Moving on from old models of reality

When I was a child I thought like a child; when I became an adult, I put childish things away…

In third-year chemistry at school we were taught that electrons orbit the nucleus of their atom in concentric ‘shells’ rather like planets round a sun. As I recall, each ‘shell’ had space for an ‘octet’ of 8 electrons, and atoms with less than 8 would look to bond with other atoms to share electrons, completing their octets. Or something like that. It was a nice, easy-to-visualise model that enabled us to make all sorts of useful calculations about chemical reactions.

But then we got to sixth-form chemistry, and we were told that the electron-shell model was essentially untrue – or at best a gross over-simplification of the truth. Rather than occupying discreet positions on a ‘shell’ orbiting the nucleus, electrons had a far more complex and less-definable existence within fuzzy parameters around the nucleus known as ‘orbitals’. (At least that’s my memory – real chemists please correct me!) The old model was still useful for basic chemistry, but it didn’t really reflect reality. The actual nature of electrons was counter-intuitive and confusing, and to be honest I never fully understood it.

Similar revelations occurred in physics. We learned that light isn’t a simple beam of energy but has a far more complex and baffling nature, sometimes wave-like, sometimes particle-like. We learned that energy and matter are not discreet but interchangeable, and that space and time are also counter-intuitively interwoven.

And then of course came Chaos theory, Quantum mechanics, String theory and multiple dimensions; and all notions about the essential underlying orderliness, predictability and sanity of the universe started to crumble.

At every point then, it appeared that the universe and the underlying nature of reality was more complex, stranger and more baffling than I’d originally thought, and originally been taught. Indeed, it was more complex and baffling than I could understand; perhaps than anyone could understand.

The move to complexity and perplexity wasn’t just limited to the sciences. In English, I discovered that the hard-and-fast rules of grammar, spelling and pronunciation I’d religiously imbibed were not in fact set in stone, and most could sometimes be legitimately broken or changed.

More worryingly, the clear moral rules I’d learned as axiomatic truths (never lie, don’t swear, drugs are evil, homosexuality is wrong) began to be challenged by the complexities of real life and real people. It seemed that the rules didn’t always work and might not even always be right. Or at least there were times when a moral rule might have to give way to a greater reality, say of love or compassion or mercy.

Growing up and moving on

I’ve written a lot about ‘moving on’; moving on from either/or, from right answers and so on. On the journey of human development and spiritual growth, we need to go through the earlier stages to get to the later, the simpler to get to the more complex, the immature to get to the mature.

So we start by understanding both the physical and moral or spiritual universe in relatively simple (even simplistic) terms, with unchanging laws and rules that work at all times. Electrons orbit in shells, light is a beam, sentences mustn’t start with ‘but’, lying is wrong, Genesis is literal truth, non-Christians go to hell.

It’s important that we go through these early stages; that we learn the most basic models of physical and spiritual reality. The things we learn at this stage contain much that is good and true – perhaps all that we can take on board at this stage of our development. If well taught, they also form the basis for the next layer of complexity; the rung on which we can stand to reach the next level of truth. The old models of reality and truth are not ‘false’ per se. They’re just incomplete, and ultimately inadequate if we are to move on into fuller understanding and maturity.

The problem comes when we think that the original models we learned are the final, ultimate ones, never to be challenged, questioned, revised or superseded. It’s unwise to cling desperately on to our old ways of thinking, our old understandings of reality.

We never reach the end, not in this life; we can never say that we’ve arrived and now possess the final, true model that will never need revising. At each successive stage of growth and learning, our understanding is still only ever partial. Successive models may move closer to representing reality, but they never quite get there. There will always be another level, another layer of complexity, requiring a new model of reality.

Upgrading our theological models

Like all our other models, our theological ones also need to undergo continual revision. Our ways of understanding God, our systems and methods of interpreting the Bible, our formulations of doctrine and spiritual truth all need to evolve and grow over the course of our lives. We can’t just learn ‘what God says’ or ‘what the Bible means’ once and for all, and then stick with that forever. As we grow and change, so does the Bible – or at least our understanding of it. Even God ‘changes’ – or our way of relating to him does.

And as with physical reality, we may find that spiritual and theological reality becomes more complex, strange and confusing as we delve deeper into its true nature. We may even find that the more we discover, the less we truly understand it. We may find that there is a fundamental mystery at the heart of the divine reality that we actually cannot understand. But that mystery is itself the source of all other understanding, rather as we cannot see light but rather see all else by it.

Worldviews and paradigm shifts

The need to keep revising and replacing models of understanding throughout our own lives mirrors a broader, longer-term movement in the development of human culture. If we look back through the history of western thought, various phases can be identified each with its own distinct worldview or paradigm into which the various strands of understanding of physical and spiritual reality had to fit.

So there was the ancient paradigm in which all of nature was ‘spiritual’, full of personal gods and spirits which needed to be appeased and sacrificed to in order for rain to fall and crops to grow – a view which probably persisted for millennia.

Then we have the medieval worldview, lasting several hundred years, with its neat cosmology of the seven concentric heavens above and hell below, all perfectly ordered according to the Christian Creator’s divine law. Out of this comes the development of the early scientific paradigm, bringing a revised and more complex view of the cosmos and its laws and elements based on observation and analysis, but still seeing the universe as God’s workmanship, like a perfectly-ordered machine.

Then within a fairly short space we have the Enlightenment, and the development of the modern worldview based entirely on human reason and rejecting all forms of supernatural revelation, exalting scientific theory and observable fact as the only sources of Truth.

And now of course we have the post-modern paradigm, rejecting the certainties and absolutes of modernism. Post-modernism questions the idea of truth as something objectively ‘out there’ that we can fully analyse, understand and control, and which belongs to an over-arching ‘meta-narrative’ or Great Story. Rather the post-modern view emphasises the essential subjectivity of truth, which is always mediated to us through our personal perspectives and paradigms. It also emphasises underlying chaos and inherent unknowability. Post-modernism then is an anti-worldview worldview, an anti-paradigm paradigm.

So at each stage the whole of western culture, thought, science, morality and theology broadly fits into an over-arching model for understanding reality and our place in it. Each model works on its own terms, providing a broad framework for life and society and thought, but each is partial, incomplete, failing to take into account some vital element of reality. Yet each model persists for many decades, sometimes centuries, until the sheer amount of reality that it cannot accommodate precipitates its evolution (or revolution) into another model.

Evangelical modernism

Up to the Enlightenment, the scientific and religious aspects of the paradigms – the ways of understanding physical and spiritual reality – were broadly in sync. With the advent of modernism though, religion found itself on the back foot, cast by the prevailing paradigm as anti-modern unscientific superstition and the enemy of progress.

What I find interesting though is that religion, primarily Christianity, tried to fight back from within the broad parameters of the modern worldview that was challenging its existence. Religion wanted to be accepted on science’s terms as demonstrably, provably, factually true and accurate. Which it isn’t and can’t be.

I would argue that much of what’s wrong with modern evangelicalism stems from this modernist fight-back, the attempt to reclaim its predominant position within the overarching cultural paradigm. And it seems to me that much of evangelical thought still hasn’t caught up with the fact that for much of the world the very grounds of the debate have simply moved on. It’s still fighting the old battles against Darwinism in science and liberalism in religion, still stuck within the old modernist paradigm. But for many that whole paradigm is a dead duck, and the old battles are lost causes to both sides.

I would say that a similar problem plagues evangelical readings of the Bible, which are so often predicated on modernist assumptions. In this model, the Bible is a book of God’s unchanging and unchallengeable Truth. Each passage of Scripture has a correct meaning which needs to be ascertained and then rigorously applied to all circumstances. We derive sound and definite doctrines from the Bible, and failure to accept these signifies apostasy.

As a model, it’s reasonably internally coherent and has some usefulness for a season. But it is only a model, not a full or final representation of reality. And it’s no longer a model that I for one find helpful or spiritually satisfying. For me, it’s time to move on and find a new model that works better – on the understanding that this too will some day need revising or replacing.

Why I am (not), part II – charismatic / evangelical / liberal…

Last time I was looking at my Anglo-Catholic upbringing and subsequent late-teen explorations into atheism and alternative spiritualities. 

When I came back to Christian faith in my early 20s, it was from a desperate sense of the need for ‘salvation’ in all senses. My life had come dramatically unstuck; I’d tried almost everything else, and was finally willing to give Christianity a go again. I felt it was the only option I had left.

Why I’m (not) charismatic

This new phase of my faith journey took me to a lively C of E ‘church plant’ that met in a school gym. Apart from being Anglican, it was in every way the complete opposite of my childhood church with all its archaic grandeur and musty ceremony.

My new church was broadly evangelical but strongly charismatic. There was a major emphasis on the active power and presence of the Holy Spirit, and on the exercise of spiritual gifts such as prophecy, healing and speaking in tongues. In my school days I’d been dragged along to a few charismatic services and events, and had found them both exciting and slightly bewildering. Now though I embraced it wholeheartedly; it seemed to me I’d found the real thing. There was an expectation that God would show up each week, speaking and acting directly, and indeed he seemed to.

These were thrilling times for me; I felt I was personally experiencing the reality of Christ first-hand. It was like being part of the church from the book of Acts – for me at the time by far the most exciting book of the Bible, and the one which convinced me most of Christianity’s reality.

Nonetheless, a few of the elements were quite far-out, including some prosperity theology as well as the phenomenon of being ‘slain in the Spirit’. Our church also welcomed The Toronto Blessing in a big way during my first year there. Looking back I have some major question marks over the whole thing, and I’m unsure how much was divine and how much human. But I can’t deny that something was happening, and it made a profound impression on me, shaping my expectations of Christian experience for a long time.

Probably the best and most enduring legacy for me of those early charismatic days has been the experience of being filled with the joy and presence of God during times of wholehearted musical worship. However sceptical I’ve become in many ways, I cannot write these experiences off as entirely emotional or psychological.

Such experiences have transformed my theology and my faith, and I can no longer see God as distant, aloof or uninvolved. Charismatic worship has taught me to listen out for God speaking in and through the world around me. I certainly don’t think it’s healthy to interpret everything that happens as a sign, and nor do I believe that God will miraculously intervene whenever we want. But I’m now prepared to see God in and through everyday things, and I expect him to be present, active and vocal in the world and in our lives (even if often he doesn’t seem to be).

I still love musical worship and I’m still actively involved in it, though I now find some charismatic choruses rather shallow and childish, and I’m ill at ease with some of the theology they express. I also wish that alongside the exuberant expression of joy and love, there was also room in charismatic worship for darker emotions – for anger and rage, sorrow and hurt, disappointment and abandonment, bewilderment, even hate.

Overall though, I’ve gained much from charismatic Christianity, to the extent that I’d still probably label myself as ‘cautiously charismatic’. I greatly value what it’s taught me about extempore prayer, though I no longer see it as the only valid kind. I still pray ‘Come Holy Spirit’, and I still expect him to (though I know he’s already there). I believe in the power of prayer, though not in any guaranteed results.

On the more dubious side, I think I ‘speak in tongues’ (I may well be kidding myself). However, I’ve never prophesied or anything else, and I see all of these ‘spiritual gifts’ as potentially beneficial but not essential. I’m slightly sceptical about most specific examples of prophecies, ‘words of knowledge’, ‘pictures’ etc. I’ve heard a few that I’m pretty sure were genuine, a whole bunch of others that I’m a lot less sure about; and some that I think were abuses of power. And these days I find the whole charismatic obsession with spiritual warfare deeply disturbing and I give it a wide berth.

But to the extent that I’m an agnostic, it’s very much a charismatic agnostic.

Why I’m (not) evangelical

In the early days of my new-found Christian faith I started to devour the Bible eagerly, if with some bewilderment. I was particularly bothered by the discrepancies between the gospels, for example the resurrection accounts and the birth narratives.

My charismatic church was broadly evangelical, and the Bible was definitely taken as authoritative (if interpreted in rather particular and slightly odd ways). But it was at university that I came under the influence of more mainstream conservative evangelical theology via the Christian Union and the conservative organisation UCCF.

Around this time I attended the evangelical ‘Word Alive’ Bible conference and heard teaching from conservative groups like the Proclamation Trust, and from teachers like Don Carson and Roy Clements. They were brilliant but they left me rather cold; they fed my mind but failed to touch my heart. Rather like atheism, a lot of what they said made intellectual sense but didn’t take account of my real experience.

For some years I tried quite hard to be a good evangelical, and felt guilty about all my difficulties with the Bible. But evangelicalism (particularly Reformed and conservative evangelicalism) never really worked for me.

I am still broadly evangelical in that I greatly value the Bible. But I’m not an evangelical in that I’ve never subscribed to sola scriptura, and I no longer see the Bible as simply the inerrant Word of God, unquestionably authoritative in all aspects of life and theology.

I am evangelical in that I accept most of the miracles associated with Christ, including the virgin birth and the Resurrection. I’m not evangelical in that I don’t believe in a literal, physical eternal hell, nor do I accept that only professing Christians will ‘make it to heaven’.

I am evangelical in that I’m largely pro-life (hopefully in a nuanced way). I’m not evangelical in that I’m cautiously in favour of gay relationships, and not entirely opposed to assisted dying in all cases.

I am evangelical in that I believe people need Christ. I’m not evangelical in that I’m no longer comfortable with most forms of evangelism, which I see as overly simplistic or as merely selling another product. I also believe that people may be able to know Christ without knowing they know him.

For years then I’ve been on a journey out of what has felt like a straitjacket of evangelical belief. My path has inevitably taken me through various forms of liberal faith.

Why I’m (not) liberal

I’ve said my dad was a Catholic, but really he was a fairly liberal one. He was a little bit of a heretic in some ways, freely questioning Catholic dogma on Mary, papal infallibility etc. He was also a scientist by training and we all grew up seeing no contradiction between science and faith, or between evolution and Christianity (I’ve never changed on that). My parents were progressively committed to inter-denominational unity, and open to influences from quite way-out thinkers and other faith traditions. We had many interesting and open theological discussions.

So my family taught me to think and (to an extent) encouraged me to be sceptical and critical; not just to accept the official church line on any particular subject. That’s certainly something I’ve retained.

Later at Uni, at the same time as I was enthusiastically embracing Charismatic Christianity, I encountered more liberal voices at the college Chaplaincy. While I felt these to be a little heretical and dodgy, I liked the people, often more than I liked my fellow evangelicals. The liberals seemed freer, funnier, more human and less prone to spout ‘right answers’ or biblical proof-texts.

The Chaplaincy also put on a creative informal Eucharist which I loved. Meanwhile I was gaining a more academic liberal perspective from the college’s optional weekly Theology and Ethics course, which opened up all sorts of fascinating insights that I wasn’t getting at church or CU.

After Uni, I started to move away from strict evangelicalism towards more liberal, open theology.  I began exploring the Contemplative and Orthodox traditions, among others. I allowed myself to question and even reject many evangelical doctrines.

I am now deeply liberal in the eyes of my more evangelical friends. However, I’m not truly liberal by a long chalk, and I doubt that I ever will be. I can’t discount the supernatural elements of faith, because they’ve been part of my experience. I can’t write off the Bible as merely human, because I’ve felt its power. If I’m a liberal, it’s definitely an evangelical liberal.

So now I find I have to carve a new path which is not strictly evangelical, liberal, charismatic, Catholic, contemplative, agnostic, pagan or anything else, but which is a dynamic synthesis of the good that I’ve gained from each of these streams. I’m not quite sure where it’s taking me, but for now I’m enjoying the journey.

Why I am (not) an evangelical / charismatic / liberal / atheist / Anglo-Catholic…

With thanks and apologies to Pete Rollins and Brian McLaren for nicking ideas from their book titles…

Throughout my life there have been many influences on my religious outlook from a variety of streams and denominations. I’ve benefited from a rich heritage of different traditions and I’m grateful for that; it’s broadened my horizons and taught me to see beyond the confines of any one particular group or their way of handling truth.

I see all these different streams as mentors, parents even, who have raised and taught me and contributed to the kind of person and Christian I now am. This is the ‘am’ of the title; in some senses I am evangelical, and Catholic, and charismatic, and all the many other things I have been influenced by.

But as with human parents, at some point the child has to grow up and grow away, finding his or her own ways – keeping the best of what they’ve learnt but rejecting other elements as unhelpful. So while I owe much to these various streams of faith, I no longer see myself as defined by any one of them. This is the ‘not’ of the title. I have Catholic components, but I’m not fully or only a Catholic – so actually not a Catholic at all. I have evangelical elements, but I’m not really an Evangelical. And so on.

Over the next couple of posts, I want to go through these various influences chronologically, looking at what I’ve retained and what I’ve rejected, and why.

Why I’m (not) Anglo-Catholic

I was born and raised in an ecumenical Anglo-Catholic family. My dad and sisters were Roman Catholic, my mum High-Church Anglican (‘smells and bells’). Most weeks I went to church with Mum; at age 10 I was confirmed in the church, and in my teens became a ‘server’ (swinging incense, carrying the cross and candles in procession).

I went to church mainly out of loyalty to Mum, and out of a sense of religious duty. But I struggled to find meaning or reality in the endlessly repeated ceremonial rituals, the ‘thees’ and ‘thous’ of the liturgy, and the history-lesson sermons about the Book of Common Prayer. I believed God existed, but he seemed distant, inactive and inaccessible. Everything he’d done seemed to be in the far past and to be couched in the language and ways of the far past.

Once a month though I went to the Catholic church for ‘folk mass’, where under my Dad’s musical leadership they sang much more fun and lively songs, accompanied by guitars and tambourines. Many of these songs were (it turns out) the same as those being sung in Anglican renewal meetings and charismatic churches. This was a breath of fresh air for me, though the Catholic liturgy in between the singing was still baffling and a little boring.

I left Anglo-Catholicism behind when I left home for university, but looking back now I see I’ve gained much from it. I value beauty, order and calm in worship; I find the idea of sacraments and icons helpful; I appreciate good liturgy, and I like many traditional hymns. In these ways, I’m Anglo-Catholic.

However, I find a lot of Anglo-Catholic practice and dogma very off-putting, dull, meaningless and in some cases downright wrong. I’m also no fan of old-fashioned language or overly ceremonial rituals that seem to have lost their living meaning. And while I believe that church tradition has an important contribution to make, I don’t believe it should ever be the predominant voice.

Nonetheless, in recent years I’ve worshipped in both Roman Catholic and High Anglican churches and have felt my faith enriched by the experience. True, I’ve been to plenty of dull, stale Anglo-Catholic services where it felt like the life had moved on and everyone was just going through the motions. But I’ve also been to some where the ritual was living and there was a very real sense of divine mystery and presence – far more so than in some charismatic and evangelical churches.

Why I’m (not) agnostic, atheist or pagan

In my late teens then I largely turned away from my childhood churchgoing, though I retained a nagging strand of belief in the Christian God.

I tentatively explored atheism, mainly through Richard Dawkins’ The Selfish Gene which I found fascinating but frightening. I also became interested in the occult and elements of neo-paganism. For a while I trod a muddled middle path as an agnostic who would occasionally let himself be dragged along to church, while also trying out various other types of spirituality and religious experience. I wanted – perhaps even needed – to believe in something, but I wasn’t too sure what, and I was willing to give almost anything a go.

I won’t dwell long on this period which was not generally a happy time or one that I’m proud of, but I did retain some good from it. I have at least an appreciation for atheism, agnosticism and alternative spirituality and for why people choose these various paths. And I did learn some good from each of these strands.

So I would say that I am agnostic in that I realise I don’t and can’t know most things for certain, at least not in any scientifically provable way. I’m even ‘atheist’ in that I reject most or all codified formulations of God – though that’s not because I believe there is no reality for them to describe but rather because I believe they all fall short of the reality. And I’m ‘pagan’ in that I love nature, art, music, and see God as ‘shining through’ these things (though strictly speaking, I’m more of a panentheist than a pagan).

But I found full-on atheism ultimately unsatisfactory because it couldn’t take account of experiences and emotions that seemed fundamentally important to me. By contrast, alternative spiritualities made much of these experiences, which was exciting, but they also contained what were for me frightening and disturbing elements from which I ultimately felt I needed to flee. What I fled to was charismatic Christianity – which I’ll leave to the next post…

Jesus is for losers – or why Christianity will never be cool

‘Jesus is for losers; I’m off about a hundred degrees’ Steve Taylor

This Good Friday I somewhat reluctantly joined a ‘Walk of Witness’ organised by our local Churches Together group. Having not really intended to go at all, I nonetheless soon found myself bearing one side of a large banner and briefly fronting the rag-tag procession as it wove along the high street, occasionally holding up bemused traffic.

As such things go, it was actually pretty well done. The element of dramatic spectacle was enhanced by a full-costume Jesus flanked by armed Roman soldiers and assorted High Priests (although the crown of thorns was notably thorn-less, and ‘Jesus’ wore gloves to avoid getting splinters from the cross). There was an amplified dramatised adaption of the Passion narrative, some thoughtful prayers and reflections, and some fairly lively songs.

Nonetheless, and meaning no disrespect to anyone involved, there was also a faintly ridiculous and slightly cringe-y, even self-parodying, element to the proceedings. It would have been all too easy to mock. And it was hard not to notice that the event also seemed to attract a higher than usual proportion of the socially odd and awkward. I suspect there were more than a few for whom the post-walk tea and buns in the local Methodist church may have been the highlight of their social calendar.

I say this not to mock, but because I’m a little ashamed to admit that these were the reasons for my initial reluctance to join the Walk. They were also the very things that used to put me off becoming a ‘fully-committed’ Christian – embarrassing acts of street ‘witnessing’, and the fear of being associated with socially-inept oddballs.

Spectacularly missing the point

So for a few very human and un-Christlike moments during the Walk of Witness, I inwardly groaned that churches so often attract such ‘odd’ people; I wished that Christianity could be cooler and have a better image, and wondered why it wasn’t and didn’t. Why aren’t churches seen as exciting, happening places where normal people would want to be seen hanging out?

Of course, I dressed this up to myself as an evangelistic concern, a desire not to put people off Christianity. If I’m really honest though, it was more do with not wanting to be associated with it myself; not wanting to be seen as one of the oddballs.

And then it struck me, with the force of a minor epiphany, that I was spectacularly missing the point; that I was ‘off about a hundred degrees’. It struck me that there’s a very good reason why churches, and Christianity, and indeed Christians, tend not to be noted for their trendiness and street-credibility.

The reason of course is that Christ himself very specifically and deliberately welcomes the very oddest and least cool. He consciously reaches out to the most socially awkward, and those with least outward attractiveness and social appeal. Jesus is for losers, for misfits and outsiders, for those mocked, rejected or overlooked by others.

And it’s a good thing for me that he is. Because the main reason I don’t want to be seen with oddballs is that deep down I’m one of the oddballs myself, and I don’t want to be found out. So don’t tell anyone.

Why Christ doesn’t care about coolness

But why is Jesus so much for losers? I think there are a bunch of reasons.

For a start, God has no worries about his own image, and doesn’t feel any need to associate with cool people or things. He’s completely free of any such worries and blithely unconcerned about any such nonsense. And of course he has a very different standard for what he thinks is ‘cool’; a very different set of criteria for what he sees as worthy of admiration. It turns out God isn’t all that interested in or impressed by human posturing, presentation, play-acting or power-plays. He’s apparently far more interested in humility, integrity, kindness, compassion; in contrite hearts and merciful attitudes.

And let’s face it, we’re all to some extent misfits and oddballs deep down; some of us are just better at covering it up than others.

Secondly, God has total compassion on all those who are excluded or looked down on by society for being ‘uncool’ or weird or odd; those who don’t fit. He doesn’t exclude them and he doesn’t tolerate our exclusion of them. The church exists for such as these; for the least, the unlovely, the social outcast and outsider. If we can’t accept them, we’re failing in one of our core missions. Which is a salutary reminder for me, who would so readily sweep the embarrassing people under the carpet.

Furthermore, God isn’t looking for mere conformity to social conventions and norms. His ways and will are far bigger and better – and more freeing – than that. And for that very reason, those we see as embarrassing ‘oddballs’ can sometimes be far freer, far more likely to take risks and do things God asks, regardless of whether they might be humiliating. The biblical prophets, John the Baptist, even some of Jesus’ disciples, all had some characteristics that probably wouldn’t make them ideal guests at the best dinner parties. They were a bit weird to be frank, even a bit ridiculous perhaps; but God was pleased to work through them.

Of course I still cringe when I see ‘nutters’ preaching on buses and street corners; I don’t think this is the best way to go about sharing Christ. But I have to remind myself that ‘God chooses the weak things of this world to shame the strong; the foolish things to shame the wise’. I have to remind myself that ‘God’s foolishness is greater than human wisdom’. I have to remind myself that even Christ himself was not ‘cool’ in any worldly sense; that ‘he had nothing in him to attract himself to us’.

Indeed, in the Incarnation and then the Crucifixion, Jesus identified with us in the utmost depths of our indignity, shame and humiliation. He let himself be mocked, insulted and spat upon; ridiculed, rejected and cast aside. The King of the Universe is also the King of the Outcasts, Chief of the Unwanted and the Outsiders. Perhaps that’s what ‘King of the Jews’ inscribed above the cross really means.

The last shall be first

Of course, all this presents something of a problem for us sophisticated, self-aware, cool-conscious Westerners; we modern victims of fashion and the need to conform. We don’t want to be associated with losers and misfits, or with a movement that appears to be so skewed towards the odd and awkward and inept. We have our pride and dignity, after all; our image to maintain. And it’s easy to justify this evangelistically – after all, don’t we want to make the church as appealing and attractive as possible to non-Christians? Who wants to invite people to a gathering of the odd and awkward?

I’m certainly not saying that Christians can’t be cool, or that Jesus loves you more if you’re a weirdo. And I don’t think we need to deliberately try to make church embarrassing or uncool, any more than we need to deliberately go out looking for suffering. What I am saying is that Jesus is for losers, and if we want to walk the way of Christ we’ll need to get used to that. And we’d better make sure our churches aren’t too cool and sophisticated to include the weirdos, saddoes, oddballs and socially awkward.

Indeed, I wonder if we even need to go one step further, though I’m not sure I have the guts to do it. I wonder if we shouldn’t be aiming to give the very highest honour and status to those people we least want to be seen with. It’s not enough to just grudgingly accept them, as second-class citizens who should be grateful that we tolerate their presence among us. Shouldn’t we rather exalt them, celebrate them, serve them gladly, welcome them exuberantly? I have a feeling that that’s exactly what the Kingdom looks like, where the lowly will be exalted and the last shall be first.

I used to have a card that said ‘The meek shall inherit the earth… if that’s all right with the rest of you.’ In reality though, the meek shall inherit the earth whether the rest of us like it or not. In that day the tables will be turned, and we the sophisticated and super-cool may be begging the misfits for their favour and mercy. For the upside-down Kingdom of God belongs first and foremost to the last and the least, to the overlooked and unwanted and cast aside. Jesus is for losers; I’m off about a hundred degrees.

Sceptical Innocence – how to avoid gullibility without becoming a cynic

On one level, I’m still a good charismatic Christian. I believe in miracles. I believe in healings, prophecies, tongues, ‘words of knowledge’, miraculous signs. I believe in answered prayer.

Or at least I believe in the reality and possibility of these things; that they have happened, can happen and sometimes (very occasionally) still do. I believe that God is present and active in and through our lives – usually behind the scenes but sometimes in more visible ways.

But on the other hand I have an extremely high level of scepticism regarding any specific reported instance of a miracle, healing, prophecy or sign. If someone says that they’ve experienced a miracle, I’ll want some fairly solid evidence before I accept it.

And if someone claims that God has spoken to them, has told them something – particularly has told them to do something that I suspect they were secretly already planning to do – then my scepticism levels go through the roof. I just don’t believe it, in 99% of cases. As far as I’m concerned, it’s far more likely to be spiritualised wishful thinking than genuine divine communication.

‘God told me…’??

I’ve said before that we humans are incorrigible meaning-seekers and pattern-finders. This innate tendency can be very dangerous when it’s coupled with a religious mindset that looks for signs and confirmations; that expects to find spiritual meanings in everyday events. We can all too easily suspend our critical faculties, spotting a pattern and reading a ‘meaning’ that suits us or confirms us in some course of action, and then claiming divine sanction for it – ‘God told me’.

For instance, while I was typing that paragraph, my computer switched itself off in order to install updates, losing several sentences in the process. The superstitious part of me (for there is one) immediately wanted to worry that this was a ‘sign’ – that maybe God was displeased with what I’d written, and that I needed to do lots of praying and soul-searching before I could continue writing. But that really is superstitious thinking, rather than genuinely spiritual.

That’s not of course to say that God can’t or doesn’t sometimes speak to us through everyday circumstances and events. I genuinely believe that he can and does. But I don’t believe that we can confidently base our life decisions on some randomly-found Bible verse or one-off ‘sign’ that we’ve read into our circumstances. We need to be wise, even to a degree sceptical, about these things.

So I’m not (say) going to head off to Africa straight away just because I happened to spot an advert about overseas missions while I was praying about what to do with my life. I’m not (say) going to leave my family and bugger off ‘on the Lord’s work’ just because I happened to be reading some passage about the early apostles while I was feeling stressed about some situation at home.

Revival wishes and Christian crazes

Another area where I’m now very sceptical is the kind of grand claims you hear in some Christian circles, for example that Revival is just round the corner; that God is imminently going to break out into our nation in mighty acts of power and salvation. I used to get all excited about this kind of thing, and go to prayer meetings where we fervently begged the Lord for revival.

Ostensibly of course this was for the sake of the lost (though I now hold a rather different theology about that). But I wonder if a lot of it wasn’t just the desire for the spectacular, and also the desire for us as Christians to be vindicated in the eyes of the world. I’m not saying revival can’t happen, but I no longer particularly look for it or even desire it.

I’m also highly sceptical about the latest Christian crazes, whether it’s the Toronto Blessing, the Prayer of Jabez or The Purpose-Driven Life ™. That’s not to say that all these things are inherently bad or wrong or of the devil (that too is superstitious thinking). But I no longer look to them to save the world, restore the fires of my flagging faith or magically bring my atheist friends to their knees. Christianity has got along reasonably well without any of these things for two millennia; no new fad or book – or even blog – is suddenly going to make all the difference we’ve been waiting for. Well, maybe this blog might…

So I’d definitely always advocate a healthy dose of scepticism regarding miraculous signs, over-confident prophecies or promises, and latest Christian crazes (particularly any with ™ after the title).

Sceptical not cynical

I said last time that there’s a difference between innocent and gullible; that while Jesus was the ‘holy innocent’ he was in no way stupid. Similarly he advised his followers – us – to be innocent as doves, but at the same time wise as serpents. We don’t have to demonstrate our faith by attempting to believe six impossible things before breakfast like Lewis Carroll’s Humpty Dumpty.

However, in avoiding gullibility we can all too easily fall into the opposite trap of complete cynicism, which I see as equally unattractive and unhelpful.

Cynicism (in the modern sense) is an attitude of near-refusal to trust or believe; a ‘won’t get fooled again’ position, often arising from a past let-down or betrayal. Cynicism requires a level of proof – proof of authenticity or sincerity – that simply isn’t possible in this world.

Cynicism’s default position is that most people are bad and untrustworthy, charlatans and swindlers; religious people as much as everyone else, if not more so. Religion is at best a delusion, at worst a con-trick. Anything claiming to have any element of the supernatural or divine is absolutely bound to be false, a hoax or worse.

This is the basic premise of Jonathan Creek, a programme I hugely enjoy. It’s essentially a grown-up, darkly comic version of Scooby-Doo, each episode based round a spooky and apparently supernatural mystery which under Jonathan’s rational scrutiny always turns out to have a perfectly natural and usually very human explanation. I enjoy the show’s ruthlessly sardonic debunking of silly superstition and supernatural spookery.

But of course, for Jonathan (or his scriptwriters), such irrational superstition also includes anything religious; any and every claim to the mystical or miraculous. And while in most cases I agree – as I do with much of the anti-religious sentiment in Dawkins’ The God Delusion – I can’t just write the whole thing off as complete bunk.

The trouble with the cynical ‘it’s all a big con’ position is well illustrated by C.S. Lewis in The Last Battle. The dwarves have been fooled once by the false Aslan (the counterfeit Christ); now they’ve seen through that trick they’re never going to let themselves fall for another. So when the real Aslan shows up, they refuse to accept him as genuine, no matter how much evidence is offered. As Aslan puts it, they’re so determined not to be ‘taken in’ that they can’t be ‘taken out’, out of themselves, out of the prison of distrust and unbelief they have constructed in their minds and hearts. So even when they’re offered genuinely good things from truly good motives, they can only smell a trap and a trick.

Cynicism then can become a kind of fundamentalism; or an anti-fundamentalism that becomes as set and rigid as that which it rejects. It closes down the argument and denies dialogue. It’s made up its mind and won’t be changed, even by the facts; won’t be fooled again.

Stage 3 and beyond

I’ve said before that this is largely a ‘Stage 3’ blog, according to M. Scott Peck’s faith-stages schema. In other words, it’s primarily for those who (like me) are going through a sceptical, critical, doubting and questioning phase. I think this is a very important, even vital phase in developing a mature and healthy faith. But it’s not the end of the journey, or it isn’t meant to be.

Unfortunately it’s as easy to get stuck at this stage as it is to get stuck in fundamentalism. I say this from my experience – we (I) can get into a rut of angrily reacting against former fundamentalism, bitterly critiquing and questioning and doubting everything without any intention of moving forward into something more positive. In so doing, we shut ourselves off to the real (albeit imperfect) good that is out there and available to us; to the glimpses (albeit partial) of truth and hope and reality that life offers us amidst the chaos.

So please let’s be healthily sceptical and not fall prey to foolish gullibility about miracle cures, divine signs and promises of revival. But at the same time let’s guard our hearts against an unhealthy, self-defeating cynicism. Despite the often compelling evidence to the contrary, let’s hope and trust that there is some goodness out there without ulterior motives; some truth and light to be found; some genuine love and compassion.

And above all let’s believe in the greatest miracle of all, the miracle of redemption, of transformation, of the possibility of meaningful change. That’s something I’d rather have than any amount of ‘magic’ healings and signs.

The Resurrection Insurrection

Have you heard the news? Apparently archaeologists have just discovered a new scroll dating to around 30AD, with a fragment of the end of Matthew’s gospel containing the words: “Verily I say unto you, I was only kidding…”

Happy April Fool’s day! It’s an interesting juxtaposition that this year it falls the day after Easter Sunday. I’m told that in Greek Orthodox tradition the day after Easter is set aside for joke-telling, to celebrate God’s great practical joke against Evil. I love the idea of Easter as the ultimate nose-thumb to the great forces of Control, the cosmic Puppet-masters; as God’s great April Fool’s leg-pull.

Rebellious or respectable?

So in light of this idea, do you see Christianity as a movement that subverts the status quo, disrupts the respectable social order and challenges the puffed-up powers-that-be?

Or do you see Christianity rather as a religion of the establishment, of the societal and governmental powers that be? As a system of moral and spiritual control that sanctifies the social order and sanctions the status quo? A hierarchical top-down structure that circumscribes and proscribes thought and action and belief? An imposed order that values social respectability and conformity to moral norms; that punishes deviance and even diversity?

In our society I think we’re sadly far more used to the latter kind of view. We tend to see the church and religion as bastions of social order, of respectability and even earthly power; as firmly on the side of the establishment. I’ve talked before about the dangers of Christendom, the conflation of temporal authority with spiritual; the collusion of religious leaders in state structures of control. All too often the Christian church has been a state-sanctioned arbiter and imposer of rule and order, the moral police, the religious arm of the secular state.

I don’t believe this is the role Christ saw for his church at all. I believe that in this world the church should always have a subversive and also a playful streak. It should be a thorn in the side of the establishment, a gadfly stinging the conscience and pricking the comfort of the earthly powers – whose comfort so often comes at the expense of the poor and marginalised.

A disobedient faith

Of course, if we view the events of the current world as basically following God’s will, and the structures of the world as reflecting the divine order, then we’ll do little to challenge them. But if we see that God’s will is generally not done in the status quo, we can start to see our faith as truly subversive. Author Glenn Myers suggests that we should view prayer as an act of rebellion; as civil disobedience against the forces of chaos and control that hold so much sway upon the earth.

(NB I don’t mean to imply a paranoid or Frank Peretti-style view of demons controlling cities or governments. I just mean that the way things are is not generally the way things are meant to be, and we can engage in active resistance against the ‘powers’, whether those be literal or metaphorical.)

Of course God is a God of order and of peace, and also of justice and truth, of moral goodness and self-control. But his order and peace and goodness may not look like we expect, and cannot be contained within the structures and strictures of our society or even our religion. Sometimes he has to crash through our conventions and splinter our status quo in order to reveal his true order, his far greater goodness.

And though God is a God of order, he is not a God of control (except self-control) but rather of genuine freedom. He is the great Liberator, and liberation tends not to be tidy, polite or quiet. It tends to involve disruption of social order, disobedience to social convention and even destruction of oppressive structures and systems.

The anti-authoritarian Christ

It’s no coincidence that many of our most potent myths revolve around the little people who rebel against the apparently unassailable authority. The Halfling Frodo resists the mighty Dark Lord Sauron and prevails by courage and loyalty. The boy Harry Potter fights Voldemort and love wins over power. Luke Skywalker’s rebels rise up against the evil Empire, and goodness triumphs.

We see the same thing in the Bible: Moses takes on the might of Pharaoh and leads a band of dispirited no-hopers to freedom. David takes on and defeats the giant Goliath in the name of the One who casts down tyrants and raises up the humble. Christ submits himself to death at the hands of the invincible Roman Empire and in so doing disarms a far greater, even cosmic, Evil.

In popular myth, we’ve cast Satan as the subversive anti-authoritarian rebel and exciting outlaw pirate, or as the Loki-style prankster and Lord of Misrule. By contrast, we’ve imagined God as the divine headmaster, policeman and chief judge. But what if it’s really the other way round?

Jesus the prankster?

So in the story of Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness, it’s not Satan who is the rebel and Christ the authority figure but quite the contrary. Satan proclaims that he has dominion over all the cities and wealth of the world; he (not God) is the one who rules with rod of iron and coffer of gold. Jesus by contrast is the refugee rebel, the outlaw nobody, come to overturn the might of nations and challenge the authority of Satan in the name of divine love.

We’ve often painted a picture of Jesus as an entirely serious, funless figure, and it’s true that one of his aspects is as the ‘man of sorrows, afflicted by grief’. But another picture of Jesus with a long heritage is as God’s ‘holy fool’. In this view Christ plays the role of a holy clown or jester, thumbing his nose at pompous priests and po-faced Pharisees, making rude noises at the ridiculous self-righteous, and playing disruptive tricks on the self-important rulers and power-mongers – of whom Satan is the archetype.

As I said at the start, in this view Easter was God’s ultimate trick and practical joke on the devil. The first stage of the trick was to let Satan think he’d utterly destroyed and defeated Jesus on the cross. Then, just as the devil is prancing about in wicked triumphant glee, Jesus delivers the knock-out punch-line by popping up again – ‘surprise!’ – impossibly risen from the dead, and having ransacked hell and robbed Satan of his authority. It’s a great picture.

Disturber of the peace

There’s certainly little doubt that in his lifetime Jesus was a self-confessed disturber of the peace. He went out of his way to provoke and even offend the religious and self-righteous. He deliberately enraged the crowd in his home synagogue by appearing to insult Israel. He upset Pharisees by associating with ‘riff-raff’, prostitutes, tax-collectors and all sorts. He called teachers of the law hypocrites, whitewashed graves, broods of vipers.

He crashed through social conventions, for example by talking to a Samaritan woman alone, and through prized religious customs about how the Sabbath should be kept. He gave cheekily smart answers to anyone who came looking to trap him. And of course, he engaged in direct religious and political subversive action by overturning the moneylenders’ tables in the Temple.

Control and chaos

So if Christ is truly the image of God, then God is not the great tyrant or dictator in the sky; not a heavenly autocrat or puppet-master. He is sovereign, yes, but he rules and reigns not by displays of raw power or by coercion but by love and goodness, by serving and self-giving. For love cannot rule by the ways of power, or it would not be love. There may be an appropriate element of fear in that love (as we might have healthy respect for, say, a lightning storm), but it is not fear of a brutal tyrant.

By contrast, Evil – whether it has a personal figurehead ‘Satan’ or not – seeks to control as completely as possible, through any means possible. Control comes in many forms – mediated through fear or desire, through threat and punishment or allure and addiction; exercised overtly or covertly. And enslavement or imprisonment are the ultimate expressions or forms of control. The addict is enslaved to his or her ‘fix’, trapped and held captive by their craving – whether that be for drugs, sex, wealth, status, approval or anything else.

Evil then is a bully, a puppet-master, a slave-driver, a control freak. Evil needs to win, to rule, to exercise raw power. And conversely those who desire above all to rule and be powerful tend to buy into evil themselves (‘power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely’). When we seek to control others we too are following these ways of evil rather than the ways of Christ.

The irony of course is that evil is itself fundamentally chaotic, always on the verge of spiralling out of control, of tearing itself apart. But unable to control itself, evil seeks to control everything and everyone else. And perhaps its ultimate control is chaos. Perhaps evil looks to the day when entropy has done its final work and all is dead and still, chaotic and meaningless, and therefore (in a sense) fully under control.

Winning by losing

However, Evil is ultimately self-defeating; though it spreads like a disease and seems unstoppable, it carries within itself the seeds of its own destruction. Love by contrast cannot die, cannot be truly defeated, though it allows itself to be crushed and humiliated and even killed. You could even say that Love wins by losing, whereas Evil loses by winning.

I’ve quoted Martin Luther King several times before on this blog: ‘By violence you can kill a murderer, but you can’t murder murder’. You can’t destroy war by fighting with the weapons of war. You can only defeat evil by innocence, by the deeply subversive operation of love, the disarming and self-sacrificial act of forgiveness.

Of course, another word for ‘innocent’ is ‘gullible’, and it would be easy to see the utterly innocent and guileless Jesus as merely a childlike fool, a Don Quixote, easy prey to the brutally brilliant powers of evil intent on his destruction. But innocence is not stupidity. Jesus knew what he was doing; knew that his innocent death would be the undoing of the great schemes of evil and power. The ‘holy fool’ overcame the cunning of wickedness; God’s foolishness is wiser than earthly wisdom.

Jesus’ death and resurrection then could be seen as the ultimate insurrection, the greatest act of civil disobedience against the rigid ruling laws of the universe – the law of entropy and the rule of death, the law that dead things stay dead. And perhaps in so doing, Jesus even potentially freed the universe’s tyrants and controllers from their need to control everything – in the unlikely event that they should ever accept that freedom.

In which case, perhaps the Anglican Easter liturgy should be changed to:
“He is risen: He is risen indeed – neaah neah-ne-neah neah!”

Why did Jesus die, part III – did he suffer so that we don’t have to?

In the last two posts I’ve been looking at the historical and spiritual reasons why Jesus died on a cross. I wondered whether he not only chose to die, but also chose the manner of his death, in order to fully fulfil his Messianic purpose of overcoming evil and death, ending exile and bringing God’s kingdom on earth. 

In this last post I’d like to look at a question that has divided Christians, particularly charismatic and evangelical Christians. Did Jesus suffer on the cross so that we don’t have to… or so that we do?

In other words, is the meaning and purpose of Jesus’ suffering and death that it entirely takes away ours, as a substitute sacrifice offered on our behalf and in our place, meaning that we are now exempt? Or is the cross actually Jesus’ highest example for us to follow as we seek to become Christ-like; an indication of the kind of trials his true followers will face as they walk his path of love, of self-sacrifice and non-violent resistance?

Divine exchange?

I was once leading worship at a gathering of Christian lawyers (don’t ask) when a kind of prayer battle broke out between the charismatic and non-charismatic factions, about a member who had been diagnosed with terminal cancer. The non-charismatics were accepting that their friend was dying, and were praying for God’s presence and solace in his remaining time, to prepare him and them for his death. The charismatics meanwhile were having none of it; they were loudly claiming God’s healing, and praying directly against the other faction’s lack of faith. It was both deeply comic and tragic to witness.

Back when I mixed more in Charismatic circles, there was a major emphasis on the theology of ‘divine exchange’ – the idea that on the cross, Jesus took on all our ‘curses’ and in exchange gives us the fullness of his blessing. He took all our bad so we can get all his good – ‘beauty for ashes’ (Isaiah 61:3). On the cross he bore all our sins, suffering, weaknesses, brokenness, diseases, failures, burdens and curses (including poverty), so that we in turn can take on his perfection, strength, health and blessing (often primarily focused on physical health and financial wealth).

One of the key biblical texts trotted out to support this was ‘By his stripes we are healed’ (1 Peter 2:24), and the understanding was that Christ suffered so that we no longer have to. Another was ‘I have come that you may have life to the full’ (or ‘abundant life’), John 10:10. Also ‘Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us’ (Galatians 3:13), taken by extension to mean that Jesus redeemed us from all curses and problems, making a life of blessing available now.

There is certainly a truth in all this, but I don’t think it’s that God guarantees his children health, wealth and happiness, a trouble-free ride through life and instant solutions to all problems. Rather I think it’s a promise that God will redeem all our sufferings, weaknesses, hurts and failures; that he will work transformatively through them for our good and the good of others.

‘In this world you will have trouble’, promised Jesus, ‘but take heart! I have overcome the world’ (John 16:33). Jesus’ path of salvation is not one of being removed from all troubles into instant bliss, as those who subscribe to Rapture theology wish for. Rather Jesus’ redemption takes the harder path of facing troubles, bearing them and overcoming them. One day, in the kingdom to come, every tear will be wiped away, and death and suffering will be abolished; but until then these things will be part of our experience – and even part of our redemption.

Take up your cross

Christ certainly did say that his yoke was easy and his burden was light (Matt 11:30), but of course he also said that any who would be his disciple must pick up their cross and follow him (Matt 16:24). He said that if the world persecuted and abused him, it would also persecute his followers (John 15:20). He proclaimed that ‘blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me’. (Matt 5:11). He even saw this as a cause for rejoicing, not because suffering is inherently good but because those who suffered for him would be greatly rewarded in the coming Kingdom.

The early apostles clearly took this to heart; ‘they left the Sanhedrin rejoicing to have been deemed worthy of suffering disgrace for Christ’s sake’ (Acts 5:41). Paul wrote that he wanted to share Christ’s sufferings that he might also share in his resurrection and glory (Phil 3:10; Romans 8:17). If we look at all Paul’s sufferings listed in 2 Corinthians 11:23-27,  it’s clear he put this wholeheartedly into practice  – shipwreck, beatings, imprisonment, hunger, death threats, you name it.

Indeed, if we look at those throughout history who have followed Christ most closely and truly, we soon see that their lives are generally not free from pain, suffering and poverty but (in many cases) quite the opposite. Take the list of people of faith mistreated and even martyred by the world in Hebrews 11:35-38. Look at all the saints and martyrs throughout the ages, from Stephen the apostle through to today’s persecuted church.

So my own reading of the Bible certainly sees a lot more support for the view that Christ’s sufferings are an example for us to follow than that they are our ticket out of earthly troubles.

Blessing and suffering interwoven

Of course, this is not to deny that God blesses, heals, and gives us good things; nor is it to imply that Christianity is a joyless drudge of suffering service until the kingdom comes. Jesus promises us rest and peace, joy and hope; he invites all who are thirsty to come and drink. It can be both/and, not either/or.

But blessing and suffering, joy and sorrow, light and shadow are interwoven in this life. They go hand in hand, and it is often through the difficulties and pains that God brings blessing and good, just as the darkest hour precedes dawn and the pain of labour precedes birth and new life. There can be no resurrection without there first being death, and this holds true for us as it did for Christ.

Crucially, Christ calls us to the way of love and compassion, and this inevitably leads us to suffering, as we enter into, identify with and share other people’s sufferings. We learn to walk the path of the cross, which is essentially the path of love, the way of surrender and sacrifice, of mercy and costly forgiveness.

There will be times when we have to make difficult and painful personal choices for the sake of others, for the sake of love and goodness, for the sake of what we know to be right. And it’s pretty much a cliché that to open yourself to love also means to open yourself to be hurt, to be heartbroken.

Please note, I’m not suggesting we must spend our whole lives killing ourselves for the sake of others out of some misplaced martyr complex. Nor do I think that we need to specially seek out trouble and suffering for the good of our souls – life will chuck plenty in our paths without having to go looking for it.

Blessed are the unblessed

So perhaps it’s in this kind of way that the paradoxical Beatitudes can start to make sense: ‘Blessed are the poor in spirit… blessed are those who mourn… blessed are you when you are persecuted’. Quite clearly, poverty, mourning and persecution are not conditions to be wished for or deliberately sought out. But they are a normal part of the Christian life, and as we go through them (as we probably will at some point) we can hope to experience – in the midst of our trouble – Christ’s presence, Christ’s peace, and Christ’s blessing.

Indeed, you could paraphrase the Beatitudes ‘blessed are the unblessed’, or even ‘blessed are the cursed’. In a sense only people in such a position are in the right place to receive Christ’s fullest and most direct blessing. The rest of us may be too busy clinging on to the partial earthly blessings we do have, or working to earn more, to receive Christ’s in full. But more than this, perhaps only those who open themselves fully to love and mercy and compassion can know both the full pain and the full joy of Christlikeness.

It’s perhaps also in this paradoxical sense that we can start to understand the apparently nonsensical verse ‘Consider it joy when you face trials of many kinds….’ (James 1:2). Those who go through times of great suffering do often report moments of inexplicable joy and peace. The trials themselves are not joyous by any stretch of the imagination; they are bloody awful. But as we endure them we can perhaps know (in part) that we are following the way of Christ; that his presence is with us (even if we don’t feel it!); that his likeness is slowly being formed in us; that through the trials he is somehow redemptively working to bring good; and that ultimately he is leading us through this time to a future state of full blessing and joy.

Reading that again, that all sounds a bit pat and smug. I still think it’s true, but when we’re in the depths we may not want someone preaching like this at us. It’s perhaps something we just have to see for ourselves (nor not), maybe with hindsight…

Stages of faith

Finally, I’d suggest that the whole blessings vs sufferings question could be fruitfully framed within my beloved stages-of-faith model. In the early child-like stages of faith, we’re more directly protected and provided for, showered with love and shielded from harm just as children are in early stages of development.

Later on, as we progress towards spiritual adulthood we become more independent and so more exposed; we’re learning to stand on our own two feet and take responsibility for our own needs and safety. And then as we reach the stage of spiritual parenthood, we have to take our turn in giving what we have received, sacrificing for others as we have been sacrificed for ourselves.

So then, did Christ suffer so we don’t have to, or so that we do? Perhaps both and neither. Perhaps he suffered simply because that is the path love and goodness has to follow. In this life we will experience suffering whether or not we follow Christ’s path. But if we do follow him we can also experience his redemptive presence in and through our suffering, giving that suffering meaning and purpose.

Why did Jesus die? Part II – the spiritual reasons

Last time we looked at the human and historical reasons why Jesus ended up on a cross. But, on a theological or spiritual level, did he really have to die? Why?

Couldn’t God have ushered in his Kingdom in some other way? Couldn’t he have found some other means to establish his reign; some other way to redeem and renew the cosmos; some other way to forgive us and to reconcile us to himself, to ourselves and each other?

To answer this I think we need to explore what Jesus’ death was for, what it means, what it was meant to achieve and why Jesus seems to have seen it as so essential.

Meanings of the cross

So, was Jesus’ death primarily to propitiate God, to satisfy the righteous wrath of a sin-hating Deity who just had to punish someone for the misdeeds of humanity, in order for there to be justice?

Or, to nuance that view slightly, was a perfect representative needed who could bear once for all the sin-penalty due to all humans, and Jesus was the only one who could fulfil that role? Was it a sacrificial payment for the ‘debt’ we all owed to God because of our offences against him, but that none of us could fully pay?

Or was it rather so that Jesus – and so God – could identify with us completely in the uttermost depths of our shame and indignity and alienation, and so bring an end our alienation and restore us?

Was it to utterly disarm and destroy evil through complete self-surrender and perfect love, even to the extent of forgiving those who were torturing and killing him? Did Jesus’ death in some way absorb all of evil into himself and neutralise it?

Was it to pay a ‘ransom’ to rescue or free us, and if so, paid to whom? One view (portrayed famously in C.S. Lewis’s The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe) is that Christ’s death was a ransom payment to the devil, rather than to God, because it was the devil who held us in his power. In this view the rescue is not so much from God’s wrath as from Satan’s power and realm.

Or did Jesus have to die simply because that’s what Love does when faced with evil that threatens the life and welfare of the beloved? When we love someone we often promise ‘I’d die for you’ – is it just that Jesus actually meant it?

Indeed, is the cross simply the full and perfect expression of Love and Goodness – love doing what love does just because it’s love? Goodness and love by their nature cannot overcome evil by using the methods of evil, by using brute force or violence or sheer imposed power. Rather they have to follow their own path of self-surrender, of self-sacrifice, of apparent weakness that nonetheless ultimately disarms the flawed strength of evil and hate and violence.

So was it also a model, an example of the way Jesus wanted us to follow, the path of self-sacrificial love?

Or was the cross a battle, a mortal combat between the Prince of Life and our age-old enemies of evil and death, of chaos and darkness? 

Did Jesus have to die, to go through death himself, in order to defeat and overcome death, to establish a new kind of life that could no longer be subject to death and decay?

Finally, was Jesus’ death on the cross a symbolic gesture, an enacted sign or parable of some sort, with meanings that are deeper, more poetic and more endlessly inexhaustible than any attempt to explain it can ever be?

Metaphors and models

I’d actually argue that this is very much a case where it’s both/and, not either/or. Jesus’ death may well have been for all of these reasons and purposes; may well have all of these meanings, and a whole lot more besides.

We also need to remember that all of these ways of understanding Jesus’ death are models, metaphors, symbols. They are not complete or precise accounts of how atonement works or what the cross achieved, because atonement isn’t like that. It isn’t a matter of scientific law or mathematical equation, or even legal satisfaction, but rather of the intricacies of the human heart and soul, of relationship, of love and goodness, of personhood.

The various models and ideas about what Jesus’ death achieved and how are fine and good and can be helpful. But the atonement isn’t a theory to be analysed, it’s a reality to be encountered and experienced and entered into.

I don’t personally find the penal substitution model very helpful, but I’m content to let it stand alongside the others so long as we accept that it’s not a scientific-style explanation. I personally think that if we focus on this view of atonement too much it can distort our view of God and even do damage to our faith.

I also find the ransom-payment-to-Satan idea somewhat disturbing, but I can see mileage in it if viewed mythically or metaphorically rather than literally. In other words, if it’s about love rescuing us from the grip of whatever evil or evils torment and oppress us, even rule over us, rather than from a specific being we call Satan.

Jesus’ own understanding

But what did Jesus himself think his death meant, or was for?

NT Wright argues (convincingly, to my mind) that Jesus’ own understanding of his death on the cross – why it was necessary and what it was for – arose from his very particular Jewish understanding of his role as Messiah.

The Messiah was to be God’s anointed liberator priest-king. He would fight and win the decisive battle against the great Enemy, liberating Israel from oppression and captivity – physical and spiritual – and thus bringing about the true and lasting return from exile. And in doing so he would establish the everlasting kingdom of God’s rule and reign here on Earth. God would dwell fully among his people (fulfilling the Jewish Temple), and his ways of justice and peace and love would be fully known and followed (fulfilling the Torah).

This then (argues Wright) was what Jesus believed he must achieve as Messiah. Jesus also extended and reinterpreted this picture in several key ways. First, that the salvation and liberation the Messiah would bring would not be solely or primarily for Israel, but would be through Israel for the whole world – even the whole cosmos.

Second, that Israel had entirely failed in her God-given duty to be the Light of the World, the true Temple and follower of God’s Torah for the benefit of the nations. Therefore he (Jesus) – as Israel’s true representative, the Messiah – would have to fulfil this role that she had forsaken.

Third, that in straying from God’s calling and seeking other political or religious ways of ‘bringing the Kingdom’, Israel had embarked on a path that would bring down great suffering and destruction on herself from the worldly powers – Rome. It seems Jesus believed that it was his role as Israel’s representative to take the first of this suffering and destruction on himself. In so doing he believed he could overcome and redeem it, offering a way out of exile into freedom for those who would follow him.

Up to Jesus’ time, it seems no-one had really expected the Messiah to die or be apparently defeated in order to achieve his Messianic goals. (There were the songs of the suffering servant in Isaiah, but this hadn’t been developed into a full theology.) But Jesus understood the situation differently – that only through his suffering and death could Israel fulfil its destiny; only in this way could the powers of evil and oppression be overcome, exile be ended, and God’s Kingdom be ushered in.

Jersualem and Rome

For Jesus it was also no coincidence that his final ‘battle’ against the forces of chaos took place in Jerusalem. This was the symbolic and spiritual heart of Israel; this was where judgement and destruction would ultimately fall on Israel through Rome. As Israel’s true representative and king this was where Jesus believed he had to face his fate and fulfil his destiny to redemptively bear Israel’s suffering. It was also symbolically significant that he was executed in ‘exile’, outside the city walls in the place of outcasts. In dying this way, he bore Israel’s exile in order to end it.

I also can’t help wondering if it’s significant that both Rome and Israel – both Jew and Gentile – were involved in his death. Paul wrote that on the cross Jesus reconciled Jew and Gentile to each other; perhaps the fact that both colluded in his death actually meant that both could be included in his mercy. Jesus’ blood is in some sense (at least symbolically) on all our hands; and by the same token his forgiveness and reinstatement of his executors is also for all of us.

All this means that Jesus’ death was about far more than just saving us as individuals from the penalty of our sins so we can go to heaven when we die rather than hell. It may well include something a little like that, but it extends far further, wider and deeper – to the furthest reaches of the cosmos.

So did Jesus have a fully worked-out theological understanding of his death and what it meant? I’m not sure he thought about it in quite this way, or that he would have seen a theology of the atonement as very important. But I do think that he saw his self-sacrificial death as vital to God’s redemptive purposes.

Did Jesus’ death have to be so brutal?

I can accept that Jesus had to die in order to fulfil his Messianic role and achieve his Messianic purpose. One thing that’s always bothered me though is why he had to die such a terrible, brutal, barbaric death. Couldn’t some other means have sufficed – a peaceful and painless death, or at least a swift and relatively merciful execution like a beheading? Did he really have to go through the most humiliating, inhumane and (literally) excruciating kind of death ever devised?

People have sometimes argued that if, rather than choosing 1^st-century Palestine, he’d say come today to a more ‘civilised’ country, Jesus could have suffered no worse than lethal injection. In some countries (like the UK) he wouldn’t have been executed at all, which presumably would have missed the point of his Messianic ministry and mission.

But indeed the whole question misses the point, for perhaps the primary reason we have ‘civilised’ societies with humane (or no) death penalties is precisely because they’ve been historically founded on Christianity. Without Christ’s death, who knows what kind of world we’d now be living in?

If we accept that Jesus died because he chose to (even intended to), we have to wonder if he did not also in some way choose the manner of his dying. It almost seems as though Jesus chose deliberately to bring down on himself the worst kind of death possible, as though only by taking on the utmost depths of evil, shame and pain could he overcome and redeem them.

Perhaps only by dying in such a way could he show the full extent of his utter commitment to love us out of our hells, our darkness, our self-imposed exiles. Perhaps he had to take the worst evil it was possible for us to throw at him, and bear it, and forgive it. Perhaps he had to experience the worst that humans could devise, and also the worst that humans could endure, in order to redeem both our spitefulness and our suffering.

Next time I’ll look at whether Jesus’ suffering means that we’re now exempt from suffering – or quite the opposite…

Why did Jesus die? Part I – the historical reasons

Over the next 3 posts in the run up to Good Friday and Easter, I want to look at Jesus’ death on a cross, and specifically the question – why did Jesus die?

There are many ways of answering this question, on different levels. This time I’d like to look at the simply historical or human level – the reasons why Jesus became perceived to be enough of a problem or a threat to end up tried by a Jewish court and executed on a Roman cross. I’ll be drawing on NT Wright fairly freely throughout, as for my money he’s our best and most interesting contemporary theologian on the subject of Jesus.

Four misguided agendas

First we probably need to understand something of the social and religious milieu in which Jesus lived and died. There were, we’re told, four main groups within 1^st-century (or ‘second-temple’) Judaism. All four had a basic common goal of ‘bringing the Kingdom’, which essentially meant re-establishing Israel as an independent nation under God, focused around the potent national symbols of the Temple and Torah. But each group had widely differing different agendas and programmes for achieving this goal.

So there were the puritan Pharisees, who sought to establish a holy Israel set apart by strict practice of Jewish religious customs and rituals. There were the compromisers (Herodians and arguably Sadducees), who sought to make the best of Rome’s rule and hope that God would somehow bless it. There were the monastic Essenes, who isolated themselves entirely from what they saw as corrupt society, establishing their own private and separate holy ‘kingdom’. And there were the revolutionary Zealots, who sought to overthrow Rome and re-establish the nation of Israel by force.

Jesus didn’t fit with the agenda of any of these groups. Indeed he challenged them all head-on, calling them to surrender their misguided and self-defeating agendas (to ‘repent’), and instead to join his entirely different way of ushering in the Kingdom. (Well, so says NT Wright in The Challenge of Jesus, at any rate.) And this direct opposition to all available contemporary agendas is itself enough to explain why Jesus ended up top of the nation’s Most Wanted list.

So he alienated the Pharisees by undermining and overturning their cherished customs, symbols of their ‘pure’ Judaism, such as Sabbath-keeping rules and food laws. He was far too engaged with the ‘corrupt’ culture to be of any interest to the Essenes. He threatened the security and stability of the compromisers, whose comfortable way of life depended on the boat not being rocked. And he disappointed the Zealots by not being revolutionary enough.

Indeed this lack of violent zeal could ironically be the direct reason why Jesus ended up under arrest. We can only speculate about Judas’ motivations in handing over his friend, guide and mentor of 3 years. Was it mere greed for money, the 30 silver pieces? That seems unlikely. Was it fear of the authorities and a decision to side with them rather than get crushed by them? Perhaps. Or might it actually have been revolutionary zeal, an attempt to provoke Jesus into starting an armed uprising against Rome to liberate Israel, in accordance with prevailing contemporary views of the Messiah? That certainly seems plausible; and indeed it nearly happened – Peter certainly seems to have been about to embark on armed struggle in the Garden, had Jesus not quelled him.

Blasphemer and rebel king

So why was Jesus executed? The standard view of course is that he’d become too troublesome to the authorities (particularly the religious authorities). In a variety of ways he challenged their power, undermined their status and threatened their security – or at least that’s how they perceived it. His message and his way of life made him a serious thorn in the flesh of the establishment.

So those with a vested interest in the status quo couldn’t afford to let this young miracle-working prophet-preacher simply up-end it as he had the moneylenders’ tables. He had to go, or he would ruin their own ways of re-establishing Israel which they’d worked so hard to achieve. NT Wright also suggests that the religious authorities saw Jesus as a ‘false prophet’, one who was leading Israel astray and was perhaps even a sorcerer, and who therefore (according to Torah) had to die.

Technically Jesus died because of ‘blasphemy’, of claiming to be God or at least equal with God. This was apparently the only charge the chief priests could make stick against him, as it effectively came from his own lips in their hearing.

He was also accused of threatening to destroy the Temple, based on his riddle about tearing down the temple and rebuilding it in three days – and of course based on his recent violent action in the temple courts. It may indeed have been this action which led directly to his arrest as a potential troublemaker, a serious threat to Jewish national and religious identity.

However, in order to get Jesus actually put to death officially (rather than by lynch mob), the religious authorities needed to involve Rome. Hence it seems they tried to persuade Pilate to see Jesus as a political threat, a dangerous rebel ‘king’, a rival claimant to Caesar. Pilate for his part doesn’t seem to have been convinced by their argument. In the end, the gospels suggest that Jesus died largely because Pilate wanted to avoid an embarrassing Passover riot.

You could argue that Jesus died simply because the powers that be (and indeed almost everyone) failed to recognise him for what and who he was. They heard his claim to be equal with God and saw him as a blasphemer. They saw his kingly actions, and perceived him to be a rebel ‘king’ threatening Caesar’s authority. They heard his clear prophetic message and deemed him a dangerous false prophet. They saw his priestly actions and saw him as a usurper of priestly authority. For these things he had to die.

And yet, if Christians have understood him right at all, Jesus was in some sense all of these things, was in some way both true God and true King, as well as true prophet and high priest. Of course, not all will agree with this estimation. But if there’s any truth in it, it’s a supreme irony that he should be killed precisely for claiming to be what and who he actually was, and for acting accordingly.

Jesus’ choice

Ultimately we can also say that Jesus died because he chose to. He directly and purposefully pursued the path that would lead to his execution in Jerusalem (apparently on the way avoiding several other attempts on his life because ‘his time had not yet come’). Time after time he had the chance to take another route to Messiahship, as represented by Peter in Matt 16:22 (‘this shall never happen to you!’); but it seems that from pretty much the outset his face was set towards Jerusalem and the cross.

He had a final chance in the Garden of Gethsemane to avoid death, and clearly struggled with it terribly, but stood firm. If we’re to believe his reported words at his arrest, he could even then have avoided capture – could have called down legions of angels to fight for him. But at each point he resolutely chose the way leading to Golgotha.

Why then was Jesus so determined to die, to be crucified as a shamed outcast and criminal? I think we can rule out the idea that he was suicidal. It seems that he saw his execution as part of his Messianic vocation, indeed as the very culmination of that vocation. He believed it to be the will of his Father; to be God’s way of overcoming evil, establishing the Kingdom and bringing salvation – not only to Israel but to the whole world.

Exactly how and why he thought his death would achieve this is the subject of the next post…