"You must ask for God's help. ... After each failure, ask forgiveness, pick yourself up, and try again". C S Lewis.
It always interests me to see what verses about ourselves we chose to omit from our own "versions" of the scriptures.
There's these, for example:
"I am of the flesh, enslaved by sin. I do what is evil because sin dwells within me (nothing good dwells in my flesh). I have a desire to do good, but I do not do this, but I do evil instead. I find that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand (for) I see in my members a power waging war against what is good and making me captive to sin that resides in me, so in my mind I know and desire to serve what is good, but in my flesh I serve the law of sin... Wretched man that I am!". Paul (Romans 7).
It's pretty clear what Paul is stating here - sin works in us, so that we sin. This is why we believe that union with Christ makes us simultaneously justified yet still sinful - we know there will be times of failure, but we know that grace has already dealt with these in the righteous life and death of Christ, hence -
"If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us, but if we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us of our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness" (1 John 1:8-10).
So, why do Christians teach things like this (which came up on a facebook link this week):
"It's a spiritual impossibility to love God but have difficulty obeying Him in certain areas".
The piece referred to is clearly speaking about you and I loving God in a way that is total. It reminded me of a conversation between John and Charles Wesley. John was well known for teaching that christians should be perfect in their conduct so they could express Gods holiness to the world. One day, Charles came to him in exasperation and said "John, I just cannot do it - I cannot keep all these rules and requirements to be holy". John is said to have replied that that was fine "Just love God instead".
Duty. Requirements. Obligations. Law.
It leaves us in the spin Paul found himself in when writing Romans 7, because honesty tells us that in ourselves, we're on a road to no where.
It leaves us, like David, at a time of obligation (2 Samuel 11:1), lounging and longing for something to allow the person to run free - often with dire consequences.
We find it hard to get close to that manner of honesty because it requires us to look deeper than our more immediate transgressions to the fact that there is part of us that not only desires gratification of our natural appetites (bent and twisted though they are by sin), but our core needs for meaning and purpose, so easily beset by pride and idolatry. It reminds us (as a new piece on Mockingbird put it this week) that "behind (inside) every faithful believer is an equally faithful atheist, seeking to tell us that it is all nonsense".
Christianity has to do its exposition of this well, because when we seek to, in some fashion, introduce a program which says you can be achieving what is expected of you (in respect to all the requirements of inward holiness and external righteous behaviour), we are getting terribly close to peddling a 'Dr good' snake oil remedy that was too well known in the first century of the faith (see Galatians 1:6-9).
In me, that is in my natural self, noted Paul, there does not dwell anything good, so if you, in effect, train what is evil to act and pretend to be good, that's not holiness - it's diabolical.
So, let's put ourselves where scripture does, and seek to lay out our theology from there, like this:
"Original sin... is the fault and corruption of the nature of every man, (hence we) are very far removed from original righteousness and are of our own nature inclined to evil, so our flesh craves continually in opposition to what is good... and this infection of nature remains in those born anew and is not subject to God's requirements, hence the Apostle (Paul) declares that such propensities to desire what is evil - to sin - are evident amongst those who believe and are baptized, but are not condemned (because of Christ)" (39 articles - 1561).
The only means provided by God that cleanses us from sin and unrighteousness is the blood of Jesus Christ ( 1 John 1:7) - our entire fellowship together is because of that reality. It underpins the fact that we are sinners saved entirely by grace (Romans 3:21-26, 4:5). If we open the door, even an inch, that conveys that something instead of or, more likely, as well as that unmerited love is required, we have omitted from and added to the word of life, and we are back to the bondage of our own worth and merits, seeking to purchase good standing with God by our own standards.
"When grace is known", notes Paul Zahl, "not confounded in any degree by law, it paints a masterpiece: a person unconditionally affirmed who instantaneously becomes the expresser of love and joy and peace and creativity" (Grace in theology). When grace is subverted by law, we instead create a Dorian Grey - a man who may dress in charm and endearment, but whose vice is slowly murdering him, without remedy.
We cannot, we must not, ascribe to a theology that leaves us with the latter and not the former, for that would leave us with a company who do not love God, but hate Him.
Christianity reflects the light, but the light is from one far more lovely than ourselves. He alone will make all things new.
Saturday, 16 February 2019
Saturday, 9 February 2019
Liberating ourselves to death
Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. C S Lewis.
What happens when you reach a point where what has been deemed 'right' by power can only continue at great cost to others?
There's a great British classic film you can watch on You tube, called the Day the Earth Caught Fire (1961). It imagines a scenario where the world is literally shifted by the folly of the super-powers, seen through the eyes of the staff of a London newspaper.
Towards the end of the film, as doomsday approaches, the general populace of London go on a rampage, similar to that witnessed in New York the night of the great power failure in 1977.
Fiction is reflected in reality.
Towards the end of the second world war, the troops of the Soviet Union (a country which had killed around 20 million of its own people in this conflict) liberated many of the Nazi concentration camps in Poland. A few weeks later, as these same troops captured large parts of Germany, they proceeded to rape some 150,000 defenseless German women. Thousands of the women committed suicide.
Why the history lesson?
Because history so often repeats itself.
This month in parts of America, under the guise of rights and democracy, attempts have begun to legislate to allow the termination of full term pregnancies - babies, no less, on the slightest of pretexts in respect to a women's health. The declaration of such aims was met with revelry in New York, and the possibility of terminating a child's life after the birth is also being examined.
We have lived with the horror of sanctioned abortions in the West for several decades, but we are about to open a doorway that will leave us on par with the deeds of the purges of communist Russia or China or the death camps of Nazi Germany.
How can the 'democratic' world even be considering such an awful thing? How far have we departed from the sanctity and value of human life at a time when marriage and raising families has also become seriously threatened.
No doubt some will reply I'm on some religious soap box here - that I take this view because I'm seeking to push what my faith states, but when you consider the issue honestly, there's much more to say than just that - take a look at this argument.
What deeply troubles me is where this road is taking us - where will our culture be in a couple of decades if we legislate such acceptance of the right to terminate a child?
Is this healthy... for anyone?
What happens when you reach a point where what has been deemed 'right' by power can only continue at great cost to others?
There's a great British classic film you can watch on You tube, called the Day the Earth Caught Fire (1961). It imagines a scenario where the world is literally shifted by the folly of the super-powers, seen through the eyes of the staff of a London newspaper.
Towards the end of the film, as doomsday approaches, the general populace of London go on a rampage, similar to that witnessed in New York the night of the great power failure in 1977.
Fiction is reflected in reality.
Towards the end of the second world war, the troops of the Soviet Union (a country which had killed around 20 million of its own people in this conflict) liberated many of the Nazi concentration camps in Poland. A few weeks later, as these same troops captured large parts of Germany, they proceeded to rape some 150,000 defenseless German women. Thousands of the women committed suicide.
Why the history lesson?
Because history so often repeats itself.
This month in parts of America, under the guise of rights and democracy, attempts have begun to legislate to allow the termination of full term pregnancies - babies, no less, on the slightest of pretexts in respect to a women's health. The declaration of such aims was met with revelry in New York, and the possibility of terminating a child's life after the birth is also being examined.
We have lived with the horror of sanctioned abortions in the West for several decades, but we are about to open a doorway that will leave us on par with the deeds of the purges of communist Russia or China or the death camps of Nazi Germany.
How can the 'democratic' world even be considering such an awful thing? How far have we departed from the sanctity and value of human life at a time when marriage and raising families has also become seriously threatened.
No doubt some will reply I'm on some religious soap box here - that I take this view because I'm seeking to push what my faith states, but when you consider the issue honestly, there's much more to say than just that - take a look at this argument.
What deeply troubles me is where this road is taking us - where will our culture be in a couple of decades if we legislate such acceptance of the right to terminate a child?
Is this healthy... for anyone?
Saturday, 2 February 2019
Two Worlds
"Change is inevitable--except from a vending machine".-Robert C. Gallagher
There I was, doing my scheduled trip to work, but across a terrain entirely different to normal. A sudden substantial drop in the temperature the evening before had swiftly adjusted the routine rain into snow, and although it hadn't lasted very long, it had left a frozen system of roads and pavements.
Doing things that had been commonplace the day before suddenly became dangerous, and the busy rush to work had become a very slow, thin trickle of people and vehicles.
What a difference just one change can make.
In a few hours, the world had been shifted.
Then, I reached the city, and it was as though I'd been mistaken - the roads here were free of any frost and ice, and it looked just like it did the day before.
Two very different worlds very close to each other, each requiring a different way of thinking, of behaving, to use them without harm.
We encounter such changes without thinking, at least until the impact on us is direct and immediate, but such sharp turns should make us think.
When a moment happens suddenly like yesterday, you have to adapt quickly to continue doing what's required, but there are far more subtle changes happening around us every moment of every day that, when they reach a tipping point, can result in an entire world becoming opened or closed to us, at both the smallest and largest of levels.
A relationship is suddenly begun or lost because two people see each other differently, businesses rise and fall through particular choices or what we deem to be free choices become defined by subtle analysis of our prior decisions, so we begin to be 'directed' by specific forms of media or other controls. Change generally means something quite radical happening to us and our world, but how can we be sure it's for our good?
When we think about just one strand of life - say, the differences between the sexes - we quickly begin to notice that these may often be subtle, but they are inherently there. When changes that seek to deny these realties are imposed (think Russia in the 1920s), they fail, even if there's huge ideological momentum behind them, because they deny something far more important about us.
Change cannot usually erase or adjust for the better what we are at our core. For that kind of change, you need something impacting upon us that is far greater than dogma or stronger than gravity. You need grace.
Grace has the kind of strength delivered by a hurricane, but the gentleness of a nursing mother. Grace has the depth and height of the most breathtaking natural wonder you've encountered (or all of them combined), but the tenderness to speak tenderly to the most troubled conscience.
Our world is often a place that snubs grace.
Grace is something given to us beyond our comprehension, beyond our estimated worth or abilities. It makes it OK for me to live, as I am, gaining light about what I am and ought to be.
God wants us to know that change above and beyond anything else - that's why He became one of us - to say that right here, right now, life can be so much more than we ever imagined.
Grace is always there, even when we think we've moved way beyond its orbit - it's amazing how it can bring recovery.
Every day of your life may bring changes, large and small, but there's one key thing each of us need all the time.
Time to take a look at the world of Grace.
There I was, doing my scheduled trip to work, but across a terrain entirely different to normal. A sudden substantial drop in the temperature the evening before had swiftly adjusted the routine rain into snow, and although it hadn't lasted very long, it had left a frozen system of roads and pavements.
Doing things that had been commonplace the day before suddenly became dangerous, and the busy rush to work had become a very slow, thin trickle of people and vehicles.
What a difference just one change can make.
In a few hours, the world had been shifted.
Then, I reached the city, and it was as though I'd been mistaken - the roads here were free of any frost and ice, and it looked just like it did the day before.
Two very different worlds very close to each other, each requiring a different way of thinking, of behaving, to use them without harm.
We encounter such changes without thinking, at least until the impact on us is direct and immediate, but such sharp turns should make us think.
When a moment happens suddenly like yesterday, you have to adapt quickly to continue doing what's required, but there are far more subtle changes happening around us every moment of every day that, when they reach a tipping point, can result in an entire world becoming opened or closed to us, at both the smallest and largest of levels.
A relationship is suddenly begun or lost because two people see each other differently, businesses rise and fall through particular choices or what we deem to be free choices become defined by subtle analysis of our prior decisions, so we begin to be 'directed' by specific forms of media or other controls. Change generally means something quite radical happening to us and our world, but how can we be sure it's for our good?
When we think about just one strand of life - say, the differences between the sexes - we quickly begin to notice that these may often be subtle, but they are inherently there. When changes that seek to deny these realties are imposed (think Russia in the 1920s), they fail, even if there's huge ideological momentum behind them, because they deny something far more important about us.
Change cannot usually erase or adjust for the better what we are at our core. For that kind of change, you need something impacting upon us that is far greater than dogma or stronger than gravity. You need grace.
Grace has the kind of strength delivered by a hurricane, but the gentleness of a nursing mother. Grace has the depth and height of the most breathtaking natural wonder you've encountered (or all of them combined), but the tenderness to speak tenderly to the most troubled conscience.
Our world is often a place that snubs grace.
Grace is something given to us beyond our comprehension, beyond our estimated worth or abilities. It makes it OK for me to live, as I am, gaining light about what I am and ought to be.
God wants us to know that change above and beyond anything else - that's why He became one of us - to say that right here, right now, life can be so much more than we ever imagined.
Grace is always there, even when we think we've moved way beyond its orbit - it's amazing how it can bring recovery.
Every day of your life may bring changes, large and small, but there's one key thing each of us need all the time.
Time to take a look at the world of Grace.
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