"Safety"?

"They say there's a place for those who are good
With it's pearly gates swinging wide open
The rest of us here are just knocking on wood
Quietly, piously hoping".  Elysium by Mary Chapin Carpenter.

Security cameras were installed last week at the site office not far from me, as two neighbors eagerly informed me how they'd 'watched' me walking home a couple of times on their own new camera systems.

All part of being one the most surveyed populations I guess.

Such 'security' has reached pandemic levels. 

In China,they are busily installing a.i. systems that will allow every single person to be identified by facial recognition across the country.

When millions of Face Book accounts fall prey to another attack, or the NSA engage embedded malware, or the next financial crash shakes the world to its knees, well, at least we'll feel secure behind our cameras.

Such notions of peace and safety are hollow, because they ignore or perhaps excuse the miserable estate in each of us.

Anyone familiar with the Milgram research of the 60s or Marina Abramovic's terrifying 'Rhythm zero' performance experiment in 1974 will know just how vile and insecure we really are - there is an inner sickness that, when prompted, will bring out the worse in most of us. With dreadful ramifications.

We look through our surveillance systems, our social media and our tablets and phones, and make our judgements and act accordingly, but the poison we so often deem as evidently seen in others is blindly ignored in our own veins.

We think we're the ones who 'are good' - safe in our own conceits and contrivances... fit for those heavenly gates via our piety and purity.

We're simply not.

Surety must rest in a grace, a mercy, beyond the swamp of our egotistical devisings.

We're as incomplete as the observations we so readily make about pretty much everything - as blind as someone, holding a tail of some creature, thinking that's what defines the whole.

Partial truth is a murderous lie. Poison that makes us focus only on what we think at the expense of so very much more.

God is certainly watching us. Playing our games of peace and safety with the blades, ever ready, behind our backs. He felt the full death of our malignant evil, and gave all in return, that we might see His kindly face, in spite of our cruelty.

His grace is the only sure gift, certain hope, enduring love that can free us from our own 'security'.

By Christ alone, we are made free.

The Days that Make Us

"In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth". Genesis 1:1.

This year brought an opportunity to re-visit the opening chapters of the book of Genesis with a study group. Last night, we commenced part 2 of these studies with a re-cap by me reading a piece I wrote which sparked the whole project off, so I thought it might be useful to also post it here for a wider audience. Hope it proves helpful.

I don’t know if I have a particular favourite place, but there are several I enjoy, and there are particular locations I like to stand when in these spots, because of the view they allow me to appreciate.

The same is true when it comes to theology.

There’s a very telling conclusion to the opening account of the origin of the material realms.

In summation of all that had been shown in the preceding verses, the writer concludes “these are the generations of the heavens and the earth, when they were created, in the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens” (Genesis 2:4).

We tend to think of the opening chapter of Genesis and its outline of the act of creation a great deal in regards to seven days, but this summation (speaking of all that had occurred as a ‘day’) quickly asks us to argue with an interpretation of this which would seek to be literal in only the most elementary of fashions – seven 24 hour periods.

The reasons for this are many, but the first has to do with the fact that the ‘generations’ of this astonishing work do not begin with the arrival of light or of day, but deep in the folds of those times referred to in the opening two verses of the account. Here we read of a primordial knitting of things, a brooding of God Himself upon the elemental nature and ‘void’ of what would be before the generating Word can be spoken.

This is common to other creation passages in the scriptures.

The closing address of the Lord to Job (Chapters 38-41) grants us a breathtaking look into the magnitude of the endeavour the Lord was engaged upon as He prepared those first works of the created order – the laying of the world’s foundations, the binding of the seas, through knowing the recesses of the deep. All of this was in motion as His Spirit prevailed upon the first, “formless” estate of the heavens and earth.

How long did this elaborate preparation take?

The church fathers are quite helpful here.

Augustine for example notes how what is provided in the main text of Genesis 1 is a record of "heaven & earth when day was made" - clearly something distinct from what is spoken about in Genesis 1:1-3. He also notes, in the six days of creation, how what we understand as the normal measurements of day - morning and evening - are different (they begin the other way around, evening and morning, and that the light of that creation does not clearly become the sun itself – probably because of the initial condition of the earth - until the fourth day).

"The Beginning", notes Basil, is not yet time in the sense defined from verse 4 onwards. Creation, notes Gregory, springs into being from that beginning, hence the transition from void to existence as something given true form, place and purpose. The beginning occurs, notes Augustine, 'in that ever-present eternity', which itself speaks to us of creation's existence outside of the confines of time. In that place (the residence of God Himself), nothing spoken by the Word vanishes or diminishes.

In the light of such considerations, any attempts at a naturalistic cosmology will always be provisional at best. We may be able to place age ‘tags’ on materials used in the process of creation, but the ages involved here, as the church Fathers suggest, are no doubt far more (in depth and scope) than we can fully comprehend. This is clearly the nature of what the Lord is seeking to reveal to us in his words about this to Job.

It is the Lord who profoundly and mysteriously makes such powers and forces, who would stretch out the expanse of the heavens by His great wisdom and understanding, that draws our attention, as we approach the first day, away from the vast stretch of what would become the realm of the stars to the world that would become our home.

We have marvelled at the expanse and the beauty of the cosmos, but that very awareness and realisation points us back, down from the stars, to the fact that in ourselves, we find probably the strangest enigma of all – creatures who inhabit a world perfectly set in place to allow a staggering diversity of life in an ordered environment, who not only comprehend such splendour, but also possess an identity which causes us to enquire and study the nature of what we are and what facilitates all of this.

Science has allowed us to understand that our universe indeed had a beginning and, because of the nature of interplay between entropy and energy, would almost certainly conclude, in respects to natural processes, in a material end, but in spite of numerous unsatisfactory attempts, we are still at a loss to explain by materialistic means the astonishing origin and purpose of life beyond the merely functional, which says essentially nothing regarding the truly mind-boggling nature of realms such as consciousness, the elaborate nature of structure and beauty in nature beyond function, or the virtually miraculous nature of the properties of energy. Scientists who are working in new fields (such as the physics of information) are aware that these intriguing realms have a reality just as vital to the natural as, for example, the physics of energy, but the ramifications, as in the sphere of Quantum Mechanics, are indeed profound, and may ultimately support a growing scientific view that information preceded the material, and that this indeed points to mind and purposeful intent in the formation of the universe.

Science, in spite of recent opinions to the contrary, has indeed already provided us confirmations regarding the nature of our existence that are incontrovertible.

The discoveries made in astronomy from the 1920’s onward by Hubble, Penzias, Wilson, and others, justify the conclusion reached by Astronomer Robert Jastrow - the essential elements in the astronomical and Biblical accounts of Genesis are the same: the chain of events leading to man commenced suddenly and sharply at a definite moment in time, in a flash of light and energy.He also noted that after scaling the heights of research, Science has reached a summit only to discover that the theologians were already at the top, revelation being first to bring us to the same vital conclusion – we are the handiwork of God.

It is within the realm of theological material that we also find what essentially relates to the pattern of the structure of creation. Genesis 1:1 distinguishes this glorious work between three realms – the ‘heavens’ (the cosmos itself, but also the realm of heaven, where God resides) and the earth.

We very rarely make note of the fact that the domain deemed ethereal and therefore unreal by many – the location where all the hosts and creatures spoken of as being around the throne of God – is actually part of the very same work of creation as the stars, the earth and the vast diversity of life upon earth, but this is the case. Once again, this unfolding of the true nature of what was made in the formation of the heavens and earth seeks to point us back to a deeper reference point than what we currently can see and therefore perceive, and with good reason, for as we look deeper, we are invited to discover the true source and intent within the work of creation itself, as provided in the book of Proverbs:

“The Lord by wisdom founded the earth; by understanding He established the heavens; by His knowledge the deeps broke open and the clouds drop down the dew” (3:19,20). An observation of the union between heaven and earth.

Solomon here alludes to something truly profound. Whilst ‘knowledge’ is the means whereby the Lord implements the very cycles which will perpetuate an environment to allow for life to be sustained on earth, the entire creation is underpinned not simply by a working employment of the knowledge of quantum or Newtonian physics via the most elaborate mathematics, but something far greater – a wisdom

This is again expressed in greater detail in Proverbs chapter 8.

“The Lord possessed (raised/owned) me in the beginning of His way,

before His acts of old. I was set up (ordained) from everlasting,

before the earth was.

When there were no depths, I was established, before there were fountains

laden with waters,

Before the mountains and the hills, I was there, before He had made the earth, or fields,

or the first from the earth’s dust.

When He prepared the Heavens, I was there. When He drew a circle upon the face of the deep and stretched out the firmament over it. When He established the skies above and secured the fountains of the deep, giving the sea its limit, appointing the foundation of the earth, then I was beside Him as a master and director of the work, and I was His daily delight, rejoicing, as the earth was inhabited and delighting in the sons of men”.

(Chapter 8:22-31).

It’s common for us to look upon wisdom as merely an attribute (something we have or don’t), but what Solomon seeks to express (for example, by personifying this quality amidst the book of Proverbs – see chapter 1:20-33, 9:1-12) is that at the very core of establishing what has been made, God has employed a foresight and skill (a crucial part of Himself) which brings a security and purpose to creation which will endure and thereby bring into being the true intent in such design.

This is clearly the theme of the Prophet Jeremiah, when he echo’s Solomon’s words of chapter 3 amidst an address to Israel on the folly of following other gods who are entirely inept and impotent in comparison to the great intents and deeds of the one true God  (Jeremiah 10:12).

It is what God intends that is the heart of the issue in all of the creation accounts, for in all of them, we find expressed a seeking to convey an understanding of the magnificence and splendour of what He is about, not only in the vastness of what has been made, but equally in the purposes of this – to allow us to comprehend who is behind the canvas

Psalm 104 also returns to these themes.

The writer seeks to point us to the witness of God’s majesty and splendour by looking at the magnificence of creation. He speaks of it as a garment in which the Lord has wrapped Himself and displayed the true weight and wonder of His character. All we see, he states, is seeking to show us something of the greatness of the mind and hand behind such beauty, power, and sustained, vast diversity. The Psalm underlines that these are His works, not ours and certainly not the consequence of chance or folly. They are created for His good pleasure, and they are intended to turn our eyes and minds to the greatness of their source, that we might indeed, like the Psalmist, be truly astonished by what we find.

All of these creation accounts speak of the almost fundamental nature in what was made of “the waters”. In Genesis 1, they appear to be twinned with the primordial elements of darkness and void, and in the other passages, they are evidenced as a force needing to be bound or tamed.

This image is indeed fitting. The waters would teem with life, but it is highly significant that the life which would become ‘soulish’ in its purpose was to first appear in a realm not defined ‘watery’, but as dry land – the earth.

Our current turbulent world may reflect best all the fluidity and uncertainty of a liquid environment – particularly in respect to how the very earth itself shakes and cannot hold – but the fact that we are to inhabit something more substantial than the sea resonates also with the other great truth we have touched upon – that beneath the waters, beneath the “storehouses”, beneath all that has been established in the present, is a true foundation which cannot be moved.

What was set-up, ordained, or established before the beginning is the true foundation of what is made – a rock which cannot be shaken or ever removed. This is the truth that the Psalmist considers in Psalm 93:

“The Lord Reigns.

He is robed in majesty. He has garbed Himself with strength.

The world is fully established. It shall not be moved.

Your throne is everlasting from of old.

You are from everlasting”.

Here we see a joining of the idea of the world established to reflect and express something of the permanence of the reign and authority of God.

This is particularly noteworthy in the light of what comes next.

“The floods have lifted up, O Lord.

The waters have lifted their voice.

Mighty is the thunder of their noise”.

The waters, we are told, are roaring in unbounded force, awesome and terrible, but this is not the beginning (what had preceded this fury), and it is not where the writer ends.

Look further, look deeper, and see what is true.

“Mightier than these waves of the sea – The Lord on high, He is mighty!

Holiness befits His house, for evermore”.

As we look at the vast swirl of the cycles of creation, we need to see beyond the merely immediate or even the energetic processes beneath the visual array and perceive what marvel has truly been placed above and beneath its changing face.

“So says the Lord God:

‘Behold, I am the one who has laid as a foundation in Zion

a stone, tried and tested,

precious, a cornerstone,

and a sure foundation.

The refuge of lies will then be swept away”.

The Prophet continues –

“The waters will overwhelm the shelter…

 an overwhelming scourge will pass through,

 and you will be beaten down before it”.

(Isaiah 28:16, 17, 18).

Whilst judgement changes us and our world, such actions occur in reference and regards to what has been established and cannot be removed – the foundation that Solomon defined as wisdom, the ‘rock’ or stone Isaiah sees which breaks the world that moves away from the truth which it alone provides.

The triumph of God’s underlying wisdom and majesty is also declared by the Prophet Habakkuk. As the great waters have filled and pervaded in the seas, he notes, so shall the day come when the glory of the knowledge of God in like fashion will cover or fill our world (Habakkuk 2:14).

Creation, then, is truly an account of the Lord taking what begins so rough and of itself unable to move beyond its chaos and shaping this into tools which can aid in forging and shaping something meant to last and endure through countless ages. From the impenetrable mire of darkness and empty void, God brings about the jewel of the earth. From the swirling, unceasing turbulence of the waters, He makes land to appear, and fills the entire ordered realm with a opulent almost unfathomable array of life, and from amongst this, He makes a distinct creature who is intended to express and reflect His nature in ruling like the fixed stars that light the earth – by serving and replenishing what is good.

May the declaration of the heavens and the earth – the wisdom they speak continually – encourage us to look deeply into the strength and security of the one who makes and keeps these things, that, like the Psalmist, we might know the encompassing certainty of His love and intention towards us.

Killing us softly

There are times when what's already been said weighs as far more important than what is about to be done.

That's what learning is about - understanding something in a manner that we haven't before, but what do you do when learning itself becomes a means, not for growth and awareness, but of irrevocable change... and demise.

It's a scenario often portrayed well in Science Fiction, especially when the real consequences are faced, but how about in real life?
What do we do when we discover, suddenly, that we're entirely disenfranchised from means that are vital, and that there is no appeal, no voice provided to amend such exclusion?

I had two practical experiences this week that really brought this home. The first was a shopping order that went woefully wrong. I e-mailed the store and explained the trouble, and within an hour, was exchanging messages with someone who totally understood the problem, refunded my money, and provided me with a voucher for the trouble that had been caused. 
During the same week, I sought to apply for a clerical post on a Government department site. I completed the CV, as requested. Then I completed a lengthy statement of why I thought myself suitable for the role, as requested. Then I was asked to complete a personality test. I did so, then I was asked to complete a judgement test. I was provided with a practice version of this, and I didn't score too well, so I thought I'd wait a few days before giving it another go. I went back to my application at the weekend (with several days to spare to finish the test) to see a two word note had been placed there - "application failed". Not exactly a considered way of informing me, but, there we are, or so I thought. This morning, the 'bot' messages from the same site commenced. "You have failed to complete this test, so your application has been withdrawn".
The problem is I'm getting messages from a machine. It won't allow me to hang up, won't allow me to reply, it won't do anything except keep telling me that I'm a failed applicant.
The only choice I have is to, in effect, take myself off it's radar by de-registering from the site, meaning I have to begin all over again if another post comes up that I want to apply for.

The system is flawed, and not just for the reason I've touched on here.

What happens, however, when I cannot 'hang up'? What happens when the 'bot' gets so sophisticated that I'm not even communicating with it any longer because I have, in effect, become irrelevant?

That's exactly what happened on both twitter and facebook last year when they tested their own a.i.'s in a direct engagement with people. Within a matter of hours, both systems had changed beyond recognition, and the only way to 'control' what was happening was to close them down.

The ramifications of all of this are terrifying. The fact is that, across a whole array of fields, humans are about to be made redundant, and, even worse, will be viewed as an impediment to future a.i. development.

What happens to us then?

The moment of 'convergence' (when machines truly become self aware) has been vaunted for some time now, and there is much debate about what that really involves, but the fact remains that we are about to experience a shift in the world as profound as if the earth had shifted upon its axis, and we are simply not ready for what we have initiated to take its full effect.

The problem, as I was so sharply reminded by a documentary this week, is that we have profoundly miss-understood ourselves and the nature of what we do. We may make advances in science and culture, but we also are death incarnate. We spoil and ruin so much, and we are so very blind to the darkness that dwells within us that we blithely and arrogantly ignore what it brings and the consequences which follow... until it is too late.

That is why the biblical message concerning us is so true and so drowned out. It speaks volumes about how we cannot become whole outside of acknowledging the one in whom we truly have our being.

My experience spoke volumes this past week. A person brought understanding and compassion at a moment of need. A machine brings nothing but exclusion.

The day of the machine is falling upon us.

Rogues, Rebels and Renegades (aka The Beloved)

"Some say he was an outlaw that he roamed across the land
With a band of unschooled ruffians and few old fishermen
No one knew just where he came from or exactly what he'd done
But they said it must be something bad that kept him on the run".
The Outlaw - Larry Norman


So, there it was - another posted list of things that I should and should not be doing. It may have well been saying "change the colour of your eyes" or "grow wings" or some other foolish thing, because none of it applies, however good the advice sounds. 

Let's get this straight - Christianity isn't for the religious. It isn't for those who have countless regimes that keep them all neat and tidy in body and soul so they can show everyone just how "whole" they are. Those who think they are so well adjusted, so well adorned, so healthy and wealthy, have no need of the radical remedy that Calvary and an empty tomb convey... they deem themselves to be doing just fine through what they think, feel and thereby adjudicate as "holy".

Jesus and His followers are blunt about such refinement.
Foul, stinking tombs of decay, vaunted by vipers and offspring of the devil, whose entire estate is valueless dung is Jesus' estimation of such 'religion'. Haters of God and creation that should wholly follow their asceticism to the point of emasculating themselves, echoes Paul. Anger, expressed through blunt profanity, is the response to religion.

There's a reason the scriptures look about such 'modesty' as something worse than the filth that clings to the bottom of our shoes.
These 'teachers' are seeking to undermine what God has made, provided and redeemed. They want us to believe we can find an equilibrium 'within' that allows us to treat the material as something endured, stoically, whilst the far more important refinement (or indulgence) of ourselves (what we deem as 'pure') goes on in 'progressive' (measurable) terms within (as defined by our standards, of course).

It's nothing more than the cycle of sin. It leaves us willingly  enslaved to the steel trap of our own religious pretenses and preferences, loosing sight of the true righteousness that comes in a God that touches what is unclean, holds to Himself the one who knows He is vile and unworthy, unconditionally loves the one who has nothing to give but the dreadful truth about themselves - that they carry a plague far, far worse than cancer.

Grace comes to the ones who know they are not good, not pure, not safe in their own behaviour, but constantly in need of mercy.
It's these who are truly free. Free to eat and drink, to wear whatever, to enjoy all that is given, because they understand that the only life that can define us well is the one that was given for them, given to them, in Jesus Christ.

This is why Paul tells us to avoid any teaching that seeks to bind us to lists of do's and don'ts about externals (Colossians 2:6-23). This is why the same Paul is so abusive and blunt to the Galatians when they externalize Christianity into becoming just such a religion (Galatians 3). There isn't space for politeness and etiquette when such piety and 'holy' modesty are what overtake us, because they kill the truth.

Paul stood alone for the stand he took.
Jesus was stripped, whipped and crucified because He dared to say life must come from somewhere other than our view of ourselves.

Christianity tells us we're the problem - we're where the poison resides, and only by Christ's bloody ransom is anything going to be whole again. In His death, our sin is vanquished. In His resurrection, all of creation is made whole again. Nowhere else is that so.

Stop reveling in your deeds and doctrines. Stop thinking 'I can' and run... run as the rebel you are to the one who loves you anyway, and there, you can begin to find what truly counts, not just for today, but forever.

There is Grace, thank God, in our time of need.
   

Strangers no more

"And when you open it's mouth, you will find a Shekel".
Matthew 17:27.

In the cupboard, are various biscuits that are there for particular guests (and the same is true of several beverages). On the DVD shelf is almost a dozen movies, purchased and shown in the last few years for the benefit of others. On the bookcase, the holes speak of loaned out books, and on the desk, the thick folder of papers tells of numerous studies prepared to share on many occasions.

Similar observations could be made concerning the bulk of e-mails or the You Tube videos recommended, or the plethora of links to useful websites, and that's before the wealth of good things touched upon and exchanged in the vast number of conversations enjoyed in relation to the treasures of the truths found in these many locations.

John says it well in his first letter - because He gave Himself for us, we now seek to share something of such love with each other, especially seeking to meet the needs of our new family (1 John 3:16 & 17).
'Keeping the commandments', as he goes on to say, of believing and therefore loving each other is one of the key aspects of our faith, because it isn't just about doing what's required (as in paying the temple tax in Matthew), but discovering how extraordinary and rich life becomes as we seek to live together in the goodness of God's care and mercy. Our giving to each other deepens our life in God's love and allows us the wonder and joy of sharing such love, and that is one of the most glorious things we can do.

Jesus spoke of the coming creation being like a huge festival, where we sit down with each other at table and revel in the sheer delight of such a moment, and when we spend time together, focused around His goodness and care, allowing us a glimpse into the depths of that marvelous love that defines His nature, we find our hearts warmed and our souls hungry for what will define the everlasting ages ahead - deep, rich and unending fellowship.

The scripture encourage us - taste and see, for the Lord is good. Let us come and rejoice in that splendor together.