Fellowship in the truth

That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched—this we proclaim concerning the Word of life. The life appeared; we have seen it and testify to it, and we proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and has appeared to us. We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard, so that you also may have fellowship with us. And our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ. We write this to make our joy complete.

So begins John in his first letter. Much could be and has been said about those verses. The one thing that struck me this morning is how fellowship (with God and with one another) is based in truth, in facts. Things heard, seen, witnessed, touched, believed, proclaimed, written - these are the foundations of togetherness in the Kingdom. 

We live in a world where truth-that-can-be-written is derided as the foundation only for hatred and war. To experience love, we are told, we need to flee from the Objective, the Absolute. John seems to say exactly the opposite. 

And that chimes with my experience. Over the last year I can think of a number of moments of meeting with Christians, both old friends and completely new to me, where the existence of a common foundation in the gospel was either the presupposition for the meeting, or quickly became apparent in the course of conversation. Such moments have been deeply moving and a source of thankfulness. On the other hand, I have also had experiences of 'Christian' events where the commitment to the Subjective, the rejection of objective doctrinal agreement or of verbal revelation itself, strangles fellowship at birth.

Our fellowship is in the Truth. Our fellowship is in Him - the one who came, was heard, was seen, who died for our sins, who rose again for our justification, who is seated at the right hand of the Father, who has poured out the Holy Spirit, who is being proclaimed amongst the nations, who will come again to judge the living and the dead. These truths about our Lord Jesus are objective, speakable, writeable, shareable. These truths are precious to us for he is precious to us. And where there is agreement in these truths, there is fellowship, light and joy. 

The need of the hour

You need a reason to start a blog at this time of verbal cacophony. We are surrounded by a storm of words, more than ever before - anyone can write an article, publish it, see it read, shared, tweeted and retweeted. Controversy and argument, radical idea and reactionary answer are the stuff of life. We align ourselves a dozen times a day - we like, we share, we comment, we refute.

This is the case in general conversation, but also within the church. Exactly the same patterns of divisive argument, of side-taking, of aggressive stances, lack of patience, kindness, self-control pervade in our discussions. 

I don't want to write a simply controversial and argumentative blog. I know that topical and provocative articles generate a lot of hits, but I want to be content to write without pretension to greatness, for whoever may happen to find a few words useful. 

And I think that the need of the hour is to hear Christian truth spoken quietly. To refamiliarise with the basic biblical message, the Bible's main themes. This may at times be prompted by a topical or current theme - last week's atrocity in Paris, for instance. And to state Christian truth is hardly to avoid controversy, in this day and age! But my starting place and basic mentality is to talk about Jesus and his love. 

I have not lost my courage or withdrawn from battle. It is my conviction that the only reason why anyone gives houseroom to so much of the wave of trendy, deconstructionalist, totally-committed-to-vagueness material currently popular, in the SA in particular, is simply unfamiliarity with the Gospel. The gurus of postmodernism have entered the church and found that no one knows enough Bible to spot what is actually poison. They have found seats and tables to sit at and a chance to even make a bob or two. 

And only the real Jesus will have the guts to oppose them. And only his gospel of grace will have the truth-power to throw them out. The church needs to be filled again with truth on fire, with the message of the Cross.