Reaching back to get beyond?

"For from the days of Joshua, the people had not done so".
Nehemiah 8:17.

What happens when a supposedly immovable object is exposed to an unstoppable force?
Well, according to the movie Twister, one of them has to give, but this scene shows just how human stubbornness can often prove to be a power which would drive us into harms way when we should be seeking to step back.

Back in the 13th century, the West, and particularly the Roman church, decided that the best way to break the tornado of change it was facing was by launching a new enterprise, termed Christendom (the kingdom of God on earth), and the instrument the papacy decided it was going to use for this new age was a device termed 'reformo' - yes, what you and I would term Reformation.

Nehemiah saw just how hard it was to really reform people in respect to what they really felt and wanted.
After years of wall and temple building, renewal of rites and ceremonies that hadn't seen the light of day since Joshua's time, he returned from a trip near the end of his life to find that the people had de-faulted back to their laxity and compromise (Nehemiah 13), causing him to become enraged and violent. History shows us that his outburst didn't stop the rot, and the people finally ended up displaced because of their unbelief and negligence (the root problem all along), Clearly, something better than just rules that couldn't be kept was required in that case, but what if you're dealing with a ruling power that is growing in its control over, well, everyone and everything? What if you have an 'office' that supposedly holds sway over men in respects to both mercy and justice?
What happens when such a power comes out of its corner into the ring, riled up for a fight?

The 13th century tells us.
The program commenced with an edict to see 'heretics' killed, and this was eagerly done during a very bloody crusade in Southern France (crusading, please note, isn't just seen or used by Rome as a means of fighting heathens, but of purifying the church). A few decades later, the next phase of purification commenced when a permanent religious office (still in existence today) of inquisition was established for capturing, interrogating (torturing), trying and burning those deemed impure. Over the next two centuries in the realm of Spain alone, this blight would result in some 114,000 victims, over 10,000 of whom would be burned for heresy, whilst in Rome, the papacy ruled itself to be above all earthly authorities.

Perhaps we shouldn't be that surprised, then, that in one of the early 'victories' of the crusaders of this period, many reported a vision from a whirlwind of a 'great leader in heaven on a white horse' (Revelation 6:2).

Now, why am I providing this particular history lesson?

A few months ago, historian Alec Ryrie published a new work  (reviewed here) entitled Unbelievers, in which he argues that the current tide of unbelief and atheism has little to do with the age of reason, but everything to do with anger and resentment at a church that seeks to impose authority upon culture in the most unreasonable fashion.

As noted in Mockingbird's review of the above in a quote from Giles Fraser: "For Ryrie, a scholar of the Protestant Reformation, the passion in question has its roots in the protest against the abuses of the church of Rome, of well-padded priests feathering their own nests, of the bullying authority of the Papacy…"

Ryrie (and Tom Holland also, in his new work, Dominion), show that Christianity broke down when it became a religion which sought to impose itself on the world by violence and intolerance, turning the entire realm of that period into a killing field.

The present intolerance, then, of Christianity, isn't just because people have stopped being 'religious' (it's pretty clear that when you talk to many, there's still a need for something beyond themselves), but because we lived through a lengthy period of time when what was supposed to have been offering the world goodness and mercy only offered them blood and fear - the totality that all dictatorships crave.

Thankfully, the story doesn't end there.
There was another, real, reformation, which focused on each one coming to know a God revealed through Christ, Calvary and the empty tomb, which genuinely revolutionised Europe and the world for the better, but the seismic events of the days that caused that benefit to come are still impacting today.

I find Nehemiah a hard book because its so much about people doing things, apparently for the right reasons, but without something deep in their affections mirroring all their labour, and faith has to be about something deep because if it isn't having that kind of an impact on us, we, and plenty of others, are going to end up in a deeply damaged state.

How we lead, and why, should always point us back to one person -
Jesus Christ.