Progress?

“What men do is shaped by what they believe they can do.” John Roberts


I was fascinated to watch the first part of Niall Ferguson's new series on Civilization recently, in which he seeks to examine why the West became the centre for the development of numerous empires in the 16th century, whilst other realms, like China, failed to do so.

Niall puts this down to the development of what he defines as the West's 'six killer apps'.  These are:
Competition
Science
Democracy
Medicine
Consumerism
The Work Ethic

The first episode looked at how it was Portugal's appetite to monopolize the market in spices that brought about sea-fairing exploration and expansion and how china has now embarked upon the very same competitive process in developing its new 'belt and road' enterprise.

Lots of interesting observations, no doubt, yet even as I watched and listened, I felt unsettled because, as useful as these 'apps' might be, they were not the full story.
The reason China can now apply these means to itself is because a fundamental shift happened in its 'hardware' to make it a nation that would do as the empires of the West had done.

Almost a century ago, through the process of the cultural revolution, Mao and his followers replaced the philosophical 'story' of China from one based upon Confucianism to Communism, and the present expansion is the clear consequence.

If that's the case, what was it that caused the West to become the power house of growth and change some 500 odd years earlier?

Europe changed from a feudal backwater in the 15th and 16th centuries because in 1453, Constantinople fell, and all the great learning stored there flooded back into the continent, seeding both the Renaissance in culture and the Reformation in the church. The 'striving creed' of Christianity (John Roberts - The Triumph of the West) found its feet, and the West truly reaped the benefits. 

What all such changes tell us is that it is the stories which inspire and motivate us that really make the difference in what we do and how we do it. If we believe there is a higher goal or a bigger picture, then we understand our place and time to have value and meaning. 

The problem in the West today is that above and beyond our immediate needs, there is very little seen as providing that purpose, and so we become caught in the latest technology (individually viewed as 'killer apps') without thinking about the deeper ramifications of what's actually unfolding around us. Ferguson's approach here is telling in that respect, because it rests on entirely materialistic means and ends when the truth is that these kinds of development have deeply spiritual connections and ramifications (consider, for example, Tolkein's insights into these in The Lord of the Rings, or Lewis' striking commentary on the matter in his Cosmic Trilogy).

It's easy for us to detach the benefits of such change from their true beginnings in the West today - two world wars, secular culture and the constant spin of new technology make it extremely hard for us at times to look deeper into the why and how of being where we are, but the truth remains that all of these common things now are the results of several hundred years of seismic shifts in the way Europe and later America came to define its reason and thereby its role.

We live at a moment when much of the globe is, again, in convulsion, and the prevalent threats of totalitarianism and also perceived meaninglessness are widespread, so it can be of real value to re-discover the rich sources of truth and value deposited by the events of the 16th century, rooted in the notion that we have value because we are the handiwork of God, redeemed by His salvic work in Jesus Christ.
It's a meaning that many today are afraid to raise or encounter, and some are very clearly seeking to erase or re-write, but it is one that we shouldn't avoid - it's been far too important to the history of humanity, and its ramifications are vital for the past and the future.

Captivating through what's good

"He has given you a spacious land, lacking nothing". Judges 18:10.

Good Friday probably isn't a day most people, Christian or otherwise, would equate with the likes of big foot, the paranormal, flying saucers and the like, but Josh Retterer's Mockingbird piece, published this week, is a true gem in several respects regarding why such thoughts can and should be considered even as we reflect on the work of our astonishing saviour, not least, of course, because the cross is about the cosmic reconciling of things in heaven and on earth (Colossians 1:20)... I feel an X Files reference coming on!

The article spoke volumes about two things in particular - our engagement with all of life because of grace (the example provided will give you a shock) and how that it so often best seen in our enjoyment of what we do.

My own studies this month have been about the nature of how the spiritual is inherent in the fleshly - food, clothing, nakedness, sex, marriage, and how all of these realms are given (creationally) and restored (redemptively) in the flesh of Jesus, given to the world that we might feed on the life He brings from heaven (which is the essence of grace).

When we partake of His broken body and shed blood, lifted up at the cross to reconcile heaven and earth, we are participating entirely in what we ruined being restored - paradise is regained here and only here, and that means we belittle and defraud God's full spending of Himself in Christ if we deny that all things are indeed His in that love.

The spacious land that Calvary opens is evidenced in the moment Christ cries "finished!", and the veil is rent and the graves are open (Matthew 27:51,52). The world, and all within it, cannot but respond to the victory the offering of His life brings.

So, this easter, truly revel and delight in the greatness of the life He bestows; enjoy and thereby show a foretaste of all that is coming through the exquisite abundance of the Almighty's love for our needy world.

The religious itch

"And the people sat down to eat, and rose up to play" Exodus 32:6.

Anthropology (in some cases) defines religion as things which 'establish powerful, pervasive and long-lasting moods and motivations by providing a frame of reference for existence'.

How does that work, then, when you're tied to a particular lifestyle - secularism perhaps, or slavery?

If you're soaked in the secular, you might at times feel you're chained to certain constant demands (is it any wonder that social media has brought a rise in suicide?). If you're a bonded slave, you might well be yearning for a little of that secular lifestyle, but either scenario probably makes you more 'religious' than your recognize, because it tethers you in exactly the way that the anthropologist would note.

When the Israelites lost sight of Moses (and thereby, God) at Mount Sinai, they went all out for the secular option. They'd spent years in servitude amidst a culture that seemed to invent a new god whenever the need arose, so they thought it was as good a time as any to become guilty of the 's' word... shopping for their own new god.

It's readily clear what they wanted here - having a ruling principal personified that allowed for plenty of rest and play, in other words, any image or idol shouldn't do or need anything more than to validate their own wants and desires.

There it is.
We think religion is about something 'other worldly' - venerating what's unseen (and therefore, almost certainly unknowable), but that wasn't the religion seen in this incident, and numerous others. Religion, it turns out, is the most down to earth part of what you and I do in the hum-drum, everyday stuff of life - our yearning for more in the mundane, which is why sex, drugs and escapism are always so major - we profoundly want more than for it just to be mundane.

Some, of course, tell us that there isn't anything more... and go on to make a religion out of that telling (see, even they cannot get past the need to scratch that itch), but we all know that behind the monotony we are buried in, there are stars (markers within and without) which occasionally glimmer and shock us, reminding us of something deeply true.

Beyond the slavery of the secular, beyond our burying ourselves in the moment, the deeper reality calls and longs for us to be more... than just.... religious.

All you need is...

Brilliant review this week in a UK Newspaper of David Zahl's truly insighful new work, Seculosity. Both are well worth a read.

The Need

"That which was from the beginning... we have touched with our own hands" 1 John 1:1

Life, it's often said, is full of surprises. The problem with such jolts, of course, is that they are, by nature, unexpected, and can be for good or ill, but they usually push us to face something in a way we haven't, and that can do us a great deal of good.

I was shocked this week, gradually, by a fresh awareness of what it means to (truly) be flesh.

There is that astonishing moment in Genesis 1, where God takes something inanimate, and, whilst touching it, breathes into its deadness and creates beings to reflect Himself.

The book I'm reading notes how all that truly signifies what we really are revolves around the miracle of that moment - taken from the commonplace, endowed with the most extraordinary gift, we are made magisterial by the very touch of the most high, who grants us life by His breath.

We, of course, threw it all away, but the need for what that moment made us - the ache for the touch that makes our flesh vital and genuinely living, is present at every moment in our short lives here, and when God graciously intervenes to redeem us, it is through the total inhabiting of that same flesh, and, as John notes, by touching our flesh once more.

There are many times in the Gospels where Jesus engages with the sick and the lost, not only by speaking, but by touching them, or by allowing them to touch Him. Taken in the light of our creation's first moment, we see an echo of God's great intention - to invest the flesh of His hands with wholeness and worth that cannot be provided elsewhere.

Redemption, above all else, is the unveiling of the resurrection of the flesh - the glorifying and re-engaging of all that was promised in Eden, that the kingdom begun in Christ's incarnation may be completed in the filling of the earth.

We have yet to see the great splendor of what is intended, but in creation and redemption, we are pointed repeatedly to the spark, the seed of what flesh will truly become.

For all the fallen (men)

Great link I came across today, regarding honesty about the male struggle to be sexually "pure".

What's Good Here?

"The preacher is required to know the difference between the law and the gospel. If a sermon ends in 'ethics', if its 'application' (a word that needs to be avoided) amounts to something I should do, it is a sermon of law and not grace...
Whenever you hear a preacher invoking concepts like 'accountability' or 'discipleship', you can be sure you're hearing the law. Whenever you are genuinely comforted or elated or absolved, then you know you are hearing the Gospel".

Paul Zahl - Grace in the church.

There are occasions when I find it hard to be in church.
It's not when I find myself facing a contemporary song I really cannot sing because the words ("change the atmosphere") make me wonder why am I doing this. Neither is it when words in liturgy and hymns are 'updated' (no doubt by those well intentioned) because that's contemporary (when the original phrases were just fine, often better). I am sure that many would conclude it's just my age if they heard me sigh in such circumstances, because in truth, it's best to be tolerant about such minor infractions. What seriously irks me though is when whoever is charged with delivering the word - the meat and drink my soul is craving for the week to come - forgets to bring before us God's truly overwhelming, abounding care and mercy in their time in the the pulpit.

Now, don't get me wrong here - 

Certainly, there is a place for reminding us we're died in the wool sinners (good services will have a time of absolution and confession, close to the start) dead to God as a race, and certainly, touching on our true state, especially in respect to our need for Christ, is a valid diagnosis before providing the essential remedy,
but where do we get the idea that telling those who have gathered to find God's grace in time of need that what they actually require is a lecture on the virtues of some expression of Christian "stoicism" - a continual shouldering of your burden and committing to 'doing better', because that's what, apparently, you've been called to.

This is dangerous stuff, which generates a very different form of "christianity". I spent years in the prison camp of 'checking your fruit' every day or week to certify you really were a believer.
Have I prayed enough, witnessed enough, read enough scripture and, first and foremost, lived a holy life today?
Have I, in effect, been the person God would expect me to be were I able to keep His commands perfectly?

Inevitably, the truthful response was no, not even close.

It left me, and numerous others I know totally uncertain about who they were because they firstly lost any assurance in Christ (where the Gospel tells them they were supposed to be looking) and then proceeded to quickly loose confidence in themselves because there is, as Paul states concerning the believer in Romans 7, nothing good in us. They needed the good news. What they were fed was a constant diet of asking 'are you really walking well?' until it crushed them, or, even worse, left them believing they were pulling it off in themselves, having a righteousness other than what's provided in Christ.

So, how serious a problem is this?

Well, let me put it this way.
The Apostolic church of the first century never held any kind of church council or major assembly on any of the cardinal truths you'd state in the Apostles creed (The Trinity, the two natures of Christ, the Virgin Birth, and so on), or the nature of church government, or for clarifying eschatology, and so on, but they most certainly did on the issue of what we need to understand in respects to the nature of a believer's relationship to not mistaking faith as a series of rules to be imposed and then fervently kept and adhered to.

"Certain men had arisen and were teaching the brethren that unless you obey the customs of Moses, you cannot be saved" (Acts 15:1). 
Notice how Luke puts that - there was a teaching circulating that was adamantly stating that the saving work of Jesus in itself is not enough to save us. It was proclaiming that you had to do more for there to be any assurance of God accepting you, but therein lies the real trouble. Our diagnosis of the problem  (who we are, and what's to be done about it) has to be total and exact if we're to apply the right treatment. Keeping the Law, however we dress it (deeper commitment, holiness, sinless living, discipleship), whatever appeal we think it has, negates the Gospel. Did you hear that? That is why Paul is so emphatic in his letter to the Galatians (he repeats his crucial, damning warning twice in his opening of the letter) - you cannot mess with this without detaching yourself from Christ!

It's so easy for us to foster some manner of confidence in our flesh, but it won't engender anything but the nightmare of bad religion.

False religion incubates in the warmth of self righteousness.

So, what is the solution?
There's a story which really comforts me.

One night, whilst Martin Luther was a wanted man, incarcerated because he was daring to challenge the established church with the riches of the unmerited work of Christ, the devil came and presented him with a list of charges - his many sins.
Now, Luther had known a long and very troubling paralysis because, unlike most people, he knew the real seriousness of his wrongdoing, and the fact that he was constantly in jeopardy because of his foul nature would seem to have fashioned a tool the devil could use against him to turn him into a worthless, quivering wreck.

Naturally, it would be game over for any man made to face something of the sheer awfulness of his true condition...
How would the Reformer respond?

Luther laughed.

Your list is far, far too short he countered, and what of them?

Something astonishing had happened to this man. It wasn't that his sins weren't real, or that he'd become some extraordinary creature who in himself could rise above his iniquity. Looking back later, he tells us why he could be so calm and bold before the accuser...

When the devil, he noted, throws your sins in your face and declares that you deserve death and hell, tell him this - 'I admit I do indeed deserve them, but I know one who has made full satisfaction on my behalf. His name is Jesus Christ, Son of God, and where He is, I am also!'

Luther was resting in the full and glorious truth that He was one made free from sin only by the life, death and resurrection of another - that is where we find God's kindly face towards us.

Our one sole place of full confidence and assurance is the benevolence we find ours at the throne of grace (Hebrews 4:16). The purpose of our fellowship together here and now is to gather us there, that Christ and His death and life may become ours, for only then are we more than those swallowed by sin and death.

If we think our discipleship, our ethics or works are going to cut it in any way, we've fallen into detaching ourselves from Christ alone. He does the saving. the keeping, the resurrecting.

Jacques Ellul, in his comprehensive work The Subversion of Christianity notes that the root of all our troubles as Christians is when we omit to call believers to their true birth right as God's redeemed children - to be free (Galatians 5:1). It is freedom we find so shocking, and so we, like the Israelites of old, often seek to scurry back to some manner of slavery, either to the law or to sin, rather than live boldly beneath the love of God.

To do so leaves the church seeking to find confidence in all the wrong places and opens us to all manner of draining and destructive error.

Freedom in Christ alone, that God's grace may constantly be our meat and drink. That's the true requirement and result of God's love at work amongst us.

Let's remember that, especially in church on Sundays.