"I hope you've got your bibles with you..."

The church seems to go through seasons of repeating this refrain, but I have noticed it as a recurring theme in recent weeks, not just in church services that I've been at, but also in podcasts I've listened to: "I hope you've got your bibles with you..." (or words to that effect).

Generally, the stated purpose of this is along the lines of: "If you don't have your own copies of the bible with you and read along, you have no idea if I'm deceiving you or not..."

Eh, what? You know, in all my years of attending church I don't think I have ever heard anyone deliberately misquote the bible in order to teach a non-biblical message.

So why should the congregation members have to bring their bibles along and read along? For most of history this would have been impossible for people to do - before the invention of the printing press bibles were only for the very rich, and beside that the majority of people were illiterate. Back then, the ordinary believers had to trust the reader and preacher, so why not nowadays?

But I've just realised that this refrain can actually be used for a slight deception if the people do bring their own bibles along and read along. For you see, the preacher will generally be preaching an interpretation of a bible passage or a message resting on the foundations of several biblical passages. And if the congregation member sees that the bible passages referred to are genuine, then that lends support to the interpretation or message presented. Even if the interpretation is not good or the message is flawed in some way. If the congregation member sees that it has its roots in the bible, they're more likely to believe it.

Now I'm not saying that everyone who encourages their congregation to bring their bibles along is doing this, but it might be happening somewhere...

Think I'll leave my bible at home this morning.

Witness vs demonstration

Further to my earlier post, I have to comment on one aspect of one of the talks from last year's Vineyard Leaders Conference (UK) that I've been listening to. The rather uninspiringly titled "The reformation today: Theology 2" (link to mp3) is one of the best and most challenging talks I've heard in a long time. Highly recommended, even if the audio quality is a bit lacking.

One of the points made in the talk was that when Jesus sent out his disciples (Matt 10, Mark 6, Luke 9) to preach, his instructions were simple:

1. Preach the simple message "the Kingdom of Heaven is near"
2. Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse those with leprosy, drive out demons
3. If anyone is unwelcoming, simply move on to the next place

At no point in there is the instruction to debate non-believers, or attempt to convince anyone of anything - if people don't want to hear, just move on, leave them alone, someone else will want to hear.

How come nobody seems to view evangelism in those terms today? Some folk seem to go out of their way to try and persuade those who aren't interested about the reality of the gospel.

Oh, hang on, the problem with the 'proclaim and demonstrate' model of witness is that (for the most part) we don't seem to be willing or able to do the 'heal the sick' bit these days. Or rather, it is easier to try to engage with non-believers on an intellectual level, because if they don't believe this is due to some fault in their perception of reality. Whereas if we tried to heal people and nothing happened then it would be our lack of faith, our fault.

Hmmm. Maybe we should be more about demonstration than debate.

“Preach the Gospel at all times and when necessary use words” as St Francis of Assisi once supposedly said.

Witness vs Gospel

I have a bias.

I don't think I ever really thought of it as a bias until last week. It concerns the content of sermons, or talks at Christian events, whether it be a Sunday morning church service or a weekend conference or an event like Greenbelt.

The bias is this: speakers who preach from the bible and expound what it says = good / speakers who preach about their own life and experiences of God, occasionally using seemingly random verses and passages to support what they're saying = bad.

I know where the bias comes from, I was raised with it. This is exactly the opinion of my parents and the church I was raised in. It was instilled in me from a very young age. So I never really noticed it before, or that it might be a bad thing.

You see, I've always thought that witness really involved telling people about what Jesus did 2000 years ago. And it kind-of annoys me when people / preachers talk about what happened in their lives last year, even if what they're telling is what Jesus did in their lives last week. I suppose my bias could be summed up by saying: 'if it isn't in the bible, its not worth preaching'.

Is this a good bias? Is it right? I'm not so sure.

For about three years now we've been attending a Vineyard church, and the teaching style generally treads the line between the two styles - generally there's a lot of preaching from the bible, but there's also the personal experience stuff too. Sometimes I like this balance, sometimes I wish there was more exposition. Usually I don't notice my bias. But it generally comes out when we have visiting speakers - most of the visitors we have had over the past few years have preached their experiences of God, not expounded. And as a result I have been biased against them without realising it. It came to my attention this week as I've been listening to the talks from the Vineyard Leaders' Conference from last year (I actually meant to listen to this year's talks but downloaded the wrong ones by accident, doh!).

The main speaker, Steve Nicholson, tells some fascinating stories of what God has done in his life and church, with only occasional reference to the bible. And along the way he mentioned that 'witness' is talking about what you've seen. And I realised that he's right. I didn't witness anything 2000 years ago, indeed, I have only hazy memories of the 1970s! If I'm to witness it must be about things I've seen - better still, it should be about what God has done in my life.

So, I've finally realised that witness is not equal to gospel.

Hopefully I can work around this bias, now that I'm aware of it.

Kingdom Theology: Part 1- Inaugurated Eschatology

My housegroup has started doing a short course from the Vineyard Biblical Institute called "The Nature of the Kingdom". Its one of the basic 'School of Ministry Level' courses. We're doing one session every few weeks, so we won't be getting through it in a hurry. But I'll post my thoughts on each session as we go.

The only really theological part of the first session consisted of the assertion that Jesus message was one of 'Inaugurated Eschatology' - a phrase that clearly baffled some members of the group.

Eschatology is: "The branch of theology that is concerned with the end of the world or of humankind."

Inaugurate is: "to make a formal beginning of; initiate; commence; begin"

So Inaugurated Eschatology is to formally begin the end of the world. Which sounds a bit worrying.

I understood the point of the explanation (there was a video of a talk explaining all this), but I'm not sure I totally agree.

You see, in my opinion, Jesus' teaching of the Kingdom is only inaugurated eschatology if you assume that 'the Kingdom of Heaven' is the thing that is only fully realised after you die, if heaven is your future state after the end of the world.

Is this what Jesus taught? Is this what his listeners would have understood by the phrase 'the Kingdom of heaven'?

I don't think so.

I used to think that way. That heaven was the place you go when you die (if you've been good). But now (and for a few years now) I have understood that the place of future hope is not heaven, but a restored 'new earth'. So heaven is not an unrealised future ideal, but heaven is the place where God rules now.

This is somewhat supported by the fact that the gospels use the phrases 'the kingdom of heaven' and 'the kingdom of God' reasonably interchangeably. God isn't a future hope, he's a present reality, so the kingdom of God isn't some future thing, its a present reality.

Does this actually change things? Well, perhaps not much. But maybe it does - if your hope is fixed in some (far?) future event your actions will be different than if your hope is fixed on some achievable near future event - the kingdom being (at least partially) realised on earth now...

Larry Norman once sung "I'm only visiting this planet. This world is not my home. I'm just passing through..." but I'm not sure if that's the way things are - this world is our home. This world will be redeemed and transformed and will continue to be our home. My hope is to see the kingdom established here, not to endure here until I can go elsewhere to the kingdom.

Surely by imagining the kingdom as a future thing we are changing the message of Jesus - who proclaimed that the kingdom is near and the kingdom is here?

Zaccheus

Luke 19v 1-10

He entered Jericho and was passing through. And there was a man called by the name of Zaccheus; he was a chief tax collector and he was rich. Zaccheus was trying to see who Jesus was, and was unable because of the crowd, for he was small in stature. So he ran on ahead and climbed up into a sycamore tree in order to see Him, for He was about to pass through that way. When Jesus came to the place, He looked up and said to him, "Zaccheus, hurry and come down, for today I must stay at your house." And he hurried and came down and received Him gladly. When they saw it, they all began to grumble, saying, "He has gone to be the guest of a man who is a sinner." Zaccheus stopped and said to the Lord, "Behold, Lord, half of my possessions I will give to the poor, and if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I will give back four times as much." And Jesus said to him, "Today salvation has come to this house, because he, too, is a son of Abraham. For the Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost."

I've heard a number of sermons that touch on the subject of Zaccheus, and most of them point out that he was (as far as the Jews were concerned) in the pay of the evil Empire and therefore a sinner.

What never occurred to me before was that at no point in the story does Zaccheus quit his job. Salvation comes to his house, yet he remains in the pay of the evil Empire.

What does this tell us about the way we relate to certain employers or occupations?

Ezekiel 20:25

Ezekiel 20:25 (New American Standard Bible)

I also gave them statutes that were not good and ordinances by which they could not live

Eh? What's going on here? This is one of those 'thus sayth the Lord' passages. So here it appears that God himself is saying that he gave the Israelites laws that were 'not good' and impossible to live by...?

Can God give bad laws? More importantly, did God give bad laws, and if so, which of the 613 laws are the bad ones?

And all this is just the run up to verse 26 that implies that one of the bad laws involved human infant sacrifice:

I let them become defiled through their gifts — the sacrifice of every firstborn — that I might fill them with horror so they would know that I am the LORD.

So many questions here...???

Between two stools

I seem to have fallen between two stools...

I've been reading a lot of stuff recently that critically examines the Bible. This has brought me to the point of questioning my own long-held beliefs on the bible itself. OK, I haven't subscribed to the 'infallible' opinion for a very long time, possibly never, but I have still believed that the book contained the Word of God, even if not every word in there was inspired. But when viewed from a critical perspective, it certainly appears that the many books of the Bible (specifically the New Testament) do not speak with a common voice.

The writer of the gospel of Luke would appear to disagree with the writer of the gospel of Mark. Not just on minor details, but on the very essence of what Jesus was about and who he was. And then the writer of John comes along and changes everything. Not only is his interpretation of the events different from the other three, he has different events totally.

And how can we deal with the issues surrounding the epistles? The evidence seems reasonably compelling that Paul did not write several of them, whoever wrote the letters allegedly by Peter lived far too late to actually be Peter, and so on. Its enough to make you fall off the stool of belief altogether...

But.

The Christian life works. Worship works (as I've said before). Healing happens. It still seems like God reaches through to touch us... but who is this God? If most of what we know comes from an unreliable and biased book, and only a little comes from experience, can we really say we know God?

I want to know the God who is there. The problem is, I'm becoming more convinced that he is not the God described in the bible - for the bible itself does not describe one God. It gives various people's perspectives on what they believed their God was like at various points through history. But hidden somewhere behind this is the real God, its just really hard to see him! [See also my old post called "Old maps"]

Who speaks the truth?

Genesis 2v16-17

And the LORD God commanded the man, "You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die."

Genesis 3v1-7

Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the LORD God had made. He said to the woman, "Did God really say, 'You must not eat from any tree in the garden'?"
The woman said to the serpent, "We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, but God did say, 'You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.' "
"You will not surely die," the serpent said to the woman. "For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil."
When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it. Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.

Genesis 3v22

And the LORD God said, "The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever."

Hang on. Who speaks the truth in this story, God or the serpent?

The thing the serpent says, "You will not surely die" and "your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil", is the thing that comes true. God acknowledges this in verse 22.

The thing God says, "when you eat of it you will surely die", does not happen. It appears (in context) to simply be a ruse to prevent the man and the woman from eating the fruit in the first place.

What gives?

Obviously, I'm happy to believe that this story is a fable, but how to literalist Christians explain this one?

Christian Humanist

For no particularly good reason, I've recently been considering how I should label myself when it comes to 'religious' beliefs. I think (for now) I've settled on the phrase:

Christian Humanist

You see, claiming to be merely 'Christian' no longer means anything in our society. If you declare yourself to be a Christian, people either expect you to be:

1. exactly like them, or
2. in some way inferior to them, or
3. a bit weird, but not interesting enough to find out more...

But fundamentally, people often don't think it has anything to do with how you live and has little to do with following the teachings and example of anyone called Christ.

By adding another label to it, particularly one that is often seen as an opposite stance (especially when prefixed with 'secular'), it will hopefully raise questions and provoke conversations.

And, of course, I believe that in many respects, Jesus himself was a humanist:

Luke 14v18-19 (my slight variation on the NIV translation; the original Greek has no mention of 'preaching' to the poor, its an interpolation)

"The Spirit of the Lord is on me,
because he has anointed me
to be good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners
and recovery of sight for the blind,
to release the oppressed,
to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor."

If that's not humanist, I don't know what is...

In God we Doubt by John Humphrys

It was inevitable that I would get around to reading this book eventually. John Humphrys seems to come at doubt from the opposite side from me - he seems to want to be an atheist, but can't quite get rid of the nagging doubt that "there's more to life than this"...

It is a reasonably interesting book, if - ultimately - pointless. You see, the book begins and ends with the point I made above. And passes through that same point several times. It doesn't actually go anywhere. Along the way we get to see Humphrys's reasons for his disillusionment with the Anglican church - yes, this is a very Anglican book - and his frustrations with some of the more militant atheists (Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens are mentioned more times than are probably necessary, although few other atheists are named), but there's no sense that Humphrys was in any way changed by the research he did or the people he spoke to.

In the end he semi-concludes that religion is probably a good thing, even if there probably is no god. Although maybe there is. Frustrating.

So I don't exactly recommend this book. Unless you really do have nothing better to do with your time. There are far more interesting books regarding the theist/atheist debate out there.