Welcome

I'm not blogging here any longer, and I'm afraid I probably won't pick up on any new comments either. I'm now blogging at The Evangelical Liberal but I'm leaving these old posts up as an archive.

Wednesday 15 December 2010

Christmas story - A shepherd's carol

Some of you may have already read this short yarn last year, in which case I can only say - why not read it again? Christmas is after all the time for re-runs and repeats. ;-)

Or else have a look at my other recent Christmassy contributions:
A Christmas carol
Merry Christmas... bah humbug

A shepherd's carol

The most terrible happenings last week – terrible; I still can’t speak about it… the dead of night, all those little ones, and their mothers and dads looking on helpless as those cruel soldiers strike down like wolves on lambs, Yahweh have mercy… I can’t bear to think about it. Terrible, terrible happenings. Such loss, such horror, such barbarity, and for what? For what? Things round these parts won’t be the same for many a long lambing.

And yet, and yet... there was that other night, two years back now, and nothing that happens can change that. Strange things happened that night, wonderful things beyond explanation. The brutality of kings and Caesars is nothing new to these parts, heaven knows, but this – this was something not heard of in all the ages. Thinking about it again gives me hope... helps ease the hurt...

Read the full story

Monday 13 December 2010

Tithing, obedience and bad exegesis

Honestly, why do some people - particularly pastors - get so hung up on tithing? Yesterday's daily devotional from Purpose Driven Life (TM) contains this paragraph:

"Often we try to offer God partial obedience. We want to pick and choose the commands we obey... I'll attend church but I won't tithe... Yet partial obedience is disobedience."
And back in August 2009, the same good old Rick Warren went a little further. After quoting on tithing from Deuteronomy 14:23, he wrote:

"We develop spiritual fitness when we honor God by giving him a tithe every week... Why would anybody have to do that? Because God says so and that’s reason enough. If you don’t do it, you’re disobeying God."
Sorry, but that's just wrong, and irresponsibly wrong at that. Tithing is an Old Testament command; the New Testament equivalent is simply giving, and it is not so much a command as a request based on gratitude to God and love and care for others.

Bad exegesis

Failing to tithe is in the same category as failing to follow regulations on sacrifices for mildew infestations
It's plain bad exegesis (not to mention pastorally abusive) to rip a couple of verses about tithing out of Deuteronomy and Malachi and then claim that not following them is disobeying God's command. Tithing is part of the old Mosaic law and relates to the temple-centric structure of ancient Israelite society. Jesus doesn't mention tithing (except in a slightly disparaging passing reference to the Pharisees' habit of tithing herbs); it forms no part of the instructions to Gentile converts in Acts; and even Paul doesn't refer to it. Tithing simply is not a binding command on Christians, and failing to tithe just is not disobedience to God. Full stop.

Picking and choosing

Rick Warren talks freely of the danger of 'picking and choosing' which biblical commands we will obey. But he himself is picking and choosing which Old Testament laws he deems still to apply to Christians.

Failing to give, most importantly failing to love and care - these are the real spiritual problems to address in our lives. Failing to tithe comes into roughly the same category as failing to follow Levitical regulations on proper sacrifices for infestations of mildew.

The cynic in me can't help wondering occasionally whether tithing would be preached on so often if it did not directly financially affect churches and their leaders...

(NB I should point out that this does not apply to the leaders of the church I belong to, who take a very sensible and liberating attitude towards personal giving.)

Friday 10 December 2010

A Christmas carol

After ranting on about Christmas in my last blog post, I thought it was time to contribute something (hopefully) a bit more positive. So here's a rough demo version of a new carol what I wrote. :-)

Into the dark of Earth's long night


Into the dark of earth's long night
Shines the star of heaven's light
Into the heart of winter sky
Rises this star so bright, so high
Guiding us with its quick’ning ray
Heralding long-awaited day
Into the dark of earth's long night
Shines the star of heaven's light

Into the dark of sin and shame
Blazes the light of heaven's flame
This flame which burns so pure and strong
Promising end to harm and wrong
Bringing to us love's holy light
Come to restore our broken sight
Into the dark of sin and shame
Shines the light of heaven's flame

Into our winter deep and long,
Sound the notes of heaven's song
This song which melts the frozen heart
Breaking its ice-bound chains apart
Making our souls and spirits sing
With the joy of coming spring
Into our winter deep and long
Sound the notes of heaven's song.

A bunch of my other songs and tunes are available here.

Thursday 9 December 2010

Merry Christmas one and all (bah humbug)

I love Christmas and I hate it; I look forward to it and dread it in almost equal measure.

On the one side is all the sheer insanity of the crass commercialism starting earlier each year, with its attendant tide of tasteless tinselly tat, dancing snowmen and singing reindeer; the annual ear-torture of Christmas singles and ceaseless repetitions of Slade, George Michael and Chris de Burgh; the hideous 'Christmas specials' and family films about elves, and X-list celebs appearing in puerile pantos in a hopeless bid to revive their careers.

And then there's the needless nightmare of Christmas shopping and the pressures of present-buying for people who don't need anything and card-writing for people who ceased to be your friends years ago. And finally there's all the endless enforced jollity and sociableness with people you probably wouldn't normally pass the time of day with. (NB - no reference to my own relatives and in-laws of course, who are all lovely and who I still want to be on speaking terms with, especially if they're planning to buy me presents. :-))

Put all this together and just for once I'm tempted to support my arch-nemesis Ollie Cromwell in banning the whole sorry business for good. If all this was all there were to Christmas, I'd hate it with a venomous passion and join with Scrooge in a hearty chorus of 'Bah humbug!'; I'd be glad if the Grinch truly had stolen Christmas and never brought it back. For all this isn't Christmas; it's X-mas - to paraphrase poet Gordon Bailey, X for a wrong answer; X for something messed up and crossed out; X for a meaningless kiss; X for the 'ex' of something that used to be but is no longer, like an ex-girlfriend.

The light shines in the darkness

And yet... there is another side which all the tide of tat, Slade, commercialism and false jollity can never quite drown out, though it tries its hardest. I just can't deny that buried under it all and gleaming through the gaps there is a genuine magic to Christmas, something of true wonder and beauty. It is the wonder of a lone star in a night of unrelenting midwinter dark; the beauty of a lone voice singing an ancient and lovely carol amid the brassy blare of Xmas noise.

True Christmas is an unexpected light in the blackest darkness; an unlooked-for hope amid the deepest despair; a sign of life and truth in the most unlikely and unlooked-for place. It is a child born in poverty and obscurity to bring new life and light to the world; it is a song sung not by Slade but by angels, and heard not by frustrated shoppers but by frightened shepherds in a forgotten backwater. "The people that walk in darkness have seen a great light... the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it."

(I don't, by the way, object to fairy lights and Father Christmas, which have the magic of myth and childhood and expectancy, and like all good myth have roots in something of truth and beauty.)

It's no coincidence that both some of the best and worst, happiest and most difficult times of my own life have been around Christmas. Seventeen years ago I suffered a severe breakdown at Christmas, and yet on the back of that I found faith, new purpose and a new life; and three years later at Christmas I got engaged to the lovely and long-suffering person who for some reason has consented to share a life with me.

I hate Xmas because I love Christmas. Bah humbug to Xmas; Merry Christmas one and all.

Saturday 4 December 2010

Snow

Okay, the snow's mostly going now, here at least. I know it's been disruptive, dangerous for some, but I love snow. It makes me feel like a child again (not that it takes much). And it's just so beautiful.

So here's a kind of meditation on snow - and kind of on God - that I wrote 3 years ago in another snowy patch:

Snow meditation


Snow – this symbol of purity and grace, a bridal raiment,
Shining robe of righteousness upon the undeserving earth.

A miracle – billions on billions of snowflakes,
Each unique – like us.

Some see holiness and God like snow –
Cold, unliving, unfeeling, freezing out life,
Destroying crops, disrupting life and
Causing men to stumble as they walk.

I see snow like holiness and God –

Joyful, playful, life-enhancing,
Ready to be sculpted by small eager hands

Beautiful,
Like love, covering a multitude of sins and filth and ugliness
(even Croydon is lovely on a snowy day)

Gracious,
Settling alike on poor and rich, great and small,
Clean and dirty, worthy and unworthy

Transforming,
If only for a brief hour, a day
Like a fleeting smile,
A glittering diadem placed upon the brow.

Kind,
Covering like a mantle, a fur-rich blanket,
Like wool upon sheep

Self-sacrificial, incarnational,
Coming down to us from heaven
Mixing with our muck and mud, our feet and hands,
Consenting to be trampled, mangled, muddied, man-handled,
Flung about, destroyed.

We wreck the snow, despoil it, fling it, dirty it
But it stays silent, like the sheep before the shearers
And though it fades and melts and turns to muddy slush
It will return.

And when it melts, it leaves us clean.

Monday 22 November 2010

Through a Wardrobe Darkly: Notes on Narnia

I'm a bit of a Narnia geek and it's been a long-cherished project to write a set of notes/commentaries on the spiritual and literary themes in each of the Narnia stories. So far I've only done The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (my personal favourite), and with the film about to come out it seemed like a good time to share these. Prospective publishers, feel free to get in touch. ;-)

Here's an extract from the intro...

Talking with Trees

"Oh, Trees, Trees, Trees," said Lucy... "Oh, Trees, wake, wake, wake. Don’t you remember it? Don’t you remember me? Dryads and Hamadryads, come to me."

Though there was not a breath of wind they all stirred about her. The rustling noise of the leaves was almost like words. The nightingale stopped singing as if to listen to it. Lucy felt that at any moment she would begin to understand what the trees were trying to say.
(Prince Caspian: What Lucy Saw)
Trees are symbolically important in Narnia
Trees and woods are symbolically important in Narnia as they are in the Bible. In The Magician’s Nephew, Digory has to pick an apple from the special tree in the walled garden and bring it to Aslan, and from it grows the great tree of protection for Narnia, as well as the apple which will heal his mother. From that second apple comes the tree whose wood will be made into the wardrobe by which Lucy enters Narnia in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe – emerging straight into a Narnian wood. Trees play a central role in Prince Caspian (as hinted in the passage quoted above), culminating in their reawakening to rout Miraz’s army (and a doorway of three wooden stakes forms the portal back into our world). In The Last Battle, the cruel felling of the talking trees is the portent of the great evil to come in the last days of Narnia. At the start of The Silver Chair, Jill and Eustace come into a forest of great trees on Aslan’s mountain. In the other books, trees and woods are present and important, albeit in subtler ways: trees, after all, are what Narnian ships are made out of (The Voyage of the Dawn Treader).

Trees are also of course what books are made of, and pages are sometimes called leaves. Awakening the trees, trying to catch what they are saying, could be a metaphor for finding new life and meaning in books, especially books that may seem dead or dry, or to have already given up all their meaning – such as the Bible, or of course the Narnia Chronicles themselves.

Take the passage from Prince Caspian quoted above: there is far more going on in it than we might take in at first glance – or even after repeated readings. The sheer depth and potential for meaning in Lewis’s Narnian writing is one of the reasons why I have written these notes – seeking to unearth some of the hidden treasures and depths of meaning in the Narnia Chronicles; to ‘awaken the trees’ and hear what else they may be saying to us, what wisdom they can teach us. Just as Lucy feels she has missed something when she cannot get the trees to wake and speak, we too may have read these books countless times and yet missed much of what they are whispering to us.

The Wood between the Worlds

Woods - and books - can be doorways to new worlds
The other great wood in Narnia is the 'Wood between the Worlds' in The Magician’s Nephew. Through the pools in this timeless wood, it is possible to enter any one of countless worlds. The wood may represent many things, one of which is our imagination by which we too can enter Lewis’s mythic world of Narnia and live in its landscape. So woods and trees – and books – can be doorways to new worlds, new experiences and new understandings.

Finally, the Narnian woods can be a symbol for our own souls and imaginations, which need to be stirred, awakened and heard. I can think of few better ways of beginning this process than immersing oneself in the rich depths of Lewis’s tales.

Read more...

Sunday 1 August 2010

Is God homicidal?

How do Christians square Old Testament bloodshed with the God who is Love?

There is much apparently God-commanded violence, bloodshed, killing, war, homicide and even genocide in the Old Testament. How do we as Christians square this with our knowledge of God as the One who is Love; the Lord of mercy, compassion, kindness, peace, generosity and goodness; the God we call our loving heavenly Father; the God revealed in Jesus who takes our sins and sufferings on himself to the cross?

Divine accommodation and progressive revelation

It's tempting just to write off the difficult Old Testament (OT) passages and the less pleasant elements of the OT view of God: to say it was simply an earlier, more primitive and partial understanding (or even total misunderstanding) of God for a more brutal age when war, killing and violence were a normal part of life. And there may be a certain amount of truth in this.

God has always revealed himself to particular individuals within particular settings
God has always revealed himself to particular individuals within particular cultural and historical settings, accommodating himself to their particular needs and norms while challenging and transcending them; adapting his language and self-revelation to their limited understanding (and their limited ability to understand). He is like a father learning to speak baby-language to communicate with his infant children, or even a Dr Doolittle learning to speak the language of beasts to communicate with his animal friends.

But always God is leading his people on to a deeper understanding of his very different ways of love, mercy, forgiveness and grace; of love for outsiders and enemies as well as family, friend and tribe. Here we have the ideas of divine accommodation and progressive revelation.

So when we get to Jesus who fulfils the OT law and prophets and indeed becomes the perfect representative of all Israel was meant to be and do, we see a very different interpretation of some of the seemingly harsh OT laws and regulations. No longer are Sabbath-breakers stoned to death; in Jesus, the Sabbath is given a whole new meaning and emphasis. Even prostitutes and adulteresses are offered repentance and redemption rather than the punishment required by law.

Holiness, judgement and protection

'Safe? Of course he's not safe! But he's good'
The other aspect of the OT is God's sheer otherness and holiness. In C.S. Lewis's famous description of Aslan from the Narnia stories, 'Safe? Of course he's not safe! He's the King, I tell you. But he's good', and 'He's not a tame lion'. God is wilder than lightning or a tornado, more powerful than the heart of a star; he is blazingly, blindingly righteous and good and powerful. And by his standards, even the best humans look like death-row convicts; even the best human actions look soiled and tawdry ('filthy rags'). It's not a pleasant thought, but God is entirely right and just to punish sin and evil, to wipe out sinful and idolatrous nations as we might wipe out an infestation of blight or bird flu or cockroaches (for example, the horrific and bloodthirsty ritual acts of the Canaanites and neighbouring nations brought down just judgement upon themselves). But it brings God no pleasure or joy to do this. He loves every human, however fallen and sinful, and his ultimate plan for all is salvation. (And with God even death is not the end, so it is quite conceivable that those wiped out in OT 'genocides' will ultimately find their place among the redeemed.)

Furthermore, in the OT God has to protect his fledgling community of faith from contagion and corruption, both from within and without, just as we need to protect infants from disease before they've built up their own immunity. The Israelite community was the nursery in which faithful, loving covenant relationship with God would uniquely be formed and shown forth to the world, and into which the whole earth's saviour will be born. That nursery of faith had to be kept clean and free from disease for a season, not just for the sake of its own inhabitants but ultimately for the whole world.

In the OT then we see the awesome holy otherness of a God who cannot be approached by mere mortals any more than we can touch the Sun, kiss the lightning or hug a wild lion. But God longs to draw us close to him and the whole OT is preparing for him to take on human flesh and frailty in Christ, to walk with us and die for us as one of us, and then for him to send his Spirit to live in us as close as our very breath, our heartbeat.

Love and goodness

Of course, the God shown in the New Testament is still not fluffy or cuddly - look at the story of Ananias and Sapphira, and all Jesus' and Paul's teaching on sin and judgement - but he is good, and above all he is Love'God is love', the apostle John tells us in perhaps the most profound statement of the Bible. The central fact of all that is, the ultimate cornerstone of reality turns out not to be raw power, or rigid legal justice, or sheer mathematical intellect; it is love. Unimaginable, unfathomable, unbounded, unquenchable love that goes to the very end - through death, hell and beyond - for the beloved. And amazingly, unbelievably, we are the beloved; we the stupid, sinful, failing, weak, messed-up losers we are.

God is not a homicidal megalomaniac; he is love and goodness incarnate. As I grow in worship and love of God, I may not understand those difficult OT passages better, but I see them in a new light and context and they cease to present such an insurmountable problem for me. Only through the lens of love and relationship can we hope to begin to understand God's actions and character in the Old Testament and to realise that even those parts that are offensive to us are ultimately born out of perfect divine love and goodness. As Tom Wright puts it, 'God gets his boots dirty and his hands bloody' for the sake of the world - and ultimately not by destroying sinners but by bleeding and dying for them; for us.

Wednesday 30 June 2010

John Sanford's declining genes

A creationist friend recently lent me a John Sanford DVD entitled 'The Mystery of Our Declining Genes', which I finally got round to watching this week.

Genetic Entropy

Sanford's main premise is that our genes are degenerating at an alarming rate
Sanford is the latest great hope for creationists; he is a pleasant and reasonable man and apparently a well-respected Cornell geneticist with sound academic credentials, who has moved from atheism through theistic evolution all the way to Young Earth Creationism. 'Declining Genes' is filmed from a 45-min lecture given to the unsurprisingly creationist Creation Ministries, in which he claims to be able to refute the evolutionary Neo-Darwinian synthesis completely by his theory of Genetic Entropy.

I must confess I didn't fully understand (or attend to) all of the talk. His main premise is that our genes are degenerating at an alarming rate, and that 'bad' or harmful mutations are so much more frequent than 'good' or beneficial ones that natural selection is like baling water out of a sinking ship. His view is that selection is God's method of slowing down the inevitable degradation and extinction of species rather than being capable of producing any actual positive developments. He's also put together a computer simulation called Mendel's Accountant (freely available to download) which he claims conclusively backs up Biblical timescales (and the ages of people in Genesis), and supposedly refutes standard evolutionary accounts.

Unfortunately as a layman I can't really interrogate Sanford's biology or his maths, so I'll have to leave that to others. However, so far my search of the web hasn't turned up any good refutations of - or indeed any proper engagement with - his ideas. My initial impression is that his arguments seem, at least on the surface, fairly plausible. However, I remember being equally impressed with Michael Behe's 'irreducible complexity' when I first came across it, and that concept has now been very effectively refuted.

A note of caution

I would just sound a note of caution to excited creationists that a single idea in one field, however impressive, is unlikely to be able to overturn all the overwhelming evidence for an old earth and for evolution across numerous other fields. If there is any weight in Sanford's findings, then they will stand out as a puzzling anomaly to address, but not as the paradigm-shifting argument-clincher that he seems to imagine.

I'm also slightly unsure about Sanford's assumptions - given that most creationists eschew the principle of uniformity, his calculations seem heavily reliant on being able to extrapolate back several thousand years from today's genetic decay rate. I'm not entirely convinced either that 'bad' mutations are necessarily as detrimental as he claims, but I'll need to leave that to more qualified people to clear up.

The second law of thermodynamics

Sanford seems to slightly misunderstand entropy, which is clearly crucial to his theory
Finally, I think that, along with many creationists, Sanford - not a chemist or physicist - does slightly misunderstand the second law of thermodynamics and the principle of entropy, which is clearly crucial to Sanford's theory. Entropy, they argue, must always increase according to the 2nd law; your house doesn't simply tidy itself (cue appreciative chuckles from audience). So the idea of natural selection being able to increase order is clearly laughable and evolution is disproved.

What they don't seem aware of, or are ignoring, is that within any specific system entropy can be decreased - at the expense of increased entropy in its environment. In biochemist Albert Lehningher's words:
"living organisms preserve their internal order by taking from their surroundings free energy, in the form of nutrients or sunlight, and returning to their surroundings an equal amount of energy as heat and entropy".
A useful related idea is Ectropy (the reverse of entropy), "a measure of the tendency of a dynamical system to do useful work and grow more organized" (Wikipedia). The Earth's ectropy is increased (entropy decreased) by the Sun's energy, and a living organism's ectropy is increased by taking in food.

So life could almost be defined as a system designed to decrease or reverse entropy internally while increasing it in the external environment.

Disquieting fundamentalism

Overall, I found watching 'Declining Genes' a strangely disquieting experience - not so much because of its challenge to my theistic evolutionary worldview, but because of its underlying fundamentalism and dogmatism. Sanford is a very pleasant, reasonable and mild-mannered man, and clearly far from unintelligent. But his wholesale adoption of fundamentalist beliefs, principles and jargon struck what seemed to me a jarring note.

He started by remarking on the 'sweet spirit' in the room, which to me sounded like an over-spiritual way of saying that the atmosphere was - unsurprisingly - friendly. He paid tribute to all the members of Creation Ministries who had faithfully been fighting for God's truth while he had been compromising with the world in espousing theistic evolution. And his whole talk was based on refuting the dangerous deception of the Neo-Darwinian synthesis with the unfailing truth of God's Word. There was no room for disagreement, middle ground or uncertainty. God's Word says, and of course the science has to back that up - how could it be otherwise? This kind of thinking scares me, especially in a man of science.

Tuesday 29 June 2010

Nut cutlets are not the only food - 10 reasons to eat meat

Okay, I confess. I'm not a vegetarian. I never have been and strongly suspect I never will be. Shockingly, I love eating meat. In today's increasingly environmentally-aware, er, environment it often seems that I'm expected to feel guilty about my carnivorous preferences. So what follows is a poorly-argued, shoddily-evidenced defence of meat-eating as part of an omnivorously-balanced diet.

1. Nature. Meat-eating has a long and noble tradition in nature that stretches all the way back to T. Rex and beyond. I for one have no intention of arguing with T. Rex. Yes, okay, this is a daft argument; cannibalism and incest also have long and noble traditions in nature. My very slightly serious point is that, at the least, meat-eating is a well established part of the ecological order and of the food chain. Come on, you know it's not green to mess with nature! :-) And God appears to sanction and uphold carnivorousness - Psalm 104 talks of lions seeking their food from God.

2. Human physiognomy and history. Humans are biologically omnivores - we're designed to eat both meat and veg, not just one or the other. And as far as we can tell, Homo has indeed been a hunter since he or she first became sapiens, and probably before. Again, this doesn't mean we have to eat meat - but I'd say it strongly argues that it's more natural for us to include some meat in our diet than to be entirely vegetarian.

3. Health. Vegetarians all die at a horribly young age. No, of course they don't really. But the idea that a vegetarian diet is inherently healthier than an omnivorous one and that vegetarians live longer is equally a groundless myth. And my entirely uneducated guess is that though it's perfectly possible to have a fully balanced diet as a vegetarian, it's probably easier as an omnivore.

4. Environment. Vegetarians fart more - it's an incontestable scientific fact. That's more harmful methane gas in the atmosphere, irresponsibly increasing the greenhouse effect and contributing to global warming, not to mention polluting the local atmosphere with foul smells.

A recent Cranfield Uni study also suggested that switching from local beef to imported tofu or Quorn could raise the risk of rainforest destruction. We're all aware that intensive livestock farming damages the environment - but so does intensive arable farming. The answer is not to stop growing crops or raising cattle but to find better ways of doing both.

5. Taste. It's a small and selfish thing, but to many of us veggie food is what the BFG would call 'revoltsome uckslush'. I'm not against the occasional nut cutlet, veggie burger or vegetable curry/lasagne, but for me an entirely non-meat diet would be like having to listen to only folk rock, or having to wear only corduroy. A small price to pay for saving animals and the planet, you might say, and maybe I'm just a big selfish baddie, but a lifetime without meat looks to me like a desert not a garden.

6. The Bible. The Bible is absolutely chock full of meat-eating. It's even a Levitical command, part of the prescribed Old Testament worship of Yahweh. Admittedly, right at the very start in Gen 1:29 God does prescribe a vegetarian - actually a vegan - diet. But within 9 chapters he's changed this decree and in Gen 9:4 he specifically gives humans every living creature as food (later restricting it to 'clean' animals). The only examples of vegetarianism I can think of in the Bible are the enforced manna diet of the desert wanderings, Daniel refusing the King's meat for reasons of purity from pagan sacrifice, and John the Baptist's famous locust-and-honey sandwiches.

7. The example of Jesus. Jesus ate meat - both fish and lamb for definite, and he even ate fish after his resurrection. He went as far as declaring all foods clean, and in Acts Peter has a heavenly vision commanding him to eat 'unclean' meats. (Of course this is symbolic but that shouldn't detract from its literal aspects.) Admittedly Jesus was not faced with issues such as battery farming and deforestation, but in principle he appeared to endorse the eating of meat. And symbolically of course, Jesus is our perfect Passover lamb, so the eating of meat (lamb at least) has an added theological and memorial dimension.

8. Moral well-being and freedom. In today's climate, being a vegetarian puts you firmly on the moral high ground and lays you open to the deadly spiritual danger of self-righteousness. For humility's sake, eat meat.

Slightly more seriously, unnecessary guilt is not spiritually or emotionally healthy. The apostle Paul enjoins us to 'Eat everything in the meat market without raising questions of conscience' (1 Cor 10:25). In other words, and taking the verse slightly out of context, we don't need to feel bad about eating particular foods. Most of us have more than enough guilt in our lives to be going on with; let's free ourselves of feelings of moral shame over meat-eating.

In some cultures, hunters thank the animal they've killed for providing them with meat and clothes. I rather like this idea - eating meat but with a sense of gratitude, even obligation, to the animal.

9. Animals are not humans. Animals are amazing, wonderful and fascinating and I love them. If I'd followed my teenage choice of career path, I'd be a nature reserve warden or a Bill Oddie. We have a duty of care to nature and animals in general. But let's not sentimentally anthropomorphise our furry friends. They are not human or equal to humans. Jesus said a person's life is worth that of many sparrows. Animals are not fully self-conscious, morally responsible beings. As already noted, they behave in some pretty horrendous ways. Animal populations do sometimes need to be controlled and culled. Some animals in some places are pests - rats for example. I don't believe that killing animals for food or to control populations is necessarily morally wrong, though it is of course unpleasant and should be done humanely.

 10. Most vegetarianism is partial and inconsistent. If we're to embrace vegetarianism because killing animals is wrong, full stop, then to be consistent we should follow the Jainist ways and never swat mosquitoes or wasps, never kill slugs on our plants, and perhaps even never take antibiotics. Of course, some do go to these lengths and I applaud their integrity. But most of us choose to draw the line somewhere; I just choose to draw it at a slightly different point to my vegetarian friends.

*

Okay, okay. I'm not seriously saying that it's spiritually or environmentally better to eat meat. With all Christians I look forward to the day when the Kingdom comes, the lion lies down with the lamb without taking a bite first, and all pain and death finally ceases. In that day I suspect we won't eat meat, and perhaps neither will we wear clothes - another result of Adam's sin, according to Genesis. And in the meantime, if we do eat meat, we need to do so responsibly; by all means let's campaign for better living conditions for farm animals, more humane methods of slaughter, and less environmentally-damaging ways of farming.

But for now, I'll keep my clothes on and continue to 'eat anything sold in the meat market', with the possible exceptions of offal and giblets.

Thursday 17 June 2010

Chance and choice

Reflections on the interplay of divine will, natural chance and human freedom.

Is everything that happens, everything we do, everything that exists completely fixed and determined; or is it utterly random and chaotic; or is it all up to us, a matter of will and decision? Do we live in a universe organised by divine command, blind chance or creaturely choice? Do we follow a set path to an inevitable destiny, or a random meandering to who knows where - or do we choose our own path and destination?

As usual, my irritatingly indecisive answer is 'a bit of all three'. I can't sign up either to total determinism, utter randomness or supreme creaturely free will, but rather to a complex interplay of all three elements.

Creator, cosmos and creatures

The three elements could be seen as standing respectively for the role of God, the universe/nature, and humans:
  • God is arguably eternal and perfect and, in his own essence (though not necessarily in his relationship with his creation), unchanging.

  • The universe (nature) seems at its most essential level to be random. The sub-atomic quantum world appears to be deeply and fundamentally chaotic, and randomness or chance - or else a pattern so complex it defies our deciphering - seems best to describe the behaviour of weather systems, radioactive decay, gene shuffling in sexual reproduction, and so many other natural phenomena.

    However, there is another side to this equation; everything in nature also obeys the natural laws and set processes of physics, chemistry and biology, so law and randomness walk hand in hand, randomness forever giving law something fresh to act on.

  • Humans (and to an extent other creatures) seem to have at least a degree of genuine freedom and ability to make real and meaningful choices with significant consequences for themselves, other creatures and the world. Some would argue that every choice we make is completely predetermined by our genes, our nurture and our present circumstances, but I believe that there is always an element - however small - of free and uncoerced choice. 

Paradoxical sovereignty

God's sovereign rule is one of freedom not coercion
I find it fascinating that God, in his sovereignty and unchanging perfection, does not impose a set order on nature or on human life but gives the freedom of chance (randomness) to the one and the freedom of choice to the other. This suggests to me that God's sovereign rule is a rule of freedom not coercion, and that his unchanging perfection is simultaneously and paradoxically a dynamic diversity. (This perhaps ties in with Aquinas's comment on divine simplicity, that God's infinite simplicity would necessarily appear to finite minds as infinite complexity.)

Of course, randomness - 'chance' - does not necessarily equate to meaninglessness. A roll of the die can produce six different outcomes but each of those outcomes can have a valid meaning or significance. Similarly, complexity need not necessarily equate to chaos; even the most apparently chaotic arrangement can form a meaningful pattern to the infinite mind of God.

The impossible real

everything that happens is both mathematically impossible and inevitable
Looked at from one end of the telescope, everything that happens is mathematically impossible. The odds, viewed from the beginning of time, of my sitting here at this moment writing this or you sitting there reading it are incalculably infinitesimal - zero, in effect. The odds of your or my being here at all are infinitesimal. By any odds, we shouldn't exist. But we do; and viewed at this present moment from the other end of the telescope our being here and doing this is definite, actual, even (in a sense) inevitable - it simply is what is happening; its probability at this point is 1 (i.e. 100%).

And of course we don't know how wide the parameters of freedom are set - how many alternative pathways chance and choice have been allowed to get from the moment dot to this present moment; how many alternative endings and outcomes there could have been and could yet be; whether the final, ultimate outcomes and destinies are all set and it's only the paths to them that are free.

Nonetheless I believe very deeply in real and meaningful freedom to act and to choose within the framework of God's sovereignty and the universe's serendipity. Perhaps our choice, or our ability to choose, is meant to form the bridge between the fixedness of God and the fluidity of nature; the command of God and the chaos of the cosmos. Or perhaps the randomness of nature is what allows us the freedom to choose within the sovereignty of God.

Or perhaps I'm just talking rubbish about things that are far too big for me to have a clue about...

Thursday 10 June 2010

Spirit and matter

Reflections on the sacredness and significance of matter...

More than the sum of its parts

there is to all things an invisible spiritual component
I believe that everything in this world is more than the sum of its (visible) parts. For there is to all things an invisible spiritual component or dimension which transforms and transfigures the ordinary into the extraordinary, the mundane into the miraculous. It is the eternal element in the everyday. It is what gives meaning and life to mere things.

Reductionism

If we look at anything in an (ontologically) reductionist, materialist way we can reduce it to a set of component parts with no meaning, purpose, significance, value or life. As Wordsworth put it, 'we kill to dissect' - or rather, in dissecting we lose the essence of the composed creation. A human can be deconstructed into flesh, bones and organs or further down into cells, then genes, then chemicals and finally atoms and their components; or else humans can be seen as 'just' apes or mammals.

A comedian once quipped "life is nature's way of keeping meat fresh". Thoughts can be reduced to electro-chemical impulses; love can be explained as evolution's means of ensuring the survival or reproductive success of genes or species; Beethoven's 9th can be disassembled into a set of sound waves.

Incidentally, I don't believe there is such a thing as 'just' anything, whether it's sound waves, sinews or cells. Even these component parts have a kind of selfhood; they are something important even in and of themselves.

But furthermore, we know instinctively that all these sets of component parts are not what humans, thoughts, love, life or symphonies are - merely what they're made of:
"In our world", said Eustace, "a star is a huge ball of flaming gas."
"Even in your world... that is not what a star is but only what it is made of." (C.S. Lewis, Voyage of the Dawn Treader)

The meaning of love?

It may well be true that romantic love is, on a biological or evolutionary level, merely the means by which humans are induced to pair up, mate and bring up their offspring, ensuring the survival of their genes. Viewed in this way it is a mere phantom, a meaningless but biologically-useful trick played on us by our DNA. But it can be both that and something more, for there is a spiritual as well a physical component to everything; an eternal as well as a temporal aspect. Human romantic love can - and I believe does - have a reality, meaning, significance and value that transcend and suppress its utilitarian biological function.

even animals are not merely animals
Human beings are not merely animals; indeed, even animals are not merely animals. Our bodies and actions matter. Sex is not merely a meaningless and transient physical act; perhaps even eating and excreting have a sacredness, linking us all in the great chains and cycles of life in which all living creatures participate and interdepend.

Matter matters

So matter matters. Matter matters in its own right, simply as itself, and it matters because of the spirit which fills, vivifies, lifts and transfigures it. Matter is spirit's body, its means of expression in a physical universe, the instrument through which its music plays.

Perhaps then almost nothing is entirely meaningless - even the most apparently random of chance events...

A poem

The body's more than earth by nature formed,
The brain is more than cells by sense informed,
The mind is more than brain's projection-screen
Where visions, dark subconscious-bred, are seen;
The Earth is more than soil swinging through space,
And man is more than monkey aping grace,
And music's more than heard-vibrating air;
For Truth is more than Reason can lay bare:

Beside, beyond, above body, brain, mind,
Unseen, ignored, rejected; undesigned
Designer, Maker, Lover, Source of love
a
nd light and life, without whom none can live -
O Spirit, may we hear your soundless call;
For spirit is the greater part of all.

Wednesday 9 June 2010

The Sovereignty of God

What does God's sovereignty really mean and does it take precedence over his love? Does everything happen according to God's will?

The Sovereignty of God is a cornerstone doctrine for Conservative Evangelicals (CEs) like J.I. Packer and John Piper. In my view though, they both misinterpret God's sovereignty and over-emphasise it at the expense of other more important aspects of his divine nature and being.

Extreme Sovereignty

In very over-simplified terms, the conservative view of Sovereignty is roughly:

a) God, to be God, must be utterly Sovereign and in control of everything. (Omnipotence, omniscience and omnipresence are implied by divine sovereignty; some would also add impassibility - that God cannot be changed or moved.)

b) God can - and does - do exactly whatever he wills and whatever pleases him.

c) God's Will and rule are ultimate, absolute, eternal, immutable, fixed, unfailing, inescapable. He does not repent or change his mind.

d) Everything that happens is God's will - whatever happens is according to or as a result of God's perfect Will and sovereign purpose. (If it is not his direct will, it is his indirect will; if it is not his active will, it is his passive or permissive will.)

e) God's ways, will and words are perfect and cannot be questioned by us.

Predestination and Inerrancy follow logically from the conservative view of Sovereignty
Also following directly and logically from this view of divine sovereignty are two further key CE doctrines:

i) Scriptural Inerrancy: God's Word is perfect, fixed and eternal.

ii) Predestination: God has chosen from before time those people who he will - and will not - save and redeem; those whose ultimate destiny is joy in the Kingdom of Heaven and those who will be eternally lost and punished in Hell. This choice is fixed and has nothing to do with the merit or faith of the people involved; it is purely a matter of God's unsearchable grace towards the undeserving.

Self-limited Sovereignty

To me, the CE view of sovereignty feels like a kind of spiritualised Determinism, more akin to the Islamic views of Allah and the Qu'ran than to the uniquely Christian view of God. It also seems to me to derive more from Hellenistic philosophy and logic than from Hebrew or New Testament thought and experience.

Taking the same points (a)-(e) as above, I would make the following definition of God's sovereignty:

God's sovereignty includes the right to limit the exercise and expression of his own omnipotence
a) God is Sovereign and in control; but to be in control is not the same as to be controlling. God's sovereignty includes the right and ability to limit the exercise and expression of his own omnipotence and omniscience under particular circumstances as his purposes require it. (For example, Jesus was neither omnipotent, omniscient or omnipresent during his life on Earth.) So instead of the absolute rule of a benign divine dictator, there is a complex interplay between God's sovereignty, creaturely freedom and - enabling these otherwise conflicting factors to mesh - divine grace.

b) Following on from this, God can of course do whatsoever he wills, but he may not. For example, if his will for a specific situation or person conflicts with the general laws he has laid down for how the world works, including creaturely choice and moral responsibility, he may choose to forego his primary will in that situation. In other words, God may choose (by his perfect will!) to self-limit his sovereignty, subjecting it to other principles or aspects of the divine nature such as love and mercy.

c) While God's overall will may remain fixed, his specific will in the current imperfect world is often provisional, flexible and dynamic. The created world and its inhabitants have the freedom not to obey God's will, and also sometimes his perfect will is not compatible with the constraints and imperfections of this world. In such cases, God's purposes are not defeated but have to go by longer and more circuitous routes. God is more than creative enough to have contingency plans for circumstances in which his primary and even secondary or tertiary will is not done.

Only in God's fully-realised Kingdom will God's will always be perfectly done
d) Again, far from all that happens in this world is what God wills, whether directly or indirectly, actively or passively. Much of what happens is in direct conflict with or opposition to God's will. Only in God's fully-realised Kingdom will God's will always be perfectly done. Why else does Jesus urge us to pray 'Your kingdom come, your will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven'?

e) God's will is indeed perfect - whatever God wills must be good and right. Nonetheless, I believe God is usually very happy for us to question his will - if that means active engagement rather than submitting passively to whatever happens. And certainly we need to question whether particular events and circumstances are God's will simply to be accepted or instead something we need to battle against and overcome.

Secondary Sovereignty

God's sovereignty and omnipotence take second place to his love and goodness
I don't have any problem with God being Sovereign, only with the primacy of Sovereignty over other aspects of his nature and character. In my view his sovereignty and omnipotence take second place to some of his other qualities, primarily his love and goodness. Therefore where his sovereignty is in conflict with his love, it is his love that wins.

Sunday 30 May 2010

An abortive discussion continued...

As I said in the previous post, the central issue for me in the abortion debate is whether embryos are really human or not; all the other issues are contingent on our answer to this question. But still there are a number of other questions that it's important to think about, starting with...

Whose rights are more important - embryo's or mother's?

Of course, if our answer to the primary question is that an embryo isn't a person, then it's not a 'who' at all and clearly the mother's rights come first. It's hard to argue that a tiny clump of cells that isn't really a human has any rights at all. However, if we believe that an embryo is human, then the situation changes radically.

Those in favour of abortion argue that a woman always has the right to choose what she does with her body and whether she wishes to be a mother or not. After all, pregnancy is no easy ride for 9 months, giving birth is about the most physically painful and draining experience it's possible to go through, and becoming a mother has a tremendous impact on a woman's whole life and career from that point onwards. I do therefore have great sympathy with those who feel a woman should be able to choose whether she is ready to become a mother.

Those opposed to abortion start from the position that an embryo (or 'unborn baby' as they prefer to call it) is definitely a human, and they argue that the rights of this developing human must be at least as important as those of the mother. Secondly they argue that the right to life (or the right not to be deprived of life) is a more important and fundamental right than the rights to quality of life, to pursue a career, not to go through the pain of pregnancy and childbirth etc. Thirdly they argue that the rights of a weaker person, one not able to speak for or defend themselves, must be upheld more strongly than those of the stronger; the rights of a child must be defended more strongly than those of an adult, and the rights of a baby (or in this case embryo) must be defended even more strongly still. I find I have great sympathy for these views as well.

Finally and more controversially, some pro-lifers argue that the woman's right to choose (except of course in cases such as rape) applies at the point of choosing to consent to unprotected sex. They argue that once she has become pregnant, she has already made her choice, or forfeited the right to choose. I'm not sure I would go this far. It does feel unfair to me that one who should pay for the adults' mistake (often the man's more than the woman's) should be the one who was totally innocent of any fault or choice in the matter. But then this of course applies both whether the embryo is aborted or ultimately born into a family that does not want it.

What are the psychological and physical impacts of abortion?

I'm thinking primarily here of the mother, but of course there are also potential impacts on the father, the family, the medical staff involved in the procedure, etc. The physical impact on the foetus of course is fairly obvious.

I don't have evidence at my fingertips to do more than raise this as a question. Pro-choicers argue that the physical and emotional impacts of abortion are minimal, and that abortion frees a woman to follow the path she really wants to. Pro-lifers argue that the effect of abortion can be traumatic both physically and emotionally, and also that some women feel pressured into abortions that they afterwards wish they had not had. I think a lot probably depends on the individual personality and beliefs of the person in question, and whether deep down they feel that abortion is wrong or not. Again, the question of whether you see the foetus as human or not, as a baby or as a blob of cells, surely makes a crucial difference to how you feel about it.

What are the other options?

I said earlier that giving birth and becoming a parent is no easy option, and abortion may seem like the only way out of a frightening, difficult, uncertain and unchosen future. Those who still choose to go ahead with becoming parents despite the difficulties need and deserve support, help and encouragement.

There is of course one other option, at least in many cases, and that is to put the baby up for adoption. Of course, pregnancy and childbirth still have to be got through, which I'm not pretending is easy, even with the help of epidurals and elective caesarians for the birth. And some would argue that the psychological impact of giving up your baby to other parents may be almost as great as those related to having an abortion. Nonetheless, adoption does at least give the child the chance of a life while allowing the birth mother to return fairly quickly to her chosen life and career.

There but for the grace of God

I've raised and explored a number of questions which I think are crucial to the abortion debate, but I can only answer them for myself, not for anyone else.

My own view is still that a human embryo is - and certainly will ultimately be - a human being, a person, and therefore (in my view) that under most circumstances it is not anyone's right to decide that it will not be. I also more cautiously believe that in most cases an embryo's right to life does trump the mother's right to choose; and I suspect (but lack evidence to prove) that the psychological impacts of abortion are generally worse than those of other options, such as putting the baby up for adoption.

However, I'm not writing this to judge or condemn those who view things differently or in particular those who have chosen differently, often under incredibly difficult circumstances. There but for the grace of God go any of us. Sorry if that sounds patronising.

A couple of quick final points. Of course there are always exceptional cases, particularly where the mother's life is in danger. And despite my views I don't believe that criminalisation - particularly of the mother - is anything but counter-productive. Instead I would ask for full and fair presentation of all available options, better education and understanding of both the scientific and ethical issues and of the full impacts and implications of the various options, and better support for adoption.

Right, quick, time for a nice safe topic - the theology of flower-arranging or bird-watching or something.

Friday 28 May 2010

An abortive discussion

Okay, deep breath... against all better judgement I'm poking my nose into the hornets' nest of arguably the most sensitive and emotive of all subjects.

The Marie Stopes TV ad

I watched the Marie Stopes TV advert last night. Nothing much in itself - three different women late with their periods, and background piano music in a minor key. The only spoken words in the ad are: 'If you're late for your period, you could be pregnant. If you're pregnant and not sure what to do, Marie Stopes International can help.'

Nothing very controversial in that... except that of course we all know that the unspecified help that Marie Stopes clinics offer is primarily abortion - or termination of unwanted pregnancies if you prefer.

Confessions and apologies

I must here confess - and I do see it as a confession - that I've for a long time leant strongly towards the pro-life side of the debate, and that's still where my natural sympathies lie. This doesn't sit comfortably with my otherwise left-wing and liberal inclinations, but there it is. However, I'm not seeking to use this blog as a soapbox, or a trench from which to snipe at those who see things differently. I just want to explore and try to understand a bit better the issues around this highly complex and emotive subject, hoping if possible to generate more light than heat.

I do also realise that it's all too easy for me as a man to theorise about matters which will never directly affect me - I will never have to decide whether to have an abortion; I will never have to go through the difficulties of pregnancy and the pains of childbirth. So I apologise if I seem to be callous or self-righteous in treating very theoretically what are for many deeply personal and painful issues.

For me, the debate revolves around a number of questions, which I'll have to deal with in separate posts, starting with:

Is an embryo a human being?

The trouble is, science cannot provide us with a definitive answer to the question
Or to put it another way, when does an embryo become a human being? To me this is the crux of the whole matter. At some point between sperm fertilising egg and birth at about 40 weeks, we're dealing not with a clump of cells but a human being. But at what point, and how do we decide? Is it when the embryo develops recognisable features, or when it is able to feel pain, or when its brain has reached a certain stage of development? Is it when the baby becomes 'viable', i.e. would have a chance of survival outside the womb, which of course depends largely on the current state of medical technology? Or is an embryo actually a developing human being from the moment of conception?

The trouble is, science cannot provide us with a definitive answer to the question, and probably never will be able to. How we define what is and is not a human being- a person - may not even be a scientific question, but a sociological, cultural, or theological one. Yet we must decide, for the whole ethicality and morality of abortion centres on this.

In most cultures and ethical systems, deliberately killing a human being (except in war or capital punishment) is viewed as murder and therefore as wrong and unlawful. Therefore if an embryo is a human being at the time of an abortion, we have a problem, for it is then hard to see how termination is ethically distinct from infanticide. However, if the embryo is not truly human, the situation is ethically very different.

To pose it as a situational ethics question, to end the life of a baby after it has been born is (I believe) generally seen as unacceptable; but at what (if any) point before birth does it become acceptable, and on what scientific, moral or other grounds?

I think the answer to all these questions has to be that we honestly don't know. If we don't know, then my own view is that - for our own sake if no-one else's - we must err on the side of not committing what could be a grave moral offence. Others will have good reasons to disagree.

even if an embryo is not yet a person, it will one day become one
Perhaps the main difficulty for me is that even if an embryo is not yet a human being, not yet a person, if it survives it will certainly one day become one. What may only be an embryo today will before long be a baby, a child, an adult. And though there are many people I sometimes feel I could cheerfully murder, there aren't many people who I would seriously say should never have been born. Yet to opt for an abortion is effectively to say this; to make the decision that this person who would otherwise one day be a you or a me, a sibling or a friend, an Aunt Hilda or a Fred the fishmonger or whoever else, should not - will not - be. And I'm not convinced that I have, or anyone else has, the right to make such a decision.

This is my own view - if you see it differently, I'm not trying to tell you what to think.

Next post - whose rights are more important, and what are the psychological and physical impacts of abortion on the mother?

Wednesday 26 May 2010

Redefining sin

Now that really does sound like I've lost it. I'll just redefine sin to suit myself shall I? Greed, pride, lust, sloth, theft - all fine now. Mind you, if you read my recent post in defence of illegal downloading you might think that's exactly what I've done.

With any luck this will be the last in the redefining series... sighs of relief all round...

10. Sin 

Evangelical definition: Sin is primarily a moral failure or offence against God's perfect law. It arouses God's anger and separates us from him, as no unclean thing can dwell in his presence; and only Jesus' sacrifice can wash away sin.  We are all born into a state of sinfulness resulting from the wilful disobedience of Adam, and until we accept Christ's salvation we cannot help but follow our fleshly inclinations which lead us to sin. In evangelical circles, particular emphasis is often placed on sins of sexual immorality (lust, fornication, adultery, homosexuality); rage, drunkenness, rebellion and witchcraft also rate highly, and failure to hold correct doctrines is often effectively treated as sin.

Re-definition: Sin is fundamentally an offence against love (the supreme law), against personality (the supreme reality) and against relationship (the expression and context of love and personality). Sin depersonalises and dehumanises; it mars and spoils Christ's image in ourselves and others. Sin is a falling-short of our true original nature as image-bearers and incarnations (icons and sacraments) of Christ; it is a sickness, brokenness and lostness of our souls. Christ's perfect love covers our sin, heals and restores us and encourages us to offer forgiveness and healing to others.

11. Hell

Evangelical definition: Hell is a post-mortem place or state of eternal, inescapable conscious torment shut out from God's presence. All who do not accept Christ as Lord and Saviour in this life are destined for this fate. Hell is God's just punishment of the wicked according to his righteous wrath.

Re-definition: Hell is both the present and the post-mortem state of souls self-separated from the love, peace and forgiveness of God eternally held out to them. It is not necessarily an eternal and inescapable state, and nor is it the inevitable destination of those who have not in this life come to faith in Christ.

12. Atonement

Evangelical definition: Atonement is the means by which God cancels out our sins and makes us right with himself, lifting the sentence of eternal punishment in hell that hangs over us. Specifically, it refers to Christ's penal substitutionary sacrifice for us on the cross, in which he bore himself the punishment due for all of our sins, thus paying our debt and freeing us from their penalty (if we accept him as Saviour).

Re-definition: The atonement is the ultimate expression and act of love, in which Love offers its (or his) own self up to rejection, pain and death on behalf of us the beloved. In the atonement, Love takes on all our pains, sorrows, guilt, shame, fear, brokenness and isolation in order to redeem them, to heal and restore us to the fullness of love and relationship.

13. Salvation

Evangelical definition: Salvation - literally 'being saved' - is God's rescue of hell-bound sinners through the gospel of Christ's sacrifice. Salvation allows us to escape judgement and enter the Kingdom of Heaven by repenting of our sins and placing our faith in Christ.

Re-definition: Salvation is less about escaping hell or entering heaven, and more about the ongoing transformation and renewing of our lives, hearts and minds into Christlikeness by the work of the Holy Spirit.

*

...unfortunately, a bit like the list of 'what have the Romans ever done for us', the list of terms to be re-defined keeps on growing the more I think about it. What about prayer, discipleship, worship, fellowship? What about faith, hope and love? What about God himself, his sovereignty, his omnipotence and omniscience? And conversely, what about evil and the devil?

Oh well, they can all wait for another day. I've got a dishwasher to load.

Tuesday 25 May 2010

Redefining the Gospel

Picking up from where Redefining salvation left off...

It's been one of those weeks when there are just too many news stories for a poor spare-time theology/ethics blogger to cover... and I've cleverly committed myself to a multi-post series on redefining Christianity. Synthetic life, the Marie Stopes TV ad and the conviction of two 10-year-old boys for attempted rape of an 8-year-old will just have to wait a few days. It's a good thing only my work colleagues are looking at this blog. Guys, I'd like some tea now please. There's nothing interesting for you here. Seriously. :-)

So, back to redefining evangelical faith and I think I'd got to no. 5 - the Larch... I mean the Gospel...

5. The Gospel

Evangelical definition: to evangelicals, the Gospel is the core of Christian faith and the key message to be conveyed in evangelism (q.v.). This message is that there is a righteous sovereign God, and that all people without exception are fallen sinners deserving his just wrath and incapable of saving themselves. The only way to escape an eternity of this wrath in hell (q.v.) is to accept the way of salvation (q.v.) that God has made for us through his only Son Jesus Christ, who bore our punishment and cancelled our sin-debt by dying in our place on the cross (see atonement, q.v.). If we repent of our sins and turn to Christ in faith, we can be saved. This gospel message of repentance and faith in Christ must be preached to all people, and must be accepted by them if they are to be 'saved'.

Re-definition: the Gospel is God's genuinely wonderful news of freedom, hope and life offered to all in Christ; his plan to restore, renew and redeem all creation through the resurrection of his Son, and to express his life, light and love through people and perhaps all creatures. It is the reaching out of God's overwhelming goodness and love, seeking out the lost, last and least. The gospel is a socially and spiritually transformative, liberating message of love to the loveless, welcome to the excluded, hope for the despairing; it has the redemptive power to bring life out of death, light out of darkness, good out of evil.

6. Evangelism

Evangelical definition: Evangelism is of central importance to evangelicals. It means preaching the Gospel (q.v., above); 'sharing Christ' with the lost in order to make new disciples; attempting to move people along the spiritual-awareness scale from -10 (no interest in God) to +10 (full disciples). Evangelical evangelism often involves bringing conversations round to Christ, often with the use of apologetics (the rational defence of the Christian faith). Formulaic methods and techniques of evangelism are also encouraged such as 'friendship evangelism', 'servant evangelism' and practising giving your own testimony (story of how you came to faith).

Re-definition: though evangelism is important and does involve sharing the gospel, this needs to be understood in much broader and less formulaic terms, and may well not involve preaching or apologetics. I'd suggest that evangelism can be seen as bringing what you genuinely have of Christ into the lives of those who do not know him, not by force or argument but as a natural and authentic part of who you are and of your relationship with them. It means engaging sacramentally and incarnationally with others as flawed and partial images of Christ ourselves, and also becoming aware of Christ's image in them. It therefore involves being as deeply as possible in Christ, as truly as possible oneself, and as engaged as possible with the reality of the other person. It is inherently gracious, genuine and relational, and not formulaic, forced or false.

7. Mission

Evangelical definition: Evangelism (see above).

Re-definition: Mission is simply our engagement with the world and with people as those who are in Christ, expressing his love and goodness, bringing his healing and hope. Matthew 25 lists a number of possible ways: visiting the sick and imprisoned, clothing the naked, feeding the hungry. It can involve evangelism but is more than just evangelism.

8. Grace

Evangelical definition: Grace is the unmerited favour of God in Christ to sinners deserving punishment, enabling them to live holy and pleasing lives of service and mission. It is also the state of being in God's favour and receiving his blessings.

Re-definition: Grace is the overflow of God's overwhelming love, beauty, goodness and generosity to all through Christ, covering over sins, overcoming weaknesses, blessing with all goodness; releasing, restoring, redeeming and healing.

9. Holiness / Righteousness

Evangelical definition: Primarily moral purity, the opposite of sin; achieved by a life of obedience and spiritual disciplines - prayer, fasting, Bible study, resisting sin and doing God's will.

Re-definition: Holiness is reflecting and displaying Christ's image through a life fully lived in/with him. It is a quality of goodness that comes from closeness to Christ.

Next and final batch: sin, hell, salvation, atonement...

Friday 21 May 2010

Redefining salvation

...along with a bunch of other words. An attempt to rethink some core aspects of evangelical faith.

Imaginary regular readers of this blog (hello to my wife) may have noticed a bit of a chip on my shoulder about evangelical Christianity recently. I must be fair and acknowledge that there are many wonderful evangelicals, much that is good about evangelicalism, and much that is valuable that I've learnt from it. And I must also note that it has many and varied manifestations and not all my criticisms apply equally to all types of evangelical faith. And finally, there is much wrong with other streams and types of Christian belief - I just don't know so much about them.

I suppose the reason for my criticisms is that I have struggled to fit within mainstream evangelicalism for the past 15 years and have increasingly found that I'm not in accord with some of its core doctrines, priorities and methods - scriptural inerrancy, penal substitionary atonement, particular methods of evangelism etc. Rather than jettisoning the whole thing though, I'm trying to find ways of redefining the faith that work for me.

In the next post or two, I want to look at some key terms held dear by evangelicals and defined by them in very specific ways, and see if I can come up with re-definitions that fit better - for me at least. In no particular order...

1. Evangelicals

Evangelical definition: Proper Christians, who believe God's Word and the doctrines contained in it; who have accepted Jesus Christ as their Lord and Saviour by faith through grace; who believe and preach the Gospel of Christ, and aspire to a life of personal holiness, good works and mission. They hold particular doctrines as of central importance - inerrancy and centrality of Scripture; the absolute Sovereignty of God; utter depravity of humans; penal substitionary atonement; exclusivity of Christ as the way to God; future judgement and hell for non-believers. Particular views of God, church, mission etc are also implied.

Re-definition: A particular type of Christian, but neither the only valid variety nor necessarily the best. Strong on theology, doctrine, teaching and a particular style of mission/evangelism, but often weak on creativity, beauty, contemplation, mystery and social justice. Negative tendencies include literalism/fundamentalism, puritanism and pharisaism, dogmatism, and over-formulaic approaches to life and faith.

2. Liberals

Evangelical definition: The opposite of evangelicals; often seen as the enemies of true Christianity. Liberals are wishy-washy and half-saved at best; they don't really believe anything, don't take the Bible literally, have lax morality and have compromised with the world.

Re-definition: As 'liber' means 'free', the positive meaning of liberal is one who has embraced the freedom of Christ and eschewed or shed the straitjacketing doctrinal rigidity of many brands of evangelical orthodoxy. Liberals are often much stronger than evangelicals on love, creativity and social justice. I've said in a previous post that I'm starting to see myself as an Evangelical Liberal.

3. The Bible

Evangelical definition: Holy Scripture; God's Word - eternal, inerrant, all-sufficient and self-interpreting, and from which can be mined doctrines to be believed, commands to be obeyed and promises to be claimed. The Bible is the believer's supreme guide and authority in life and in all matters of faith, morality, doctrine etc. If the Bible says something, it is to be taken literally if possible and to be accepted without criticism. Though notionally valuing all parts of scripture equally, evangelicals tend to place particular emphasis on the theological and doctrinal letters of Paul.

Re-definition: The Bible is a complex, multi-genre library of texts arising from the community of faith and their unfolding relationship with God. It can be seen as 'breathed' through its human authors by God, who continues to breathe afresh through the texts, bringing out new meanings, interpretations and emphases. The Bible is therefore not a fixed, static stone tablet but a living, breathing, dynamic text to be ongoingly engaged and wrestled with. Nor is it inerrant or 'perfect' in a modern historical or scientific sense; but it is nonetheless chosen and used by God for his purposes. Many non-evangelicals prefer to see the Bible as 'the Witness to the Word' rather than 'the Word of God', a title they (and the Bible) reserve for Jesus.

4. Truth

Evangelical definition: Correct ('sound') Christian doctrine as read from the Bible and expounded in propositional, expository preaching. Christian Truth is absolute, eternally fixed and unchanging. It is the opposite of error and false doctrine. Other forms of Christianity are generally deemed to have less of the truth than evangelicalism.

Re-definition: Jesus alone is the Truth - the truth about God and the truth about humanity. Truth is therefore not primarily propositional or doctrinal, but personal (the person of Christ) and relational. It is also not necessarily simple, systematic and fixed, but rather dynamic, paradoxical and often deeply counter-intuitive.

In the next post: Redefining the Gospel, evangelism, mission, grace, holiness...

Wednesday 19 May 2010

Copyright or wrong?

Is downloading music from the internet without paying really stealing?

The issues of copyright and piracy are rarely far from the headlines these days, particularly the dire threats supposedly posed to the music and film industries by illegal online file-sharing.

I'm anti-copyright and pro-piracy. Tut.
In this month's excellent Third Way magazine, comedy script-writer and regular columnist James Cary expounds on why we should pay for content rather than expecting a free ride. Appropriately enough, you can only read his article in full if you subscribe (I'm tempted to give out the login details but sadly I've not managed to get hold of mine yet, though I'm a subscriber). He concludes with the words 'But Christians should know that stealing from the rich is still stealing, isn't it? And stealing is still bad, right? We haven't exegeted our way out of that one, have we?'

As an amateur musician/song-writer myself and someone who's enthusiastically embraced the potential the internet offers to music-lovers, I'm interested in these issues. And I have to say that, unlike Cary, I'm pretty much entirely anti-copyright and pro-piracy. And me calling myself a Christian. Tut.

Yes, downloading or copying music without paying for it is certainly illegal in most parts of the world - but is it stealing, and just how wrong is it really?

What is theft?

For a start, I'd say that it all rather depends on your definition of stealing, and crucially on who's defining it and for whose purposes and benefit. For example, the UK copyright law that works stay in copyright for 70 years after their creator's death seems designed almost entirely to protect companies' interests and profits.

A music file simply isn't an item of property or a possession in the same way that, say, your computer or your car is
A music file simply isn't an item of property or a possession in the same way that, say, your computer or your car is. Copying or downloading a music file does not take anything away from someone or deprive them of anything, except the putative income they could have generated from it had you chosen to buy it - which you may well not have done. It's not like you've broken into someone's house and nicked their CD collection, or even shoplifted from HMV.

Who's robbing who?

Of course, even if it is stealing, robbing the rich (and the faceless system) to benefit the poorer is culturally enshrined in British mythology through Robin Hood and the romantic (though admittedly false) myth of pirates. This may not make it morally right, but there's a lot of power and truth in myth and I for one am on the side of the outlaw Robin Hoods against the Sheriffs of Nottingham, however legally in the right they may be. Laws don't always serve the common good or the common people, and in my opinion the outgoing government's Digital Economy Bill sucks big time.

I'd also be inclined to argue that it's the record companies who are actually guilty of stealing from the music-buying public - and probably the artists - by charging far more than is necessary for CDs and taking far too large a cut of the profits.

There are so many free ways of accessing music now via the internet that it becomes a ridiculous splitting-hairs technicality to say that listening to it for free any time you like on Spotify, we7, Grooveshark or YouTube (etc) is fine, but downloading it free to your mp3 player from a number of sites that I won't list is wrong.

I need to find the actual evidence here, but I'm pretty sure that it's been shown that those who download music illegally also tend to be the biggest buyers of legal music. Cutting off illegal file-sharers from the internet is ultimately biting the hand that feeds the music industry.

As an aside, we also have the moral dilemma - is it morally right for Christians to financially support the decadent and self-destructive lifestyles of some rock stars by buying their songs? If not, does that mean we also mustn't listen to their music, which in a sense is separate from them and bigger than them?

Free music for all

Cords, notes and rhythms are no-one's possession - music should be free and available to all
This leads nicely into my main argument, which is simply that chords, notes and rhythms are no-one's possession and that music, like birdsong, should be free and available to all. This may sound hopelessly idealistic and old-fashioned, but there are various ways it could be sustained - for example by a model of rich patronage (as in Mozart's day, though admittedly he didn't do well out of it), or by donation (like the Covent Garden performers' model), or by self-support (e.g. Borodin, who was a chemist by trade as well as an amateur - but brilliant - composer). We don't have to buy into the current model of commodifying, professionalising and industrialising everything, including the arts.

As I said, I'm an amateur musician/composer/song-writer myself, albeit not a successful one who stands to lose out from piracy. You're more than welcome to listen to my music for free at http://sites.google.com/site/harveyscorner/songs or download it from http://sites.google.com/site/harveysongs/music.

Excuses, excuses?

So is all this just a bunch of self-justifying excuses so that I can get on with downloading music? Probably. I don't really believe that it's morally righteous and noble to pirate music, but I just don't think it's that wrong either. Let him who has never broken the speed limit or nicked soap from a hotel room cast the first stone. :-)

And let the last word go to 'Weird Al' Yankovic with his superb parody Don't download this song...

Tuesday 11 May 2010

Evolution, progress and purpose

A strictly non-scientific speculation about the possibility of an underlying divine purpose to the natural process of evolution.

Biology versus ideology

people often associate evolution with progress... biologically, this is bunkum
A lot of people naturally associate the concept of evolution with ideas of progress, of improvement, of forward and upward movement to some higher goal. Hence the biological theory of evolution has often been co-opted by causes and movements seeking justification for their own utopian visions of progress, whether by means of communism, capitalism, eugenics, or whatever other hideous ideologies humans have managed to dream up. (I said in another post that the Bible has been used to justify many mutually-opposite ideologies - the same can equally be said of the theory of evolution by natural selection.)

Biologically speaking, this is bunkum (I could have used other words beginning with 'b'). The theory of evolution, as a strictly biological theory, has nothing to say about progress. Evolution by natural selection tends towards increased diversity of species, increased complexity (at least in general, I think), and better adaptation of a particular species to its environment. That's about it. It doesn't have anything to say about a future utopia or a master race of superbeings. Any speculations of this nature lead us promptly out of the realms of science and into philosophy and metaphysics.

That's not to say such speculation can't be valid - just that it won't be scientific, and those who engage in it shouldn't imagine that they are backed up by the science.

So with that fairly major caveat aside, I'm now going to indulge in some theological speculations about one possible relationship between evolution and progress.

The appearance of purpose

the whole process does give the impression of progress and purpose
I suspect the reason why so many people link evolution with progress is because the whole process, viewed from beginning to end, certainly gives that impression quite strongly. At one end we have self-replicating strings of protein; at the other we have immensely complex, conscious creatures who can think, love, create music, investigate the nature of reality, land on the Moon, and Twitter pointless rubbish fifty times a day. Well, not all progress is upward. ;-) But certainly there seems to be the appearance of a general direction, of some kind of progress, and, well, even of what might be called purposiveness in the whole process.

A biologist, as a biologist, would perhaps only view this as interesting but irrelevant to his or her work. But as a human they or anyone else can regard it as a phenomenon that could do with investigation - just not by the methods of science.

To one who believes in a supernatural God who invisibly underlies the visible processes of nature, it's no surprise if the broad sweep of evolutionary history tends towards the emergence of rational, relational, morally-responsible creatures. It's exactly what you would expect, though of course it's not something that science could predict or indeed comment on.

The dark side of progress

However, there are at least two serious problems with this. First, the whole process apparently relies so fundamentally on pain, predation and selfish competition. Secondly, the results are so mixed: for every Mother Teresa there's a Mao Tse Tung; for every Mona Lisa there's a My Lai massacre.

These really just re-state in a slightly different form the classic theological problems of evil and suffering, which I've tried to look at more fully in other posts (see links to related posts below). In brief, the usual answers are either that the evil is simply a necessary potential counterpart or flip-side to the good; or that there are malevolent, chaotic or corruptive forces at work in the cosmos alongside the good; or that humans are in some way morally responsible for at least some of the evil; or else that it's all just too darn mysterious and complicated for us mortal pea-brains to have a clue about. I tend to subscribe rather tentatively to a complete mixture of these answers. :-)

Monday 10 May 2010

Evolution, fall and morality

Our evolutionary heritage | Adam and Eve | Talking Beasts

Were humans created perfect and then fell, or did we already bear the baggage of our evolutionary heritage?

Uncle Den, Irenaeus and the evolution of conscience

I'm rather proud to be related by marriage to Dr Denis Alexander, founder of the Faraday Institute and author of Rebuilding the Matrix and Creation or Evolution: do we have to choose? (Read my review) 'Uncle Den' is a bit of an expert in the field of evolutionary biology and is also a strongly evangelical Christian in the Reformed tradition. I have great respect for both his scientific views and for his faith, though my own theology is rather different.

After hearing him speak on Darwin and evolution at a conference at Spurgeon's College last year, I asked him what he thought about the role evolution may have played in the development of human conscience and moral sense, and also whether our evolutionary heritage had predisposed us to sin. I can't remember his answer in full but he seemed inclined to believe that we were originally fully able to obey God and had chosen not to - very much the standard evangelical line.

Irenaeus believed that humans were created immature
However, he did mention the 2nd-century theologian Irenaeus who believed that humans were created immature/imperfect and we were intended to reach maturity through a lengthy process of change, growth and development. Denis doesn't agree with this view but to me it makes a lot of sense, particularly in light of evolutionary theory.

Our evolutionary heritage

humans share millions of years of evolutionary history and heritage with other animals
If Darwinian evolution is broadly true, as I believe it is, then we humans share millions of years of evolutionary history and heritage with other animals, including all the instinctive mechanisms of lust, greed, aggression and selfishness that have always been vital for survival in a competitive world of limited resources. We know that nature is at best amoral, and we may not like it but we do not blame lions for killing zebras, frigate birds for robbing terns, robins for being aggressively territorial, cuckoos for laying eggs in other birds' nests, or ducks for having multiple partners. Our closest living relatives, chimpanzees and bonobos, are frequently violent and sexually promiscuous.

This leads me to two major questions:

1) If we do indeed owe much of our own evolutionary history and DNA to creatures like these, how on earth could humans have escaped bearing the marks of this in our own instincts and behaviour? Why wouldn't our earliest human ancestors have been every bit as aggressive and lustful - as amoral - as all these other creatures?

2) But in that case, how come humans do - apparently unlike all other creatures - have an inbuilt moral sense, a deep belief that so many of these 'natural' behaviours are in fact morally repugnant? As I say, we don't hold animals morally responsible for their behaviour, nor do we expect them to feel guilty for doing what comes naturally. But we ourselves have set up complex ethical, moral and legal systems to discourage indulgence in many evolutionarily-encoded activities. Why?

Adam and Eve

I've said before that I don't hold the Genesis chapter 2 'fall' story to be factual history, but nor do I believe it to be merely fictional. I see it as mythicised history, with elements of fact set in a highly symbolised myth to convey spiritual, psychological and theological truth.

'Adam and Eve' were already evolutionarily predisposed to sin
If my hypothesis is in any way correct, then 'Adam and Eve' were already evolutionarily predisposed to sin (qu 1 above). However, God somehow set them spiritually or morally apart from other creatures, giving them (whether by divine act or by natural means) a unique moral sense of right and wrong which enabled them to rise above the legacy of their brutish evolutionary past (qu 2 above). Their inability to do so in the long run is not only their story but the story of all their descendants - of you and me.

To me, this account seems the obvious way to marry classic Christian theology with current biological theory. However, I realise that it will please neither evangelicals nor evolutionary scientists. It pleases me though, and maybe Iranaeus too. :-)

Talking Beasts

"Do not go back to their ways lest you cease to be Talking Beasts"
As usual, C.S. Lewis and Narnia come to my aid at this point. In The Magician's Nephew, when Aslan has brought forth the animals from the earth he goes among them and touches a male and female of each kind to set them apart. Then he breathes on them, there is a flash of fire and he speaks words of power over them: 'Narnia, Narnia, Narnia, awake. Love. Think. Speak. Be walking trees. Be talking beasts. Be divine waters.' The Talking beasts reply: 'Hail, Aslan. We hear and obey. We are awake. We love. We think. We speak. We know.' Then he instructs them:
'Creatures, I give you yourselves... I give to you forever this land of Narnia. I give you the woods, the fruits, the rivers... I give you myself. The Dumb Beasts whom I have not chosen are yours also. Treat them gently and cherish them but do not go back to their ways lest you cease to be Talking Beasts. For out of them you were taken and into them you can return. Do not so.'
Of course this is a myth, and unlike the Eden story it is entirely fictional, but it is nonetheless powerful and instructive. Aslan - okay, God - has chosen beings from among the dumb beasts to think, love, speak and know. But they share a common origin and heritage with the dumb animals and can return to their un-talking state if they follow their unthinking, unloving ways. This is far closer to the Irenaean view as I understand it, and to mine, than the classic evangelical reading of Genesis.

Friday 7 May 2010

It's only natural (but it still sucks)

Death of a duckling | Rage against who? | Nature, good and bad

What does the death of a duckling have to say about the nature of the universe and God?

Death of a duckling

I even chose my secondary school partly on the basis of a brood of ducklings
I've always been tremendously fond of ducklings (I don't mean crispy fried). I even unwisely chose my secondary school partly on the basis that there was a brood of ducklings in the quad pond when I went for the open evening. And this year my 4-year-old son has been asking for daily report-backs on how many ducklings I've seen in Greenwich Park. For the past week I'd sadly had to report dwindling numbers - 9 down to 5, down to 4, down to 2... but then on Tuesday lunchtime to my delighted amazement I came upon 17 ducklings in the main wildfowl lake. I happily watched the antics of the little swimming fluff-balls for some time and was about to turn away when I noticed a Canada Goose treading on a duckling that was sitting on the concrete sloping down into the water. The goose then picked up the duckling in its beak, shook it and dropped it. It lay still.

Angry and upset, I stood wondering whether I should transgress the park boundaries, step over the fence and pick up the duckling, although I was sure that it was already dead. Then a crow flew down and snatched up the little body in its beak, but a mother duck flew at it and it dropped the dead duckling into the water where it floated with its head underwater. The saddest sight for me was the mother duck swimming up behind it and repeatedly nudging the little floating body with her beak as though she could coax it back to life. At the risk of being written off as pathetically sentimental, it brought tears to my eyes and an intense feeling of loss and grief.

Rage against - who?

suddenly that dead duckling represented all the injustice of the world
I know it's all perfectly natural and normal, and that only a few ducklings - and other young animals - survive to adolescence, let alone adulthood. But suddenly that small bedraggled floating bundle of dead duckling became for me the representative of all the injustice and wrong and cruelty of the world, and my heart just wanted to shout out abuse and rage against whatever it was that made things be this way.

The obvious thought is that it's God who made things this way, and against him that my anger should be directed. But I can't shake the feeling that the God I've seen in Jesus Christ was grieving every bit as much for that duckling as I was. In some ways the duckling was like Christ - the very symbol of innocent suffering at the hands of the cruelty and injustice in the universe. I felt that my anger must be directed at all the evil in the world, and at the corresponding evil in myself.

Nature, good and bad

Is the universe fundamentally benevolent or hostile?
Nature is so full of beauty and loveliness, and simultaneously so full of suffering and death. Is the one necessary for the other, or are death and cruelty alien and unnatural evils that have found their way into a good creation?

What about lust, greed, anger and violence - these things feel entirely natural; are they just natural in-built parts of our evolved survival package, or are they a corruption of good instincts and impulses?

Is the universe fundamentally benevolent or hostile, kind or cruel? Is it more truly natural to be compassionate and caring or to compete and kill?

I have no easy answers to these questions. All I know is that I have chosen to base my life on the reality and goodness of God, to believe in the beauty and grace despite the very real pain and injustice. This present world, this nature, is good but it is not perfect, is not how it is ultimately meant to be. Perhaps the pain is part of the process of becoming perfect - or perhaps it is an evil to be fought and overcome.