Soul Thoughts

Faith and relevance in the 21st century

Category: Jesus (Page 9 of 12)

Still fascinated after all these years

April 24, 2011 / / 0 Comments

I just watched an amazing video of a portrait of Jesus being put together by a wonderful artist. As I was watching, I realised how fascinated I still am by Jesus. After about 25 years of being a believer, he still challenges me, still draws me, still encourages me to strive on to be better than I am.

There is something amazing about this man who lived, died and, I believe, was physically raised 2,000 years ago. People of all persuasions have had their lives turned upside down, been given hope, been infused with meaning, and been turned around from self-destruction to self-giving love by the man from Nazareth. Kings and rulers, and slaves and peasants alike have been utterly transformed by him.

If you think of some of the things that make Jesus so fascinating, they are at once paradoxical yet at the same time make sense in him. Things like the fact that he makes the most outrageous, extraordinary claims of himself, yet not once does he come across as arrogant or self-opinionated. Or how about the fact that he actually intensifies the moral norms of his culture (“you have heard that it was said…but I say to you…”), and yet the most despised of ‘sinners’ in that same culture are drawn to him like metal to a magnet?

Jesus makes the most pressing claims on our lives, yet at the same time gives us grace upon grace – undeserved love. He demands total commitment yet never demands anything he doesn’t do himself. He tells us to love our enemies, and does it himself. He tells us to walk the extra mile, and he walks it himself. He tells us to take up our cross and follow, and he takes it up himself, even unto death on the most brutal, completely humiliating implement known in those times: a Roman cross.

This is a man like no other. The most intelligent minds in the world, such as former Head of the Human Genome project, Francis Collins, to the child who sits in wonder at the fact of Jesus’ love, come away transfixed, never the same again. 2,000 years later, Jesus appeals to great minds and little children alike. And throughout those 2,000 years, thousands have been transformed in a way they cannot explain but for the presence of a love outside of themselves. As Bono said once when it was suggested to him that this Jesus stuff is a bit outrageous: the alternative is that thousands of people throughout history have had their lives turned upside down by a madman – now that’s outrageous!

I read a bit of the Bible every day. I have read about Jesus for years; I have written about him and I daily try to live my life as he did, but still I find myself drawn to him, still I find myself wanting to be like him, still I want to learn more from him, and more than ever I am convinced that only in him lies the life and hope that we all strive for.

As I ponder, I can only echo the famous words of Dr James Allan, written almost a century ago, of this One Solitary Life:

He was born in an obscure village
The child of a peasant woman
He grew up in another obscure village
Where he worked in a carpenter shop
Until he was thirty

He never wrote a book
He never held an office
He never went to college
He never visited a big city
He never travelled more than two hundred miles
From the place where he was born
He did none of the things
Usually associated with greatness
He had no credentials but himself

He was only thirty three

His friends ran away
One of them denied him
He was turned over to his enemies
And went through the mockery of a trial
He was nailed to a cross between two thieves
While dying, his executioners gambled for his clothing
The only property he had on earth

When he was dead
He was laid in a borrowed grave
Through the pity of a friend

Nineteen centuries have come and gone
And today Jesus is the central figure of the human race
And the leader of mankind’s progress
All the armies that have ever marched
All the navies that have ever sailed
All the parliaments that have ever sat
All the kings that ever reigned put together
Have not affected the life of mankind on earth
As powerfully as that one solitary life

To paraphrase Paul Simon, I remain, of Jesus, still fascinated after all these years.

The death that stops the world

April 22, 2011 / / 0 Comments

Every year in my home town of Melbourne, we have a public holiday for a horse race. The Melbourne Cup is the race that stops the nation, and the day is famous for people getting together over a BBQ, having a flutter, and watching the horses go around the track.

As I drove to a church service this morning, my mood was one of stillness and quietness. I felt the solemnity of this holy, holy week when the Passion of Christ brought the whole of creation close to its darkest hour. Then I turned on the radio to see if there would be any discussion of this most holy of days in the Christian calendar. As I flicked through the radio stations, I heard talk of last night’s football, and what the Aussie dollar was doing against the Greenback at the moment. I felt a sense of sadness as I realised that the world doesn’t stop today. Everything continues as if this day is just like any other, and not the commemoration of the most important event in history.

I turned the radio off, wishing that the world would stop and ponder. Cultures need times of ritual, times of being still, times of remembrance. We do it on Anzac Day, as we should, and we all stop on Melbourne Cup Day, as well as Grand Final Day. But a postmodern, post-Christian, culture, no longer has an overarching story to tie itself to. Easter for us is a holiday, a chance to have five days off in a row, a rare luxury in our busy year. People ask me if I’m going away over this time, and I’m glad to say I am not. For me it’s not about that. I want to stay and ponder, stay and remember a bigger story, a story which is the foundation of all our stories. I need this story, and I am convinced our society needs it too. After all, for all the destruction that the church has caused over the centuries, it has more-so been a force for the most incredible good in our Western culture. The life, death and resurrection of Jesus is the foundation of that.

So today, like the disciples, I sit and ponder. But unlike those confused and absolutely bewildered, disillusioned men and women, I know the outcome. As Tony Campolo says, I know that even though it’s Friday, Sunday’s a-comin’. But they didn’t know. They were completely and utterly defeated. Just a week earlier Jesus had ridden into Jerusalem on a donkey, the symbolic action of the Messiah coming in to overthrow the oppression of Rome. Hailed by all and sundry, this was their moment of glory. But a week later, Jesus tells them again that his kingdom is not what they think. No wonder, when their king gets down and starts washing his disciples’ feet, does Peter protest vehemently. Foot-washing was something that only slaves did, not Messiahs. Such an act was completely beneath the dignity of a king, and Peter had to remind Jesus of the fact. But the kingdom of love is one of humble service, of laying down your life for the other. Jesus was providing an example for his followers. Once again, he was practising what he had preached over the previous three years, that whoever humbles themselves will be exalted, that life is found not in our own glory but in the lifting up of others.

Such action is what changes the world, and such action is the way that God meant it to be. For God is a God of life and love, of sacrifice and humility, and we have the privilege of following in this most counter-cultural of ways.

I wish the world would stop today, and not just today, but over the next few days. I wish people, especially Christians, would stop asking me what I am doing over Easter. As if it shouldn’t be obvious. I wish Christians would stay and ponder as well, rather than seeing this as a great chance for a holiday, no different to the rest of the world. But then, as always, I have to look at myself. By staying and pondering, am I claiming the moral high-ground, something which I have no right to do, ever? Am I ignoring the very words and actions of Jesus today, the one who laid down his life and put love of God and neighbour above himself? This is what the death that stops the world challenges me with. God change me, and help me to know anew the magnitude of your sacrifice.

Jesus, communion and the future

April 8, 2011 / / 0 Comments

N.T. Wright says that at communion we must remember it as not just the extension of God’s past (or Jesus’ past) into our present, but also as the arrival of God’s future into the present, for this is what Jesus’ resurrection did. In him the kingdom of God broke into history. After all, Jesus did say that this was the body and blood of the new covenant. Something to think about when we take communion this weekend.

The freedom of loving your enemies

March 21, 2011 / / 0 Comments

More from Richard Rohr on the revolutionary nature of Jesus’ life, and how freeing it actually is:

Shame and honor, and the maintenance of these divisions, were, in fact, primary moral values in the culture Jesus lived in. As a result, required retaliation was the rule in Jewish culture, as it has been in most human cultures. Without it, a man lost all honor and respect.

For Jesus to walk into the midst of that and to say, “Do not retaliate” is to subvert the whole honor/shame system (Luke 6:27-35) in one blow. People who heard this would wonder, “How do I find my self-image, my identity? How would I have any respect?”

Jesus is pointing radically to God: Who you are in God is who you are, nothing more and nothing less. In that free space there are no ups and downs, no dependence upon families and villages and friends for self-esteem, upon wealth or good societal standing for our inner value.

You might think Jesus is asking too much, or being unrealistic; but he is actually freeing you from all of the emotional ups and downs, the ego dramas, that create almost all human violence, self-hatred, and unhappiness.

Adapted from Radical Grace: Daily Meditations, p. 371, day 384

I get frustrated when people say that these type of teachings by Jesus were not what he really meant, are meant in a metaphorical way, and are not to be taken literally. That’s rubbish. Why would he say them if he didn’t want us to live them out? The reason we shy away from teachings like this has more to do with the type of God we believe in than with what God is actually like. We want a God who will not bother us, a God we can make in our own image. It has been said by a few people that God made us in His image and we have been trying to return the favour ever since. Thankfully the liberating gospel of Jesus shows us otherwise.

Rahab the woman made in the image of God

March 8, 2011 / / 0 Comments

As part of an ongoing celebration of the 100th International Women’s Day, I have been asked by some colleagues to say a few words about a significant woman of history. Here is an extended version of what I plan to say.

As a male, I am aware of the responsibility I have to my colleagues to present a woman of history in a way that does justice to their real struggle. And so, of the women that were on our list to choose from, I chose Rahab, a woman we know about through the book of Joshua in the Old Testament.

To give some background, Joshua had been Moses’ right-hand man. So when Moses died, Joshua took over as leader of the Israelites. As they were about to go into the land that God had set aside for them, Joshua sent two spies to Jericho to check it out before the rest of them went in there. That night the spies were taken in by Rahab. She had heard about Israel’s God and was afraid of the mighty deeds of this God and so wanted to do something to help.

When soldiers of the city guard came to look for the spies, Rahab hid them on the roof of her house. After escaping, the spies promised to spare Rahab and her family after taking the city, even if there should be a massacre, if she would mark her house by hanging a red cord out the window. What is interesting in all of this is that Rahab was a prostitute, and some have claimed that the symbol of the red cord is the origin of the “red light district”.

As we think of the type of woman Rahab was, I am reminded that Jesus was known as a person who ate and drank with prostitutes. In Jesus’ day, who you ate with mattered. It spoke highly of who you considered was important. Status and honour was everything. But Jesus didn’t care about that. He was known as one who cared for those that nobody else cared about. And aren’t prostitutes still seen like that in today’s society? But not in God’s society. Contrary to the way we would think of a prostitute, Rahab is included in the genealogy in Matthew’s gospel as an ancestor of Jesus, she is mentioned as one of the heroes of the faith in Hebrews, and she is given a special mention in the letter of James as an example of faith resulting in action. People like Rahab matter to God.

I believe that men in general need to apologise to women in general for the treatment many of us have inflicted on them, in all sorts of ways. And so, as a male I want to offer my own apology for that. I apologise for the times in my life when I have thought of and treated women as less than men.

If you consider someone like Rahab today, the great injustice about women in the oldest profession is that they are the ones who have the stigma attached to them, but the truth is that prostitution is a profession driven by men. And as far as using prostitutes goes, thousands of men visit prostitutes every week in my city. And I heard a statistic some years ago that said that 25% of prostitutes try to kill themselves. Prostitution is considered by many to be simply trading in commodities, to use a financial term. There is no relationship, no care, and no love. These women, like Rahab, are someone’s daughter, someone’s partner, and someone’s mother – human beings made in the image of God.

Women have suffered terribly at the hands of men. And while I can sympathise all we want at the mistreatment of women, I can never put myself in the position of a woman simply because I am not one. The nearest I ever came to relating to the experience of women in this regard was about 15 years ago when I was doing some volunteer work in a mainly gay environment. I remember being looked up and down by some of these men, and my immediate thought was “back off!” It made me realise the sense of violation that women must feel every time a bloke ogles them and sees them as an object.

The woman who hid the spies in Jericho is not known to Jesus as Rahab the prostitute. She is known to him as Rahab the incredible woman made in the image of God. Her profession does not define her. This woman, considered a slut in her society as she would be in ours, is a heroine in the eyes of God. Jesus warned the religious leaders that the prostitutes were going into the kingdom of God ahead of them because they believed the message about Jesus when the religious leaders – the church of that time – didn’t. I pray that I will not be like the religious leaders and that, as a man, I will treat women as Jesus does – with dignity and full equality – as people made in the image of God.

What did Jesus really mean when he said you must be born again?

February 27, 2011 / / 3 Comments

I reluctantly call myself a born-again Christian. I say ‘reluctantly’ because of the huge cultural baggage such a label brings, not to mention the likelihood of being written off by all and sundry outside the church as soon as you give yourself such a label. But I still have to say that I am a born-again Christian because to deny it would be denying something very deep about who I am. I know what it is to be reborn of the Holy Spirit, I surrender my life to God each day to do with as He wills, and I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, that He died for my sins and that he was physically resurrected. But if someone asked me how I would describe myself in terms of my Christian faith, I would definitely not refer to myself as a born-again Christian. I would much prefer to say that I am a follower of Jesus.

It’s interesting that evangelicals like me get so hung up on being born again. Why is that so? Jesus mentions the new birth twice in the Gospels, and that is in the same conversation with Nicodemus in John 3. But Jesus says “follow me” 87 times in the Gospels, and the kingdom of God is mentioned 110 times. Why don’t we get as hung up on the importance of following Jesus or about finding out what the kingdom of God is about? I suspect it is because we have a wrong interpretation of what Jesus’ whole message was.

Before we explore this further though, a little clarification is required. We need to clarify what describes someone who says they are a born-again Christian. To most people outside of Christian circles, a ‘born-again Christian’ is someone who is probably into converting people, who doesn’t smoke, drink or have sex before marriage, and who is known as being judgmental. And while that label is unfortunately all that a lot of us Christians are known for, being born again is of course much more than that.

In evangelical circles, talk about being born again has to do primarily with individual salvation. It is about a personal relationship with Jesus that assures you of salvation, which more than anything else means going to heaven when you die. The date and time you are born again refers to the time this personal relationship with Jesus starts. It is when you make a commitment to Him and give your heart to Him. On the whole, it means you have accepted that God loves you, that you are a hell-deserving sinner in need of salvation, that Jesus died for your sins, and that you have repented and accepted Him as your personal Saviour and Lord. These steps are otherwise known as the ‘four spiritual laws.’

It is worth saying too that, in much of the United States, saying you are born again guarantees you a majority of the Christian vote, so it is a very politically astute thing to do. But that of course presupposes a certain cynicism on the part of this author. The fact is that most U.S. Presidents who have claimed to be born again have in fact had a genuine faith in Christ, despite what many of their policies have been. Jimmy Carter was the first in the 1970s, soon after Chuck Colson’s book Born Again was released. Since then, Ronald Reagan and George W Bush have expressed their personal faith, as has Barack Obama. In the latter case though, there is less talk about his being born again than about him simply having a genuine faith in Christ (Sadly there is also a significant proportion of the US population that are convinced that Obama is a Muslim – something to do with the fact that he spent some of his childhood in Indonesia – the largest Muslim nation on the planet – and his middle name is Hussein, something Christian fundamentalists are quick to point out). So, whatever you think of their politics, US Presidents from both sides have expressed a genuine faith in Christ.

But it doesn’t just go back to the US. John Wesley preached a sermon on the new birth in the 18th century, and a Menno Simons spoke about it in the 16th century. It seems that the new birth has been an issue that Christians have talked about for many centuries. And why not? After all, Jesus did talk about it. Even though it was by no means his most important topic, the fact is he did say it, and therefore we have an obligation to take it seriously.

So having said that, let me add that I believe in the new birth. Because Jesus said it, I take it seriously. I believe in being born again. The problem I have though is that what Jesus said has been so misinterpreted over the years that it has caused much confusion and tension both within and outside of Christendom.

So what was it that Jesus was talking about that night in his conversation with Nicodemus that is recorded in John 3? To answer this question honestly, it is absolutely imperative that we remember that we are reading about an event that happened 2,000 years ago in a completely different culture to our own between people with completely different worldviews to our own. I cannot stress enough that when we come to the Bible, we simply must take what we read in context. That is why a simple reading of this passage on its own and without taking into account the context of the conversation between Jesus and Nicodemus, is fraught with danger. It is not too extreme a statement to say that taking verses out of context like this is how heresies start. As has been said many times, a text taken out of context is a pretext. Or, as someone else has said, a text taken out of context is a sure sign you’re being conned!

In our Western culture, we look at life through the lens of individualism, and so, as mentioned above, we see the message of Jesus as being primarily about a personal relationship with God. But this is not how people in 1st century Palestine viewed life. In fact their worldview was pretty much the total opposite of ours today. For them life was all about living in community. Hospitality was a huge part of life. Identity meant who you were in relation to the group you belonged to and had nothing at all to do with ‘finding yourself’ or any of the nonsense that we hear today in many churches about improving your self-esteem. What this means for understanding the conversation between Jesus and Nicodemus about being born again therefore has enormous implications for how we understand the Gospel, because it is on this little verse in John 3:3 that much of our understanding of the Gospel is based.

Merrill Kitchen, former Principal of the Churches of Christ Theological College in Melbourne, and someone who has led many tours to Israel and the Palestinian Territories for many years, reminds us that, contrary to our general understanding, Jesus’ words to Nicodemus, “you must be born again”, were actually directed to Nicodemus’ whole community. The literal translation is “All of you must be born from above”. The main point of their conversation was not so much about the new birth, but about who was now included in God’s kingdom. Kitchen goes on to say that the strong ethic behind the command to ‘be born again’ or ‘born from above’ is about redefining who ‘the chosen people’ are. No longer is being a child of God a matter of national identity. Remember that Paul says that in Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek. Remember too that Nicodemus was a Pharisee, a respected Jew, so hearing Jesus say that God’s chosen ones also now include anyone who wants to be included would have been shocking news for him. It was a radical change to everything he would have grown up with and had ingrained into him.

Jesus’ conversation with Nicodemus also needs to be read in conjunction with the rest of the gospels so we can see their overall message. And the overall message is clearly that, with the coming of Jesus, everything has changed. Here was someone who ate and drank with despised tax collectors and ‘sinners’ in a society in which who you ate with mattered enormously. Here was someone who hung out with the poor and outcast in a society in which to be poor was a clear sign of your sinfulness. And here was someone who touched and healed lepers in a society in which such people were unclean and to touch them made you unclean as well. Everything was turned upside down with the coming of Jesus. Those who were last would now be first, and those who were first would now be last. This is the main point of the coming of Jesus, not whether or not you remember praying the ‘sinners prayer’ and that being the day you were assured of a ticket to a place in the sky when you die.

In Jesus the kingdom of God has broken into history. It is a kingdom of love, justice, peace and mercy – all characteristics of the very God of Jesus himself. As Scot McKnight says in his recent book One.Life, while the church talks about accepting Christ, Jesus talks about following him, and while the church aims at getting people to heaven when they die, Jesus aims at getting heaven actively involved in history now. We have seriously misread much of the message of Jesus, and this includes his message about what it means to be born again.

A useful illustration of this misinterpretation is told by Steve Chalke in his book The Lost Message of Jesus. Chalke relays a story in which a small group had gathered one evening to talk about how they became Christians. As they shared their stories, a common theme began to emerge. Each of them could recall a specific day in their lives when they had prayed a prayer and ‘given their heart to Jesus’. That was the day they claimed they had been born again. Then one lady in the group dropped a bombshell by saying she had always been a Christian. This caused quite some scepticism in the group. How could she have always been a Christian? There must have been a point at which she ‘crossed the line’. But she said no, she had grown up in a Christian household and had always had a love for Jesus. As she continued to share, her love for the Lord was obvious to the others. Their worldview had been shattered.

Now what this story is not saying is that there is no need for people to be born again. And this story is also not saying that this woman was not born again. It was clear that she had a passion for Jesus and had indeed been born from above. It was clear that the Holy Spirit was in her heart. The fact that her experience did not conform to that of the others in the group did not negate it one bit.

The experience of this lady could be related by many thousands of genuine followers of Jesus. I can somewhat relate to it as well. I too made a ‘decision for Christ’ when I was about 15. At the time I had a Sunday School teacher who was a used car dealer, and he would turn up at the church every week with a different car. As I was his only student most of the time, he and I would sit in his car and he would teach me about Jesus. One day, after what must have been a year or two of meeting like this, he asked me if I accepted Jesus as my personal Lord and Saviour. Having grown up in the church I just said “yeah”, as if it was not such a big question. But as soon as I said this, his eyes widened, a huge smile broke out across his face and he shook my hand profusely, saying how wonderful it was that I had just accepted Christ. Of course I had no idea what all the fuss was about. In my mind I had just affirmed something that I had always thought was true of me. Things fell into place a bit more for me a couple of weeks later when someone else at the church said to me that they had heard I had ‘made a commitment’ recently. Realising that he must have been referring to the strange moment in the car with my Sunday School teacher, again I just said “yeah” (being a pretty shy teenager my vocabulary wasn’t the greatest!).

It was only after these events that I went home and thought that now that I had done this thing I suppose I had better start reading the Bible. And so began a love affair with God that has waxed and waned over the years and has become deeper than ever over the last 5 years or so.

My story would be similar to many others, perhaps to yours. And while I would say that I was definitely born again around that time, I’m not sure that it was that day in the car with my Sunday School teacher. Maybe it was, because something definitely changed in me from soon after that. Up until then I hadn’t taken seriously the claims of Jesus. But after that, and when I started reading the Bible, my whole worldview began to change and I wasn’t the same person.

Whether I became born again that day in the car or whether it was some other time, the fact is that as I began to surrender my life to God each day, something shifted deep within me. For me it was a process. You see, I think we need to be born again every day. It is not just a once-off event. Being born again is about conversion, conversion to the way of Jesus. It is becoming more Christlike as we submit our lives to Him. Jim Wallis of Sojourners, in his book The Call to Conversion, says that conversion is a daily process of being moulded into the image of Jesus. For me, it is only as I surrender my life to God each day and ask God’s will and not mine be done for that day, that I live the life that I am meant to live, the life that I am convinced that God wants me to live. And it is a life lived in relationship with others. It is not a life lived in isolation, as if it was just me and God. Following Jesus is only done in community with others who are also on the journey, the journey from self to God. It is the type of life that wants to include and not exclude, that wants to love and not just be loved. And it is a life of humility that, as Ross Langmead says, realises that what we know is just a glimpse of what there is to know.

Being born again involves a daily dying to self, taking up our cross and following Jesus on the costly, sacrificial way to life. It is a journey of constant searching, of constant discovery, and it is a journey that never ends. In Jesus the kingdom has come. Through the life, death and resurrection of this man, everything has changed. Salvation is not just for a chosen few anymore; it is open to everyone. All are welcome at the banquet table. It was this that was the point of Jesus’ conversation with Nicodemus. Yes Nicodemus had to be born again, but that was a peripheral issue. What Jesus was saying to the learned Pharisee was that it was not just Israel that was looked upon favourably by God anymore. It had nothing to do with who you were and how ‘holy’ you were. Anyone and everyone could now come in and feast at God’s table. How often we become like the Pharisees, thinking that we are ‘in’ and those who haven’t made a definite commitment and can recall the day and time it happened are ‘out’.

If Jesus had wanted us to be so focused on whether or not people are born again according to our faulty definition of it, I think he would have mentioned it more than twice. But his clear emphasis was the kingdom of God. When Jesus came into contact with people and they were healed, their healing was not just physical; it was social and personal as well. In Jesus the kingdom of God was among them. We do need to be born again, but that means nothing if we are not following in the footsteps of the Son of God, loving the loveless, walking with the poor, welcoming the stranger, visiting the prisoner, and reaching out to all with the empowerment of the Holy Spirit in the name of Jesus.

Am I a born again Christian? You bet I am, but only in the sense that Jesus meant it, not as most evangelicals define it. The fact that I don’t pinpoint it to a single day and time doesn’t mean anything. What matters is that I am inclusive as Jesus is, that I surrender my whole life to Jesus every day and seek to follow Him, to go where He sends me, and to walk where He walks, with the poor, with the outcast, with the ones that nobody else wants to know. In the words of the old song, I want Jesus to walk with me. I need Jesus to walk with me. I want this world to be a better place and I want to work with God to make it so, to help bring the kingdom of God on earth as it is in heaven.

Jesus’ message to Nicodemus about being born again was a radical message of inclusiveness. It doesn’t matter what type of life you may have lived in the past. It doesn’t matter whether you are a top-of-the-town millionaire or a cleaner at the local school. Those status symbols don’t matter in God’s kingdom. There is no difference between the person who has used and abused people their whole life and the one who has grown up in a Christian home and never smoked a cigarette. In God’s kingdom there are no favourites. This is what Jesus was saying to Nicodemus and it is the life that He calls us to as well. God help me to live such a life.

The line that runs through us all

February 21, 2011 / / 0 Comments

Not long ago I believed that the root of our problems in life stem partly from the fact that we don’t really believe we’re loved, that if we had a sense of who we are as people loved by the Creator of the universe, it would revolutionise our hearts. And I still believe that. Love does indeed revolutionise our hearts. Martin Luther King was right. Love is the most powerful force in the universe, and only love can drive out the self-loathing in our hearts.

When you know you are loved you want to do good – most of the time. But having said the above, I also see now the reality of human sinfulness. Listening to U2’s The First Time recently, I realised (for the first time!) how much I can relate to it. Years ago, having tasted that the Lord is good, I then went off and did things my own way again. I “left by the back door and threw away the key” as the song goes. I used to struggle with how anyone could know the love of God so deeply and then reject it. But of course it’s possible. How could I be so naive to be so surprised that it happens?

There are deep reasons in the human psyche as to why we make certain decisions in life. There are reasons of hurt and deep abuse in many people that cause them to be unable to trust at depth, even when shown the greatest love. When shown such great love, they believe it is too good to be true. Like St Peter of old when Jesus gave him and his mates a bountiful catch of fish, the great apostle – confronted by the unbelievable generosity of a God who gives without conditions – cannot face the good news that God would choose even him. Doesn’t he know how sinful I am? In Peter’s broken mind it is too good to be true. At that moment he coudn’t believe that He was loved that much, that he was thought of that highly.

But as much as we are victims we are also agents. Having made the courageous decision to follow Jesus and come to know a life and love beyond his wildest comprehension, he then deserts his Master at the hour of his greatest need. Peter is a man I can relate to. He showed the potential for the greatest devotion and yet also showed the greatest act of cowardice. How could this be so in one man? I think Alexander Solzhenitsyn nails it better than anyone I know of:

“the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either, but right through every human heart, and through all human hearts. This line shifts. Inside us, it oscillates with the years. Even within hearts overwhlemed by evil, one small bridgehead of good is retained; and even in the best of all hearts, there remains a small corner of evil.”

How I can relate to that. Deep in my heart there is the propensity for both the greatest evil and the greatest good. For me, this highlights even more the importance of maintaining a spiritual life of closeness to Jesus, of passion to be Christlike. I have seen the consequences of destructive choices I have made and I don’t want to go there again. Yet at the same time, those same things still tempt me.

I have found that the more I surrender my will to God, the more I become the person I really want to be. If I don’t surrender, I will hover between the good and the evil, and I will find myself tormented by that eternal question, ‘who am I?’ Am I the person who is friendly and genuinely wants to do good, or am I the person who secretly wants to use people and take what I can get regardless of the consequences? The closer I stay to God, the more I am spared the torture of that hellish question. Thankfully, the lyrics of The First Time hold true:

I have a brother
When I’m a brother in need
I spend my whole time running
He spends his running after me

This is the prodigal God. We spend our lives running from Him, and he pursues us, the Hound of Heaven in hot pursuit. And little by little we can surrender and say we’ve had enough. We run up the white flag and submit to the One who gives us life. Little by little, if we are willing, He reveals our defects to us, and little by precious little we hand it over for Him to do with it as He wills. Jesus said “come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light” (Matthew 11:28). God how I need that. God how I want that today. I pray that tomorrow I will as well.

Jesus and resistance

February 11, 2011 / / 0 Comments

I found a great quote recently in Jayakumar Christian’s God of the Empty-Handed. It is from Walter Wink:

“Jesus, in short, abhors both passivity and violence. He articulates…a way by which evil can be opposed without being mirrored, the oppressor resisted without being emulated, and the enemy neutralised without being destroyed.”

Jesus is all about resistance, but it is always nonviolent. The fact we must get deep into our hearts is that Jesus is never about being walked over. Love is never about being trampled on. It is an active walking with Jesus in submission to God. Injustice is to be resisted because it is not of God. But, again, the resistance is always to be nonviolent. If that means having someone strike you on the cheek so be it; we offer them the proverbial other cheek as well (for a proper explanation of what Jesus was actually referring to when he said to turn the other cheek, and how his first century hearers would have understood it, see Steve Chalke’s The Lost Message of Jesus).

Many of us have grown up in churches where to be Christian is to be ‘nice’. But as Dan Allender has said, Jesus said we would be known by our love, not by our manners. Love always seeks the good of the other, and often that means being nice. but if you’re anything like me, your niceness will often be about protecting yourself from possible rejection. It will be more about people-pleasing than loving. Love doesn’t worry about what other people will think. It just goes ahead and does good. That’s why Jesus would let no one, not even Herod, get in the way of his work for the kingdom. He was not going to be sidelined by threats from the powerful.

It is not easy living the Christian life. We are constantly in tension with the ways of power and status all around. Sometimes people will see Christ in us and other times they will not. Sometimes we wil come across as the fragrance of life and other times we will come across as the fragrance of death. John Smith said once that a good measure of your walk with Christ is to look at who your enemies are. If your enemies are the powerful and those who exploit, then you will most likely be walking in the way of Jesus. But if your enemies are the poor, the weak, and the people often called ‘nobodies’, you are almost certainly not following the Jesus of the gospels. God give me courage to resist that which is evil and the humility to submit to You.

Blessed are the cheese makers? Misquoting the Beatitudes

February 6, 2011 / / 0 Comments

The Beatitudes, those sayings of Jesus that make up part of his Sermon on the Mount, are the heart of his teaching on the kingdom of God. But I would guess that whether you are a believer or not, you would probably have rarely, if indeed ever, have heard a sermon on these most famous of Jesus’ sayings.

Throughout the 2,000 years of Christian history, there have been few people who have really taken the Beatitudes seriously as ethical guidelines. Dave Andrews offers a reason for this. He says that the Beatitudes are rarely taught in churches. And when they have been taught, more than likely people will hear that they are not to be taken literally because they are too unrealistic and can never work in the ‘real world’. This is such a common response amongst preachers that one of the most famous movie lines of all time takes it off. Check out this clip:

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However when you look at the people over the years who have taken the Beatitudes literally, people like Gandhi and Martin Luther King, these are the people who have made a real difference in the world and lived the Beatitudes out in their own lives. Other people who have lived them out in different ways have been Nelson Mandela, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Vaclav Havel, Lech Walesa, and Oscar Romero.

However it is not just the Beatitudes that have been misquoted and misinterpreted. The whole Sermon on the Mount has been taken this way, to the extent that it is pretty much ignored by many Christians. There is a scene in the movie Gandhi which expresses this in a way that brings shame on the Christian church. When Gandhi meets clergyman Charlie Andrews, he asks Andrews to walk with him, and pretty soon they are both faced with a real life situation in which the reality of the Sermon on the Mount is put to the test. As they are about to walk down a laneway (remembering that this is in 1890s South Africa, when apartheid is in full swing), they are both confronted by three white young men who pour scorn on the fact that a white man is walking with a coloured man such as Gandhi. Andrews quickly suggests they perhaps go a different way, but Gandhi reminds him that the New Testament says that if someone strikes you on the right cheek, to offer him the left as well. The Christian clergyman then displays the attitude that we have seen too often in the Western church: he stutteringly tries to explain that Jesus didn’t really mean these things literally; they are more to be taken metaphorically. Gandhi though, says he is not so sure, explaining that what Jesus meant was that we must display courage, and in doing that, we will earn the respect of the oppressor but also not be pushed aside. So, as they approach the young men, the larger one tells Gandhi in no uncertain terms to get out of the neighbourhood. As he does so, he is pulled up by his mother who asks from the floor above their house what he is up to. As his mother tells the young man to get on to work, Gandhi looks him intently in the eyes and calmly exclaims, “you will find there is room for us all.”

What this exchange shows is that the Beatitudes are not some fluffy teachings of Jesus that are fine in an ideal world but can never be applied in real life. To the contrary, when lived out in the here and now, they change the world. The Beatitudes take enormous courage to put into practise. They are not to be taken metaphorically at all. Nor are they, as those on the more liberal side sometimes say, to be taken as statements by which we attain a salvation by works. Neither position takes Jesus seriously enough. And I reckon that’s why everyone knows how many commandments there are but most Christians wouldn’t know how many Beatitudes there are (there are 8).

In this scene from Gandhi, the Indian leader – the non-Christian – lives out what Jesus said. The problem for Gandhi though was that he so respected Jesus that, as John Dear points out, he could never understand why Christians didn’t obey their Master. For over fifty years, Gandhi asked Christian friends. “Why do Christians go about saying ‘Lord, Lord,’ but not do the will of Jesus? Why don’t they obey the Sermon on the Mount, reject war, practice nonviolence and love their enemies?”

Gandhi once said that the Sermon on the Mount was the greatest teaching that has ever been given, but he decided not to become a Christian mainly because of Christians. Something else he said, which is just a great an indictment on us in the church, was that everyone knows what Jesus meant in the Sermon on the Mount except Christians. I would qualify that last statement and say ‘Western Christians’. Because for the first 300 years of the Christian church, the Sermon on the Mount was its guiding ethical framework. And look at the impact the church had in those days. It was only when Constantine became Emperor and Christianity became the official State religion of the Roman Empire and aligned itself with the powers, that it suddenly became impractical to oppose the State when it came to such teachings as ‘blessed are the peacemakers’, ‘love your enemy’ and ‘do good to those who persecute you.’ We have so lost sight of the message of the Sermon on the Mount that we now see bumper stickers like the one below reminding us of the obvious:

While there has been a shift in the church over the last 20 years or so (and the above bumper sticker was actually from a church in the US) sadly not a lot has changed since the time of Constantine. The church today generally lives by a different set of ‘Beatitudes’, as brilliantly expressed by Joe Abbey-Colborne:

Blessed are the well off and those

…with ready answers for every spiritual question;

…they have it all.

Blessed are the comfortable;

…they shall avoid grief.

Blessed are the self-sufficient;

…they wait for nothing, they have everything they want,

…and they have it now.

Blessed are those who are not troubled by

…the injustice experienced by others;

…they are content with realistic expectations.

Blessed are the ones who gain the upper hand;

…they take full advantage of their advantages.

Blessed are those with a solid public image

…and a well hidden agenda;

…they are never exposed and see people

…in a way that suits their purposes.

Blessed are those who can bully others into agreement;

…they shall be called empire builders.

Blessed are those who can point to someone else

…who is a worse person than they are,

…they will always look good by comparison.

Blessed are you when people praise you, give you preferential treatment, and flatter you because they think you’re so great. Rejoice and be exceedingly glad, because it doesn’t get any better than this.

This is the way our church has always made celebrities of the best and brightest.

As with anything like this, I need to ensure first and foremost that I am not falling into the trap of living such a smug life. The fact is that I still tend to spiritualise the Beatitudes, living as if they are good aspirations which could not work in real life. But Jesus lived them out. At the end of the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 7, it says that the crowds were impressed with his teaching because he taught as one who had authority. That means they saw that he lived out what he taught.

So let’s have a look at these troubling sayings of Jesus:

Blessed are the poor in spirit – This one has had a few different interpretations over the years. It is one of the main ones we have tended to ‘spiritualise’ because Matthew’s version adds ‘in spirit’ whereas Luke’s version just says ‘Blessed are the poor’ (Luke 6:20). This beatitude has generally been seen to be referring to those who see themselves as inadequate, whose only hope is in God. And the fact is that these ones are actually the outcast. Listen to what Athol Gill says about this:

“For Jesus…the kingdom of God belongs especially to the poor, the powerless, the outcasts, and the dispossessed – all those who have no standing within the community. Those who count for nothing in the eyes of their fellows are the very ones to whom the kingdom of God is promised. They come empty-handed, with no power or position of their own. Their only hope is in God, and that hope will not go unrewarded.”

So it happens that the poor in spirit are also the outcast and marginalised, those with no power or privilege. And these are always the materially poor. But notice that Jesus is not saying they are blessed because they are poor. This is not about having a poverty mentality. There is no glory in wanting to be poor, UNLESS God has specifically called you to a life of poverty. They are blessed because even though they are poor, in the kingdom of God they are loved.

Blessed are those who mourn – Dave Andrews points out that God does not bless those who are happy with the present state of affairs. He blesses those who mourn. Ridley College lecturer Dave Fuller talked once about having a holy dissatisfaction with life. You don’t have to look very hard at the world to see that things are not good. Deep down we all have a sense that something is wrong with everything.

Blessed are the meek – The main thing we need to keep in mind here is that meek does not mean weak. Being meek in Jesus’ day actually referred to the taming of a wild stallion, meaning those who have powerful emotions but who have them under control. This can mean channeling your energy in surrender to God and God’s will, not being out of control and running your life how you think it should be run.

Blessed are those who seek righteousness – This should really be translated those who seek justice, as that is what the original Greek translates to, but I think both fit, because righteousness can be seen in an individual sense which is like being pure in heart, but justice is seen more in terms of social justice. Jesus sought out justice for those who were being oppressed by the Romans and the religious leaders. He said they were of the same status as everyone else. And those who seek justice in the same way as Jesus did are blessed.

Blessed are the merciful – Jesus says blessed are those who seek justice (previous beatitude) but many who are into social justice are merciless. There is a constant anger about them. I’ve seen them at peace marches. There is not a lot of gentleness shown by these people at these marches. More problematically though, I see it in myself. I very quickly become resentful at politicians who go against what I think is right. But Jesus says ‘blessed are the merciful.’ Justice and mercy are often linked throughout the Bible. An example is another classic passage from the Old Testament, Micah 6:8 – do justice, love mercy and walk humbly with your God.

Blessed are the pure in heart – This beatitude refers to those who work for what is right but don’t bring attention to themselves. I saw a coffee mug once that had written on it, ‘integrity is doing what is right when nobody is watching.’

The pure in heart are those who want to be pure, not just in their actions, but in their thoughts as well. That’s why Jesus told the disciples and the crowds to not just not kill people, but that anyone who hates has done the same thing as kill their enemy. Jesus actually intensified the norms of the culture to their true meaning. It is about integrity. That’s why he also said that when you give, don’t let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, and when you pray, go into your room and lock the door, because God sees what you’re doing. It’s not about showing everyone how righteous you are.

It needs to be pointed out here too that the Beatitudes are very confronting statements. To say in this case that purity is what’s on the inside was a profoundly politically subversive statement to make by Jesus. For to say that purity is a matter of the heart was to deny that it is a matter of observing the purity system that the religious leaders obeyed in those days. The purity system was a strict code designed to exclude ‘outsiders’. It was all about how good you looked. But Jesus turned that right around and said that it is actually about what you’re like on the inside. And the Pharisees didn’t like that one bit because they knew that he was saying to them that they were rotten on the inside. I need to constantly be aware of this to ensure that I am not being a ‘Pharisee’ myself in my own life by doing apparently godly things which actually exclude others.

Blessed are the peacemakers – This is another beatitude that Dave Andrews has some good points to make on. He explains that Jesus says that only committed peacemakers have a legitimate claim to be called children of God. And notice too that it is not saying ‘blessed are the peace keepers’; it is blessed are the peace makers; those who actively and intentionally work for peace between people. Teachings like this highlight loudly and clearly that, even under the ‘just war’ principles put forward by Ambrose and Augustine when Christianity became the State religion, our current wars simply do not fit that criteria (are you beginning to see how the Beatitudes are relevant to the real 21st century world?).

Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake – It is very important to note that this beatitude does not say ‘blessed are the persecuted’. There is no merit in suffering for suffering’s sake. It is about suffering for doing what is right, as Peter says in his letters later on in the New Testament. Just as I mentioned before that it is not about having a poverty mentality, it is also not about having suffering mentality or a martyr complex.

If we are to take the Beatitudes seriously, these sayings of Jesus call us to change ourselves. Dave Andrews says that ‘to quote the Beatitudes is religious, but to act on them is revolutionary’. Before calling on others to change, we have to change, ourselves. As we live them out, we change. The Beatitudes are about conversion – conversion to the way of Jesus. This is why the earliest Christians were called followers of the Way, because they lived out the way of Jesus, and literally thousands joined their ranks because they saw that these people were different. They cared when others didn’t. They were prepared to suffer for what was right, and they took outrageous risks of love when others didn’t.

The Beatitudes are the framework of the Sermon on the Mount, and the Sermon on the Mount is the framework of Jesus’ teaching about the kingdom of God. Remember that Jesus talks about the kingdom of God 110 times in the gospels, and he talks about being born again twice. Just something to remember for those of us who go on and on about the need to be born again while not stressing the real message of Jesus (and here I must stress that I am NOT denigrating being born again. I believe in the new birth. It is essential for a relationship with Jesus. And while Jesus mentioned it only twice, the fact is he did mention it and therefore it is to be taken very seriously. I am just saying that if we are to truly follow Jesus, we need to stress the kingdom of God much more than being born again, just as Jesus did).

In Jesus the kingdom of God has come into history. The Beatitudes are Jesus’ announcement of this coming kingdom, a time when those who mourn will be comforted, when those who hunger and thirst for justice will finally have found what they are looking for, to quote the U2 song, and when the merciful will receive mercy.

This is the upside down kingdom, when the first will be last and the last will be first (Luke 13:30), a kingdom which will finally be consummated, as we have described in that wonderful passage in Revelation, when the final coming together of heaven and earth happens and there will be no more tears or pain or death (Revelation 21:1-5). That is when all things will be made new. But here in Matthew’s gospel, with the coming of Jesus, the kingdom of God has broken into history and that is what Jesus is announcing in the Beatitudes. In him, in his life through his works of compassion, his healing, his including of those who have always been excluded, the kingdom has come. It has broken into history through this man.

So the Beatitudes are not about us. They are not just a set of values. They are about Jesus and who he is and what he is doing. This is the good news, that you who are broken, you who are last now, you will be first. It is the great reversal, and it has begun to happen in Jesus. It is the beginning of heaven coming to earth, which we see finally completed in Revelation 21 when heaven and earth come together fully and completely, never to be separate again, to make God’s consummated kingdom, where the characteristics of this kingdom reflect the character of the king – just, loving, peace, reconciling and restoring. These are all what God is like, and so it will be what life in the kingdom is like when it will finally be completed at the end of all things.

In Jesus the future has arrived; it is here. Remember that Jesus says ‘blessed ARE the poor in spirit’, not ‘blessed will be’; ‘blessed ARE you who mourn’, not ‘blessed will be’. You are blessed now, but it is not the type of blessing we often refer to in our churches. It is the blessing of the kingdom of God, of following Jesus and being drawn closer to Him. The kingdom has come, and we are called to live by its values, reflecting the king, being merciful, doing justice, loving our enemies, and living with integrity – being pure in heart, not just in outward appearance. We live like this in anticipation of the day when all things will be made new, when our hope will be made complete, when justice reigns, when peace reigns, and when love reigns, in our hearts, in our thoughts, and in the world. Amen.

Truth in a postmodern culture

January 25, 2011 / / 0 Comments

Showing Christ to be relevant in a postmodern, largely secular society has its share of conundrums. I will say upfront that I am not an expert on postmodernism; the following are simply my observations of being a follower of Jesus in 21st century Melbourne, as well as some insights picked up from other followers on the way.

I have a deep conviction, and in fact I can say – and I understand that this will seem like an incredibly arrogant assertion to make in a postmodern culture – that I know that Jesus is the answer to the question of life, of what it’s all about and how we deal with it. He is the only one who delivers on the life that humanity is after. This conviction has been borne out of years of surrendering my life to this Christ, asking for His will and not my own to be done in my life each day. As C.S. Lewis said, “I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.” You can’t prove that by the logic of reason, and that is one of the benefits of bringing across Jesus today. Many people are not seeking ‘proofs’ these days. As John Smith has said, you could convince someone that Jesus really did rise from the dead, but they could at the same time turn around and say, ‘so what?!’.

People want to know that Christianity works. But whilst it is important to bring that across, it is equally important to remember that Christianity isn’t true because it works; it works because it’s true. Again, this will come across to many people as another seemingly arrogant assertion to make. But I learnt from Rikk Watts some time ago, and I agree with him, that truth is something different to what I had always thought. In these postmodern times where what’s true for you doesn’t have to be true for me, I believe we have forgotten what the definition of truth is. I believe we have been looking at it the wrong way. We are still caught in the trap of our post-Enlightenment thinking that sees truth as a concept. But the Scriptures never describe truth in such a way. Have a read through John’s gospel and you will see it. Truth is personal. The truth has come to us in a Person, the person of none other than God incarnate. A concept is impersonal, and truth is not that.

When talking about truth we have been asking the wrong question. Ever since Pilate asked Jesus that great existential question, ‘what is truth?’ (John 18:38), we have thought of truth as a concept. But John tells us that truth is a person. Jesus said I am the way, the truth and the life (John 14:6). And John in his gospel says that the law was given through Moses, and grace and truth came through Jesus Christ (John 1:17). This Truth is the great ‘I Am’, a designation that the Jewish hearers of Jesus would have instantly recognised as nothing other than the outrageous statement of someone who is claiming to be the living God. No wonder they tried to kill him. How dare he make such claims in front of those who claimed to have a monopoly on truth!

I wonder how society would react if He made those claims today. I don’t think it would be much different to 2,000 years ago. We live in interesting times. While we live in a time when modernity seems a relic of the past, there are still strong glimpses of it. People know integrity when they see it. You will not meet many people have major problems with the church who will also write Jesus off. As Dan Kimball has noted in his book of the same title, ‘they like Jesus but not the church. And, as N.T. Wright says, “we generally know deep down what is good. When we see someone living out a Christian life, we don’t ask ourselves if it’s good or not; we just wish there were more people like that around.”

Throughout the ages, from modern days to these postmodern days, actions still speak loudest. If we want to find out whether or not Christian faith is relevant in the 21st century, we need only look at the actions of those Christians who are walking their talk. The fact is that Christians have had a profound impact on society. I have written elsewhere of the massive contributions that people of faith have made over the centuries. It is that more than anything that has convinced people of the reality of God in the world.

If we want to see what Scriptures speak best to a postmodern culture, I think the relevance of Christ today is seen most profoundly in those magnificent words of Colossians 1:15-20. This is what brings it all together for me. Check it out:

The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. And he is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy. For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.

I think this is one of the most radical passages we can think of for the 21st century. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. And, contrary to popular church opinion, God did not make everything for our glory. Colossians tells us that it was all made for Him. The creation and all that is in it was not made for us. We don’t own it. We are stewards, and stewards take care of what they have. If the church would only grasp this and get over its mind-numbing superficiality and obsession with growth and success, we would be more of a fragrance of life than a fragrance of sameness and conformity. And we would actually have something powerful to say to a society that is drowning.

We need to be more aware that society has largely given up on modernity and its failed promises of the good life and inevitable progress. But, as alluded to above, people still want to believe in something bigger. Witness the extraordinary outpouring of hope in Barack Obama in 2008. It’s interesting that such an outpouring of emotion and hope occurred in a country with Christian roots, nominal though its Christianity generally is now. It has largely been overtaken by a consumerism that has taken it to the eve of destruction, as Barry McGuire put it so many years ago.

In such a consumerist society, with so much choice, we suffer from choice anxiety. When our only commitment to life is the commitment to – in that postmodern catchphrase – ‘keep our options open’, we become confused people. We become terrified of missing out because we’re addicted to experience. As a result of this we become wired, unable to settle with being committed to something for the long term. That’s why I think Facebook has taken off like it has. It is a service that both reflects and shapes our times. On the other hand, as I have said previously, it is why marriage is so good for the soul: it’s about a commitment for life to one person.

When we ‘keep our options open’, we rarely take up any of those options and we miss out on much of the joy of being alive, of standing for something, of living with purpose. The line from a John Mellencamp song from the 1980s rings true today more than ever: “if you don’t stand for something you’ll fall for anything.”

Having said all this, some thinkers, notably Mark Sayers, believe we are moving away from postmodernity back into something more akin to modernity. Sayers adds though that while there has been a decline in the concept of postmodernity in the wake of 9/11 and the rise of the ‘New Atheism’ with its modernist catchcry of ‘celebrating reason’, the reality of postmodernity is being lived out by average people in the suburbs. Consider this comment by Sayers:

“Postmodernity is seen most clearly in the ethically incoherent lives lived by Western people. Its beat of relativism is heard most clearly in the contradictory hedonistic/altruistic, nihilistic/optimistic, spiritualistic/materialistic lifestyles of average people everywhere in the West.”

Sayers goes on to say that therein lies the challenge of mission in the 21st century. We do well to remember that postmodernism too has made the same mistake as the church. It too still has traits of modernism about it in that it still sees truth as a concept. It just sees truth as relative instead of absolute.

Whilst in our conversations, the use of modernist concepts like reason (an essentially Christian idea by the way) and logic can have its place, there is a challenge to be given to those who live a contradictory lifestyle. But the challenge first has to be faced by people like me who often decry the subversive effects of the very materialism we secretly still hang on to at times; in my case the very technology I secretly want more of. We too need to walk our talk. That will speak louder than anything.

I wonder if we have let ourselves be walked over by the claims of postmodernism. Can we say that truth still has a claim on the hearts and minds of people today? Can we talk about truth in a world where there is no meta-narrative, no greater over-arching story anymore? We can, but only if we remember the nature of truth, that truth is a Person, that it is about relationship, something that goes to the very core of our identity as human beings. Jesus never spoke in abstracts; he told stories, and people respond to stories because there is usually something in them they can relate to. The Christian message is a story. It is the story of creation, fall, Jesus, redemption, and new creation. Stories touch something deep in us. That is why the Christian Gospel will always touch the deepest part of our soul, that part which wants a place to call home, which wants to know absolutely that all will be ok, that there is love in the universe, and that good will triumph in the end.

My conviction is that Jesus makes internal and external sense. Internal in the sense of giving meaning and real hope as well as joy and the ability to become more loving and more whole. And externally in the sense of being the initiator of the new creation, a world where justice rules, where everyone knows both their own and everyone else’s dignity, a world where all is renewed and in its rightful place, where people are truly humble – seeing themselves rightly in relation to God, a world where grace rules. And it is all because of Him, it is all for Him. He satisfies the hungry soul with goodness (Psalm 107:9) and fills our cups to overflowing (Psalm 23:5). A postmodern culture longs for such Truth.

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