Whole lotta shaking going on

It is arguable that the UK is now in its biggest mess since the last World War. The difference being that then we were, by and large, united. This time the mess is in the disunity. The Tories and Labour are both torn apart, with the opposition in particular disarray and carrying the can for what was really a Tory row. People say that they don't know who they can look in the eye in the street. Families are divided, with the traditional alliance between teenagers and their grandparents under special strain. And immigrants and transients feel insecurity and fear as at no point in most of their lifetimes. 

The most striking thing to me is the degree of disruption that has also occurred in relations between Christians, and church leaders particularly. At a General Election, very few ministers come out strongly and publicly in favour of one or other party. Still less is there an attempt to theologise the vote, in the sense of bringing arguments that claim a biblical basis for a particular choice. This time though, between a sudden attachment to, for instance, "the biblical concept of the nation state" and the discovery of the "vital role of the EU in preserving freedom for gospel work in Europe", we were pushed this way and that by strongly worded claims. It was all too easy to imply that, ultimately, only a Leave, or only a Remain, vote would have God's approval and blessing.

And strongly-worded we were. At a time when we were undoubtedly being lied or spun to by politicians on every side, Christian ministers were also going for the jugular, and the strain in relationships was and is visible. Some have had to get out of social media. Others have dropped or blocked brothers and sisters in Christ. To the best of my knowledge, the only friend I have lost was a Christian woman with whom I remonstrated for her apparent willingness to let anger turn to physical assault on a public figure. It's been rough, hasn't it? 

It is time to calm down, breathe deeply, look at ourselves, and deal with some issues. Above all, we need to think biblically and in a way that sees the Kingdom and the power and wisdom of God in all of this. 

1) God rules over the nations. He directs the heart of the king as a gardener directs the hose onto his prize roses. He does that for voters too. This referendum has surprised and shocked a lot of people - including, it would appear, some of the victors! Our sovereign Lord wasn't surprised. If you are happy with the result, don't let your happiness simply flow from a sense of "we did it."  Give thanks to God. And if you are unhappy, or very unhappy, let your unhappiness be tempered by the awareness that God is sovereign over this mess too and he has his purposes in it. 

2) Christians are to submit to the authorities. In this case, in any democratic process, that means submission to the will of our fellow voters, unless we are being forced along a path fundamentally inconsistent with our faith. That is surely not the case here. The issue was important, but not actually one where Christian faith itself was at stake. So, submission must now be our principle. We argued hard beforehand precisely because we knew that every individual's mind mattered and we wanted to win minds. I can tell you, whinging after a vote has gone against you ain't going to win any minds. The only way to change things is through proper democratic process - we are at liberty to work within democratic mechanisms to effect change, but I don't see that we are at liberty to simply refuse to submit to the decision as taken. 

3) The Kingdom of God is the real and lasting kingdom. Essential to our understanding of it is that, while nations, alliances, empires and civilisations come and go, Jesus' kingdom will endure and grow and dominate at last the entire created order. And the other kingdoms HAVE TO come and go for that to be seen. Think about the rise and fall of empires as seen in Daniel's prophecy. Think about the smoke of Babylon rising for ever in Revelation - and the fact that the smoke of destruction is the subject matter for a neat little worship song. Think of every knee bowing at the name of Jesus. It of the essence of Christian faith that the British empire (like all the others) did not last for ever!

We are citizens of another kingdom, and the mighty hand of God lifting up and casting down countries and politicians is to be a reason for praise, not fear. We need to take into account the possibility that God is actually in the process of dismantling much of what we have regarded as normal. The preservation of that "normality" or even its transformation in a direction that we want cannot be our highest priority. 

4) The biggest issue facing all of us as individuals, and the root cause of the spiritual bankruptcy in our society is our citizenship, or lack of it, in that kingdom and our relationship with its King. In the light of that overriding issue, I have been alarmed by the level of passion applied by Christians in arguments re Brexit. The question certainly has arisen - are we as fervent in persuading when it comes to the good news of Jesus? It has staggered me that gospel ministers of maturity and repute have weighed in so heavily on social media when talking to complete strangers of whose spiritual standing they know nothing. One suspects they may not be used to talking to people who actually think differently from them. I felt I had to write to one prominent conservative evangelical leader who had been arguing in a thread on my Facebook, just to give him a heads up regarding some of the people he was talking to. I received no reply and I saw no change of tone in the argument, still less any use of the moment to communicate anything related to the kingdom of Christ. 

When people bump into strangers on the Internet, they often get into heated arguments. We all know what social media can do to usually mild-mannered people. But a Christian must not hide in the anonymity of the internet. We are going to give account for every idle word. And there is no such thing as a "random stranger", for Providence is behind every conversation. There is no one who we will never meet again, for one day we will all give account at the judgement seat of Christ. All will meet there. Every internet conversation forms part of our story and of the story of those we "meet" in this life. How will we give account for our passionate persuasion re Brexit and our indifference to people’s ignorance of God, his commands, his judgment and his grace?

5) The referendum has both revealed the frustration, disenfranchisement and anger that already affected a vast number of people in our country, and has increased the division, turmoil and uncertainty that our society faces. We are in an appalling mess. 

At the political level that tells us that we had better be listening, talking and engaging in real conversations with struggling people who feel that an elitist system has let them down. There has never been a better time to get involved, but it had better be with a genuine, honest open-handedness and readiness to help people. They will know if it isn't. 

And at a spiritual level, we are seeing a meltdown of the things that people have relied on. There is a great shaking happening - within our nation, and between nations. Things are very disorientating. Where can people turn for any higher certainties and values than the dross of false promises and dashed hopes that have come from politicians? At such a time, the church needs to be united, loving, understanding and clear in its proclamation of grace. 

I am accustomed to the fact that some liberals have drifted from the urgency and overriding priority of the eternal, eschatological gospel; I am really disconcerted when conservative evangelicals let a political agenda usurp the place of the gospel in their conversations. 

For my part, I apologise for any and every interaction where I have failed in balance, kindness or understanding over the last fraught weeks. I want to appeal to you, especially to gospel preachers, to make a conscious effort to examine yourself, put right any relationships that words and attitudes have strained, and do all that is within you to preserve and demonstrate the unity we have in the Spirit. This is for our good as individuals, for the good of the church, and for the good of a hurting, lost, blind and fragmented world. 

I am strangely excited about the present situation. Not because I have come round to thinking Brexit was a good idea politically, but because I can recognise that in uncomfortable times, God is at work. I think that a much more radical breakdown is entirely possible, with potential for terror and violence on an unprecedented scale. I can also see Islam going through death throes, with a new openness to the grace of Jesus Christ already being seen amongst many who have fled from (let's face it) persecution by other Muslims. No wonder they are open!

 

But I can also see new waves of hate, and more readiness to show it. If British streets run red with Muslim blood, will you and your church be ready to stand between the immigrants and the mob? Will hospitality and love to strangers be the hallmarks of your religion? 

If the post-modern tide reaches its peak and the church really is persecuted, will you stand firm? Or if an anti-post-modern, anti-political-correctness backlash should take hold, will you be ready to stand equally against that tide and with the newly-oppressed? 

We don't know which of those futures it will be. But we do know who holds the future, and we know that he has work for us to do still. Let us plead with him for his Spirit to be poured out again, for his church to stand firm again, for holiness and love to mark us out, and for an as yet unimagined harvest to be brought in. The hope for Europe isn't the EU, or Brexit, Dexit, Frexit or any other Exit. It is God, in Christ, reconciling people to himself by the Spirit's power. 

Weakness

But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong. 2 Corinthians 12:9-10

We are surrounded by images of perfection. Beautiful people, fit bodies, lovely homes, successful careers, fulfilling relationships, happy families. Such images are used to sell us every kind of product, and those who present ideas and ideologies, parties and movements, had better come up to standard. 

Christianity is shockingly counter-cultural at this point. We worship a despised, rejected, crucified God who called a motley bunch of men to be his first spokespeople. They in turn struggled and suffered, both with persecution and illness. None appears to have had a comfortable, ideal life. Their relationships with one another were not without incident - rows and misunderstandings occurred, partnerships broke up, and they saw many colleagues fail and drop out. But through them the church took root across Europe and further afield. 

Christianity holds before us the greatest ideals of all. It presents us with the eternal hope of perfection. But on the way there, its followers and its preachers suffer persecution, they are subject to tiredness and illness, they are attacked by the devil and many temptations, and they are not, in this life, ever free of sin. (I realise that the last clause is not in sync with SA Doctrine 10 as read in accordance with the Founders' intentions. As one retired DC said to me, that doctrine is unbiblical. It is the main obstacle to my involvement as a soldier.) 

We create intolerable tensions and pressures in the church when we import the world's model of "perfection" - young, fit, shiny, beautiful - into our expectations and ministry. In the SA it may be the greater expectations of those with an impeccable Army pedigree and who look good in uniform. In the reformed scene of my background it was, to quote a former boss, "a perfectionist view of sanctification with a worthless worm view of salvation". Whether the drivers are sub-cultural or theological, we place ourselves under a terrible burden. 

We are not helped by the tradition of Christian biography which glosses over the weaknesses or even moral failings of great leaders of the past. Sometimes we are not even allowed to see them as people of their time. It took a long time before I could come to terms with Martin Luther as an anti-Semite, John Wesley as having a terrible marriage, George Whitfield as a slave-holder, William Wilberforce as a racist and so on. And it isn't just the more moral or ethical weaknesses that are missed; we may be familiar with William Cowper as suicidally depressed, but we may be less conscious of mental frailty when we think about John Bunyan, Lord Shaftesbury, Amy Carmichael, CS Lewis or Martyn Lloyd-Jones. And yet we know in experience that Christians we have known who we have admired greatly have been real people - sometimes clearly proud, or tetchy, or down, or selfish or whatever, and subject to the prejudices and blind spots of the prevailing general and church culture.

I am not trying to tone down the shock and disastrous impact of my own serious sin by saying that in some way we are all the same. Not at all. But I do think that the expectation of perfection makes it so much harder to talk openly about weakness and temptation - and the brittleness and precariousness that such lack of mutual support produces makes a truly disastrous fall that much more likely. If one is scared to talk about any weakness in marriage, any struggles with personal prayer or devotion, any tendency to anxiety or depression - if there is a fear that admission of ANY problem could be career-threatening - then the stage is set for a very lonely walk deeper and deeper into the ravine of danger. 

God has seen fit to use the weak things of this world. He uses the flawed, the hurt, the fragile. Illness, depression, insecurities, struggles, temptations and persecutions are the norm, not disqualifications. He reaches the broken through the broken - broken people who speak of the Crucified through the Spirit and so become strong for the task in hand. But supermen they are not. Mutual care which acknowledges that will help us stand; mutual care that pretends we are above failure will contribute to our destruction.

It is an amazingly alleviating thing to let go of the need to appear strong and perfect. It is such a relief to get the mask off after years of worries when it occasionally slipped. It is wonderful to rediscover the honesty of grace, and to acknowledge weakness and failure, and still to press on, trying to live for Jesus and point people to Jesus.



Why care? The theological foundation of social action

A friend of mine who has worked in development work in TSA for a number of years said to me a few months ago that he felt he didn't really have a theological basis for what he was doing. My impression is that he has dipped a little into various theologies, principally of the more Progress or Liberation type, but he has never felt that he has a coherent and comprehensive understanding from which to work. Specifically, I think he has never been strongly exposed to the broader evangelical history of social action nor its theological base. I believe that the SA, with its glorious history of social action, needs to rediscover its own theological roots in just this area, and so to place evangelism and social action in close coordination within the Army's holistic mission. 

You don't need a Liberation Theology to have a holistic vision for social action. The Christian social reformers of the 19th Century would not have agreed with an LT reading of, say, Exodus, and yet their call to social action WAS grounded in their classic, evangelical theology. What are the distinct elements of such a theology as it touches on social, compassionate and developmental issues? In one sense a "holistic" vision is one where all thought-streams are interconnected, so that every aspect of theology has a social outworking, but I think it is possible to identify three key theological taproots of evangelical social concern.

1) The Image of God: Common humanity flowing from common humanness. 

We recognise and honour the image of God in every human being. This image is present and underwrites the value of human life after the Fall - it is present in all, regardless of gender, age, colour, class, age or ability. Admittedly, among the various lines of discussion regarding the nature of the image of God, it has been an evangelical stream - the Lutheran - that has tended to say that the image was lost completely in the Fall, but Reformed theology, with a few exceptions, has argued for a damaged and yet still present image, which is still the basic measure of human value. This position has dominated British evangelical theology.

The logic of this, once seen, or allowed, is inescapable. If the measure of human worth resides outside of ourselves, in God himself, then a respect and honour is due to one another which precludes all racism, sexism, classism and ageism.  And how can I allow my fellow image-bearer to starve, be mistreated, abused, trafficked or killed? 

In honouring all human beings as being made in the image of God, I honour the One who is THE image of the invisible God - the Man for whom and by whom all things were first made. This leads to the second point...

2) God's kindness and compassion in Jesus Christ

In a broken world under judgement, social concern is motivated by - we might say made possible at all by - the grace of God in Christ. The human race has fallen - we are corrupt. At one level we don't deserve any good. Hunger and pain, struggle and failure, chaos and unfairness, are all woven into our lives. But what God has done in Christ means that we cannot adopt a "grin and bear it" approach. He has shown kindness and mercy and condescension when we were dead in our sins. He has stooped to help us. We live in a helped world. 

This help has come to us holistically. Though the centre and goal of Jesus whole ministry was to PREACH the gospel of forgiveness of sins and then to BE that gospel through his dying and rising, nevertheless, along the way of the Word and the Cross, he did good at the most practical level. Maintaining the spiritual message of the Cross at centre is totally consistent with vigorous attempts to ease the physical burden of our fellow human beings because that is exactly how Jesus demonstrated his love as he travelled along the same road. If sin is the cancer and suffering and injustice are the symptoms, I will not take my eyes off the need for a cure from sin, but I will want to help with the symptoms. I will recognise that to preach the message of forgiveness to a man with an empty stomach is to deny the love at the very heart of the message I preach.

It is striking how the NT letters, as they come to practical application, repeatedly bring us back to the cross of Jesus as our motive.  Love your wife, give to the poor, be kind and tolerant towards each other in the church, submit to your boss - all these and more are to be driven, for the Christian, by a constant awareness of God's love in Jesus.  Amongst all the rediscoveries of which the church is in need, the rediscovery of the link between Cross and lifestyle is amongst the most important. 

3) The coming age of Christ 

The gospel of Christ is more than simply a spiritual message of forgiveness in itself, of course. In justification we hear the verdict of the future judgement day brought into the present; that great "Not Guilty" is the opening fanfare of our entrance into eternal life, and eternal life is enjoyed now and forever, in a new world which the scripture presents consistently as physical and solid. 

The future world will be a place of justice and peace, of integrity and prosperity. All that is corrupt and unjust in the present system will be swept away into the rubbish bin of eternity. Some Christians, including some evangelicals, have tended to say, "Well - that's for the age to come - no need for us to do anything now." I think the opposite - we are to live as citizens of the coming kingdom. This world may be passing, it may be destined for judgement, and yet it is groaning for its future redemption and we cannot live as if it had no value at all. The powers of the age to come have already laid hold of us, and we have to demonstrate the values of that age in the here and now by pursuing the same goals. We are to show the characteristics of the future reign of our dear King, Jesus, in this age. Indeed, it is precisely the certainty of his coming justice, of judgement in the light of the transcendent moral values of this King, that makes the pursuit of justice in the present evil age so utterly imperative. 

One of my favourite characters from British church history is James Montgomery the hymn writer, who gave us the carol "Angels from the realms of glory".  He was imprisoned on more than one occasion for his radical, socialist-leaning views. He cared passionately about the plight of the poor, and helped in the fight against the slave trade. All of that was rooted in his Moravian spirituality - the same source that John and Charles Wesley had drunk from so deeply. My favourite hymn of his is the well-known paraphrase of Psalm 72...

1. Hail to the Lord's Anointed,

great David's greater Son!

Hail in the time appointed,

his reign on earth begun!

He comes to break oppression,

to set the captive free;

to take away transgression,

and rule in equity.

2. He comes with succour speedy

to those who suffer wrong;

to help the poor and needy,

and bid the weak be strong;

to give them songs for sighing,

their darkness turn to light,

whose souls, condemned and dying,

are precious in his sight.

3. He shall come down like showers

upon the fruitful earth;

love, joy, and hope, like flowers,

spring in his path to birth.

Before him on the mountains,

shall peace, the herald, go,

and righteousness, in fountains,

from hill to valley flow.

4. To him shall prayer unceasing

and daily vows ascend;

his kingdom still increasing,

a kingdom without end.

The tide of time shall never

his covenant remove;

his name shall stand forever;

that name to us is love.

That is eschatological hope, clearly breaking out into present social concern. 

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I am not rejecting every insight that has come through Liberation Theology. I am saying that a broad-based commitment to social action was built into the Christian movement way before LT. In the Salvation Army there are many who have a genuinely deep love for Christ, and a deep love and concern for people, which have been come into being through a traditionally evangelical but theologically impoverished preaching. As those who are involved in social action look for a deeper foundation, they seem to be offered mainly non-Evangelical models. We need to go back to our roots, with greater confidence that we have what we need in classic Evangelical thought.



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For a helpful and thorough historical and theological survey of the relationship between Evangelism and Social action in the SA, please see here. I think it ends up a tad too positive about the impact of post-modernity, but I think the authors may not have been aware of (or imagined) the way that post-modern thought would invade evangelical theology over the last decade.

 

Repent, for the kingdom of God is at hand

Repent, for the kingdom of God is at hand. 

One of the perpetual pitfalls for the church in its preaching is the tendency to moralism. We love telling people to do this, to not do that, and to change. And we have so many biblical passages to clobber and coerce people with. One is the phrase here, as preached by John the Baptist and then by Jesus. 

The problem is that we tend to see the command to change, but divorce it from the "Kingdom of God is at hand." When we do that we flatten out the time dimension in the passage. God was doing something, or about to do something. The repentance was to be a reaction to what God was doing. The FACT of his work was to lead to the urgent COMMAND to change. Indicative driving imperative, if you like your grammar old fashioned! 

This is how true Christian proclamation is always to be, of course. Not moralism, but good news; God acts, and in the light of it, commands do come our way. Moral command without good news is not Christian preaching - as is communication of gospel facts with no imperative cutting edge, of course! 

"Repent" in John the Baptist's preaching is therefore not a command floating free of a context, a general urge to pull your socks up, turn over a new leaf and change. It is all about impending action and change that God is doing. 

What was God doing? Judging from the texts that the gospels quote as speaking about John the Baptist's preaching - Malachi 3 and Isaiah 40 - two great threads of hope were about to be fulfilled, and fulfilled together. God was about to step into history, with comfort and salvation on the one hand, and with judgement and wrath on the other. It was in the light of that just-around-the-corner action that John's hearers were putting their lives in order. They were baptised because, though they had longed for God's arrival in salvation, they realised they were unprepared for his judgement. After all, who can abide the day of his coming?? Submission to John's baptism was the recognition that you were under a terrible judgement which was about to fall, not a glorified New Year's resolution. 

This perspective really helps us with the oddity of Jesus' baptism by John. So long as we see John's baptism as part of a general repentance process for sinners, then we are flummoxed by Jesus' need of it. But his "fulfilling all righteousness", as he said to John, was not repentance. It was the recognition through baptism that God was about to act.  Judgement and salvation were arriving. The Kingdom of God was at hand! 

Of course, the Kingdom was arriving because the King had arrived. Jesus is the King of the Kingdom. People were preparing for his coming. The shock for John, and for us, is that instead of inspecting, commanding, judging and punishing, the King comes quietly, like a Lamb, and says, right from the start, "I'm under the soon-to-come judgement."

And that's how the salvation comes to the rest of us. 

A religious four year old and the problem of maintaining Grace.

A young lady of 4, a relative of mine, has a fairly high opinion of her moral standing. In the light of the frequent tantrums displayed by her sister (Terrible 2) she believes herself to be perfect. Along with this lack of acknowledged guilt goes more. She is religious. 

Their mother was recently reading to the girls: the story of Jesus welcoming the little children. She asked 4 and Terrible 2 if they thought that Jesus checked on who was good or naughty before he welcomed them. Clear and firm came the reply from 4: "Yes."  

She has never been taught that. That concept has come entirely from inside herself. It is as much an early manifestation of a toddler's original sin as disobedience, greed, selfishness or lying. She is religious, in the sense that she innately sees acceptance by God as being based on merit, that we are able in some way to make the grade, and (miniature Pharisee that she is) that she is one of those who would be welcomed. 

The incident got me thinking. Grace is such an amazing thing, but it is also alien to our basic human, proud, sinful mindset. As such, it is always under attack, from one direction or another. In the first place, the simple fact of unconditional acceptance at the point of entry into Christianity is so different to our inborn religiosity that it is always hard to maintain.

If Jesus receives us just as we are, then he leaves no room for our natural tendency to oneupmanship in general and especially for oneupmanship as we come to him. In fact, such a moral pecking order will hold us back from ever really coming - if I think that God would accept me more easily than my little sister, then I haven't really understood what his acceptance means and I have never really run to him. Tragically, the church is full of replicas of the four year old - glad they have made the grade. They make the world want to spew. (Interestingly, such decent religiosity apparently makes Jesus want to spew too.)  

Jesus doesn't ask what we are like before he welcomes us. That is grace. You come as you are, and you don't need to look at yourself and how bad you are (or how "good" you are), still less at anyone else, but only to him. 

But the church also faces another challenge to grace. Having welcomed us in simple acceptance, the idea is around that Jesus never asks us about our lives or lifestyle, and that he certainly never asks us to change anything at all. And that is not the case. 

Grace is the open welcome to those who have done wrong, treating us lavishly with unmerited kindness and mercy. It does not deny or even ignore the fact of our wrongdoing - rather it pays the price for it. It is that costliness of acceptance, that fact that grace is free to the sinner but bloody expensive to the Giver, that challenges me to look at my forgiven wrongdoing and be determined and delighted to change. There is to be no hard examination of myself at point of entry, as if my goodness or badness could alter my possibility of acceptance, but, once arrived, the fact of being accepted, and being accepted through the Cross, shines a light onto and into my life like never before: I see my sin in a dreadful new way, and I find I must change.

Grace accepts me as I am - but it doesn't leave me as I am. It challenges me to the core - my pride, my selfishness, my deceit, my greed, my perversion, my lack of love and honour to my Creator.

Of course that process of gracious acceptance, challenge and change, is not linear. If it were, we would certainly end up with a vicious pecking order firmly entrenched among all who have come to Jesus: "I've made more progress than her...!" But it is a circle. I come to Christ... am accepted... grace challenges my bad stuff... I try to change... see how bad my bad stuff really is... and come to Christ afresh for the unconditional acceptance which is my only hope. Because of that cycle, a Christian is never more than a heartbeat away from coming to Jesus empty handed. Break the circle, start to pride yourself on your "progress", and you will find yourself back in religion with a much loved four year old.

 

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Jesus calls us to come to him. Not because we are good, but because even the feeling of being good enough to come (or to not need to come!) is a symptom of our bankruptcy. So come and receive his forgiveness. 

You will never be the same again.