Soul Thoughts

Faith and relevance in the 21st century

Category: Love (Page 5 of 7)

Movie Review – Les Miserables

February 10, 2013 / / 0 Comments

Source: http://insidemovies.ew.com/2012/12/04/les-miserables-opening-select-imax-theaters/

If you wanted to find an illustration of what the Gospel is, you couldn’t do much better than going to see the latest film version of Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables. As old as this story is, this is the first time I’ve ever been through it. I have never finished reading the book, nor have I ever seen a film or performance of this most incredible of stories.

The Gospel comes out in this story as powerfully (perhaps even moreso) as it does in C.S. Lewis’Chronicles of Narnia. The overarching storyline is one of grace compared to law. The first clear sign we see of this is when the convict Jean Valjean (played by Hugh Jackman) is caught stealing a whole lot of silverware from a priest who has given him lodging. Dragged back in disgrace to the priest’s house by the police, the priest remarkably says to Valjean that he forgot to take the fine candle holders, and gives them to him as well. Struck by the unfathomable mercy and forgiveness shown him by the priest. Valjean becomes a changed man, rebuilding his life to eventually become mayor of a small town. From petty thief to an honest and good man, Valjean begins to love because he is first shown love (1 John 4:19).

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Freud and C.S. Lewis on ethics and morality

October 28, 2012 / / 0 Comments

lewis-freud

Armand Nicholi, in his book, The Question of God, brings to life an imaginary debate between two of the great minds of the 20th century, Sigmund Freud and C.S. Lewis. Here is what they both say about ethics and morality:

“Freud, however, asserts that ethics and morals come from human need and experience. The idea of a universal moral law as proposed by philosophers is “in conflict with reason.” He writes that “ethics are not based on a moral world order but on the inescapable exigencies of human cohabitation.” In other words, our moral code comes from what humans find to be useful and expedient. It is ironic that Lewis contrasted ethics with traffic laws; Freud wrote that “ethics are a kind of highway code for traffic among mankind.” That is, they change with time and culture.
…
Lewis points out that although the moral law does not change over time or from culture to culture, the sensitivity to the law, and how a culture or an individual expresses the law, may vary. For example, the German nation under the Nazi regime obviously ignored the law and practiced a morality the rest of the world considered abominable. Lewis claims that when we assert that the moral ideas of one culture are better than those of another, we are using the moral law to make that judgment. “The moment you say that one set of moral ideas can be better than another,” Lewis writes “you are, in fact, measuring them both by a standard, saying that one of them conforms to that standard more nearly than the other . . . the standard that measures two things is something different from either. You are in fact comparing them both with some Real Morality, admitting there is such a thing as a real Right, independent of what people think, and that some people’s ideas get nearer to that real Right than others.” Lewis concludes that “if your moral ideas can be truer, and those of the Nazis less true, there must be something— some Real Morality— for them to be true about.”

A response of gratitude

July 29, 2012 / / 0 Comments

One of the things we tend to lose when we focus so much on following Jesus is the fact that he died for our sins. We lose sight of the forest for the trees. Jesus’ death on the cross served a number of purposes, which are ultimately tied to the fact that he died for the sins of the world.

CrucifixionSin has long been a dirty word in much of the church. It smacks of condemnation and conjures up images of hellfire and damnation. But what Jesus did in dying on the cross for our sins is just the opposite. Think of the worst things you’ve ever done. Sin has consequences; that’s just the way life is. We really do reap what we sow. If we sow destruction, we reap it; if we sow peace and love, we reap that. Sin in my life has produced tears, pain, agony, shame and despair. How can anyone not take that seriously? How can anyone dismiss that as not so bad? Anyone who does is not in their right mind. A definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. If we don’t take our own sin seriously and want to get as far away form it as possible, we will inevitably make the same mistakes again and again.

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The Moral Law

July 28, 2012 / / 0 Comments

Moral lawRecently when I was having a moment of doubt, wondering if this Christian stuff really is true, I was reminded of the argument that people like Francis Collins, former Director of the Human Genome project, put forward for their faith. Collins and others such as C.S. Lewis have talked about the moral law, or the sense of right and wrong which we all inherently share. As far as I know, we are the only creatures that are able to transcend our feelings, our basic instincts. Every human being who has ever lived has had a moral sense about them.

We are so trained in our world to see life only in terms of the physical or
material. If we can’t see it, touch it or taste it, it doesn’t exist. But the discovery we make when we don’t subscribe to that worldview, but live as if there really is a moral law, is that we develop an increasingly acute sense of right and wrong.

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Love is the greatest apologetic

June 24, 2012 / / 0 Comments

In a postmodern world, and a post-Christian Australia, traditional Christian apologetics don’t get very far with a lot of people. 25 years ago when I was still a fairly new believer, books like Josh McDowell’s Evidence That Demands a Verdict were wonderful in helping to strengthen my faith. Today though, they don’t do a whole lot. I still like to read apologetics, although I tend to gravitate towards the likes of N.T. Wright and others these days. I just find I don’t have much of an interest in works like McDowell’s. Many people would though, and if people are assisted in their faith and growth toward God, then I think that is wonderful.

I suspect though that more people like to see genuine expressions of Christian faith from believers who live their faith in all they do, people who want nothing more than to be Christlike. There is nothing like the life of Christ shining through his followers to get people thinking. This is always the best advertisement for God. Love is the greatest apologetic. One of the great insights I heard once was that Jesus had no need of an apologetic. People flocked to him; the common people heard him gladly. Jesus’ life was his apologetic, and he calls us to the same.

Back in those days in the mid to late 1980s, I was taught a number of things about Christian faith, from the Four Spiritual Laws to evidences for Jesus’ resurrection, to learning how to turn conversations around to the things of God. Today I believe that such thinking is quite dangerous and short-changes the gospel of Jesus. The Gospel is actually much bigger than that, as well as being much more accessible to the average Aussie in the street. Mark Sayers tells the story of when he was speaking once and explaining the story of God’s new creation through Jesus, how Jesus came to inaugurate the kingdom of God on earth and how Christian faith is not about going to heaven when we die. After Mark’s talk, a friend of his came to him and told how she was sitting next to a person who wasn’t a believer, and this person said “why hasn’t anyone told me about this before?” When Mark expressed the Gospel as it really is, it touched something deep inside this person.

Christian faith is ultimately about a story, and people love stories. They always have. That’s why Jesus told so many. He never actually defined the kingdom of God; in describing it, he always began with “it is like…” When we tell stories of the great things God is doing in the world, people listen. When we tell them of what Eden Parris calls rumours of hope, or what Philip Yancey calls rumours of another world, they begin to prick up their ears and listen.

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The Brain on Love

April 4, 2012 / / 0 Comments

The New York Times recently had an insightful article on how love affects the brain. To me this is further evidence that we seem to be wired for love. Consider some of the quotes from the article:

  • “What we pay the most attention to defines us. How you choose to spend the irreplaceable hours of your life literally transforms you.”
  • “All relationships change the brain — but most important are the intimate bonds that foster or fail us, altering the delicate circuits that shape memories, emotions and that ultimate souvenir, the self.”
  • “A wealth of imaging studies highlight, the neural alchemy continues throughout life as we mature and forge friendships, dabble in affairs, succumb to romantic love, choose a soul mate. The body remembers how that oneness with Mother felt, and longs for its adult equivalent.”
  • “Scientific studies of longevity, medical and mental health, happiness and even wisdom,” Dr. Siegel says, “point to supportive relationships as the most robust predictor of these positive attributes in our lives across the life span.” The supportive part is crucial. Loving relationships alter the brain the most significantly.”
  • “Through lovemaking, or when we pass along a flu or a cold sore, we trade bits of identity with loved ones, and in time we become a sort of chimera. We don’t just get under a mate’s skin, we absorb him or her.” (I would add that this is why casual sex is so destructive; the more we indulge, the more we lose our identity; we don’t know who we are – Nils)
  • “As imaging studies by the U.C.L.A. neuroscientist Naomi Eisenberger show, the same areas of the brain that register physical pain are active when someone feels socially rejected.”
  • “A happy marriage relieves stress and makes one feel as safe as an adored baby.”

And perhaps the most profound:

  • “I saw the healing process up close after my 74-year-old husband, who is also a writer, suffered a left-hemisphere stroke that wiped out a lifetime of language. All he could utter was “mem.” Mourning the loss of our duet of decades, I began exploring new ways to communicate, through caring gestures, pantomime, facial expressions, humor, play, empathy and tons of affection — the brain’s epitome of a safe attachment. That, plus the admittedly eccentric home schooling I provided, and his diligent practice, helped rewire his brain to a startling degree, and in time we were able to talk again, he returned to writing books, and even his vision improved. The brain changes with experience throughout our lives; it’s in loving relationships of all sorts — partners, children, close friends — that brain and body really thrive.”
  • “During idylls of safety, when your brain knows you’re with someone you can trust, it needn’t waste precious resources coping with stressors or menace. Instead it may spend its lifeblood learning new things or fine-tuning the process of healing. Its doors of perception swing wide open. The flip side is that, given how vulnerable one then is, love lessons — sweet or villainous — can make a deep impression. Wedded hearts change everything, even the brain.”

Love impacts every part of our lives for the better. Knowing that we are loved, and living a life of love, is good for us. As we remember Love personified at Easter, I want to live more like that Love.

Faith is a verb – a theology of love

August 31, 2011 / / 0 Comments

There is a line in the famous movie Ben Hur in which one of his relatives goes to hear Jesus speak. She comes back enthralled. The way she describes Jesus is by saying that he is like no one she has ever met before – he speaks words of life.

And so he did speak words of life. And the Gospel writers add that he spoke as one who had authority. The Message version interprets this as meaning he lived out what he spoke. Your life will have impact most powerfully when you live what you speak. And Jesus is the perfect example of this. Over 2000 years he has captivated people of all races and colours. There is something about this man that is like no other. He speaks words of life and he lived those same words. He loved his enemies, he walked the extra mile, he denied himself, took up his cross and lived a life of obedience to the Father.

Our lives speak, whether we like it or not, and whether we think so or not. We are either speaking life or we are speaking death. Everyone has a worldview. This is what the debate about religious education in Australian schools earlier this year was about. Some have been insisting on Christianity being taught because it provides an overarching view of existence. What the proponents of a secular view seem to miss is that they are equally supporting a worldview, one which is not based on a spiritual view of the world. They want values-based education, as if that is somehow less biased than a religious-based view. Everything in our lives speaks something, whether we realise it or not.

If we want to have impact in our lives we need to live out love. As has been pointed out by many wise people over the years, talk is cheap. This is much of the problem with our theology. In the end you can have all the theology in the world but if you have not love you are nothing. If you’re like me and you love theology, you need to be very careful that your theology doesn’t become your master. Because ultimately the best theology is born out of a life of love. Love is the bottom line, not theology. We don’t get our theology right first and then live out of that. Jesus says “follow me” and that is where we learn our theology.

Love is about sacrifice. We come closer to God by living it out a life of sacrifice, of denying ourselves, taking up our crosses and following Jesus. In terms of theology, ours is a ‘doing’ theology. It is more about orthopraxy than orthodoxy. This is how the theologies of liberation in Latin America started. They were born out of deep suffering. As Jayakumar Christian, National Director of World Vision India, points out in his book, God of the Empty-Handed, “this theology (liberation or Dalit theology) is a call for theologians themselves to be converted, abandoning their ways and entering into the life of their neighbours, particularly the poor.” Good theology is useless unless it is applied.

It may surprise some readers that it is in John’s gospel that the call to a ‘doing’ theology is emphasized most. In evangelical circles this gospel is usually the one given to new Christians to give them a grasp of what it is to have eternal life and to believe in Jesus. But while proper belief is (rightly) emphasised by most evangelicals, I wonder how many new believers are taught the fact that, all throughout John’s gospel, faith is a verb. In John, the phrase ‘to believe’ is mentioned nearly a hundred times, and not once is it mentioned as a noun. It is a ‘doing’ word. So when John finishes off his wonderful gospel by telling its readers that it has been written that they may believe that Jesus is the Son of God and that by believing they may have life in his name, what he is really saying is that believing in Jesus cannot mean anything else but living out your faith. For John, believing in Jesus has nothing to do with mere intellectual assent. If we believe that faith in Jesus means nothing more than accepting him as your personal Lord and Saviour, we are not believing the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Whilst John’s gospel is one of the more popular books of the New Testament for us evangelicals, the letter of James is possibly the least, mainly for its apparent over-emphasis on works. But the overarching message of James is, just like John, that faith is a verb. Both James and John affirm that faith without works is dead. James affirms John’s message that believing is more than intellectual assent by pointing out that the demons ‘believe’ too, and shudder. And John likewise affirms James’ message by emphasizing that the way to have life in Jesus’ name is by living it out, not by just saying you believe he is the Son of God. Both John and James believe in a ‘doing’ theology – a theology of love.

Belief and action can never be separated in the life of the real Christian, just as they were never separated in the life of Jesus. This was shown most beautifully earlier this year in the uprising in Egypt when we saw the inspiring images of Christians protecting Muslims while the latter were engaging in their daily prayers. Such an action would have no doubt been criticized by some Christians as heretical as it would be seen to be condoning idolatrous action. But, to the contrary, this was love in action. It was loving your neighbour and laying down your life for your friend. I have no doubt whatsoever that Jesus would have been right there with those Christians who linked arms protecting their Muslim brethren in those frightening days in Cairo.

A similar story to the beautiful one we saw in Egypt is told in the movie The Imam and the Pastor. This true tale tells of a Muslim Imam and a Christian pastor in Nigeria who were once bitter enemies, literally trying to kill each other, and encouraging their people to do the same. But after some time they saw the futility of their actions and instead wondered how they could resolve their differences and stop the killing. They eventually started to work together for peace in their battered country. They don’t agree with each other’s beliefs but they have matured enough to see past that and work for reconciliation between their people. When I first saw this movie, my blinkers went up and I struggled with the apparent ‘compromise’ the pastor was falling into by agreeing to work with a Muslim. Shouldn’t he be sticking to his beliefs and showing Jesus to this Muslim Imam? Then it dawned on me. He was in fact doing exactly that. He was putting his faith into action, just like John’s gospel says. He was loving his neighbour and living out his love for Jesus.

Our ultimate aim in life is to become more loving. Jesus said the greatest commandment is to love God and love our neighbour. As N.T. Wright says in Surprised by Hope, “Love is not our duty, it is our destiny”. This is the end of life. And it is only through living a life of following the greatest love the world has ever seen that we get our theology sorted out. It matters what we believe, and right believing only comes from following the One in whom we find the grace to love, the One whom we love because he first loved us. This is what love is, that he laid down his life for us. Love is action, faith is a verb, and only from this comes our best theology.

Suffering and knowing God

May 15, 2011 / / 1 Comment

I have mentioned previously that one thing I have noticed over the years of my Christian walk is that the people who really know God, who really know the heart of God, are people who have known what it is to deeply suffer. It is deeply wounded people who know the suffering of the God of the universe.

People who have an intimate experience of suffering are the wounded healers, as Henri Nouwen expressed it. It is these people who I respect deeply and who I listen to when they speak. I want what they have.

For these people, the pat ‘Christian’ answers aren’t enough. They have experienced the deep injustice that life sometimes deals out, and they have experienced it often. These are people who weep easily, not for themselves, but for the state of the world. Theirs is a godly sorrow. They might even come across as somewhat manic at times, and some people might even think that they are mentally unwell. But to the contrary, they are more than likely more in touch with reality than the rest of us.

People who know God intimately and who know deep suffering are like Job and the Psalmists. They sing the blues and they can cry out ‘why?’. But they have also come through the fire with their faith intact, and at the same time their faith is never the same as it was. It has made that longest of journeys from the head to the heart. It is no longer mere intellectual assent to the truths of the Gospel. It is a knowing, a knowing that ‘though I lay my bed in Hades, thou art with me.’

This morning at church I heard a sermon from someone like this. This is a person who knows God and who suffers deeply. For these people, being misunderstood and not feeling heard is a regular fact of life. Life is a lonely path for them. Often taunted, told to lighten up and not be so challenging all the time, these people are a prophetic voice speaking into our malaise. To the indifferent and the apathetic and the asleep, they continue to speak the cry of the prophet. They often feel like a voice in the wilderness. To hear them is often uncomfortable, but at the same time they touch something deep within us. Isn’t that just like what Jesus was like? They often talk about justice, they often challenge the lifestyles of comfortable Christians. For godly people like this, suffering is something they endure regularly.

These people are generally the first to not want to bring attention to themselves. They just go on and do God’s will. But they are sometimes tempted to go the easy way. Like Jesus in the garden, often it feels like too much and they cry out to God asking if they have to really go through all this. But deep down they know something we don’t. They know that this is the way to life, and in the end it will all be worth it. But that is also not their primary motivation. Their primary motivation is to do the will of God. As a pastor of mine said once, loving is sadness, and they are committed to loving, whatever the cost.

The New Testament Christians knew what it was to live like this. In the Book of Acts we are told that they considered themselves privileged to suffer for the Way. They got it. How different that is to the comfortable Christians of the Western church today, who have succumbed to the dominant ideology of the consumer culture.

It seems that if we are really serious about being followers of this Way, then we must be willing to suffer. There is no other way to be a genuine Christian. An honest appraisal of life and love does not leave us any choice. And if that makes us question whether we really are Christian, that is no bad thing. Jesus knew this. Those who thought his teaching too difficult took up their freedom to walk away, and when he asked his closest friends if they too wanted to leave because they thought it was all too hard, Peter spoke those immortal words, “to whom else would we go? You have the words of eternal life”.

With Jesus, the way of life is the way of death. The way up is down, and, as Dietrich Bonhoeffer said, when Christ calls someone to follow, He bids them come and die. There is only one way to know God, and that is to be willing to go the way of the crucified One. In the culture of Jesus’ day, when he said that anyone who wants to follow him must take up their cross, everyone who heard knew full well that this call was nothing less than a willingness to die. May I have that courage today.

Belief and love…what really matters?

March 2, 2011 / / 0 Comments

I’ve been thinking a fair bit recently about the priority of beliefs and love. There is an apparent dichotomy between how much belief matters over how much simply following Jesus matters. Some would say that belief is all that matters while others say that all we need to do is follow Jesus. I think something in between the two is a proper biblical view. It certainly matters what you believe, but belief is not all that matters.

There was a great post on Jesus Creed about a month ago which looked at this issue. It looked at a couple of passages from Luke’s gospel and questioned what they are saying in comparison to each other. The author of the post says they are basically saying the same thing, that to love God is to love your neighbour. One point he makes is that,

“The ‘reason’ for faith, and the best apologetic, is the body of Christ keeping his commandment … “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another, even as I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this all men will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another (John 13:34).”

I remember someone saying on a blog once that Jesus had no need of apologetics. His life did all the explaining.

The author also has some wonderful quotes from Mother Teresa that remind me of what Jayakumar Christian says about marred identity. In this regard, the author says that “We are not called to give money to the poor – we are called to love our neighbour, the poor…” Rikk Watts also once said that faith is a verb.

Ours is a ‘doing’ theology – that’s where the liberation theology people have it right. It is as we live out our faith that we become closer to God.

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