Deep Creek Anglican Church Blog

As the Occupy Movement has swept across the U.S. and western Europe, I have found myself with a certain empathy.  Sure  - such protests will always attract some anarchists and rabble-rousers.  But, but ……. there is something deeply stirring the hearts and souls of many folk.

The rampant, poorly regulated capitalism of so many western nations, especially in the last two decades, has left in its wake genuine pain.  That should not surprise us.  I know experientially the pointy end of capitalism having worked in outposts of Wall Street for many years.  There is an adrenalin rush in ‘doing deals’, and doing bigger and bigger ones with larger and larger success fees!  To assume more broadly that an economic system, obsessed with profit and accumulation of personal wealth, will generate good and ethical outcomes for the whole of society is simply fanciful.

And of course it is not just the pointy end of capitalism that has led to such widespread malaise. Political parties and governments of supposedly more ‘social’ orientation have repeatedly failed the very underprivileged that they supposedly are seeking to protect.  How?  At the risk of gross over simplification, through massively irresponsible housing policies; through expenditure of public funds with pathetic cost control resulting in a small number of contractors becoming even richer and overall less resources available to assist those who are genuinely hurting and are disenfranchised.

There is real pain in the community.  There is real unsettledness.  You can here the cry from people’s hearts: “Something is wrong!”

And indeed there is.  And it is much, much deeper than simply the excesses of any particular economic system or power obsessed politicians.

Ben Witherington has just penned a post that I think simply ‘nails’ the root problem.  He writes:

“The root of the problem is not our lack of jobs. The root of the problem is not Wall Street. Those boys are just living out one form of the American Dream which produced the bumper sticker ‘the one who dies with the most toys wins’ or ‘I’m spending my grand children’s inheritance’. The root of the problem is the human heart, and the only solution is a heart transplant. The only solution is dying to that old Adamic self.

The only cure for narcissism is a real conversion. Not just a change of direction, or a change of a few ideas, a real conversion which allows one to give up the self-centeredness and actually love God and neighbor. And the interesting thing is, that when you actually do that, that little voice inside goading you into more selfish activities quiets down. Once you know you are a person of sacred worth whom God and others love, you don’t need to prove to yourself or others you are somebody big, someone of note.”

Read Witherington’s article – slowly – digest it, chew on it, and turn to the One who is the great rescuer and transformer of hearts that, outside of God’s transforming grace, are bent on self destruction.

Michael Bird is a fine New Testament scholar who has returned to Oz relatively recently from Scottish environs.  He is a New Testament lecturer at Crossway College, Brisbane.

He has a very ‘Aussie way’ of communicating – especially in less than formal scholarship arenas.  Last month he penned an opinion piece at ABC Religion and Ethics, School Chaplains: The Real Issue Isn’t the Separation of Church and State.  Michael writes:

“…The separation of church and state is just a smoke screen.

The real issue is that some of the more ardently godless simply do not want kids or teenagers to have a positive experience of religion or religious people. After all, there are stereotypes to be maintained. All Catholics are child molesters and all Evangelicals are psychotic crazies trying to sign you up to their weird cult.

The problem is, of course, that if you start meeting some of these people and learn that they are not sexually-predatory-religious-whackos, but are sincere and caring people, many of whom have left lucrative careers in order to become school chaplains, then these stereotypes become rather difficult to maintain.

The myth of religious dysfuntionality must be impressed upon our youth and it is rather inconvenient for this dominant secularist myth-making if young people meet functional and likable men and women of faith.

If separation of church and state were the real issue, then there would be calls for the abolition of all chaplains, not just school chaplains.

For the most vocal opponents of faith, freedom of religion is principally freedom from religion. Religious people are permitted to exist as long as their religion is neither seen nor heard.

It is a bullying dogma that aims to deny the religious any voice or influence, much less a platform in a place like a public school, where young people can get to know them and – Stalin forbid – even start to like them. Or, worst-case scenario, young people might begin to find their way of life so attractive and their worldview so coherent, that they might even aspire to be like them.

That’s the real issue, if you ask me.”

Here’s an interesting article about Jeremy Vines, a BBC Radio 2 presenter.  He talks about the pressures against him speaking openly about his Christian faith.  He comments:

“One of the things that I think, which may sound bizarre, is that Christ is who he said he was.  I don’t think I’d put that out on my show; I suppose there’s a bit of a firewall between thinking that and doing the job I do.”

It strikes me that ‘freedom of speech’ is increasingly becoming more of an intellectual concept than a practical reality in some western ‘democracies.’

Ravi Zacharias is one the great Christian thinkers and apologists of our time.  Late last year Ravi spoke at the annual Dundee Evangelical Church Alliance in Scotland.  It is a powerful address.

You can check it out on YouTube, recorded in four parts:

Part 1

Part 2 (at the 7min point, Ravi comments, “The love of God is something totally unmerited and yet so often squandered“)

Part 3

Part 4

That is such a fundmental question.  Alongside, “What’s the purpose of life?”

Steve Kryger, in an article in The Punch, recounts his experiences of asking a variety of Aussies, “One second after you have breathed your last, where will you be?”  He concludes, from at least his sampling, that “only a shallow scratch beneath the surface reveals that many Australians have neither evidence nor confidence to back their eternal aspirations.”

Steve finishes off his writing with,

“The Christian message isn’t a new message, and I can anticipate many objections to what I believe and why. My point isn’t to convince you to believe what I believe, nor to defend the Christian gospel in a couple of paragraphs.

No, my purpose is to urge you to work out what you do believe, and to make sure you’ve got some evidence and ultimately some confidence, to back up whatever that might be. Don’t go round that last corner blind-folded. The consequences are simply too great to just cross your fingers and hope for the best.”

The writer’s experiences are similar to responses I’ve received.  Check out the article – and also the comments!

Have you heard of Culturomics?  Google has scanned about 15 million books and in conjunction with some Harvard researchers, a database has been built containing 500 billion words used in publications over the last four centuries.  You can read more about this fascinating project here.

By graphing the time frequency of the usage of a word or phrase, the researchers suggest you can obtain insights into cultural changes in societies.

The Google Labs Books Ngram Viewer simply requires you to type in the word/phrase, time period and language.

What conclusions would you draw, if any, from the frequency of use of the following words: Jesus, charismatic, expiation, propitiation?  Here are the charts:

Jesus:

Charismatic:

Propitiation:

Expiation:

Theological rich words describing the atonement are on the slide(!) but ‘Jesus’ isn’t!! Happy nvraming (a lovely verb).

Chapter Two: Some Mysterious Actors on the Stage

We return to Timothy Gombis’ The Drama of Ephesians: Participating in the Triumph of God.  In his second chapter, our author focuses in on some unusual characters in the drama of Ephesians – “powers and authorities” (Eph 1:20-23; 3:10; 6:10-18).  So who are they?

In answering the question, Gombis looks at the Jewish worldview that he believes shaped the Apostle Paul’s understanding:

• in addition to angels and demons, there are suprahuman cosmic guardians that God has appointed over aspects of His world.  The following Jewish conception is cited: “[The powers] have rebelled and now enslave the nations by orientating life on earth so that it is idolatrous and self-destructive.  They pervert creation so that human life is characterised by greed, inordinate sensual lust and over-powering selfish ambition leading to self-destructive exploitation, manipulation and injustice.“
• in the Jewish tradition, God mediates His sovereign rule over all things through archangelic rulers (Deut 32:8-9; Ps 82:2, 7; Dan 10)
• in this tradition, the fall of these cosmic rulers is recorded in Gen 6:1-4
• in early Judaism (576Bc to 70AD) there are numerous references to these cosmic rulers (eg. Jubilees 10:7-9; 11:4-6; 15:31-32; 1 Enoch 8:1-4; 19:1)

Gombis notes that Paul avoids the speculative elements of this tradition but does see “the present age as dominated by suprahuman cosmic powers that are in rebellion against God and His purposes for creation.”  See 1 Cor 2:6-8; 15:24-26; Col 2:14-15.

The powers originally had a legitimate role but having rebelled, they “foster the enslaving character of the present evil age….”.

Gombis then, in the last part of this pretty heavy chapter focuses on the present effect of the powers.  He gives sober advice to avoid preoccupation and speculation but rather to focus on the effects of the powers on creation.  The following quote is important:

“Based on the scriptural witness, however, we can discern the effects of the powers wherever cultural forms are corrupted, where institutions foster oppression, where there are social patterns of exploitation and systemic injustice, where there is racial and ethnic suspicion and division, where life feels crushing, where shalom and human flourishing are prevented and where there are idolatrous ideologies and behaviours.  The most deceptive part of all this is that one of the strategies of the powers is to make it seem that destructive corruptions of society are normal.“

What should the Church do in response?

• name the powers.  Not direct engagement with them nor a fundamentalist condemnation of culture but identifying injustices as corruptions of God’s good world
• resist the powers.  In the resurrection power of God, through “reversing oppression and exploitation and spreading life, blessing, joy and hope.”

There’s a lot to get your head around here.  This is the best treatment I have found on the ‘powers.’  Also helpful are John Stott’s comments in The Message of Ephesians (pp267-275) and Clinton Arnold’s Powers of Darkness: Principalities & Powers in Paul ‘s Letters (see especially chapter 6).

The Third Lausanne Congress on World Evangelization has just commenced in Cape Town, South Africa, and will meet until October 25.

Tim Keller is presenting a paper on “What Is God’s Global Urban Mission?“

Well worth reading – the author comes to this important subject with much practical ministry experience in the NYC urban context.

Here’s a short post on a really helpful section at the very end of:

Chapter Eight: Life Between the Cross and the Coming.

Graham Cole highlights three ‘commissions’ that Christians are to obey, as we live for Jesus in the world:

1. Creation Commission (Gen 1:28).  Our exercise of dominion is one of both care and control (eg. Gen 2:15).  I would put it this way: care for the environment is one aspect of being a follower of Jesus and a citizen of God’s Kingdom.
2. Discipling Commission (Matt 28:18-20).  God calls His people to make disciples – of all nations.
3. Moral Commission (Matt 22:37-39).  The Creation and Discipling Commissions are “to be shaped by love of God and love of neighbour.”  Indeed, as Graham rightly concludes: “Without love, creation care and discipling others become vacuous.  We gain nothing (1 Cor 13:1-3).”

If you have appropriated the peace dividend, how then are we to live?  That’s the very practical question addressed in the next chapter of God the Peacemaker by Graham Cole:

Chapter Eight: Life Between the Cross and the Coming

How should followers of the Lord Jesus live?  By faith.  And our author gives an excellent exposition of what walking by faith, and not by sight, looks like.  Living by faith means:

• always trusting God, including in the age to come
• living a life of love (Gal 5:6)
• the opposite to living by fear and by sight (Matt 8:26; 2 Cor 5:7)
• giving our total allegiance to the One who won our redemption (1 Cor 6:19f)
• responding to Christ’s love in a “self-donating lifestyle” (eg. Phil 1:13-26). Simply put, Christ is worth it!
• living as a true servant (“worthy of the Gospel”), exemplified in the Lord Jesus’ “great stooping both in incarnation and atonement” (Phil 2:5-11)
• being prepared to suffer for Christ (2 Cor 11:23-28; 1 Pt 4:12-16).  This is the reality for so many of our fellow brothers and sisters in Christ throughout the world
• attracting spiritual opposition from the demonic.  The devil has not disappeared; he is behind human hostility to the gospel and is to be resisted (1 Pt 5:8f).  The armour against his attacks are defensive (shield of faith, breastplate of righteousness, helmut of salvation) and offensive (the Word of God).  Prayer is crucial.  It needs to be specific and gospel focussed (Eph 6:14-20)
• living now, in the reality of what we will be – “Spirit-impelled resurrection life.”  In the most practical of ways, this means worshipping the Lord through the offering of our whole person as a living sacrifice (Rom 12:1-2).  The individual believer is a temple of the Holy Spirit (1 Cor 6:19-20) as is the corporate Body (1 Cor 3:16-17) and that’s what needs to be displayed – not a physical Temple.

Living by faith (I think of it as being ‘up close and personal with Jesus, as we walk around the Sea of Galilee together’) means living as Kingdom people.  Graham zeroes in on two of the beatitudes in Matt 5-7: ‘blessed are the merciful’ and ‘blessed are the peacemakers.’  When we are ‘shalom-bringers’ we are acting like God in character.  And active peacemaking will be in sync with justice – reconciliation requires that wrongs are confronted and acknowledged.

As those who have appropriated the peace dividend (ie. those who are caught up in God’s reclamation project), we have a story to tell the world.  And it is undertaken by:

• evangelists, gifted by the risen Christ and equipped by His Spirit (Eph 4:11-13) to tell the story.  Our author gives a succinct account of the gospel content and proclamation approaches in the Acts of the Apostles.
• witnesses.  Every believer is not gifted to be an evangelist but every believer has a story to tell – of God’s ways and deeds.
• apologists.  Again, every believer has the task of answering questions raised by the gospel (1 Pt 3:13-16).  And we are to do so with gentleness and respect – if there is offence its source must be the gospel itself and not our manner!

Life between the Cross and the Coming is a life lived in the Spirit - the great applier of our salvation.  Graham provides a helpful overview on “filling” as seen in Luke/Acts.  And then in considering the Spirit’s role (in relation to the Trinity), he comments:

“…the Holy Spirit…uses our evangelism, witness, apology, shalom-making and mercy-showing…to bring to fruition the divine plan.”

This is a great chapter, linking biblical theology with helpful historical theology examples, with a focus on the way we live out our daily lives now, in this age.  There will be wonderful benefit in chewing on the contents of this chapter with our Bibles open, and hearts submissive to the Spirit’s transforming work.