Eyre Lines

I was maybe a little taken aback to see the congregation at St. Michael le Belfrey invited yesterday afternoon to form groups and do their own intercessionary prayers. Once we had our little huddle of four, I commented that we wouldn’t get beyond Syria and the Middle East – and we didn’t.

One thing we did not pray for, at least not vocalised, was for the various Muslim leaders involved. I think we should have. We did pray for the people of the area, for the Christian churches in Syria and Egypt and, finally, for western leaders to have wisdom (and I’ll come back to that). But we didn’t pray for the people whose decisions will have far more actual effect on how things proceed in the desperate situation in Syria and the very difficult one in Egypt; President Assad and his government and army leaders, ex-President Morsi and the Egyptian army and the Muslim Brotherhood there.

So, I’ll express openly what I didn’t have time to express openly yesterday; may all of them remember that they very regularly pray “in the name of Allah, the merciful, the compassionate” and take it to heart; may mercy and compassion overflow in their hearts and those of the people generally.

I am having a difficult time with the news reporting of these situations. My wife, indeed, has mainly turned away from news, because she doesn’t want to know any more. We see pictures and hear reports of appalling things happening on a daily basis, and the need to do something, anything, in order to stop the beating our compassion is taking is very strong. Obama clearly feels it; Cameron and Clegg seem to have as well – but amazingly parliament has listened to the voice of the people and has decided for the UK not to take any military action.

God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

Well, I would like to think the west could change something and would have the courage to do that. Is this a matter of courage? Is Obama being courageous, and the UK parliament being cowardly? Well, probably yes; to a great extent I think the parliamentary vote was because we don’t want to see much money spent and British lives lost in another foray into the Middle East. But that may also be the wise thing to do, and after all, we elect our politicians in a representative democracy to be wise on our behalf. I feel the pull of the Myth of Redemptive Violence here, very strongly; the situation is intolerable, something must be done, someone has used violence, let’s use more violence against them and “put things right”; I’m sure the parliamentarians who voted feel that too. Perhaps, therefore, the really courageous thing to do is to restrain ourselves?

What I do see is that, as in Iraq, the long term results of military intervention cannot be sensibly mapped out. Syria is not a situation in which there is a “right” and a “wrong” side; there are not two, but at least five distinct interest groups involved (probably significantly more), and the major force opposing Assad is linked with al Quaeda, which should at least give us pause in doing anything which may be seen to support them. Indeed, we should not do anything military unless we have a clear plan for the peace afterwards (as we did not have in Iraq). The only way I can see in which the multiple interests in Syria can coexist peacefully is in a fudged compromise (which is what the Assad regime really rested on until recently), and the only way to get that is for the parties to negotiate between them. There is certainly no clear path to a partition there; the various groups are far too closely intermingled.

I also see no clarity as to who is “at fault” and who is “innocent”. Both sides have been guilty of killing civilians fairly indiscriminately as well as on a narrow sectarian basis in the past; it is by no means clear to me that the recent sarin attack was by government forces (and there is every reason to believe that they would not want to cross that line, but that the rebels would want that line to be crossed as long as it was blamed on the Assad regime). Again, there is no “right” and no “wrong” side.

Neglecting for a moment moral considerations, including such things as public and world opinion, the solution might be to say to the two sides “You will come to the negotiating table NOW and make peace, otherwise we will attack both sides indiscriminately”; of course, if the threat is made, we must be prepared to carry it out, and there seems a huge danger that that might happen. But public and world opinion would never condone such an attitude, and probably neither would the consciences of our leaders.

No, if there is anything the West can do, with its massive supply of manpower and weapons, it would be the non-violent expedient; move in soldiers tasked to do no more than defend themselves and place them between the warring factions, then call for peace talks. In other words, an UN peacekeeping mission. That would require courage (not least from the PBI – “poor bl**dy infantry – on the ground), and it would not directly foster the myth of redemptive violence. I am not sure whether this should be done either; it might still not be successful in bringing the parties to negotiation, and could end up with the forces on the ground being the target of all sides. However, it is, I think, the only courageous and proactive thing which could usefully be tried, diplomacy having so far signally failed.

Do we need the courage to change this, as we can, or do we need the serenity to accept the situation and do nothing? I don’t know, I am praying for wisdom. But I am praying more for the leaders on the ground to find their mercy and their compassion, and a very large amount of courage to change.

Over at Jewish-Christian Intersections, Larry Behrendt has started a series on Problem Texts, and I’ve been spending some time exchanging comments with him. The second of these deals with Deuteronomy 20:16-17, which reads:-

¹⁶ However, in the cities of the nations the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance, do not leave alive anything that breathes. ¹⁷ Completely destroy them—the Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites—as the Lord your God has commanded you. (NIV from Bible Gateway).

It seems to me that this reveals a vitally important issue to deal with for both Judaism and Christianity (and also for Islam, which also shares a degree of allegiance to the Hebrew Scriptures). As I touch on below, this is just one of a host of injunctions to violence in the earlier books of the Bible, and not just violence but extreme, genocidal violence in total war. We have here what all the religions of the book regard as inspired scripture in which God is portrayed not merely as accepting, but as approving and instructing xenophobia, genocide and wars of annihilation. Historically in Christianity, the words “smite the Amalekites” have occurred far too many times in wars (and sometimes not even in wars) to justify extreme, exterminating violence; violence without compassion or remorse.

There are, I know, groups within all of the religions of the book nowadays who accept these passages literally and are prepared to act on them, just so long as they can identify another group as Amalekites or Hittites (or, as we see later, home grown idolaters).

I think Larry sensibly chooses Deuteronomy 20, as it is part of the Torah (for Christians, the Pentateuch), which is arguably in both cases the most foundational group of texts in scripture. Not only is this scripture, therefore, but it is the earliest and (at least in Judaism) most revered part of scripture. It is also not quite as extreme as the injunctions regarding the Amalekites (Deut. 25:17-19) which, as they provide three of the 613 Jewish commandments or mitzvot, are of another level of difficulty.

It is, I believe, supremely necessary to find ways of dealing with these texts, and unless we wish to regress several thousand years, not by following those groups which regard them as evidencing revelation for the nations of today, and not merely regarding them as obsolete (or, as Anthony LeDonne comments in a reply to Larry, lead us to a Marcionite rejection of the Hebrew Scriptures). They are scripture, they are capable of great damage, and they must be addressed fully.

Larry writes:- “If I adopt an historical perspective, I can easily dismiss this text – it’s not historically likely that the Israelites conquered Canaan in the way the Bible describes. But if this conquest never happened, why does the Old Testament remember God’s war instructions in this way? And worse, what kind of God would order the wholesale murder of conquered men, women and children? What happened to the God who was willing to spare Sodom if there were ten righteous people living there? Were there not ten righteous people among all of the Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites?”

My immediate response was “So, what we have in Deut. 20:16-17 is a situation where the Israelites have appreciated that they have a relationship with God and that God is good in respect of them; they haven’t yet grasped that God is the God of the Canaanites as well or that the good of the Canaanites is something to be taken into account. They have a partial revelation (otherwise, why bother with prophets/rabbinic schools/yeshivas or prophets/Jesus/Paul/theologians?).

The problem with this way of presenting it is that some will say that even at the earliest stage, the whole revelation is already there. This is possibly implicit in Torah-only thinking, it’s certainly implicit in some conservative Christian explanation. As a result of that, there’s a danger of being caught up by the Myth of Redemptive Violence (http://www2.goshen.edu/~joanna…).” I was there quoting an article by Walter Wink, author of the “Powers” trilogy, which I highly recommend.

I am, of course, advancing an idea of progressive revelation; I amplify that later by saying:-

“… Religious traditions undergo continuous development… If I follow Isa. 55:8 and 1 Cor. 13:12, I can argue from scripture both that it is entirely right that they do so and that there will always be more work to do (thus securing the theologians’ future employment). I don’t merely think of this in terms of “progressive revelation” in the sense that God grants revelation in bits and pieces as he considers humanity to be capable of receiving it (although I do think that that tends to be the effect); I also consider either that the revelation may be in effect constant but (1) mediated to such an extent by the recipient’s capacity to understand (whether by virtue of language, philosophy, societal imprinting or otherwise) that nothing more than what we now see was capable of being transmitted, (2) that there may have been much fuller expressions of revelation, but that the fact that the society of the time was incapable of understanding or appreciating them meant that they were ignored or deliberately adjusted by third parties, or (3) that the recipient received what he could, thought “I can’t possibly say all of this” and deliberately moderated it to what he judged the audience could receive.

I don’t know how you would tell which of those had been the case with a particular writing. I suspect that no.2b or no.3 might display some characteristics in writing fluency if the passages hadn’t been redacted afterwards, but I’m not equipped to judge that kind of thing.

Incidentally, no.2a represents a kind of “natural selection of inspired writing”, which I think could be a powerful concept, and nos. 2&3 illustrate ways in which you could explain (the passage from Ephesians 5 discussed previously); complete gender equality was an unattainable objective in the circumstances of the time.

However, following the above lines of thinking, I do note that Deut. 20:10-15 displays a technique which would probably have been regarded pre-5th century BCE as fairly morally advanced, namely always to offer surrender to a city and content ones self with forced labour thereafter; sadly this was not extended to the immediately neighbouring “usual suspects”, 16-17 being an exception to that rule. I could definitely see this as still a case of God moving the Israelites as far as it was possible to move them in the moral climate of the time”.

In one of those coincidences which part of me dismisses as such and another part suspects of being divine providence, a sermon I heard yesterday drew on 2 Chronicles 14:1-13 and 16:1-12 in order to illustrate the importance of and benefits of reliance on God as helper. However, if you read through the missing portion, you find a charming tale of ethnic cleansing and religious intolerance in pursuit of a Judah free from the presence, worship or worshippers of idols. Personally, I would never want to preach from texts with this kind of context without addressing the disconnect between the morality displayed there and that which is taken as advanced in the society in which I live.

(There is also a series on violence in scripture starting at Patheos today, and a recent book on the subject. A surfeit of coincidences?)

I do think that the Myth of Redemptive Violence is very active in the historical parts of the Hebrew Scriptures, and it also figures greatly in the various New Testament apocalyptic passages, notably Revelation but including the apocalypses in Mark 13, Matthew 24-25 and to an extent Luke 21:7-28. However, I think that in the passages from Deuteronomy and Chronicles there are also another two factors which are operative.

The first of these is that “bit players are expendable” – as Terry Pratchett comments, when the cry “Guards, guards” goes up, you know that a set of people are going to arrive and be killed or, at the least, neutralised. The story does not expect that we should have any identification with the guards. I have some difficulty reading the book of Job, for instance, which is a good example of this. I have no doubt that the writer did not remotely expect the reader to be agonised by the massive injustice wreaked upon Job’s children with the sole intent of teaching Job a lesson, but my focus goes to them immediately. They are, however, bit players, and to an extent the idol-worshippers of 2 Chronicles and the Hittites and others of Deuteronomy are bit players; we are not expected, I think, to consider their positions; it is the internal situation of Judah and Israel which matter.

The other factor is the sheer tribal egocentricity and xenophobia of the tale (which feeds into what I indicated above). The Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites, and the worshippers of idols are “other”, to be feared and shunned and utterly destroyed. Orson Scott Card writes in “Ender’s Game” and “Speaker for the Dead” (extended with lesser effect through “Xenocide” and “Children of the Mind” a splendid dissection of the moralities surrounding his invented categories in which the “other” can be placed. There is Utlanning (a member of the same species from another place), Framling (same species but from another planet), Raman (a different species with which communication is possible) and Varelse, a different species with which communication is impossible (there is also Djur, which lack the capacity for thought and self-awareness).

It is always the case in Card’s universe that the Ultanning or the Framling is definitely “one of us”; the Raman may be attacked, but their position needs to be considered and accommodation with them is possible, but the Varelse needs to be exterminated, as there is no possibility of accommodation. The first two books hinge on the initial categorisation of an insectoid species as Varelse, the realisation that they are in fact Raman, and the resulting moral situation and then the extension to something (a virus, in fact) which appears to be Djur, even more requiring extermination.

In Deuteronomy 20, earlier on rules are set down for warfare with other nations which are, arguably, morally advanced for the time; they are treated as Raman (much on a par with the Levitical instructions for relationships with domestic animals – another species which can be communicated with), and “one of us” clearly doesn’t extend quite as far as that yet. However, the specific exceptions are those given in vv. 16-17, which are treated as Varelse, requiring to be exterminated – and they are by and large the closest nations to the historic Israelites, countering what would be the normal assumption that the named nations would be Framling to the Raman previously considered, in other words to be treated better, as being more “one of us”. But they are not; they are to be largely exterminated.

The assumption I make here is that in the historical actuality (which as Larry links to was probably not that the Israelites entered Canaan with a divine mandate to take it over, but a situation where they coexisted uneasily with neighbours from a very early stage) relationships had become based on a series of revenge attacks, probably initially based in Mimetic Rivalry, the various nations competing for resources, land, population and status, and the resulting vendetta appearing impossible to resolve; there was too much “bad blood”. It’s also possible that a result of the mimetic rivalry was to “scapegoat” neighbouring nations.

We should not here forget the more extreme case case than the Hittites et al., namely that of the Amalekites as mentioned above (Deut. 25:17-19, Judges 6, 7, 10, 15, 20, 27, 30; 2 Samuel 1, 8; 1 Chronicles 4) where the failure of Saul to eliminate every last one of them was grounds for his losing his mandate as King, and there remain three commands among the 613 relating to them, one of which is still to eliminate every Amalekite descendant. This is a clear vendetta situation.

The opposition in a vendetta situation becomes, effectively, Varelse; they cannot be made peace with, accommodated or accepted not because they cannot be communicated with, but because their attitude prevents any understanding; they will not listen. I think that we have the textual relics here of a set of vendettas with immediately neighbouring nations.

Once the other is Varelse, of course, they are not regarded as human. Morality ceases to enter into the equation, as the non-human is not entitled to moral consideration; the wasp stings and you swat it, wasps sting you regularly and you destroy the nest.

When you get to 2 Chronicles 15, however, you are seeing something slightly different; the idol worshippers are definitely either “us” or at worst Utlanning. Where do we get the extermination reaction? I think the answer is seen in the fact that they follow a different religious meme, and one which is seen as contagious. They are therefore harbouring something analogous to a virus, which on Card’s scale is Djur. The only answer to a virus is elimination. In Card’s imaginary universe in “Speaker” and “Xenocide”, it is the unfortunate fact that the virus is housed in a planetary population; it still must be eliminated because of the degree of threat, and so the population will be “collateral damage”. In Chronicles, the idolatrous religious meme is housed in the idolaters, with the same result.

I have to ask myself here what level of divine inspiration would be necessary to overcome a societal identification of a nation or group as Varelse or Djur, and the answer I arrive at is “cataclysmic”. If the recipient could indeed make any sense of a divine instruction to treat Djur or Varelse as “one of us”, the instruction would either fall on completely deaf ears or would be modified by the recipient to something less incomprehensible – for instance, a shift in regard of former “Varelse”, incomprehensible foreigners who might have been exterminated, to the more beneficial status of Raman/Framling, having a status somewhere between a beast of burden or slave and a foreign resident in the society. This occurs in Deut. 20:10.

Of course, all religions can look to later scriptures to modify what they see here; the period of the Prophets in Judah and Israel led by stages to very considerable modifications of the earlier calls to violence to establish and make strong the “people of God”; the start of one such can be seen in 2 Chronicles 16:1-12, where potentially non-violent reliance on God’s aid is placed above paying another neighbouring state to act against the perceived enemy (in this case Israel); that trend continues. By the beginning of the first century CE, Jesus’ injunctions against violence (which are too numerous to address here) were not a massive stretch from the position of Judaism generally, although I would maintain that they were radical in their effect. However, we need to justify why we take the later scripture over the earlier (and Larry has mentioned that in Judaism this becomes particularly difficult).

Some schools of thought in Christianity would appeal to the concept of “dispensations”, ascribing these passages to the dispensation of Law, and stating that this is superseded by the dispensation of Christ, of Grace or of the Church. This will at some point in the future be superseded again by the Millenial, Kingdom or Zion dispensation. I have problems with this concept for a number of reasons. First, it does nothing to answer the issue as to why God’s commandments to us in one age are different from those in another age, if they were valid in the earlier one. Secondly, it involves supersession of Judaism; while this is a different argument, I find it impossible to extract from Jesus’ words as reported by the gospel writers the concept that this thoroughly Jewish preacher and teacher (and that is not intended to be an exhaustive description) intended to do away with the system of Law in which he operated rather than to reform and amplify it. Lastly, it is normally connected with an understanding of the last (or penultimate) dispensation of the Kingdom as involving an apocalyptic and extremely violent change affecting the entire earth (as one interpretation of Revelation would argue), which I see as being so tainted with the Myth of Redemptive Violence rejected by Jesus as to be worthy of wholesale rejection.

I thus return to the concept of progressive revelation in a less quantised manner, as proceeding steadily through multiple prophets (in which I would include Jesus, Paul and, reluctantly, the author of the Fourth Gospel) and continuing, albeit in a more subdued way, through multiple subsequent theologians or, on the Jewish side, Rabbis.

I do however need to address the issue as to whether this progressive revelation has in all cases resulted in moral advance, rather than moral retreat. In fact I do not think this is the case; the previous “problem passage” discussed was Ephesians 5:22-24 (which advocates subjection of women to their husbands). My considered opinion of that passage is that it constitutes a retreat from the more advanced sentiment of Galatians 3:28 “[In Christ] there is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus”. In the same way while I regard Augustine as being inspired to make an advance in respect of some things (such as the requirement not to read scripture literally when that results in conflict with the evidence of creation), I consider that his doctrine of original sin was retrogressive, fixing Genesis 2-3 with an over-literal interpretation.

So, why do I feel such confidence that in this respect the advance must be in the direction of reducing human violence and renouncing revenge? In the first place this is what the Spirit tells me is the case. However, that is my own personal experience and cannot be more than minimally persuasive to others. Secondly, however, it is part of a broad arc of movement throughout the Hebrew scriptures which progressively reduces occasions when violence is to be permitted or endorsed, just as the arc of equality of humankind moves from the tentative steps of recognising some rights of slaves and foreigners in the Law through Gal. 3:28 to, I hope, the realisation that tribes, races and nations are all as naught against the requirement to love our neighbour as ourself.

And we do not do that by violence, still less war, still less total war and genocide. Scripture points away from these things in stages, but leaves us in these passages with a reminder of where we have come from. This, perhaps, is the wisdom of the redactors of the Hebrew Scriptures; that they retain the reminder.

Peter Enns recently posted a link to Joan Osborne singing “What if God was one of us”, commenting “Not a bad sermon, actually”.

Well, a little light on exposition, perhaps, but definitely up there with the points to ponder.

“If God had a name, what would it be, and would you call it to his face if you were faced with him and all his glory?”

The thing is, in Christianity, God was “one of us”, at least in the limited time frame of the first third of the millennium in Galilee and Judaea. In my panentheist vision, and taking Matt. 25:31-46 rather more literally than is normally the case, God still is “one of us” (and all of us), and you might call him Fred, or Jill, or Mary, or Bob. Or in the circumstances of the passage from Matthew, not call him anything to his face, not see his glory, as he would be a ragged-clothed beggar sitting in a shop doorway, a half-glimpsed hospital patient alone and groaning gently in a ward hurried past, a despairing face looking out from a barred window in a police van, a bloated-stomached African glimpsed on television, an addict shooting up in the park or your neighbour, normally surly and uncommunicative, who you haven’t noticed you haven’t seen for a few days as the unsolicited mail piles up behind his letter box.

But this isn’t going to be my normal guilt trip about not noticing the risen Lord in need of my help or company, or passing by swiftly with my head averted.

“And what would you ask him if you had just one question?” might at that point be “How can I live without pouring myself out to you in the form of all these people, and still making no significant difference to the ocean of need out there?”. But I can hear his reply already – “start with one or two”.

“What if God was one of us, just a slob like one of us, just a stranger on the bus trying to make his way home?”.

Wait – what have I just heard? “Just a slob?” You were pushing it with the beggar, the criminal and the addict, Chris, but that’s just insulting to the Lamb of God, the Prince of Peace, the Saviour of Mankind, the Name above all other Names, God incarnate. In all his glory… Isn’t that just a little (cough) blasphemous, Chris?

Well, it seems to me that the peasant craftsman from Galilee who wandered the countryside preaching the kingdom without food for today (unless it was given in charity or gleaned from the fields) let alone tomorrow, who sat down in fellowship with prostitutes, recovering mental patients, lepers and even the 1^st century equivalent of bankers would not have thought that. He preached time and again against wealth, against domination structures of all kinds whether they be the occupying Roman Empire, the rich and corrupt Temple hierarchy, the sanctimonious religious purists or even (Luke 12:53, Matt. 19:29, Mark 10:29) the family.

The earliest followers understood this. They practiced radical community, sharing everything with each other and the poor (Acts 4:32-37) and healed and comforted among the lowest of society, the outcasts from society, just as had Jesus. But then came theology, and a string of titles, and Jesus the Christ became kinglike (except more so) where he had cast scorn on kings, became emperor-like (except more so) where he had cast scorn on empires and God-like where he had repudiated any thought of equality with God (Phil. 2:7); he was teacher where he taught his disciples not to call themselves teacher, Prophet, Messiah and King where he had renounced the offers of these statuses in his temptation in the wilderness (Matt. 4:1-11, Luke 4:1-13).

I think this is a case of title-inflation, of “my Jesus is bigger than your emperor (or high priest, or resistance leader, or…)”, and I think that it’s to some extent a mistake. God having bridged the gap, we open it up wider and wider with our thinking and our terminology until it’s too wide to cross or reach over, too wide for a relationship. We end up close to being docetists, docetism being a heresy which held that Jesus only seemed to be human, while being divine. And we replace an unreachable God with an unreachable Christ. Our Jesus is not greater than your emperor in the sense of being more emperor-like, he’s greater in the sense of being totally different from an emperor, a herald of the Kingdom of God on earth, a champion of those who are poor, afflicted, outcast. He triumphs through sacrifice of self, not through force, not by overawing but by showing the emptiness of mere power.

Let’s face it, if we are to think of Jesus as human, we have to think of someone who pissed, shat, had aches and pains and all the accompanying lowly features of human existence. I’ll go further here; in an attempt to justify Jesus as having been a perfect sacrificial offering after his death, the idea grew up that he was perfect, that he could not sin, that he must have been physically imposing and beautiful (though linking him to Isa. 53:1-3 should have been a clue there). I don’t think that can be correct; I think that we cannot think of him as human without also considering that he could be angry, lustful, proud, self-centered, arrogant, xenophobic and occasionally a male chauvinist (both of the last two of which seem in evidence in the tale of the Syrophonecian woman in Mark 7:25-30).

I do not think it is possible to be both human and perfect. If Jesus was perfect, taking into account his extended words about “thought-crimes” in Matt. 5:21-30, he could not even think of sinning, and if he could not think of it, not only could he not have been tempted (and resisted temptation), but he could not have understood those who are. He could not be “one of us”, and so God could not be “one of us”, and so relate to us; be such that we can have a relationship with him.

I know something like this from personal experience. I was very good at maths as a child; it was all obvious and easy to me through my teens. And I couldn’t teach it to anyone else, because I couldn’t understand how it was not obvious and easy to them; I couldn’t empathise with them, and any explanation I gave went straight over their heads. It didn’t stay that way, by the way; at second year university level maths stopped being easy and obvious ( almost catastrophically for my degree, which had to change slightly), and I suddenly found some comprehension of how it was possible to have difficulty. That made it possible to coach my mother when she took a course which required some maths a few years later.

How much more must the failure of comprehension be for someone who is perfect, who is not really “one of us”?

But, of course, God can be, and is, through Jesus then and in the panentheist conception now. And so in seeing his glory in the stranger on the bus and the beggar in the doorway and responding to the calls for help, one or two at a time, failing to fill the whole need, we can know that it is sufficient that we try to be a little more perfect than we are, rather than perfect all at once.

I’ll be paying more attention to a few of society’s untouchables again next week.

I am extremely indebted to my friend Pastor Tom Sims for giving me a link a little while ago to Rick Warren making suggestions about leading and preaching from weakness.

When I saw that, I had already started to write from a degree of weakness, but my immediate impression was “Wow, I have SUCH a lot of weaknesses I can use”. And so it is proving, as I take the gift of the cessation of depression and try to wring every possible moment of understanding and inspiration and use and service out of it which my poor abused body can cope with (yes, body, I am taking slightly better care of you now, OK?).

There will be more, but the most major part of it is not likely to be seeing the light of day, or rather the internet, for a while yet. I have a lot of years of increasing paralysis of my ability to feel God and to communicate this, culminating in near total inability for the last eight years. That’s a lot of weakness to investigate. I am going to be taking some time to arrive at a narrative for all that.

Particularly as about four days worth of writing disappeared in a recent hard drive failure. No matter, I can write it again, and the result will probably be better for a little maturing.

Rick Warren is not a pastor whose blogging I would normally read (due to a slight contrast in – well – almost everything), so Tom’s part in this was crucial.

I haven’t blogged about the last few sessions, as the information is still sinking in. However, session 6 was considered as covered in the week 5 Bible Study talk, sessions 7,8 & 9 were shoehorned into an intense 4 hour period on Saturday last. As I was flying high enough on the Spirit (or a large dose of GF, if you’ve read “About”) to be a danger to civil aviation before I even walked into session 7, anything detailed will need more time, if indeed I am able to achieve rational analysis. My notes however indicate that in the discussion of Pentecost, the phenomenon of deindividuation needs to be considered as a contributory factor, as it does indeed in the one to one prayer session after session 9 and that sundry promises of the Spirit coming to every Christian do not in my experience, if true, seem to produce results which are actually sensible to a sizeable number, including lifelong and very devout Christians. I am not convinced that the statement “every Christian has the Spirit but not every Christian is filled with the Spirit” really answers this one adequately.

Apart from that, viewed as a sometimes figurative description of spiritual experience of this type rather than as a description of supernatural realities, these three talks seemed to me unexceptionable; they were very ably presented by a husband and wife “tag team” which actually made the presentation much more digestible.

I do not think that an afternoon is sufficient for these three talks. If a day is not achievable, could not an afternoon stretching into the evening have been considered?

As of tonight, we have had sessions 11 and 13 in one rather over-long talk, which as sessions 12 and 14 are to be “missed”, brings the course to a close. I have other comments, which are likely to be subsumed into a general overview and critique later, but did receive in answer to “Do you think that incompetent evangelism can be more damaging than none” or words to that effect, “Yes” with some further explanation.

I then proposed what I really think should be standard, namely that you should share how you came to believe something rather than trying to argue people into believing it. Ideally, you should also say what believing in it has done for you in the past and does for you today. That, I mentioned, tends to be difficult for people to take offence at, which is a major danger with the schoolmaster-like approach, and you can’t be as “in your face” in the process, which is always a plus for getting heard rather than ignored or attacked.

The discussion afterward largely went into what we had learned and where we intended to go. And at this point, I intend to go to bed…

Here’s another recycled sermon:-

Once, there was an intrepid explorer pushing into the wilds of what is now Alberta, who had found a native guide. He was trying to map the area and was asking the native names of things; pointing at a mountain, he said “what is that called”, and the mountain is now Mt. Tadwagogol.

Of course, the “native” was in fact a French-speaking halfcaste trapper, as the French had been into the interior long before any Englishmen; of course, the French can speak English but on the whole the English know no French.

And so, to the French-speaker, that mountain is now called “Yourfingeryoufool”.

I could now say, like the African storyteller, “I don’t know if it happened this way, but I know this story is true”.

Actually, I do know that it didn’t happen that way, because I made up this version of a story which is told about mountains in many lands, and I suspect all of them are apocryphal, or in other words they didn’t actually happen like that. But they tell us a truth or two. The guy who knows more languages can baffle the one who doesn’t, perhaps?

Or more, never trust a translator. If you can, learn the language in use somewhere and you’ll go wrong a lot less often. In the Bible, nothing was written in English. All we have is translations. All we have is translators to produce the translations, and translators (as we’ve seen above) sometimes have their own agenda. Often, they don’t even realise they HAVE an agenda, because they just know it’s right to translate in THIS way and don’t ask themselves why they know this, what is it makes them sure – and nine times out of ten, it’s because they already have a theory of what it is that the word is likely to mean.

Such as a mountain, rather than a finger.

Or a very scary Last Judgment with the possibility of getting things wrong without realising it, rather than a corrective exaggeration encouraging people to obey the Second Great Commandment when Jesus says (Matthew 25:40) “Truly I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me”.

However, there are excellent Bibles, printed and online, which have the literal translations of each word made available to you (I say “translations” rather than “translation” because a huge number of words do not translate with direct equivalence – consider “In the beginning was the Word”, which in one French translation is “Au commencement etait le verbe” and in another “le parole” giving a sense in the first of action, in the second of speaking, where our English word is a static one. I’d have translated “the Word” into French as “le Mot”, which no French Bible uses, or at least I would if I weren’t more interested in what the original said, which was “Logos” in koine Greek. And THAT is completely different again – but that’s another topic

The story shows us also that you should never mistake whatever it is that points the way for the thing which it’s pointing to. Indeed, that you should never mistake the man doing the pointing for the thing pointed at, or some part of him at least. You don’t drive up to a signpost saying “Paris” with an arrow on it and say “Right, now we’ve reached Paris”. Because that would be stupid, wouldn’t it?

And yet we sing songs in Church worshipping Jesus. No matter that the fellow we’re actually supposed to be following said on numerous occasions “not me but the Father” (in much the same way as John the Baptist is said to have said “not me but the one to come”). We have only one instance of Jesus’ words on how to pray, and that’s in Luke 11:1 (and Matthew 6:12): “One day Jesus was praying in a certain place. When he finished, one of his disciples said to him, ‘Lord, teach us to pray, just as John taught his disciples'” . What follows is the Lord’s Prayer. You all know it. It’s a prayer to God, not to Jesus, and that’s how he, the man himself, the person we are actually supposed to be following the teachings of, actually told us to pray.

In Mark 10:18 Jesus says “Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone”; that is echoed in Matthew 19:17. In John 14:28 he says “My Father is greater than I”. Even Paul manages to keep the two distinct in his mind; in Coll. 3:1 Jesus is seated on the right hand of God, 1 Cor. 11:3 “the head of Christ is God”.

There are a few problematic passages in John which have produced the concept of Jesus as God (and although it’s outside the scope of this, I have reasons for thinking that is not an unreasonable thing to say), but in all the cases I’ve mentioned so far Jesus is less than God or not God at all, really; he cries “Eloi, Eloi, lama sabacthani” ( “my God, my God, why have you forsaken me”) in Mark 15:34 which Matthew also reports in 27:46.

Many of the others can be more easily explained as God being revealed through Jesus than by Jesus being God.

The big one, though, to my mind, is John 14:6, which we all know “I am the way, the truth, and the life: no one comes to the Father but by me”.

The topology of going through God to reach God is a bit too much for me at the moment. No, I think he was rather explicitly saying “Look, this way” (or “that mountain”).

Now, what is a “way”? It’s a path, a road, a direction. Now assuming that we’ve got over our literalist tendencies today, I’m sure we’d prefer not to take home the image of walking on TOP of Jesus to get to God, so perhaps we could settle on “direction”?

Jesus is the direction to God from where we are. We don’t stop there, any more than we stop at the signpost saying “Paris”. We walk there in fellowship in a church.

And the church is the body of Christ. Paul says (1 Cor. 12:27) “Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it” (I have always suspected that, as a body part, I am the ingrowing toenail…)

I point to to Jesus, and Jesus points you to God, to a way to God, to a journey which all of us can take, walking together, side by side, but with Jesus our guide.

Hello, thanks for reading something I’ve written, and I hope you’ve read “Witness, share, apology” as well.

Yes, I hope there’ll be more than one of you, but at the moment it’s just you and me, OK?

Now, I don’t know who you are, whether you have any faith or no faith or even if you aren’t sure which.

I don’t know if you’re some kind of twelve-stepper or not, or if you have any of the various compulsive behaviours (including addiction), psychological peculiarities or other defects of character which I may share about, whether they have their own Twelve Step programme or not.

I don’t know if you’re a Christian, a Jew, a Muslim, a Bah’ai, a Hindu, a Buddhist, a Sikh, a Jain, a Taoist, a Wiccan, a Pagan, a “Scientific Pagan, a Druid, a Shaman, a Practical Kabbalist, a Ritual Magician, a “Born Again Agnostic” or….. well, just because you’re not mentioned doesn’t mean I don’t mean you, and if you give me a nudge I’ll try to include you in the next version of this. As it is there, I have friends who describe themselves as each of these, and I’m pretty confident that they’ll read this sooner or later.

By “Christian” I mean you have faith in God – or at least want to – and try to follow Jesus as best you can, whatever conception you may have of what “God” means, what “Jesus” means, what “faith” means or what “follow” means. In other words, whatever “flavour” of Christianity you belong to – and if you’re a Seventh Day Adventist or a Latter Day Saint and think you’ve been missed out, I count you in Christian. I count me as Christian too, if you push me hard enough.

I don’t care about these labels. I think I mean that as an absolute statement, but if it turns out to be wrong, I am trying to move towards it as an ideal.

If you’re human, I mean to include you. I’d include anyone who wasn’t human as well, but I don’t think they’ll be reading this. You get the picture…

There is only one thing I really want to change your thinking about, and it is this. Please consider moving towards thinking of your fellow human beings more as I try to. They are all “us”, none of them are “them”.

Otherwise, don’t panic. I am not trying to convert you. On the “Art of Dharma” site, there is this quotation:-

To a man who asked to become a Buddhist, the Dalai Lama replied, “Please don’t. Stay in your own religion, and meditate.”  Further , he has stated, “It is better to stick with the wisdom traditions of one’s own land than to run from them pursuing in exotica what was under your nose all the time.”

I take his view, for the most part. If you have a belief structure and it’s working for you, use the maxim “If it ain’t bust, don’t fix it”. If you have no beliefs and it’s working for you (i.e. you’re a true agnostic, to my mind, though you may call yourself an atheist and that’s OK with me), use the same maxim. It’s possible there may still be something in what I write which is helpful to you, and I hope there is, but I’m not really writing for you. Sorry!

But if you have some beliefs and they’re not working well for you, I may have more to say (or not – I can only tell you how it is for me, and it’s up to you and, I suppose, chance whether you can find anything in my writing). Again, if you have a belief structure, I’d prefer you to be more comfortable with what you know rather than to shift wholesale; I may still have experience which is helpful. If you don’t have a belief structure, but feel a need for one, I may be talking about the one for you. Or not.  It is going to need to feel right and to help you develop faith, by which I mean love and trust, in whatever you can comfortably conceive “that thing which I tend to call God” to be.

I have a special note for you if you’re an atheist or an agnostic. I started the journey I’m on as an evangelical atheist, that’s to say I believed strongly that God didn’t exist, that the mere concept of God was pernicious and damaging and that I should try to convince everyone else of that. I then spent a significant amount of time as an agnostic, not knowing but still seeking.

And in some ways it would be fair still to regard me as an atheist (and some of my fellow Christians do); it would certainly be fair to regard me as an agnostic still, as I don’t know that any of what I believe is true, I just take positions on the balance of evidence or because they are useful to me and I can relate to them (though I have no option about faith; love and trust doesn’t get argued away easily) and there are still a fair number of the stories Christianity tells which I don’t relate to well, or sometimes at all. I know where you’re coming from. I’m on a journey, moving in a direction, and my beliefs have had to change along the way and will probably change further (though, granted, the changes recently have tended to be fairly subtle).

Please don’t get me wrong; I am very happy indeed with the belief structures I have and I think it would be really cool if you liked them too and tried them for size. For me, Christianity has the best, the most varied, the most useful stories – but to a great extent that’s because I grew up with these stories and know them better than I know other people’s. You’re not me.

I think everyone would be better off with a faith, and that their faith should be strong (as long as it doesn’t damage others or get in peoples’ faces or tell them what to do), and that some of what I’ve learned over some 45 years might help you with that. But I can’t tell you you’d be better off with more faith, as such, just that I’m convinced I am (and yes, it could easily be argued that I’m not from reading things I write about my experience; I try to signpost the points where I think there are dangers and what they are, though).

Finally, before you go further reading my witness, my share, my apologia, please be careful of one possibility. I have had people individually and sometimes collectively wanting to follow me, for me to be their leader.

Do not even think of doing this.

·         Firstly, you can’t get where I am by proxy, only by doing some things and having some experiences. You are not me, your experiences will be different, you can’t borrow mine, only find things in them which speak to your experiences and situation.

·         Secondly, I do not want to be put in the position of telling people what to do, it will embarrass me, and, within my belief structure, you should not be following me anyhow, you should be following in the direction I point. I want people to walk beside me, not behind me.

·         Lastly, I don’t want to be put in the position of having to say “no”, because that would pain me, but I would have to say no anyhow.

On Sunday, I met with a friend. Now, this guy is fired up with God, with Jesus and with scripture. And that’s all good. It’s better than good, it’s warming those he comes into contact with. I am really happy for him. He’s also fired up with a completely different view of scripture from my own. A different concept of God, a different concept of Jesus… I could go on.

We acknowledged to each other that we are in two completely different places (he reads my blog, bless him) but that we share one faith, one fire. He’s been used to my own fire being somewhat damped (I suffer from clinical depression, inter alia, and have done for quite a few years), but on Sunday, courtesy of some new medication, I was not feeling damped.

Now, I’m confident that as we were acknowledging that to each other, both of us were thinking with at least part of our minds “I’m in the better place, and you’ll eventually join me there”. I can’t see that happening myself, and I’ve no doubt that he can’t see himself joining me in my thinking. But we are one in love, we are one in spirit, we are one in religion (even, at the moment, denomination), we are one in whom we follow.

I think I see how there can be one church. I know there should be only one church, of all the followers of Christ (as a minimum). At my last count, however, there were several thousand denominations, and I found that depressing, particularly when one flavour of follower of Jesus shuns, anathematises or kills another flavour of follower.

We are very different. And we are exactly the same.

Went to my second service of the day this afternoon, and heard a sermon on Matt. 24:36 -25:12. This was an evangelical Anglican Church, and I expected and got a theologically neo-conservative sermon.

All the individual parts of this reading refer to not knowing the time and place (and this refers back to the apocalyptic vision starting at Matt. 24:1). The message was, therefore, that the time of the return of (variously) the Christ or the Son of Man could not be predicted, and we were urged to be like the wise virgins who kept back some of their lamp oil and were therefore ready for the feast of “the bridegroom” as opposed to the foolish virgins who had used all of theirs; they asked the wise virgins for more and were rejected, as the wise virgins might then not have enough for themselves, and while going out to buy more, the bridegroom arrived, the festivities started and the foolish virgins were locked out. We didn’t want to be like the foolish virgins and not be ready, and therefore condemned to eternal separation from God.

We should be ready not just because the apocalyptic end (“heaven and earth passing away” may come, but also because some of us may die before that time and at that point we will be judged, and if we are not ready, potentially in Hell.

The preacher hastened to say that the message was not primarily of threat, but of the hope given that following Jesus would bring us to the Kingdom of Heaven instead.

And yet… I have no quarrel with the preacher’s last two points (about which I’ll say more later), but there I was, sitting in the back of the pews, with part of my mind constructing alternatives. This is not at all uncommon with me; my regular vicar seems to have sort of got used to me raising a couple of extra points or a slanting interpretation after the service and not to mind me doing that. I wouldn’t normally do more than that, but I’m in the middle of writing a piece about reading, interpreting and studying scripture, and here I have a ready made example. If he sees this, I hope the preacher will forgive me!

OK, the first thing I note is that historical-critical analysis considers that the parable in that passage (and several other nearby ones which the preacher relied on) are quite likely to be the words of Jesus unmodified by the author, but that the apocalyptic surroundings are most likely to have been inserted by the author, and therefore to be indicative not of Jesus’ actual words but of the understanding Matthew had reached of Jesus and his importance at the time of writing of the gospel.  (Historical-critical analysis tends to accept parables and similar statements as the “true voice” of Jesus and ascribe other statements to authorly fleshing out of the story). Assuming for a moment that the significant number of scholars who place the bones of Matthew sometime between 60CE and 100CE are correct, I consider from the evidence of Papias that the earliest possible date was around 95, so we have a small window.

The circumstances then were that in the late 1st century BCE and the 1st century CE, messianic fervour in Israel had been high. The nation hoped to be rescued from Roman domination by a messiah predicted in many places in the Hebrew Scriptures (testified to in Josephus, inter alia). The Temple had been destroyed by the Romans in 70CE and the heart ripped out of Judaism. It is clear from the whole tenor of the gospel of Matthew that the writer was certain that Jesus was the promised messiah and that the messiah as predicted everywhere in the Hebrew Scriptures was a single person (still the position of both Judaism and Christianity, but see my thoughts on this), and also that he would have been aware that Jesus had not fulfilled quite a few of the messianic prophecies (the Jewish attitude to the messianic properties considers, for instance, that the messiah will gather the Jews into Palestine, restore all Jews to full observance of the Law and bring peace to the whole world

It would follow that Jesus needed to come back and complete the job. Enter the kind of apocalyptic vision familiar from earlier Hebrew writing. This is Matthew’s vision, not in Jesus’ thinking according to historical-critical technique, and as with all apocalyptic literature of the time, historical-critical thinking views it as talking of the times you are in and offering a vision of the future from that perspective (as a criticism) rather than as being prophecy. My own view modifies this slightly; I do not wholly rule out the possibility that a statement might actually be prophetic, though there is no way to know if it is true until after the event (some prophecies in the Hebrew Scriptures do not in fact come true, often because God is said to change his mind), but even if it is, it must also speak to the times.

So we are primarily talking of Matthew’s own times, not about the future.

But there’s more. Actually the parable is a Kingdom statement, prefaced with “Then the kingdom of heaven shall be compared with…”. Clearly, the wise maidens are going to be in the Kingdom of Heaven, the foolish virgins are not. But when is this? Well, helpfully, this occurs just after the statement “this generation will not pass away till all these things take place”. I think I establish in my Kingdom Sermon of 10 years ago that Jesus was telling us that the Kingdom was already there – within you, among you, there before all present would die. So, in fact, that generation, which was all dead a very long time ago, did not pass away before the arrival of the Kingdom; it was already there, at least for some.

I see my own first peak spiritual experience as having been, effectively, entering into the Kingdom. The full effect was brief, but ever since I have felt that I had “one foot in” the Kingdom. I can therefore witness that one of the features of this was an immediate conviction of a very large number of things I had previously done wrong or was doing wrong – a conviction of sin, if you like. And it crept up on me, as the preacher also quoted, “like a thief in the night”. With it, however, was an equal conviction of being forgiven, accepted, and the will given to resolve to do differently in the future (which I think agrees broadly with the picture given by Ezekiel 18 in the Hebrew Scriptures; repent and turn to God’s ways). This is, I think, grace; it surely wasn’t remotely deserved on the first occasion and hasn’t been subsequently either, when the same process has occurred.

It has been painful, fortunately briefly, and without the force of that immediate feeling of forgiveness the resulting guilt and shame could be sufficient to prevent someone from feeling forgiveness, and feeling and therefore being separated from God. I have heard quite a few people witness to me of feeling like that, despite having otherwise at least the outline of a similar experience, and I have had an extended period in which I felt no contact with God at all and, whatever amends I made, however I tried to improve my spiritual practice and reestablish that contact, could not shake shame and guilt. All I had was faith, frequent repentance and as good an adherence to Jesus’ Great Commandments as I could manage. Supposedly that’s enough, being as prepared as possible, but it hasn’t felt that way. Frankly, it’s felt like Hell, and I’m not at all sure I mean that as a figure of speech.

That is what I know we can be saved from during our lifetimes. After death, I have no idea. My experience also delivers me the conviction that on death I will be one with God (in all persons of the Trinity), and no indication at all that in that I am any way different from other people as regards that. I note, though, that Paul says that Jesus came to save everyone without exception (Rom. 5:18-19). In Col. 1:19-20 is ” For in him all the fulness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven”. No exceptions. God is, after all, loving.

I do not know the mechanism (I would like to think of a new opportunity to accept just after death when, after all, we will be seeing not as through a glass darkly but face to face, but have no supporting scripture for that), but the Theologia Germanica says “Nothing burns in Hell save self-will, therefore it has been said “Put off thy self-will, and there will be no Hell” (quoted from F.C. Happold: “Mysticism”). That will do for me; the preacher suggested putting off self-will in favour of following Jesus, and despite arriving from a different direction, so do I.

However, there’s more; if I am right in the above, the foolish virgins will get their opportunity in the future. They’re missing a feast now, not an eternity of no feasts. However, I worry about the “wise virgins”. The preacher interpreted their refusal to share the lamp oil as not being able to get into the Kingdom on someone’s shirt tails. But in the parable, if they’d shared, all ten virgins would have got in to the feast, though they might have ended up more dimly lit.

There the simile may be breaking down. There are things we can share without losing anything ourselves; the gospel, our experiences and above all love. We should not withhold these from others because we may not have enough for ourselves. I could picture Jesus adding after Matt. 25:39 “I was in darkness, and you gave me no light”. A primary part of the Kingdom must be love, and we can think of the parable of the mustard seed in Matt. 13:31-32, a pervasive weed which spreads.

Feel love, show love, share love (you will have no less love as a result) and it will spread, and with it the Kingdom.

Now, I was going to use this as an example for a later post in my Bible Study series, but that might be a bit delayed due to the overload of inspiration which I am currently feeling. Thus I want to clarify what the message behind this actually is.

I think the preacher had exactly the right inspiration (i.e. the guiding of the Spirit) but was seriously hampered in following it by being obliged by various factors to use the standard Penal Substitutionary Atonement model, the seriously modified later understanding of Hell as real and not as metaphorical and similarly many “sheep and goats” type statements, which to me are story-telling forms of rebuke (eminentaly justified) rather than attempts to say that people will be permanently excluded upon death. There are other atonement theories which he could have used (not mine!) and it’s a pity that in order to make the points the Spirit was urging him towards, he had to leave hanging a nasty implication and rather skate over it’s implications. In other words, the preacher had exactly the right idea (probably via inspiration), but some of his theology was giving him problems arguing to that conclusion, and for some reason I don’t know, he felt unable to marshal some other, more compatible theological framework.

I’ve added this largely because a kind lady yesterday listening to me use this as an example (as intended) pointed out that I might have been criticising the preacher. I’m not – he made a wonderful job of it with which I agreed, but working from some really substandard material which he had been supplied with. Love the preacher, hate his theology…

(The following is the slightly modified text of a sermon I gave rather over 10 years ago. )

Seeing all the coverage about Israel and Palestine, and doing some background reading, a thought came to me.

Yasser Arafat was a son of God.

 

Shocking, isn’t it? Whatever you think of the rights and wrongs of the current conflict, Arafat was a long time terrorist, and his followers (if not he himself) have been responsible for the deaths of a lot of innocent Israelis.

 

But bear with me….. in Matthew’s gospel, we read “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called children of God” (Mat.5:9). Chairman Arafat was once a joint recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize. And he’s a male child, so he’s a “son”. Stands to reason……

 

I think, following that, that we’d all want to take refuge in the passage from Ezekiel (Ezk.18) in the reading “When a righteous man turns away from his righteousness and commits iniquity……. none of the righteous deeds which he has done shall be remembered” (Ezk.18:24). To be fair, I’d also suggest that it’s about time that those in Israel read and took to heart the wording of that chapter. There are too many fathers who have eaten sour grapes (Ezk.18:2), and too many children whose teeth are set on edge (Ezk.18:2). That passage marks the point where Judaism abandoned the concept that the sins of the fathers were visited upon the children (Ex.20:5, Ex.34:7, Num.14:18, Deut.5:9, Jer.32:18) and was a precursor to the development of Judaism which became Christianity.

 

So, perhaps, for  brief period, Chairman Arafat was a son of God and would have been received into the Kingdom of Heaven (or the Kingdom of God – I don’t make a distinction between them, and where Matthew says “Kingdom of Heaven”, Mark says “Kingdom of God” when describing otherwise the same saying). Perhaps, at some time in the future, that will be the case – we can hope and pray so.

 

Matthew also tells us Jesus said that the poor in spirit qualified. (Mat.5:3) Those persecuted for righteousness’ sake (Mat.5:10). Those who feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, welcome strangers, clothe the naked, visit the sick or prisoners (Mat.25:34-37, Lk.12:32). Luke tells us “Love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return, and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the most high” (Lk.6:35).

 

So we have a promise. These actions will deliver the Kingdom to us. Jesus reinterpreted for us the standards which Ezekiel talked of, including especially charity (Ezk.18:16), and added the foundation for the commandments – that we should love our neighbour as ourself (Mat.23:39).

 

So what is the Kingdom? We hear that it’s a pearl of great price Mt.13:35), as well as a grain of mustard seed (13:31), a leaven (13:33), a treasure hidden in a field (13:44), good seed (13:24), choice fish (13:47), the new and the old from a treasure (13:52), a good return on investment (18:23), given in fullness irrespective of our worth (20:1). Confusing…….we should obviously look for it, but what will we get?

 

Paul writes “For now we see through a glass, darkly, but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as I am known”. (I Cor.13:12). What we hope for is a glimpse of God as He is, a connection with Deity, a foundation for our existence. And this is indeed a pearl of great price and a treasure. Seeing through a glass darkly is accepting the grain of mustard seed which can grow, accepting the leaven which will raise our spirits. Clearly, this is something which we cannot comprehend without experiencing it, and we will experience it only in part.

 

Mind you, Matthew also tells us Jesus’ words “Unless your righteousness exceeds that of the Scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven” (Mat.5:20)- but that may say more about how he felt about the Scribes and Pharisees than it does about what we need to reach the Kingdom.

 

More seriously, though, he says also “Except you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Whoever humbles himself like this child, he is the greatest in the Kingdom of heaven”. (Mat.18:3-4). Has the promise been taken away if we can’t manage to abandon all our adult attitudes?

 

No, I don’t think it has. I think Jesus speaks here from the absolute knowledge that, before God, we will inevitably react as little children.

 

Now, when will this happen?

 

Is it to be when we die? Is it to be when Christ comes again?

 

I don’t think it has to be. In Matthew’s and Lukes’ gospels, Jesus speaks of the Kingdom being at hand several times, as does John the Baptist before him (Mat.3:2, 4:17, 10:7) – but this is often interpreted as talking of an event which hasn’t happened yet. I think that’s not a correct reading. Luke tells us Jesus promised “There are some standing here who will not taste of death before they see the Kingdom of God” (Lk.9:27) – and this was nearly 2000 years ago!

 

Was he wrong? Were his audience going to die before a second coming (as they clearly did) without his words being fulfilled?

 

I think not. I believe he was right; I believe some of them did see the Kingdom of God, and indeed entered into the Kingdom of God, within their natural lifetimes. The Kingdom is a thought away, if, indeed, it isn’t filling some of us as I speak.

 

I’ll assume that anyone who’s looking into space and seems to me not to be concentrating is experiencing the Kingdom at this moment…….

 

But I’d like to hear some testimony about it from them later.

 

But I don’t see any promise of when this entering into the Kingdom will happen, just that it will.Maybe not within our lifetimes, maybe at our deaths, maybe at some time after that.

 

Let me move on to John’s gospel. John has a very different approach and talks of a very different vision from Matthew, Mark and Luke. John records that Jesus said “unless one is born anew, he cannot see the kingdom of God” (Jn.3:3) and “unless one is born of water and the spirit, he cannot enter the Kingdom of God” (Jn.3:5).

 

I often used to attend a charismatic church, where they are very keen on the “born again” concept – and it seems to work. I’m not someone who’s gone through the formula of being born again in that way; neither was my father, and, I suspect, neither are most who will read this (though some may feel “born again” in a different way). Those of us who have arrived at faith by other means (and I’m going to come back to that) are going to find it difficult, at the least, to cast everything away and take a new path.

 

So do we all need to be “born again”? Born twice, indeed? Well, not as a precondition. Look at Saul, on the Damascus road: you’ll remember that Luke writes in Acts “But Saul, still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord, went to the High Priest and asked him for letters to the synagogues at Damascus, so that if he found any belonging to the Way, men or women, he might bring them bound to Jerusalem. Now, as he journeyed he approached Damascus, and suddenly a light from heaven flashed about him. And he fell to the ground, and heard a voice saying “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” And he said “”Who are you.Lord?” And he said “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting, but rise and enter the city, and you will be told what you are to do” The men travelling with him stood speechless, hearing the voice but seeing no one. Saul arose from the ground, and when his eyes were opened, he could see nothing, so they led him by the hand and brought him into Damascus. And for three days he was without sight and neither ate or drank” (Ac.9:1-9).

 

Saul’s heart was filled with anything but humbleness and charity, and he was a persecuter rather than the persecuted. He didn’t qualify under any of the headings I’ve mentioned, but God still gave him a vision, a faith and a mission all in one all-encompassing experience. I’m sure that in the process he was born again spiritually, as I’m sure that in entering into the Kingdom of God each of us are born again spiritually – if not yet, then in the future.

 

I’m sure you’ve realised that I’ve now covered three basic ways of attaining the Kingdom.

 

We can have faith, do those things Jesus stated would entitle us to enter the Kingdom, and rest assured on his promise that we will do so (though we ought to take to heart the passage from Ezekiel (Ezk.18:24)).

 

We can go through the ritual conversion which has been made out of the passages in John I mentioned and others. As I’ve said, it seems to me that this is a fairly effective way of opening a line to the Kingdom. I think John knew this route, having travelled it himself – I see his poetic writing in his Gospel as evidence of this – we all know “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (Jn 1:1), and we all know “I am the Way, the Truth and the Life; no one comes to the Father but by me” (Jn 14:6)

 

Or, a very few of us may be zapped by God like Saul. We won’t deserve it, but it will give instant access to the Kingdom and change our lives forever. We can’t ask for it, we can’t do anything to encourage it; it will just happen.

 

Unfortunately, after he became Paul, he didn’t write anything about that experience which might give us a glimpse of it from this great writer. The best I can come up with is from Blaise Pascal, the famous French mathematician, written in his notebook:

“From about half past ten in the evening to about half an hour after midnight.

Fire.

God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob.

Not the God of philosophers and scholrs.

Absolute certainty; beyond reason. Joy. Peace.

Forgetfullness of the world and everything but God.

The World has not known thee, but I have known thee.

Joy! Joy! Tears of joy!”

 

What Paul does write of at length is his knowledge that, once such an experience has happened, there is no going back, and areas where there is no room for doubt (Rom.12:2 etc.). And that the fruits of the spirit will flow inevitably (I.Cor.12).

 

Now, I did get zapped like Saul, or at least like Pascal. My father didn’t. He left myself and mum a message which we read after he died, and it was clear that he hadn’t had more than a glimpse of the full possibility of entry into the Kingdom and had many doubts and uncertainties. I wish he had had a fuller experience than that; I know that Jesus’ promise means that he now does. I know that that promise means that all can share in that Kingdom, whether we arrive by a life of faith and works, whether we seek an instant transformation with the Charismatics, or whether God just decides it’s time for us to change and changes us without warning.

 

But, knowing father’s doubts, I’ll pray that we can all enter the Kingdom sooner rather than later, and go through the rest of our lives with the absolute certainty given to John and to Paul.