Fullness, emptiness and witness

What does a life that bears witness to the gospel look like?

How would we have to live before people would ask us the reason for our hope?

These seem like crucial questions to me.  I've heard so many sermon applications - and I dare say preached a few - which just don't appreciate the enormous difficulty here.  Be honest and don't fiddle your expenses at work.  Who do you think I'm working with, that this would set me apart in any way?  Care for your family, love your spouse, be selfless, treat your kids well.  Sounds good, but will just make me like 90% of the people I know.  Folks are good, moral, decent - on the whole.  They have their struggles and their moral failings, but I'm going to find it hard to outperform them morally - and if I do, how will that point to Jesus?

Should there perhaps be a fullness to the Christian life?  That must be part of it.  It must look different to do all the normal things of life but filled with the Holy Spirit.  That's why I have taken to praying, every morning, that the Spirit might fill me, my family, the members of my church.  The presence of God will inevitably make a difference, right?  Of course, the Spirit is the Spirit of Christ; he will make our lives cruciform, self-sacrificial, in ways that are distinctly uncomfortable.  But also, fullness.  A life that doesn't wear out or get thin.  There's something here about being able to see the beauty in everyday things.  Might people not notice that?

But then I wonder whether we might not need a degree of emptiness as well?

Imagine you're walking through empty countryside.  Coming over the brow of a hill, you see a tower - but a tower that is unlike anything you've ever seen before.  At the ground floor, the walls seem barely to touch the earth.  The first and second floors have only one wall each.  At the third storey, a turret juts out improbably; is it even attached?  And up and up it goes.  Walking around the base of the tower looking up, it's hard to see how this works.  How is this tower standing?  And then more careful observation reveals that the tower is... twisted, somehow.  As if it were built around something, something you can't see.  Intrigued you investigate further, trying to trace out the shape of this apparently absent something.  It seems to have a regularity to it; there is a curious solidity to the absence.  And so the question changes, from 'how is this tower standing?' to 'what is holding this tower up?'

I wonder whether people ought not to be looking at us and wondering what is holding this life up?  I wonder if our lives should be so built around the reality of the gospel that it is just impossible for anyone who doesn't take the active presence of Christ into account to see how or why we keep going.

That might mean deliberate emptiness.  If we structure our lives as everyone else does - around family, career, home - how will they tell that we are sustained by Christ?  If we just assume that we'll get married and have kids like everyone else; if we assume that it will be right to follow career wherever it leads; if we plan to keep on upgrading our homes much as everyone else does - why would anyone ask questions about a life like that?  Where are we deliberately - and visibly - leaning into the reality of the Lord?

Was this perhaps why all those hermits fled into the desert?  When it became easy to be a Christian, when the persecution stopped, when the simple act of believing stopped not making sense to unbelievers - then they started to deny themselves things which they themselves confessed to be entirely legitimate, in order to demonstrate that it was the Lord who upheld them.  Where are the examples of that today?

I feel deeply privileged to have a number of friends who are seeking to live faithfully to Christ whilst wrestling with same-sex attraction.  I think I see in them an example to us of what this life would look like.  A life which foregoes some of the things which those around us imagine to be the very heart and meaning of life - to show that in fact the heart and meaning of life is Jesus.  I feel rebuked by their example, to be honest.  What have I given up for the Lord?  Where are my dreams different from those who don't know him?

Where is my life so shaped around the gospel that it looks impossible from the outside?

Vision, leadership, service

“There is such an emphasis on ‘vision’ that if you have issues with that then you are encouraged to leave."

As another evangelical leader is removed from positions of authority amid allegations of bullying and manipulation, these words from a former member of his church (reported in Christianity Today) seem to be really important. I don't know the ins and outs of this particular situation, but that one sentence seems to me to get to the heart of many of our leadership issues in evangelicalism.

What is leadership? Isn't it primarily setting out a vision, rallying people to that vision? But then might there not need to be some policing of the vision? How might we treat people who aren't 100% on board with the vision?

'Vision' in this sort of discourse so easily becomes short-hand for 'the leader's personal sense of calling'. And although we typically separate between 'beliefs' and 'vision' - although we would maintain that our unity is built on the truth of the gospel and not any particular vision statement - it seems from experience that there is no stopping 'vision' from gradually occupying the central place. After all, programme is driven by vision. What we do together is only indirectly motivated by the Word of God as testified in Holy Scripture; the vision mediates everything. And then the conflation between gospel and vision becomes inevitable, and if you don't quite agree with the leader's sense of vision you are anti-gospel.

"I am among you", said the Lord, "as one who serves." Maybe it would be helpful for us to reflect on those words, spoken at the Last Supper, on the night he was betrayed. He was there amongst his disciples as one who serves. He is here amongst his people as one who serves. Can ministers of the Word be 'leaders', when the Word of God is amongst us as one who serves?

What is my job, if not to lead?

Isn't it just this: to serve the Word? In the sense of being a servant of the Word, and in the sense of being a server of the Word - that is what I am meant to be. As a servant of the Word, I must spend most of my time in the Scriptures, reading, reflecting, meditating - making sure I am hearing the Word. As a server of the Word, I must simply dish out that Word - in one to one conversations, from the pulpit, at the Table. If there are disagreements, discord, how do I react? By ministering the Word.

No vision statement necessary. No new and exciting ways of being (or worse, 'doing') church. Boring old ministry of the Word. Preach a little here, pray a little there. Dish out a little bread and wine. Look for the growth that comes slowly from God, look for the barely perceptible change that comes through grace.

I wonder whether the language of leadership just needs to disappear altogether amongst us.

Gospel, philosophies, cultures - disconnected thoughts

1.  The only culture to which the gospel is bound is that of Israel, as that culture is created and witnessed through the Scriptures of the Old Testament.  That the gospel is bound to this culture is no comment on the suitability of Israel per se, but relies on the fact that the Word of God has taken Jewish, Israelite flesh into personal union with himself in Christ Jesus.  The pre-existence of Israel, before the coming of Christ, is already founded on his future incarnation.  So the gospel is bound to the culture of Israel as expressed in the OT because God has bound that culture to himself in Christ.

2.  No philosophical or cultural background other than OT Israel is inherently more suitable for receiving or expressing the gospel than another.  The gospel has power to express itself in a variety of cultural and philosophical settings, but this power does not come from or depend on the cultural or philosophical milieu.  The power is all in the gospel, in God's Word, to take conceptual, linguistic, and narrative worlds which are in themselves merely human (and therefore incapable of being vehicles for God's revelation) and use them to express divine truth.  Or to put it another way, Jesus can speak many languages.

3.  Every culture and philosophy - and I am not clear in my own mind whether this includes OT Israel or not! - has a tendency to distort the gospel.  Maybe it's the tendency of classical philosophy towards freezing god; maybe it's the Hegelian tendency to bury god in the processes of history.  Maybe it's the modernist assumption that salvation means progress; maybe its the postmodern assumption that salvation means individual liberation from all norms.  Whatever it is, there is always a particular ditch, or several particular ditches, into which any cultural and philosophical framework threatens to drive the gospel.  This does not prevent the Word of God from speaking into and even through those frameworks; nor does it imply that in all, or any, other respects those frameworks are inherently suitable for the gospel (see point 2 above).  But we are not excused from trying to discern the weak points and the danger areas.

4.  A philosophical or cultural framework can shift under prolonged 'pressure' from the gospel.  Classical philosophical concepts, for example, end up being reshaped as Christian content is 'poured' into them.  This can give the impression that here we have a 'Christian philosophy' or a 'Christian culture'.  Better to say that we have a philosophy or culture which has been affected by Christianity, but which still in itself stands against the gospel and in need of constant correction.

5.  Where the church has historically wrestled through particular theological issues using a conceptual and linguistic framework from the past, we may consider ourselves to be bound to their conclusions without being bound to that framework.  For example, we may (and I think should) hold that the church made an irreversible decision and definition at the councils of Nicea, Constantinople, and Chalcedon; but we are also at liberty to express that same conclusion in a different philosophical framework, and indeed we may have an obligation to do so.  In such cases, we can expect a degree of tough questioning as to whether we are really saying the same thing; and that is something to which we should be prepared to submit.

Praying for God

Preaching from Ephesians 3 on Sunday, I was particularly struck by the things that the apostle Paul prays for:

For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.

He asks that God would give his Holy Spirit, so that the believers might be strengthened in their spiritual innards; he asks that Christ might dwell in their hearts by faith.  He asks that they might know the love of Christ in all its unknowable immensity; he asks that they may be filled up with God in all his overflowing fullness.

Big asks!

But also asking for things which to an extent they already have.  They're Christians, which means they have the Spirit, they know Christ by faith, they have some experience of God's love, God already dwells in them and amongst them.  They have all this; but Paul prays it for them anyway.  Because God is inexhaustibly rich, because the love of Christ is a vast ocean that can never be fully charted, because the Holy Spirit is a never-ceasing fountain of grace - therefore, Paul prays for them, that they might have and enjoy what they already have and enjoy, more and more, through and through.

And notice that what he wants for them is God.  This is God's will: to give himself to his people.  The God who lacks nothing, and is rather the source of all goodness, wants to give his presence, his power, his own self, to his people.  It is only because the gift is God himself that Paul can pray knowing that there is always more for them to receive, no matter how much they have already.  God in his infinite bounty desires to spend eternity demonstrating just how bottomless is his grace.

Can you have more of God?  If not, I don't know what Paul is about here in this prayer.  Yes, there is more.  Always more.

And might we not ask for that?  For God?  Remember that the good Father always gives the Holy Spirit to his children who ask him.  Here is a thing he has promised to give in response to prayer, and moreover it is the best thing - himself! - and a thing we will never have finished praying for because there is always more.  And yet our prayer meetings, and I would guess our personal prayer times, are full of prayers for other things, uncertain goods, finite ends.

Might we not pray for God?

Ethics, obedience, fellowship

Bonhoeffer (again) argues that Christian ethics is unique because it refuses to ask the two ethical questions - how can I be a good person? and what is a good action? - because it is already confronted by a greater question: will you hear and obey God?

I think that's helpful in churches riddled with ethical confusion.  Look, the key thing here isn't to go away and have a commission and a process to try to work out what is good.  Will you listen to God and do what he says?

It's also helpful in cutting through some of the fudge.  This is just ethics, say some.  It's a peripheral and complicated issue.  Nobody should be made to feel unwelcome in church just because of an ethical disagreement.  Why can't we all just coexist?  Well, okay Mr Fudge, I see where you're coming from.  The big 'ethical issues' we're wrestling with - around gender and sexuality, for example - are indeed 'peripheral', and have a degree of complexity about them.  I get it.  But what if we try again with the only relevant question for Christian ethics put front and centre: this is just obedience to God.  Obeying God is a peripheral matter, and it's complicated.  Nobody should be made to feel unwelcome in God's church just because they persistently and deliberately disobey God!  Yeah, doesn't sound so good now, does it?

Leaving aside the fact that the apostle is perfectly clear that we should indeed break fellowship with people over 'ethical' issues, and that he brings this into the closest possible connection with the eucharistic celebration of the gospel, just understanding what the ethical question is ought to help us with working through the implications of the answer.

Two crucial concepts from Bonhoeffer

I've long been convinced that Bonhoeffer's Ethics ought to be required reading for all Christian leaders, and perhaps all Christians.  It astonishes me that in this unfinished work I find the most profound reflections on what it means to be a Christian in the modern world.  Two particular concepts have been on my mind lately.

Firstly, the concept of the natural.  For Bonhoeffer, the natural is not identical with the created; in fact, it contains within it the concept of fallenness.  (It is perhaps significant that both Barth and Bonhoeffer are fairly tentative about the original created state; I tend to think that contemporary evangelicals [in the anglophone sense] make rather stronger statements about the original creational design than can be sustained from Scripture).  The natural means the form of reality which persists after the fall.  It cannot be regarded, on the hand, as the original design, because of the fall.  But on the other hand it cannot be regarded as utterly fallen, because of creation.  It is, if you like, the order of preservation, the way God has ordained that things should be.  Crucially, for Bonhoeffer, it is the form of life.  The natural is ordained for life, and as such it is relatively open to the coming of Christ, because Christ comes to give life.  The natural is not yet Christian life, nor does it depend on revelation; but it is in a sense ordered towards revelation and towards Christ.

Because the natural form of things is given by God, it is not dependent on any human authority.  In fact, it is the unnatural which requires organisation, propaganda, force; the natural is simply given, simply there.  Bonhoeffer gives the example of children: they may, by the force of propaganda, be organised against their parents (he has, of course, the Third Reich in view); but if the propaganda and organisation subsides, a more natural filial relation will assert itself again.  I think this explains the constant propaganda around abortion, or around sexuality and gender, at the moment; the proponents of the new moral consensus understand very well that they must constantly buttress their position, lest nature creep back in.  It is also a source for optimism, as Bonhoeffer points out.  Not ultimate optimism - we ought to have that because of Christ! - but the relative optimism that there is a good chance that natural form will reassert itself.

Second concept is vicarious representation.  For Bonhoeffer, amidst the collapse of his society into evil, the crucial temptation to be resisted is ethics as keeping one's own hands clean.  Withdrawal, separation, an attempt to fence out evil from the church, an attempt to separate an individual life into an outward compelled evil and an inner purity...  All this has to be resisted.  An ethic that derives from the gospel recognises that Jesus does not separate himself (in that sense) from sinners, but (in his total separation) becomes a brother to the wicked, taking on himself responsibility for their actions and their waywardness.  Of course this is a movement which cannot be, and need not be, repeated; Christ uniquely bears sin and guilt, is uniquely the vicarious representative of all human beings.  But those who are in Christ must not shy away from accepting solidarity with sinners, must not shy away from accepting guilt.  There is no 'us and them'; just us, sinners.  Because Christ has borne our guilt away, we can take this stance without fear of judgement; because Christ has given us an example, we must take this stance.

The combination of the two concepts seems to me to give us the possibility of a calm, a serenity, in the face of moral collapse in our society.  We are not to be frantically lecturing those around us, as if the natural order of things ordained by God required our defence.  We need not be frantically barricading ourselves and our church communities against the evils of the world, as if Christ needed to fear contamination.  Cheerfully, we speak the truth; tearfully, we confess our complicity in guilt.  And then cheerfully again we remember Jesus.

Religious liberty

The Prime Minister and others made some encouraging noises about religious liberty a few weeks back - supporting freedom of religion at home and abroad.  But I wonder if he knows what religious liberty really means?

I think freedom of religion is not regarded as any great thing in our culture, because religion itself is so badly misunderstood.  If religion is just the Sunday (Friday, Saturday) hobby of a minority of people; if religion is merely the private beliefs of a limited number of individuals; if religion is just a mythical underpinning for a moral framework which could in principle be separated from those mythical roots - well, in that case religious liberty is not much more of a big deal than freedom to follow the football team of your choice, or freedom to read the novels of your choice.  This sort of thing seems like it shouldn't be difficult or costly for society to grant; nor does there seem to be any reason why any particular clamour should be made about it, particularly as the number of people wanting to exercise this right seems so small.

But in fact freedom of religion means freedom to live in a completely different world from society at large, with entirely different values springing from an entirely different view of reality, and yet still to be included in social institutions and events without discrimination.

Put it like that, and I think it's a big deal.

Picture the late Roman Empire - religion here is not about private beliefs or occasional rituals for a minority; it is the whole shared world.  The reason the Roman authorities are anxious about Christians - the reason they refer to them as 'atheists' - is because they seem to be threatening to tear this whole social fabric apart.  They are opting out of the whole cultic-social-political complex, and the more people who go in this direction the more likely it is that the whole thing will collapse.  In that context, to issue an edict of toleration is a brave and testing thing to do.

So, perhaps we wouldn't call it 'religion', but I think our situation is pretty similar.  There is an assumed framework of morals and values ('British values'?) based on a particular reading of history and reality.  To opt out of it is dangerous - you might be a terrorist; you are surely a bit weird.  It's not the going to church or the beliefs that society objects to; just the fact that people insist on acting as if these beliefs were really true, in the real world.  Hard to take.

The easy and natural social response, and the one which our culture typically pursues, is exclusion - of course you're free to hold these views (we're Western, after all, and believe in religious liberty), but you can't come into the public sphere with them.  This is not genuine freedom of religion.

I wonder if our society can be, or wants to be, brave enough to have the real thing?