Cruciformity

I’ve been playing my guitar and listening to music a fair bit recently. My friend Nick has been lending me CDs that he thinks that I’d like, and he gets it right most of the time. Anyway, the latest is Nick Drake’s Pink Moon and it is such a beautiful album (thanks Nick!). If you’re looking for something down-beat or something to play in the background, this would be well worth investigating. This was published back in 1972, his third and final album before he died aged 26 just two years later. The recording captures his voice and guitar so wonderfully, his songs are varied and interesting. It’s just great stuff.

His is a sad story, and his lyrics reflect this. You could say that he told it like he saw it, and for someone who suffered depression and sleeplessness and died by over-medication well before his time, I guess he’s not a sunny-side-up kind of guy. Nevertheless, his poetry is beautiful, and matches his music perfectly. You need to listen to the whole album when you get the chance.

Please have a listen to track 6: Things behind the Sun

Apologies. My blogging resolve has been waning recently due to a hike in the study load.

Just to give you an indication about the things that are giving me kicks in these busy times, check the tastey fonts available for free download on the SBL website. Greek and Hebrew. You know you want it!

Oh, of course, my ‘other interest’ is the very poorly timed World Cup, you’ve probably heard of it.

Analytical by day, fanatical by night.

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?

At church we’ve been working through Revelation and I had the privelege of preaching on a section on Sunday. I wanted to mention this because I was incredibly rewarded. And it wasn’t one of the purple passages that people often find encouraging and hear preached on. Rather it was chapters 12-14 with a big dragon and a pregnant woman standing on the moon.

The point I wanted to make was that despite how scary Revelation is, with all of the seemingly random symbols, it really rewards a slow and careful read. Make it the next book you read in your quiet time, read it slowly, looking up the cross-references in your bible margins!  You won’t be disappointed.

I’ve got three tips and a book recommendation. If you’re looking for a book on Revelation then I highly recommend Richard Bauckham’s book, The Theology of the Book of Revelation. Anything by Bauckham is worth reading, in my opinion. It’s a thin book, well written, historically informed and compellingly cohering.

Here are 3 tips that I started my sermon with on Sunday night:

1. It’s about Jesus

Don’t be distracted, it’s about Jesus all the way through, with the victory of the cross, the blood of the lamb, forming a central image all the way through. Take it from John’s introduction:

The revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave him to show his servants what must soon take place. He made it known by sending his angel to his servant John,  who testifies to everything he saw—that is, the word of God and the testimony of Jesus Christ. (Rev 1:1-2)

2. It’s for our blessing.

This book isn’t meant to scare us, or confuse us. It’s not meant to be a cryptic crossword or Sudoku to solve. It’s written for the blessing of the reader. Again, take it from John’s introduction:

Blessed is the one who reads the words of this prophecy, and blessed are those who hear it and take to heart what is written in it, because the time is near. (Rev 1:3)

3. It uses Apocalyptic Language.

Apocalyptic Language is picture language used for it’s heightened expression. The images that illustrate this to us best are those 20th Century War Propanda posters. They contain strange symbols that might be hidden in a culture now past and difficult to retrieve. But once those symbols are attained (and I’m convinced that many of them are attainable from the Old Testament) then the message is not only plain, but it’s screamed at you from the pages you’re reading.

If we save ourselves from an overly-literal reading of the text and allow Revelation it’s symbols and exaggerated forms of imagery, then what results is an acutely relevant call for Christians to ‘overcome’ and follow the lamb on the throne wherever he goes!

Something deep in me needs you to know that the team I go for in the English Premier League - Tottenham Hotspur - absolutely pantsed their rivals Arsenal. From all accounts it was a very special night. I would love to see the reply. For the moment, though, we’ll have to make do with this footage of an AMAZING goal by Danny Rose ON HIS DEBUT for Spurs. Well done, young man. And well done, Spurs.

I’ve been back at College this week and it’s already taking its toll. There’s a 2 Timothy 1 exegetical, a Zechariah 8 exegetical, Australian Church History research, and, of couse, my Project reading. Add to that the regular lecture readings and bible study prep. And then, I’m preaching on the middle section of Revelation over the next few weeks.

All of this suggests that I may have been a little bit relaxed in my holiday study plans. There’s my bean bag, sitting in the corner with a guilty look on its zipper.

But, in case you were worried, I have blogging resolve.

I’ve had a good (though eclectic) selection of music to get me through a few long days. Pink Floyd’s Wish You Were Here. Ray LaMontagne’s Till The Sun Turns Black. And I’ve had flashback to Daft Punk’s Homework. I (mis)spent some time on Youtube this afternoon and found this YouTube Daft Punk goodie:

I’ve had one of those beautiful “ahh!” moments tonight, my eyes opening to see just a little bit more of God’s vision for his people in his world.

What does the Apostle Peter mean by the following sentences?

“Dear friends, I urge you, as aliens and strangers in the world, to abstain from sinful desires, which war against your soul. Live such good lives among the pagans that, though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day he visits us.” (1Pet 2:11-12 NIV)

How are we as Christians to relate to the world around us? Do we reinforce a distinct identity from the world? Or do we embrace them - becoming socially and politically winsome?

This week’s reading for Social Ethics was an article by Miroslav Volf call Soft Difference where he considers these questions. It’s opened my eyes to 1 Peter and to the way I relate to the rest of the world.

Volf observes in 1 Peter a vision of the Christian life in a community of believers that sums what people mean by “in the world but not of the world”. These Christians find their purpose and significance in God, living without the pressures from the world around them to break away for survival or to accomodate their beliefs for approval. They have a quiet and gentle confidence in God’s future for them. The boundaries they form around them are not hard in order to isolate themselves, nor absent in order to be absorbed in world, but soft. Not soft as in weak. But soft as in ‘not hard’. Not born from fear or indignance, but soft and born from above into a Christ-given hope and love (1:3). What results is a Christian community refreshingly different, born from above, properly outrageous and winsome to the world around and about.

It’s difficult to reproduce the profundity of it, but here is section that I thought hit a nerve for me as I try to relate properly with my neighbours:

The distance from society that comes from the new birth into a living hope dies not isolate from society. For hope in God, the Creator and Savior of the whole world, knows no boundaries. Instead of leading to isolation, this distance is a presupposition of mission. Without distance, churches can only give speeches that others have written for them and they only go places where others lead them. To make a difference, one must be different. (p24).

What is true Freedom? The modern way of thinking basically suggests that true freedom is having lots of choices. So how’s this for an idea? An ancient way (including an ancient Christian way) of viewing freedom is that true freedom means less choice, not more! I know, it doesn’t sound right. Have a read of a section of David Bentley Hart’s book about deluded Atheists. While plugging Hart’s book yesterday, I was reminded of a section of the book that sums this thought up nicely. Have a read:

It should not be forgotten that the concept of freedom that most of us take for granted, at that is arguably modernity’s central “idea,” has a history. In the more classical understanding of the matter, whether pagan or Christian, true freedom was understood as something inseparable from one’s nature: to be truly free, that is to say, was to be at liberty to realize one’s proper “essence” and so flourish as the kind of being one was. [...] We become free, that is, in something of the same way that (in Michelango’s image) the form is “liberated” from the marble by the sculptor. This means we are free not merely because we can choose, but only when we have chosen well. For to choose poorly, through folly or malice, in a way that thwarts our nature and distorts our proper form, is to enslave ourselves to the transitory, the irrational, the purposeless, the (to be precise) subhuman. To choose well we must ever more clearly see the “sun of the Good” (to use the lovely Platonic metaphor), and to see more clearly we must continue to choose well; and the more we are emancipated from illusion and caprice, the more perfect our vision becomes, and the less there is really to choose. We see and we act in one unified movement of our nature toward God or the Good, and as we progress we find that to turn away from that light is ever more manifestly a defect of the mind and will, and ever more difficult to do. Hence Augustine defined the highest state of human freedom not as “being able not to sin” [...] but as “being unable to sin” [...]: a condition that reflects the infinite goodness of God, who because nothing can hinder him in the perfect realization of his own nature, is “incapable” of evil and so is infinitely free. (Atheist Delusions, 24-25).

College missions are always like this: crazy and very fruitful. It was great to be dragged away from the books and reminded of the bigger picture - God’s purposes in mission. One of my jobs was to sit on a panel at a men’s discussion night on the New Atheism of Richard Dawkins and the like. Without knowing anything about the region we went to I presumed Atheism was a common issue for the people living there and so I put some effort into looking into the topic.

We went to Merrylands, near Parramatta, the geographical centre of Sydney, home to Lebanese, Sudanese, Chinese, Indian, Croatian, Russian, Kuwaiti, just to name a few of the cultural backgrounds represented there. My doorknocking opportunities told me what you would suspect - most people there believe in a god. Given the Hindu population, if you did the stats, you’d probably find that the average was more than one god per household.

Now, this isn’t to say that the minister didn’t have his finger on the pulse, though - he was just measuring a different pulse. Atheism remains an issue for most of the Anglo population and - I discovered - it’s an issue that many from the younger generation were picking up from school, uni and the workplace. The New Atheism has caused shockwaves in some areas, and it got no response in other areas.

In any case, Atheism was an issue for me as I grew up and this gave me the opportunity to flick through some recent material on the topic and I found some average stuff and some great stuff. On the one hand, Richard Dawkin’s The Greatest Show on Earth preserves his boiling rage against Christians from his previous book, though he now seems to hold out some respect for some Christians. Is he coming to realise how ridiculous some of his claims are?

On the other end of the spectrum is great book, David Bentley Hart’s book Atheist Delusions: The Christian Revolution and Its Fashionable Enemies. I thought that Milbank’s endorsement on the back was funny but I didn’t know that it truly is a demolition job:

Surely Dawkins, Hitchens, et al would never have dared put pen to paper had they known of the existence of David Bentley Hart. After his demolition job all that is left for them to do is repent and rejoice at the discreditation of their erstwhile selves.

If you’ve been stung by the claims of the New Atheists, then I definitely recommend it. He steps through misquote after misconception after non-sequitor and straightens out the story behind much of Atheism’s banter. He’s eloquent and well read, he makes thoughtful responses and maintains a confidence that allows him speak honestly about the shadows and mystery of the Christian faith.

My only criticism of Hart is that he also exudes an elitism that I find difficult to swallow. It quashes the blazing rhetoric of his opponents (and I must say that this is very satifisfying!), but it leaves me feeling like it misrepresents me a little bit as a Christian.

This is probably the most important thing I learned that week. The Apostle Paul boasted in his weaknesses and embodied his message, centred squarely on Christ crucified. If we’re to follow Jesus, then our response to our enemy can’t be alike, it must be love.