Jesus is the Word of God
I was reading a parable to Fred, a 95 year old member of our congregation. I asked him if he understood what it was about. In his gentle farmer burr he said "It's about knowing the Lord I should expect."
Words to live by!
What do you expect when you open the Scriptures?
I was reading a parable to Fred, a 95 year old member of our congregation. I asked him if he understood what it was about. In his gentle farmer burr he said "It's about knowing the Lord I should expect."
Words to live by!
What do you expect when you open the Scriptures?
Part of my ordination training involved doing the Myers-Briggs personality test. Now I realise that this is not strictly mandated by the Pastoral Epistles, but on the other hand it was a good old giggle. (See mildly amusing prayers for the 16 personality types here.)
I came out quite strongly as ENFP which means I'm an inveterate procrastinator, big-picture, no-detail, scatter-brained, last-minute, wing it with a smile and talk my way out of it later kind of guy. At this point all the ISTJs (the opposite to me on all four spectrums) are waking up to why my blog really bugs them. (Myers-Briggs did actually help me understand something of my bible college experience - the majority of Anglican ministers I trained with were ISTJs).
But already you're probably sensing what everyone should know about these 'personality types.' They're not neutral. They describe real patterns alright - and extremely hard-wired patterns too. But a lot of what they describe are patterns of sin. A good part of each of the 16 'personality types' simply identify chosen, self-protective schemes that enable us to navigate a cursed world along paths of least resistance. Whether we buy into the 'loud' or the 'shy' persona, the 'organized' or 'shambolic', we're basically doing the same thing - finding a way to make life work apart from Christ. By some combination of retreating from the thorns and sewing our fig leaves we hit upon a style of relating that minimizes pain and maximizes self.
Now we cluster together in different groups of sinners because there are natural contours to our make-up, and there are unique events shaping our development. Those internal and external differences are not in themselves sinful. What's more God redeems our Adamic personalities (rather than replaces them) and gives us distinct and glorious gifts. This is all a very good thing. Differences are not a problem. Not at all. The new creation will not be monochrome! And different gifted-ness is not something to be ironed out in the name of Christian maturity. We are trinitarian! Our goal is not the absence of difference but the harmony of God-given distinctives.
The problem is not difference. The problem in fact is a lack of distinctiveness to our personalities because instead we slide into personas that deny our particular identity in Christ.
How many times have we flinched from serving Jesus by making such claims as...
'I'm just not an extrovert.'
'I don't really do organization.'
'I'm not a morning person.'
'I get energy from withdrawing and being alone'
'I need order/control.'
'I'm not good with authority/structure.'
'I'm not a people-person.'
See more "I am not..." statements here, and their effect.
Even as we think of these deep-seated statements of identity it should be clear that they're not just descriptive. They are also very strongly aspirational. I got that sense even as I took the Myers-Briggs test. So many of the answers I gave were actually the answers that I thought the artsy, laid-back Glen should give. In fact it was almost exactly like doing the Star Wars personality test where I tried my hardest to come out as Han Solo (but ended up as Princess Leia. My wife was the Emporer - but that's another post). The point is our reactions to events are partly innate but also strongly determined by the persona we'd like to hide in.
So who's identity are we hiding in and why?
I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. (Gal 2:20)
Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. 2 Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. 3 For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God. 4 When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory. (Col 3:1-4)
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Rest of series:
Tearing down the idol of my personality
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We've thought about the chief error in guidance - believing that our choices make us who we are. That's Pelagian/Erasmian/Enlightenment garbage. But it infects everything.
One way it plays out is by feeding a familiar false dichotomy: it's the old boundary keeper versus tight-rope walker dilemma.
The 'boundary keeper' believes God has set limits ‘out there’ on our behaviour. There’s the ten commandments etc. And if you keep them – if you keep within the boundaries – then choose whatever you want. Get on and do your thing. Don't bother God and God shouldn't bother you.
You can see pretty clearly how the chief error feeds this view. I am my own self-directing godlet (with limits obviously).
But what's interesting is that the flipside to this error is essentially the same hubris differently applied.
The tight-rope walker looks very different. They think there's only one right path in life and at any minute they may put a foot wrong and fall off God’s will for their life.
Guidance then is all about making sure you make the one right decision in every circumstance.
But of course the question must come: Why? Why must you make the RIGHT decision? Unfortunately, for the tight-rope walker the answer comes: Because my very selfhood / standing before God depends on it. You're still effectively saying "It's all in my hands."
Looks humble and fearful before God. It's still all about you.
What's the answer?
Well this sermon from Proverbs has a go at an answer.
Essentially I conclude - we're not in a wide-open plain, we're not walking a tightrope - we're in the House of Wisdom. From that loving security we grow wise. And with the resources of the House of Wisdom - the Craftsmanship of Jesus; the Teaching of Jesus and the People of Jesus - wise people start making wise choices.
Audio here. Text below.
Look at this guy, solitary, upright, clear view to the horizon. In fact he seems to stand between heaven and earth. He is the Man, surveying all before him, standing on top of the world.
And which way will he go? It's his call.
He is the captain of his soul. This is man at his most liberated and flourishing isn't it? Free to do what he wants any old time.
He's living the dream. Which is why the whole scene is shot through with romance - the sun setting idyllically on his sovereign Decision.
But this very modern view of our choices is a ridiculous idyll. It crumbles under almost any scrutiny and yet it captures the hearts of the whole world - and so many in the church too.
I reckon this false belief in our identity as sovereign choosers is mistake number one when it comes to the issue of guidance. The whole world seems to believe that what we choose leads to who we are. And while-ever we believe that then our decisions will be invested with an existential importance they were never meant to carry.
Modern Christians are obsessed with the issue of guidance in a way our forebears just weren't. To a certain degree you can explain that as a function of the greater opportunities we have today to shape our lives. In years gone past a baker's son was a baker and that was that. Today he might become a she and move to Thailand. It's his/her call!
The options have certainly expanded, but actually it's the underlying false belief which invests those options with such weight that they become a burden. We really think that our choices makes us who we are. We believe we have the power (in ourselves, in our choices) to be self-made men and women - rather than to receive our life and being as a gift.
But a moment's thought shows how ridiculous the sovereign chooser myth is.
I could tell you some of the story of my life by telling you the choices I’ve made. I decided to take this job and not this job. To move to this city at this stage. But that tells you only a very small amount about me (but, usually, the only part of me that the world is interested in - because we're all playing the same game).
But what about the bits I didn’t decide. For instance, my parents never decided to have me – I was an accident, as my sisters would constantly remind me. I never decided to be born in the 20th century in the West. I never decided to grow up in Canberra. Would you have chosen your home town if you had the choice?? I never decided all sorts of things that have made me who I am.
And this is not to mention all the hundreds of decisions I’ve tried to make happen but they never came off. Those failures have made me who I am too.
Didn’t John Lennon say ‘Life’s what happens to you while you’re busy making plans’? That's a good observation. Life is not found in our choices and plans and strategising. It happens to us. We receive it. And if we simply learnt that lesson, the weight of the guidance issue would lessen significantly.
But what we really need to do is attack the problem at its source. We need to go to the Scriptures and learn again that what we choose does not make us who we are. Rather who we are flows out in what we choose.
Take the book of Proverbs for instance. You might read it and get the impression it's supporting the world's wisdom. It seems to say "Wise people act like this and it's good. Fools act like that and it's bad." But on closer inspection you see that the actions flow from the being wise or being foolish. There's only actually one wise Person - Wisdom. And one foolish person - Folly. They both consider humanity to be simple and lacking in judgement (Prov 9:4,16) yet they vie for the hearts of the masses (see Prov 1:20ff; 8:1ff; 9:1ff). They are portrayed as women - Wisdom like the good wife, Folly like the deceitful adulteress. And belonging to their respective houses - that's what constitutes a person wise or foolish.
Then from within those houses the wise and the foolish live out their being. In the house of the wise you walk with the wise and feast with Wisdom and learn her teachings and right choices follow.
So first it's an affair of the heart as Wisdom woos you. This constitutes a change of being and then we see a change in will, in choosing, in action.
All of which is just to stress what Luther saw as absolutely critical in his debate with Erasmus. The moment you make the will the centre of gravity, you lose the gospel. Our wills are bound. We do what we want, but we can't want the right thing until the LORD sweeps us off our feet. When He changes our hearts, then the will is liberated to act in line with our new hearts. But to make our very identity depend on our choices is to commit a fundamental theological error.
I'll write some more on guidance, but for now let's just emphasize this basic point: we are NOT the choices we have made. We are who we are in Christ who has wooed and won us and freed us to live in a new way. In that new way there will be decisions to be made. But relax. Your life and identity is not found in those plans, it's found and it's secure in Christ.
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More on freedom here.
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These are not the outskirts of Eden. **
Yet my defaut mode is to think exactly this. I wake every morning with peace in the land, money in the bank, food in the cupboard. I shower in clean drinking water, go to my rewarding job, drink coffee from the other side of the world. I've lost none of my siblings, none of my close friends. In fact all death seems to be sealed off in a sanitised compound, far from my everyday consciousness. I have no major illnesses (that I know of). I blog / text / download / watch the latest banal distraction. I preach with virtually no expectation of opposition and people even thank me for bringing them the gospel.
So this is the garden of Eden right? At least an outer suburb, surely?
I heard Rick McKinley once comment that news footage of atrocities looks very different in the west to other places. In the aftermath of a bombing in Palestine, the crowds are grieving. They know what to do in these situations, they've seen it all before. And they cry, they wail, they mourn the dead. In the aftermath of a tragedy in the west what are the expressions of the onlookers? Shock, disbelief, incomprehension. And the whole sense conveyed is 'How could this happen? These are the outskirts of Eden, right?'
Well, no. We've actually been exiled from the Lord's presence and the very ground beneath our feet trembles under the weight of a divine curse. Thorns and thistles grow up for us. Interesting to note that preposition in Genesis 3:18 - these thorns that mar all our efforts to fill and subdue the earth are not randomly placed in creation. They are intentionally pointed at us. The Lord rigs the whole creation for frustration (Dan Allender's phrase). Our relationships are bent on violence and destruction. Even, and especially, our life-giving activities (filling and subduing and child-bearing) are shot through with excruciating pain and disappointment and we live under an ominous death-sentence. Dust we are, and to dust we will return.
So that curse is crashing down on my head daily - and on the heads of the people I love. But because I think I'm in a suburb of Eden, here's how I respond. I retreat from the thorns and I piece together my fig leaves.
Put it another way - I refuse to engage in the painful toil involved in the Lord's work and instead I invest in whatever I think will make life work. Under the ridiculous delusion that I'm entitled to Eden's ease, I take pain as a sign that I'm not where I'm meant to be (since I believe I'm meant to be in Eden). So I shield myself from this pain - be it the frustration of admin, the vulnerability of opening up to people, the risks of leading through change. And I seek life in other ways - through my plans, ingenuity and hard graft (my fig leaves). All this assumes that I'm basically in the Garden (at least in the outskirts). I tell myself there's no reason for me to engage in pain, and every possibility I can make this world work. But this is not Eden and I must not be shocked by the thorns nor retreat from them. Neither should I think that I can press through them to life. Equally I must not cover myself in my own righteousness, nor think that life exists in such efforts.
Dante had the words "Abandon all hope ye who enter here" written above the gates of hell. Actually the words above this land east of Eden could say something pretty similar: "Abandon all hope ye who live here - except for Christ." There is no hope for us, no hope for making life work, no hope for avoiding the curse. There is Christ only. Nothing we put our hope in will work. Not finally. But we engage in His work, in all its pain. We renounce our own coverings and trust in Christ alone. And we wait for the new heavens and the new earth - for that is the home of righteousness.
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** btw I'm using 'Eden' as a shorthand for 'the Garden of Eden' - Paradise. I realise that the Garden was in Eden - a larger area (cf Gen 4:18). So I'm begging a little artistic license here.
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Here's my ill-considered overstatement of the issue: Our problem is not that we aren't telling the gospel to our pagan friends. It's that we don't tell the gospel to our Christian friends!
When's the last time you looked another Christian in the eye and said 'Mate you're a sinner. I know you have struggles, I know you're tired but, deep down you're wicked! That's your real problem. But Mate - you're clothed in the righteousness of Christ, carried on His heart before the Father, rejoiced over in the presence of the angels.'
I don't mean, When's the last time you talked about the toughness of the Christian life, or the state of the nation's morals or the soundness of certain bible teaching etc etc. I'm talking about eye-balling your brother or sister and speaking God's word direct to them - His blood was for you, you are clean!
We all struggle to muster up the courage to evangelise non-Christian friends and family. But I wonder whether a significant part of our difficulty is that we're not even used to speaking the gospel to people who should welcome it!
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Recently my wife bought me a guitar for my birthday. A very nice guitar. I was grateful. Still am. But not so much because now I have this kind of guitar. More because now and 'till death us do part' I have this kind of wife. I'm grateful to have the gift. But what really thrills me is to have the giver.
Ask a typical evangelical why Christians do good works and they'll say "Out of gratitude for what God's done." You know the drill: He's given me heaven, the least I could do was tithe.
And apparently this is all of grace because it's a response to a gift.
But it's a quite detached response to a quite detached gift. God gives me stuff and I am moved to give stuff back.
But isn't it more that God gives me Himself since He gives me Christ. And all good things are in Him. There's a lot of stuff in there. Eternal life, wrath averted, forgiveness of sins, a spotless righteousness, a new spiritual family... lots to be grateful for. But really what I have is Christ. And in Him I don't simply have a lot of great stuff. Rather what I have is this God - the God who is a Giver.
The magnitude of His gifts are not finally what call forth my grateful response. It's the fact that I have such a Generous Giver - not simply as a Benefactor to draw upon. But He Himself is mine.
Not only His gifts belong to me, but the Giving God belongs to me. Therefore my response will not be payback but instead it will be my Christ continuing His generosity through me. The Gift that keeps on giving.
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Zephaniah 1:1-2:3
What is our hope for the world? Many things threaten our planet and our lives, many dangers, many problems. What is our hope for the world?
Let me give you Zephaniah’s answer. What is our hope for the world? Judgement. Universal, inescapable, final judgement. That is our HOPE for the world. Interesting answer isn’t it? But I think it’s really profound. And if we understand it – really helpful.