GBShaw Blog

  • A Good Example or a Terrible Warning

    A long time ago, when I’d screwed things up yet again, a respected church leader told me: “Well, if you can’t be a good example, you can always be a terrible warning.” She said it with an indulgent smile. I’m sure she didn’t invent the dichotomy, but it’s stayed with me and had many applications since.

    A couple of weeks ago, it had another outing when I was preaching on Genesis 15. Yahweh (in chapter 12) has promised Abram that he will father a great nation through which the whole world will be blessed. But years later, Abram and Sarai still have no child. Abram is quick to complain about this when Yahweh comes to visit him in a vision. The story tells us that God takes Abram outside his tent, shows him the stars and says his offspring will be as numerous as the stars he can see.

    Then we get the bit that the New Testament will take up. Abraham believes God, who credits his faith (trust) as righteousness (15:6). Thus, Abraham becomes the great example of faith for Paul (Romans 4:3) and is duly inducted into the hall of fame for faith by the author of Hebrews (Hebrews 11:11-12).

    And yet Abram’s conduct is far from ‘faith and nothing but faith’. In fact he, like many great Old Testament heroes, is BOTH a good example AND a terrible warning at different times.

    In chapter 12, Abram and Sarai leave Canaan and go to Egypt to escape famine. But he is afraid that the Egyptians will see how beautiful Sarai is and will kill him to get her. So, to save himself, he tells Sarai to pretend to be his sister. The expected happens, and Sarai is taken into Pharoah’s harem. Pharoah rewards Abram very richly for Sarai’s sake. God is very displeased with the arrangement and inflicts terrible diseases on Pharoah and his household. Pharoah finds out that Sarai is married to Abraham and sends them packing, but with everything that Abraham has acquired.

    To make matters worse, Abraham (the new name Yahweh gives him in chapter 17) again pretends (in chapter 20) that Sarah is his sister when they travel to the Negev, where Abimelech takes Sarah into his harem. This time God intervenes more quickly before Abimelech can lay a hand on Sarah. Somehow, Abraham still comes away richer with gifts from Abimelech. I suppose this is something of what it means to be chosen by God.

    These stories are told fairly matter-of-fact, but Abraham’s conduct is surely not to be held up as a good example. We might particularly pick out Jacob and David as key players in God’s purposes whose conduct is sometimes far from exemplary.

    For me, I take solace that I follow in hallowed footsteps in that sometimes I’m a good example and sometimes a terrible warning. What really seems to matter is that God has chosen Abraham, and has chosen us and he’s the one who generously keeps bringing us back into the right way when we’ve strayed.

    To conclude: this is what I think I should have preached a couple of weeks ago. Sadly, it didn’t come out that well! I often know what I should have preached after the event. But my trust is that it all depends on God and he can further his purposes just as well through my mistakes as through the things I get right. Praise God!

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  • RIDDLED WITH LIGHT

    You may recognise the title from WB Yeats’ poem The Cold Heaven. It’s a phrase that has stuck with me since studying Yeats’ poetry many years ago.

    The words capture the essence of my visit to Uganda and South Sudan. I was there for five weeks in April/May. There are lots of stories to tell and I still plan to write more in due course.

    “Riddled with light” is a violent metaphor. For me it conjures images of a Gatling gun, hand-cranked, dealing out death, blowing holes in bodies and buildings. Light, of course, is characteristically a positive word. The inner conflict of the phrase recalls Yeats’ later refrain in the poem Easter 1916: “A terrible beauty is born.”

    There is a terrible beauty to be seen in the camps in Northern Uganda, where nearly one million Sudanese refugees live. The camps are dark places but riddled with light. Life is a bit different in South Sudan, but its towns of Juba, Yei and Kajokeji all reveal the same oxymoronic reality.

    In one sense, there’s nothing extraordinary about this. We’ve come to expect a drop of good news amidst great tragedies. Exceptional self-sacrificing bravery is often present and widely trumpeted when a disaster strikes. A person is rescued from under the rubble of a collapsed building or a mine, long after hope of finding survivors has vanished. Stories abound of how communities support one another amidst war, prejudice and poverty. All reflect Dickens’ rich opening to A Tale of Two Cities: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times ….”

    How do people survive in a refugee camp for 30 years? How do people cope being unable to afford a desperately needed operation for their child? What is it like to miss years of school or have no hope of any qualification that might get you a job? Or have overcome so much deprivation to achieve qualifications and then not be able to find any work, eking out an impoverished existence at the house of an almost equally poor distant relative in a city such as Juba, so far from home?

    To be honest, it’s hard to keep looking and not turn away, to listen to people’s stories and engage with their reality with an open heart. But when we do this, not only does it honour the humanity of the person or community, it prevents us lessening our own, or put another way, it makes us more fully human, because we are engaged with reality not shielding ourselves from it.

    Learning how people survive and where they find light helps us not only to begin to understand (a little) their situation, but in doing this we too learn how to live. It is the path of wisdom, practical transferable wisdom. This is at the heart of our fellowship and the ground on which any true partnership is built. In fact it’s necessary to any good relationship at all not just cross-cultural and international outreach. We learn from each other. We share resources.

    And resources are what my friends from Sudan have in abundance. Resources that are more important than the much-abused resources of oil, gas and minerals to be found in South Sudan. Resources that lighten the darkness in ways that gas and oil can never do.

    I’m not sure I could identify all these resources for living, but I am sure they begin with thankfulness and active thanksgiving. Discerning, seeking out and celebrating everything for which we are thankful. A glass of clean water or a cup of tea, a conversation, a shared memory, a laugh, people to help you dig your plot or harvest it, an opportunity to help someone out, a community gathering, a story, the ripening of the mangoes on the trees, a prayer, a word of hope. Everyday things as well as major events. Any excuse for a celebration! A wedding obviously but also a funeral with all the comfort and practical help that family and friends provide. Etcetera!

    Of course, almost all of these (and many more) are familiar to us, but we so easily take them for granted. We so often expect the good things and focus on what we don’t have and live in a permanent state of dissatisfaction.  

    Or we lose the importance of community. The ongoing and daily reality of community and commitment to the common good. The sense of belonging and responsibility that comes from community. For most Sudanese, survival depends on the give and take of community life, rooted in the belief that ‘who we are’ comes before ‘who I am’.

    Most friends of mine from South Sudan (whether refugees in Uganda or living in South Sudan) live lives that feel much more vulnerable generally. Vulnerable to disease and death. Vulnerable to being unemployed. If working, they are vulnerable to losing their job and income. Vulnerable to accidents when they travel. Vulnerable to prejudice and criminality due to a non-existent or corrupt judicial system. Vulnerable to armed groups stealing their crops or trampling their land with large herds of cattle. And much more besides.

    And yet, for the most part, people do not live their lives in fear of what may happen. There is an acceptance that these bad things can and do happen. They are part of life. There is extraordinary resilience. Of course planning happens, but people live much more ‘for today’.  There is an acceptance that things don’t always work out. It accounts for the very frequent use of the Arabic word ‘inshallah’ meaning ‘God-willing’. We shall see you tomorrow inshallah. We will start a Nursery School inshallah. She will get better inshallah. It could be just a word, or even symptomatic of fatalistic resignation, but mostly it is an expression of real faith, real trust in God.

    There is a trust that God and family and neighbours will get you though whatever happens. So we have bread for today and tomorrow will take care of itself. No use worrying.

    I hope that thankfulness and community are a challenge to us and a hopeful opportunity to rediscover what they can mean in our context.

    The last thing I want to do is idolise the people and communities I meet from South Sudan. They are as fallible as any other people. But they have wisdom to share from their situation.

    We can’t simply transpose a Sudanese way of living back to Europe. But I think we can be inspired to think and live differently as individuals, as families, as Church communities etc.

    And we can, perhaps must, ask the questions: how we can be more resilient? More thankful for what we do have?  More community-minded? And hopefully through it all, more open to God and to his/her family who are our brothers and sisters across the world.

    We face darkness in so many ways, but already our darkness is riddled with light if we have eyes to see it.

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  • I Believe in You

    When I began my last job as a vicar, there was a small bookshop in the church, run by a Christian who had some very strong beliefs. The books on the shelves reflected his rather narrow theology. I could cope with that, but he also would pin up articles from various newspapers and journals, which invariably attacked the wider Church, and clergy in particular, for their lack of faith in God and in the Bible. Usually with a hand-written comment from him like: “Clergy lack faith!” He was an otherwise kind man, and (I think!) accepted graciously the clipping of his wings with the arrival of a new vicar.

    I start with that story, because there’s a lot of focus on church leaders’ faith in God and in the Bible. And, of course, a lot of variety and disagreement in how that faith works out, or should work out, in today’s world and in the local context.

    However, it seems to me that a vital but very undervalued ‘faith’, for church leaders and Christians generally, is our faith in people. Our faith in people is very much linked to our faith in God and in the Bible, because each person is made in the image of God, and it’s the first chapter of the Bible which assures us of this. Nonetheless we rarely focus on the faith we need to have in people.

    In the wonderful film Hook, Robin Williams plays a grown-up Peter Pan, who has forgotten who he was and is. As a workaholic lawyer, Peter Banning has neglected his family time and time again, but when his two children are stolen and taken to Never-Never land, Peter must go there to save them from Captain Hook. But to save them, he must first remember who he truly is, and become Peter Pan again. To the lost boys he meets in Never-Never land, he is initially a figure of ridicule, until a small child takes Peter’s face in his  hands and looks searchingly deep into his eyes. And after much looking: “O Peter – there you are!” And from then Peter himself begins to believe, to remember who he is and how to fly.

    In the moving climax of the film, when Peter fights Captain Hook, Hook plays on Peter’s doubts about who he really is, reminding him of his past failings. Peter looks defeated, but is saved from this brutal attack on his self-image by the children who say, one by one, “I believe in you” and finally his son Jack who says “You are the Pan.” With his faith in himself restored, Peter finds his mojo and goes on to defeat Hook.

    I visited a couple about 10 days ago, whom I’ve seen on and off since their teenage son tragically took his own life a few years back. As I walked away from the visit, it seemed to me that what I have been able to offer into that dark place was something very much like “I believe in you.” In particular: “I believe you have the resources and support to ‘get through’ this to a place where every waking moment is no longer a nightmare. Things will get better. You will begin to have energy for life. Things you look forward to. You will know joy again. The gaping black hole in your daily life will always be there, but it will not constantly suck you in.”

    We are currently in Lent. Confession and penance are founded on a belief in people, as well as in the forgiving nature of God. This is how we can forgive ourselves and forgive others.  We believe we (and other people) have it in us to choose a better way. We can face our selfishness and mistakes and not be overwhelmed by them, but find relief and move forward less burdened.

    As a vicar I’m convinced that believing in people stands alongside believing in God as about the best I could do for anyone. And people believing in me is just about the best thing they can do for me. Especially when I’ve lost my self-belief and I’m inclined to believe the accusations of an over-active conscience.

    As individuals and as the Church, we yearn for people to believe in God. And to discover the life God offers them in Jesus. Surely no-one turns to Christ without knowing, at some level, that God believes in them. God’s call must mean that God believes in us. We are significant. We are loved. Not faceless slaves, but loved children. And we can make a difference.

    The mission of the Church, any Church, depends crucially on its capacity to demonstrate that we believe in one another as well as in God. It’s a dynamic of the whole people of God, and nurturing this must be a priority for every form of church leadership .

    For any of us to thrive, we need people to believe in us at every stage of our lives – teachers, family, friends, work colleagues, pastors and especially our parents. I remember my son once getting frustrated with me, saying something like: ‘you don’t listen to me. You don’t think I’ve got anything worthwhile to say.’ Ouch! I was (eventually) glad he could trust me with that painful truth.

    Believing in someone is an expression of love and respect. It always translates into words and actions which reveal that belief. Giving people opportunities. Trusting them. And ‘trust’ is what it’s all about. “Trust” is a perfect translation of the Greek word normally translated “faith” in the New Testament – ‘pistis’.

    The two greatest commandments, according to Jesus, are to love God whole-heartedly and to love our neighbours as ourselves. They go together. Believing in God and believing in our neighbour.

    When Paul writes his wonderful words about love in 1 Corinthians 13, he is addressing young Christian communities. Above all, they are to love. This is “the most excellent way”. God’s love is the model – a love which “always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.” A risky love indeed, but one which is necessary to help one another achieve our potential. God believes in us. Let us believe in one another.

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  • ****** Extractor Hood!

    Our extractor fan above the hob has been out of action for several weeks. Apart from pressing the ‘on’ button every now and then (more in hope than expectation) I did nothing about it. I put off doing anything about it. Except complaining. Especially when I needed it to extract the smell of frying onions and garlic. How frustrating it is when things don’t work! How hard it is to get anything mended. How much time I’ve wasted over the years trying to work out what is wrong with my computer, or printer or phone. And fixing (or not) fan heaters, strimmers, recalcitrant torches and so on.

    A couple of days ago, it occurred to me that I’d better check on the guarantee, as we must have installed it a little under 2 years ago, just before we moved in. The guarantee might be still valid, but about to run out. I wearily retrieved the paperwork from the drawer where all our appliances’ documents are to be found (or not found). And yes, it has a 2-year guarantee which will run out in a month or so. Better do something about it and contact the manufacturers’ agents.

    But first, go to the back of the appliance booklet where ‘Troubleshooting’ can be found. Check for anything to try. Nothing hopeful there. Just the usual: is it plugged in? Check the fuse is working etc. There is no plug, it’s all wired into the wall. Isn’t it? There are various sockets along the wall … and a switch. I wonder what that switch is for. Press the switch down.  Press the on/off button on the extractor fan and … like magic (black magic?) it works. Feelings of relief and shame. Then: who turned the switch off?

    But even if it wasn’t me (which it probably was) what an eejit to whinge for weeks about it not working. Is there something to learn from it apart from my eejit-ness? Endless possibilities no doubt, but here’s what I’m thinking.

    I suspect I’m not alone in being much better at giving advice than receiving it. And advice I regularly give, even when not asked, is to face the thing that troubles us. Not in a gung-ho manner, because many things we face are deeply troubling and costly to engage. And we often need another person or persons to help us do that. And even a bit of preparation. But basically we know that putting off dealing with something almost always makes it worse. Not least because we add the stress of all those moments when it comes to mind, and we feel the pain, and it takes energy to squash it down again.

    But my experience, and the experience of countless others I’ve sat with, is that the thing we dread to face is often much less dreadful than we fear, and sometimes even simple to sort out.

    Okay – it’s a deep and complex thing to hang on a bit of stupidity about an extractor fan. But maybe the determination to face difficult things in our personal experience and in the wider world, might need to begin with small things.

    A final word. The ‘abundant life’ or ‘fulness of life’ which Jesus offers us here and now, is not an abundance of things or a full social calendar. It is his promise to us as individuals and as a community, to be with us in every circumstance. To resource us to embrace whatever the day brings, free from the burdens of yesterday and without fear for tomorrow.

  • The Beginning of Life on Earth (2)

    The BBC replied 2 weeks ago to my follow-up complaint about the phrase “An instant of pure chance”, as follows:

    Dear Mr Buttenshaw,

    Thank you for returning to us with your concerns. We’re sorry for the delay in coming back to you – it’s a bit longer than expected and we apologise for the wait.

    We are sorry our first response misunderstood your concern. You refer to the following line in the script:

    “So much of how life began is still a mystery. It’s not known exactly when, where or how it happened. But we do know that, one day on Earth, a living thing came into existence. The first microscopic organism. And in that instant of pure chance, everything changed.”

    While this section acknowledges that much of how life began remains a mystery, we appreciate you feel it should have reflected the possibility that “the process was somehow directed by God, or a higher power” rather than being a moment of chance.

    We value your feedback on this matter which has been included in our nightly report. These reports are among the BBC’s most widely read sources of feedback and ensure that your concerns have been seen by the right people quickly. This helps inform their decisions about current and future content.

    Thanks again for getting in touch.
     
    BBC Complaints Team 
    http://www.bbc.co.uk/complaints  

    Well, at least they finally logged my actual concerns. And apologised for their first response.

    Why is this Important?

    It illustrates how hard it is to get a fair hearing in the media, and perhaps in the public domain generally. Before we even start to make a case, we may face a ‘pre-judgement’ (i.e. prejudice) that what we are going to say about God or creation is already known and rejected. Of course, this pre-judgement is not exclusive to matters of faith. We live in a time when listening is rare, and shouting down, denouncing and no-platforming is all too common.

    What can we do?

    Two suggestions, looking to ourselves first:

    1. Acknowledge that we have often been the problem and may still be! Our faith is everything to us – the way we see life and find meaning. But is it sometimes so precious that we resist anything which challenges it? Faith (like love) can be unhelpfully blind. And if we can’t seriously engage with science, how can we expect science to listen to us?

    Sometimes I think we are too cosy, hiding or protecting our faith from reality like a comfortable sitting room we can retreat to, with a warming fire in the grate. Often that is the comfort God blesses us with, but God is not just a comforting fire in the sitting room but also the all-consuming fire of the volcanic eruption.

    In the New Testament, the word translated ‘Faith’ is the Greek ‘pistis’. It’s more an attitude of heart than intellectual assent. It could equally be translated ‘TRUST’ and includes the concepts of loyalty and commitment. It expresses the personal nature of our relationship with God. This trust and commitment is often the only thing that keeps us going when there is so much that is painful or that we don’t understand. But we don’t have to understand. We do have to trust. We don’t have to understand how God created the world. We simply affirm it. Science reminds us how magnificent and beyond understanding our creator is. As the hymn goes: ‘O Lord my God, when I in awesome wonder consider all the works thy hand has made… ‘

    • We evangelicals have been deeply committed to a simple and clear outline of the Gospel: Creation – Fall – Redemption. I continue to hear this Big Story very often – a summary of the Gospel which implies or states that God created the world/universe perfect. Then human sin entered this perfect world and separated us from God. Our broken relationship with God, and the broken-ness of Creation is (and can only be) redeemed by Christ and his atoning death on the cross.

    I absolutely believe in the redemption that Christ has brought and is bringing to us and all creation. But I do not believe in a perfect creation or an historic Fall. Science, of course (as in the BBC’s EARTH series) offers us a history of our planet that is not compatible either with an originally perfect creation or the Fall.

    So I cringe every time the Gospel is presented as if an historic Fall happened. And yet we must retain, and regain confidence in, the accounts of the Creation and the Garden of Eden in Genesis 1-3. They are absolutely foundational to our understanding of Life, God, Creation and Humanity. And, like the rest of the Bible, they offer a vision of the good purposes of God to redeem all of creation and bring in his kingdom.

    Maranatha!

  • The Beginning of Life on Earth (1)

    I recently complained to the BBC about an otherwise excellent programme presented by Chris Packham: Earth: Atmosphere (Series 1:4). Chris was speaking about what he called “the most important moment in the history of Earth”. The beginning of life. He spoke of the mystery of how and when and where life began, but spoke of it as “an instant of pure chance” to which I object strongly. If he’s right that it’s the most important moment in history, he is under a very strong obligation to choose his words carefully. This was my complaint:

    Bias against theists 

    Chris Packham: “So much of how life began is still a mystery. But we do know one day a living thing came into existence, the first microscopic organism. And in that instant of pure chance everything changed. The earth became a living world.”
    I object, on behalf of all who believe in God, to a scientist presenting the view that life began by pure chance without acknowledging respectfully that a great many people, including respected scientists throughout the world, believe the process was somehow directed by God (or a higher power).
    The implication is that an atheistic point of view is the only scientifically acceptable one, and this is biased and false.
    Apart from no-platforming God, I enjoyed the program and the presenter. 

    9 days later, while on holiday, I got this inadequate response from the BBC:

    Dear Graham

    Many thanks for taking the time to get in touch with us – we were naturally disappointed to hear of your unhappiness.

    Whilst we appreciate your own personal view, we’d explain that the BBC is clear that evolution is a scientific theory.

    Scientific theories are not claimed to be 100 per cent fact, but are established by being tested against factual evidence. That is how science works and progresses, and theories become a generally understood and accepted premise.

    Evolution by natural selection is a theory that has been repeatedly tested, and remains the best and most robust explanation for all the known factual evidence about life on Earth.

    The details of evolution have been refined as new evidence has emerged, as happens with all scientific theories. However, no evidence or data has yet emerged that the fundamental principles of evolution are unable to accommodate.

    We of course fully understand that different people will have their own individual leanings, scientific understandings and religious or other beliefs, but we hope you will also appreciate that we have to bear in mind generally accepted scientific principles with a general audience in mind.

    Thank you again for your feedback, which is incredibly valuable for us. Alongside comments from other viewers and listeners, your points help us gain a snapshot of audience opinion which we can then report back to senior figures across the BBC. This process helps us identify opinions and trends, all of which can help shape our future decisions on programmes and policies.

    Kind Regards,

    Craig Osborne

    BBC Complaints Team 
    www.bbc.co.uk/complaints

    This is the response I sent today:

    The BBC response to my complaint was entirely misdirected, not to say patronising. “We’d explain that the BBC is clear that evolution is a scientific theory.” I never mentioned evolution, and I have no problem with the basic tenets of evolution. It appears that the respondent, Craig Osborne, has simply churned out a standard response to a complaint I did not make.
    I was very specific on the focus of my complaint: not to deny evolution, but to to complain that to call the beginning of life “that instance of pure chance” reflects prejudice against those who believe that the beginning of life on earth was not an accident of pure chance. That is NOT a denial of evolution. Science can only say that it happened. It cannot state unequivocally that it was pure chance. At the very least it must acknowledge the possibility of alternative explanations of this mystery. And the BBC should acknowledge this too.
    I look forward to a better response. Thank you.

    I’ll let you know what reply I get.

  • 16. Some Concluding Thoughts on Interpreting the Bible Today

    As I’ve tried to write this concluding section, it’s become longer and longer and harder and harder! Not surprising really. I’ve been constantly reminded of a favourite sentence that I came across in Keats’ letters many years ago and have never forgotten: “I can scarcely express what I but dimly perceive – and yet I think I perceive it …” There is so much that is deep and moving and meaningful, which is beyond our, and certainly my, ability to express.

    I have deliberately unpicked some of the threads and revealed some of the joints in the Bible. I have stressed the fact that multiple human processes and agendas, over a long period of history, have gone into recording, writing, and bringing together the amazing collection of writings in the Bible. This very human process by which the Bible has been created, must affect how we arrive at ‘biblical teaching’.

    Perhaps because it continues to be the most important and the best-selling book of all time, the Bible may also be the most abused book of all time: badly used by individuals, churches, political movements and even governments to justify their actions and their prejudices.

    The nature of truth is at stake. There are answers to life’s big questions and mysteries which are simple, easy to understand and woefully inadequate or just wrong! Fundamental to truth is honest seeking – an unblinkered consideration of everything we know, in the attempt to achieve understanding. It is no different when we seek truth in the Bible.

    This is NOT to deny the immediacy of truth, even the accessibility of truth in a story such as Jesus’ parable of the Prodigal Son or the precious statement “God is love”. Such stories and statements move us at many levels, and if we engage well with them, they will reward every stage of that engagement from an initial hearing to a prolonged in-depth study.

    My experience of teaching and preaching on scripture in many contexts in this country and abroad, over many years, is that the time and the place is always important. The word must take flesh and live among us. One cannot simply take out a sermon and preach it verbatim in a different context. Sometimes the heart of the teaching may be challenged by the context, which calls for new thinking about assumptions too easily made.

    Teaching needs to be applied, incarnated – and that process of asking: “what does this mean for us here today?”, mirrors the process by which biblical documents are written, and draws us into the dynamics of ‘God’s word’ being taught and received in different times and places.

    I totally believe in the divine inspiration of the Bible, but I don’t understand exactly what that means. Nobody does. It is a mystery. It’s not God dictating, but God at work bringing the scriptures into being and speaking to us through them. To acknowledge the mystery of this process does not undermine the Bible’s power to speak to us and to shape our lives. Rather, that power is enhanced when we refuse to allow God’s message to be curtailed by narrow biblical interpretation, or turned into an idol which takes the place of the living God. So, far from being afraid of critical study of the Bible, we welcome the enlightenment it brings to faith seeking understanding.

    WHAT CAN WE GET AWAY WITH?

    When I was a youth worker in Dublin, I was responsible for a lovely group of church-linked teenagers. One topic that always got them groaning, but also interested and asking questions, was boy/girl relationships (I don’t mean to exclude other relationships but that was all we discussed in 1983).

    • The questions and discussions seemed always to focus on what couples were ‘allowed’ to do. How far they could go in their physical relationship. Touching, kissing, petting, etc! many of the questions were really: what can we get away with? It seems to me that while God was at some level acknowledged as the creator of love and of the attraction between the sexes, his main role was to tell them what they could or couldn’t do – mediated through the Bible and a rather dodgy youth worker!
    • Sadly, the question ‘what is allowed’ or even ‘what can we get away with’ is behind far too much of Christian teaching. And it reduces our faith so easily into a narrow and very unattractive legalism which loses sight of God as the loving parent of the Prodigal Son story, who runs to meet us when we turn back to him.
    • The ‘limits’ that God gives are always there to help us create a thriving community of faith, at the heart of which is love, where everyone is valued and can offer their gifts for the common good.
    • In Jesus, we make a huge step into adulthood, the freedom of the Gospel and the God who desires mercy not sacrifice. Jesus asks us to look to the main principles and act on them with the help of his Spirit. Jesus castigates the teachers of the law and the Pharisees for insisting on tithing everything, even herbs, “but you have neglected the more important matters of the law – justice, mercy and faithfulness. You should have practiced the latter without neglecting the former.” (Matthew 23:23)
    • This coming of age which Jesus leads us into actually makes us go back to the most child-like but important question of all. WHY? Back to first principles and big issues.
    • For example, the fourth commandment is “Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy.” (Exodus 20:8) We have noted elsewhere Jesus’ teaching on the Sabbath, including “the Sabbath is made for man”. To work out how to live out the important principle of Sabbath, we cannot be legalistic, but need to go back to first principles – why there is a Sabbath, what it is for and then how to live out that priority in today’s world which is very different from its original context in the Old Testament.

    CATCH THE VISION. SEE THE BIG PICTURE

    • I remember vividly an interview with my headteacher when I was about 12. I had been messing about with marbles and dropped them noisily on the floor during the brief end-of-day prayers. I came ready with all sorts of excuses, but I remember him looking at me with kindness. He waved away my explanations and spoke briefly about his vision for the school. He said he wanted young leaders to help him, and he hoped I could become one. He wanted me to share his vision, be the person, and set an example.
    • It was a huge growing-up moment for me. A commitment to the big picture and helping create that school community, put everything else into perspective.  I felt both very stupid for not seeing what the real priorities were, but also very affirmed and inspired to play a positive role thereafter (though I’m sure I did that very patchily!).
    • God, as we have come to know him in Jesus, calls us to share his vision and his mission to bring about the kingdom of God here and now and as our future hope. The Bible, the Spirit and the Christian community are all there to help us do that together. We need to concentrate a great deal more on the vision of what can be, allowing that to capture our imagination and shape our hearts. It’s our biblical priority.
    • I still remember, as a child at that school, being fascinated when I was taught how to draw a reasonably straight line freehand. Make two dots – one at the beginning of your planned straight line, and one where you want it to end. Place your pencil on the first dot, then keep looking at the end dot and draw. Up to then, I’d thought I should look at the pencil, at the place where I was making the mark, but the line would always go skewwhiff.
    • It illustrates the importance of keeping one’s eye on where one wants to get to. On the big picture. The point of the journey. For Christians, the point of the journey of life is the kingdom of God – as in Jesus’ prayer “Your kingdom come”.
    • In relation to daily situations and decisions about what we live and teach, we will get there by focusing on the big biblical themes, on what Jesus calls “the more important matters of the law – justice, mercy and faithfulness.” (Matthew 23:23) Or simply focusing on loving God and our neighbours as ourselves.
    • In the life of the Church, we tend to focus on the wrong place. On where we are now as opposed to where we want to get to.  On self-preservation. On maintenance rather than rather than mission. On disagreements that are important but secondary. On inadequate human resources rather than on God with whom nothing is impossible.

    UNDERSTANDING THE BIBLE ACROSS DIFFERENT CULTURES AND DIFFERENT CHURCHES

    • We are a long way from the times and cultures in which the writings of the Bible originated, were written down and reached their current form in the collection we now know as the Bible. This is especially true in the West. Other parts of the world may more closely reflect ‘biblical times’ not least by their dependence on agriculture and subsistence farming, and a much stronger sense of community.
    • This distance has advantages as well as drawbacks. One advantage is that we bring a lot of understanding about the writing of the Bible from careful study of the writings and our growing knowledge of the backgrounds from which they emerged.
    • In the Bible, we see different priorities, different teaching and even different histories, emerging from different situations. So, we ask the question: why was that message given to those people at that time? What were the human priorities, and why might God have wanted it said or written? It enables us to reflect on big themes applied in different situations.
    • How we interpret the Bible in radically different cultures and settings today is certainly difficult. It is causing huge divisions in world-wide Churches. Most obviously (for me) in the Anglican Church which has very public disagreements and divisions. But it is just as present, say, in the Roman Catholic Church which keeps its conflicts a little more under wraps.
    • So, what’s the future of the Church with so much difference in theology?
      • The first answer has to be that we are in God’s hands and the Holy Spirit will guide us, though we may hamper that by not having ‘ears to hear’. Christ is head of his Church and will shape it with us when we are open to his leading, and despite us when we are not. But it’s a long-term project and history and experience tells us that God takes his time to sort out our wrong-headedness and injustice!
      • Secondly, we need a lot more humility. Isaiah 55:8-9 is crucial: “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways” declares Yahweh. God enables us to know what we need to know, but we know so little in a universe so vast. We need bucketloads of faith and trust to find coherence and meaning in life, even with all that has been revealed to us in Christ, in the Bible and in creation.
      • Thirdly, Churches evolve. Churches everywhere evolve. And I think the speed of evolution in our ever-smaller world, is speeding up through ever-advancing means of communication and social change. Theology is always contextual, and contexts are always changing. Through these changing times we need to be constant in prayer, listening, study and reflection – with our hearts and minds open to God doing and revealing new things.
      • Fourthly, I think we will only remain united if we agree to loosen our requirements for theological unity (believing the same thing about everything) and become more deeply committed to loving relationships and mutual respect, focused on our shared mission to live in, and proclaim, Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit. ‘Bearing with one another in love’ is utterly essential.
      • Finally, we will never avoid honest disagreement among Christians, not least because of the very nature of the Bible. But how we disagree is crucial. And how we behave towards each other when we disagree is crucial. Probably one of the most important things we can do in our divided world, as a witness to the Gospel, is to be an example of how to disagree and yet maintain loving relationships. We’re not often good at that!
        • We need a focus on the fruit of the Spirit: “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control” (Galatians chapter 6) when there are disputes about Christian teaching.
        • Jesus tells his disciples, when warning them about false teachers, that a good tree will only bear good fruit and a bad tree will only bear bad fruit. So “by their fruit you will recognise them.” (Matthew 7: 14-20 and elsewhere).
        • In the same vein, James writes “I will show you my faith by what I do.” (James 2:18)
        • And at the heart of a story that is very challenging to St Peter and all faithful Jews (Acts chapters 10 and 11), Peter is recorded as saying: “I truly understand that God shows no partiality, but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him.” (Acts 10: 34) We need that kind of inclusive generosity.
    • One of the greatest achievements of the Bible and the history it records, is that it keeps God’s people looking forward in hope. It keeps presenting a vision, which renews and adapts as the situation changes. In the Church, we need to model this dynamic and ‘proclaim afresh in every generation’, and across cultures, the good news of hope and healing in Christ. We should not expect this proclamation of hope to be exactly the same in every time and place, but we should expect our love for one another and our unity in Christ to be more important than our differences.

  • 15. The ‘Ten Words’ or Ten Commandments

    You may know that the Bible doesn’t actually refer to ten ‘commandments’ but the exact translation of the Hebrew (e.g in Deuteronomy 4:13) is ‘Ten Words’. This is also the meaning of the Latin word often used to describe the 10 Commandments: the Decalogue. I wonder if that simple difference (‘Words’ rather than ‘Commandments’) suggests something very deep. ‘Words’ certainly underlines the graciousness of the gift and of Yahweh the speaker who is not so much dictating as offering a future. The 10 Words in Exodus 20 are directed to the whole people: “you” is always the singular ‘you’, so the nation as a whole is being addressed. Yahweh, through Moses, has told the people: “if you obey me fully and keep my covenant … you will be my treasured possession … a holy nation.” (Exodus 19:5-6).  The people agree to the terms and Yahweh then proceeds to tell them how to live as his holy nation beginning with the Decalogue or 10 Words.

    • The 10 Words have the context: this is how you will live as a holy nation. The first commandment is normally translated: “You shall not have other gods … ” which sounds like but is not quite the same as “you must not have other gods …”. It is equally correctly translated: “you will not have other gods …” followed by several more uses of “you will not” (make idols, misuse Yahweh’s name, murder, steal etc). This is what it means to be Yahweh’s people. It tells them it is possible to live like this.
    • Undoubtedly, these are still commands but they are presented as the future for Israel. Later laws will elaborate details of particular cases and sanctions and punishments, but first it seems that an overarching vision is being presented. We can compare the ‘will’ in the 10 Words to ‘the lion will lie down with the lamb’ of Isaiah 11, which is a vision of the future not a command.
    • If you read Exodus chapters 19 and 20, the ‘10 Words’ of chapter 20, verses 1-17, stand out as different, and are inserted into the story with their own special introduction in verses 1-2. If you left out the whole section, chapter 20 verse 18 would follow on naturally from the end of chapter 19 and continues with its own version of the giving of the Law to Israel.
    • Why is this detail significant? The 10 Commandments, the Decalogue or 10 Words, is set apart. It has pride of place in the establishment of Yahweh’s covenant with Israel. Before all the detail comes the vision, the big picture, the evocation of what it is to be God’s chosen people. It’s the Old Testament’s summary of the Law and what it means to be God’s people.
    • The establishment of the covenant with Yahweh at Mount Sinai is the foundation of Israel’s identity. Yahweh chooses them, they choose Yahweh and Yahweh gives them a summary vision in the 10 Words for how they will live thereafter. It’s a summary everyone can memorise. The long and detailed laws that follow immediately are of a different quality altogether although they flesh out the Decalogue. Everything else is tied to time and place in what we can call ‘case law’.
    • The Bible offers this base vision of what it means to be God’s people, and will adapt, develop and renew that vision in the historical situations Israel will come to face: entering the promised land… under kingship… in exile… in the return from exile… in the promise of a messianic king… and ultimately in the New Covenant focused on Jesus the Messiah with a new summary of the Law. None of these visions are ever realised fully (far from it) but the vision is always drawing God’s people forward towards the reign of God on earth.
    • The genius of the Bible is that it keeps God’s people looking forward in hope to a promised future. We must not be satisfied with anything less, but to survive such a demanding vision, we need to know deeply that we are chosen, loved and readily forgiven when we fail.
    • So, the Bible calls the Church today to put flesh on its vision in every situation, holding it up for one another to aspire to. It’s a vision we will feel inadequate to fulfil, but with God’s help we see his kingdom breaking in in multiple ways whenever love triumphs, evil is defeated and there is healing and reconciliation across human divides.

  • 14. A Canon within the Canon

    I haven’t used the term ‘canon’ before, but the issue I want to look at is usually referred to as ‘A canon within the Canon’.

    • ‘Canon’ means ‘rule’ and the ‘Canon of Scripture’, the biblical canon, is the approved collection of writings that form the Bible, according to the rule of the Church. The canon of Scripture differs a bit between Roman Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant Bibles.
    • To write of a ‘canon within the canon’ means that some writings are more important than others, and biblical teaching is shaped by the prior commitment to the message of these favoured writings.
    • Most obviously, Christians value Jesus’ life and teaching more than anything else in the Bible, so that would be a canon within the canon. Jesus’ life and teaching becomes the lens, or the spectacles, through which we see the whole Bible. Those spectacles will, to some extent, include all we learn about faith in Jesus from the rest of the New Testament.
    • We will still need to do our best to listen to and understand Old Testament writings in their original context first – bringing to bear everything we know about the situation they address, the human reasons why that word was spoken and written and reflecting on what may have been God’s reason for including it at that time and for later generations.  Then we should look at it through the spectacles of the Gospel of Jesus Christ and see what difference that makes.
    • Some would say that Martin Luther and the reformation made Paul’s teaching about ‘justification by faith’ as the lens through which we see the whole Bible landscape.
    • Liberation Theology, which arose out of poor communities in Latin America, takes the Exodus as its canon with the canon, stressing the liberation that God brought to Israel in rescuing them from slavery in Egypt. That liberation then becomes a model for the liberation that Jesus brings – not just what one might call ‘spiritual’ liberation from personal sin, but structural, societal liberation that insists upon socio-economic change that is good news for the poor and the oppressed.
    • You may have a favourite parable, or a portion of scripture which speaks powerfully to you and acts as your ‘canon within the canon’.
    • Churches can stress evangelism, the Eucharist, social outreach, contemporary or traditional music, social justice and so on. All will have a justifiable biblical basis and this may influence everything else the Bible says.
    • As a young Christian, it was a few years before I engaged with biblical teaching about the Holy Spirit. I discovered that some churches had decided that the gifts of the Holy Spirit were confined to the age of the apostles. For other churches, teaching about the Holy Spirit became their canon with the canon – as in Pentecostal churches, or the Charismatic movement and the Vineyard churches. Some churches stress the other persons in the Trinity: God the Father, or Jesus the Saviour. Bible readings, prayers and preaching very often favour one or the other, focusing on creation or salvation.
    • A ‘canon within the Canon’ may be a bad thing as it may suppress other biblical teaching, and so be blinkered and perhaps prejudiced. But it may also give helpful focus in particular situations and might reflect God’s priorities in that time and place.
    • The Bible itself contains teaching that varies in emphasis and sometimes substance according to the historic situation, which is no doubt why the Bible is particularly open to divergent teaching. Previous articles have addressed some of these divergencies in both Testaments.

    The Church wants to keep control

    I used to work overseas with the Church Mission Society, based in Sudan first and then Uganda. In many ways the spread of the Gospel in many African countries parallels the spread of the Gospel in the early Church. Certainly, rapid growth brought problems.

    In the 19th and 20th centuries mission agencies from ‘the West’ introduced the Christian faith to many African peoples (though ancient Coptic and Orthodox Churches had existed for centuries in Ethiopia and Egypt) chiefly in sub-Saharan Africa. Perhaps inevitably, they brought many elements of their own culture which were either imposed or taken up by the African Church. For example, translations of the Book of Common Prayer, vestments and ‘My Lord Bishop’ are still common among Churches begun by Anglican mission agencies in Africa. 

    Alongside this work, indigenous African Churches began to split off, many with a mix of traditional African culture and sometimes traditional religion alongside Christ and the Bible. It became increasingly important to offer the new churches clear guidance to ‘keep them in the fold’, faithful to the Gospel they received. Other independent churches simply developed their own unique theologies, many of which appear to thrive up to the present time. Some are relatively orthodox and some are distinctly ‘wacky’!

    The early Church spread far from its roots and soon faced the problem of poor teaching and false teachers leading the new congregations astray. In Acts 20, Paul warns the elders in Ephesus that false teachers (“savage wolves”) would come among their flock and “distort the truth”.

    We can see this happening if we compare Jesus’ teaching in John’s Gospel with the first letter of John. Both came from John the apostle and the community that followed him. His Gospel is significantly different in emphasis from the first three Gospels. One difference is the amount of space and significance he gives to the role of the Holy Spirit, notably in chapters 14-16. Jesus encourages his disciples with the promise that he will send them the Holy Spirit to be their guide, to be another advocate (Jesus was the first). The Spirit will be called alongside them to lead them into all truth once Jesus is no longer with them to do it. It’s optimistic.

    The first letter of John comes from the same Johannine community but addresses the Church many years later. The Holy Spirit hardly features in the letter, except to discern between the competing spirits. “This is how you can recognise the Spirit of God: every spirit that acknowledges that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God.” (1 John 4:2)

    The letter writers have lost the sense of exciting freedom in the Spirit. Rather, they are concerned with countering the false teachers and the main purpose is to establish what is genuinely Christian. Its characteristic phrase is “This is how you know …”. The teachers and the Christian communities are judged on how loving they are (particularly towards fellow-Christians) and whether or not they believe the right things about Jesus.

    For understandable, and sometimes good reasons, Church leadership usually wants to control and regulate what is taught in the Christian communities they have some responsibility for. This is understandable because otherwise they may lose the integrity of the Gospel as originally taught. But it is not acceptable if its prime motivation is preservation of the institution and its power structures. This can very much affect how the Bible is used or abused, but it inevitably tends towards institutional control rather than stressing the role of the Spirit and our freedom in Christ. This is as true for small independent churches as it is for the biggest church – the Roman Catholic Church.

    We can turn to Liberation theology again as a good example. It generally believes that the Church has accumulated wealth and influence by ignoring much of Jesus’ message about wealth and poverty, siding with governments rather than challenging oppressive socio-economic structures.  Liberation theology tries to put the Bible back into the hands of the people to hear its radical message afresh. All churches can, and probably do, read and teach from the Bible selectively in ways that promote or preserve the status quo, “the way we do things here”. Genuine engagement with the Bible counteracts such damping down of spiritual fire and opens the way to engaging with our endlessly creative God, who is always remaking us and calling us forward into his future.

  • 13. Our Insecurity can Blind us

    When I first ‘became a Christian’ it was a dramatic conversion. It happened one summer in Pennsylvania when I was 20, and I came home to Dublin wearing a big red and yellow badge proclaiming ‘Jesus Saves’! I had found a small but lively and loving community of believers who put the Bible at the heart of their faith and daily routine.

    I knew I had been given something very precious, which had come to me as a package. Lose any of it and it might all fall apart. So, I constantly ‘defended’ my faith, including its view of the Bible as ‘inerrant’. Though if I was honest, I sometimes couldn’t quite square that with what I read. I was often, as I still am, deeply moved by how the Bible speaks to me, but for years I was not willing to let down the barriers and think through my predetermined (i.e. pre-judged and hence prejudiced) attitude to the Bible.

    As a young Christian I was asked if I would second a motion in a debate at Dublin University Theological Society. The topic was: “This house maintains that there is only one story of Creation in the Bible”. I’m not sure why I agreed to speak, except that I thought it was my Christian duty to uphold the truth of the Bible. I thought this must be that there could only be one story. I did minimal research and I have no idea what I said, perhaps because I’ve expunged the painful memory! I have no doubt that it was earnest, but uninformed guff.

    I think it was the ecumenical movement that began a more open spiritual journey for me. In Trinity College Dublin (Dublin University) I met people from other denominations who believed differently. A Roman Catholic girl, Louise, with whom I had many helpful discussions, gave me a copy of Edward Schillebeeckx’s scholarly book Jesus. I dipped into it, but it was a bit heavy for me at the time. I remember a guy (why do I always remember the girl’s name but not the guy’s?) who was a Quaker and being impressed by the Quaker view that the whole of life is a sacrament.

    The Dublin Interdenominational Charismatic Committee introduced me to many Roman Catholics who were beacons of faith and keen students of the Bible. They organised the wonderful David Watson (of St Michael-le-Belfrey, York) to come and speak in a Catholic church in Sallynoggin and I had the privilege of meeting him in a friend’s house after the event.

    I had come back to Ireland a few years previously with a lot of baggage as well as a lot of love from the small Bible Church in Pennsylvania. They were happy to be called fundamentalists because of their belief in the Bible. They rejected any traditional denomination as far as I could tell (and presumably still do). For them either the Roman Catholic Church or the Pope was the Antichrist, I can’t remember which! It was relatively easy to maintain that prejudice in Pennsylvania, I think, but not in Dublin where I met so many faithful practising Roman Catholics.

    Through meeting people of different Churches and denominations it was clear to me that one could be faithfully Christian with some quite different understanding of the Bible’s teaching for us today. This was not to say the differences didn’t matter, but we could embrace each other as brothers and sisters in Christ.

    When talking to Jehovah’s Witnesses, Mormons or other deeply committed sects, I always sense the same insecurity that I felt in early years. They have found something very precious, very different to what ‘the world’ offers, and they fear that the whole house of cards will come tumbling down if they question it. But genuine listening goes out the window, and conversations about faith are about defending a view, not about discovering new insight. I guess there are times when I’m still that way myself!

    I love a description I heard of the great Christian writer and missionary to Muslims, Kenneth Cragg, of whom it was said that he would listen so deeply to Muslim scholars that he was ‘almost ready to be converted’. It’s that kind of courageous listening we need. Not lobbing arguments or scriptures from behind the walls of our impenetrable theology to prove we are right. Many years ago, as a keen young Christian (I’m a keen old Christian now!), I went to a debate in Dublin about the place of women in leadership in the Church. I was horrified to hear a clergyman say: “I don’t think St Paul would have written that today”! It seemed to me to demean Scripture which I viewed as timeless. But I’m sure I was wrong about that and many other things (as I doubtless still am). That narrow view of the Bible has taken a lot of unravelling over the years, as I’ve begun to allow it to speak for itself and I’ve learned to accept the complexity of truth and the reality of how little we know. And the overwhelming priority of our relationship with God, of ‘knowing’ him. The Bible still comes alive to me, as much as ever, as I read and study it but I live much more easily with mystery