Keswick IV Downs and ups with Micah

It's been a down and up week with Micah, although an up and down week at the Keswick convention. Let me explain the last, first. Approaching any big occasion one's been looking forward to for a while, there's naturally all the anticipation of what's to come. It's not just Keswick. The US Society for Neuroscience meeting is in November. Abstracts were initially submitted in May! All that time looking forward means that by the time I pitch up in San Diego I'll have a real appetite for the smorgasbord of Neuroscience that will greet me. Mind you after five days of posters, talks and symposia, I'll probably be ready to expire.  Towards the end of the convention of course, there’s that feeling that what was being anticipated, is now past. And it’s on to the next thing. Another observation:  in spite of what will be an intense and stimulating few days, I will be intriguingly unchanged. That’s hardly a surprise. It’s not really the function of science to change lives in fundamental ways. That’s the point I was making at the beginning of the week in Keswick I.

To some extent there’s been the same sort of process with Keswick. A long period of anticipation, and then the convention week is over. Even if it was good as anticipated (and for me it was better), there’s the obvious down as the week comes to a conclusion. But the nature of the content means that there’s something else going on too. Because this was also about life and how it’s meant to be lived.

Some of what Micah’s had to say has been pretty grim, and that continued in the final session this morning.  We heard about the total breakdown of a society that for generations had turned its back on God.  Violence and corruption commonplace, and a total breakdown of trust; trust in leaders, trust in religion, even trust within families. It didn’t happened overnight of course, it evolved and emerged over centruries. But it happened. And the only thing left was to wait for the judgement that would come. Not that it was expected. In fact it was denied. Things were the way they had always been weren’t they? All these blood-curdling warnings of prophet after prophet, and what had happened? Nothing. So much for the judgement of God. Micah didn’t live to see the fulfilment of his prophecy. But he knew where to place his confidence, and, as hard as it was, he knew he had to wait. This was all a bit of a down.

In a way we’re still waiting of course. We can look back to some of the events that Micah looked forward to, primarily what God did in His Son, Jesus. But with Micah we continue to look forward to a final vindication that Micah talks about at the very end of his book; this was the up. Micah would wait for his God. But can God be relied upon? Here we have some advantages over Micah. God’s got a good track record of keeping promises.  Bible history maps out promises of judgement – kept; promises of restoration – kept;  the promise of His ultimate answer to human sin and rebellion - kept. There promises that are still to be kept. Some will argue all this is a nonsense. But they have a track record too. Because they taunt the believer, as they did in Micah’s day and throughout history, with things like  “where is your God”?  We were reminded that Peter tells hard-pressed Christians in his day that the same taunt will mark the “last days”. So much for judgement. Things are just fine, and we don’t need your God. Peter makes the point that they misconstrue patience as slowness or absence. Actually what God is providing is an opportunity for those who don’t believe to change their ways before it’s too late. Yet more evidence of God’s grace and patience. So we ended the Bible readings on a definite up.

So things to think about.  Circumstances in “Christian” Europe may be grim, and they may get grimmer. The kind of elite corruption Micah talks about, is currently a fixture on the popular agenda. The tax-dodging of corporations and oligarchs are complained and campaigned about . Concerns about self-serving political elites lead to popular discontent if not outrage. But this drives popular discontent that manifests itself in responses that potentially make things worse (Brexit and Trump?). Intellectual and religious corruption mean that some of the mechanisms that might have led to corrections in the past no longer seem to operate. Indeed they make their contribution to the downward spiral. And in all of this God and His truth are marginalised, if considered at all. Are we in a downward death-spiral, or can the trajectory be changed? More importantly in a way, what does the remnant, that dwindling band of believers, do in such circumstances?

We do what Micah did. We wait.

Keswick III An apology to Micah

It turns out that Keswick has been a brilliant place to sit out the heatwave currently afflicting the UK. Today is the only day it's been really hot here, and it's probably nearer 25° as opposed to the 35° being experienced "down south". We've been enjoying our riverside walks to the tent in Skiddaw St where the Bible readings on Micah have been taking place. We're not quite done yet; there's one more to go. But I feel I owe Micah an apology.

I've never viewed the Old Testament as an irrelevance, as just the prelude to the interesting bit. There are lots of reasons for this, but here's one. At the end of his Gospel Luke records an encounter between Jesus and two of his former followers. That's how they would have though of themselves I suppose, because they though Jesus was dead. And they were probably fairly fearful they might be next. Jesus, who initially is unrecognised by them, walks alongside them as they head away from Jerusalem. They're pretty depressed, and probably grieving. After all, their leader and mentor has just been executed. As they new well, the Romans knew a thing or two about executions and dead men stay dead. Hence their general state of depression. The problem was that Jesus was no failed insurrectionist, or teacher of novel ideas swept away by accident or miscalculation. And the evidence? The resurrection of course. 

One of the intriguing things about this whole incident in Luke 24 is that the two disciples actually knew the key facts about the resurrection. They'd been told that the tomb where Jesus' body had been left was empty. They'd even heard that some of their number had been told that Jesus was alive. But of course, all of their experience told them this could not be true. He was dead. So they had headed off down the road, disconsolate. But Jesus of course wasn't dead. And as He walks with them he does something very interesting. It's also interesting what He doesn't do. He doesn't show them his wounds (as He did with Thomas) to identify Himself. Nor does he do a miracle to impress them. Instead, He conducts a Bible study, concentrating on all those bits of the Bible I find obscure and difficult to understand: the Old Testament, including the law and the prophets. For all I know he even did a quick tour of Micah. The point He was making was that it all spoke about Him. His approach, exposing people to the Old testament Scriptures as a way of encountering Him, proved to be a lesson that really stuck with the early disciples. When Peter gets the chance to talk to a vast crowd a short time later, what does he do? He preaches from an obscure corner of the Old Testament, the prophecy of Joel. I have to confess, given the opportunity to address a vast crowd about who Jesus is and what He's done, I probably wouldn't have done the same. But I might now be tempted to turn to Micah.

It's been amazing (except it's not really) how bang up to date and relevant Micah is.We've had the abusive elites in Micah 3, exploiting those weaker than themselves just because they can. This leads to what Chris Wright rightly called a kind of "social cannibalism" that consumes the consumer. Are we not concerned about elites in our day? Mind you, that doesn't get the rest of us off the hook. Perhaps we get the leaders we deserve by not thinking critically about so many of the little choices we make every day. Of course, Micah was largely ignored in his own day. Everything was basically fine wasn't it? Religious leaders were able to claim with apparent impunity that God was fine with what was going on. Except He wasn't, and judgement was coming. The creeping injustice, the toleration for what was wrong being called right, the religious syncretism that sought to keep the Living God in His place, in His box, and out of the public sphere. It wasn't doing in any damage was it? Things just kept going. And for those with a continuing pang of conscience, there was always temple, always religion, always more ritual.   

Except as Micah points out, God had shown what He was looking for. It wasn't more and more sacrifices. It wasn't even ultimate sacrifices. In a startling pointer to Jesus' future mission (and Micah prophesied the site of His birth), Micah says God doesn't want the sacrifice of their fistborn(s). Why? Because it was going to take the sacrifice of God's firstborn to clear the debt we have all incurred. But in general God had been consistent and clear in what He requires. As Micah 6:8 makes pithily clear (and as Jimmy Carter quoted in his presidential inaugural address) God requires us: "..to do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with your God."  This was no radical departure, this is the whole teaching of the Old Testament. The rituals and sacrifices had their place, but it was limited. And they provided no answer for habitual, continuing, rebellion against God. Of course few were listening in Micah's day. Few may be listening today. Shortly after Micah, it all came crashing about the heads of leaders and people. They had persisted in going their own way. 

There it is in Micah. A warning to me, to us. It was there all the time. The bad, the good, the ugly and the best. 

Sorry I wasn't listening Micah.

Keswick II: What’s Micah ever done for us?

Like the Romans in the eponymous Monty Python sketch, it’s sometimes only when a question is asked that answers start to pop into your head. I admit this question is not very likely to pop into many heads. After all, the Micah in question came from a fairly obscure and long-forgotten village/hamlet/probably-not-as-big-as-a-town in ancient Israel, and lived an awful long time ago (born around 740BC). And of course his book is tucked away in a corner of a bigger book many would consider, for all practical purposes, to be entirely irrelevant to life in the 21^st century. To be honest the question only occurred to me because Micah is the subject of the morning Bible readings here at Keswick. Shame on me it turns out. Yes, Micah was written a long way away and a long time ago, yet front and centre there are themes that resonate.

Just a couple to mention. The first is the silencing of preachers. My view is that what Micah had to say is of lasting, global significance. Many take a different view. That’s fair enough. But in Micah’s day, Micah was told to shut up. He was told that what he was saying was not a suitable subject for preachers. In the immediate context, he was warning of disaster because it turned out that God was not indifferent to what was going on in Israel and Judah. But many in Micah’s day were comfortable. At least the comfortable were comfortable, and they didn’t want their comfort being disturbed by some shaggy preacher, who originated from a nothing family, in a nothing part of the country. It wasn’t that they necessarily had no time for religion and indeed preachers. But they had to be the right sort of religion and the right sort of preachers. Preachers that preached about nice things were particularly welcome.

My observation, for what it’s worth, is that both tendencies are among us today. On the one hand when preachers take up what the Bible has to say about issues that cut across and challenge the culture, they are told to shut up. If not quite literally silenced, moves are made at least to drive them from the public sphere. Perhaps the consequences are currently not that dire in the scheme of things – yet. But maybe a time is coming, when livelihoods and then liberty and finally even life will be on the line. On the other hand, the flip side is that preachers who preach “nice things”, may well do very nicely. In our time there’s the prosperity peddlers of course. God wants only good things for us; believe hard enough, give plenty (to the preacher usually), and all will be well.  This despite the fact that Micah and others from Jeremiah to Paul and indeed Jesus Himself, all seem to have experienced something very different to health, wealth and prosperity. Then there are those who are just generally “nice” (remember the Royal wedding?). That seems to be fairly acceptable. Nice, preferably short and quick homilies, so general and vague as to be interpretable as meaning almost anything, that will do very nicely thank you. And finally, just go with the culture, reinterpreting the Bible for our times so it’s “relevant”. The bits that are clearly unacceptable to the postmodern post-Christian mind just ignore. Then we’ll be able to preach what the culture at large considers acceptable. Tell them what they want to hear. The result? Well in Micah’s day (or shortly thereafter – he was a prophet after all) first Israel (the ten northern tribes) and then Judah sleepwalk into disaster.

The other thing that sticks out is the way the powerful exploited those without power simply (so it seems) because they could. There were apparently no internal restraints on their behaviour, and because they were powerful there were obviously no external constraints on them. Exploitation was all they thought about. They went to sleep at night scheming and this was what gave them a spring in their step come the morning. The consequences for those they exploited was of no concern to them. And it looked like they got away with it. Except of course they didn’t. Their success was illusory. Kind of raises the question as to what really counts as success and what matters.

So, not very far in to Micah, and it looks like there are connections to be made between Micah’s world and mine. I accept it  might not be about roads, education, viaducts and, erm, the wine, but Micah’s may well do me some good.

Keswick I: Science and Micah?

Time for a summer break. We decided this year we’d spend part of it at least in Keswick in the English Lake District. It’s a beautiful part of the world only a few hours’ drive from where we live. Sharp little hills interspersed with dark stretches of water (the eponymous lakes). Some of the lakes are big, famous and busy (like Windermere), others are small and quiet. It’s all so picturesque that it’s a UNESCO World Heritage Site, on a par with the Grand Canyon or Machu Picchu. So here we are for a week.

Mind you, welcome as the grand vistas are from the windows of our rented cottage, they are not really why we’re here. We’re actually here for the middle week of the Keswick Convention. Founded in 1875, this has remained a theologically conservative Bible teaching jamboree, now spreading over three weeks of the English summer. For many who will be here, the centre of activity is the morning “Bible reading”. This year, during the middle week, these will concentrate on what many would consider to be a particularly obscure bit of the Old Testament, the book of Micah. So why “holiday” here rather than on a nice beach somewhere? And how does any of this sort of thing square with my day job?

First of all the Bible reading bit. Yes, reading the Bible, listening to bits of it being explained, thinking about and discussing it, is different to reading the latest research on behavioural inhibitory control (one of the things I’m currently working on). It’s certainly different to reading my own tortured prose as contained in the latest manuscript we’ve submitted for publication (hopefully to appear soon in Experimental Brain Research). But science is what I do. The Bible is much more about who I am. It’s not that the two don’t intersect and interact. Some have argued that these are such separate spheres that there can be no points of contact. But that is not a sustainable position (and neither is it an intellectually honest one). Apart from anything else the, Christian who is also a scientist must be a point of contact between the two.

It’s the Bible that shapes (or should shape) me the person. Funnily enough this has an impact on how I go about the science I do. When I seek to bring to my professional life qualities like honesty and integrity, I do that because those values stem from my faith and are shaped by what the Bible teaches. Note that I’m not claiming that if you have no faith you can’t behave with integrity and honesty; just that such commitments in me flow from my faith. My commitment to science as a way of finding out about certain processes also flows from my conviction that underpinning those processes is God’s power (something I learn from the Bible). By studying them, I’m learning more about Him. This is my version of Kepler’s famous “thinking God’s thoughts after Him” comment.

Flowing the other way, the intellectual rigour that is developed by a training in science (critical analysis, weighing of evidence etc), is helpful when thinking about the Bible. Basic rules of interpretation and analysis apply. I don’t mean it’s a scientific text making scientific claims; it’s not and it shouldn’t be treated as such. But it still has to be approached with due and thoughtful care.

So here we are thinking about Micah. I don’t expect to learn much here this week that will help me understand the pattern of inhibition errors we observe in the eye movement task we’ve been using recently to study healthy ageing. But it’s quite possible that I’m going to learn more about me and how I should be living. Because standing behind the Bible, even the bits I find obscure (like Micah) is the same God who underpins the universe I study in the lab. He is not the distant God of the Deist, a God who stands at an infinite distance as a largely passive observer. He is the intimately involved God, interested in and active in this world, who speaks though His Word, shaping thoughts and lives. That’s why I’m happy to be here this week. I don’t usually get this much time to listen and think (and in such pleasant surroundings). I might even be tempted to comment here the odd thing that I pick up in Keswick about Micah.