The Slaughter of the Amalekites

One of the things I love about God is that he never seems to sugar coat the truth. If the Old Testament histories and narratives have one striking feature, it is how 'warts and all' they are in their revelations. In fact, this is one of the most interesting aspects historically of the Old Testament narratives. Those who write history usually omit their defeats, and yet the Old Testament is full of mess-ups, muck-ups and mistakes. The bible doesn't just tell us what we want to hear. Which I love. But at times it's a little tricky.

One of the most troubling passages of Old Testament history occurs in 1 Samuel 15, where God commands the destruction of an entire nation - specifically to include women and children. The story is part of Saul's downfall because he becomes conceited and obsessed with his own power and begins to flippantly disobey God. But when you pause and look from another angle, it's pretty hard to ignore what God asks him to do in this passage.

If we are honest, our immediate reaction to God's command in this passage is moral disgust. And yet, as Christians, we hold this passage alongside the rest of the bible as the word of God, the primary source of all of our knowledge and understanding of God, and arguably our sole source of understanding of his intervention in the story of Israel. So how do we get our heads round passages such as this one?

I am not a theologian or a biblical scholar (other than in the sense of every Christian being a scholar of God's word to some degree). I am just a Christian. That is by way of disclaimer should anything that follows offend or disgruntle the reader! But as someone who knows God, passages like this strike me as out of kilter with the character of the God who I have come to know. And so the following has been my thought process as I have tried to work this one through. If it helps you, great - if it doesn't, I refer you to my disclaimer above and accept no liability for your disagreeing with me...

First, a preliminary thought.

The very concept of morality is dependant on God. That doesn't, of course, mean that people who know God are more moral than those who don't - it is a statement of objective fact that there is no basis for the existence of moral thought without an external standard to which we are accountable - see an interesting debate here:  http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=61XaBy8JYHA. Without a god-given moral conscience, we are eventually left with the answer 'it just is' when we are continually asked 'why' a certain thing is wrong.

What that means, logically, is that judging the morality of God is a nonsensical endeavour. It is like using a calculator to prove that the calculator itself is wrong. Every basis we have for judging morality comes from God. And so when we tell God he was wrong, we are telling him that he has contravened a moral code which is itself defined by what God does. We chase our tails. We are telling him he is acting in an ungodly manner, but if God acts, the act is godly. This sounds like semantical gymnastics, but the point I am making is that God is God. He does as he pleases, and we are simply unable to assess or judge the basis of his activity. It is beyond our capacity.

That said, the reason this story causes such concern is that the command by God to destroy the Amalekites appears inconsistent with what we know from the rest of scripture of the revealed character of God. In other words, we don't understand. We don't understand why a God who reveals himself as a God of love, slow to anger, and patient, would require the destruction of an entire people. And it has to be OK to not understand. We have to be comfortable, to an extent, with not understanding, because God is beyond our understanding. It's a tension we have to live with.

But irritating people like me need something more to chew on.  What follows will by no means provide a full and satisfactory answer to that question. It is, after all, one of those things which we simply cannot fully grasp - his ways are higher than ours. But there are some factors which, for me, assist in scratching the surface just a little.

So here goes.

I'd suggest that the slaughter of the Amalekites was not what God wanted. Stay with me. I'm suggesting that from the fact that God required this awful thing to be done, it does not flow as a consequence that this act was the perfect will, desire and intention of god. All of this is post-fall, and has to be seen in that context. We always say 'well, in a perfect world, (X) wouldn't happen...' and the same applies here. In a perfect world, the Amalekites would not die. God created a perfect world. And we ruined it. From that point on, the story has been one of God redeeming, correcting, and changing things to bring us back into perfect relationship with him. And when things have gone wrong, it can take things that otherwise we would never do, to bring them right again. We would never send men running into a fire. But when something has gone wrong, and a house full of people is about to burn down,  we do. Think of the cross. Would a father ever want to have his own son nailed to a cross? No. But God did, because the conditions of the perfect world no longer applied, and for a reason beyond our understanding that act was necessary.

So we know that there was some reason by which this act - which is not something God would ever want - became necessary. To stay with the example of the cross, we are given insight into why God sacrificed his son. We see the consequences of it. We rejoice in the mercy, grace and incredible sacrifice demonstrated by God to win our freedom, to defeat our sin and to bring us back into relationship with him. God has revealed to us, at least in part, why the cross had to happen. And so we can see this as an aspect of what god does: he turns evil into good. Things that can seem when looked at in a vacuum to be terrible things, when considered in the light of god's greater plan are seen to be as much a reflection of god's righteousness and love as anything else God has done.

We understand the cross in this way because we know the other side of the story. We know that Jesus was God and so the cross was in fact an act of self-sacrifice. We know that Jesus rose to life again, having been obedient to death, and so the cross was not the final word over the life of Christ. We know that the cross won for us eternal salvation, reconciliation to God, and the opportunity of living a life of genuine joy, purpose and fulfillment. We know these things, and so we worship God for the cross.

The problem with understanding the slaughter of the Amalekites is that we aren't told all of the other sides to the story. It isn't immediately clear what this act achieved or was intended to achieve. It isn't immediately clear to us what provision God made for his mercy and love to be made known to the Amalekites. We aren't told what eternal fate met the Amalekites. We don't know.

There are a number of potential aims or explanations for the slaughter of the Amalekites, and I make no comment on the persuasive power of any of them in justifying what happened in our minds. This is all, of course, in the context of having to come to a point of being OK with not fully understanding it. The list of explanations I've heard or read fall into two broad categories.

1. God commanded their destruction to save Israel (and by extension, his plan to show his light and love to the whole earth) from the people the Amalekites would become. The Amalekites, so say biblical historians, became an oppressive people who included an individual by the name of Haman.  Haman would become an ancient Hitler figure, who came close to having the entire Jewish race eradicated. In the book of Esther his story is told. Had Saul obeyed God and destroyed the Amalekites, Haman would never have come to be. Into this category would also fall the argument that the slaughter of the Amalekites was intended to prevent the world at large being dragged further into sin and depravity by their example, given that they are thought to have been one of the most brutal societies around at that time.

2. This was simply divine judgement on the Amalekites. They had become an evil people, engaged in depravity rarely or never seen, including child sacrifice. They had been given 400 years to repent and change their ways as a people, but they had continued in a downward spiral. God simply called time on their disobedience. There is also an argument, supported by the passage itself, that this was divine judgement for a specific act of oppression in the recent past. The Amalekites had oppressed and opposed Israel as they settled into their land, because they were weak and an easy target. Years later, when God has prospered and strengthened Israel, they are repaid for their aggression. This was a demonstration, so the argument goes, of the fact that you cannot oppose God and win in the end.

All, or some combination of the above may be part of the answer to the question 'why would God do this?', or these factors may simply be human ideas which fall way short of what it was God had in mind. We just don't know.

Where does that leave us? How do we respond to this passage?

I would argue, the same way we are to respond to every calamitous thing that happens, every mass loss of life that we see. Our God is sovereign and could end suffering with a cosmic snap of his divine fingers if he so wished. He hasn't, so far. And, whilst there are some reasons suggested by well meaning humanity for why god might decide to allow these things, and there are some theological frameworks (usually going back to the fall as the game changer) which are put forward as a way of dealing with these problems, they still leave us with something short of an emotionally satisfying answer.

So what would God have us do? He would have us trust. Trust that he is good - all the time. Trust that his will is perfect. Know that he takes pleasure in no-ones destruction, that he wills no-ones demise. Trust that he brings goodness from badness, light from darkness. To know that he is in control - and when the world seems out of control, it will only go so far as he allows.

And if you are wrestling with the question of God's goodness, either when you read passages like 1 Samuel 15, or when you face awful tragedy in life, it is OK to ask. If Job and the Psalms teach us anything it is that it is OK to ask. To complain. To plead. It is OK to not understand. But what we can do is ask God to help us to trust that he knows what he is doing. We can ask God to show us what light he is bringing from the darkness.

And as I've walked that path with Jesus, I've found myself convinced that even though so many things in the world seem so wrong, and there are so many things I just don't - and may never - understand... He is very very good. He is faithful. He is just. He is kind. He is so patient. And he loves each and every one of us with a furious love.

The Discipline of Joy

Lately I've found myself complaining of that sneakiest of ailments - 'a lack of joy'. Nothing big or dramatic - I watch the news and feel dreadful for complaining - just that old mundane Monday feeling. But as I was praying (or just complaining by another name) with my wife this morning, God surprised me. He kind of suggested that maybe my joy was my own responsibility. Bit of a spanner in the works of my morning moan, right?

But I guess he is right. (I know he always is.)

He reminded me that there are two similar concepts - which for ease of reference I will call happiness and joy. External things can make you happy - a good curry, a great movie or success at work. But we know that happiness is time-limited. It is also based on our immediate pleasure. Joy, on the other hand, is awakened within you - it is internal, not necessarily rooted in external circumstances. In fact joy, unlike happiness, can endure in the face of negative circumstances. And joy is a discipline. At least partly.

Joy is a discipline. Happiness is a feeling. Often they overlap, and we experience them simultaneously. Often the discipline of internal joy will lead to the experience of external happiness. Sometimes experiences of external happiness can be a part of the building up of joy internally. But they are distinct.

Joy is intrinsically connected to your understanding of the world around you. The level of joy that underpins your life is dependant on what you believe about life. If you are a fortuitous combination of molecules with no purpose but the perpetuation of your species, then what cause (or point) is there for joy? If you are religious and you believe in a deity who is a bully, a Scrooge who grudges all pleasure and piles on burdens at every turn, whose only emotion is disappointment and wrath, then you won't take much joy in life.

But if you believe certain other things about your life, your existence, and the nature of God, certain attitudes and logical responses to those beliefs manifest in a different way of looking at the world, which leads to joy. Joy might be experiential, but it comes from a discipline of remembering.

All the way through the Old Testament the message of God is to REMEMBER. Remember who God is. Remember what he did and therefore what he does. Remember how he provided, how he rescued, how he forgave. And so remember that God will provide, he will rescue, and he will forgive. My history teacher used to say that those who fail to study the mistakes of the past are doomed to repeat them. I would say that those who forget God's goodness in the past are doomed to live a pretty depressing future!

If we operate in a lifestyle of remembrance, we will always have in mind who God is and what God does, and so we will never look at our circumstances as the world does, ever again. In that way, joy is one of the fruits of the spirit: something that flows organically from a life surrendered to God.

It doesn't mean an inability to experience suffering: a laughable refusal to recognise the facts of life. But it does mean a deeper joy that allows you to smile in the midst of sadness, to worship in the midst of grief, and to see light when all around is dark. As Nehemiah said 'The joy of The Lord is our strength'.

It's clear in the 'joy in suffering' passages that joy comes not from refusing to recognise the truth, but from a recognition of the whole truth. If Paul and James didn't experience it as suffering, would they have referred to it as suffering or trials or tribulations? Of course they experienced the pain of it! But they had joy because they knew God was still God, he was good, and he was at work in the midst of the pain.

If you are lacking joy, you have forgotten something about God. When I lack joy, it is probably because I have forgotten to remember. I have forgotten to remember all of the times that God has brought me through difficult times, changing me for the better in the process. How God has rescued me, sometimes gradually, sometimes dramatically, from stickier situations. In a more general sense, it is probably because I have forgotten just how ridiculously loved I am by God.

I live for a God who spared no sacrifice to rescue me, and has given me his word that he is with me always. I live for a God who fills my life with good things, if only I'll open my eyes and see them. A God who works all things together for my good, turning mourning to dancing, darkness to light, and tears to joy. God hides beauty and opportunity in every day, and he does nothing by mistake. That means that today is a day mapped out for me by a God who loves me.

And when I remember that, joy doesn't seem so difficult. Even on a Monday!

A Voice Worth Listening To?

The last few years have seen a remarkable amount of debate and discussion on the issue of religion. From paedophile priests to “The God Delusion”, gay marriage, faith schools, bishops in the House of Lords and the cartoonishly indignant caricature of the “Christian Right” which appears to hold such sway over American politics, we keep on talking about this persistent, bothersome and rather nebulous entity called “religion”.

For some, these discussions are an opportunity to point out the laughable stupidity of the hapless unthinking believer.  For others, they represent an opportunity to strike out at the moralistic proclamations of a corrupt and hypocritical church. Unfortunately, these discussions are rarely approached with the maturity they deserve. The atheist who considers the belief of the faithful pure fallacy rarely stops to consider that many of the greatest minds of the past and present centuries have acknowledged spirituality and often Christianity specifically. The anti-hypocrisy snifferdog rarely pauses to consider their own fallibility, and the possibility that something can be true even if those proclaiming the truth are themselves flawed.

As a Christian in the legal profession I find myself considering a question which has been asked, usually rhetorically, by many detractors of Christian morality:

What gives the church the right to tell us how to live?

This question is at the core of all other objections in this field. Those who argue vehemently against the existence of God and the veracity of the Christian faith do so not because they passionately believe in the absence of the evidence (indeed, as Dawkins regularly points out, why would someone be passionate about not believing something?), but because they passionately believe that nobody should tell them how to live. Those who point to the flaws (many real, some imagined) in the ethical track record of the church in its various forms do so because they resent, like we all do from time to time, the feeling that we are being told what to do, particularly by people who don’t practice what they preach.

So what right does the church have?  What right does any man have to tell another how to live?  If we mean “tell” in the sense of a compulsion, an order, an instruction, then the answer must be none, with the exception of narrowly defined areas of life, under a specific authority bestowed by law (e.g. police powers) or by nature (e.g. father to young son).

If we mean “tell” in the sense of an encouragement, an exhortation, a plea, then the question is quite different. I have no right nor authority to force you to live as I wish.  But, in the right context, I can tell you my sincere and heartfelt belief about the best way to live.

If that is true, then we have established that the church does have a right – the same right as the World Health Organisation or proponents of vegetarianism – to attempt to persuade you to and encourage you to live in the way they think best.

So the real question is not whether the church (and by the church I mean followers of Jesus, wherever they may be) has a right to raise its voice. The real question is whether there is any reason to consider that voice worth listening to. In other words, whether there is any reason to believe that these Christians might be right.

Since Christians claim that their moral framework has been given to them by God, in order to evaluate the moral claims of Christianity, one has no option but to consider the question of whether Christianity itself is true or not.

This is the core of the matter. As much as some Christians may argue that biblical advice for living so well founded that “even if it’s not true, I’d live this way”, the real crux of the Christian argument comes with the question of truthfulness.  As CS Lewis said:

“Christianity, if true, is of utmost importance. If false, it is of no importance. The only thing it cannot be is moderately important”

A more modern take is from Matthew Parris:

“If a faith is true it must have the most profound consequences for a man and for mankind. If I seriously suspected a faith might be true, I would devote the rest of my life to finding out… ‘Familiar’ be damned. ‘Comforting’ be damned. ‘Useful’ be damned. Is it true? — that is the question. It was the question when I was 12 and the question when I was 22. Forty years later it is still the question. It is the only question.”

The evidence of the truth of Christianity is there. You may have to see beyond the hyperbolic straw-man arguments of many atheists and secularists. You may have to peel back the layers of church tradition and human corruption. You may even have to think for yourself rather than allowing popular opinion and the secular press to sway your mind. But the evidence is there.

And if the real issue is the truth or otherwise of Christianity, then the specifics of the moral claims fall to the wayside. The accusation is often levelled that Christians who hold to a certain view of, for example, sexual ethics, are “stuck in the past” and need to recognise “society has moved on”. Surely, if something is true, it is true regardless of what the society around it believes.

When Christians led the charge to eradicate the slave trade they were praised (eventually). When Christians were at the forefront of aid missions to Africa they were doing what was right. Yet when Christians refuse to bow to public pressure to adapt their view on the rights and wrongs of sexuality, they are bigoted, homophobic, and behind the times. What is it to believe something both when it makes you popular and unpopular? Does it show mental strength and heartfelt conviction? Or does it show an inability to move on, a mind “stuck in the dark ages”?

St Paul might describe this as preaching the gospel in season and out of season. Secular humanists describe it as “fundamentalism”. What is fundamentalism, and why is it a bad thing? Should we not be “fundamentalist” about liberty, about justice, about poverty, about equality? Or do we no longer have fundamentals?  Perhaps the issue is that “fundamentalists” have fundamentals that society no longer values. Let’s give up the name-calling and the stereotypes – fundamentalism is a meaningless term. We were fundamentalist about free speech until we started disagreeing.

To those who would seek to suppress Christian opinion on matters where it refuses to chime in with the conformism of our post-post-modern secular humanist morality, I say that the church has a right to argue, to persuade, to encourage, to plead. In response you can either ignore, or you can address the argument and genuinely consider its merit. What you mustn’t do is boil it down to unsophisticated superstition and thereby belittle the majority of souls on the planet, and indeed the majority of people in the country, who remain open to the idea of the existence of God. It not only belittles them, it belittles the integrity of your own thinking.

To Christians I say this: Do not be silenced. You do not just have a ‘right’ to speak up, you have a duty. You have a duty to preach the gospel – the whole gospel – to persuade the world of the best way to live, to point to complete forgiveness for every past present and future wrong in Jesus, and to call a lost culture to the light of God. This must be done with respect, with love, and out of a desire not to see yourself vindicated, but to see the world redeemed.

You may be met with, to use the favoured moralistic terminology of the day, intolerance. You will be misrepresented and accused of bigotry and hatred. Your intelligence will be insulted and your character slurred.

Only a few months ago Archbishop John Sentamu spoke eloquently and – I thought – sensitively about his opposition to government changing the definition of marriage. He was at pains to express his passion for equality, yet argued that marriage was not a matter of equality, given all the legal rights already contained within the Civil Partnership regime.  In response, campaigner Peter Tatchell called him a “religious authoritarian” and he received racist abuse in letters and emails.

Jesus said “the world hates me” and “if they hate me, surely they will hate you”. Nevertheless, he commanded “take up your cross”. But he added the promise: “I will build my church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it”.

Keep the faith, stand firm, live with integrity and love, and proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ fearlessly, shamelessly and clearly. Love God - don’t shy away from his word. And love people – no judgement, no condemnation, no self-righteousness, no tribalism, sectarianism or hatred. Love. And in the context of a life of love… speak up. You have a voice worth listening to.

Heaven on Earth

There's a peculiar view of Christians that has rather unfortunately become quite a common misconception. It's the idea that Christians hunker down, hate the world and all it's awful worldy things like television and cakes, and wait for heaven.

But what is heaven?

And what did Jesus mean when he said 'the Kingdom of heaven is close at hand' back in Matthew?

The way I understand heaven is quite simple: stuff being as it was meant to be. A return to Eden, if you will. Things being right, or as the Revelation puts it, all things being made new.

The thing about Jesus is that he didn't talk all that much about the 'after you die heaven' that some views of Christianity tend to focus on. In fact, he didn't really talk about death in the way we do at all. Jesus talked about those who follow him having 'already' passed from death to life. Kind of fitting in with all this incessant 'kingdom of heaven' talk. It's not all for later, over the hill and far away, in the happy every after. It's 'at hand'. It's now.

Which means that heaven is on earth. Not completely, not fully. But hints, glimmers, tastes and reflections of heaven are all around us. Whenever stuff is right, working as it should. A little taste of heaven. Whenever we get back into right relationship with God and with each other. A foretaste of heaven.

When husband and wife live in committed, selfless and passionate love for each other. A little bit of heaven. When family works as it should - love, grace, forgiveness, laughter, joy. A bit of heaven. When you get a sun bathed view of Loch Long, the Cobbler and Loch Lomond from the shoulders of Ben Narnain. A taste of heaven. For me anyway.

And just think. None of those things, not one, are the true picture of heaven. When things will truly be made new, when we will finally be reconnected fully and eternally with the source of all joy, life and fullness. If all of those reflections of heaven are so glorious, just imagine what the glory of the true thing will be like.

See Christianity isn't about the rejection of the good things. It is about the discovery of what really is good. Eternal life starts now. Like the Psalmist, we can say not only that we will 'dwell in the house of The Lord for ever' but also that 'goodness and mercy follow me all the days of my life'. In other words, heaven starts - little by little - on earth.

The Pursuit of Holiness

This is a sermon I preached a few weeks ago that a couple of people have asked for a copy of - here it is in note form. Enjoy, endure or ignore as you see fit!

Follow: The Pursuit of Holiness

“As obedient children, do not conform to the evil desires you had when you lived in ignorance. But just as he who called you is holy, so be holy in all you do; for it is written: ‘Be holy, because I am holy’” (1 Peter 1:14-16). “It is written” is a reference to three points in Leviticus where God commands Israel, and Peter extends the command to us, “be Holy, because I am Holy” (11:44, 19:2, 20:7).

So holiness is an essential part of following Jesus. In fact, properly understood, holiness IS the pursuit of Jesus. But holiness has become an uncomfortable subject, with two extremes arising in Christian culture.

On the one hand there is pharasaical rule-keeping religious Christianity, where the call is "obey in order to be accepted by God". This being entirely untrue, some have then over-reacted to the opposite extreme, preaching that because God loves you just as you are, he's far too nice to ask you to change, he's far too polite to disagree with your choices, and even if he did, he's far too timid to do anything about it. Holiness is a thing of the past, they say, and it doesn't matter any more.

So who is right? Well, as with so many things in this wonderfully complex and beautifully simple thing we call following Jesus, the answer is both, neither and somewhere in between.

This is a huge topic and what follows is no more than a basic framework, scratching the surface at a couple of points. But my prayer is that even as we scratch the surface of a biblical view of holiness, God will pierce our hearts, changing us and drawing us closer to him to make us more like him. That's the point.

Justification vs Sanctification

The most important thing to grasp when dealing with this topic is the distinction between two wonderful theological words. Justification and Sanctification. True Christianity must include both, and all of the tension over this issue comes down to our understanding of this distinction. It is vital, as it cuts to to the core of Christianity itself. It hits the very core of the gospel.

Justification

Justification happens the moment you give your life to Jesus. At that instant, you were justified before God.

The bible describes that transformative moment in a number of ways:

- Being cleansed from every sin and stain. 1 John 1:7

- Declared Not Guilty. Romans 3:23-26

- Made right with God. Romans 3:29
- Made right in his sight. Romans 5:1
- Restored to friendship with God. Romans 5:10-11
- As of that moment, there is no condemnation. Romans 8:1
- You are assured of his glad welcome. Ephesians 3:12
- You are perfected forever. Hebrews 10:14

Because of Jesus, when you say yes, you are immediately, fully, completely justified. That means more than just forgiveness or the absence of punishment. So much more. It means being completely restored to perfection in the eyes of God. A restoration to right relationship. If you have given your life to Jesus, God sees you as completely clean, completely new, completely perfect, completely justified. There is no lingering suspicion, no secret grudge against you, no reluctance to embrace you. You are completely, utterly and wonderfully restored into perfect intimate and loving relationship with God. You are justified.

And yet... if we’re honest with ourselves, we know we’re not perfect.

And that realisation is the beginning of sanctification.

Sanctification
Hebrews 10:14 captures this perfectly: "For by one sacrifice he has made perfect for ever those who are being made holy”

At once, we are already perfected forever, and yet still being made holy. It is the now and the not yet tension of the Kingdom of God. God has declared you holy in his sight, and now he is setting about the work of making you holy. Sanctification follows justification. You are not saved by your holiness – you live a holy life because you have been saved. As John put it last month in his sermon, we don't "do in order to be", rather you "be, in order to do".

No effort of yours or mine to live a holy life can ever save you. We are saved by the grace of God - unmerited, underserved. A scandalously and ludicrously free gift of God, when you turn to him and place your trust (faith) in him.

And once you have been saved by the unmerited, undeserved and unstoppable grace of God, the command comes “be holy”.

Misunderstandings

 

Often we misunderstand this pursuit that is so close to the core of what it means to follow Jesus. When we misunderstand the nature of the pursuit of holiness, it can influence the motivations and attitudes we carry into our relationship with God. I know I have caught myself living in accordance with these various false statements from time to time - I wonder if you can relate to any of these?

1.“Be Holy in order to be assured of salvation” 

In other words - be really good, just in case God's grace doesn't stretch as far as my sin... be holy just in case his grace isn't good enough. This mixes up justification and sanctification. It leads to a guilt-ridden pursuit of the perfect life, driven by insecurity in our salvation. It means we attempt obedience, but we are driven by guilt, shame and fear.

It is the trap the Galatians fell into, and Paul corrects them in the strongest possible terms in Galatians 3:2-3: “Let me ask you this one question: Did you receive the Holy Spirit by obeying the law of Moses? Of course not! You received the Spirit because you believed the message you heard about Christ. How foolish can you be? After starting your Christian lives in the Spirit, why are you now trying to become perfect by your own human effort?”

Romans 8:15-16: “The Spirit you received does not make you slaves, so that you live in fear again; rather, the Spirit you received brought about your adoption to sonship. And by him we cry, ‘Abba, Father’. The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children”. If you have accepted Jesus Christ and have decided to live life in relationship with him, then you do not need to be concerned about your salvation – you don’t need to live in fear, trying to obey because you’re secretly not sure if this grace thing can really stretch as far as my sin. Rather, you are brought into an intimate father-child relationship. And the father is asking you, as his child, to be obedient to him.

2. “Be Holy in order to win God’s affection”
 
You say, ok - I've got my 'get out of hell free' card. I accept that the salvation part is done. Maybe you're not trying to earn salvation - but you're trying to earn affection. Maybe you are someone who had a difficult relationship with your parents and you felt you had to perform in order to earn their affection – to make them proud. Maybe you put that on to your relationship with God: obey in order to be loved.

But the bible says the opposite: “We love because he first loved us” (1 John 4:19). When you became a Christian, you were adopted into God’s family, and he said “you are my son/daughter, and I am fully pleased with you”. Those were the words spoken to Jesus in Matthew 3:17 – and that same love, acceptance and affirmation was given to you because of the cross (Romans 8:16-17).

We are not striving for the affirmation of the father - he has given it! And from that relationship where we are affirmed sons and daughters of the father - loved and fully pleasing to him - he calls us to holiness.

3. “Act Holy on the outside so people don’t suspect what’s going on inside”

This is one of the false statements we perhaps most easily fall into. We put on masks of the perfect Christian lives. God told me to be holy – so I better not admit that I am struggling in marriage, struggling with temptation, struggling with dilemmas of integrity, struggling with spiritual disciplines. Even worse, I certainly won’t admit that I gave into temptation, that I gave up my integrity, that I haven’t read my bible in a month.

Holiness is not about looking good on the outside. It’s about being changed from the inside. And often that looks awful on the outside for a while! The Pharisees were all about looking good on the outside: Jesus said to them in Luke 11:39 “You are so careful to clean the outside of the cup and the dish, but inside you are filthy—full of greed and wickedness!”. In interesting analogy Jesus uses, isn't it? Think about the cup: what matters more for its use? A clean and sterile inside? Or a clean outside?

In Romans 12:2 it says “Let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think”. It all begins on the inside.

4. “God loves me, so why should I change?”

We can sometimes forsake the pursuit of holiness out of a wrong understanding of grace. The pursuit of holiness was part of the salvation package. God loves us and accept us just as we are, but he loves us far too much to leave us that way. A Christian is a disciple – someone who is learning to follow and become like the teacher, Jesus. He expects us to be committed to it too: he says to count the cost before following him, because following Jesus means change.

The moment of becoming a Christian is often called “repentance” which literally means turning – I've been looking after number one, following the false Gods of this world, and now I am going to turn and follow Jesus. Following in the knowledge that I will make mistakes, with the awareness that I have so far to go before I am what I should be, but my heart has turned towards Jesus Christ.

Christianity is the pursuit of holiness.

The Nature of Holiness

Holiness is not a religious exercise in sticking to a set of rules

When we do that, we usually just pick a particular rule to judge ourselves and each other by. For example we obsess about sex: you can gossip, you can oppress the poor, you can be malicious and anger prone and bitter and jealous - but if you want to be holy just don’t have sex.

Maybe you can relate to times of life where you judge your holiness level by the number of days since you lost control of your sex drive either with someone else or on your own.
Maybe your religious rule of choice is religious observance: Holiness means spending three hours in prayer per week and attending four services per month.

Holiness is not a record keeping exercise in self-discipline.

You can discipline your body, you can discipline your time, you can even to some extent discipline your thoughts. The Pharisees loved this kind of holiness. They were good at it. They lived by the law, and they were good at it. But they fell well short of the standard required by holiness.

Law v Grace

The difference between 'law' and 'grace' is a wonderful thing to study - Galatians is a good place to start (I don't have time or space here to fully explore it). The Pharisees were offended by the early church because they preached you can't be saved by the law. They thought that Christianity was an easy way out - "you don't need to keep those rules anymore". I know Jewish and Muslim friends of mine often feel that way when discussing the concept of grace.

But the standard of grace is actually higher than the standard of law. Law says love your neighbour. Grace says love your enemy too. The law says give 10%. Grace says give everything. The law says don't commit adultery. Grace says don't even look at a woman with impure thoughts in mind. The law says don't murder. Grace says don't even speak a word in anger.

Holiness requires a transformation of the heart

Holiness requires more than keeping the rules. the holiness that we are to pursue, having been saved by God's grace, requires a complete transformation of the heart. The inside of the cup.

Holiness = set-apart-ness

God is described as Holy Holy Holy…. Completely set apart from everything. We are to be Holy… set apart for God – marked as his. My wedding ring tells the world that I am set apart for my wife. So our transformed lives should tell the world that we are set apart as God’s.

Be Holy = Be Different

As a child, being a Christian was great - lots of bouncy castles and singalongs. When I hit teenage years it became more difficult because it meant actually being different. Having a different view of sex, alcohol, drugs. Having a different attitude to the class loser. It meant being different. But that's the point! Even as you look at the most obscure laws in the old testament (like not boiling a young goat in its mother's milk) the reasons they are in place are to mark God's people out as different to the pagan cultures around them at the time.

Be Holy = Be like Jesus.

 

Be holy because HE was and is holy (John 14:9 – Jesus shows us the father, Holy Holy Holy). The only man who's eyes never looked at a woman with lust. The only man who never acted in jealousy or selfish anger. A man for whom nobody was too low on the social ladder to be worthy of his time, affection and love. A man who spent his life with his will aligned to his father's, listening to his voice and acting on what he heard. A man who sacrificed his life out of love for a broken and needy world.

 

Holiness is Christlikeness. That is the standard each one of us is called to. To say in every situation, as Jesus did “your will be done”.
It means prayer. Not for the sake of ticking the box, but because our hearts hunger for his presence, and our eyes have been opened to our need for him.

It means worship. Not out of religious obligation, but because we have seen a glimpse of God and our hearts have been changed to love him.

It means sexual purity. Not because God wants to keep from you from having fun, but because your heart is being transformed, your view of women is being transformed. Because you start to see in sexuality something beautiful about the very self-giving character of God, and you start to see in the world’s version of sexuality the opposite of that – selfish hedonistic sensuality.

It means love. Genuine, selfless, boundless sacrificial love.

It means honesty and integrity. Not because “good boys don’t lie” but because you love that person, so why would you cheat them? You care about that person – so why would you gossip about them?

It means doing the will of God when it makes sense and when it doesn’t – because it means trusting that God is good, and that his will is good.

Holiness looks like Jesus

How Does Holiness Happen?

Holiness happens as we follow Jesus. It is the unavoidable result of any genuine relationship with God. We talk about this all the time in the language of fruit. We know that as Christians we are meant to produce good fruit – John 15. We know that in our lives we should be developing the fruit of the spirit – Galatians 5. Anyone who has every been into gardening knows that you don’t plant a seed and then the next day drink fully pressed apple juice from a full-grown tree. It is a process of growing.

That raises an interesting question: is it my job or is it God’s job?

That’s another one of those questions to which the answer is both, neither and somewhere in between.

It comes from your relationship with Jesus.

Paul talked about his ministry in these terms: “I work very hard at this, as I depend on Christ’s almighty power that works within me” – Colossians 1:29

He counselled the Philippian church in Philippians 2:12-13 “Work hard to show the results of your salvation, obeying God with deep reverence and fear. For God is working in you, giving you the desire and the power to do what pleases him.”

Romans 12: 2 “Don’t copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think.”

It takes God's commitment, and it takes our commitment.

We know about Jesus' commitment: Philippians 1:6: “God, who began the good work within you, will continue his work until it is finally finished on the day when Christ Jesus returns.”

So what about your commitment?

There is a wonderful prayer that a pursuer of holiness prayed long ago – found in Psalm 139:23-24 – “Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. Point out anything in me that offends you, and lead me along the path of everlasting life.”

With that kind of prayer we lay ourselves before him and say: take every part of me. Show me the areas of my life where habitual sin still lurks. Show me the thoughts and attitudes that don’t glorify you. Make yourself Lord of every dark and hidden corner of my heart.

That kind of prayer is a marker of an intimate relationship with God. That is the kind of prayer that God loves to answer. Because he is committed to making us holy.

Products of Holiness

1. Deeper intimacy with God: as you open up the most vulnerable and secret parts of your life to God, you begin to see him change you deeply, and that makes you love him even more deeply. By the same token when we begin to pull a veil over parts of our lives, keep them for ourselves, we start to place barriers between us and God.

2. Other people notice: Matthew 5:14-16 “You are the light of the world—like a city on a hilltop that cannot be hidden. No one lights a lamp and then puts it under a basket. Instead, a lamp is placed on a stand, where it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your good deeds shine out for all to see, so that everyone will praise your heavenly Father". Holiness shows God to the world: let your good deeds shine. 1 Peter 3:15: “You must worship Christ as Lord of your life. And if someone asks about your Christian hope, always be ready to explain it”. The implication is that if you are worshipping Christ as Lord – i.e. if the fruit of holiness is becoming apparent in your life – only then will people start to ask about the faith you have.

If your life looks no different from the rest of the world, then why on earth will anyone listen to you when you say that Jesus offers life to the full? Worship Christ as Lord of your life - and then the light shines.

Trust

It's been a strange old month.

We will never grow in faith unless we go through times where our faith is tested. It's easy to say you trust God when everything is coming up roses. It's another thing entirely to say it when the future seems uncertain.

What does it mean to trust God when things are down?

The thing about trust is that it isn't always a good thing. The worst of life's emotional anguish comes from broken trust or trust that was misplaced. Trust is only a good thing if it is placed in something worthy of trust. No matter how much we trust - how much faith we have- unless that faith is in something with a firm basis in truth, it is useless.

If you are falling from a cliff, and have faith in a branch to hold your weight - it's not the strength of your faith that determines whether you fall to the ground, it's the strength of the branch.

I can tell myself that my wife and I will get the jobs we want - I can even believe it as I say it. I can squeeze my eyes tight shut and believe it so hard I burst a blood vessel. But does that mean it will come true? It isn't the strength or unshakability of your trust that matters, it is the truth or otherwise of what you are trusting in.

As Christians, should we 'just believe' that everything will be fine - it will all work out as we want? Of course not. Things are manifestly not all fine. Life clearly doesn't go (at least not consistently) just as we would like.

And it is in precisely these difficult times that trust becomes important. The most wonderful statements of faith in God come at the close of the most melancholy Psalms. Trust clearly isn't some crazed assertion that everything is ok. To say that is to deny the nature of the world in which we live. And the nature of the world Jesus lived, suffered and died in.

So what does it mean to trust God?

That depends, again, on the truth behind your trust. Are we trusting God for who he has actually said and shown he is, or are we trusting in a God of our own making (idolatry)?

Do I believe God is never angry? No, I believe he is slow to get angry.

Do I believe God gives us everything we could ever want? No I believe God works all things together for the good of those who love him and are called according to his purposes.

Do I believe that nothing could ever harm me? No I believe that nothing can separate me from the love of God.

Do I believe that God's will is the same as mine? No I believe God's thoughts are higher than mine.

Our trust can't be in some particular desired outcome from a situation. That is faith in something which is not based in fact. I hope for that, I pray for that.  I might even go so far as to say I pray to a God whose revealed character of love and generosity makes it LIKELY that he will answer those prayers. But I cannot say I can trust in that outcome. Because God sometimes has other plans. 

Daniel's three friends (for lovers of mid 90s talking vegetable bible cartoons, we can call them Shack, Rack and Benny...) are an incredible example of this kind of trust. They said 'our God is able to save us from the fire... but even if he doesn't...'

Their trust was in God, regardless of the immediate outcome. Their devotion to, faith in, trust in God was not conditional on God complying with their will.

The challenge is to trust him regardless of whether his will is our will.

So what does it mean to trust God in uncertainty - when we can't say that what we want to happen is what will happen?

Well, if we trust God, we trust in what he HAS promised us. I trust he will provide for me. Because he told me so. I trust he has a plan for me. Because he told me so. I trust he is working all of these things together for my ultimate good, because he told me so. I trust that at the end of all of this, when as the hymn writer said 'earth's joys grow dim, it's glories pass away', I will see him face to face, and every tear, pain, worry and burden will finally be gone. Because he told me so.

I trust that no matter what happens, and no matter how bad - or good - things get, he will never leave me or forsake me. And if we really grasp the glory of who Jesus is - the pearl of great price - then that has to be enough for us.

As a side note, I've talked about how faith (trust) is powerless unless it is faith placed in something which is objectively reliable. I hear the secular materialist say 'see, you admit it - blind faith is useless'. Yes, of course I agree with that.

But this branch I am hanging on - my faith in Jesus - is rooted in objectively rational fact. There are good reasons to trust this branch to hold my weight. The trustworthiness of the branch is also confirmed by subjective experience. In other words, my faith is not blind - it is faith in a person who I know, who I have experienced, and who is as real to me as the woman I married.

When we decide to trust God we do it on his terms. And his terms are that he is God, and we are not. He might not do as we thought / wished he would. But we can know that in all things, he is unequivocally and eternally FOR us. He loves us. And he asks for our trust.

I trust. I don't know how it's going to work out, I don't know where it's going to take us. I don't know what's around the corner.

But I know Jesus.

And that's enough.

Four Deaths. And Life.

I don't think death is ever a cause for celebration. Certainly not in and of itself. I was saddened that when Osama Bin Laden was killed celebrations broke out, not at the idea of a victory over a legitimate foe, or the idea of freedom from a certain danger being achieved, but simply at the death of a man. I was quite simply repulsed today by the thought that some people in this nation - even this city - would consider celebrating the death of Baroness Thatcher. What an example of the failure of human dignity, the failure of mankind to live up to even the basic standards of decency once more. An old lady, suffering from Dementia, has died, leaving behind a grieving family. She also happens to be the first (and thus far only) woman to have held the highest political office in the country. This frail old lady still arouses such passions, that one otherwise gentle and jovial old man who sat next to me on a plane once told me 'I'd dance on her grave'. Grace? Forgiveness? Not for her. Such is the attitude of many tonight, sadly.

That gets me thinking about another death we've been remembering these past few months, a death that (some might argue) we do celebrate. I refer of course to Jesus. It would be wrong to say we celebrate his death. That was on the Friday. That was a sombre moment and a cataclysmic moment. The celebration came on Sunday, with the resurrection. It is rather important not to confuse them. One lawyer this Easter in a Scottish court was pleading for a light sentence for his client, and said 'after all, M'Lord, it is Easter time'. To which the presiding Sheriff replied 'yes, it is good Friday - are you asking me to impose crucifixion?'

In the Easter story God brought life from death, not unlike the mythical phoenix rising from the ashes of it's former self.

Which is interesting.

Because death come to us all. This is a subject that has, for better or for worse, occupied my mind for the past few days. Not deliberately, but I wonder if subconsciously I have been heeding the advice of the writer of Ecclesiastes, who counsels us that 'a wise person thinks a lot about death'. 

I am currently writing and revising a talk I am to give on Thursday at an Alpha course launch night, and death raises many of those wonderful and horrible questions of life that Alpha is designed to explore. Is death the end? Do my decisions now make a difference to what happens in the end?  Or, as Tolstoy asked in typically poetic language, 'is there any meaning in my life that will not be annihilated by the inevitability of death that awaits me?'

In addition to Alpha and Ecclesiastes there is another thing that has made these issues the focus of my thoughts of late. It was a Christian writer (I won't name names) who was providing some remarkably pleasing answers to horrendously difficult questions. It was enticing. It is that simple after all! That's just what I'd like to believe! Except as I thought it through, and went back to basic truths, I saw that it just isn't that simple. There are big things at stake. Big questions to which we each need to find an answer. And the answer you find matters enormously.

Which leads me to death number four. (Maggie, Jesus, Everyone... Have you been counting?)

Our deaths. (Wait, that was number three wasn't it? Have you lost count?). What I mean is our pre-death deaths. Perhaps it's too late at night for such nonsense. I soldier on regardless.

What I mean by a pre-death death, is a kind of death that, like the Easter story and like the Phoenix, leads to new life. It is a kind of death that leads to new life of such a vibrant degree, and of such an increasing fullness, that the 'official' bodily death becomes just a mere formality to seal the transition. It is the death Jesus asks us to die in order that we can follow him into resurrected life. A death not brought about by violence, disease or age, but a death brought about by the decision to throw yourself  spiritually from a great height.

I have never bungee jumped. I don't have the cajones for such a feat. I consider that my impulse NOT to jump is a prime example of natural instinct at it's most effective. But when it comes to the big questions, the surprising answer (or so I've found, at any rate) is that dying a spiritual death, throwing the whole broken lot of me over the edge, has resulted in a Phoenix-like rebirth, where behind every lost cause there lurks a miracle story, and over every insurmountable object there is written 'hope'. What glorious grace, to fall from a great height only to fall into the arms of the God who was waiting to catch me, and then to give me wings.

Death comes to us all. But then so can life.

Marital Coercion

How disappointed I was to learn from the Vicky Pryce case that marital coercion is not a defence which will be accepted by a modern jury as excusing someone for committing an act they had previously thought unthinkable. Because I never thought I'd write a blog. In fact, for so long I have (gently) railed against the first-order vanity of the blogger, who thinks their thoughts are of such invaluable quality that the whole world should read them.

And here I am writing a blog.

But Roxy made me do it.

Or rather, she said she thought it was a good idea. And making her smile seems to be at least a contributing factor to my motivation for most things in life, since that strange girl made me fall in love with her.

So here it is, for what it's worth. My thoughts, deliberations, ventings and musings (and perhaps even some not-fully-formed sermons) on the things that matter to me. If the same or similar things matter to you (imaginary reader) then perhaps my contributions will be of some mild interest if there really is nothing in the telly.

And if all else fails, please remember - she made me do it.