The hideous beauty of good theology

We are reading Job in the mornings. So far, we have got as far as Zophar the Naamathite's first speech in chapter 11, and feel that we are at the stage where the gloves are coming off. Job has suffered a terrible loss - wealth, family, health - and the friends' readiness to come and simply be with him in his misery was so impressive at first. But now, their determination to say, in effect, "You brought all this on yourself" "You deserved it!" is coming through loud and clear. 

The thing is, the vast bulk of what they say is truth. Their theology is good, and beautifully expressed. Some passages are sublime, in fact. There are sections which are close parallels to the very things God himself says about himself towards the end of the book.





Here is Zophar:
 

11:7-9  “Can you fathom the mysteries of God?

Can you probe the limits of the Almighty? 

They are higher than the heavens above—what can you do?

They are deeper than the depths below—what can you know? 

Their measure is longer than the earth and 

wider than the sea. 

And here is the Lord:

38:4-7  “Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation?

Tell me, if you understand. 

Who marked off its dimensions? Surely you know!

Who stretched a measuring line across it? 

On what were its footings set,

or who laid its cornerstone— while the morning stars sang together 

and all the angels shouted for joy? 

Just occasionally the three friends give themselves away with some questionable theology:

11:6b God has even forgotten some of your sin. 

Really, Zophar? 

But the way they really give themselves away is in attitude. They purport to know the mind of the Almighty, and to some extent they really do, but they err when they speak on His behalf, not knowing the full picture or purpose. Their theology is good, but incomplete, mistimed and insensitive in delivery. 

Zophar again:

11:2-6a “Are all these words to go unanswered?

Is this talker to be vindicated? 

Will your idle talk reduce others to silence?

Will no one rebuke you when you mock? 

You say to God, ‘My beliefs are flawless 

and I am pure in your sight.’ 

Oh, how I wish that God would speak,

that he would open his lips against you 

and disclose to you the secrets of wisdom,

for true wisdom has two sides.

Job's friends appear to have adopted the tone of a debate on social media long before the dawn of the Internet. Their theology is broadly good, but the spirit in which they say it is ugly and gets uglier. All that is missing is for them to compare Job's "arrogance" to that of Hitler...!

I am taking several things away from this book already. 

 

- Theology which is 98% good can still be very bad theology. The yeast works through the whole lump of dough; the curate's egg - "good in parts" - is not a good egg. 

 

- Theology which is all good, but partial, applying to situations that are not the one facing us, can be very bad theology. Where we don't know, far better to say so and keep our traps shut. 

- Theology which is all good but spoken with a desire to score points, to bring down, to win an argument rather than a soul, is bad theology. Job's friends cease being friends during the conversation. They have an agenda - and it isn't God's. 

The book of Job stands as a great warning to those who say too much. Even good stuff said at the wrong time or in the wrong way can do great damage. The rest of the Bible is more concerned with rebuking bad theology; Job rebukes the good. It makes you stop and think. 

Joyful Intercessors

In the training colleges of the Salvation Army across the globe, group support and cohesion both in training and after is catalysed by giving each year's intake of cadets a "sessional name". I

have been knocking around the fringe of William Booth College long enough to have seen the  Disciples of the Cross (the high-flying DoCs), the Heralds of Grace (or rather more lowly HoGs), the Messengers of Light (a term surely only in use biblically for Satanic beings), and now the Joyful Intercessors. 

At WBC, London, my wife has already photographed them all; Facebook has already suggested I befriend most of them, and I have even met some of them. We have Hammonds (new and improved?). We have the Annual Callum. We have a lovely influx of continentals - I've met France, the Netherlands and the Czech Republic - and the nation-state of Yorkshire is, as ever, solidly represented. They seem bright and eager, keen and friendly and slightly nervous. All normal then. 

Beyond the cadets of the Salvation Army colleges around the world, a far larger number of other students are also beginning theological studies. Few denominational setups have quite such a focussed programme as TSA, where, if you complete the course and make your covenant, you will be ordained as a minister and will have a guaranteed job, but nevertheless, many new students have their hearts and minds focussed on future ministry in church and mission. 

What can be said to these new students? 

1) Enjoy your time at college. 

You will feel busy. You will feel pressured. Deadlines will loom. If you have been years out of full-time education, essay writing will feel like climbing Everest with advanced arthritis. Some of you will also have your brain stretched horribly by working all the time in a second (or third!) language. 

However bad this feels, remember that college is an oasis of peace and tranquility and time compared to the demands of your future ministry. Sorry to say it, but it is true. Not only are time pressures lighter now, but you are surrounded by people who will become your friends, and some of those friendships will last for ever. The future will probably be tougher and lonelier. Don't complain: enjoy! 

2) Recognise that this really is foundational 

You have time now to think through issues that you have never had the time to tackle properly before. And you will never again have such a chance to explore theological and practical thought-contours. Well-chosen essay titles given over the next years will stretch you, will make you think, and will stay with you, if you work hard at them. Essays I tackled at college on John 1, on the witness of the Spirit in assurance, on Rastafarianism, on the Prophets as Covenant Policemen - all have stuck with me through nearly 30 years now, becoming part of my substructure of thought. Ditto for practical ministry stuff. Make the most of it!

3) Remember that this is not "normal"

I'm not a fan of theological training that takes people away from the normal rhythm of church life. But colleges are with us, for good or ill, and we need to learn to live with them. There are ways of minimising the abnormality though!

As far as is possible during your time at college, be a normal part of a normal corps/church. Get to the meetings. Hear the word. Pray.  Take part in social events. Play a genuine and unassuming role in church life as much as you can. 

Above all, do not regard your "status" as a cadet/student as putting you a cut above the "ordinary" members. We are called together to live for Christ. So let's show that. Remember, the greatest Christian leaders you know and have ever known have been the most humble. Isn't that so? 

4) Guard your heart and mind

Many people go into ministerial training with a relatively simple faith - even simplistic. You've believed that the Bible is "true", that Moses led a vast company of Israelites out of Egypt, that the miracles of Jesus really happened, that Paul's letters come from God, that the doctrines of the church are to be signed up to without great thought as to other "options", that there is a heaven to seek and a hell to flee. You may well feel over the next few weeks that suddenly all of that is in meltdown, that nothing is certain any more, that the simple light of your faith is all but being blacked out by what feels like a tide of cynicism and even direct unbelief. Amongst the loudest voices in that will be some of your fellow students who seem keen to vie with one another as to who can seem most knowledgable, most critical, most radical.  

Just remember: when you seem to be presented with just two roads, there may be a third way. When simple faith is mocked, and a critical, liberal, unbelieving, progressive path is placed before you as the attractive option, there is a way out. The best transformation of an unthinking fundamentalist is not into an intellectual liberal but into a thinking believer. Someone who has read widely, tested their thinking, recognised strengths and weaknesses in their upbringing, and who has held fast to a profound biblical faith even in a highly critical climate. 

5) Maintain your personal spiritual priorities 

If the intellectual foundation of your faith may feel under attack, so can your personal walk with God. Theological training is a bit of a hothouse environment, and unfortunately a hothouse can grow weeds as well as the desirable plants. If you have any tendency to become professionalised, handling the Bible and Christ's gospel as if they were a commodity at your disposal, as if the delivery of a sermon was just a job to do, then that tendency will probably start to rear its ugly head here. If the approval of teachers and session colleagues matters more than Jesus' approval, if looking good in front of fellow professionals counts more than actually caring for the person in front of you who doesn't know you from Adam, then college will start to show it. 

I dropped out of Christian ministry because professionalism did for me, from the inside. I ended up committing adultery - but I'd slipped a long way first. And I think that issue went all the way back to the start of my ministry. What matters ultimately is not essay marks or accolades. What matters is a life of love - walking in love to God and neighbour. Whatever else you get from college, don't let it rob you of that. 

God bless you, keep you, teach you and use you! 

Photo credit: Sarah King

Some curious thoughts about Kim Davis

If fame is only supposed to last fifteen minutes, Kim Davis seems to have stayed slightly longer in the limelight than is necessary. The Kentucky clerk jailed for refusing marriage licenses to gay couples has now been with us for that number of days and the media interest is only just beginning to wane. 

I have found her case interesting for a number of reasons. She is not a neat poster girl for her cause. Married four times, a life-long and highly committed Democrat, she may not be the religious right's ideal standard bearer in their fight. 

But one issue particularly strikes me, in terms of "Christian culture." Davis is a fairly recent convert to her church - about four years - and it is the nature of that church which fascinates. 

She is a member of Solid Rock Apostolic Church. Splitting from other Pentecostal groupings back near the beginnings of the movement, this particular "apostolic church" does not believe in the Trinity and regards speaking in tongues as necessary to salvation. On both those grounds it is clearly not a Christian church - although, as with other confused and heretical groups, it is not our place to assess the possibility or probability of personal faith among its members. 

What intrigues me is the speed with which some Christians have identified with this "Christian" lady. Would support have been as swift if she had been a denier of the trinity who went to the Kingdom Hall and thought that evangelistic door knocking was essential for salvation? Would the evangelical right have been as warm if she had denied the trinity, worn a burkha and just come back from the hajj? 

And the support from like-minded Christians has been uniform in taking Kim Davis to be one of them. In an era of instant reactions, of shallow knee-jerking, of single-issue blinkeredness, of lack of theological awareness, haven't we been reduced to the point where doctrinal definition is irrelevant? If a woman is white and doesn't like gay marriage, she must be sound, right? 

I'm not commenting on Kim Davis' conscience. Nor the rights and wrongs of her specific concern - not to have her name on those certificates. Nor the fact that she (inadvertently, and because of media spin, perhaps) seems to have done more to spur on public acceptance of SSM in the U.S. than any other single individual. I'm just saying that her case highlights the low point we have reached in understanding our own faith. When the choice is between bright and loving but fuzzy liberals, and unattractive evangelicals who have lost touch with the basic contours of their own faith, no wonder it is the atheists and the Moslems who are laughing. 

On this day... the Birmingham Church Bombing, 1963

On this day in 1963 the children were arriving into their classrooms for Sunday School at 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama. The lesson set was, "The Love that Forgives," based on the Sermon on the Mount in Mat 5:43, 44. "You have heard that it was said, 'Love your neighbour and hate your enemy' but I tell you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you."

At around twenty past ten a bomb made up from a dozen or so sticks of dynamite planted near the back porch of the church building exploded. Glass windows blew out, roofing timbers fell into the sanctuary, pews were splintered and the rooms nearest the blast were devastated.

Back in those days of segregation it was an all-white police force that arrived on the scene to restore order, but black church members who sifted through the rubble and immediately tended the

wounded. Four young girls had been killed - Denise McNair, Carole Robertson, Addie Mae Collins and Cynthia Wesley. The broken body of one was found and lifted from the rubble by her own grandfather. Seventeen other people were more or less severely injured. Given that there were 400 people in the building at the time, this was actually a remarkable low toll, but utterly dreadful, nonetheless.



Birmingham had suffered many bomb attacks over the preceding decade or more. In fact, local residents had given the place the nickname “Bombingham”. But this was the first against a church, and targeted just when the children would be occupying the worst-hit part of the building. It took 14 years to bring the Ku Klux Klan member responsible to justice, and not till 2001 was anyone else convicted of taking part in the atrocity.

I am too young to remember this event. I am convinced that many people younger than me, in the UK at least, and especially whites, have very little consciousness of that period. When people moan about “political correctness gone mad” etc., they may be forgetting that “political correctness” is at root treating other people as human beings, and not blowing up little girls in Sunday School.

The damage at the church

As the refugee crisis causes feelings to rise, I have been disturbed by the element of racism that is around us. I have heard talk of an influx of “non-white” refugees. Someone with whom I work regularly talks freely of Poles being thieves, their women being sluts, of foreigners being unwelcome, of shuddering at the thought of black men because they all smell. Another friend posted thoughts on the refugee crisis from an overtly white-supremacist site. In the year that I visited Auschwitz, it sends shivers to see a sentence like, “Jewish Supremacists... are using the “holocaust fable” to promote and justify the current Third World invasion of Europe.”

We need to remember that a pause in inter-racial hate and violence is more exception than rule in human societies. That the relative peace and common humanity we have been enjoying is a lovely oasis in a tragic and sorrowful world. We need to remember our shock back in the Bosnian war – “these people who were ethnically cleansed had washing machines!” We need to keep it real.

A fundamental Christian doctrine is that of the unity of the human race as creatures made in God’s image. The Salvation Army doctrines don’t hammer that out as explicitly as they might; a statement of faith that I used to have to sign kicks off its third article with “All men and women, being created in the image of God, have inherent and equal dignity and worth.” I know of no one in the SA who would have troubles with that article. On the one hand it outlaws racism; on the other, it promotes a high view of the glory, honour and dignity of every human being, at every stage of life, whatever their colour, culture or creed, poverty or riches, success or failure, moral excellence or disaster; whether intelligent or with difficulties understanding things; whether beautiful or ugly, tall or short, male or female, young or old. It makes us stand against the rising tide of new hate. It calls us to care, to be concerned, to welcome and help and serve our neighbour – first because God made us to honour him and honour his image in each other, and second because our Lord Jesus came to serve and calls us to serve too.



Members of the public watch the funeral for one of the girls.

I am a grandfather. I have three little granddaughters. My feelings of protectiveness and care for them are, if anything, even greater than my feelings were towards my children at the same age. (Perhaps the relative distance and powerlessness of grandparents makes us more nervous!) I can only begin to imagine what it must be like to find your grandchild’s body, limp and lifeless. Bad enough after an illness or accident – but for someone to take her life like that?!

On this anniversary, let’s remember how ugly racism really can get. And then let’s do all we can, as salt and light, to stop our society going there.

To be alone with you

I’d swim across Lake Michigan

I’d sell my shoes

I’d give my body to be back again

In the rest of the room

To be alone with you

To be alone with you

To be alone with you

To be alone with you

You gave your body to the lonely

They took your clothes

You gave up a wife and a family

You gave your ghost

To be alone with me

To be alone with me

To be alone with me

You went up on a tree

To be alone with me you went up on the tree

I’ve never known a man who loved me

My son took me to see Sufjan Stevens at the Royal Festival Hall last week. I am a somewhat reluctant convert, having vaguely liked the artist for a long time, but never quite getting the passion. I now get it. The musical style isn't always immediately my scene, but the lyrics are extraordinarily freighted and perfectly carried by the painfully delicate singing. 

Sufjan’s following is (so far as I can tell) a broadly hipster, post-modern swathe of humanity aged from 20s to 40s. It isn’t obviously loaded with Christians, which is kind of odd, because his songs are heavy with faith. Here is good music by a Christian, as opposed to Christian Music. No comment on the latter!

I have never felt so much like I’d been to church without actually going to church. I cried a lot. Perhaps I was predisposed – many songs dealt with death, and we were laying my Uncle David to rest the next day – but I think I would have cried anyway, touched by words that convey such a weight of God's love and grace.   

The lyric above is one of Sufjan's best-known songs. It seems to be thought of by many as a human love song. And I suppose it is, though the identity of the man who wants to be alone with me is pretty plain. I knew the song, but heard live, I really got it, and was overwhelmed. 

  

Yes, it could be criticised for being over-individualistic. Jesus did not die to be alone with me; he died to gather his congregation around him, the eternal, global, international qahal of his people. But the song stripped things back to the heart of the matter for me, and I am lost again in amazement (even as I write, on the platform at East Croydon) when I contemplate the weight of love. 

You gave your body to the lonely

They took your clothes

You gave up a wife and a family

You gave your ghost

To be alone with me

To be alone with me

To be alone with me

You went up on a tree

My own Christianity fell apart ten or more years ago because I replaced “to be alone with me” with “so that I could serve you”. I changed the content - from being to doing - and I changed the direction - from his desire to my action. From my receiving to my giving, in fact. 

And still that tendency is there. Saved by grace, how quick I am to swap out grace for law, receiving for giving, being for doing. We hardly stop to enjoy his coming close to us before we are “pouring out our lives” and talking about the “debt we owe”. When our reaction to received grace is a reflex response of trying to give back, it throws into question whether it is really grace we have received, or whether we have really grasped the graciousness of grace.

And when we talk about debts and pouring our lives out, we generally mean service “out there", in activity. Serving. Being useful. Being busy. Being driven, even. That is what did for me, in Christian ministry. That is what I allowed to steal away my enjoyment of God. And I’m still a bit of an activity addict. (Is writing this blog a symptom???) 

I am not denying the rightness of grateful service to our gracious God. I’m just saying that if to be alone with me he went up on a tree doesn’t resonate deeply any more, if his love at his cross doesn’t move us more than anything else, we are in trouble. And I think many of us may be. Indeed, many are wounded, scalded, damaged, broken, repelled, excluded, by churches where the ethic of driven activism has usurped the enjoyment of a God who comes close in amazing grace and self-offering. 

The church where I now find myself is perhaps the quintessentially activist church. The Salvation Army is gloriously hands-on. For love of Jesus the love of Jesus has been carried in word and action to millions around the world who are often the most unloved and unwanted by anyone. I feel humbled and honoured and utterly insufficient to be accidentally grafted into this tradition. 

But any movement this busy does run a risk. I have lost count of the number of times people have said to me “we don't think much about theology, we just get our hands dirty”. There is a certain pride abroad that we are the church that does what other churches don’t do. We disagree with Billy Bragg – we certainly do want to change the world. And I sometimes even wonder if our activism is actually the very glue which, for better or worse, holds this old boat together – we have liberals, we have evangelicals, we have fundamentalists, but we have no time to talk, let alone split, because we are too busy. We stay together because we work together. And we have band practice.

It may be that we need to re-centre. To find the place of just us and our God again.  I am not arguing for an inactive pietism, but for a recovery of a constant still place at the centre of our perhaps inevitably busy lives, where the only thing that matters is our God, what he has done for us in Christ, what he has shown us by his Spirit and simply revelling in the company of this blessed Trinity.  That joy, not debt, is to be at the heart of our activity, or work and rest, our lives as a whole. To borrow from another tradition, it is the Westminster Shorter Catechism that expresses the chief purpose of life as to "glorify God and enjoy him forever."  Calvin's catechism is more succinct - it is to "know God". To be alone with you. As Vernon Higham put it “our God is the end of the journey”.  

I never want to lose this again. I don't want to go back to Egypt; I want to live in the promised land. Not a child of the slave woman but of the free. Serving, yes, but out of a constant, conscious gladness that I am his and he is mine. And that we are close. And that HE paid for that.

We laid my Uncle David to rest on Friday the day after the Sufjan gig. His serving days were long past, but not his alone-with-you days. Many times throughout his life and especially in his final months he was overwhelmed by God’s love for him in Jesus. And now he is fully home. That is how I want to go too. 

This is an “if the cap fits” blog. If activity has not robbed you of the simple enjoyment of Christ, then I am so glad for you – you are way ahead of me and I want to learn from you! But if you are busy in the work, so busy, so engaged in serving, that you have lost touch with the simple joy of being loved and accepted by God, you need to come home too. Whatever your theology, evangelical or liberal, a service-driven Christianity will ultimately be barren, unless you recover the centre. 

To be alone with me

He went up on a tree

Photos: https://www.facebook.com/AndrewKingPhotography

www.andrewkingphotography.co.uk

Accentuate the Positive

She was tall and elegant, the vicar's wife. While he wore a black cassock (? Full length

dressing gown thing with countless buttons down the front) she was in something Laura Ashleyish as I recall. We were in the same discussion group after I had spoken on "the person of Jesus" as part of the Alpha course taking place at their Sussex church. 

The conversation turned to John 14:6 - Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. The lady was forthright: "I love the first half of the verse. It's wonderful. But I can never accept the second half. I just don't believe it. So negative!"

I have never forgotten that moment. Her openness and honesty were refreshing, perhaps, but what she said appalled me and, given her prominent role in the parish church, went a long way to explain why so few of the ninety or more regular church goers present seemed to have much living understanding of Jesus, at least so far as I could see from their words that night. 

What she said has struck me many times since as symptomatic of a widespread discomfort in the church regarding negatives. "I am the way..." is lovely; "no one can..." is uncomfortable.  We feel we want to be affirming and positive, we want to reach out in love, not erect barriers. We want to say Yes. 

But actually, Jesus himself, and the NT in general, use negatives very liberally. Even a passage so famously positive as the Beatitudes is followed immediately by:

“You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled underfoot. 

“You are the light of the world. A town built on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. 

In both of those paragraphs, the negative is used precisely to accentuate the positive. The importance of the positive teaching is brought out, but more, the words highlight the urgency of obedience given that an alternative, dreadful, negative possibility is brought into view. This pattern continues. Sometimes the pattern starts with the negative, at others the logic is more complex, but time and time again Yes and No interweave to create a tight and inescapable argument or exhortation. Try these:

Matt 6:13 And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.

 

Matt 9:13 But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.

 

Matt 10:28 Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather, be afraid of the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell.

 

Luke 18:16 But Jesus called the children to him and said, “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these. 

Ephesians 2:8-9 For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works, so that no one can boast. 

John 3:16-18 For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son. 

Romans 12:2 Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. 

Sometimes in the letters exhortations seem to almost alternate in their positive and negative

impact:

Romans 12:9-12, 16-19 Love must be sincere. Hate what is evil; cling to what is good. Be devoted to one another in love. Honour one another above yourselves. Never be lacking in zeal, but keep your spiritual fervour, serving the Lord. Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer. ...

Live in harmony with one another. Do not be proud, but be willing to associate with people of low position. Do not be conceited. Do not repay anyone evil for evil. Be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everyone. If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone. Do not take revenge, my dear friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written: “It is mine to avenge; I will repay,” says the Lord. 

Many more examples could be given. The point is that the negative not only accentuates the positive; very often the positive could not be clearly expressed without the negative. Unless the negative is said, the truth is not actually being communicated at all. 

And that is where our desire to be positive is getting us into deep problems. The vicar's wife who denied John 14:6b but wanted to keep saying 14:6a actually didn't get 14:6a at all. Light pierces the darkness, but darkness in a sense underlines the light. The negative accentuates the positive. It is Jesus' gentle "No" to Martha that helps us to see the beauty of Mary's priorities; to understand what Mary got right we should be so glad of the rebuke to Martha who got it not-quite-right.

 

And more: in a fallen world, we need God's gracious No, and not merely to highlight the good, but to assault the bad. When we read the papers, we want to say "No." When we watch the TV news, we should want to scream "No!" at the screen. And when we look at our own lives, there is something wrong with us if we don't want to say, "No!" to much of what we see.

The perpetual diet of sweet "inspirational" images and text-bites on social media reveals a less than healthy church. A church which wants to say "Yes" all the time isn't actually saying "Yes" to Jesus, because he requires us to say "No" rather frequently. Grace-talk, love-talk, joy-talk, Spirit-talk, forgiveness-talk - "Christian" talk that is never negative is not really fully Christian at all. We are slipping away from the gospel, and all our fluffy kittens and sunlit scenes seem only to show how determined we are not to go back to it. We badly need to re-embrace the negative, to re-learn to say No, and so to enjoy God's real, realistic, refreshing grace in all its genuine fullness.