaker, or even a single Catholic book on the book tables, but my search was in vain.

There was no sign of priests dominating the proceedings.  Most of the organisers and the totality of the prayer ministry team (a very large group for such a huge gathering) were “lay” people – with an even balance of men and women (the MC of every meeting was a woman).  Everything was superbly organised and orderly – yet totally charismatic in expression.  It has been a long time since I was at a gathering where such a bold invitation was given for cancer sufferers to come forward for prayer for healing.  Naturally the priests led the eucharist, and their language is very different to what I am used to.  However, you would have to really stretch what they said about the bread and wine to find even a shred of the doctrine of transubstantiation (a classic stumbling block for Protestants).  Of course I couldn’t see what was going on in people’s heads, and on this occasion I didn’t feel at liberty to take the communion myself, but I was struck by the notion of the eucharist being a sacrifice of praise, not so much offering Jesus all over again, but offering ourselves as “living sacrifices” of praise and thanksgiving.

I was left with the sensation of “what have I been missing all this time”!  How can I have lived in this Catholic nation for 13 years without knowing that this existed?  Well, actually I did know, but it’s one thing to know something on an intellectual level, and quite another to experience it.  There is a time for everything though, and it’s never too late.

I saw the Lord seated on a throne, high and exalted, and the train of his robe filled the temple.  Isaiah 6:2

Still making my way through the chronological Bible, and we’ve arrived at my favourite book among favourite books.  How to describe the book of Isaiah?  It is majestic, vast, a world within a world, and full of hope in a way that makes you want to dance.  It is also mysterious in parts, and you get the feeling there are bits that you’re missing.  This is quite a normal reaction, for two reasons.  Firstly, it does not stand alone, but is situated within a library of prophetic books that provide context and clarification.  And secondly, as with all prophetic books, it announces future events that will not be completely understood until they actually come to pass.  A perfect interpretation of Isaiah is not possible this side of the accomplishment of those events, no matter how many careers have been spent dissecting this book, rehashing its chronology, and seeking to prove that it couldn’t have all been written by the same person.  Jesus himself quoted from all sections of the book, and refers to the whole as being the work of Isaiah, so that’s good enough for me.

A curious thing about the Bible is that on the one hand we read “No one has ever seen God” (John 1:18), and yet we read of many occasions in both Testaments of people who did see God, and Isaiah is one of them.  The continuation of this verse in John gives a clue to help resolve the apparent discrepancy:

No one has ever seen God, but God the One and Only, who is at the Father’s side, has made him known.  John 1:18

I think it is highly likely that the person that Isaiah saw was this same “God the One and Only who is at the Father’s side”.  We have trouble with the idea that it was in fact Jesus that Isaiah saw, because he said “my eyes have seen the King, the LORD Almighty” – “LORD” being the convention for translating the Hebrew name for the one true God – YHWH.  We automatically associate YHWH with God the Father, not the Son – and yet with other divine appearances in the Old Testament, where God has obviously appeared to people in human form, we see that expressions like “the angel of the LORD” and “LORD” are used interchangeably.  This makes sense when we see how, later in the gospel of John, Jesus reveals his unity with the Father in his prayers for the disciples when he says “you are in me and I am in you” (John 17:21).  At another point he actually says “I and the Father are one” (John 10:30 – the unity of God is a major theme in John).

We should not deduce that God is not wanting to be seen, as if he holds himself aloof.  It is more likely that as human beings we simply could not cope with seing the glory of the Father – it would kill us.  Jesus, however, has been seen – not only as a regular man, but also in his glorified form, and it is probable that this is who Isaiah is looking at in chapter 6 of his book.

Some other interesting clues:

Isaiah realises that the person he sees before him is the King (Isaiah 6:5) – the subject of the King is elaborated on repeatedly in Isaiah’s writings.

He hears the voice of God saying, “Whom shall I send?   And who will go for us?”  This seems an odd case of pronoun confusion that we should stop and ponder.  We could just pass it off as a transcription error, but I think we have something more significant here.  Muslims and some Jews are offended when Christians talk about God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit, because they imagine we are talking about three gods, which conflicts with the concept of God being one:

Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one.  (Deuteronomy 6:4)

Some Muslims carry the misunderstanding even further, suggesting that the Christian “Trinity” refers to God, Mary and Jesus – they can be forgiven for this confusion in light of centuries of Church doctrine that over-emphasises Mary.

But the point is that Christians can be 100% in agreement with Jews that God is one.  And Jesus the Jew also taught this very clearly.  When he says I and the Father are one, we can hear the echo of the Shema – Deuteronomy 6:4.  There is no division in God, which is why we should not be surprised at the apparent “pronoun confusion”.

God is both “I” and “us”.  Jesus could be considered the great apostle.  Apostle simply means “sent one”.  As the great Apostle, he sends other apostles.  This is clearly what he is doing as he commissions his followers at the end of the gospels: “Therefore go and make disciples of all nations…” (Matthew 28:19).  He is the great sender, and he is the one that we see sending Isaiah, the “I” of Isaiah 6:8.

But the pre-incarnate Jesus is not alone in this.  Although he is the one that does the sending, he sends on behalf of the “us”: God – Father, Son and Holy Spirit in conversation.  We see the same dynamic at the creation, where God said “Let us make man in our own image.”  Genesis 1:26

Man can and does see God.  Personally I have not had that experience, but I have no doubt that it happens.  There are precedents in the Scriptures, and I hear regular stories of people who see Him in dreams and visions.  God has his own reasons for revealing himself in this way at certain times and places, but it is in no way a prerequisite for faith:

Blessed are those who have not seen, and yet have believed.  John 20:29

It is an allotment that is situated only about 50 metres from our house.  We naively imagined just having a bit of dirt to plant a few tomatoes and lettuces, so what we actually got fits into the “abundantly more than all we asked or imagined” category.

110 m2 of jungle!

On that first day we proudly opened the gate with our shiny new key, and were immediately welcomed by a charming lady in her 80s who has been gardening here for the last 30 years, and she took it upon herself to show us around our inheritance.  Our jaws dropped when we discovered what we had let ourselves in for – our veggie patch had suddenly morphed into a market garden, dauntingly covered in a tangled mess that would not have looked out of place in the Amazon.  But, we thought merrily, it’s OUR mess, so we got stuck in.

Down on the farm

After poring over garden books and the impressive array of seeds, tools and various products that are supposedly vital for making your garden grow, I was feeling totally bewildered.  Then I lost my highly technical planting plan that I had spent ages working out, so in the gave up on anything remotely systematic and just started planting stuff.  We haven’t even finished clearing the whole plot, but decided just to get something in the ground anyway as summer has already got off to a teetering start (lot’s of wind, drizzly, and not particularly warm).

The domain begins to take shape

Most of the plants we have put in so far have been given to us.  The other gardeners are so friendly, and have been enthusiastically growing seedlings for some weeks – more than they could ever use themselves, so they’ve passed things onto us.

Tomatoes that we are trying very hard not to kill

Bean teepee - I was asked today if this was an exotic New Zealand custom...

Trainee salads

We decided to keep the poppies

It’s been years that we’ve been wanting to get into vegetable gardening, but with our little courtyard at home it seemed like an impossibility.  Maintaining such a big plot is going to require a bit of a change in daily routine, but we’re up for the challenge.

We need to be especially circumspect about saying “so-and-so gets it right / wrong” when the so-and-so in question lived in another time and another culture. But at the risk of sounding arrogant, I would like to suggest that Bildad got it wrong.

For one thing, most people have heard of Job, but next to no one has heard of his fair-weathered friend Bildad. If Bildad had got it right, we might have heard more about him. Not that relative anonymity is necessarily proof of getting it wrong, but take a look at what he said, as he was berating Job for being a rotter who deserved everything he got, and worse:

How then can a man be righteous before God? How can one born of woman be pure? If even the moon is not bright, and the stars are not pure in his eyes, how much less man, who is but a maggot – a son of man, who is only a worm! Job 25:4-6

Bildad is not exactly what you would call an optimistic humanist. His basic view seems to have been that there was no such thing as a “good” man, and that basically we are no better than maggots or worms. This same belief has been rehashed many times throughout the ages in a variety of philosophies and religions. But there is something fundamentally wrong with it. Job, in spite of his pain, also recognised that Bildad had rather lost the plot:

Who has helped you utter these words? And whose spirit spoke from your mouth? Job 26:4

Whose indeed?

For one thing, man can be righteous. Why should we find that statement so heretical? The first man and the first woman were created righteous, and presumably continued to be so until they disobeyed. Jesus was righteous, and unlike his first forbears he never ceased to be. Job himself was referred to as a “blameless and upright man” (Job 1: 1).

Furthermore, even a superficial reading of the New Testament clearly indicates that making man righteous is one of the central purposes of God’s programme. Yes, the psalmist says “there is no one righteous, not even one” (Psalm 14:1-3), and the apostle Paul validates this verse by quoting it in Romans (3:10). But this undeniable fact is a distorsion of God’s original intention for humankind.

Many Christians perceive themselves as maggots, and approach God on this basis. When we go to God, beating our breasts and saying “woe to me the worst of sinners”, we are acting like maggots. But this is not how God views us.

Many passages in the Scriptures show us that humankind is the pinnacle of God’s creation. We are the only one of God’s creatures that He looked upon and said “very good”, the only one made in His image, the only one that God sent his Son to die for. Humanity is a mirror, reflecting the glorious light of the face of God to the whole of creation.

But Man has been lied to, by one we may refer to as the lord of the maggots, the one whose spirit spoke from the mouth of Bildad (Job 26:4). Our greatest disobedience has been to believe the maggoty lord’s false picture of our identity, rather than the true picture. This true picture we see most clearly in the person of Jesus Christ, who is the example par excellence of what it is to be truly human, truly bearing the image of the Eternal God. Accepting the maggot and worm falsehood is what produces the unrighteous behaviour that separates us from God and prevents us from being who He made us to be.

Job’s “friends” accused him of the most dire of sins, in what can only be termed an adventure in missing the point. In their view of the world, suffering has only one cause: the sin of the sufferer. This would seem to be justice, but Job realised that it could not be true, because of his deep and unshakeable conviction that God is not only just, but merciful also. Nevertheless Job’s arguments seem to be stuck in a similar rut. At the risk of grossly oversimplifying, Job’s theology of suffering echoes that of Bildad and the others: suffering is the result of sin, but I haven’t sinned, so why am I suffering?

I will never admit that you are in the right; till I die I will not deny my integrity. I will maintain my righteousness and never let go of it; my conscience will not reproach me as long as I live. Job 27:5-6

Job understood that he was neither a worm nor a maggot. He understood that God valued him as a friend (Job 29:4), but his great dilemma was that God no longer seemed to fit within the confines of the theological box he had placed him in.

In order to get it right, Job will need a revelation of what God is really like, and that’s exactly what comes next in the story.