Killing the Law

"I fought the law and... the law won".

I'm going to start a little differently today, principally because there's a great link you need to check out before we go any further, so come back after you've taken a look at Mr Walker's piece.

All done?

OK, so what I wanted you to glean was how what we deem to be 'spiritual' or just plain right can actually become Law to us, and law multiplied, and that really isn't going to do us any real good.

We have this inner propensity to bend away from unmerited mercy, because we (and by that, I mean that 'natural' (fallen) you and I) keep de-faulting to the notion that in the right time, in the right place, under the right conditions, we can actually achieve what's required in both our thinking and our deeds. At moments like that, we don't want to hear those statements which say that even our righteous (good) enterprises are equivalent to used rags when set against true goodness and eternal uprightness.

We're living at a time when most of us are being defined and often judged by how we match up to a set of social externals that measure just how 'good' we are in respect of not 'harming' others by what we don't or do perform publicly, and, perhaps, even what we think, expressed in our words or attitudes. It's a breeding ground for 'little things' morality, especially if it's accompanied by being on message about various other social issues that we're constantly being told need to be remedied, but it all amounts to little more than a security blanket to bolster our pride and self-righteousness instead of exposing us to the much deeper requirements of life primarily wrapped in mercy and expressed in forgiveness.

We can only be free when we are held by grace and thriving in the liberty and freedom that brings.

Let's hope that becomes evident as we approach this Christmas and the vital joy this exclusive gift and splendour brings to our troubled world.

Certainty

 Nice piece at Mockingbird this week on where we can gain something truly worth it's weight amidst our days that rattle and roll... Take a look here.

Into the Wind

A piece I wrote recently....

We're going in”...

Bill Harding – Twister.

It was a big thing in the seventies – the disaster movie.

People would pack cinemas to see films like The Towering Inferno and Jaws to be shocked and terrified by experiencing some man-made or natural disaster.

None of us, however, really enjoy living in a world of earthquakes or tsunamis... but we do.

It's also true to say we live in a world of enormous human evil.

The events of the 20^th century left a truly miserable trail of abominable carnage and extermination.

From the Gulag's of Stalin's 'glorious' Socialist state, through the gas chambers of Nazi Germany, to the Killing Fields of Mao and Pohl-Pot in the East, these awful decades of death grant us a horrifying insight into the seemingly inexhaustible misery and brutality we can impose upon others, particularly in the name of some form of political idealism.

As with the French revolution of the 1700's, this manner of evil is continually wrapped in the guise of something meaningful and 'progressive' for humanity. Hitler brought several years of genuine economic growth in Germany before his engagement in full scale war, but behind the scenes, work was already in hand to bring about the centre-piece of a national socialist regime – the 'final solution', which would begin with the extermination of the Jewish people, but would then continue within the new reich into the purging of all races to bring about the goal of a truly 'pure', eugenically guided master species.

The 'truth' we want to tell ourselves about our own times is that the great wars ended such troubles – that for our lifetimes we have moved away from such abominable aims and instruments of ideological control into an age of genuine enlightenment and calm, but this would fly in the face of reality, and recent events of global trial have shown us otherwise. Whilst the threat of a nightmare pandemic has left many realms gripped by fear into yielding their economic policies into wholesale damage control, the far deadlier take-over at work in our political and social structures has continued unabated, indeed aided by the present conditions. We are at greatest risk not from a virulent form of a seasonal strain of a particular grouping of a virus, but the very same ideological misery that has played out in prior times.

GAME OVER

Some of us will recall one of Disney's earliest ventures into digital technology in the early 1980s movie, Tron. It tells the story of how a mega corporation's attempts to corner the world of information technology is thwarted by a group of rebel programmers, but the 'real' story is the inter-action which takes place between a master game-creator named Flynn and the micro world within 'the machine', pictured as a malevolent Master Control Program. Flynn is taken into the system, where he is made to play gladiatorial-like games to remain alive, but escapes such through the help of a program his associate created called Tron. After a great deal of struggle, Flynn manages to defeat the MCP and its human counter-part, Dillinger and restore a form of freedom to the system.

The film says a great deal, as the 2019 documentary, The Great Hack, reveals.

In the modern world, “Users” (you and I) have indeed become 'stored' in the system as thousands of data points, which are constantly used in an analytical fashion to not only determine what we like and what we will purchase, but how we can be swayed to vote or think about various issues, and this has quite literally adjusted the entire course of the modern world.

The brave new world we have inherited, laid down by the likes of IBM and Microsoft, but then accessorised by Google, Facebook and Twitter, is a domain where you generate value for corporations and businesses by our continual use of their systems, the validity of which has increased ten fold over the last six months. These data spheres have become as invaluable to us as groceries and hospitals, even taking the place of worship and other social activity during our now commonplace times of confinement. It is only when we begin to fully comprehend the extraordinary power these 'faceless' corporations now control in every major sphere of human activity that we begin to comprehend some measure of how evil is shielded within the 'cloud' of what most of us view as benign, even benevolent, in our daily sharing of images or messages. Behind that popular notion is a very dark and manipulative world of global influence and monumental change that costs us so much, just so we can work beneath the pretence that everything is good.

LEAVING THE RESERVATION?

If you watched any of this year's other 'must see' documentary, The Social Dilemma, then one thing that should have really struck home was the number of prior pioneers for 'big tech' companies that now stay away entirely from social media, purely because they understand how their inventions have been deployed to manipulate the user as often as possible for as long as possible. As noted in The Great Hack, social media has been comprehensively weaponised by the best means available to gather profiling data on its users to addict them to what is on offer – 'safe' engagement with every social sphere you need, for as long as you need, in a fashion you perceive as 'free' and, most importantly, self affirming.

Gone is the paranoia of earlier days seen in movies like 'The Net', and worries about the very real existence of AI systems that are growing exponentially smarter all the time are viewed as conspiratorial at worse, so when Elon Musk announced a new 'implant' chip that plugs straight into your cerebral cortex on Facebook in the autumn, no one gave it much thought – just another 'app' that makes it simpler for everyone.

We have become entirely comfortable with such tech being within reach 24/7, and if the next phase is an 'upgrade' that makes it part of our own skin and thereby simpler to use, we won't be concerned. In reality, it will mean that far more about you is being streamed into the systems of private corporations who entirely own what you provide... and you cannot get it back.

THE CYCLE

When the World Wide Web first opened for business, the vast majority of domains and sites you could access were free use. Slowly but surely, companies moved into the space and offered various 'services' for a fee to keep your data 'safe', but the clauses we all signed when we joined such agreements gave our vital information to them, and for the last thirty years, pretty much everything we do has been feeding that system, not only by facilitating the way we chose to spend via mega corporations like Amazon, but through 'encouraging' us to see the world in particular ways, once again to facilitate the expansion of other power interests and continue to provide ever increasing amounts of valuable (tradable) data, which is why such information is now the most valuable commodity on the planet.

The question which should be on our minds is what happens next?

In the first episode of the 1978 series Connections, James Burke imagined what it would be like if the power were to be switched off – permanently. After the initial violence and looting, a mere handful of people just might make it by returning to the land and having enough savvy to know what to plant and how to survive, but what he showed then was just how entirely the world had come to depend upon technology. Over the last 40 years, we have reached a point where the pressures we have placed upon the planet and society have exploded, but along side those troubles, new forms of social reform and modifying behaviour have come into play, reaching a pinnacle in the use of social media.

It's highly unlikely that the 70s collapse scenario will happen, but how far are we from the manner of synchronised dystopia envisaged in a film like The Circle? As facial recognition cameras become commonplace in our supermarkets, as health requirements move us to a point where face to face engagements and the use of physical currencies become unhygienic, as AI becomes more and more responsible (intrusive) for determining what benefits or offers or virtual opportunities are available or not to you, how long will it be before what defines us is not ourselves?

THE TYRELL SCENARIO

On the cusp of technology adjusting us, Science Fiction writer Phillip K Dick penned a story of where the nightmare of growing dependence on the artificial would lead us. His 1968 book would become a cult classic in the 1980s when it appeared as one of the most defining films of the era, Blade Runner, exploring the heady question of what indeed makes us human, but equally, what allows us to keep what is genuine in that equation.

The 2019 documentary The Great Hack showed that this question has become absolutely imperative to this moment. Just like the men and women 'shielded' by using androids in the film, Surrogates, we find ourselves required to spend more and more of our lives on-line, vicariously living by what is provided there, having our identities defined and used by the parasitical systems that intrusively channel what makes us a viable extension of devised wants and needs that provide others with power.

BREAKING THROUGH

Evil does not parade its true nature and ramifications in a fashion that will leave us appalled and angered. It will work softly, methodically, appealing to our sense that it is best to tolerate and co-exist with what is not deemed or perceived as an immediate threat to us, drawing along side, and then, requesting what is clearly good or sensible for us, thereby gradually encroaching upon what it should not have until it erodes away our actual freedom by luring us with something it defines as better than what we had, until we are entirely snared by its pervasive systems and choked by the poison of its ideals, defined as being 'for the best'..

In his series of documentaries for the BBC at the turn of the century, Adam Curtis showed how our society has spent over a century succumbing to the power of the elites (The Mayfair Set), and discarding personal and social liberty for the sake of comfort and seculosity (The Trap). This has lead us to a point where 'freedom' is only found for most in what is fed to them (Hypernormalisation), leaving us suspended and eerily detached from the very need to find genuine humanity beyond the scope of immediate wants and needs. This is indeed the Soma predicted by Aldous Huxley in Brave New World.

The awful cruelty of the last century explicitly shows us what is now implicit in our times – where millions are now murdered annually because our ideology condones abortion and gradually accommodates euthanasia – Eugenics becomes accepted as reasonable.

The final chapter of such enclosure, the final annihilation of the community significance of being ourselves, is about to open, where most are imprisoned within themselves, constantly 'assisted' by their never – sleeping 'guide', which feeds upon them in a fashion which, they believe, makes them valuable.

Passivity leaves us dependent upon this IV, but “better eyes” (The Abyss) can penetrate the nightmare.

The purpose here is to provoke, to pierce, you, that eyes that were blind may see,

that the truth, indeed, might set us free.

Will we escape the machine?

Only when the Son sets us free!

Made Secure

 She said 'we are all just prisoners here of our own device'.  Hotel California.

Who the Son sets free, is free indeed.  Jesus.

Jail time.

It isn't something that appeals, is it.

I'm sure Paul and Silas were none too happy about it, especially when it followed having taken a beating from a mob which had acted in full sight (and the backing) of the region's authorities (Acts 16:19-24). It was a far from ideal situation, and yet, these men  could be found, at midnight in the deepest cell, in prayer and worship in spite of their miserable conditions.

Most of us have never known such acute persecution, but we've probably been in circumstances that have tested us. There are times when it's been it's been characteristic of us to behave like Jonah... to have too much pride to want to serve others well or to be just plain sulky about the fact that we should be 'picked on' to be involved in such an arduous venture, but thankfully, mercifully, we sometimes respond by grace with faith, and it's then the unexpected can unfold.

It certainly does here.

I suspect if we were sitting somewhere and an earthquake struck, our first reaction would be to get up and go, but as the terrified jailer prepares to kill himself for his failing to keep his prisoners in jail, something startling happens - Paul yells out to him that everything's fine... they're still there, so no need to do himself any harm.

How is it that these men could remain so calm, so thankful, in such adverse conditions?

They clearly understood something in their very core.

Whatever befell them, they were under a much higher protective custody.

It held them when evil befell them.

It held them when the prison was tumbling in around them.

It assured them as they sought to help another in terrible anguish.

No prison can hold such people. Unjust accusations, adversity, suffering, even the very real threat of death does not stop them, because amidst such circumstances, they possess a freedom that no man or diabolical power can take from them - they have been truly made free by the excellence of liberty that God gives to His blood-bought children.

There is another prison... common amongst a people who feed on fast food meals and the latest fake drama on the 'in' show. We can see it so palpably right now in our 'safety' obsessed state - it's granting you everything you 'want' whilst what's removed is everything you actually need. Those who see it and speak up are marginalised and maligned, but the cry will still rise in the midnight hour, and woe betide the men pleasers when the earthquakes comes.

Liberty costs, and freedom had to be purchased with the most precious blood of all. We should expect the days we have entered to become harder, but let's pray that we, like Paul and Silas, are given the strength to sing in the cell until it brings the house down and saves those truly in peril.

"Making the best of it"

 "For by the same criteria you use to determine what's right and wrong, you will also be weighed and examined". Matthew 7:2.

Evil rarely comes at us in horns with a tail, and if does, there's usually been a long developmental process to get to that point. 

The powers which enable genuine evil to perpetuate, notes C S Lewis, are "given to it by goodness" (Mere Christianity) - by an inversion of what is meant to be there to enrich and enliven into something which demeans and taints.

In the days of Jesus, those deemed teachers in the region of Judea had refined their means of determining what could and could not be done to the point of literally dotting their I's and crossing their T's, because, in addition to Mosaic law, they had composed an additional rule-book called the Halakah, which told them what to do in all those niggling little moments when the Laws in the Torah weren't detailed enough. A practical solution, perhaps, but the trouble was, as time went on, these 'additions' came to be seen as just as important as God's given law, and this meant that judgements often derived from a reasoning that placed what certain "religious" folk determined as right, in fact imperative, rather than what was actually right.

We all have a propensity to 'judge' in ways that require demanding a great deal from others, (whilst usually requiring not so much from ourselves), and this had certainly become the case amongst many of those who made such requirements when Christ came amongst them.

Many of these rules were really hot button "musts" in respect to the Sabbath - it was imperative that pretty much everything that wasn't to do with treating the day differently (so, for example, work) was entirely concluded before sunset on Friday, and not resumed until after the special day was over, but there was a problem here. Did the rule not to work mean that you ceased from doing good for a whole day? Wouldn't that mean, in effect, that if there were an immediate need, and it wasn't addressed, that what was meant to be holy instead became a context for harm and evil?

After reading from Isaiah's striking words to define His ministry, Jesus often 'worked' (did good) on the sabbath to clarify the trouble we place ourselves in when we serve religion rather than God.

Keeping a day special is good (rest and refreshment are essential), but there are other requirements than just those provided for in such a break, so we should also take genuine notice of the "closing down" of religion in what Jesus is about here.

The Torah says nothing to forbid doing genuine good on the day of rest - and it is this truth that makes Jesus both angry and grieved at those who wished to manufacture their own morality above and beyond what was provided by God (Mark 3:4).

Soon, it would be the scribes and religious who were murderously angry with Jesus as He continually defied their rules and proceeded to teach that these were futile when it came to genuine righteousness.

The intention of those deemed 'spiritual' was to work amidst a framework of statutes which allowed them to continue to be viewed as 'good' and 'holy', whilst in truth, they continued to avoid the genuine requirements of God's commands in respect to the fullest compliance to these. 

Truth, of course, shatters the illusion, hence their violence towards Jesus.

So, what of us?

Are there rules or requirements we impose that are in effect contrary to the good that God is seeking to work amongst us?

Christianity isn't 'muddling along' beneath a set of moral, civil and ritual devices that we believe will convey some kind of acceptable piety whilst covering up our far deeper evils in respect to God and each other. Being naked bar the righteousness of Christ means we 'walk in the light' before Him and each other - that we genuinely understand each other to be sinners saved entirely by grace.

Law compliance, however pious it may appear, concludes beneath a curse (Galatians 3:10) - for all of us truly fail miserably to come close to complying with its comprehensive and relentless requirements - if we're honest, we'll admit we even fail in reaching the far lower standards we make for ourselves.

The community of faith has to be seen to be marked by something better, and that is where grace comes into the picture.

What are we about right now?

Are we throughly 'ruled up', seeing our assent with what's required as virtuous and even perhaps allowing us to see ourselves as "good".

We must be careful to understand how evil really leads us into ruin by such devices.

There are plenty of times God's people failed because of this blind spot, but, thankfully, because of God's mercy, there are also countless times when they were picked up again by Gods goodness and embrace so they could continue to walk in something that truly heals them, and us.

Let's not muddle through in our own folly, but rest assured on the surety of His astounding care.

(Happy Reformation Day from Dr Mike Reeves)

For Reformation Day...

 Two recommendations to set your weekend alight as you sip your German ales....

First up, this excellent article by Mike Reeves in Table Talk on why the Reformation is so vital to the present.

Then, 1517 held their annual conference recently on the Freedom of the Christian, and have generously placed the entire two days worth of material on You Tube. There is some excellent material here, and I'd highly recommend David Zahl's paper on Freedom.

Enjoy the day!

The "If" bomb

 "He brought me into a broad place; He rescued me; He delighted in me".                        Psalm 18:19.

I wonder how often you have entered a church and heard the minister or the opening hymn tell you in a clear, unambiguous fashion that "Grace Rules".

To put that in a perhaps more familiar phrasing from the Apostle Paul - 

"It is for freedom that Christ has made you free. Stand firm, then, in that freedom, and do not let anyone place you again under a weight of bondage" (Galatians 5:1).

The freedom the Gospel brings is our liberation from the powers of sin and death - forces which wish to take from us the very life which God breathed into us, face to face, in giving Adam breath, but the 'bondage' that so concerned Paul here was what came after that deliverance - slavery that had arisen in the church by the forceful imposition of various rules and requirements, which, if you refused to honour and obey, would mean you were judged as unrighteous - socially and spiritually rebuke-able because you had, in effect, denied what was required in addition to Grace.

In my years in the 'renewal' realm of the church, this was encountered in all sorts of ways - you had to speak in tongues to prove you were saved, you had to submit to the "rhema" word of those deemed 'Apostles' or elders on everything - from who should lead the church to whether you should or shouldn't marry someone - because if you didn't, you were outside of the 'covering' of God's anointing, and therefore under discipline until you repented. What fascinated me was when I later joined a Pentecostal church, they didn't require any of this - the key thing to them was enjoying their faith in Jesus and sharing that joy.

At the start of his letter to the Galatians, Paul is clear about what's gone wrong. Originally, these people had known the beauty and latitude that God's grace had given them in life to be people who could use their new faith well, but it wasn't long before those who had despised such freedom sought to restrain them with all manner of 'necessary' rules, taking them away from what was genuinely good.

Religion will always seek to feed upon "your" virtue, wholeness, sanctity and the like - to establish worth in what we, in and of ourselves say and do, rather than turn us away from such silly peripherals to the sweet and ever-abundant goodness of Gods grace (that He is for us - that is why Christ came). This is because it is something which feeds itself upon our compliance and thereby makes us believe we are "good" because of such behaviour, but true freedom, true righteousness have nothing to do with this. The real totality of righteousness is found solely in Jesus Christ, and Him crucified (see Galatians 3:1).

Legalism cannot see the good in Christ making gallons of excellent wine for friends at a wedding. It cannot but agree with those chastising the disciples for indulgently picking heads of corn on the sabbath. It joins in chorus with Judas when the precious ointment, which could have fed the poor, is broken out and used to fragrance the head of Jesus, and it is horrified when a 'fallen' woman is found kissing and washing the Lord's feet.

All of these examples point us to EXACTLY the manner of sweetness and beauty that grace breaks open in the Christian - warmth, joy, genuine repentance and affection, delight in the good things of life - these are the bitter enemies of religious bondage.

So, what do we find in our churches?

Do we imbibe freedom as we step into a realm of fellow-believers, or are we met with a barrage of "if's"...

"If you want to be here with us, then you must"....

or

"If you want to belong to our fellowship, then you have to"....

Jesus says something somewhat different -

"Come to you me, all who are heavily burdened, and I will give you rest".

He GIVES freedom and life. Grace reigns.

Christianity isn't, ever, about seeking to please or gain the approval of men.

It is about sharing the amazing love of God.

That's why we need this in our churches, every week, and why we need to be given the room, the freedom, that God Himself bestows - hence, Paul's crucial words in Galatians 5.

Church is essentially the house of grace, where the family of saved sinners can come and be included amidst, as one Puritan put it, 'their prayer and play'.

In the current circumstances, we need to examine carefully what signals we're sending in respect to what fills the religious vacuum of 2020. Are we expressing some manner of virtue justification - a self or moral rightness - in our manner of showing Christianity, or  are we evidenced as those, as Robert Capon noted, who are 'intoxicated on the rare vintage of God's exuberant mercy'?

We live in a moment defined principally by strict rules and requirements, even perhaps to the point in some cases of requiring a rendering to Caesar what is actually Gods.

The lost need to see that God is wholly about something gloriously good, and this, as Paul notes in Galatians, can be evidenced when those who are truly free can express this in the way they genuinely serve each other. Humility, patience and gentleness ( the fruits of grace - Ephesians 4:2) only spring from liberty bestowed through grace - that is why Paul can end his exhortation by speaking of how standing in Christ makes us those who bear another's troubles (6:2).

The days ahead are clearly going to be arduous, so let's stand where the Apostle teaches us we must to truly express the richness of God's astounding grace.