Tag Archives: belief

Beauty expresses good

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Poem on Substack

Beauty expresses good. We sense it when we see compassion, artisanship and often in nature. By it we judge what leads to life and what leads to death. Beauty informs our being, seen and unseen, and reaches the light within each of us taking us to a place within where we may sense joy and feel content.

Notley John Raye way

Beauty is the place of peace, where we encounter justice and truth reigns. Jesus opens us to this way and leads us to a knowledge of God that transforms our being. His birth life and resurrection shows us a God who enters into creation and faces down evil. On the cross God confronts evil through the narrow way of peace; Jesus experiences death, the consequence of sin, though he never departed from the way of life. Jesus paid the price of Sin, and died. Evil did what only evil could do: violence. Jesus did what only good can do, transformed evil and violence, and defeated it by rising from the dead to new life. Beauty open’s our eyes to resurrection, we are people of the resurrection looking for resurrection in our lives, a people of hope. Through the resurrection hope we receive hope and can look on beauty renewed. We can see.

As we obey the leadings of beauty, beauty opens our eyes to the salvation that is in Jesus the Christ. We come to understand the depths of death, the sin that separates us from life. In peace, humility and contrition we are transformed from glory to glory in the face of evil: all is well and all is made well. We chose life and receive the grace of peace.

Of relics, intersex genetics, and transgender identity

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Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, which you have from God, and that you are not your own? For you were bought with a price; therefore glorify God in your body.
1 Corinthians 6:19‭-‬20 NRSV

https://bible.com/bible/2016/1co.6.19-20.NRSV

Are trans people ‘on a sacred journey’?

The bodies we have, I believe constitue ourselves, our lives. They are not just animated containers. The scripture above would speak to followers of Jesus about how their conduct in their bodies matters. Being a follower of Jesus is more than doing no harm to others it includes doing no harm to our selves. There is no body spirit divide and in harming ourselves we harm the sacred other. So what does this mean if you suffer body dysphoria; what if the body you have causes you pain because it does not match the gender your brain is telling you you are? Biology has got it wrong.

I want to approach this through relics and the facts of science, to establish the sanctity of material and of life, the twists of religion and the twists of genetics.

Relics are material remains of the life of a person. They can be body parts. When they are body parts or even whole bodies, I sense within myself an offence at their veneration. Something deeply human, to honour the dead, has been overcome for the sake of religion, parading their remains. Or has it? The sanctity of a person residing in their material being is a deeply human reaction; we honour bodies and ashes. An unburied body is an offence. We visit graves and, some sense the presence of a person at a grave side. Personally I am overcome at the graveside of my sister. Maybe to offer people the experience of the presence of a person through relics is acceptable. I am not convinced but am prepared to accept it is a human reaction to the same feeling I get on being at the grave.

The relics of Christ would be his clothes, his blood and the water that streamed from his side, elements of the cross and his burial cloths but the Bible speaks nowhere of these being collected to be venerated or admits such a practice. But there is a human  instinct to invest the material remains with the essence of the deceased. Photographs, pew seat covers, vestry brooms all have significance and if they belonged to a holy person, well…

Jesus is recorded as emotional, he ate and sweated and was physically mature.

In the words of the notorious Ezra Pound,

Oh we drank his “Hale” in the good red wine
When we last made company,
No capon priest was the Goodly Fere
But a man o’ men was he.

Ballad of the Goodly Fere

Ezra Pound – 1885-1972

In all ways Christ identified with humanity, even in death. In death the material of his body remained to be resurrected, the first fruits of a new materiality, fully human but glorified, a new creation subsuming the old, the old creation wholly the new, is how I see it. So in his death and resurrection, for me, Christ reveals the mystery of all creation, the sacredness of all matter. We breath the air Christ breathed. His dead body was not just a skeleton, flesh and fluids it was the person of God, incarnate and dead. This for me is the holiness of Easter Saturday.

Paul teaches that identifying with Christ involves a physical infilling of the Spirit, an earnest of our future resurrection so that we are a new creation. He pictures our bodies as a temple of the Spirit, bringing what was to be into what is now, endowing us with the new materiality of the resurrected Christ. Part of our experience of life is the putting off of the old body and the putting on of the new.

All bodies are imperfect and subject to chance and time. No doubt some bodies are formed through choices made or marred by self harm or collateral damage. None are beyond redemption.

The number of people born intersex is between 0.02% and 0.05% and arguably 1.7%. Let’s take the low percentage of 0.02%. Today there were potentially 385,000 babies born today, so there were potentially 100 intersex babies. About 0.1% of babies are born with Downs syndrome, another chromosomal variation, so about 600 could have been born today. Every 3 seconds someone is said to be diagnosed with dimentia around the world. Each is a person. Each made in the image of God. As a Christian, the sanctity of life is important, and mercy killing, abortion and end of life occupy a sacred space.

The poet David Hodges, a Cistercian Monk taking the voice of a lady, identifying with a feminist agenda, writes,

If it’s a mistake
it has no rights,
let it die
don’t incubate it.
Stick it in
a plastic bucket,
it’s not human
if I don’t want it.

From Protect the Human in Watching for the Wind by David Hodges

I don’t like this poem, but the phrase, it’s not human if I don’t want it, is haughnting. My reaction to thus phrase confirms flesh is sacred to me; having choice doesn’t change the fact that a life has been lost and instinctively I feel the flesh should be honoured. My baby brother died very early in life and the practices of the times means he has no grave, yet he is memorialised in our family. I feel deeply that no life should be extinguished because it is less than perfect and all flesh that housed human life has dignity.

Medicine is allowing us to preserve life outside the womb earlier and earlier and share organs. Hopefully this is not leading to a brave new world where the womb is dispensed with; every intervention carries a risk of misuse. Organs can be harvested and bought. But, for now, it’s a true observation that we dispense with life and are controlling its coming into being in what seems to be an irrational way in the name of rationality.

So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.
Genesis 1:27 NRSV

https://bible.com/bible/2016/gen.1.27.NRSV

As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.
Galatians 3:27‭-‬28 NRSV

https://bible.com/bible/2016/gal.3.27-28.NRSV

It’s only humanity that is so specified as being male and female in Genesis. Some fish swap gender as do worms, slugs and snails. Male bees, wasps and ants develop from the unfertilised eggs of females enabling the female genes to perpetuate.

I have written elsewhere of the miracle that is Jesus, formed from the flesh of Mary yet fully human. A harmonising of the Genesis story admits that humanity was formed male and female and became man and woman. The Fall story illuminates the consequence of division and Paul shows how Jesus restores peace. I personally can’t see how the writer of Genesis had gender politics in mind. I do see however that in God male and female coexist. God is beyond gender. Jesus’ humanity is beyond genetics.

To use Genesis in the debate on transgender identity does violence to its writing. Paul writes,

All scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, so that everyone who belongs to God may be proficient, equipped for every good work.
2 Timothy 3:16‭-‬17 NRSV

https://bible.com/bible/2016/2ti.3.16-17.NRSV

What is the reproof, the correction, the training for righteousness in Genesis 1 and 2? It certainly is a challenge to the patriarchal culture of the day and so it seems for today. I believe in the plain reading of what it says and who Jesus is. All humanity is made in the image of God, however formed. Isn’t the story of the Fall an indictment of binary thinking, the knowledge of good and evil being the foundation of sin. Jesus commands us not to judge with the authority of Genesis. 

“Do not judge, so that you may not be judged. For with the judgment you make you will be judged, and the measure you give will be the measure you get. Why do you see the speck in your neighbor’s eye, but do not notice the log in your own eye? Or how can you say to your neighbor, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ while the log is in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your neighbor’s eye.
Matthew 7:1‭-‬5 NRSV

https://bible.com/bible/2016/mat.7.1-5.NRSV

In the transgender debate this is for me a key scripture along with 1 Corinthians 6 . Jesus calls us to a high standard of righteousness; he takes the high ground in all disputes on the law from divorce to property. It is strange how we in the name of grace cheapen Jesus’ words. Jesus  commands us to Love and not judge and calls us to a purity that would cut off our hands and rip out our eyes rather than lust, would cast ourselves into the sea with a weight round our neck rather than abuse a child.

We really have lost it when our only care is the integrity of our liturgy, the preservation of our hierarchy and power. Jesus calls us to a higher righteousness. Transgender people suffer because they feel their biology has let them down. They have a genetic mismatch in their minds.

Our only response to one another as Christians who follow Jesus must be to be with those who find blessing in the midst of destitution and hunger and thirst for the righteousness that does not judge and loves to the point of loving its enemies.

Currently we are sullying the message of the Jesus by engaging in the politics of transgender identity rather than acknowledging the sacred journey we are all on from brokenness to wholeness, immersed in the rule of God. Nobody I hope is advocating that we are called to anything less than love, anything less than humility, anything less than faithfulness: Jesus is our righteousness, and we are saved by his faithfulness.

Are we really saying that someone who is LGBTQ+ is less worthy than any of us; or anyone who is not male or female, or suffers from gender dysphoria, or has a mental disability or dimentia. Read Matthew 7 again and pray with me for God’s mercy; it’s so much more complex.

The relics of St Theres of Lissieux are seen as an ikon to a knowledge of Christ. I don’t agree and something in me cries out against such a theology. At a tender age Theres felt called to be a nun and as a nun she felt called to be a missionary. She suffered deeply physically and mentally and at one stage maybe lost her faith. However she saw in her suffering a way to heaven from where she would shower petals of love on all. She died very young. The little way she left has encouraged many to  faith in Christ. Her words are her true relic. Her youthful wilfulness and dogged self identifying as a nun, who would never marry, was decided by her at the age of 15.

Mary, we believe, could have been 14 when she conceived Jesus. Her willingness to accept the word of the angel brought Christ into the world. This is not normal. Theres was not normal.

We should be very wary of excluding or dismissing what we see to be not normal. We are called to compassion,  to be a source of hope and light. To wade into the argument on transgender therapy with scripture is not necessary. We should keep our arguments in the sphere of protecting the weak and vulnerable. If we exclude the weak and vulnerable our voice is not Christian.

When the woman caught in adultery was brought to Jesus, he again took the high ground as regards the law. However, in executing his judgement, we only see mercy. Jesus states that though she had transgressed, he did not condemn her. He let’s her depart with the word, not to sin again. He entrust her with a high calling. Let us go and do likewise.

https://www.thetech.org/ask-a-geneticist/transgender-intersex-sex-chromosomes

https://www.littleflower.org.uk/her-life-in-lisieux-carmel

Seeking God.

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As we seek after God, what we know will lead us. Even if we start with God is Love, our experience of love will form our thoughts. If our confidence starts with the assertion that what is revealed in the scriptures is sufficient for us to trust God and the promise of God found there is true, who we are in our reading will dictate our path to seeking the Holy.

Holy means beyond knowing yet close, a place of presence, an encounter with mystery. Both love and holiness are the exercise of goodness. Love wills the good and holiness is presence of good. Again our culture and experience, our character and history will define our experience.

That is why I believe silence and stillness to be part of our quest after the divine. That’s why I believe that faith begins with the appreciation of beauty, goodness and justice. What warms our hearts in the moment, what blazes unexpectedly, the arresting presence is the beginning and end of faith. The faithfulness of God in the incarnation and resurrection of Jesus are my beginning and the stillnes and silence strip away the rest, all other thought is purified by the presence of the mystery of the birth, death and resurrection of God in Christ.

The experience that defines our quest after the knowledge of the Holy begins with encountering the end of experience, declaring, here I am before the person and voice of God speaking into our need to know.

Forgiveness

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The Christian distinctive that is foundational.

Miroslav Volf teaches at Yale Divinity School – and is celebrated for his work on reconciliation and forgiveness. But book learning alone does not explain this focus.

Miroslav’s brother was killed in a childhood accident, and the Volf family’s journey through misery and hatred finally ended in a powerful act of forgiveness inspired by Christian teachings. He tells Dr. Laurie Santos how seeking to “unglue” the deed from the doer is a gift we can give others and ourselves.

Writes happinesslab.fm

https://www.happinesslab.fm/happiness-lessons-of-the-ancients/episode-7-forgiveness

John 1:4

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In him was life, and the life was the light of men. http://esv.to/John1.4

This scripture is key to my own faith. It has sustained me in my relationship with God and with others. All life is in the Son’s hands and the Son reveals the Father. Every person has this life and it lights all people. In everyone I find Jesus and in all I find the way to the Father. This is my work to believe in the Father. This is the way of freedom, to love God and to love each and everyone I encounter.

Controlling Fertility

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Deuteronomy 5:12-15

Observe the sabbath day and keep it holy, as the LORD your God commanded you…

Psalm 81:1-10

…O Israel, if you would but listen to me!

…Open your mouth wide and I will fill it.

2 Corinthians 4:5-12

For we do not proclaim ourselves;

we proclaim Jesus Christ as Lord and ourselves as your slaves for Jesus’ sake. …

We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed;

perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken;

struck down, but not destroyed;

always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be made visible in our bodies. ….

Mark 2:23-3:6

… “The sabbath was made for people, and not people for the sabbath; so the Son of Man is lord even of the sabbath.”

…He (Jesus) looked around at them with anger; he was grieved at their hardness of heart …

The readings today carry us through that narrow place between the absolutes of the law and the freedom we have as people to show compassion; the way the world should be and the way it is.

For most of us, life throws perplexing circumstances and we find we cannot know what to do; there is no answer. Jesus commands us to be obedient to his word and his word is that we are to love God and love our neighbour. The high calling for us is to come to Jesus with the decisions we have in life and know peace as his teaching is not a burden; God from the beginning calls us to choose life.

So where do we stand when people celebrate the freedom to abort babies? We are told it is a human right that women are able control their fertility. We are told that the right to life is a human right. The UK has amongst the most liberal abortion laws in Europe. Abortion is available up to 24 weeks and beyond if necessary. The foetus has no human rights until it is born; up to this point it is only the life of the mother that is considered to have human rights. As a follower of Jesus, the truth is we know the reality of hardship and its ability to crush us; we look around and we see people despairing and abandoned.

Personally, I stand with new life being life from the beginning. I have known people tormented by the power of nature to abort. I have accepted as natural babies being lost through miscarriage and been saddened by hearing of babies being born dead, alive till the moment of birth. I have communed and rejoiced with those desperate for children who in conceiving one life have destroyed the remaining embryos. I have grieved with those whose babies have been born disabled. Am I conflicted?

Abortion will happen: John Wesley in his book Primitive Physick opens with how an abortion could be done. His heart was to see health care extended to the poor. The tragic stories of the lengths women would go to abort a baby remain in our folk memory. John Wesley’s response was to make this safe. To some of us this may be horrifying.

For the Jews, controlling fertility was at the heart of the story of Moses; his abandonment under order of the authorities resulted in him becoming a prince in Egypt. In our time the Chinese have tried to control fertility as have the Russians and the government of Peru to destroy the native population.

At the time of Jesus and into the first 300 years of Christianity, child exposure was practised by the Romans to get rid of unwanted infants, but not by the Jews. Two abandoned babies were said to have been the founders of Rome, brought up by wolves. Babies were left out to die or be claimed as slaves. Many were disabled and most were girls.

What was the Christian response, but to collect these babies and care for them. This has to be my response; my path between law and human freedom. Life sucks for some people and we need to care for all. Yes, the rejoicing over abortion sickens me but what I need to do is show compassion.

The ideal is that life starts at conception, the reality is that every birth is a miracle. This has been my own experience being at the birth of my own children; life is fragile. The world is mucked up.

Given the widespread practice of infant exposure, the Christian practice was to care for the poor and the abandoned, not condemn the poor. By 374 BC they had shown the way and the practice was made illegal. Our weapon is to love, not condemn.

I know it is wrong to argue from silence, but nothing in the scriptures condemns the practice of infant exposure, but we know it is wrong. We do have the wonderful story of John the Baptist recognising his saviour whilst in the womb of Elizabeth and our heart tells us that life is precious from conception.

Conception and birth are redeemed in Christ. Being in Christ, our practice is to care for the afflicted, the crushed; those abused and abandoned. Through our being true to love we can work to create a world around us where there is no abortion only hope.

Incarnation?

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The Nicene Creed, a touchstone of Christian orthodoxy states of Jesus,

For us men and for our salvation,

he came down from heaven:

by the power of the Holy Spirit

he was born of the Virgin Mary, and became man.

Having a science background, this has been an article of faith for me and I have written of my position elsewhere[1]. But recently I have become aware that some recite this creed but believe that the Virgin Mary is an historical title, a tradition, not a fact about Mary of Nazareth[2].

This in mind, I decided to buy a book that would let me understand the full argument and was from a perspective I would not hold to be true. The book I chose was a recent publication by Kyle Roberts which he has summarised through the blog post, Virgin Birth or Incarnation? Why You Can’t Have Both (December 23, 2017)[3].

I found the book very informative. I realised that yes, historically we have a problem with philosophy invading our faith, with extra scriptural traditions based on pagan thought, and an inability to accept the humanity of Jesus. I understand the reason for Greg Boyd’s podcast which recommends us to think more of Jesus,

…from the perspective of “God as Human” rather than “God and Human.”[4]Do we struggle with Jesus eating and defecating, vomiting, feeling ill, experiencing sexual attraction and basically being human? Do we hold true to the Gospel of Jesus?

… we have a High Priest who was tempted in every way that we are, but did not sin. Let us have confidence, then, and approach God’s throne, where there is grace. There we will receive mercy and find grace to help us just when we need it. (Hebrews 4, GNB)[5]If we do, then we are at that point where we too join with the Fathers and Mothers of the church who created traditions to cover up the subversive nature of the historical birth of Christ.

We might build ideas that include the perpetual virginity of Mary who was not only a virgin at conception, was also preserved as a virgin through the birth of Christ and remained a virgin after the birth of Christ. The Virgin Mary’s birth canal becomes so important to some, Mary is believed to have been impregnated by the Holy Spirit through her ear[6]. Some have decided it is best to side-line Mary all together and avoid the questions.[7]

I have looked at all of this and, despite all, I still hold that Mary was a virgin when Jesus was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit. Surprisingly what I wrote at Easter 2017, I still hold to.

[1]https://memlynhumphries.me.uk/2017/05/03/easter-2017/

[2]https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/dec/24/story-virgin-birth-christianity-mary-sex-femininity

[3]http://www.patheos.com/blogs/unsystematictheology/2017/12/virgin-birth-incarnation-cant/

[4]http://reknew.org/2017/12/podcast-jesus-god-human/

[5]https://www.biblesociety.org.uk/explore-the-bible/read/eng/GNB/Heb/4/

[6]https://www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2017/22-december/comment/columnists/angela-tilby-letting-the-virgin-birth-mystery-be

[7]http://www.patheos.com/blogs/thepangeablog/2017/12/22/protestants-dont-know-mary/

God said… Part 2

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The opening of the meaning of scriptures is a spiritual event. We can devise all manner schemes to know the meaning of the words but only true insight is gained through knowing the Word, Jesus. It is right that we have sound doctrine but the message for life is in the whisper, as well as the whirlwind and thunder, and rooted in Jesus. For many this mindset is difficult as it seems to undermine our understanding of authority.

It is not clear on mount Sinai whether God spoke or thundered and Moses wrote. In both cases Moses was the mediator of the “voice” of God; the human who responded to God’s message. There is an ambiguity in the word. For the Jews, the tradition and the text become a means of encountering God because of this ambiguity. Study, doubt and debate about what happened on the mountain become an act of worship. In listening to one another, what God is saying or thundering becomes a living encounter.

Jesus enters this tradition. In his anguish, Jesus called out to his Father to glorify his name and God thundered. Some heard thunder and some an angel. Jesus heard, “I have glorified it and I will glorify it again.” The message to the people was, “Now is the judgement of this world; now will the ruler of this world be cast out…” Jesus interpreted the event and the message was mediated through him. The thunder became words.

God thunders and whispers in the scriptures and we are commanded by Jesus to respond in grace, mercy and peace with faith. Jesus is the fount of our understanding and without love our interpretations become a noise and a clang. Without love, we close-down the voice of God in others and stand between God and his children.

Basing our faith in Scripture commits us to perpetual reformation[1]. In scripture, Jesus teaches us that every jot and tittle of the scripture is to remain and points us to him being the accomplishing of it. He talks about the random distribution of the seed and its generous and wasteful throwing out, of sun and rain falling on all, of treasures old and new being brought out and of new wineskins and old wine. He speaks of a small seed becoming a tree and providing shelter, a miracle of faith we can only watch and wonder at. The seed of God’s word is planted and we watch and wonder as it grows into a tree. God provides the rain and the sun; mountains are moved.

John says no one has seen the Father except the Son and we are left to ponder the scriptures that say otherwise. Paul takes the roar and rumble of scripture and compiles them into meanings hard to follow but rooted in tradition not the scripture and makes them scripture with gay abandon. No word of scripture is to be abandoned, it is breathed by God for a reason. One of those reasons may be to challenge our mindset and perpetually renew our thinking.

The rigour of our mindset that brings us to a scientific understanding of everything is disrupted by the words of scripture. We approach them subjectively needing certainty and a firm foundation. Jesus says faith in him is the firm foundation. The very words we would set our foundation on, on the tongues of men, shift their meanings like sand. Some rail and rant at us and call us to abandon reason or what we feel to be true. They label us as filthy and baying wolves, dehumanise us, because we dare to question their precious tradition or interpretation.

The scriptures throw is into the arms of Jesus. In the roar and rush of life, the power-plays of humanity, Jesus pulls us up out of the anger and violence of humanity, into the embrace of the One who walks on water and stills the storm. We have one Mediator, the Holy One, Jesus Christ crucified.

We need to listen to the doctors and luminaries to hear the foolishness of the good news of Christ. We need to be those who are learning and are teachable. Our faith in scripture is because we see Jesus and are saved. In the preachers’ and teachers’ words we hear the truth and can be set free, because we know Jesus and are lead to worship him and him alone. Scripture and teaching digs the hole but the rock and foundation is Jesus.

It is faith in who Jesus is that is the rock on which the Church is built. Yes, our faith is in scripture, but only read through the eyes of the knowledge of the crucified Christ. Jesus sets the words on the page alight in a consuming fire burning up our pride and arrogance so that we can live forgiven and forgive and live generous lives full of hope and love. In Jesus, we are enabled to live life in its fullness without fear.
[1] The Crucified God, Jurgen Moltmann, SCM Press, 2015, page 118

Failure and doubt.

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We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin.
(Romans 6:6, English Standard Version Anglicised)

The phrase “brought to nothing” translates a verb and,

“…means … to make ineffective or inactive, and is used of unproductive land and unfruitful trees. They are still there. They have not been destroyed. But they are barren. When this verb is applied to the devil, to our fallen nature and to death, therefore, we know they have not been completely destroyed… it is not that they have ceased to exist, but their power has been broken…not…abolished…overthrown. (Stott p280, The Cross of Christ)

 

We are here talking about the nature of our justification, how we are made right with God through Christ dying in our place so that we might live by faith. Grace is never set aside and it is our privilege to be witnesses of the grace shown on the cross.

Sin is the antithesis of life, gives birth to violence and ends in death. The wages of sin are death. God’s judgement is that in sin we are separated from life and the sting of death is separation from God. This can only be known by faith in God’s goodness and a revelation of the depth of our sin. Death’s dark veil separates us from knowing what this means as we can only glimpse what is on the other side of death. As we encounter the knowledge of the Holy we find ourselves loved but broken by the evidence of our own sin. We hold the treasure in earthen jars or in today’s language plastic bags.

How is it we receive faith to repent and know life? How is it that in our contrition and poverty of spirit we are enabled to grow in faith?

The cross is the answer. Evil demands death. Evil is violent and merciless. Jesus engages in the battle. As a person, where he encounters evil, it is defeated through faith. He teaches non-violent opposition and self-sacrificial living. He teaches virtue that exceeds the demands of compliance- a heart washed trust in the righteousness and mercy of God. He teaches us to love our enemies and to forgive, over and over again. He calls us to be perfect as God is perfect who in sending the sun and rain to all, is good to all, whether they are good or evil.

God is the judge. God bears the pain of allowing sin to bear fruit for the sake of love. God is not indifferent to suffering but for the sake of love he allows evil to flourish.

There is a spiritual battle in the heavenly realms, a battle in the hearts of men revealed in the life of Jesus as he disarms evil in the world. We live in the realm of the prince of darkness who corrupts all things. He sows evil in all things but through love, forgiveness and healing Jesus fights back. This is an understanding we can only see by faith. Improbable, and hard to believe, but with the eyes of faith, the eyes of Elijah, it is evident that God is in the battle and in Jesus we see how.

God in his holiness is wholly other and in himself he is completely separate from evil. We understand his relationship to evil in human terms as wrath, jealousy and warfare. The cross shows us that he does not do this through violence. The battle gown of Jesus is already covered in blood, the blood of the cross, the saints are in white and Jesus’ sword is in his mouth not his hand.

God sets aside his wrath by forsaking Jesus on the cross and allowing evil to destroy itself in the fire of his love and forgiveness. In the life of Jesus and on the cross we can see how God’s wrath and judgement are propitiated- averted- and we are ransomed from the realm of the prince of darkness, freed to live in the kingdom of light. As evil rages, it is consumed on the cross.

Again, this can only be seen with the eyes of faith and appears absurd and heartless, especially in the light of the collateral damage we see in the suffering of the innocent that God’s forbearance allows.

On the cross, God in Christ allows himself to bear the fullness of the violence of evil and God withdraws in the Father, so that all sin and evil encounters absolute purity in Jesus and is extinguished in the cry of anguish of the Son. All sin and evil is poured on God in Christ through the violence of men and the enmity of the spiritual powers as God in the Father forsakes Jesus and he dies. A way of God’s judgement is revealed throughout the scriptures in him withdrawing his hand and giving humanity up to their sinful ways or the havoc of the spiritual powers humanity has trusted. Is this what we see on the cross? Before he dies, Jesus proclaims, it is finished.

God in his being bridges the huge gulf between his holiness and our sinfulness and shows us love by taking upon himself the judgement against sin. Faith tells us that that the pain in this withdrawal in the ground of God’s being, is beyond our understanding. Faith opens our eyes to the deep love God holds for humanity as God in Christ takes upon himself our sin and caries it, taking it into death. God endures the pain of separation for our sake and we are forgiven.

In victory, God in Christ, sanctifies death and evil is defeated so that we are restored in God. God in Christ takes upon himself the separation of sin in death. By faith we are crucified with Christ and our ransom is paid. True love is revealed as God in Christ takes the cup of wrath for our sake so that we might live in the victory of new life.

Jesus teaches us that true love sacrifices itself for the sake of others. True love does not count itself more worthy than others. Indeed, love is revealed in pouring ourselves out for others, even to death.

Jesus’ victory was in the path of peace, the narrow way of non-violence and love for enemies. Evil was defeated by love. In our poverty of spirit, we inherit the righteousness of God through the cross. The power of sin and death is broken, becomes barren and is fruitless, not because of our own efforts, but because of the cross. Jesus took the judgement of God on sin, in our place, once and for ever. By faith we are crucified with Christ, and death and sin are brought to nothing, so that we are empowered to live our lives in Christ.

But how weak that looks in our lives. We can claim that God is within, dwelling as Father and Son, so that we are in Christ as the Son is in the Father but it doesn’t often look like that. We proclaim we are new creations. This is so audacious and in all honesty, it looks a pitiful and a messy delusion.

Are we fools to have such confidence? Are we totally deceived? Our lives in many ways are a mess and the facts speak of moderate to severe turmoil, occasionally just poor, but rarely moderate to good. Our failures and our inglorious experience of life should rightly lead us to crumble. Why don’t we just give up and say to our doubts-the facts seem to hold, you are right, this is a fiction?

My hope is in the fact that God loves me, and his love looks like the cross. In reading the scriptures I see this has always been so; God pours himself out to dwell with humanity and its crushing sin, staying the hand of judgement.

We hold the perfect within, yet we are only marginally different to those who do not. We look as hopeless as the criminal on the cross. The irony is, we are the criminal on the cross.

Our witness of faith knows the criminal to be God. This is the truth of the grisly cross. The context and circumstances, the mess of our being, holds within itself the knowledge of the Holy. Our trust in God and our resting in him brings peace by grace and not by the effort of works. This looks like defeat, but in dying to ourselves and taking up the cross we find grace upon grace and God in us, our hope of glory.

Peace does at times look like turmoil, but the humility of God means he steps into this turmoil and he comes and lives in the ugliness. We are being transformed by this indwelling faith.

Is this how we read our lives? Is this what the life of Jesus leads us to? The removal of the mask which enables us to depend on God, to trust in him fully, by trusting in who we are, is our salvation. God humbles himself to bear the mask of our lives because of the cross.

Our lives are transformed as we find God in the ugliness, not our own righteousness. The light of God shines and we find our strength in the cross. This is the source of our repentance. We are not justified because we repent, we repent because by faith we are justified by believing in God in Christ crucified.

The mess of the criminal executed on the cross is the person of God, who dies in our place and takes away our sin. Death loses its power and God is glorified in the mess and this is by faith and faith alone. Virtue in the eyes of humanity does not justify us, it is faith. It is by faith that we live to God, freed from the power of sin. So, doubt and failure are part of this faith because in our doubt and failure we need to have the faith not to rebuild what has been torn down. We may be ridiculed, but having faith we will stand and we stand against those who would enslave us once more to works. On the cross God shows us that he, through the Spirit, transforms us and he is pleased to abide in us.

But if, in our endeavour to be justified in Christ, we too were found to be sinners, is Christ then a servant of sin? Certainly not! For if I rebuild what I tore down, I prove myself to be a transgressor. For through the law I died to the law, so that I might live to God. I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. I do not nullify the grace of God, for if righteousness were through the law, then Christ died for no purpose.

(Galatians 2:17-21, English Standard Version Anglicised)

Idolatry

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Idolatry is a powerful and divisive force in the world – it is evil as it is the outworking and instigator of sin, taking away from the worship that is rightly only given to God, capturing the hearts of men which is the abiding place of God.

Jesus teaches that the way to glory is narrow and found by few while the way to destruction is wide. The narrow way is Christ, knowing no other and trusting no other. Few find it while many follow the crowd.

Idolatry and violence are the wide way; trusting in ways, powers and gifts, leads to disaster. We see this time and time gain – movements fail, nations falter and leaders bring disgrace – the poor and needy are trampled into the dust and kept from feeding on the truth because the truth is muddied by false teachers.

Followers of Christ inherit the promise of Abraham. We are a people of faith, adopted into the family of those who are children of God. We are a blessing to all and the healing of neighbourhoods and nations. We draw strength from God and God alone, drinking from the flowing water of the Spirit. In this knowledge, we read the scriptures, the times and the world around us. Each knows the voice of God by virtue of being in Christ. Any one who tries to take away that gift is an imposter.

In Genesis 1, the sun and moon are mere lights in the sky put in their place by God to govern times and seasons. They are not to be worshipped. In Exodus 20 the foundation of the commandments is love for God and no other gods and the forbidding of worship given to idols, the work of our hands. Our relationship with God is to be immediate. Proverbs 17:17-18 calls us to a narrow way naming pride as contrary to the true way. The letters of Paul tell us idols are not real and echo the prophets in a strong warning against the power of idolatry. Reading these scriptures in the light of the message of Jesus we see why; I am the way, the truth and the life he says – he sees that true worship is not to be confined by places, traditions and peoples but to be in Spirit and truth. The realisation of this truth is the revelation of Christ.

We must guard our hearts and test the spirits. We need to allow the light to discover the darkness in our hearts; the obscuring beam in or own eye.

I can be in the presence of great natural beauty; be struck by the awesomeness of the heavens, the sky by day and the sky by night. I can wonder at the power and beauty of creatures and maybe fear their potential to do me harm or maybe good, giving food or even companionship. I can wonder at the potency of cycle of nature and its life-giving efficiency. I can glory in the beauty and intellectual depth of music, art and poetry – the works of great craftsmen. I can revere great men, their legacy and memorials. There may be places and stones of significance that evoke a connection with their greatness. There may be possessions; a guitar or a handbag, that have come to represent the persona of celebrity and are valued.

To ascribe any of these feelings with spiritual value is wrong if we begin to think that by relating to them we can begin to absorb the essence of the owner. It’s an abomination to think we can come to God through such things. The only way to the Father is Jesus, every other way is pure fantasy, not real and evil.

Our hearts cry foul when we hear of the exchange of great sums of money for handbags, guitars and pieces of the cross, or bishops seated on relics to enhance their authority. Believing relics are powerful is an abhorrence and lie; the idea that their presence exudes holiness is anathema. We are ashamed when people claim vials of blood liquefy and candles burn perpetually, statues rock and virgins walk. We are not those who recognise power in springs and wells and hang out scraps of cloth for luck; we run from charms, symbols and incantations; horoscopes, Spiritism and divination. We are suspicious of the idea of thin places and that the merit of a place is anything but an imaginative engagement with a story. The power is not in the pilgrimage, periods of detachment or maze, it is in taking time to engage and reflect. A song is a song and a prayer is a means not an end. All things are good but not all things are helpful to everyone.

The human heart is a deep well of feelings and emotions, and knowledge of this should be a warning. The heart not bathed in the Spirit of God and washed clean, can easily be moulded by celebrity, fame and renown and be fickle in the midst of strong opinions and crowds – tossed and turned with every wave of excitement – hungry for a new thing, a new phenomenon, a fresh spectacle.

Even the scriptures can substitute for God, written in either words or pictures. Devotion to scripture or icons can easily slip into worship of the form and so become idolatry. We see this when people hang on to old translations, pictures, traditions and places. The consequences are obvious; wars, brawls and gossip. The way to destruction is wide and many find it. You are in a crushing crowd.

We are safe if we stick to the pure message of Jesus. Keep clear of thin places, grave soaking and supposed manifestations of glory in case your good character is ruined. Be more than sceptical, deny their power and in prayer speak to your heart and come fresh to the immediate presence of Christ.

Continue to meet in twos and threes with those whose lives match their words. Be wary of those who would control and shame and deny you liberty insisting that Christ is more present in larger gatherings. You will recognise them as they try to mould your thinking by attrition rather than encourage you to pray and reflect; they reveal themselves by insisting on their interpretation and aggressively deny you your understanding – by their actions they do not trust the power of God as much as their power of persuasion. They demand unity on their terms and lack accountability denying the authority of the gathering of the saints insisting on their own rights. People who stand against them are shamed and undermined, removed to the outside and excluded.

Detach yourselves from those whose thoughts are revealed as being impure in the words they choose and jokes they make. If someone invades your personal space and insists on secrecy or secret knowledge or denies your freedom, they are not of God. If your heart is troubled it is the voice of God. Listen to it. No one in Christ is bound to the power of another – Christianity is not established by compulsion or violence to the individual.

The kingdom of heaven is won by those who are prepared to aggressively stand up for right and by those who are prepared to stand firm in Christ alone,  by the Spirit and the whole of Scripture and endure for this cause. True followers won’t be popular but meek and winsome.

You have no need of a mediator as in Christ alone there is salvation, sanctification and glorification: the knowledge of the Holy is found in Christ.