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.