Dirty Hands

 "Now when the scribes and Pharisees gathered to Him, some coming from Jerusalem, they noticed that some of his disciples ate with hands that had not been ceremoniously washed and were therefore unclean (and thereby defiled according to their traditions)" (Mark 7: 1-3).

How much of what you what deem to be meaningful is defined by what you observe?

I'm not merely talking about what you visually notice (or what you miss), but what you "see" that directly impacts upon the way you behave or what essentially defines what you determine to do.

Paramount in the spirituality of the men with Jesus here was their 'pots and pans' mentality (it actually says that - see verse 4). They expected everything to be clean enough that they could see their own piety reflected in it. Anything that dropped below this exacting standard was vile, so when we're told that they enquired of Jesus how it was that His followers didn't come up to spec, they weren't simply seeking to correct a minor mistake of social etiquette - they would have been boiling at such disrespect for what was, to them, the "weight" of the Mosaic law; the display of godliness.

We always know when we're dealing with that kind of regimental control. The supposed reasons for "holiness" have nothing to do with God showing up, but entirely revolve around not deflating our own sense of importance (because we set the ground rules, period).

Jesus understands we're filthy. Not because we haven't worn our pharisaical best or forgot to apply a little soap and water, but because that's exactly what we are. Abraham may have been a man of faith, called by God, but that didn't change the fact shortly after leaving Ur, he was back to his weaselly ways of seeking to wriggle out of trouble.

It's not the dirt that's the trouble (at least, if we're honest about that). It's when we seek to contrive ourselves to be something (godly) that we're not, and then expect God to give us credit for our self-deceit (hence, the tragedy that was Cain).

That's why this same chapter has the story of the noticed gentile woman (vs 25) and the miraculous restoration of senses to an impaired man (vs  32). They were 'heard' because they were both in poverty, and all they needed was Jesus to meet them where they were. What they didn't need is all the "provisos" that Jesus Himself warns about (7:14-23) after setting the religious tea-set owners in their place (6 & 7). That's where we need to zone-in when it comes to the issue of "our" religion - the measure by which we choose to 'weigh' another up.

So what does Jesus say? What amounts to 'pots and pans' as opposed to genuine spirituality?

There's an interesting notation in John's third letter about a character named Dieotrephes (See verse 9). In spite of all that John had written in a prior epistle about the necessity for Christian love and an adherence to truth, this clearly sanctimonious and self-referential blotch had managed to place himself at the very core of a Christian company in such a fashion that John's teachings were deemed to be unacceptable, and the Apostle himself barred from this gathering.

This is where the hollow 'noise' of false pietism takes its adherents.

We can readily point to 'the world' and simply throw it all under the bus, but Jesus is saying those things we want to make a real song and dance about aren't actually the real problem. It isn't what's "out there" that brings evil, He notes, but what arises from inside us to abuse ourselves that manufactures all manner of obsessive religiosity, not to mention iniquity, especially when it comes to harming ourselves and others.

The clean cutlery brigade are highly dangerous because they want, at all costs, to evade the real trouble - the stinking mire festering inside their dying souls. That is why religion is so dangerous. If it becomes all about what we "are" (in our own estimation) and not what we actually harbour - the things listed by Jesus (verses 21 & 22).

Martin Luther became a real person when he came to understand how much he actually hated God. Religion merely amplified the notion that God was nothing more than a cruel, sadistic tyrant, who demanded total commitment through genuinely pious behaviour, and would bring countless ages of "refinement"  (purgatory) if there was even a hint of resentment or a moment's lapse of devotion, and if you were less 'godly' than that, then the torment would be eternal. Life, says Jesus, can only begin when such folly is ended by the truth that only God's love saves us entirely, and the wretched woe of our sin was fully met in by Christ's deliverance on the cross. It was as Luther discovered this for himself in Paul's letter to the Romans that he finally became a free man, and the tyranny of religion was dissolved.

Jesus, in this passage in Mark, calls people to be His on the very same basis (verse 14) - to put aside all the 'externals' that they thought were vital and merely trust that He could do something about their real problem within.

So, where does that leave us?

That "inner" notion we have of ourselves being 'good' people because we tick all the  'clean and tidy' exterior boxes can so easily leave us looking away from God's mercy to something else as our virtue and merit, but that is utter folly.

Jesus wants us at His table, with all our baggage, and the dirt very evident indeed, whatever others think about that. He wants us to be trusting entirely upon Him.

Vanity purchases a wardrobe of outfits (beliefs) that suit our propensity for self religion. "Worship" becomes a contrivance through which such self veneration is bolstered. The consequence is an eternity of void between us and the only healer in town. He is the one that needs to be seated at our table, continually.

Restoring Beauty

 "May I reside here, in this, your house, everyday that I have, to encounter the glorious radiance of the most high, and to be at home, here in your presence".

Psalm 27:4.

So, this week, Andrew Klavan sought to address the monumental task of how we seek to see genuine beauty become evident once again in life and action in a manner which truly seeks to express something of the marvel of God's extravagant and pervasive goodness and truth.

Whilst I am delighted to see this head on approach to something that truly matters, I want to unpack some of what he stated, because it was both useful and troubling, pretty much in equal measure.

THE REASON

Andrew is certainly correct to seek to address the "slump" in our culture, and the need to see this addressed in a fashion that moves beyond the nasuiating limitations of politically correct culture. The recent massive success of the film, "Top Gun - Maverick', for example, which has taken over a hundred and fifty billon dollars at the box office states loud and clear that people are looking for something far more genuinely entertaining than the dross of the recent Disney films, Netflix and Amazon shows, that keep pounding the woke drum, but this shouldn't cause us to loose sight of the genuinely good film makers that are still very much at work in that genre. Directors such as Ridley Scott, Christopher Nolan, Guillermo Del Torro, and Denis Villeneuve, have found ways and means amidst the past troubled few years to continue to maintain and produce visual works that genuinely speak to the power and scope of cinema to tell human stories of worth and significance, so our examination of the arts needs to be nuanced by such considerations.

THE ROAD AHEAD

Society, as Lewis noted in the Abolition of Man, clearly has a pernicious tendency to turn us in upon ourselves. That indeed is a spiral to madness (hence, plenty of 'art' today that conveys just that), but good art always causes us to look outside of this vortex - to perceive the 'hand' of something or someone greater reaching in to take us into a far better place of seeing and understanding what and where we are. Such truth brings a depth of acknowledgement of our shortcomings and a greater truth beyond ourselves.

Mere images and appearances - the peripheral - is what has become key in our present fixation upon the immediate (our momentary wants), hence so much of our media is tellingly geared to the satiation of this. Nature's overt glory is therefore discarded because it "sings" of a far higher beauty, as does the very truth of the image within ourselves that we must impugn in order to 'protect' ourselves from hearing the explicit 'song' that the natural realm proclaims so loudly within and without (Romans 10:18).

The present moment reflects how all that is essential in respect to ourselves and our world becomes severed when we dissect our nature and existence by the scalpel of nihilism. Truth instead exposes the very nature of our soul and marrow as the explicit property of the divine. The popular error is indeed artistic annihilism - the incarceration of the person and the culture, as evidenced in the realm of such evil expressed, for example, in Germany in the 1930s.

There can be no doubt that such "death" has been at work in our society throughout our times, but it would be wrong to assume that this has been the only 'voice' at work in the West. Some of us have witnessed first hand the 'wind in the trees' of awakening and renewal in life and faith, and this has often lead directly to very genuine expressions of the life which comes down from on high to enliven our engagement with society and the creative aspects of existence.

THE ISSUE

The intention of beauty, he (Andrew) notes, is to essentially point to truth. Beauty is abused, then, when we seek to mutilate its inherent virtue to construe something 'as' beautiful which maligns and demeans us via our encounter with it (Genesis 3:1).

Our affections, our ability to use our faculties to visualise wonder, can either be a gateway to something genuinely rich and marvellous, or, if beguiled, to become enslaved by a wickedness that is our undoing. The David who wrote in the Psalms of the astonishing splendour of the 'fearfully and wonderfully' made human body, for example, was also the man ensnared by inappropriate desire when he neglected his vocation and surrendered to his propensity to sin.

Part of the problem today is properly defining beauty. The 'goodness' of this virtue, the video notes, is expressed in its consequences, but that does not mean that a valuable definition cannot be given.

Beauty is the means whereby what only 'appears' to be secular actually becomes a jewel which reflects the deepest expression of what is eternally good and true. Genuine beauty can therefore take what is naturally "dissolving" (pain, suffering, death), and bring a virtue and a value into these realms that is genuinely sublime and extraordinary.  Art, therefore, is 'good' when inviting us to look for, to discover, what is genuinely the most important, the most just, in what we can encounter in song or sculpture or moving images.

Beauty, then, seeks to express what is 'highest' in the realm we inhabit, but the encounter elevates us to beyond the merely temporal - it encapsulates a genuinely transcendent quality. In this manner, it is truly married to truth and goodness, because it is a threshold into what is essentially, vitally deeper and richer than the merely mundane.

RENEWING THE SECULAR?

Given the above definitions, can something that is contemporary (post-modern) be used in a fashion that conveys truth?

This surely depends upon the intention of those who are using a medium - what is it that they want to express?

In my younger days, many sections of the church stated that rock music was simply 'of the devil', but that simply was not the only statement to be made of such a genre.

We can so easily 'miss' the fact that God can take a stone, a stick, a bush, or a human embryo, and by filling it with Himself, make it an expression of extraordinary truth and beauty.

Whilst we can agree with Andrew that what we so often see and hear is truly degraded by the human condition, this does not prevent God from picking this up and using it for His glory.

There is no denying that modernism - which, as Andrew shows in his own book on beauty, really commenced in some of the streams which emerged at the time of the enlightenment - seeks to demean and expunge genuine beauty from life, but not everything that is part of present culture belongs in that stream, and therefore, the right place to start is to truly enjoy, advocate and value what is good (Philippians 4:8) - hence, venues like this (I hope), where people are encouraged towards this.

The wounds upon our civilisation are indeed deep, and one of the flaws of post-modernism is the manner in which it seeks to lie about the impact of these upon us, but beauty actually requires us to take a hard, comprehensive look at these evils, to engage with their relationship to us, in order that we might truly be broken and genuinely healed (Psalm 51:8).

Our "greatness" sprang from a moment when we were able to look back at the glories of the past and see these renewed through the cypher of Jesus Christ and Him crucified. The Renaissance is the twin of the Reformation, so when we see Martin Luther, industriously working with his pen to conform the faith back to the gospel, we see it marries to the work of Cranach the Elder and others, in their seeking to illustrate the freedom of what such words conveyed, and this is a very familiar pattern (look at the relationship between Moses and Bezalel).

Such majesty cannot help but generate the splendour of what followed.

The shock of the devastation of the world wars is indeed traumatic, but it would be wrong to say that our culture was simply entirely killed off by those events. The 're-invention' of the West was to say that something splendid derived from those ashes - the rise of Hollywood, of Rock and Roll and modern society, has all been looked upon, for better or for worse, as a turning of the tide against such atrocity.

SPECKS OF GLORY

It's imperative we understand this. Anyone who has seen a movie as good as Chariots of Fire or the Shawshank Redemption, or enjoyed the orchestral scores of composers like John Williams, or acknowledged the sheer artistry employed and expressed in numerous works by modern photographers and artists knows that, whilst post-modernism may drain the colour from contemporary society, it has clearly not entirely removed it. Shards of the excellence of this, our pre-(French) enlightenment days, clearly remain and illuminate some of what is still in view.

C S Lewis rightly discerned that when we are enthralled by such forms, it is not because these are inherently "vessels" which convey the totality of beauty in themselves, but they act as means whereby we are drawn to look beyond them to the source of all such whispers of something profoundly and eternally true.

What we encounter in such moments is something far above and beyond ourselves, and that is why we desire to return to such again and again. Our "gaze" merely comprehends (because we have been permitted to do so) something so much more than ourselves or the merely natural ability of our senses. We glimpse the nature of true wonder.

LESSONS FROM THE GREEKS?

In the middle of his recorded travels in the books of Acts, the Apostle Paul finds himself in the ancient hellenic capitol of culture - Athens. Unlike Rome's insatiable thirst for dominion, the Athenians sought to excel in seeking to reasonably understand the nature of existence, and this was particularly expressed in their methods of artistic representation. Paul walks amongst them, and taking an opportunity to address their thinkers, he notes that examining our form is useful, even necessary, if it leads us to recognise our profound dependance upon the one who made and sustains us.

Art may take us, in other words, towards a threshold, but it is only an act of divine inter-ventive grace which carries us over.

This was the vital lesson stated by Michelangelo towards the end of his life. The magnificence of art is empty before the profound revelation of God in Christ, reconciling us at the hill of the skull; the crucible of redemption.

DEEP INSIDE

Good art always reflects the naked truth about ourselves - that which we all know to be proudly true. The body in art alludes to that glory which is now so often marred or masked by sin, but when we allow the rightness behind such shades to become evident, when the body has become defined afresh by the resurrected flesh of Christ, then the true nature and value of God's handiwork is restored, and we can begin to look afresh upon the divine purpose and intent for what was animated and enlivened from dust.

What, therefore, makes art 'good' is not merely the immediacy it inherently contains to draw us, but it's ability, however distressing its content, to profoundly convey to us something essentially and crucially true about what is vital.

When we come to overtly good religious art, what is so profound is the manner in which this ties to something inherently human in respect to the manner of occurrence it portrays, but equally, additionally, the palpable embodiment of some divine 'word' it is seeking to convey (an expression, then, of the theology provided through this particular incident or scriptural passage). What is certainly natural becomes embued with an entirely deeper level of meaning and significance due to the depiction involving the recognition of the Most High being related to an event.

Beauty allows us to open a link between ourselves and what is true, what is good, what is virtuous and what is perpetually valuable in our realm of existence, and beyond this. It acts as a means to 'see' further than the confines of an existence merely defined by the mundane and the meaningless. If we loose the "upward" level that beauty is continually wanting to allow us to acknowledge, then we become dreadfully deformed and empty in our days here.

May the depths of beauty truly allow us to see well, and thereby recognise and know the hand that provides such a splendour.

Getting what you want

 "The woman you gave me - she gave it to me". Genesis 3:12.

Blame culture.

It's as old as that first dispute in Eden.

"It really wasn't my fault - I'm the victim here... You're the one who is in the wrong".

Notice that scripture shows that the first person we sought to place in that box was God Himself, and that the consequences of our actions instantly brought a catastrophic division between Him and us, and us and everyone else.

Living in a moment where "you" (anything not "me" - defined by what I deem to be right) are the problem, it's become clear that what is defined as evil is only resolved as and when "I" am seen as fully justified and exonerated in what "I" define as your wickedness and what  "I" say necessitates justice and truth. In other words, everything you say and do is wrong unless I determine it to be otherwise. You, however, cannot seek to judge or correct me by some external criteria of requirements (however objective or factual they may be), because I have determined that the single factor that holds any weight in the world is what I decide is good or bad, right or wrong.

Back a few decades ago, America was deemed so rife with the consequences of this manner of behaviour when it came to suing people for pretty much any infraction of what someone deemed offensive that it spawned a popular award-winning TV series to speak to the subject. The current cancel culture, however, makes those days look positively delightful in comparison to the present.

When we reach the point where we believe an ideology makes us so virtuous and moral that we are beyond individual error and corruption, we have crossed from being human to becoming an automaton for a "final solution" of cultic heresy. We can no longer "see" ourselves, the real world, or the true estate of others, because everything is now filtered through the single reference point of our rightness, and that destroys us entirely. Woe to the one, noted Isaiah, who defines light as darkness, and darkness as light, for such blindness brings nothing but an ignorance to their own fall (Isaiah 5:20).

We live at an hour when the "light" that so many have accepted as good in truth leaves them bathed in a malignancy that is eating away their humanity, and the conclusion is truly dreadful (Matthew 6:23).

The Apostle Paul warns that in the perilous days of the end, men would become entirely "lovers of self", not only in respect to pursuing their own desires, but in respect to only 'hearing' their own counsel, and thereby neglecting any admonition concerning the truth that comes from beyond themselves (2 Timothy 4:3 & 4). "Myths" about who and what we are will replace what actually matters.

Dealing with life is often a very difficult and painful process. We all face moments of distress and discouragement, of deep trial and ongoing trauma, caused by loss or lack of the means to do more than accommodate certain problems. We were never meant to be people who resolve everything by solely drawing purely from our 'inner resources' for virtue or strength, seeing ourselves as the source of truth. All of life tells us we deeply need so much outside of ourselves to be genuinely sustained and strengthened - to know the richness of what is actually there to help us. God has provided Himself to us to bring about a care and a sustaining at the deepest level.

We need to get rid of our pretences, and throw ourselves upon the wonder and the beauty of God's gift to the world - the life of His beloved Son.

Ummmm.....

A truly brilliant video. Enjoy.

Phenomenal

 "For what can be known about God is plain for them to see, because God has clearly shown it to them".  Paul - Romans 1:19.

We know the passage, how the Apostle states that what can be known of the Lord's eternal power and divine nature have been clearly made evident, leaving us all without an excuse to acknowledge his existence (1:20), so that being the case, how would we show this today - how would we take Paul's approach with the philosopher's at Mars Hill (Acts 17) and apply it through what we are able to say today?

I recently was involved in a series of conversations that focused around just that, which generated a written response to consolidate the key arguments and thoughts into something cohesive for future reference. Here's the results...

The Threshold of Eternity

Phenomenology and the science of the Numinous.

Let's start with a parable.

The Cosy Coffee Corner was a popular spot for all manner of thinkers. On this particular afternoon, a theist was going over some familiar ground with a rationalist friend on the subject of why the chairs they were sitting on were the colour blue.

The chair was what it was, stated the theist, because it was sustained by a designer to be so, and thereby shared the same glorious essential reality of all things that were made. Whilst not denying either the 'blueness' or 'chair-ness' of the object in question, the rationalist felt it unnecessary to require the existence of an ultimate creator for these things to be so – it is self-evidently merely what it is, and that is just the state of things.

As the conversation ensued, a post-modernist visitor interrupted. Whilst they might define the said chair as blue to them, it may prove red to someone else, or to someone else in the room, it might be properly defined as a yellow table.

Before anyone could go any further, another voice raised itself to refute them all. This belonged to the follower of contemporary paganism. You are ALL wrong – it MUST be defined as Pink Elephant – that is what has been determined – and if you seek to say anything contrary to that, you will be cancelled, socially disgraced and perpetually ostracised by the new order for your crime.

The theist and the rationalist, sitting somewhat closer now, said nothing, but marked the monstrosity of the moment. The Post Modernist sought to protest, but was quickly expelled, as a crew arrived to bring an elephantine flavour to all the fittings and furnishings in the place.

A young man across the room, still weighing up the meaning of life, observed as these things transpired, certain that the chair was indeed blue, and that there was indeed a clear purpose and design in its being there. A question deeply troubled him as he watched these things unfold – why do so many seek to dismiss or deny or displace what is clearly self-evident about where we are? What drives all the noise and, in some cases, fury, against what is true?

THE CONVERSATION (understanding where we are).

Prior to his death in 2011, atheist Christopher Hitchens noted that there were two key issues of life which should cause any person of his persuasion serious pause.

The first of these is the astonishing physical fine-tuning of the laws of the universe, which prove to be extraordinarily, suspiciously exact in order that matter is possible and then, there is an even more particular exactness so life can exist here. Richard Dawkins recently stated to geneticist Francis Collins that this particular set of facts is a truly valid argument in respect to the possibility of intelligent design.

The second and perhaps less well understood consideration is the existence of and the palpable impact upon us of all of what is commonly termed numinous – that internal 'geiger-counter' that registers 'something' beyond the merely material in play around and within us amidst our brief existence here.

The fine-tuning ramification have become significant in their own right in the twenty first century. The ground-breaking proofs by the likes of Alexander Valenkin and Alan Guth on the definite and finite beginning of the universe certainly harmonise with the Kalam cosmological argument in respect to design, providing a 'big picture' schematic for the galactic origins of time and space, but this only provides us with a fraction of the actual picture of reality that impinges upon each of us. As Jacques Vallee argued in his TED presentation on the physics of information, we are only beginning to open the door on a far wider realm of metaphysical reality, and this most certainly shows more going on behind consciousness and the pliability of energy.

This all leads to some deep considerations.

OUT THERE

In the 1970s, NASA launched the two voyager space craft to explore the outer planets of the Solar System and then head into the realms beyond – into the very sphere of intergalactic space. It was clear that within a single lifetime, these two probes would become the man-made objects that would travel further than any other terrestrial vessel, so the issue to be addressed before launch was what should be included aboard these ships to state something about us?

It was decided that an anodyne record would be placed in each vessel, each inscribed with a series of images and graphs that would provide essential data as to the astronomical, chemical and biological nature of human life on earth; a scientific portfolio into what we are.

The project was enthusiastically commenced, but even as the material was collated, project leaders like Carl Sagan recognised there was a problem – more had to be included on the disc. There had to be images, sounds and music – there had to be something that directly sought to express who and what we are.

The Voyager example tells us an essential truth about the very nature of our reality.

Beyond the merely empirical “stuff” of the hard sciences, the real scope of human existence arises from a field of reference and relevance that, in itself, actually conveys wealth and meaning.

SEEING DIFFERENTLY

To glean just how imperative this reality is, imagine seeing what is being considered here from the perspective of an extra- terrestrial, who has obtained the basic 'hard' (initial) data of the Voyager disc. This enables the entity to find earth and to understand its basic structural components. So, it arrives and sees these creatures, homo sapiens – in their natural environment, going about their daily business – and this is where things rapidly become very puzzling.

Our visitor quickly notices and is wondering why certain locations and activities engaged in there are occurring at all, because they are clearly of some import, and yet, they appear to have no biological, chemical or environmental utility whatsoever. At a place termed the British Library, there are vast amounts of collected paper and at this structure called the Albert Hall, the space is often filled with a vast array of sounds – but to what ends?

Such materials, such structures cannot readily be understood, for they all derive from a fundamental source – the very human-ness of our nature.

As Phenomenological Philosophers have stated, you don't understand Shakespeare's plays via surveys or a laboratory experiment. Bach's Fugues or Michelangelo's Art are mere detached actions and shaped stones if you only apply an 'external' field of reference – something much deeper is in play.

Consciousness gives a meta-narrative to such activities, rooted in the significance of interpretation. Meaning becomes key.

A WORK OF ART

Mankind defines itself by something far richer and deeper than mere existence.

Nature, notes Roger Scruton, provides us with sounds, but it is the human capacity alone which allows these to be fashioned and crafted into a landscape of exquisite beauty in respect to how these can be combined and presented to express melody and harmony, majesty and tragedy to the ears that can 'hear' and appreciate such craft.

Music, art and scholarship are external realities that impress and impact profoundly upon our inner field of reference from which they derive, connecting us to something rich and real beyond the merely cognitive – the merely pragmatic.

Reality, in other words, is far more nuanced than what is expressed in a 'third person' objective analysis. Actual reality must penetrate us to be truly valid and active in respect to the vibrant, multi-layered nature of the cosmos.

THE MESSAGE

When we appreciate something of these issues, we can engage in a 'lifting' of the means employed in the physical realm to facilitate a bridge into the life sphere of the internal realm that is essential to ourselves, and here we find an entire domain to be populated with meaning, purpose and value. This sphere, in effect, adds 'breath and flesh' to the external structures of our existence, expanding life far beyond the merely material.

The world directly experienced in this fashion becomes so much more than something mundane and utilitarian. Whilst science provides a framework in respect to the 'where' of our existence, we require this 'inner' narrative to be rich so we can seek to explore and appreciate the 'how' or the 'why'.

Objective facts take us so far – they tell us a great deal about the structural nature of many things, but existence is far more textured than this. The 'scaffolding' of physics provides, at best, a back-drop for something far more “magical” than the movement of molecules and atoms.

None of us can deny this – to do so would be to empty life of all which genuinely makes it significant.

The reality this presents us with, in effect, defines the human soul, and should leave us with several deep and disturbing questions. What does the existence of such a realm of magnificence allude to? What does it say about us? What 'image' is painted by the pervasive presence of such a palpable reality?

THE CONSIDERATION

As the external realm, sustained by the extraordinary laws of fine-tuning states the case for design, so our internal world, enlivened and developed by the splendours of art, produces a flourishing married to a natural marriage to the sublime. This allows for moments of true encounter with a 'glory' beyond ourselves – the touch of the numinous.

All such themes, properly examined and honestly weighed, lead us to the transcendent – the source and the sustainer of all of our realm of excellence.

Amidst such irreducible meaning, we resonate with a 'coming home' – a discovery of true place within the realm of the world.

THE SPIRIT BEHIND THE MATERIAL

Jordan Peterson recently presented Richard Dawkins with the evaluated position of leading mathematician, Dr Roger Penrose, that on the basis of his understanding of his field, he could confidently state that consciousness exists outside the realm of the material – coming from beyond this. All of this, noted Peterson, clearly points to there being a 'one level up' in respect to what truly matters – something 'above' continually pulling us beyond the rudimentary to commune with a majesty beyond ourselves.

The imperative to recognise is if consciousness is merely 'emergent' (so, the view of the schizophrenic is just as plausible as anyone else), there is no criteria for what, in effect, is deemed “reasonable” (it is all, at best, relative, because there no basis of objective measurement).

Consciousness impresses itself in such a manner that it conveys that there is a realm of absolutes, hence, our aesthetic validation of what is good in art or even amidst the mundane aspects of human existence (in respect to what matters morally).

So, in respect to what can be known, we a have a 'fixed point' that leads us beyond ourselves – our various 'models' of reality – to reality itself.

FULL CIRCLE

Dr Anthony Flew was a world leading atheistic thinker for most of his life, but all of that changed in his last decade. He found himself confronted by the irreducible data that empirically 'stated' that life here was the result of superlative design, both in respect to the building blocks of the universe itself and in the very nature of the 'front-loaded' multi-complex information contained even in the simplest of cells. This lead him to abandon his view and begin to re-evaluate the sheer array of ways in which what was 'above' us continually impressed upon our lives, if we are willing to open our eyes and see.

Eternity impinges upon the soul, noted Solomon, by surrounding us with a trove of extraordinary beauty. We merely need to be free enough, bold enough, to read its pervasive message.

The Way

 "I am the Way". Jesus.

Listening to a sermon this morning which underlined just how distant the "discipleship" of those who travelled with Jesus left them from actually following Him (none of them wanted Him anywhere near Jerusalem and the crucible that awaited Him there), I was pulled up again about how often we miss-hear, miss-read and, of course, miss-understand the nature of 'the Way' Jesus calls us to belong to.

Part of the problem is the manner in which we fail to perceive and live with the key idea of 'kingdom' in today's world.

In Roman times, it was evident what that meant continually. Rome stamped its seal on everything - local, national and globally, so whatever you did, from buying groceries to travelling abroad, it all involved the empire, and the power of that domain was present at every level. Living in a province like Judea meant constant engagement with that power, so when Jesus tells them that another kingdom is present amongst them, that really got their attention.

The last few years have made many of us aware in a palpable way of what happens when a 'power' begins to impress its requirements upon the very commonplace aspects of our daily lives. Routines become put aside, normal everyday things become interrupted, and everything we accepted as ordinary and typical is placed into a state of suspension. A new order has moved in, and we have become entirely subject to its priorities.

That is the radicalism of the authority of the new Kingdom. It shows us, as Paul unpacks it in Romans, that we were subjects of a particular domain, tyrannically and totally controlled by the malevolence of sin and death, but the first act of the new is to kill us to these. We still know and live in the domain where these powers are very real, even inside us (Romans 7), but the good news is that although, naturally, these things would destroy us, the birth of the new reign in us at baptism (Romans 6) means that the day of total liberty is coming, and that we have now - here in this present realm - tasted of the splendour that is to come.

The waters that flow in the new realm issue from the Throne of the Lamb, because in that everlasting realm, it is the death and life of Jesus Christ alone that sustains us and all things.

The ones that travelled with Jesus on that journey to Golgotha and the tomb were a mess. They failed to truly see Him, to hear Him, to do what was good, but the Lamb of God rescued them!

So, when we 'do' all that we do this week, let's look to 'Christ, and Him Crucified' as the one and only sufficiency we need in our days here. That's why living matters, and that's what makes our dying a coming home. He is the Way, and the destination.

"Mythical"

"That which has been from the beginning, which we ourselves have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, and have touched with our own hands - the word of life - manifested amongst us... this is what we speak of to you - the coming of eternal life, which the Father has brought amongst us". 1 John 1 & 2.

"In the end, everything becomes literature. Whatever is told (revealed) unfolds itself in time - it becomes story... The only reason to tell a story is because of what it means".

Andrew Klavan - The Truth and Beauty.

Back in the my teens, I absolutely loved the album The Myths and Legends of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table by Rick Wakeman. It was an album that lead my imagination into the magical realms of what might have happened in England in those turbulent times between the departure of the Romans and the settlement of the Anglo Saxons. Such thoughts fuelled many a holiday trip to various locations in the 80s and a final settling in my own thoughts as to some of the 'possibles' with respect to this mythical figure (by the way, I still love the album!).

It's in this light that I want to refer to coming across the recent conversion of Paul Kingsnorth and his joining of an Eastern Orthodox form of church.

Paul has certainly been on quite a journey, and it would appear from his own testimony on this that something palpable yet unseen has been present in his background for a very long time. It's clear that all this is working, in a similar fashion to what's evident with Jordan Peterson, to expose him to the living reality of Jesus Christ, but whilst this is certainly a profitable direction of travel, there are a few 'wrinkles' that all of us have to address.

In the Rebel Wisdom video linked to above, Paul speaks frequently about the 'mythical' nature of theological truth - there's no point looking for Eden, or evidence of Noah's Flood, he would assert, because these are meant to be treated merely as 'stories' with meanings that somehow anchor us to what matters. He also speaks of the 'literalist' church (apparently focused in America) being a 'recent phenomena' and not in any manner related to the church of prior times, the Eastern church's tradition of mysticism being the correct approach to such difficulties.

I've always found this to be a bizarre and unfathomable principle of this tradition.

If you address this religious system in respect to the Incarnation, they have absolutely no doubts that you're dealing with history - divine intervention that cannot be refuted. The question is why? Why is this section of the biblical narrative to be deemed as actual, when so much of the rest of this collection of events is to be seen, at best, as amounting to some manner of useful story?

Think of it this way -

We know that Pilate existed, that Herod issued heinous edicts, that Jesus was indeed crucified, all because of extant materials from the period, so what, then, are we to make, for example, of the discovery of the City of David, or the curse tablet (in the last few weeks) on Mount Ebal from the times of Joshua's Conquest, which contains BOTH the divine names ("El" - Elohim and YHWH - Yahweh)? These are just the recent examples of a vast array of materials that are now available to construct a very palpable narrative of ancient history which clearly marries with the Biblical accounts of events.

What our 'myth' only friends need to consider is that the entire basis of why things are this way today - the fall of humanity - clearly cannot be mythological. It has to be a real event, as real as the divine work of creation itself.

You also then have to face the vital testimony of the scriptures.

The writer to Hebrews, for example, isn't simply referring to 'stories with useful messages' when he speaks of Abraham, or Moses and Joshua, or Sampson, or earlier patriarchs. He's saying these people engaged in real actions with God present, and it was that truth that makes the difference.

When I watch a TV drama or a good film, I may be seeing something that is aiming for some measure of historical accuracy on a particular person or event, but I'm usually watching something that is generally fictional in nature - just like the tales in the King Arthur legends, but it would be totally wrong for me to come away from that with the conclusion that real historical figures never actually existed - that history never happened (we wouldn't be here if it hadn't). The same is true of the Biblical record. We may go about manufacturing all manner of 'what ifs' about the people and times spoken about there, but these people and what they underwent must be taken for what's stated - very real.

It's great when people come to a point of having to deal with the real Jesus, but that Jesus is surrounded by a 'cloud of witnesses' - the saints from prior times and ages, that were transformed in their lives by the same good news that reaches us.

It's imperative that Christianity believes and shows that.