A true reckoning

 One of the most telling things that rings so true about the Gospels of the New Testament is the way in which they narrate the various characteristics of the people who followed Jesus most closely.

They were ordinary people who were wrestling with the impact of the unmistakable work of God amongst them, and it is that which allows us to draw so closely to the 'taste and tone' of what Jesus conveys as He brings heaven amongst them.

One of the key lessons to learn from this manner of unpacking the good news is in respect to the true nature what's good - what actually amounts to holiness.

In Mark 7, Jesus sits to eat with His disciples after a typical day amidst the heat and the dust ministering to so many... and the religious folk present are mortified.

There was no ceremonial washing, not lengthy actions of purification; the disciples just reclined at the table and tucked in, enjoying the food and each other's company, in a state viewed as entirely impure to some others present.

They were not only unwashed - they were unsanctified, unworthy, in effect, to participate without purifying themselves.

Surely, they reasoned, Jesus, a rabbi and a follower of God would have no part of this outrage. The requirements of "the law", they ranted, must be adhered to!

Before we unpack what happens next, how do we evaluate such obviously earthy behaviour? Is it acceptable, or troublesome to us? How would we respond to such men as these, given their cultures taboos? Do we see ourselves in their enjoyment of this moment, or, are we like those present who were standing in judgement of such obscenity?

Religion cannot abide something so unhindered by what it deems essential to be godly. The adherents of this case express their shock to Jesus - why would something so 'unclean' be allowed amongst his closest group? Surely, this must be admonished and ended quickly in the most stringent manner!

Notice what Jesus says in response to their cries of disgust.

There is a realm of difference between those who 'play' at being godly, and those that are (the reference He draws from Isaiah is telling them just this).

What God commands, and what they couldn't begin to comprehend, was something far more costly and total than they could ever achieve. The disciples of Jesus knew they were just straightforward men, fallen and deep in need, which is why they were with Jesus.  Religiosity merely hides such truth behind a veneer of arrogant deceit (that we can comply to our own definition of goodness and that will suffice). The true evil of this is that it rises in us because we are afraid to partake of what God is really offering, and think our side-stepping can provide an alternative, acceptable to Him whilst stroking our own egos.

So, what are we to do? What, as Christians today, is required of us?

In this superb little presentation, Chad Bird lays it out beautifully. Enjoy.

Troubling the Waters

"There must be someway out of here" 

All along the Watchtower.

In a recent interview on the nature of the troubles currently whirling through our society, Atheist and academic Peter Boghossian informed the Spectator that one of the key reasons that we have such dreadful ideology at work everywhere right now is the impact of New Atheism on our times. It has been a movement, he notes (around the 43 minute mark), which has demolished confidence in faith systems, especially here in the west in Christianity, and replaced it with a gaping hole which has been filled with the utter nightmare we now face of totalitarian identity movements and the abyss this brings with it.

Whilst the likes of Sam Harris revel in the stupidity of this, others are beginning to seriously ask what can be done to rectify the horror. Is there any solution to an age falling to a morass of meaninglessness?

I also came across this superb piece today which shows how someone who was a third generation atheist came to genuine and life changing faith in God - it really hits the spot :)

Enjoy!

C o m p r e h e n s i o n

 "And He asked, 'is it lawful to do good or harm, to save a life or to kill, on your holy day?'. They said nothing. And He looked upon them with anger, grieved at the hardness of their hearts". Mark 3:4,5.

Mark's gospel presents the Son of God as someone prescribed religion simply cannot swallow.

A few verses before this, the disciples of Jesus had been marked as lawbreakers by a similar company because of the way they picked and ate grain on the Sabbath, but Jesus would have none of it. On the occasion of His statements quoted (above), Jesus went out of His way to heal a crippled in front of these people on the holy day of the week, asking them why this was wrong. After refusing to reply to His query, they then went on to begin to plot how they could rid themselves of Him, purely because He was seeking to show that truth in effect operates outside of the 'box' they had invented for themselves.

Their practices would never allow them to cross the line and rescue a tax collector or a woman of the street, and to then actually visit their homes and eat with them would have been abominable. They could not speak with actual authority because their interests were so very far from the Lord they presumed that they served (who clearly wanted to draw alongside those so ruined by whatever plagued them, be it adversity or sin).

The 'rules' alone (especially as defined by such religion) were not made to make us righteous by themselves, but to point us beyond ourselves to the one who can truly aid us, deliver us from the 'strong man' that ruins us and turns us into creatures that cannot contain what is truly good. The most dreadful estate is when we fail to see that truth - that we think we 'contain' what is truly necessary when, in truth, we're an entire universe away from what is necessary to remedy the alienation of our souls.

The Jesus we encounter is more than willing to help those who know they need Him, but He is only angered and dismayed by the ones who see that aid as nothing but a hindrance to their own contrivances ruling themselves and everyone else.

The confines of misplaced religion are truly terrifying. They cause these people to be entirely paralysed when it comes to seeing what matters - that God is breaking into their day and acting before their eyes, and yet, all they can do is renounce such a marvel - they cannot grant what is beyond their own prescribed boundaries of what is proper and virtuous.

We are all too familiar with those who seek to evaluate things through such a lens. Jesus is angered and grieved at the consequence of this affliction, because it dreadfully nullifies, indeed murders, the vital value and significance of truth, however obvious it is, and leaves a person so defined incapable of opening themselves to what truly counts.

The Kingdom of God is a realm where what is seen (in word and deed) affirms the true presence and work of God in what it seeks to show (God's great care and mercy towards us). The powers that work against such are those which seek to repudiate the presence and worth of such in the world - they would act to silence such truth.

It is clearly commonplace today to see this negation in so much that presents itself as meaningful and right, but Jesus calls us to see better, deeper, further than this - to look and grasp the splendour of the one who makes us whole by a redeeming mercy that makes us what our own religions never will.

B L I G H T ?

 "For He has not given us over to a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of self control". 2 Timothy 1:7.

One of my favourite motion pictures of recent times is The Professor and The Madman. The story begins with a man, half insane, bent on killing another man. His murderous act leads to his incarceration, where it becomes clear that there are deeper demons in play to face to bring about a rescue of this very troubled soul. I won't spoil the story by saying more, but just to say that his miserable estate perfectly conveys the terrible condition of us all, and that underlines the vital need we all share for a perfect redemption outside of ourselves.

People often confuse Christianity as 'just another religion' because they view it as a collection of rules and requirements, with the onus very firmly being put upon us to do our best if we are to hopefully 'make it' in the eyes of God, but that's because they haven't read the words of Jesus to those in dire need or paid attention to the message of extreme good news conveyed by His first followers.

The question we have to ask ourselves bluntly once we have heard that message, to see if we have actually understood it is -

Is Jesus enough?

Is His Incarnation, Life, Crucifixion, Glorious Resurrection and sure return ALL we need to fully, truly save us, or are we looking for some other, extra virtue to finish the job for in ourselves?

If your answer is along the lines of the Apostle Paul, who wanted to boast and live in nothing else beyond the saving death and victory over the grave of Jesus Christ, then you can know the same manner of full deliverance that Jesus gave to such men.

If your answer is to look elsewhere - to say that isn't enough- we need to do something more, then you are religious in a really dreadful way, and such a way leads only to death in an eternal sense of 'lostness'.

That alone is why the Gospel matters. It is the only actual remedy, because it shows the rescue doesn't reside with us, but with God alone, who truly comes and saves us.

Plenty of dead ends out there that will tell you you're good enough.

Only one way that says the answer is beyond you, but it's freely yours if you'll take it.

The Purity Spiral

 "I marvel that you are soon turned to another gospel".

The Apostle Paul.

I often wonder how Paul managed to remain 'less'.

The Lord clearly provided means to assist with this (the implementing of a 'thorn in the flesh'), but it's interesting to see how many of the congregations he ministered to (the Corinthians, the Galatians and the Colossians) essentially sought to write-off his vital service to them, even when he was seeking to convey the wisdom of God to their situations.

How would we react to this array of circumstances?

Paul laboriously seeks to correct the misconstrued notions of the numerous cleeks in these communities so they can find unity around the glorious marvel of the Gospel, but they clearly have serious issues accepting even his authority to do so.

There's a very telling lesson here for the present.

Pietism - a mark of numerous "purity" activities and movements, can so easily and readily replace actual genuine piety amongst us.

When the focus becomes 'deeds' (what are you doing?), not 'creeds' (the vital giving of the liberating truth, which is the focus of Paul's work), then we can rapidly slip into the 'purity' trap - where "service" becomes viewed as the saving grace (especially when it is defined by us), thereby overtaking our vital refreshment and genuine delight in the singular goodness and care of God towards each of us.

The problem so often with pietism is that it sounds so right (abstaining from all manner of things whilst being 'spiritual' in how we behave), but in truth it actually tarnishes and can even destroy our vital confidence in and witness to the faith.

What is defined as "church", as Paul's epistles shows, can so readily embrace a piety that elevates all the wrong things, often leading to a carnal partisanship in congregations (the how by which we define ourselves), rather than singularly extolling the saving work of God in Christ.

The spectrum of issues Paul has to address in his various letters reveals just how readily all manner of pseudo or super-spiritual contrivances rise up amongst the saints, leaving them amidst all of their frantic activity bereft of what God actually wants to say and vitally establish amongst them - the healing saving word of Christ crucified.

We so spiritually impair the faith when this touchstone of genuine redemption becomes relegated to a secondary (or worse) issue in our theology and life, because without the vision of God manifest in the saving death of Christ placarded perpetually before us, our own stupefied agenda of distractive religiosity will hurriedly rush in to return us to the waters we entirely prefer - our own virtue and the 'goodness' we believe this fosters.

Paul endures with his stiff-nicked readers not because he is seeking to 'modify' their pietism, whatever its particular form, but because he is wanting them to re-gain what was truly theirs - the full rescue already provided in what had rescued them. There, and there alone, at the Cross, is where they absolutely must return, as must we, if we wish to know true life and health and peace in our faith and mutual fellowship.

May God's great grace aid us to rest there, in the same riches of His unmerited love, today.

Some Straight Truth

 "Not many of you are worldly wise, or particularly powerful or of distinguished background - because God chooses to use what is often despised".

1 Corinthians 1:26 & 28.

So, that's how it is.

You're in a disreputable profession, the world is coming apart around you, and all you really know to your core is that there is a far greater truth at work in the universe than those around you want to admit (and actively avoid), which leaves you often alone in your thoughts and actions, longing for something truly deeper in this time and place.

That doesn't sound like a particularly motivational list of qualifications for going places, but when we meet the likes of Rahab of Jericho amidst the events that will lead to the conquest of Canaan, this is exactly what is true for her.

Evidential failure to amount to what is presently prized by the consensus is so easy to make a means of evaluation, but it doesn't actually tell us anything about what is actually going on. No one would have looked upon the arrest and mockery of a show trial of Jesus, or the savage events that follow this as a triumph, and yet, this is the very 'hour' God had anticipated since our failure in Eden to bring the most substantial event in all of time and space.

Rahab's story makes you realise just how easily we can ill-define the superficial criteria for actual significance. How many of us would have given a pagan named Abram a second look or even considered the possibility that any kind of redemption would have been possible through a renegade like Moses? We readily recognise the flaws of someone like Noah (taking to getting drunk after a truly astonishing deliverance), or the vile nature of David in adultery and pre-meditated murder for his own ends, but how do we then untangle the clear unmerited benevolence shown to them?

These records remind us perfectly of the daily propensity of people in general - to want to bury or evade in whatever way we can the fact of what we actually are.

That isn't news. What is astounding is the God who Rahab knew was there interrupted the 'natural outcome' of these people's lives to bring about something entirely outside of what should have been, purely because of mercy.

Because of that alone, they are actually rescued from themselves.

God revealed in Jesus (a descendant of Rahab, by the way), is looking for those who know they need that manner of overwhelming care in the now, so that their day to day lives amounts to something more than a litany of disaster - it speaks of a goodness far above what should normally be true.

These are the people God reaches to, and rescues, purely because they ask and He so freely provides.