Cruciformity

One of my friends is looking to plant a church in a part of Sydney known for its strong advocacy of Gay rights and for its dominant Gay community. Somehow, the question of the Bible’s teaching on Homosexuality arose and, in his attempt to articulate a Christian position, they took him to be a bigotted, fundamentalist ignoramus. The result has been a furious storm possibly resulting in the local Council actually banning his Church group from using the local community centre for their meetings, leaving the Council open to a law suit. You can read more about it in today’s Daily Telegraph here. I just wanted to post a few reflections on this.

First, care is needed by Christians in their communication of the Christian message. I’m struck by the sensitivity of this issue. My friend isn’t a chump when it comes to explaining things, and so it strikes me that Christians have to be extra careful about how they respond to avoid being quickly discarded or blown completely out of proportion.

The way to achieve this, I think, is a constant retreat to the greater context of the Christian message. The main things need to remain the main things. The passages of Scripture are not to be avoided, dodged or belittled, but neither are they to be construed apart from the God of love and truth revealed in Jesus. The context of Leviticus, Deuteronomy and Romans alike is a love story of which the aggravating verses are part of a chapter. A sensitive response will appeal for people to keep reading! God has loved the world at great self-expense.

A corollary of this, and this is undoubtedly not a criticism of my friend, is that the context of the Christian message extends to Christian behaviour. The medium is the message, and so the message of Jesus requires lives that are worthy of the calling that we’ve received.

Secondly, I’m saddened that the Council is so willing to prevent my friend and his community bringing them great blessing. The ideas that these guys have sound great and I think that locals would actually really love them. They’ve got a genuine love and care for the people that live there and a deep commitment to community. The extent to which they’re going out of their way to think through ways of benefitting the community is indisputably lovely!

Thirdly, I’m angered and confused by distortions of the truth. That the media have severely twisted the intentions of my friend’s group, is evidenced by the conspicuous addage “allegedly” and the complete lack of supporting evidence. This angers me but isn’t confusing in itself as I understand that it’s quite common.

What continues to be confusing to me is the deep hatred that so many people have of Christians, Christianity and ‘the Church’. I can understand that there are a number of people that have had poor experiences in Church communities that are difficult to forgive. That I can understand. But a true representation of Christianity surely cannot be reduced to these experiences. When similar evils occur both within and without the church, doesn’t it make more sense to conclude that there is a problem with People, of whom Christians are a subset? I have personally experienced great good and great evil within the church, but this only affirms for me the way that (to quote Alexander Solzhenitsyn) “the line between good and evil passes through each one of us.”

I’ll be praying that the ‘thorough investigation’ hinted at in the article will be give my friend a good chance to explain the vision for the Church and that he’s given an open and thoughtful audience at the Council.

That the Council and much of Sydney’s broader population have over-reacted is evident in the comments in the article cited above. Just flick through the comments in the article to see how much hatred is generated around this issue! I’ve seen obscene video footage of pseudo-Christian groups in the US that explicitly hate Gays and Lesbians but what evidence is their of such hatred in Australia?

I just wanted to run a quick question by you. What happens when we use the word ‘immutability’ to describe God? I’ve got a eight ideas, but I’d love to hear what you think.

1. People don’t know what it means. It’s a word that has been used for centuries a way of describing God as ‘unchanging’. If you didn’t know that much it’s a case in point, but if you did, what does ‘unchanging’ mean?

2. People that DO know what it means often have different ideas of what it means. For some people immutable will refer to God’s  commitment to his promises and true-ness to his character. Others will take a more philosophical take on it, that it means an unchanging essence or being.

3. It CAN and often DOES mean what the bible says about God. If we were to spend time understanding passages like Num 23:19 and Mal 3:6-7 in their contexts, we would deepen our appreciation of how different God is to us; he’s unchanging and constant in his love toward us and in keeping his promises.

4. It CAN and sometimes DOES locate our discussion of the idea in the history of Christian thought. This is a very important point since we need to make a priority of learning from our forefathers in the faith. We have much to learn. But it has to be conceded that this could only obscurify the meaning of a term. I don’t know the history of ‘immutability’ but it isn’t always clear how words are used by different authors at different periods of recorded history, and how meaning has shifted in time.

5. It’s a partial descriptor of God. While it can describe a truth about God,  it will never describe all of what God is like by itself and so it needs further explanation. I guess we can’t ask too much of words, they can only do what they can do.

The result of these four things is the following:

6. It’s seldom necessary. If someone asked you a question about God’s ‘immutability’ you can’t ignore the word. But if they don’t, you could quite easily use other words to say what you mean, and probably more directly. That is, …

7. There are clearer ways of saying the same thing. For example, Karl Barth proposes an alternative - ‘constancy’ (CD 2/1 , 492-3). God isn’t unpredictable or unreliable like we often are, his love and character towards us is faithful and trustworthy and so he’s ‘constant’. This language is pretty easy to understand, and it’s less technical. Finally, …

8. ‘Immutability’ can create the picture of an abstract or impersonal God. This is a big one for me, although I find it difficult to articulate. ’Immutability’ stirs in me a degree of resentment. It seems to deny proper theological method, which begins with humbly and prayerfully receiving Jesus, revealed in the Scriptures by faith and obedience. I keep feeling that it jumps straight to putting God into an ancient philosophical discussion, or at least into a theory to be pondered, poked and prodded. So it might also be that it sounds rude. Like talking about someone without admitting that they’re in the room with you. God is kept at the distance of a proposition and so removed from the history of salvation revealed in the Holy Scriptures. That’s my gut reaction anyway…

So, it does have meaning. But my question is, why use it when there are better ways of saying the same thing?