Seriously, though...

On Sunday after church I was discussing with a couple of guys what might be wrong with our churches.  (This wasn't a reflection on the service in which we'd just been participants; I hope not, as I was the preacher).  The thing that sprang to my mind was just this: we're not very serious.  We don't take things very seriously at all.

To a certain extent, as one of my friends pointed out, this is just because we live in an informal culture, and it is hard to be informal and serious.  I think there is a lot of truth in that.  After all, when we want to do really serious things in life - I have in mind the big occasions, like getting married, or burying someone - we still reach for formality.  It wouldn't seem right to mark those huge things with an informal tone.  Seriousness does demand a certain level of formality.  Isn't it a shame we don't consider meeting with God's people for worship to be serious in this way?

I wonder though - if we don't know how to be informal and serious, perhaps it is a bigger problem that we don't know how to be joyful and serious.  In fact, there is no 'perhaps' about it: this is a bigger problem.  Informality is a cultural preference; joy is a gospel command.  It is interesting that as I was thinking about this I had an encounter with Father Christmas - not in the flesh, which would be odd and also unseasonal, but in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, which I'm currently reading with the boy.  Here's Lewis:

"Some of the pictures of Father Christmas in our world make him look only funny and jolly.  But now that the children actually stood looking at him they didn't find it quite like that.  He was so big, and so glad, and so real, that they all became quite still.  They felt very glad, but also solemn."

And this bit:

"Lucy felt running through her that deep shiver of gladness which you only get if you are being solemn and still."

Perhaps there is something we could learn from Santa...

Aiding and Abetting

Today I've been thinking about the Homoiousians.  I imagine you think about them from time to time as well, but just in case they've not been at the forefront of your mind recently, let me remind you who they were.  The Homoiousians were the moderate party in the fourth century debates about the person of Christ.  They positioned themselves between the Homoousians on the one hand (note the lack of 'i' - homo rather than homoi) and the Arians on the other.  To boil it right down, whilst the Homoousians said that God the Son was of one being with the Father, and the Arians said that God the Son was unlike the Father, the Homoiousians said that the Son was similar to or like the Father in his essence and attributes.

As we all know (right?), the Homoousians ultimately won the day; the Gospel story required the relationship between Father and Son which they championed.  Arianism has been denounced as heresy by all branches of the Christian church.

But my thinking today has not really about the Trinitarian and Christological controversies of yesteryear.  Rather I've been thinking about the role played by the 'moderates', the Homoiousians, in all this debate.  They were a varied bunch.  Some were very slippery characters; they had Arian sympathies, but lacked the courage of their convictions.  Others were simply concerned for the unity of the church; they wanted to try to acommodate the views of as many as possible (whilst ruling out the extremes of Arianism).  Others just felt that it wasn't as important as everyone was making out; they just wanted to preach the gospel without getting mixed up in this abstract argument.

History has not judged their efforts kindly, nor should it.  Whatever the motives, good or bad, the attempt to moderate and compromise and hold people together led to the Homoiousians advocating, or at least tolerating, heretical doctrine.  They did not, in the final analysis, speak the truth about God.  Had they been allowed to triumph, the Gospel would have disappeared.  In the end, whatever they hoped to achieve, they were in fact aiding and abetting the enemy.

I've been thinking about Homoiousians as I reflect on the role some people I respect very much are playing in the big debates in the church today - especially around gender and sexuality.  I worry that in trying to be gentle, kind, moderate...  they're running the danger of being on the wrong side.  When it comes down to it, on this and all issues, we have to listen and speak.  If God said nothing on the subject, we'd jolly well better shut up.  But if he spoke, we'd better hear what he says and articulate it clearly.  No messing around.  No fudging, no hedging, no softening the edges.  Rather, gentleness with clarity.

Why I am so immoral

Everybody knows that it is good to have a strong sense of ethics.  A strong moral code.  On the other hand, it is not generally considered good to be strongly committed to ethical positions which contradict the majority view.  To a large extent we have democratised ethics, such that in most situations what is 'good' is defined by the majority opinion.  It is interesting to see how things which were 'evil' a generation ago are now 'good'.  I am not sure if many people realise we are constructing morality as we go along in this way; I suspect there is a widespread but rather naive belief that we are discovering that our forebears were wrong.  It is not clear to me what new information we have to overturn their conclusions.

But I am not much interested in strong moral codes, whether fashionable or not.

Whilst Holy Scripture contains a number of moral codes itself - Ten Commandments, anybody? - I do not think that morality in this sense is very important in the Bible.  It is certainly true that Scripture encourages us to think wisely, and to work out in practice what it means to do the good.  This may well result in the drawing up of private or public ethical codes, and that is fine and at least potentially good.

But the main thing is not ethical codes.

There is a difference between a person trying to live by the rules - whether their own set, or society's set, or even a Biblical set - and a person trying to live responsibly.  By responsibly I mean at least two things: living in response to another Person - God - as he takes action in the world and particularly (in this connection) as he commands; and living in the knowledge that one will be held accountable by another Person - God - who will ultimately weigh what one has done.

It is less about a good moral code, and more about a righteous God.

This way of life is so much more weighty.  Things really count here.  I must listen, and obey - and this is always a personal interaction.  Though it might mean searching through books and thinking hard, at the end of the day it is about receiving the command of God, which can never really be reduced to an ethical theory.  Whoever came up with the phrase 'divine command theory' had presumably no acquaintance with actual divine commands.  And having received a command, one must follow it, knowing that one will give account.

This way of life is also more difficult.  Codes of ethics are always subject to revision, and no matter how strict they are can usually in time accommodate themselves to shifts in fashion.  The God who does not change, though his commands are always new and personal, will always be who has been.  It is listening to him that leaves Christians out of step - on life issues, on sexual ethics, on a host of issues.

And in a world where ethics is defined by fashion, to listen to the commands may also make us immoral.

Why I am so stupid

There is no getting around the fact that we Christians believe all manner of stupid things.  Here is a sample of really dumb things that I believe to be absolutely true:  I believe that as I type this I may well be observed by invisible spiritual beings, some good and some evil; I believe that the world outside me exists purely for the sake of one Man; I believe that the death of one Person has completely changed the situation of every single person who has ever existed; I believe that a dead Man came back to life on the third day; I believe that the most glorious thing that can happen to a person is to die because of their faith.  And when I say 'believe', don't hear that as some sort of religious word.  I mean that I believe these things in much the same way that I believe that my laptop is in front of me as I type.

These things are stupid things to believe.

They are not stupid beliefs in and of themselves.  Only internally contradictory beliefs would be stupid in isolation.  They are dumb beliefs because they are impossible to fit within the frame of reference which we use to describe reality.  They are stupid because they are contradicted by the most fundamental axioms which we have adopted as arbiters of truth.  In particular, they are dumb because they are manifestly not derived from my experience or from any empirical judgement.  They are stupid, actually, because they could only work in our frame of reference as 'values', as myths which are in some sense true for me but certainly do not make any claim to actual, real-world truthfulness.

I believe all these stupid things.

I believe them because I have come to think that our frame of reference is all wrong.  I believe them because I think they reflect a higher frame of reference: the truth of the Creator.  These foolish beliefs are his folly, not mine. And his folly is wiser than my wisdom.

There is just one thing I am determined to do: to keep being stupid.  The danger is that I take these beliefs, see the profundity of them, glimpse something of God's wisdom - and adopt a position of superiority.  If I do this, I deny the very reality of the beliefs I profess; shape them into something strong and praise-worthy.

No, I will just carry on being dumb.  Nothing much ever depended on my cleverness anyway.