Jinxed!

"I am not a number - I'm a free man!"
The Prisoner.

So, what's more annoying than having to fix a serious fault?
Discovering that the detector that said you had the fault was the fault (especially if you discover this after spending money to repair a fault that wasn't really there to begin with).

Think it doesn't happen?
Actually, it is a very common occurrence, but whereas it used to be just about fixing a brake light or changing your oil, now it can be far, far more serious.

We're talking, in essence, about algorithms, lines of code that determine not just how your car runs or your phone works, but whether you get off a criminal listing, are viable for benefits, or to be considered a social risk.

The problem is that much of this determination is made in a fashion that is incredibly naive and facile, purely because the character of the programing is often quite superficial, but that doesn't change the fact that people's lives are being decimated by the consequences.

Bad programming quite literally leads to dreadful consequences. The problems arise, of course, because the best these machines have to go on is what's been placed in them... by us.

Is what's true when it comes to A I systems also true when it comes to the way we 'do' our own thinking about the nature of truth? How often are we shaped in our conclusions here by poor or miss-placed notions of what matters?

I was recently listening to Sam Harris debate Jordan Peterson about various evaluations he'd reached and how they diverged on this, principally because Sam had a very telling (and common) view about 'God' informing his objections. This was expressed in various ways, but one popular notion expressed was how vengeful and capricious 'God' was because He required the extermination of those living in the land of Canaan when the Israelites arrived and began their conquest. Entire peoples, Sam noted, were to wiped out purely because Joshua and company were instructed to do so - all finished off, foom, in a heartbeat, because of the command of this 'just' God.

Sounds pretty damning.
Then I thought about it. This was actually a case of a false fault signal.

If you take a look at the prior 400 years of the history of the region (and there are various snapshots in Genesis, Exodus and Joshua on this), you begin to see that this wasn't a snap judgement by some violently-natured ogre. There's a series of jolts in these stories that say 'hey, what are doing being so corrupt that you're murdering innocents - stop it, or there will be a reckoning'.

The remarkable thing about this story isn't that judgement comes. It's how patient and long-suffering God is about this (so, now wait for the atheist analysis that says this shows God is evil because He's too s l o w in dealing with these people!). How long would it be if just one of these tribes set up on our back lawn before we'd be calling the authorities to have them arrested... but God is merciful towards them for centuries, so the usual analysis is just plain wrong.

That's something worth considering in 2019... How good is our thinking about this? Are we seeing the real picture, or just the piece that appeals to our personal whims?

Wholeness often starts right there.

Happy New Year.

Amidst the smuged scribblings of rascals

"The problem is not the problem. The problem is your attitude about the problem. Understand?" Jack Sparrow.


The festive season looms, so, pull up a chair, take a drink, and enjoy a story...

So, once there was a boy destined to be a king.
To prove his virtue, he was required to spend a night in the forest alone.

Amidst the strange and dark place, the boy found himself overcome by a striking vision.
A voice boomed out from a intense brightness and asked him,
"are you worthy to become the keeper of the sacred cup?"

Before he could answer, he found his mind abuzz with further images - treasures, victories, thousands honoring and serving him. He felt himself welcoming such ambitions, and as he did, a fire fell upon his extended hands and he felt his soul dreadfully wounded and undone.

As he grew older, the inner wound from that night grew deeper, so nothing could fill the void it caused. He found he had no faith, no true love for another, and without comfort and aid, he was surely enslaved to death.

One day, a fool entered the castle and found the benighted king alone. Being simple in his ways, he did not see the troubled soul as a king, only as one in distress and in pain.

"What's wrong?", he asked.

"I'm thirsty".

So the fool took a cup from near the king and filled it with water and gave it to the king to drink.
Instantly, the king's deep wound was healed, for the fool had given him to drink from the sacred cup he had glimpsed that distant day in the woods.

The king turned to the one who had given him aid and said "How did you find what I could not?"

The fool replied "I only saw one in need, and sought to end his thirst".

(The Fisher King).

What I love about this tale is it's truly about us. 

We like to think of ourselves resolutely on our way to better things, until of course something far more tempting crosses our path, and then, without exception, we will be pressed till we succumb to something  that, indeed, burns us, and however stout or noble we may then appear to others (equally covering their folly), we know, like this king, that we are truly torn and bleeding inside, and the wound is terminal.

The other great thing about the tale is that it takes someone deemed to be outrageously ill equipped - a fool - to see the malady and provide the remedy, purely on the basis of seeking to rescue another. 
There isn't any capacity or virtue in the king to change a thing - everything that counts is done to him from outside of himself.

That's the Christmas message.
We can dance and sing, make merry and play, but what's required is a 'fool's wisdom' -
The stable at Bethlehem. The birth of one to take our stead upon the splintered wood of a Roman cross... that's the balm that God wants us to find and drink this season.

The easiest thing is to remain right where we are.
Christmas tells us that we don't have to.

May such warmth warm us this Christmas.

Pointers

"He sighed deeply and asked, 'Why does this generation always seek for a sign?

 Truly, I tell you, no sign will be given".  Mark 8:12.

I watched a fascinating analysis this morning of one of my favorite movies. Taking several of the major themes and ideas of Villenueuve's epic venture, it seeks to examine what the tale says about ourselves - the way we seek to discover what we are in a world in which we can often feel divorced from what makes life meaningful and our existence worthwhile. Whilst the quest is true for each of us, the longing for that which is distinctively, immortally "us", notes the analysis, is a mistake, an internalizing of worth (fabricating a soul) which leads us, like agent K in the film, into foolishly believing notions about himself which were delusional and distractive, so apparently without worth of pursuit.

Like some pack of zealous assassins, the religious men of twenty centuries ago hounded Christ for something they could quantify and define so they could settle Him into their entrenched mental landscape and thereby revert to their business as usual routine. They called for an evidence to satisfy this requirement because they failed to see what was before them and what that meant to the entire world.

In Blade Runner 2049, K's first "conversation" is with another replicant, Morton, who he deems to be inferior because he is an older model. K's entire clarity in his actions ('retiring' Morton) derives from his ordered perception of what is - any referencing of something greater in respect to himself or other replicants was folly, so he certainly cannot, at this stage, "hear" Morton's reference to a miracle, and yet, what then proceeds to unfold, both in respect to his miss-understanding and the truth, will derive from this one cardinal truth - that a miracle has happened.

Jesus pointedly asks the "religious" mind why it would expect the truly spiritual to conform to its requirements - to just be something such a mind can unpeel and dissect. Like K in that first encounter, such believe they have the tools to unlock what counts, to be and do what is valid, but the lock on their blindness is secure. No sign, no miracle would ever be enough, for they cannot see, as the word is spoken, the action has already been performed - the reality is already, truly there.

The prison must be seen for what it is.

In the film, what is dead and lifeless (Rachel's bones) becomes the key to what is new and vital - the hope of a new humanity. 

Jesus tells His disciples to avoid the 'leaven' of the religious - those who can never perceive what counts, and our generation is certainly a time that needs to mark that warning.

In the film, K is finally able to look beyond his own illusions and delusions regarding what counts, and to give himself wholly to safeguarding the people who will take the redemptive nature of what is happening forward.

Christianity is about that very same truth - that the life and death of another is not only the true 'sign' of what must define us, but the true gift that provides that miracle.

This season provides us with two options -

Christ's sigh at the Pharisees inability to recognize what has happened, or God's sign in the incarnation.

May we not be blind to what truly counts.

The Thorn that makes or breaks us

Heaven bend to take my hand and lead me through the fire

Be the long awaited answer to a long and painful fight

Truth be told I tried my best

But somewhere long the way, I got caught up in all there was to offer

But the cost was so much more than I could bear

Fallen by Sarah Mclachlan

The eve of the year becomes a war zone in my yard.
Having four oak trees surrounding me, when the winter winds arrive means I spend a great many hours having to clear up the seasonal debris, several times over, to maintain the area in the light of what 'naturally' transpires. Blocked gutters and drains, hazardous steps and pathways, falling materials that can cause dangers on dark nights, all have to be dealt with, however 'natural' the occurrence.

What's true of my trees is doubly true of human nature.
We don't see ourselves as doing anything wrong in behaving 'naturally' in respect to our proclivity to put ourselves and our opinions first, but it doesn't take much - some sober analysis of the kind the likes of Jordan Peterson has been calling for - to begin to peel away the pretense and discover what folly and misapprehension lies beneath.

This is doubly so regarding the essential suppositions concerning atheism.
Here is a video that asks some reasonable and honest questions on the nature of those presuppositions - why are they held, and are they genuinely applicable.
It's imperative to honestly expose ourselves to such considerations, because without them,
we find ourselves in a trap of our own making.

In his book Grace in Practice, Paul Zahl states in the concluding paragraphs of the first chapter that "internal motives are the most compromised of all data", particularly in respect to our defining the world as made up of good people and bad people. His analysis here - which brings a really deep jolt when you stop and think on it - is derived from what's said by Jesus about us (Mark 7:20-23) - that the real problems we encounter much of the time derive fom what so 'naturally' comes from us.

Our views, our attitudes, our motivational imperatives, are far from innocent, so we shouldn't be surprised that we 'rationally' read the world and our place in it, wrong. Our entire propensity is to stack the deck in favor of one thing - me - and that leaves us "blind as a bat and out of control" - we just can't live with that admission, so we contrive to make our folly true, whatever it takes.

The cliff-edge precariousness of our folly is only truly embraced when we know we're powerless to change our situation and understand that we need to. That's when we can step out into what first appeared to be void and discover there's far more than one hard, dark season - more than our constantly shelling out what we singularly deem correct.

The winter can unfold and break towards more than cold, short days can ever hold.

There's a far bigger world in God's good grace than you find buried beneath all the ruins of self determined existence.

No Strings Attached....?

"Jesus replied, 'it isn't the healthy that are in need of a physician, but those who are sick - I have not come to arouse or  invite those who deem themselves to be righteous to a remedy for sin, but those who know they err and are seeking change'". Luke 5: 31, 32 (expanded).

The divide could not have been any wider.
There I was, sitting in a carriage reading a sign that stated 'the best things in life are fee free', encouraging me to use their free wi-fi, whilst the connecting page for this service on my tablet was demanding payment.

How often do we make Christianity like that.
We say we can freely come and partake of God's mercy, but no sooner are we over the threshold than we're presented with a barrage of increasing tariffs (quite literally in respects to money in many churches) and by-laws that demand what we really cannot give, because all we have is us - the mess that drew us to what we hoped would be unmerited mercy in the first place*.

Jesus, of course, is on a different page. The passage above tells us exactly where we are - the sick - and what we need - Him; no ifs or buts or small print. God's astonishing mercy and astounding loving kindness is indeed deep and full and wide.

But wait, comes the cry, what about our repentance? Isn't that what we do - what we bring to the table to receive?

Steve Paulson, in his introductory work on Martin Luther notes how the reformer spent much time dwelling on that, and he came to realize something imperative about repenting.

Repentance was nothing more than the putting of the old sinner to death and allowing Christ to raise the dead to new life. The important thing to note, however, is that it is Christ alone who makes us the subject of that work of God's Spirit, that it is God who does the deed... we are entirely acted upon by God in His mercy, not the ones who are acting at all. In other words, any faith or repentance we bring is God's gift, not something we can "do" ourselves.

There's a really important truth here.
Religion always causes us to fall back 'into ourselves', seeing something we've done (our faith or our repentance) as the doorway into blessing, but in truth we're like those in hospital, perhaps miserable at the fact that we have to be here, but understanding that the treatment is entirely necessary if we're to be made well.
The good news is that the hospital also turns out to be a banqueting hall, where we are freely invited, constantly, to come and dine at the table of grace, purely because of love for us, and that is what overshadows our past, present and future.

It's not our diagnosis or resolutions that change a thing.
It's not what we bring to the table, impoverished and miserable,
It's what has been made ours in Jesus Christ alone that heals us, clothes us, feeds us and cherishes us.

God's goodness and love are simply astonishing.
Our seeking to corner and contain that gift into something we want to define by our own religiousness is nothing short of terrifying.

We need to come to His love and care and find the remedy.

Christianity is that, or it is an empty and dangerous thing.

*A really helpful sermon on this can be found here. Have a listen to Joe Dent's message on Titus 2, given on the 4th of November, 2018.

Under the Sun

Are you defined by what you do, by surviving another day, by endeavoring to build something worthwhile with the sand grains of tide and time?  This is a superb and sobering analysis of what we do and the dangers of being defined by that.

Consider...

"For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel’s will save it". Jesus (Mark 8:35).

Yesterday, whilst walking home from work, I noticed a Thrush perching on a branch in windy conditions that appeared way too weak to hold its weight.

Initially I found myself thinking 'goodness, what amazing confidence that bird must have to rest in a such precarious spot', but quickly dismissed the thought as I reminded myself that the confidence I assumed wasn't required at all - this creature, should it slip or begin to fall, had wings, which meant at any moment it could soar off into the air and quickly find somewhere else to perch.

It's 'confidence' came from the fact that it was a creature used to something I could only imagine - experiencing the world through the gift of flight.

I found this left me pondering about what should be 'natural' to all of us.

There's been much discussion and debate at large recently (as I noted in a prior posting) about the value and place of our religious propensities in life - are these just a mistake, or are they indeed pointing to a deep truth and reality about our existence that we need to notice and consider in the kind of way I was thinking about the nature of the bird. Does what lies deep inside of us tell us that we can so easily miss the moment when we should be able to encounter the world in a completely fresh and life-changing way?

I was fascinated this week to discover a new video that seeks to unpack the second part of a trilogy of highly provocative films - Terrance Malik's Knight of Cups. The philosophical analysis examines how easily we can loose ourselves in our world by becoming enveloped and overwhelmed by the sensual and the transitory at the expense of unpacking our true nature and significance.

What fascinates about this analysis, and Malik's recent movies, is that they are pointing to the fact that in the human condition, this simply destroys us - it leaves us adrift, like the main character in this film, occasionally registering that there's something more we need to pursue, but essentially powerless to do more than to feel that there's a truth there that troubles us.

Recent dark web materials have been registering this same issue. Yes, there may well be a greater intelligence that us. Yes, there may be some form of consciousness after death. Yes, there may even be some purpose behind all of this.

So, what does "religion" answer to that?

Jesus' statement above is deliberately bold and shocking.
He claims that not only is this loss of ourselves a palpable reality that so readily overcomes us, but that true identity, true purpose and meaning are defined by Him, and it's by coming to terms with His character and purpose (the Gospel) that we can escape our inherent lack of place and become who we are meant to be - we can gain the ability to see the world anew.

That's why the truth claim at the heart of Christianity isn't about what we can or cannot do - it's about what another can do for us, making us whole and showing how all those things we suspect to be true are actually true, and we can have confidence in that truth.

Malik's movie shows how we in ourselves so easily fail, but also that the love that is given to us doesn't change, and the struggle and the suffering is worthwhile if it leads us to understand that astonishing truth.

Consider what is going on beneath the futile, the temporary, the moment. The light of that care, that grace, is never far away.