Part of something bigger…..

This weekend, we here in this United Kingdom are celebrating Queen Elizabeth II’s platinum jubilee. She is our longest reigning monarch, celebrating 70 years of faithful service. While the anniversary actually fell on 6^th February, this is the weekend of the holidays, pageants, parties, a thanksgiving service at St Paul’s, and so on. She is a remarkable woman, has been a remarkable head of state, and that is why many are reflecting (and remarking) on both her role and her rule. Among them was Matthew Parris in today’s Times. I’ve mentioned before my liking for Parris’ columns. But now he’s beginning to worry me.

He begins his column discussing termites of all things, because they illustrate the power of the collective. This leads him on to the human and national collectivism that was demonstrated in the pandemic. But that was a moment of coming together quite out of character with times in which division and dissension have been, and are, to the fore. What therefore can unite us Brits? It is this that brings him to her Majesty, and her role as not just a figurehead, but as a powerful uniting figure. And her appeal is, well, remarkable. Even republicans find her, if not the institution of monarchy, admirable. Interestingly Michelle O’Neil, the First Minister Elect of the Northern Ireland Assembly, wrote  to the Queen recently, expressing her admiration and gratitude. I have no doubt that she was being sincere. But remember, she is a republican who wants to see NI out of the UK and joined to the Irish Republic. The paramilitary group that gave birth to her political party murdered the Queen’s second cousin (and mentor to Prince Charles) Lord Mountbatten during the “Troubles”. O’Neill’s letter tells us something about both women, but certainly is an indication of the wide admiration that Her Majesty generates. But Parris’ main point is that this admiration also tells us something ourselves.

He asserts in his piece the following: “Like it or not, implanted within each of us is an inchoate craving for something…”. I find myself in agreement with him here. He is not claiming any original insight. His point is that we are looking for a unifying figure, we are looking for something (or someone) to “draw us together”, to bring us together into a “something bigger” beyond our individual selves. We identify the Queen as the figure who can do this, egged on by admiring commentary from abroad (even from the French President). Of course, we may be imputing to her qualities she does not in fact have. And Parris fairly points out that those often mentioned attributes of hard work and sense of duty are manifest by many other public servants who are unsung and unnoticed. We just don’t know, most of us, what she’s really like. And yet, because of the way we are apparently made, we latch on to her, and invest in her our respect, admiration and hope. Of course there is a problem. Inevitably, she is only a temporary occupant of the throne. Just this weekend, we have all been reminded of her frailty (she is after all 96 years old) as well as her remarkable reign. And this raises the question for Parris as to who comes next and whether they (or rather he) will be able to fulfil the same role. As it happens, he’s fairly optimistic.

But there is something very odd going on here. Why are we “made” with a desire to be united around someone (anyone) who can only ever succeed on a temporary and imperfect basis? He seems to be almost channelling Augustine at this point, an avowedly Christian writer whom he has certainly read. After all, Augustine opens his famous “Confessions” by writing: “..you have made us for yourself, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.” (Confessions 1.1). Parris has observed our “instinctive need to be part of something bigger than ourselves” as manifest in our coalescing around our “dutiful monarch”. He can’t explain it; but Augustine could. Augustine’s point was that we were made to know the God who created us, but by nature and practice we have become estranged from Him. And yet there are these strange echoes hinting at how we really are beneath how we appear in day-to-day life. One of these is the desire to believe in and belong to something bigger than ourselves. This sort of instinct that has been derided by materialists since the dawning of the enlightenment as a myth and a frailty just will not curl up and die. It keeps popping up in strange places and phenomena. But none of the God-replacements we turn to are able to ultimately fill the hole left by our denial of Him. Some are just wholly unsuitable and harmful. Some, while good in themselves (like our Queen), and performing a legitimate function (as she has done superbly), don’t really answer our deepest longings and needs. These can only be met with and in the God who made us and sustains us.

Of course dear Matthew will have none of this. He seems to feel a need to remind us in his column that he is a “Christian atheist” as well as “an agnostic about royalty”. Both are easy to forget; he sounds fairly keen on royalty and appears to be rigging on a Christian theme. But you really can’t be any kind of Christian and an atheist without so draining and redefining the word “Christian” (which he really does spell with a capital “C”) of its meaning that it becomes useless. As an adjective I suppose the word might bear some weight, but then it only rates lower-case c. The form he uses reveals a lot. Because it is clear that its meaning rests in the one whose title it contains, and that title is highly significant. “Christ” is the Greek form of the Hebrew “Messiah” – God’s chosen servant. As it turned out, God Himself in the form of Jesus. So “Christian atheist” suggests a degree of confusion that is never nice to observe in someone of clear intelligence and insight who’s getting on. Hence my worry.

Whether recognized or not, we are part of something bigger. At its heart is not (respectfully) the Queen of the UK and Commonwealth, as amazing as she is, but the King of Kings (and Queens). She apparently recognises this, and knows that she serves in a greater kingdom for a greater King. We could all usefully learn from her example.

Joy in a cursed world

It turns out that joy is a serious business. In 2015 the John Templeton Foundation awarded over $4M to Yale Divinity School for a project entitled “Theology of Joy and the Good Life”, the first aim of which was to develop “a new theological movement that places reflection on joy and the good life at the centre of Christian theology”. You can watch a series of YouTube videos in which serious theologians, philosophers and others seriously discuss joy. But never mind reflecting on it, where is it to be found? In a world in which several of the horses of apocalypse appear to be at least trotting towards the stable door, if not yet galloping into action, joy is at a premium.

You won’t be surprised to learn that my goto source for important subjects is not YouTube but the Bible. Even the words used in the Bible for joy have an interesting story to tell. Studying biblical words does not capture everything there is to say on a topic of course, just as studying the properties of the pigment used in Leonardo’s Mona Lisa cannot capture everything there is to say about his masterpiece. As an example, there’s an interesting story about when the translators of the Septuagint were translating Hebrew words for joy in the Old Testament into Greek. They hit a snag. Joy played a role in the religions of the ancient world; the Greeks knew how to have a good time, even in a religious setting. But this frequently involved copious amounts of alcohol and various sexual activities. The Jewish scholars translating the Old Testament wanted to emphasise that the joy experienced in the worship of Yahweh was of a different nature, and they didn’t want to import into their translation unwelcome cultural baggage. Their solution was to invent a new word in Greek which they used when referring to joy related to worship.

In the New Testament joy is mentioned 326 times including cognates and synonyms. On 141 of these occasions it is inward joy (chairein, chara) that is referenced. These words are noticeably similar to another Greek word - charis (grace). It has been suggested that there is a clear link between joy and grace; the idea is that true joy is experienced by those who are recipients of God’s grace. But the whole point about grace is that it is undeserved. Unpalatable as we tend to find the notion, underserving of God’s grace, and the joy that flows from it, is exactly where we all start off. We live under a curse in a cursed world. Hence the problem with joy.

The reason the world is cursed is laid out in the early chapters of the Bible, in Genesis. And it is no accident that the first human emotion recorded in Scripture is not joy but is Adam’s fear (Gen 3:10), followed by Cain’s anger (Gen 4:5). This does not mean there was no joy in Eden, presumably there was. But it looks like a point is being made, something is being highlighted. In fact, joy is hardly mentioned at all in the first five books of the Bible; references to it are scattered and sporadic until we reach book #5: Deuteronomy. Again, it is presumably not the case that between the events of Genesis 3 and the end of Israel’s wandering in the wilderness no human being was ever joyful. Perhaps joy (of a sort) accompanied Lamech’s hymn to violence (Gen 4:23,24), and presumably Abraham and Sarah experienced joy at the arrival of their promised son Isaac. Many in Israel were no doubt joyful at their deliverance from Egypt at the Red Sea (although their moaning and grumbling is a much larger feature of the record). However, if we treat the five books of Moses (the Pentateuch) as a single literary entity, it has to be significant that after a period of “literary” scarcity, joy does then start to consistently crop up in Deuteronomy. After a long time, and a lot of words, it is mentioned twice in Deuteronomy 12 in the context of Israel coming together to celebrate and worship in the presence of God. He is very clear that He is not to be worshiped in the manner of the peoples of the land Israel will enter but in the manner and in the place of His choosing. They were to feast and worship and rejoice. In Deuteronomy 14, Israel is instructed to “eat before the Lord your God and rejoice” (v26). In the Feast of Weeks and the Feast of Booths Israel was to “..rejoice before the Lord..”.

To help things along, Israel had a hymnbook, the Psalms, and lots of these open with joy in the very first verse (e.g. Ps 21, 47, 66, 95, 81, 97, 100), many with the idea of shouting, singing or praising God with joy. And it is in God that the “fullness of joy” is experienced (Ps16:11). What was promised and commanded in Deuteronomy was experienced by the Psalmist, and by those who took up his words in the worship of the living God. But the Old Testament is, in part, a record of Israel’s sin and rebellion and this led to judgement and exile. However, even in the midst of judgment and suffering, one of the Old Testament prophets Habakkuk wrote: “… yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will take joy in the God of my salvation” (Hab 3:18). The lack of blossom on the fig trees and an absence of fruit on the vine (Hab 3:17), a big deal in Habakkuk’s day, meant his circumstances were hardly those conducive to joy. But the joy he is speaking about is not found in his circumstances; it’s found in God.

Israel eventually returned from exile of course, and in Ezra 6 joy resulted from the rededication of the temple, the proper place for the worship of God (Ezra 6:16). Once again Israel was able to celebrate their feasts, and once again this was marked by joy (Ezra 6v22). But throughout this part of the story one is left with a sense of unfinished business. And as the Old Testament closes we are left wondering where is the joy spoken of by prophets like Isaiah. In Isaiah 61, everlasting joy was promised (v7). In the day when God creates “new heavens and a new earth” (Isaiah 65:17), Jerusalem will be a joy (65:18) and be rejoiced over by the Lord Himself (65:19; 62:4b). There was even a day promised when God Himself would rejoice over His people with “loud singing” (Zeph 3:17)! I don’t think that day was reached during the period covered by the Old Testament, and I don’t think that day is now. It is still to come.

Joy is possible in this world of pandemics and wars, of inequality and injustice, of suffering and famine. It’s possible in the teeth of these realities. It’s to be found in the same place ancient Israel was to find it – in the presence of a promise keeping, gracious God, with the community of God’s people. It is not grounded in circumstance, for how could it be? But even this is still only a shadow of a promised joy, a down-payment, a deposit with the balance still to be paid out. Joy is to be found partly in response to God (who He is and what He has done) and partly a resource to keep going in what is, still, a cursed world. But this lost world is not the last word, and in a day yet to come, our singing, and our joy, will be blended with His.

What’s so good about this Good Friday?

Just as grave concerns about a global pandemic, caused by a new virus for which there wasn’t initially a test or cure, begin to recede (whether they should or not only time will tell), war breaks out on the continent of Europe, a continent that everyone thought had learned its lesson in the 20^th century. And not the kind of war Brits have been involved in recently, whether in the Falklands (40 years ago this year), the Gulf or Iraq – wars of choice, mainly about politics – but an honest-to-goodness, old-fashioned war of national survival. A big state has picked on a smaller state, and for spurious reasons has attempted to steam-roller it into oblivion. In the pandemic we elected to follow the science. And science largely stepped up to the plate. Recent discoveries and new molecular and genetic techniques provided tests and vaccines, and then treatments, in record time. So now, even although there’s still lots of infection about, particularly from dreaded “new variants”, the fear and certainly the panic has largely dissipated. Nothing of any spiritual interest to see here, or so it would seem. And no particular spiritual lessons to be gleaned from war in Ukraine.

But there are two related things that strike me. The first is that surely now no one can cleave any longer to the naively optimistic modernist belief in the inevitable progress of humanity. For years (indeed hundreds of years) they’ve been telling us that the Christians and their Bible were just flat wrong. Humanity is not intrinsically and self-helplessly bad. Men and women are good, made bad by their environment and lack of education. Improve their environment, and educate everyone (neither of which is a bad idea), and all the bad stuff will stop happening. And, of course, it’s religion that starts wars. Do away with religion and that will also be to our benefit. No religion, no war. Anyway, religion in general, and Christianity in particular, belong to humanity’s adolescence; we can progress past that. We have progressed past that. Well, apparently not.

The war in Ukraine is every bit a cruel and violent as any fought in the 20^th century. And as for rules governing war, rules like not targeting civilians, or civilian infrastructure, apparently there’s a new rule book. The one that allowed for the systematic destruction of Grozny and Aleppo; that’s the one that is now being followed in Mariupol and Kharkiv. So far the numbers of dead and the geographical extent may not have reached the level of previous world-scale conflicts, but who knows where we are headed.

It turns out that radically improved living conditions, longer and better health and mass education, all good things in their own way, have in part only served to distract us from deeper realities. They have provided a veneer. They have improved the outside, but have apparently left the inside largely untouched, unreformed and unimproved. Yes, the war is about a bad man and his enablers and acolytes. But it’s a reminder of a central truth. There is something rotten in all of us (and not just “them”) that cannot be fixed from the outside in.

As troubling as this is, the second thing is a much trickier issue to raise, and I do so hesitantly. It is profoundly disturbing in its implications. And I claim no deeper insight than anyone else, and certainly do not claim any particular or personal revelation. One of the Old Testament prophets, Habakkuk, had a real problem with what God was doing in his day. Times were tough and things were bad. God was acting in judgement on Habakkuk’s people Judah. So far so good. Habakkuk knew that Judah had become corrupt, and they had all been well and often warned. But then God told Habakkuk how He was going to judge Judah. He was going to use the Babylonians! “But how can you?”, shouted Habakkuk, “They’re even worse than us!”. There was an answer to Habakkuk’s question of course, even if it was in part “You’ll see”. Those who lost loved ones as the Babylonians swept into Judah no doubt grieved. Those who were subsequently deported, becoming strangers in someone else’s country, were no doubt aggrieved. How could God do this to us using them?

Now, don’t get me wrong. There is a bad man at the heart of the Ukraine war, who is responsible for death and suffering we haven’t seen the likes of in generations, at least not in this part of the world. And as in time Babylon was dealt with, so will the President of Russia be. “Will not the judge of all the earth do right?”. And yet it’s precisely this part of the world, Europe, that has taken the lead in proclaiming that God is an irrelevance (if He exists at all). Either He’s made up or we’ve abolished Him. But don’t worry, because we can get along without Him very happily thank you. Now, if there is a God, not the unattached, uninvolved watch-maker of the deist, but the God who is intimately involved in this very world (because He made it and sustains it), how is He supposed to respond to all of this? 

Maybe, just maybe, as well as doing what we all can to alleviate real suffering, we also need to reflect on what He might be saying to us all, even in these current events. Maybe there’s a need to reflect on our whole spiritual and moral direction and recent tradition, and look for another way. Because the track we’re on just isn’t working. It hasn’t solved the basic problem - something deep in me, in us, that no amount of environmental or educational improvement can touch or fix.

But what makes me think that there is a God, and what makes me think that he’s bothered by any of this? That’s where we come to Good Friday. If there’s anything that shows that God is not an uninterested bystander in all the mess of this world, it is that He Himself, in the person of Jesus, stepped into precisely this broken, bloodstained world. And in order to provide a means whereby the real issue could be dealt with, how to bring about the internal revolution needed in each human heart and mind, He went to neither a lecture hall nor a pulpit but to a cross. There He gave up His life in appalling circumstances, not as an illustration or an example, but as a sacrifice. Making provision for all God-ward human failure, making it possible to break the power that holds us captive, and enable a fundamental break with our personal failure where God is concerned. Making possible personal, inward, revolution and renewal This is not a new way, or a newly concocted alternative to modernism’s (or post-modernism’s) manifest failure. It’s a rediscovery of an ancient truth.

Buried in another of those “obscure” and ancient Old Testament prophets, quoted by Peter after Jesus’s resurrection, and taken up by Paul in one of his New Testament letters is a startling statement about how entry into this different, new, old, radical way is possible. And it requires Good Friday. Precisely because Jesus died on the first Good Friday and was raised on the first Easter Sunday, it is the case that “everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved” (Joel 2:32; Acts 2:21; Rom 10:13).

Now that’s good, whether it's Friday or not.

“Blessed wonder and surprising delight…”

Maybe it’s just me, but I assume that there is a time in all our lives when the thought strikes us that we are nearer our death than our birth. Of course none of us can ever know when we reach this point, because that would require knowing when we were going to die. Fortunately, for most of us this is unknown, if not necessarily unknowable. Perhaps such thoughts only come when one reaches a certain stage in life when statistically, the law of averages being what it is, we think we are at, or are beyond that point. This was brought home to me recently when I received a couple of projections from my pension company (there’s a big clue!). Their actuaries had calculated that I (probably) had about twenty years of life left. But then what?

Here we have a problem. It is at this point that the evil twins of materialism and naturalism demand  a high price. Materialism is a creed and therefore it is something to be believed. It is not something that is necessarily true. It proclaims that the universe only consists of stuff that can be seen, touched, tasted, heard or smelled. Only matter exists and there is nothing else, nothing beneath and nothing above. Naturalism is the related belief that everything that is arises from natural causes, and therefore only natural explanations, that rule out a priori supernatural causes, are acceptable. Again, this is a belief. Many would hold that these two are the ruling beliefs of the age. And the problem is that even those of us who reject both of them are influenced by them.

Previous generations would have thought nothing of my "then what" question. Most would simply have spoken of heaven to come. Today we are patronizingly apt to claim that this was because they knew so much less than us, although they believed so much more. Now we know so much more, and consequently believe so much less. How easily their answer to “then what” is dismissed as just a form of superstitious wishful thinking. But this falls into two traps. The first is the chronological snobbery that C.S. Lewis defined as the “uncritical acceptance of the intellectual climate common to our own age and the assumption that whatever has gone out of date is on that account discredited”. The modern (or the postmodern, or post-postmodern) is inevitably right, the past is inevitably mistaken. Secondly, it leaves us ensnared in the trap of believing that somehow we no longer  believe. Certainly there are things that we no longer believe. But that is different. Materialism and naturalism are creeds that are believed. It’s not that we don’t believe, rather that we believe something different. We have ruled out all talk of heaven to come, not so much as unbelievable but as irrelevant.

But Christian believers, those who take seriously God’s self-revelation of His purposes in His Word, need to be a lot less coy about what we believe. It’s not that we believe and the naturalist and materialist don’t. We believe something different and need to be less shy about saying so. And perhaps there is no more important issue than our final destination and state. If it’s not up to much, we should be clear about it. If it is only just a little bit better than the alternatives, then that would be worth knowing. An informed choice can then be made about whether it can really supply the hope and comfort actually needed to offset the trouble we’re likely to face for being believers in it in the first place. But if it were to turn out that it is a prospect that is glorious and joyful (not words we’ve heard much in recent days), indeed if it were revealed to be full of “blessed wonder and surprising delight” then this is surely worth knowing too. A clear vision of such a state would surely be an important resource helping us in the here and now, as well as healing us in there and then.

In his book “Rejoice and Tremble”, Michael Reeves highlights some of the writing about heaven from the past, including some from Isaac Watts. Watts is perhaps best known today as a hymn writer; he wrote “When I Survey the Wondrous Cross” and the Christmas carol “Joy to the World”. But he was also a non-conformist pastor, tutor, philosopher and logician, and wrote what became a standard textbook on logic (titled “Logic”!), published in 1724 and running to some twenty editions. It was widely used in universities such as Oxford and Yale, well into the nineteenth century. So he is not easily dismissed as an obscurantist medieval mystic. Indeed he was well aware of, and had respect for science. But he knew it had limits:

“What are the heights, and depths, and lengths, of human science, with all the boasted acquisitions of the brightest genius of mankind! Learning and science can measure the globe, can sound the depths of the sea, can compass the heavens, can mete out the distances of the sun and moon, and mark out the path of every twinkling star for many ages past, or ages to come; but they cannot acquaint us with the way of salvation from this long, this endless distress.”

So it is interesting to read what Watts wrote about heaven. He certainly wrote about it in terms rarely encountered today:

“In heaven the blessed inhabitants ‘behold the majesty and greatness of God’ in such a light as fixes their thoughts in glorious wonder and the humblest adoration, and exalts them to the highest pleasure and praise.” (“The World to Come”, Vol I, 1811, p389)

“When … the soul, as it were, beholds God in these heights of transcendent majesty, it is overwhelmed with blessed wonder and surprising delight, even while it adores in most profound lowliness and self-abasement.” (p390)

So there you have it. According to Watts, I can look forward to being “overwhelmed with blessed wonder and surprising delight”. Clearly he could be just plain wrong. But what he wasn’t was stupid, and therefore should not be lightly dismissed. As an answer to “what then”, it’ll do me.

Faith in fantasy…..

I rather like Matthew Parris, one of the columnists for The Times. He’s a thoughtful fellow, who has the good sense to share some of my prejudices (or is it the other way around?). We don’t agree about everything, but his analysis is often thought provoking, and that’s useful. Usually he comments on the political issues of the day and other ephemera. But on Saturday (behind a paywall), on the first day of a new year, and because it was the first day of a new year, he asked for forgiveness “for discussing those deeps rather than the surface storms”; he was referring to those deep, great underlying currents which “shape history”. The basic conundrum he decided to tackle was why nice people can champion wrong causes, and wrong’uns can sometimes do the right thing. This he finds perplexing. But what he really had a problem with was notions of good and evil.

His problems are, in part, due to a number of assumptions he makes. Among these is the notion that good and evil have no independent existence; the words “good” and “evil” are only adjectives and should not be used as nouns. This springs from the related notion that there is nothing outside of ourselves, by which he means explicitly (this is how he ends his column): “no demons, no Heaven, no Hell, no cosmic forces of good and evil, no battle between darkness and light”. As he claims in his final sentence “There is only us”. Along the way to this assertion however, he writes approvingly of Augustine. Now, you would find it difficult to find someone in history who would more violently disagree with his concluding statement. Augustine was only too aware of, and conceptualized, all the things that Parris claims don’t exist. He was utterly convinced that there is not only us. What Parris specifically approves of in his column is the thrust of Augustine’s statement in his “Confessions” that “I still thought that it is not we who sin, but some alien nature that sins within us” (Confession10:5). In other words there was a time when Augustine thought that he wasn’t the problem, but some power acting on him. Parris’ central claim is in agreement with this; there is no such force, no such power. Such an idea is a fantasy mainly got up by the Christians (and Muslims for good measure). There is just us, and the things we do. The real question, which he claims others persistently dodge, is why then we act as we do.

I am always intrigued when atheists, even cultured and intelligent ones, take up with approval what Christians teach. Of course, Parris can’t possibly approve of everything Augustine taught, and that’s why he misses some of the answers that are to be found in Augustine’s writing. Augustine knew he was not as he should be or as he could be. In the Confessions he recounts what happened to him as he was struggling with this, specifically with his “impure life”. Part of his struggle was that he was not able to do anything to deliver himself from the distressing condition he found himself in, any more than a drowning man can rescue himself. But he recounts how he heard a child’s voice chanting “take up and read”, which he took to be “a Divine command” to read the Bible. He immediately went off and found Paul’s letter to the Romans (which as it happens he had been reading) and read from Romans Ch13 “..put on the Lord Jesus Christ…”. The effect was stunning:  “…it was as if a light of relief from all anxiety flooded into my heart. All the shadows of doubt were dispelled.” (Confessions 8:12). What he is recounting is one of the most famous conversions to Christianity in all of history and literature. Augustine would go on to be one of the most important Christian theologians.   

What Augustine found in Scripture was an account of how we are all marked by a bias against how the God who made us and sustains us would have us think and behave. Our wills are warped; we’ve become “wrong”. But there’s nothing we can do about this for ourselves. We need the intervention of God’s grace to bring about our rescue and that’s what Augustine experienced for himself in a Milan garden. There had been an internal battle going on, and it was resolved when Augustine accepted the grace that he was offered in Christ. But there is also an external battle going on in that there is an adversary who’s whole project is to trip us up and keep us away from the grace that would rescue us. This mixture of our nature, and both internal and external battles helps explain much of our behaviour, in both its good and bad aspects. All of this, Parris asserts, is fantasy. But his is an assertion not an argument. And the problem is that it leaves him perplexed. Denial of God, Heaven, Hell, good and evil is all well and good. But it has all the hallmarks of an unproductive approach. There is something to be explained, and this approach does nothing to explain it. What Augustine found in the pages of the Bible was a powerful explanation. Now this, in itself, doesn’t make it true. But what he then came to experience was God speaking to him personally through His word the Bible. To quote Paul in Romans again “..faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ” (Rom 10:17). This is not at all about dead propositions on a page, dry and dusty arguments providing a proof in words for a particular view of good and evil. This is a combination of an objective explanation (something outside of us) and the subjective experience (something inside of us) of God speaking to us for Himself.

So if you wanted a project for 2022, one that will leave you less perplexed at the end than at the beginning (and certainly less perplexed than dear Matthew Parris) - “take up and read”. Bibles aren’t hard to find. You can get recent translations (like the NIV and ESV) free, online. And you can easily pick up analogue Bibles (probably for free) in a church nearby, or in all good bookstores (probably for cash). Or you could place your faith in Parris’ fantasy that there is only us.

Christmas Reflections 2021 #2 Not just a baby…..

The world still spins on its axis and there are no obvious signs of it ending any time soon. Neither of these observations means that it won’t end any time soon. Mind you, given current conditions, the continuation of the world in its present state is not unalloyed good news. The virus continues to spread and kill, the planet warms, racism continues to exclude and oppress, poverty for many continues to grind, political tensions rise. None of this is good, even if the main impulse at this time of year is to direct our gaze away from these realities and coo contentedly as we imagine a well-fed infant, sleeping soundly albeit in a feeding trough wrapped in cloths (not clothes). But this infant will shortly become a refugee in another country to escape violence. He will grow up probably having the circumstances of His birth questioned (“his mother was unmarried when He was conceived, y’know”), and to be discriminated against because of the end of the country He apparently hailed from. And then a lot of other things will happen. There is a hard edge to the Biblical narrative that we think of as the first Christmas, and it gets harder as the story progresses. It is the history of a life very definitely lived in a world eerily familiar to us.

In reality, ours is a world of predicaments. Some are petty and trivial, and barely deserve the description. Some are excruciating and perplexing and admit to no obvious solution. Whether to wear or not wear a mask at an indoor gathering really should not be on the list. The fact that it is in many parts of the rich and educated world is one small sign of how ridiculous things are becoming. There are many reasons why some insist they will not wear a mask. Apparently for some it is a matter of demonstrating that they have an inalienable right to choose, and to demonstrate that they are possessors of such a right they choose to act nonsensically. It would be no denial of their right to choose to wear a mask, but apparently freedom is only demonstrated by wrong choices. Of course they feel free to choose because they don’t understand their predicament. The problem is dangerous, but it is invisible. The virus can’t be seen, smelt or touched. It is only revealed by one or more of a constellation of symptoms, and (in an admittedly small minority) an inability to breathe effectively even in an intensive care unit. As most of us don’t work in intensive care units, we don’t see the daily life and death struggle to breathe in such places. Numbers, rates, probabilities, statistics, just don’t communicate effectively enough the predicament. Not feeling in peril means things like mask wearing and vaccination come to feel like impositions rather than means of rescue. And this partly explains why what happened at Bethlehem is so easily misconstrued.

If you don’t feel the seriousness of a situation, you are unlikely to feel any particular necessity for rescue. If I tell you the baby born in Bethlehem was actually not just any old baby (not that there are such things) but one stage in a cosmic rescue mission, it’s unlikely to strike you as particularly relevant to you. So it is easy to accept the line that Christmas is a quaint cultural festival; a probable kernel of historical truth wrapped in multiple layers of myth, but nothing more. After all, a relevant rescue mission would suggest some level of peril, and you don’t feel in any way imperilled. And certainly not in a manner whereby a baby could possibly be of much help. But what if, as with the virus, you couldn’t see, hear, touch or even normally feel the threat that you face? Attempting persuasion with propositions probably just won’t cut it. Nevertheless, here goes.

The thing about the baby born in Bethlehem, in this world although admittedly some time ago, is that it provides a point of contact between two narratives. One is the narrative of the Living God, as He reveals it in the Bible; the other is a competing narrative that there is no such being and the Bible is a story book for children and the inadequate. But let’s stick with God’s narrative for the moment. Our world is spoiled and is not as it should be. This spoiling involves all of us as we are spoiled too (from His point of view). As He’s God, and we’re not, this rather matters. Because the problem – let’s call is S for short – is so fundamental, and because S is an outrage and an affront to God, the only real answer is to bring the current state of affairs to an end, and recreate things as they should be. Because He's God He can do this. But then what of you and me? That would mean an end of us (remember we’re part of the problem). But at some point, still in our future, that’s what is going to happen. And so that’s the predicament we face. Now we could rail against the injustice of it all, but that wouldn't solve the predicament. We could just ignore it and wish it away, it does all sound a bit remote and ridiculous. But if there were anything that could deliver us from our predicament, ignoring it wouldn't make sense.

For reasons fundamentally only known to Himself, and only partly revealed to us (but to do with His character as opposed to any external necessity), God has provided a means by which we can be rescued from this predicament. By fixing S in individuals, the process of being made fit for the world that will follow can be inaugurated. The baby born in Bethlehem is part of the mission that makes this possible. And this is where the two narratives collide. Because there really is a Bethlehem, and there really was a baby. To deal with S, there is a price, a cost that has to be paid. Being affected by S incurs an obligation that must be met before there can be any question of being part of the world that is to come. But self-help is not an option. After all, by nature we are all so caught up in the counter-narrative that there isn’t even a problem. Other than what is revealed in the Bible, God’s narrative, we would be unaware of our predicament, and therefore blissfully ignorant of our obligation. But the baby born in Bethlehem, grows to adulthood and takes that obligation on Himself as a substitute, and offers individuals freedom from the obligation, thereby fixing S. 

Thus, only to see a baby is to miss the bigger picture, to miss (and to miss out on) the rescue mission. Rescue offered to all, because all are in a predicament and facing disaster because of S. To substitute appropriate Bible words for S, Jesus becomes a Saviour to deal with Sin. More than a baby, a rescuer. All fine and good. Except you probably neither see it, or feel it. Even though the pandemic should have taught us all about our vulnerability, and the fragility of life as it is for all of us. All this talk of sin and rescue sounds much less compelling than sticking with stories of perpetual babies. Except that in due course Christmas will be followed by Easter. And that’s a whole different story.

Christmas Reflections 2021 #1 Grimness again……

Reflecting on last year’s reflections seemed like a good place to start this year. One of them centred on the grimness of the original events which eventually led to us celebrating Christmas (along with the advertising of the men from Coca Cola). You can obviously read that particular post again should you be so inclined. Here we are, our second Christmas in the pandemic, and things have taken a potentially ugly turn with the advent of the Omicron variant of COVID19. At least last year we had the effects of the vaccine campaign to look forward to. Then along came Delta, and now Omicron, complete with partial vaccine escape. Who knows how bad it will turn out to be? Apparently, at this stage, no-one. But once again we are facing restrictions - the Netherlands has just gone into “lockdown” again, with other European states perhaps about to follow. Some people are wondering what to do for the best in terms of how to celebrate Christmas with family and whether they can travel any distance or not. Meanwhile, protests are growing over restrictions (in Government and on the streets), and the antivaxxers are still making their voices heard. All of this is before we get to political instability and problems with integrity at the heart of UK politics, and stuff that really matters like Russian forces massing on the Ukrainian border and the growing climate crisis. In the face of all this, it is tempting to put one’s fingers in one’s ears and hum a happy tune before hunkering down with a stack of Christmas DVD’s, pigging out on mince pies and hoping that it will all turn out alright somehow. That would be naïve, and probably self-defeating. Eventually all the DVD’s would be watched, and a diet consisting of only mince pies is almost as unhealthy as a dose of COVID in a twenty-year-old. But funnily enough there is some Biblical warrant for an approach that, at least superficially, seems a bit like this (without the calorie count).

If you’ve been to many carol concerts, nativity plays or watchnight services, you will inevitably have encountered readings from Isaiah’s prophecy. Isaiah seemed to know an awful lot about both Jesus’ birth specifically, and His life and character more generally. This leads some to deny that the book of Isaiah could possibly been written when apparently it was written – hundreds of years before the events themselves. Of course if the Living God revealed things to Isaiah, things in his future which he may very well not have understood himself, that has big implications for how we understand the Bible and the events thus foretold. But puting that to one side, Isaiah Ch 11 vs 1-9 has been on my mind of late. Here, in what were probably grim circumstances, Isaiah invited his original audience to look up and look forward. While the bulk of Isaiah’s message was that things were going to get grimmer still for his nation of Judah, in 11:1 he writes about new life that will spring from what will look like a dead, inert tree stump.

It becomes clear in v2-5 that Isaiah is not referring to an event, nor to an institution, but to a person who is to come. He tells us that “the Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him” (11:2). Aspects of this person’s inward character are described: He will have wisdom, understanding , counsel, might and knowledge; all qualities singularly lacking from leaders in Isaiah’s day. And He will be marked by the “fear of the Lord”, a phrase that is repeated for emphasis. What was an aspiration for others, would be a daily reality for Him. Who could this possibly be? After Jesus was baptized in the Jordan by John, Matthew records the Spirit descending and “coming to rest on Him” (Matt 3:16). Shortly after this, as Jesus began his public ministry, He attended a synagogue on the Sabbath and read from Isaiah 61: “The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me…”. And then He said “Today this Scripture is fulfilled in your hearing” (Luke 4:21). Jesus was observed to be, and claimed to be, the one who was promised in Isaiah 11:1 – the one on whom the Spirit of the Lord rested. He is the one who fulfilled the promise of Is 11 along with those other staples of carol services like Isaiah 7:14 “..the virgin shall conceive..” and 9:6ff “..for unto us a child is born..”. But then Isaiah goes a bit weird.

In 11:6-9 the scene shifts. A different world is portrayed, different from the time when Jesus lived, and different to our world. Wolves dwelling with lambs, and leopards lying down with goats! Whether the wolves and lambs, leopards and goats of v6 are metaphorical or literal hardly matters. In either case, where previously one was predator and the other prey, in this new world things are different. Lions will apparently be no longer interested in eating fattened calves. Indeed, at a basic, even biological level, things will be transformed: lions will eat straw (v7). And a particular enmity that has been present from near the beginning of humanity’s existence will be absent from this future world. In v8, the ancient hostility between snakes and even young children (we might call them “offspring”) will in that day no longer exist. Older children, who you would expect to have learned a thing or two, won’t develop a healthy fear of poisonous snakes, nor will they be at risk from them (v9). In this imagery, there are quite deliberate echoes Genesis 3:15 but with a twist. Gen 3 is the account of the fall of man, and the entry of sin into a perfect created order. As a result a snake is cursed because of its role, and one element of this is enmity between the snake and the “offspring of the woman”. But in Is 11:8 a world is described in which that enmity has been removed. But how to get from where we are to this new world?

If you’ve ever gone walking in the English Lakes, or the mountains of Wales, or in the Scottish Highlands, you’ll have had the experience of looking at distant peaks. It is often difficult to get a sense of the distance between them, and you can see nothing of valleys between them. Here, Isaiah has the same problem as he looks down the corridors of time and sees two peaks. We know that the first part of this chapter (the first peak) refers to Jesus – because Jesus Himself tells us. That was in Isaiah’s future, but is obviously in our past. The first advent was a promise made, and we know it as a promised kept. Jesus was born, lived as the one portrayed in Isaiah 11 vs 2-5, and died as the suffering servant Isaiah also tells us about in Ch53 – “pierced for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities” (53v5). But there is a second peak, far off in the distance from Isaiah’s perspective. This is a renewed world, a world without sin and the enmity it produces, full of the knowledge of the Lord (Is 11:9). This is a world yet to come, lying in our future. Our response to Jesus and His first advent determines whether we will gain entry into that perfect world that is yet to come. Christ came before, exactly as promised. He will come again (as promised) to “judge the world in righteousness” (Acts 17:31), transforming everything. The fulfilling of the first promise provides a rational basis for trusting the second.

When things are grim, the return of the celebration of Jesus’ first advent reminds us to look up and anticipate His second, and the world that it will inaugurate. Much better than DVD’s and mince pies.