Friday 29 January 2016

Painted into a Corner

Painted into a corner.

Or more specifically I have painted myself into a corner!

I have deliberately up till now not engaged with the relevant current events – the most alarming of which are: Europe at the behest of the German Chancellor and like minded people has welcomed a huge number of Islamic “refugees” - overwhelmingly young men of military age. France has suffered an orchestrated Islamic terrorist attack. German police, politicians and media tried to cover up over 1,300 attacks by large groups of “refugee” men during the new year's eve celebrations (About half these were sexual assaults on women).

Partly my silence was because there was no lack of commentary – at least outside Europe – in the media. Partly it was because I wanted to establish some Biblical principles through which to view these events and their probable causes and significance. But for the West, with Europe in the lead, rejecting God and his ways as foolishness may be a plausible cause – in which case God handing us over to the consequences of our foolishness may be the real significance.

The Biblical model for individuals and nations receiving deliverance from God is always “repent, throw away your idols and turn back to God”. What varies is the particular sins that have the person or society entranced, and what idols they have put in God's rightful place in their lives.

So somewhere we need to look at how our national lives measure up. Somehow we need to identify the sin of our age. And we may need to trace how we got into this mess for these things to become apparent.

If you are like me (and the other Christians I know) when the Holy Spirit convicts you of the next sin on God's list for you (from Romans 7 not even Paul after 20 years as an apostle had got through his life's punch list!) you know exactly what you have to repent of! On the other hand just vague, woolly guilt feelings (even if they are almost overwhelming) are not from the Holy Spirit.

Now you see how I am cornered! There is no lack of people eager to preach what they think is the sin of our nations! About the last thing I want to do is add another human voice proclaiming more such things that are just of human origin. The Old Testament is full of denunciations of the swarms of false prophets in those days who encouraged the wicked and disheartened the righteous!

Two simple examples of voices I think are wrong would be:
a) the classic progressives who are fiercely pro-abortion – and at least 95% of abortions exactly fit the Biblical definition of murder, but at the same time passionately anti-capital punishment, which the Bible gives at least an “in principle” mandate for (how this mandate should be applied is another matter)
b) anti-nationalism to the extent that, for example, some Americans are saying they are so ashamed of their nation's conduct past and present that they think God should destroy America! Dinesh D'Souza in his book and film “America, Imagine a World Without Her” gives a very powerful rebuttal of this doctrine.

But all this means a lot more work is required comparing the various claimants against the Biblical model before we can get beyond the proverbial shouting match “You say – I say”.

Which brings me to the crunch: I need to go and do some more research before I write any more!
So …. I will not be writing any more blogs for about eight weeks …

please come back for my next blog: First Weekend in APRIL


Saturday 16 January 2016

God & Human Failure

God and Human Failure

Or how does God respond to humans messing up his plans?

The answer to this is important in in our quest to save the West. If God alone can save, and we as nations and cultures have screwed up, is there anything in the Bible that reveals enough of God's nature from past events that we can guess what his response will be in our present circumstances.

It seems to me that no-one – absolutely no-one - thwarts God's ultimate purposes. Having said that, human actions certainly may cause a great deal of pain and mayhem. Also we may have very fuzzy and self-centred ideas about what God's ultimate purposes are, so people may think (wrongly) that his purposes have been thwarted!

Some examples to think about:

Adam and Eve: when our first parents sinned by falling for the devil's line “you can become like God, knowing good and evil” that should have ruined God's plans that he could have the intimate friendship with that we see depicted in such homely style in Genesis 3:8. with the humans he created “in his image”. Certainly their sin caused them to hide from God – a human problem right to this day! Certainly there was judgement – cast out of the garden, a curse on the earth: life would be hard and end in death . But there was mercy, (Gen.3:21) God made garments for them. There was still some communion with God possible for humans, there was and is above all God's future.

1 Peter 1:20 tells us Christ was “chosen before the creation of the world”. Our human rebellion did not thwart God's plans or even take him by surprise! It did of course bring death destruction and misery to Adam and Eve's descendants – not that we can blame them – every one of us has followed in their footsteps by choosing so many times to follow our fallen nature rather than follow God's ways. What God did to save us from the eternal consequences of our choices involved a great deal of pain for him: “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son …” But Revelation ends with a new Jerusalem, described in better-than-Eden motifs “on each side of the river stood the tree of life … yielding its fruit every month. And the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations. No longer will there be any curse

So God's ultimate purpose of having humans who chose to love him enjoying for ever all the delight of a close friendship with him and a communion with each other unpolluted by sin was not thwarted.


Abraham and Ishmael: I though initially this would be a counter-example but looking closer it demonstrates the same point. Indeed So do all Abraham's mistakes. God has promised Abraham (still named “Abram” at that stage) a son through is wife Sarai/Sarah. She appears barren. She gives Abraham her maid as a concubine. That was the law and custom in the ancient near east. Marriage contracts of that period have been unearthed that lay down that if the wife cannot bear children she is to provide a surrogate whose children will be legally regarded as hers.

However God's purposes are to be carried forward by a son of promise – to be born by Sarah. Hagar despising her mistress was wrong as was Sarah's cruelty to Hagar. Demanding that Abraham sent Hagar and Abraham's son Ishmael away was seriously bad by the rules of their times. The very fact that over the centuries of the scriptures being transcribed and transmitted no-one thought to “whitewash” Abraham – their spiritual “father” – but left all the unsavoury details untouched speaks to the accuracy and integrity of the scriptural record!

At the end of the day God's purposes stood despite all these, and other (like Abraham passing Sarah off as his sister when they sought refuge in Egypt) human wrongs.

Choosing a king: Remember when ancient Israel chose to have a king? That was not part of the plan.

God had provided Moses to lead them out of Egypt and through the desert wanderings to the very edge of the promised land.

Over the next few hundred years whenever there was a crisis requiring a national leader to rally the tribes and lead them into battle God raised up one for that purpose. The book of Judges records this vividly. But … this made them different to the nations round about them. These nations all had kings. Being different was part of the plan, they were the people of the one true God, they were to trust him, and specifically not try to ape the peoples round them!

As Samuel grew old – and may have been part of the problem by appointing his own sons as rulers - the people of Israel demanded a king 1 Sam 8:5 “They said to (Samuel) 'You are old, and your sons do not follow your ways; now appoint a king to lead us such as other nations have.

Understandably Samuel did not like this, but it was also against God plan: 1 Samuel 8:7ff “the Lord told (Samuel) '… it is not you they have rejected; they have rejected me as their king. As they have from the day I brought them up out of Egypt until this day, forsaking me and serving other gods. … now listen to them but warn them solemnly and let them know what the king who will reign over them will claim as his rights'.”

That is a scary thought for every one of us: God gives them what they ask for even though it his best plan for them! We should be so grateful for those times when God does not give us what we ask for in prayer – he is protecting us from our own ignorance and dumb choices! But I take comfort – and warning from the story of Baalam (Numbers 22). He was warned! Only when he persisted was he allowed to go when he would have been so much better to have stayed.

OK God gives them a king, even though they asked for the wrong reasons (to be like other nations), even though they were in fact rejecting God as their real King (who appointed leaders as needed), and even though kings came as good, bad and just plain greedy.

But God's ultimate plans were not upset. Re-arranged perhaps, but the repair - if repair it was – to his plans was so seamless that looking back we cannot see how it could have been any other way.

Jesus, God's own son sent to reverse the curse of the fall was the Messiah, the son of king David. The prophesies using kingship to describe Jesus; the examples of Israel's kings being bad shepherds requiring God to announce he would step in and be the good shepherd, how would it have worked had there been no kings? Unanswerable questions of course, but I do find it breathtaking how brilliantly God counters human (and demonic) moves against his purpose!


One more quick example: the North-South split.

Remember how King Solomon for all his good start went bad at the end and how God sent a prophesy that ten of the twelve tribes would be torn from his dynasty. (1 Kings 11:29ff)

The North rebelled against Solomon's son Rehoboam, and from then on there were two kingdoms, “Israel” in the North with Samaria as its capital and “Judah” in the south based on Jerusalem.
The North generally got into more trouble, but God still sent them prophets to warn them to come back to him – Amos and Hosea for instance. My point is that he did not abandon the North to their own devices. Sadly the history is that they disobeyed him and fell to the Assyrians who were excessively brutal and the original population were carted off and dispersed while foreigners were brought in to replace them (ie the Samaritans of Jesus day were not ethnic Israelites).

On the other hand God passed up many good opportunities to merge the two kingdoms again. This should give us food for thought when we are told that merging churches which have split sometimes centuries ago is some sort of Christian imperative!

Just to complete the story, the South survived until the Babylonians were the expanding power, they were comparatively humane, so while the Judah-ites were deported they were kept together, maintained their identity and seventy years later a remnant went back to Jerusalem. And from them at the appointed time in the town of Bethlehem was born God's Messiah - Jesus.

Friday 8 January 2016

Organized Religion Behaving Badly

  Organized religion behaving badly.

Last post I made the point that churches as social institutions were necessary, and that this seemed to be endorsed by scripture. This time I want to illustrate from scripture that they continually go wrong! It is so like God – but still breathtakingly wonderful - that in response he continually works to reform and revitalise them. As Paul said of God's grace in another context “but where sin abounded grace superabounded” (Romans 5:20)

One way things go wrong was when the ministers (& people) do evil.

The priest Eli was an early example: “ Eli's sons were scoundrels; they had no regard for the Lord. … This sin of the young men (demanding the best part of sacrifices the people came to offer to God) was very great in the Lord's sight because they were treating the Lord's offering with contempt.” 1 Samuel 2:12ff).

In addition their father who should have stopped them did not: “Now Eli who was very old heard about everything his sons were doing to all Israel and how they slept with the women who served at the entrance to the Tent of Meeting

God's actions leave us in no doubt how he feels about such actions. He sent a prophet who warned Eli what would happen if he did not act against his sons. Eli did nothing. Then God sent a message to Eli through the boy Samuel: “I will carry out against Eli everything I spoke against his family – from beginning to end. For I told him that I would judge his family forever because of the sin he knew about: his sons blasphemed God and he failed to restrain them.” This was fulfilled when both of Eli's sons were killed in battle, and Eli fell from his seat and broke his neck on hearing of this and that the Ark had been captured.

The lesson is that God really hates evil being done by people who are seen to represent him, and the “higher-ups” who fail to do their duty to stop them!

In our day both the paedophile priests and the bishops and church officials who turned a blind eye are exactly in this position! I find it hard to comprehend – assuming they have read this part of the Bible – and the story of Samuel is one of the more well known Bible stories – that they can actually believe God exists and still do what they do. They should be far too terrified – having read this example of how God feels about such actions – of facing God on Judgement Day! For those who are so committed to the institution that they think evil should be swept under the carpet, abuse hushed up and victims silenced, look what God did in this case.

Not only did God punish Eli and his sons as a lesson to us (1 Corinthians 10:11 “these things happened to them as examples and were written down as warnings for us ...” (and when you stop to think about it, death in this world is the least of the problems of someone who incurs God's wrath!) but He dealt severely with an institution that was misrepresenting his character. The Ark of the Covenant was allowed to be captured by the Philistines (who then learned reverence for God), and the sanctuary at Shiloh destroyed (Jeremiah 7:12 “Go now to the place in Shiloh where I first made a dwelling for my Name, and see what I did to it because of the wickedness of my people Israel ...”

There is a warning here to be heeded!

In Jeremiah's lifetime we have the example of the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem and the deportation of the people. God preferred to appear weak by having the Babylonians boast that their gods had given them victory, and to have the Temple dedicated to him destroyed rather than have evil flourish in it. For instance Ezekiel's vision about corrupt worship in the Jerusalem Temple while he was among the exiles in Babylon. Ezekiel 8:16ff “He brought me into the inner court of the House of the Lord, and at the entrance to the Temple, between the portico and the altar, there were about 25 men with their backs to the temple of the Lord and their faces towards the east, they were bowing down to the sun in the east.”

God did these things in the past and had them recorded in his Bible “as a warning to us” therefore he may not necessarily visibly punish “here and now” these days. We have already been warned. On Judgement Day we will have no excuse! Of course God is kind and does not wish anyone to perish but rather that they may repent and live! So he may reinforce the past warnings by executing a little bit of judgement in this world.

Another way things go wrong is “career minded ministers”

I do not mean that people serving God full time and earning their living from it is a problem. Not at all! The Old Testament priesthood and Levites were set up by God this way. In the New Testament the pattern is the same. The Apostles gave up their businesses -Peter, James, Andrew, John their fishing business, Matthew his job with the revenue office and so forth, to work full time with Jesus. In Acts 6:1ff the Apostles stress the importance of them “giving (their) attention to prayer and the ministry of the word” Paul did indeed at times support himself and his team by working but he also defended the right of ministers to be paid with statements like “Who serves in the army at his own expense?” (1 Corinthians 9:7)

I do mean “career ministers” who are people shaped by this world not God.

Such Old Testament ones persecuted the prophets who really were God's agents. Jeremiah was flogged on the orders of the priest Pashhur for warning the people to turn back to God. (Jeremiah 10). Amos is ordered to stop telling the people to turn back to God by Amaziah priest of Bethel (Amos 7:10ff). Here we get, as a side note, Amos' famous words “I was neither a prophet nor the son of a prophet ...” There were plenty of career prophets about (see how Amaziah says to Amos “Go back to Judah, earn your bread there and do your prophesying there!” but none of them were delivering God's message. Amos certainly was not one of them – he was a real messenger sent by God!

Through Ezekiel, God describes ministry by the metaphor of a shepherd. Ezekiel 34 is a dramatic description of the continual failure of human ministers and how eventually God himself will have to step in to set things right. Looking back we know this was in the person of Jesus who called himself “the Good Shepherd”. Ezekiel 34:2ff “woe to you shepherds of Israel who only take care of yourselves! Should not shepherds take care of the flock? You eat the curds, clothe yourselves with the wool and slaughter the choice animals but you do not take care of the flock. You have not strengthened the weak or healed the sick or bound up the injured. You have not brought back the strays or searched for the lost. ...”

In the new testament we see priests like Caiaphas who practice realpolitic rather than justice. “'What are we accomplishing?' They asked. 'Here is this man performing many signs. If we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him and then the Romans will come and take away both our temple and our nation.' Then one of them named Caiaphas. Who was high priest that year, spoke up,'You know nothing at all! You do not realise that it is better for you that one man die for the people than that the whole nation perish'” (Caiaphas deserves no credit for the prophetic double entendre: “one man die for the people) For all their “religion” these priests actually knew God so little that when he came in the flesh they could not even pick the resemblance!

Even in its fledgling state the Christian community fell prey to ministers who were in it for the money or satisfying their own fallen nature.

Paul battles them in Corinth: 2 Corinthians 11:13ff “For such people are false apostles, deceitful workers, masquerading as apostles of Christ ...

Peter had some blistering things to say: 2 Peter 2 “But there were also false prophets among the people (of the Old Testament) just as there will be false teachers among you. They will secretly introduce destructive heresies … Many will follow their depraved conduct bringing the way of truth into disrepute … In their greed these teachers will exploit you with fabricated stories. … they will be paid back for the harm they have done. Their idea of pleasure is to carouse I broad daylight. They are blots and blemishes, revelling in their pleasures while they feast with you. With eyes full of adultery they never stop sinning; they seduce the unstable; they are experts I greed – an accursed brood!


Jude felt compelled to pen a warning: “Dear friends, although I was very eager to write to you about the salvation we share, I felt compelled to write and urge you to contend for the faith that was once for all entrusted to God's holy people. For certain individuals … have secretly slipped in among you. They are ungodly people who pervert the grace of God into a licence for immorality and deny Jesus Christ our only Sovereign and Lord. … These people are blemishes on you love feasts, eating with you without the slightest qualm – shepherds who feed only themselves. … they follow their own evil desires; they boast about themselves and flatter others for their own advantage.

In Revelation 2:18ff the church in Thyatira is warned: “Nevertheless I have this against you; you tolerate that woman Jezebel, who calls herself a prophet. By her teaching she misleads many of my servants into sexual immorality and the eating of food sacrificed to idols.

Every gardener knows: as well as feeding and watering your prize plants you have to keep pulling up the weeds! And weeds always seem to grow faster than the good plants.

Organised religion” seems to be the same, it needs (probably every generation) to be brought back to obedience and trust in God because it has drifted away into unbelief or wrong belief or both. It also needs always to be on guard against evil doers – wolves in sheep's clothing who want to hide among the flock and devour.

Friday 1 January 2016

Organised Religion - Do We Need It?

Organised Religion – do we need it?

The answer is a definite “yes” on so many levels!

For instance our world view is largely socially shaped. Our beliefs are reinforced by bouncing off other like-minded people, by enacting rituals together and so forth.

The person who can stand out against peer pressure is rare even in our “individualistic” West, in the East they have been virtually eradicated: they even have a saying “the nail which stands above the others gets hammered down”.

You may have heard sermon illustrations like: “what happens if you pull one glowing coal out of the bed of coals? It turns from red to black and goes out! What happens if you put it back among the other coals? It starts to glow red again. Just like that we need fellowship with other Christians!”

However some have suggested that small Christian fellowships can adequately fulfil this role, that we do not need anything like the large denominational organisations we are familiar with. (Of course others say we need to go the other way merge all these organisations into one – I'll deal with that later.)

A couple of decades ago I was studying up on sociology, particularly the sociology of religion. It was at a time when “house churches” were all the rage. Some sincere advocates believed that this was going back to our New Testament roots. It also echoed the social flavour of the time of attacking all forms of authority and every institution. This was a much less laudable but more probable cause of the movement's popularity!

It has stuck in my mind all these years how the books I was studying were unanimous in their verdict that thinking one could have any religion which passed from generation to generation and influenced whole cultures, without having an “institution” was sociologically naive. The crunch was that whatever its faults, large religious organisations were simply a necessity given human nature and the way this world is.

Given these empirical observations, to what extent are they borne out in scripture?

Take the Israelites after God had rescued them from slavery in Egypt. There was established a secular administration: Moses as leader (not always unopposed or appreciated!) and senior judge, then the loosely bound tribal league, with each of the twelve tribes having its officials and deputy judges for trying straightforward law cases.

Moses also had a unique religious role as a prophet and mediator between the people and God.

Then God added a religious institution based on Aaron and his (male) descendants as priests, with rituals and vestments ordained down to the last detail. There were also instituted (three) annual festivals where the whole tribal league gathered to celebrate together and reinforce their common faith.

To this God added mobile worship centre (as befitted nomadic herdsmen). Again it was ordained down to the last detail, with the tribe of Levi appointed to run it.

Further the Law was written down and preserved for teaching successive generations with the Levites playing a special role as teachers.

Nevertheless, the cultic activities God instituted differed sharply from those of the peoples around them. God specifically forbade: Idols or images, Human sacrifices, ritual prostitution, and worshipping other gods. All of these were part and parcel of the religious practices of the peoples surrounding the Israelites once they entered the promised land.

I think it is safe to conclude that God recognised and endorsed the human need for “organised religion” together with festivals and certain rituals. And a means of preserving, transmitting and teaching the faith. But, God certainly did not endorse corrupt rituals and ones which obscured his essential moral character, goodness and uniqueness.

By now you may be thinking: “and look how that all went wrong starting with Aaron's “golden calf” idol!" True, and I want to look at the failures next post, but for now I am just looking at the necessity of religious institutions.


What about Jesus? Did he set up a “New Covenant” organisation? Maybe not, but then he was initially calling the nation of Israel (Matt.15:24). It already had religious organisations: one based on the Pharisees and the Synagogue the other the temple worship led by the priests. This would become obsolete once Jesus died and rose again, removing the point of animal sacrifices (Heb. 10). Historically it then became physically impossible after the Romans demolished the temple. Perhaps there was for some time at least the possibility that the nation would belatedly recognise Jesus as God's Messiah and these organisations would be reformed and revitalised.

Historically that did not happen and the early “followers of the Way” were ejected from Judaism (Acts 8:1).

Organisation certainly can be seen in the Christian Church from soon after the New Testament period. I think it can also be seen developing earlier from the record of scripture.

The Apostles were clearly preservers and publishers of the record of Jesus' life and teaching. They also appear as “leaders” of the large and growing community of believers. Fir instance we see the Hellenists coming to them with the complaint that their widows are being neglected in the daily distribution, and (after prayer) the Apostles appoint people to oversee this work (Acts 6). The incident of conversion among the Samaritans, and their receiving the Holy Spirit after the Apostles go to them and lay their hands on them could be interpreted various ways. But I think all ways contain a germ of God endorsing the Apostles leading role (Acts 8:14-17).

The Jerusalem Council (Acts 15) gives a picture of dealing with disagreement over fundamental issues of faith in that early community. That they came together in council indicated some degree of organisation and unity. That James after summing up the issue ans says “...it is my judgement ...” (Acts 15:19) and achieved agreement all round speaks to acknowledged leadership.

Paul in his letters leaves us in no doubt that the Christian organisation was bigger than the individual congregation. (eg hinted at in 1Cor.11:16, implicit in 1 Tim.1:3 and Titus 1:5,)
[Special Note: As anyone can easily verify by a word search of EKKLESIA, generally translated as “church” in Paul's letters he has in mind people who meet together not an organisation far less a building! - but that is a story for another day.] (but consider Gal.1:22) and Revelation 1:4 ff)
Paul leaves no room for doubt in his letters that he is apostle with responsibility for and authority  over at least the churches spread that he or his associates had founded.

His relationship to Peter and the Jerusalem church is interesting. He sends Jerusalem famine relief, he goes to Jerusalem for a ruling from the leading Apostles in his dispute with the “circumcision party” who have been undermining his work (Acts 15). Yet he stresses that “his Gospel” came as a revelation from God – he did not learn it from any human”(Galatians 1:11 ff). On the other hand, he says that years later he recited it to the leading Apostles and reports that they agreed it was the same as what they taught (Galatians 2:1ff). His dressing down of Peter over fellowship with Gentile Christians demonstrates the truth of the Gospel trumps any deference to organisational hierarchy (Galatians 2:11ff).

I think that we do see the beginnings of a supra-congregational organisation. This organisation has two interesting features: First, as Jesus taught (eg Mark 9:35) and Paul used as a yardstick (eg Acts 20:18ff), leadership is by servant-hood. Second, loyalty to Jesus and the truth of his Gospel is more important than “unity” in the organisation or loyalty to any human leader (eg Galatians 1:8, 2:11ff).

Next we shall look at how it all went wrong (again and again and again!)