As spotted yesterday in an airport bookshop. Sorry for the blur, I was in a hurry.
Note the section.
Tag: culture
More than a million dead
Since the earthquake - more than one million have died worldwide. 150 000 per day. Every day without fail a Haiti-sized disaster strikes. This is not to play down the horror of this crisis. It's to awaken us to a daily horror that we accept all too readily. 56 million people - that's almost the whole UK population - return to dust every year. And I will be one of those statistics. Sometime this century. I live on a fault line every bit as treacherous as the Enriquillo-Plantain Garden fault zone. No house could ever be structurally sound enough. This world will be the death of me.
'Not one stone will be left on another, every one will be thrown down' said Jesus about the house of God (Mark 13:2). This was just the start of a top-down judgement. First the flesh and blood House of God was torn apart on the cross. Then the brick and mortar house of God in AD70. One day it will be God's house - the whole cosmos - that comes crashing down. The stars from the heavens, the sky torn in two, the moon turned to blood. It's scheduled for demolition.
Can you imagine how the disciples would have viewed the temple after Mark 13? For the next 40 years they would visit the temple (e.g. Acts 2:46) but they would never again be taken in by its 'massive stones' and 'magnificent buildings (Mark 13:1). They knew it was about to be shaken to its foundations.
We know that earth and heaven will be shaken (Heb 12:27-28). And in the meantime, we see portents. Earthquakes (Mark 13:8). This is the world that we know. Tsunamis destroy, volcanoes erupt, plagues devour, cyclones flatten, wildfires rage and the very earth upon which we stand quakes.
But here's a surprise. Jesus doesn't call these 'death-throes'. He calls them 'birth-pains'. (Mark 13:8) Because the demolition to which we are heading is, in fact, a palingenesia - the renewal of all things. (Matt 19:28) This top-down judgement is for the sake of a top-down resurrection.
We're heading towards 'the end' - the goal of all things (Mark 13:7,13); summer (v27); the cloud of His presence (v26); gathering (v27) and the power and glory of the Son of Man (v26). We're heading for a new heavens and new earth - a kingdom that 'cannot be shaken' (Heb 12:28).
May this earthquake awaken true compassion in us - (here are some places to give money). May the Body of Christ speak boldly of the Redeemer from all evil (Genesis 48:16) and demonstrate His suffering love in the midst.
But may we also reconsider our own precarious position. This ground is not solid. Not right now anyway. It will be shaken and it groans under the weight of sin and curse. It will rise up to strike me down and swallow me whole. Yet so often I marvel at the 'massive stones' and' magnificent buildings' of 'this present evil age.' I cosy up in the demolition site.
May we wake again to the reality of a whole world under judgement. May seeing these deaths re-ignite our hatred of death. Every day the tragedy of Haiti is repeated the world over. But mostly we try to ignore that the last enemy is swallowing everything we love! Let us wake up and snort with indignation at the grave the way Jesus did (John 11:33-38).
And then, through the lens of His resurrection may we look to the most audacious hope - a new Haiti, secure, prosperous, radiant, gathered under the wings of the Son of Man, every tear wiped away by the Father Himself.
The non-Christian can hope for nothing greater than 'safer' buildings on the same old fault line. And as they labour admirably for this, many will ask why God does not seem to be cooperating with their desire to pretty up the demolition site. They plan to build some lovely houses on this sand and they imagine God to be standing in the way of their saving purposes. Of course it's the other way around. And of course it's we who have a small view of redemption.
The Lord has a salvation so audacious He can call earthquakes 'birth-pains'. (As can Paul - Rom 8:22). Certainly they are birth-pains. But they are birth-pains. Jesus has a redemption so all-embracing that it will include even these evils. It won't simply side-step Haiti, or make the best of a bad situation, it will (somehow!) lift Haiti through this calamity and birth something more glorious out of the pain.
We know this because Jesus began the cosmic shake-down with His own destruction. And He was perfected through this suffering (Heb 2:10). His death (Matt 27:54) and His resurrection (Matt 28:2) were attended by earthquakes - they were the original earth-shattering events. And through this death and resurrection was birthed a new creation reality beyond death and decay (1 Cor 15:54-57). Where the Head has gone, we will follow, and the whole creation with us. And as Christ bears and exalts the wounds of His own suffering into eternity, somehow the evils of this last week will also be caught up into resurrection glory.
I don't pretend to know how and I don't pretend that this answers our grief or our questions. It's the answer of faith and not sight. But, unlike the answer according to 'sight', this answer takes us deeper into the tragedy - we all face this fate (Luke 13:4-5!). And it points us much higher to its redemption.
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My sermon on Mark 13 from last year
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Carolling in the Name of…
Finally. The success they deserve - Rage Against the Machine have the UK's Christmas number 1.
And for those who have been following the exploits of this feisty four-piece, it's more apt than you know.
It all began when Zachary Ragg formed his little beat-combo Ragg and the Be Cleans. They hit the road, playing the usual tent crusades and church picnics. But while their lyrics were outstanding, soaked as they were in the best of Patristic and Reformation theology, their rap / heavy metal fusion (birthed in the Anfechtung of their Lutheran heritage) was often lost on the good church folk.
Their career took a decisive turn when Sony snapped up the talented young boys and re-branded them as Rage Against the Machine.
From that point onwards, young Zachary's profoundly Christian lyrics were altered by cynical producers riding the wave of 90s angst. But Christ the Truth can now reveal the original words to 'Killing in the Name.' We reproduce them here with comments in the hope that its Christmas wonder can be reclaimed.
The song is introduced with its own title:
Carolling in the Name of...
So sacred is the divine Name the Be Cleans dare not speak it. And yet they unfold His majesty with a moving ode to His divine kenosis:
Now the One who works forces
Is the same who bears crosses
So taken is Zachary with this Christmas meditation that he dwells on the theme at length. Then, with a discernably Lutheran slant, he launches into a stunning exegesis of Galatians 3. He addresses Israel under the law, hammering down upon them the slavery in which they are bound:
And now you do what they told you
And now you do what they told you
And now you do what they told you
And now you do what they told you
Soon the antiphonal response will be added, pronouncing the divine judgement:
And now you're under a curse
And now you're under a curse
And now you're under a curse
And now you're under a curse
The tension builds until we find release in Christ's marvellous exchange:
He Who dies - He justifies
He wears your bad - now the chosen: white
He justifies - He Who dies
He wears your bad - now the chosen: white
After this chorus of exultation in Christ's substitutionary work, the Be Cleans recapitulate their meditations on Galatians 3. Soon all is resolved as they turn to Galatians 4:4. With ever increasing certitude, Zachary takes on the role of the incarnate Christ, born of a woman, born under law. Now, from within our humanity He fulfils the law and reverses the curse. He pronounces His benediction in words reminiscent of Hebrews 10:7 -
Bless you, I now do what I told you
Bless you, I now do what I told you
Bless you, I now do what I told you
Bless you, I now do what I told you
The excitement of the Be Cleans reaches fever pitch and who can blame them? Christ has come, He now shoulders the burden, the curse is reversed, slaves are turned to sons. The final line from Zachary proves le mot juste - what else can we do but adore the condescension of this Great Shepherd of the brethren!
Brother-Flocker!
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The mission of the church
Check out this definition of the church's mission.
‘The Church's commission, which is the foundation of its freedom, consists in this: in Christ's stead, and so in the service of his own Word and work, to deliver to all people, through preaching and sacrament, the message of the free grace of God.’
That's it. That's the mission of the church. Proclamation.
Now, without cheating, see if you can guess where this comes from. And when.
Any guesses?
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Well maybe you think these are the words of some one-eyed fundamentalist, divorced from any pressing social or political needs. Perhaps you think this definition represent a cowardly retreat from the social and political realities of the day?
Well the year was 1934, the place was Germany and this is article 6 of the Barmen Declaration - the document that founded the German Confessing Church.
And into that context, this determination to view the church's mission simply as gospel proclamation proved to be the most provocative political challenge possible. This is precisely because it refuses to engage with the world on its own terms. The Nazis are confronted because the Confessing Church occupies itself with its one true Fuhrer (Christ), its one true Reich (God’s Kingdom) and its one true commission: delivering ‘the message of the free grace of God’. Far from creating an ‘ecclesiastical ghetto’ for the Confessing Christians, this single-minded determination to let the Gospel set the agenda for the Church brings it into its most significant contact with the surrounding culture.
Barmen is profoundly political. But it is so by refusing any other agenda but the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Nothing could be more explosive.
A few years later, Karl Barth (who authored Barmen) was back in his native Switzerland. (Interestingly it was his lectures on preaching that were the last straw for the Nazis, the Gestapo bursting in and forcibly deporting him. Apparently his last words to his students on the train platform was the admonition: "Exegesis, exegesis, exegesis!") Anway, a young pastor from Brandenburg wrote to him in distress. He had been sacked after preaching against Mein Kampf from the pulpit. The pastor expected sympathy. Instead Barth replied that the pastor had made a "decisive mistake":
Your job, when you stand in the pulpit, is to again make well the sick church of Germany. That can be done only by the Word alone. You are to serve that Word and no other. But you can’t do that if you seize on Mein Kampf… Was it not a shame, each minute that you wasted with this book instead of reading the Bible? (William Willimon, Conversations with Barth on Preaching, p248-249)
Interesting huh?
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Pollutants or Prayer? What changes the climate?
Ok, I'll get off the subject soon enough. Just a little test for us all, inspired by Heather's comment.
“When I shut up the heavens so that there is no rain, or command the locust to devour the land, or send pestilence among My people, if My people who are called by My Name humble themselves, and pray and seek My Face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and heal their land. ” 2 Chronicles 7:13-14
"Elijah was a man just like us. He prayed earnestly that it would not rain, and it did not rain on the land for three and a half years. Again he prayed, and the heavens gave rain, and the earth produced its crops." James 5:17-18
So what causes climate change, pollutants or prayer?
Cue howls of disbelief. Choruses of "medieval superstition!" Derisive laughter...
Yeah, yeah. Get it out of your system. But seriously... Which is it? Pollutants or prayer?
And of course you say, 'It's not an either-or.'
Well... even when it is a both-and, it's by no means a symmetrical 'both-and' is it? Prayer can change the climate quite apart from the levels of Co2 in the atmosphere.
And really - who's running this show? Christ or carbon?
Cue more mocking and incredulity. I hear your protests: 'Don't be ridiculous Glen, typical overstatement! The sovereign Lord still works via means and agents. He might well say to the waters 'This far and no further' but He uses gravity to do the job. Same with climate. He's Lord of climate change, but He oversees it according to cycles and seasons and constants and laws.'
Mmmm fine. That's what I thought you were going to say. I just wanted to see how quickly you said it. As a matter of interest, how immediate was your 'Yeah, but...'?
I'll probably agree with your 'Yeah, but...' I just want to know how quickly it snapped into place. I want to know how strongly it rose to the surface. Because in my heart and mind it springs like a steel trap.
And the place it springs from is not my training in historic reformed Christianity. Oh I can happily use Calvinism to justify it (secondary causes and all that). But I'm pretty sure it springs from enlightenment sources, not reformational ones.
You see I read 2 Chronicles 7, lodge its truths in some cerebral filing cabinet under 'theology', and then return to the real world where principles and programmes and professors and pollutants rule the roost. In the real world iron laws grind out our predicatable fate. And the only difference between us and the 'enlightened' secularist is that we know the name of the One pulling the levers. Right?
Sheesh... Of course by the time you've made peace with this view - the name of the One pulling the levers is so immaterial to the discussion you can afford to drop it entirely. And nothing really changes. Because, let's face it, we we basically reckon the levers pull themselves. Right?
And so here's my little test. Can you say this sentence out loud and for ten minutes refuse every urge in you to clamp down with your 'Yeah, but...':
Ultimately, prayer changes the climate, not pollutants.
Can you linger on this for a full ten minutes? Can you mull over all its radical implications?
Christ not carbon is the determining factor
Here's the deal - if you can remove yourself from the deistic clockwork universe for ten minutes and feel the immediacy and Personality of the biblical universe, I'll let you go to Copenhagen.
Fair?
Ok, off you go. But I warn you, it's a lot harder than it sounds.
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How can I be sure of climate heaven?
Imagine you're in a conversation with someone of another religion. At some point you might ask them: "Are you sure of heaven/Valhalla/getting beamed to the mother ship?" (delete as appropriate).
This is a good question because no other god actually saves. They might talk a big game but they can't be counted on to do the business. And so the follower of this other religion will be forced back on themselves. They'll either openly confess 'No' or they'll be full of bravado and demonstrable good works but the most they can say is, "I hope so." And when they confess their lack of assurance it's enough to bring you to tears. What wicked demon has ensnared you that you may even kill yourself in its service yet have no hope of its favour!?
Well don't we see the same thing with the carbon-cutting gospel? I receive emails from an old university friend (I'll bet many of you get the same ones - his global advocacy group has become massive). But for all the candlelit vigils, the millions strong petitions, the vast sums raised and ambitious goals - the lack of assurance is palpable. Every email ends "with hope." But you just wonder don't you.
It seems to me that even the most committed activist working to tax carbon into oblivion doesn't really think their gospel will deliver. The most optimistic talk of the climate campaigner sounds so much like the devout Mormon who 'hopes' they'll make it. Maybe I'm reading things in here, but I get the distinct impression that deep down their whole fear-driven carbon-cutting works both hide the fact and spring from the fact that they don't think it's going to happen. Not deep down.
Oh they hope so! And they hope it enough to wear themselves out in anxious labour. But there's no assurance.
So how do we preach to the climate campaigner? Let me suggest not by agreeing with their apocalyptic, pseudo-messianic gospel and then adding in a few Jesus extras to get the job done. (You're correct in your assessment of the planet's destiny and true rulers, but let me add in Jesus who helps us to be the saviours!)
No, that's not the way. But not because we have no compassion. We do. It is desperate to see them so harassed and helpless like sheep without a Shepherd. And so the way forwards is to teach them (Mark 6:34). And perhaps especially we might paint for them a cosmic picture of the new heavens and the new earth, the home of righteousness. Not just a reduction in the number of hurricanes, but a crystal sea like glass! Not just preventing the displacement of people groups but their planting in the land! Not just the protection of the trees but their joyful worship! Not the maintenance of adequate food supplies but the richest of meats and wine dripping from the hills! Not alleviation of drought but the Lamb shepherding us to streams of Living Water! Not simply the preservation of lions and lambs but their reconciliation! And a little Child will lead them. We introduce them to this Child and He will calm all fears. Because He is able to deliver on this future. He guarantees it.
Maybe we need to be saying to our climate believer friends "After all this effort, are you sure the planet's going to be ok? Cos I am."
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By the way, Paul Huxley speaks much sense on the reasons for scepticism here.
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The world uniting to save itself
the coming carbon race must be driven by a collaborative effort to achieve collective salvation.
From the Guardian editorial, today published on its front page and shared among 56 other international publications.
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We’ve got the whole world in our hands
Walking through a London train station yesterday I had to weave my way through hundreds of protestors. Their favourite placard seemed to be this one:
photo from here
The message reads: Our climate is in our hands. And at least 20 000 gathered in the capital to remind us of this: we've got the whole world in our hands.
Maybe it's coincidence but it's pretty close to a Guardian headline this week that said, regarding Copenhagen, "Our destiny is still in our hands."
Wouldn't we love that to be true!? How we long to be this world's solution! And therefore, however costly it might be, we are eager to cast ourselves as the problem. (See this former post entitled 'Anthropogenic')
The cost we seem willing to pay to keep ourselves at the centre beggars belief. The Spectator reports the cost of making good on pledges agreed at the G8 summit:
A high global CO2 tax starting at $68 could reduce the world economic output by a staggering 13% in 2100 - the equivalent of $40 trillion a year. That is to say, it would cost 50 times the expected damage of global warming. (Bjorn Lomborg, The Spectator, 5/12/09)
But hey - that's the price you pay when you take your destiny into your hands. And you pay it willingly and with self-righteous zeal. Because you are coming of age. To this you were born. We are the ones we've been waiting for, and all that.
But Christmas tells a different story. He is the One we were waiting for. And the government is upon His shoulders. (Isaiah 9:2-7).
Yet whenever we turn from Him we become slaves to the devil's lie: 'Be like God'. And the result is a captivity to fear and an incessant struggle to make the world work. We end up as slaves and we willingly pay for the honour. Eventually in blood. But no cost is too dear in order to secure our own messianic delusion.
I don't know about the science involved here. But if you ever wonder whether a skeptic's approach to the debate could account for the so-called scientific consensus on warming or why people would be willing to pay so much if it's unnecessary - I think the gospel has ready answers for this.
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We've got the whole world in our hands
Walking through a London train station yesterday I had to weave my way through hundreds of protestors. Their favourite placard seemed to be this one:
photo from here
The message reads: Our climate is in our hands. And at least 20 000 gathered in the capital to remind us of this: we've got the whole world in our hands.
Maybe it's coincidence but it's pretty close to a Guardian headline this week that said, regarding Copenhagen, "Our destiny is still in our hands."
Wouldn't we love that to be true!? How we long to be this world's solution! And therefore, however costly it might be, we are eager to cast ourselves as the problem. (See this former post entitled 'Anthropogenic')
The cost we seem willing to pay to keep ourselves at the centre beggars belief. The Spectator reports the cost of making good on pledges agreed at the G8 summit:
A high global CO2 tax starting at $68 could reduce the world economic output by a staggering 13% in 2100 - the equivalent of $40 trillion a year. That is to say, it would cost 50 times the expected damage of global warming. (Bjorn Lomborg, The Spectator, 5/12/09)
But hey - that's the price you pay when you take your destiny into your hands. And you pay it willingly and with self-righteous zeal. Because you are coming of age. To this you were born. We are the ones we've been waiting for, and all that.
But Christmas tells a different story. He is the One we were waiting for. And the government is upon His shoulders. (Isaiah 9:2-7).
Yet whenever we turn from Him we become slaves to the devil's lie: 'Be like God'. And the result is a captivity to fear and an incessant struggle to make the world work. We end up as slaves and we willingly pay for the honour. Eventually in blood. But no cost is too dear in order to secure our own messianic delusion.
I don't know about the science involved here. But if you ever wonder whether a skeptic's approach to the debate could account for the so-called scientific consensus on warming or why people would be willing to pay so much if it's unnecessary - I think the gospel has ready answers for this.
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Robbie Williams on the scope and effect of the atonement
If Jesus really died for me / Then Jesus really tried for me
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How do you say the first line with conviction without the second line sounding like a well-meaning but ineffectual gesture? That's at the heart of the debate between limited and universal atonement. Well put Robbie.
Pity the song's rubbish.
I like the way Peter put it:
4 to whom coming -- a living stone -- by men, indeed, having been disapproved of, but with God choice, precious, 5 and ye yourselves, as living stones, are built up, a spiritual house, a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. 6 Wherefore, also, it is contained in the Writing: 'Lo, I lay in Zion a chief corner-stone, choice, precious, and he who is believing on him may not be put to shame;' 7 to you, then, who are believing is the preciousness; and to the unbelieving, a stone that the builders disapproved of, this one did become for the head of a corner, 8 and a stone of stumbling and a rock of offence -- who are stumbling at the word, being unbelieving, -- to which also they were set. (1 Peter 2:4-8, Young's Literal Translation)
Christ through His cross is really set forth as Cornerstone. And His proper office is to build up a spiritual house. But, get this. His effect (in an accidental rather than proper sense) is also to determine those in unbelief. Not even unbelievers can 'set themselves' against Jesus. Instead they are set in their unbelief. They do not avoid the Stone, but stumble over Him. They cannot escape His atonement. They cannot free themselves from the Stone. Either they fall on Him or He crushes them (Luke 20:18). One way or another they are determined by Him. In fact they find that even their rejection of Him makes Him to be the Capstone. The cross is precisely the point where rejection is made to further not thwart His saving agenda. Through His cross, Christ shows Himself to be so great His enemies serve His purpose. This is the universal effectiveness of the cross. What a crazy gospel! But wonderful. The Lord has done this and it is marvellous in our eyes.
Therefore Christ's atonement is for universal salvation - that is its proper effect. Jesus did not come to condemn the world but to save it. There is though an accidental and incomprehensible effect - rejection. Yet even this rejection is taken up at the cross and through the cross to serve the saving purposes of God. It is universally effective.
Jesus really died for you. And Jesus more than tried for you. At the cross He has entirely determined your existence..