From the Sola Panel:
This is the third instalment of a five-part series (read parts 1 and 2.)
We’ve been looking at Psalm 8 and have discovered that stargazing should make us wonder why God the creator should have anything to do with us.
At this point, if you were sceptical about the existence of the creator himself, I could point you to proofs of a designer in the universe. For example, I could use the ‘fine-tuning’ argument for the existence of God—the fact that there are over 20 fundamental physical constants in the universe that all work together to make the universe work as it does, and that can’t be explained as a coincidence—at least, not yet. If any one of these constants had been a tiny bit different, life couldn’t appear. For example, if the force of gravity was even slightly different by a colossally tiny factor (1 part in 1040), no life-supporting stars could exist. Or I could talk about the statistical improbability of life itself emerging—the fact that even a small protein has 1095 possible folding combinations, and the chances of a protein folding by accident into a functional life-conducive shape during the lifetime of the universe is something like 1 in 1065.
But then you might come back with an answer—the multiverse. Do you know about the multiverse? The multiverse is a philosophical theory, born out of reflection on cosmology and quantum theory. It’s the idea that we are just one out of a gigantic number of different possible universes. The multiverse is a way to solve the problem of the fine-tuning of the universe. Since there’s such a huge or infinite number of possible universes, it’s no problem that our universe just happens to exist by chance—a universe with impossibly fine-tuned life-supporting physical constants, where proteins folded in just the right way. The multiverse is an act of faith; it’s not a scientific hypothesis in the strict sense. There is no scientific evidence for the multiverse; in fact, there’s no experimental test that anyone has conceived that could possibly prove it or disprove it. It’s a philosophy that tries to solve the apparent design of the universe without resorting to a designer. The multiverse theory is complex, physically and philosophically, and it seems to me to be the last resort of the desperate. But if you’re philosophically committed to atheism, that’s what you’ve got at your disposal at the moment.
But actually there’s a bigger problem with my proofs for a designer. You see, even if my arguments for the existence of a cosmic designer were true and irrefutable, and even if you believed them, what does that actually prove? That there is a great designer—a purpose—to the universe doesn’t say anything about you and me.
Let’s assume for the sake of argument that there is a great grand design to the existence of the 70 sextillion-plus stars out there. Say there is some grand 13-billion-year-old design to it all, and that God the creator is behind it all. So what? What on earth would that have to do with you, your life, your relationships, your joys, your sorrows, your acts of kindness, your feelings of guilt at those evil things you’ve said and thought and done, your goals, your children, your ethics, your conviction that it’s wrong to hurt and right to love, and your death as you dissolve back into the dust you came from? What is that to God? Why does that matter at all in this gigantic universe?
Yet this is the question of our poet, as the song continues:
Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings
and crowned him with glory and honor.
You have given him dominion over the works of your hands;
you have put all things under his feet,
all sheep and oxen,
and also the beasts of the field,
the birds of the heavens, and the fish of the sea,
whatever passes along the paths of the seas.
(Ps 8:5-8)
This is actually a real puzzle—a problem—the crisis of the song—that this God, the one who made the heavens for some reason, deliberately and personally sees you and me as important. You and I are a key part of his creation. We (as the song says) are “crowned … with glory and honor”. We are rulers. We have dominion.
These words ‘rule’ and ‘dominion’ recall the words of Genesis 1-2. They are used to describe the reality that humans are put on the earth by God himself to care for it, not to exploit it for our own ends. It’s a statement of our glory and our responsibility, not a statement of our God-given right to use the world any way we want. Our poet in this biblical song recalls these words to express wonder at the fact that we specks of dust are somehow glorious in God’s eyes. The evidence of the stars suggests that we are nothing, but God himself, the creator of the stars, says we are something. We have been made by God for a purpose in this world: we have responsibility. We have responsibility to God to do what is right—to rule the works of God’s hands. And, as the rest of the Bible points out, we have a responsibility to live rightly in our relationships with each other—to honour God, to care for his world, to care for each other, to live under his loving rule.
But that’s the problem. That’s the puzzle. How is it that such a great creator—such a great and super-powerful supreme being—has given us specks of dust this responsibility?
Verse 9 gives us no answer:
O Lord, our Lord,
how majestic is your name in all the earth!
The song ends where it began. It hasn’t solved the puzzle; it has just expressed it. God is great in the earth, and somehow, for some reason, we are important to him.
To be continued …
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From the Sola Panel
In the second instalment of a five-part series, I contemplate the extent of our significance in the universe. (Read Part 1.)
We’ve been looking at Psalm 8, and we’ve discovered that stargazing helps us to see how insignificant we really are.
Just think about the size of space for a moment. Imagine you could get into the fastest jet on earth (last time I checked, this was the SR-71 Blackbird). Its official speed record is almost 2,500 miles per hour. Now imagine you could speed it up 100 times to 250,000 miles per hour. Then imagine that you could take it on a trip to space. It would take you an hour to get to the moon—that’s pretty reasonable! It would take you eight days to get to Mars, the closest planet to Earth. It would take you four months to get to the planet Saturn (remember, we’re travelling 100 times faster than the fastest jet ever built). It would take you a year and a half to get to the planet Pluto at the edge of our solar system. To get to the closest star to the sun, Proxima Centauri, it would take you 12,000 years. To get to the centre of our own Milky Way galaxy, it would take you 80 million years. To the next closest galaxy, Andromeda, it would take you seven billion years. To get to the edge of the visible universe, it would take you 40 million million years. And they think that the size of the non-visible universe is vastly huger than this: that would take you a million million million million, etc. years.
I’ll quote another modern ‘poet’—this time, the late Douglas Adams, writing The Hitchhikers’ Guide to the Galaxy:
Space is big. Really big. You just won’t believe how vastly hugely mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean you may think it’s a long way down the road to the chemist, but that’s just peanuts to space.1
The ancient biblical poet was ignorant about billions of parsecs or millisecond pulsars. He just knew that space was big, wonderful, majestic and beyond us. That’s the universe we live in.
So the Bible has a question for you: who are you?
what is man that you are mindful of him,
and the son of man that you care for him?
(Ps 8:4)
What is man? Who am I in comparison to this world? Who are you? You are one of seven billion tiny organisms, living on an infinitesimally small pinprick of a dust ball, who are giving birth, breathing, eating, maybe reproducing and dying.
But that’s the Bible’s question: what is it to be human? What is your existence—your family, your career, your study, your relationships, your life—compared to this immense universe with its big bang, its nebulas and its millisecond pulsars?
But did you notice something? That’s not quite the way the song puts it, isn’t it. It’s not just the universe that’s big; this biblical song makes an even more profound point. It’s a point about God himself: God is big. See verse 1:
O Lord, our Lord,
how majestic is your name in all the earth!
You have set your glory above the heavens.
We’re not just talking here about how small we are compared to the universe; this is a song about our relationship to the majesty of the Lord—the God who created that universe.
Now it’s important to realize that this ‘God’ spoken about in the Bible has nothing to do with superstition and magical religion. The Bible’s view of God is the opposite of superstition. In fact, it’s the biblical view of God that enabled the early Christians to throw astrology away and promote astronomy instead. Astrology is the belief that the stars have something to do with our lives. Astrology happens when people look out at the stars, see how distant and high they are, and decide that somehow, in some magical way, these stars have a direct influence on their own personal lives.
But just listen for a moment to Augustine, a Christian theologian who was writing in about 425 AD—a man whose influence over western thought has been profound and continues to this day. This is what Augustine says about astronomy and astrology, and their relative value:
Astronomy … makes possible systematic predictions about the future, which are not speculative and conjectural but firm and certain; but we should not try to extract something of relevance to our own actions and experiences, like the maniacs who cast horoscopes, but confine our interest to the stars themselves.2
Augustine rejected astrology because he believed in the God of the Bible—the God we meet here in this very song—a God whose glory is above the heavens. See verse 3: this is the God who made the heavens, and set the moon and stars in place. This is the God who is majestic and great, and above and beyond those stars themselves. He is a God of order who set those heavenly bodies where they should be. But he’s done it for his glory, not for magical speculation about how your week is going to pan out.
So the question of verse 4 is a question about our place before this God:
what is man that you are mindful of him,
and the son of man that you care for him?
Why on earth would this God, who created the stars, be interested in you and me? There are more stars in the visible universe than grains of sand in all the beaches on the earth. According to an Australian estimate in 2003, there are 70 sextillion stars. This is 7 x 1022. Who are we in all of this? I can’t resist quoting Douglas Adams in the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy again:
Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western Spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun.
Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-eight million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue-green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea.3
Even then, he’s talking about one galaxy amongst quadrillions. And that’s just the visible universe.
There is a God who made it all. So what on earth would he have to do with us? Who are you? What is man?
To be continued …
1 Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Del Ray, 2005 (1979), p. 65.
2 Augustine, De Doctrina Christiana, II.113.
3 Adams, p. 3.
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On the Sola Panel:
In the first instalment of a five-part series, I’m pondering what astronomy has to teach us.
I’m a fan of space. I don’t actually know much about the details of astronomy or cosmology or astrophysics; I just think that the space is really cool.
If there are any real scientists reading this, I want to say thanks. I know that most of your work involves boring and tedious searching, collating and number crunching. Thanks for doing all that stuff so that I can see those fantastic pictures of nebulas on the internet and wonder at it all.
For example, I’m a fan of millisecond pulsars. A gigantic star, millions of light years away, explodes in a huge supernova. It creates a fireball ten million billion billion times bigger than Hiroshima. In its ashes, it leaves behind a neutron star made of dense atomic nuclei, squashed together at a density 10 trillion times greater than steel. A teaspoon full of neutron star weighs about the same as Sydney Harbour. Sometimes this neutron star will steal stuff from a nearby star and start spinning. Some neutron stars spin hundreds of times a second—a whole star rotating as fast as an idling car engine. Many of these super-dense, revving stars send out pulses of electromagnetic radiation, milliseconds apart. And we might be able to use these millisecond pulsars as standard cosmological clocks to help us detect gravitational waves, explore space-time bending, and understand more about the tiniest particles in the universe.
But apart from the wow factor, what’s the point of learning about space?
Some people might say that, in the end, astronomy is a complete waste of time. Sherlock Holmes, that fictional epitome of scientific rationalism, cared nothing for astronomy. When his friend Dr Watson scolded him for being ignorant even of the basic facts of the solar system, he interrupted and said, “What the deuce is it to me? … you say that we go round the sun. If we went round the moon it would not make a pennyworth of difference to me or to my work.”1
Is Mr Holmes correct? Is stargazing a completely useless exercise?
Well, you could point out that weather and tide and climate predictions need detailed solar, lunar and planetary modelling. You could also point out that car engines need modern mechanics, which is all based on the laws of motion formulated by Isaac Newton, who used the orbits of planets to calculate and build his theories. Or you could point to the humble GPS satellite navigator, which relies on Einstein’s theory of relativity and orbiting satellites. Of course, astronomy is useful; after all, it helps us to work out whether it’s raining, and how to drive quickly to the cricket and back without taking a wrong turn!
But I want to suggest that stargazing is far more important than all this. In fact, the Bible itself gives us a very good reason for considering the stars. There is a song in the Bible about the stars—a song composed thousands of years ago in ancient Israel. This is how the song begins:
O Lord, our Lord,
how majestic is your name in all the earth!
You have set your glory above the heavens.
Out of the mouth of babies and infants,
you have established strength because of your foes,
to still the enemy and the avenger.
(Ps 8:1-2)
You’ll notice that this poet believes in God (just like many of the astronomers down through the ages). In fact, this whole song is a prayer to the creator of the universe. We’ll come back to this shortly. But for the moment, let’s look at his exercise in stargazing. Do you see what he says in the third verse of the song?
When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars, which you have set in place …
When you think about it, stargazing is something that would have been easier and more natural for an ancient Israelite than for us. Yes, we can use our light, radio and gamma ray telescopes to penetrate vast distances, and we can use our complex mathematical and cosmological theories to make determinations and predictions. Of course, the ancients couldn’t do that. But on the other hand, they had a very big advantage over us: they had a clear, unpolluted sky in their backyards. We have so many lights on earth—especially in our cities—that the lights of the stars and the moons are drowned out. When I go into my backyard on a clear night, all I can see are a few pinpricks. But this biblical songwriter could step into his own backyard and see far more than you or I. He could see the glory of it all—the heavens, the Milky Way, the wandering planets.
We don’t tend to look up very much at all, do we. We don’t use the night time to look at the heavens; we use the night time to look down—to watch TV, to immerse ourselves in virtual worlds online. We know cyberspace very well, but this ancient poet sees real space with his naked eyes. We know the intimate details of the lives of rock stars and football stars, but this song is about the real stars. At this point, this biblical poet is far more in touch with the reality of the universe than we are. And knowing these stars—seeing them there before him—what does this do for the poet? How does it make him feel? Look at verse 4:
what is man that you are mindful of him,
and the son of man that you care for him?
What does astronomy do for this poet? What is the use of astronomy for all of us? Astronomy is very useful. It does something very negative for us, but it’s still very worthwhile: it reminds us how very very very small and insignificant we really are. In case you’re wondering, the words translated ‘man’ here mean ‘all humanity’. The question “What is man?” is an expression of amazement that human beings have any importance at all in the face of the evidence of the stars.
To be continued …
1 Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, ‘A Study in Scarlet’ in Sherlock Holmes: The Complete Long Stories, John Murray, London, 1929, p. 17.
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On the Sola Panel:
Do you know for sure that you are going to be with God in Heaven? If God were to ask you, “Why should I let you into My Heaven?” what would you say?
Have you ever used these questions (or a variation on them) to talk about the impact of the gospel of Jesus Christ with friends or strangers? They are the introductory questions in the well-known gospel explanation associated with Evangelism Explosion (EE). They’ve proved themselves to be a very popular way to start a serious discussion about our relationship with God. We assume that people in our world have given at least some thought to their own death and eternal destiny. These questions help us to show how the gospel, with its strong emphasis on assurance of future salvation through Jesus (e.g. 1 Thess 1:10, Heb 9:27-28, 1 Pet 1:3-5), provides a clear answer to important issues.
But, perhaps, not any more: XEE, the next generation version of Evangelism Explosion, starts with quite a different set of questions:
On a Scale of 1 to 10, how fulfilling would you say your life is?
What makes it an X? Would it change in either direction if God were in your life?
The key Bible verse for XEE is John 10:10: “I came that they may have life and have it abundantly”. The emerging generations, according to XEE, no longer think very much about death or the afterlife; people care more about the now-life. Futility or fulfilment today matters more than fear or hope for tomorrow. And so, if we want people to listen to our explanation of the gospel, we need to start with something that people today actually care about. You can have a fulfilling life, says XEE, by having a relationship with God through Jesus. XEE’s presentation does, of course, say that this “life to the full” is not just about our circumstances, feelings, or quality of life; it also says that it continues beyond the grave. Nevertheless, XEE’s overall emphasis is the fact that Jesus gives us fulfilment in life now.
The creators of XEE have made a serious effort to understand the real concerns of real people whom we want to hear the gospel, and we should applaud them for it. There is an advantage to beginning a gospel presentation by addressing a felt need in your hearer(s). It makes evangelism much easier because it means you can start up a genuine conversation quickly on a topic that matters to them. But I have a question for users of XEE. In fact, I have a question for anyone who has tried to use ‘fulfilment in life’ as a good way to begin a discussion about Jesus. That question is this: how do you deal with the fact that most people’s idea of ‘fulfilment’ is so utterly different to the kind of fulfilment Jesus talks about?
The idea of ‘fulfilment’ in today’s world is incredibly ambiguous. It is usually associated with careers, family, sexual relationships and education. If you ask somebody whether they’d like ‘fulfilment’, that’s the kind of thing they’re most likely to be thinking about initially. However, Jesus’ view of ‘abundant life’, or life ‘to the full’ (John 10:10), is very different. In John’s Gospel, ‘full’ or ‘abundant’ life is eternal life (John 3:15, 4:14, 4:36, 6:40, 6:68). Even though this abundant life is available now through Jesus’ word (John 5:24, 8:31-32, 14:23, 15:3-4) and Spirit (John 4:23, 7:38), it ultimately means life beyond death (John 5:21, 5:25). The ‘full’ life of John 10:10 is about being saved from God’s judgement for our sins (John 3:16-17, 3:36, 5:24, 5:29, 7:24, 10:9). Actually, people who came to Jesus expecting material benefits for their own daily life needed to be corrected (John 4:15, 6:27). Many of them turned away from him because he has disappointed them in this regard (John 6:66). Indeed, in the here and now, Jesus promises his disciples hardship, persecution and hatred by the world (John 15:18, 17:14), not just the benefits of a fulfilling relationship with God.
So if you begin your discussion about Jesus by asking people whether they feel fulfilled in life, and if you imply that the gospel is the answer to this need, you’re going to have a much harder job further down the track. You’ll have to show people that the Bible’s idea of a fulfilled life is completely different from what they first expected when you started talking to them about ‘fulfilment’. How do you avoid the confusion? Talking about ‘fulfilment in life’ might be more instantly accessible to post-Christian generations. And it clearly makes initial conversations easier. But is it, in the long run, going to cause more problems than it solves?
I’m not saying that we should only ever use the ‘classic’ EE questions about getting into heaven either. In fact, these questions have their own pitfalls. Because they begin with human concerns about the afterlife rather than with God himself, they run the risk (if not used properly) of marginalizing Jesus’ demand on our lives and making the gospel sound like a mere ‘free ticket to heaven’. Nevertheless, there are also great advantages to these classic questions. They are clear and direct. They imply that there is a personal God, that this God will judge us, and that there is an afterlife that really matters. This means that they can potentially generate discussion that quickly gets to the heart of some of these central biblical concerns. On the other hand, as the creators of XEE have realized, these questions assume too much in a post-Christian world. Can we really take for granted that our hearers have a clear view of God, judgement and heaven before we start to share the gospel with them?
Perhaps there are alternative questions we could use to start up a conversation—questions that make sense without being confused with promises that Jesus simply doesn’t make. Perhaps we could talk about people’s fear of death in general. (According to Hebrews 2:15, the fear of death itself is a basic feature of human existence, not just a generational thing. The fear of death is certainly a common theme in much contemporary fiction; just look at the Harry Potter series, which is all about the terror of death, from the first book to the last.) Or have you discovered other means to talk quickly and easily about the impact of the gospel in ways that make sense to our current generation?
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From the Sola Panel
What is the most polite way to refer to an old person? Have you noticed how the words we collectively use to refer to old people in the media and in private conversation keep changing? It’s a strange process. We start using a word or phrase, for example, ‘old man’, ‘old woman’. After a while, we decide that this phrase is really a little derogatory, and so we change to another, more neutral phrase, such as ‘senior citizen’. But after a while, ‘senior citizen’ sounds condescending and slightly offensive. So we try another, more neutral, word—like ‘elderly’. But the same thing happens: after we use the word ‘elderly’ for a while, it starts to sound a bit insulting. So we try ‘aged’. Then ‘ageing’. And so on. The reason this keeps happening is that our underlying concept of ageing itself is negative. It doesn’t matter what word we choose to express it; that word will start to take on the negative connotations that we associate with the underlying concept.
Ageing, for us, is a terrible thing. Nobody wants to be old. We have created an entire cosmetic industry dedicated to covering up the disastrous effects of ageing. We don’t want to be look old because we don’t want to be old. Why are we so negative about ageing? It’s because ageing represents the opposite of our core values. We live in a society that puts a huge value on freedom, choice, fulfilment of desires, strength and independence. All these values are far more obtainable by the young than by the old. Increasing age means diminishing freedom, limited choice, lower potential for fulfilment, increasing weakness and growing dependence.
Furthermore, we believe that old people actually limit the potential of the young people around them. Old people are a ‘burden’, a challenge, an increasing demand on an economy that is ‘driven’ by the young. Or at least, this is the way we often talk about ageing.
What light does the gospel of Jesus Christ shed on ageing? The doctrine of creation remind us that God has created a good and ordered world for humans to rule under his loving oversight. Old people, by virtue of their greater experience in this world, have invaluable wisdom to offer the young. Young people need the presence, experience and wisdom of godly old people in our communities, in our homes (e.g. Prov 23:22) and in our churches (e.g. Titus 1:5, 2:3). Old people are not a burden. In fact, we can’t do without them.
Nevertheless, ageing is a reminder that our world is under a curse. The increasing weakness, futility and numbness of old age (Eccl 12:1-6) is merely the forerunner to death (Eccl 12:7), which all stems from God’s judgement for our rebellion against him (Gen 3:19). The debilitating effects of ageing remind us that there is something terribly wrong with our world and our relationship with God, and that should make us turn to him for salvation.
The fact that Jesus came as a servant to die as a ransom for our sins and to help those who cannot help themselves (Mark 10:45 , Romans 5:6) teaches us that God cares for the weak, the feeble, the vulnerable. Following the crucified saviour means caring for those who need our care (Mark 10:43-44, Phil 2:4-11), including the aged among us (1 Tim 5:8). We all need to acknowledge the great value of aged care, and support those individuals and professionals who care for old people.
The resurrection of Jesus Christ shows us that mortality, frailty and death are not God’s final plan for humanity. Jesus’ body didn’t see decay (Acts 13:37); likewise, all those who trust in him look forward to receiving renewed, immortal bodies from God (1 Cor 15:42-44). In Christ, old people, as much as young people, are created in the image of an imperishable, immortal saviour (1 Cor 15:49) and share equally in that massive potential for freedom, glory and fulfilment in the new creation.
But the gospel demands faith and repentance. Do we trust in God’s promises enough to also entrust him with our fears and anxieties about our own ageing? Do we need to change our attitudes and our actions so that we properly value and love the old people in our midst?
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From the Sola Panel:
I’ve just read through the Apostle Paul’s letters and noted all the words he uses to describe his ministry. It’s a fascinating and humbling list.
Paul calls himself: apostle, servant, minister, preacher, master builder, from the tribe of Benjamin, prisoner, teacher, Hebrew, aroma, Jew, Israelite, temple servant, from the circumcision, manager, nobody, debtor, father, ambassador, vessel, the least of all saints, seed of Abraham and assistant. He also likens himself to a messenger, farmer, miscarriage, shepherd and mother.
God, Christ and the Holy Spirit assign or enable Paul’s ministry by loving, revealing, sending, guaranteeing, setting apart, confirming, making known, displaying, giving, giving over, approving, strengthening, showing mercy, accomplishing, working in, considering, willing, leading in triumphal procession, opening doors, making sufficient, calling, comforting, leading, laying upon, speaking in, receiving, shining, assigning, appearing, standing by, entrusting, filling, rescuing, dwelling, compelling, commending, certifying, commanding, setting, publicizing, anointing, guarding and graciously giving to Paul.
Paul describes his ministry as taking captive, a necessity, a defence, apostleship, pleasing, betrothing, confirmation, begetting, making known, a new covenant, administration, ministry, teaching, imparting, handing over, service, an athletic course, authority, working, evangelism, seeking, death, laying a foundation, treasure, priestly duty, destruction, assignment, fruit, announcement, gaining, preaching, speaking, worshipping, temple service, testimony, admonition, building, management, presentation, convincing, fulfiling, enrichment, nourishment, ambassadorship, offering, sowing, a battle, fighting, saving, guarding, running, being a prime example, publishing, planting, illumination, grace, and a gift of God.
Paul likens his ministry to those who struggle, compete, thresh, plow, contend, focus on the altar, toil, box, run, plant and cherish.
Paul describes his message as truth, revelation, how to please God, knowledge, teaching, glory, commands, promise, gospel, reconciliation, healthy, testimony, secret, fragrance, instruction, tradition, how to walk, faith, wealth, enlightenment and God’s word.
As he performs his ministry, Paul acts with love, holiness, sincerity, truth, blamelessness, genuineness, uprightness, knowledge, righteousness, glory, power, purity, freedom, hope, desire, energy, hard work, determination, madness, authority, life, readiness, worthiness, tears, speech, patience, foolishness, yearning, weapons, devotion, confidence, boldness, gentleness, abundance, faith, spirit, purpose, respect, a rod, speech, his flesh, signs, wonders, wisdom, prudence, compassion, conscience, his body, discipline, fear, assurance, joy and kindness, sharing his life, not being burdensome, being renewed, overflowing, enslaving his body, imitating Christ.
Paul also struggles, despairs, weeps, spends, thirsts, works, forfeits, dies, toils, hungers, suffers, journeys, burns, groans, trembles, escapes, fears and fills up the lack in Christ’s affliction; he is bound, destroyed, perplexed, weak, homeless, ignorant, sleepless, exposed, persecuted, afflicted, slandered, unpaid, cast down, treated as the dregs, treated as scum, treated as deceitful, boxed, thwarted, hindered, abandoned, stoned, torn away, seized, beaten, poor, adrift at sea, offered as a libation, branded, turned away, distressed, humbled, flogged, abused; he endures riots, chains, pressure, prison, responsibility, danger, the lion’s mouth, discipline, trouble, dishonour, need, cold and birth pains.
In the course of his ministry, Paul commends, asks, hears, curses, endures, opposes, receives, eagerly expects, defends, doubts, sends, gives opportunities, speaks foolishly, baptizes, sees, wishes, knows, gives opinions, informs, bows his knee, writes, prays, shows, commands, punishes, pursues, is content, approves, enters, strains forward, hopes, gives thanks, lives, courts favour, seeks after, considers, marvels, reaps, visits, opens his heart wide, boasts, cuts down, judges, forgets, speaks, blesses, considers, grieves, learns, testifies, solemnly charges, calls witnesses, regrets, remembers, reminds, conforms, supposes, knows, puts under oath, gives instructions, comforts, appeals, encourages, convinces, has confidence, walks, abounds, believes, fulfils, longs, endeavours, opens his mouth, behaves, understands, commends himself, seals, completes, sets forth, gives an example, spares, fears, thinks and forgives.
Paul’s supporters give to him, pay him, supply his need, administer, are concerned for him, refresh him. They are his brothers and sisters, acceptable, pleasing, useful, an aroma, temple servants, fragrance, a sacrifice, Paul’s partners.
Those who rightly receive Paul’s message are beloved, holy, brothers and sisters, a vineyard, a field, written on his heart, glorious, Jews, Gentiles, from the uncircumcision, elect, Paul’s hope, a letter, workers, co-workers, zealous, in his heart, a blessing, witnesses, imitators, infants, mourners, a building, faithful, a flock, poor, earnest, Paul’s crown, Paul’s certificate, children and Paul’s joy. Paul boasts in them, longs for them and blesses them. They recognize him, receive him, follow his example, obey him, help him, live with him and die with him.
Paul’s rivals are false brothers, masquerading as apostles, false apostles, super apostles, masquerading as ministers of righteousness, ministers of Satan, would-be law teachers, false workers, evil workers, Jews, the mutilation, dogs, from the circumcision, enemies of the cross.
Paul describes the people who work with or for him as beloved, saints, strugglers, brothers and sisters, followers, the Man of God, apostles, kinsmen, genuine, administrators, ministers, servants, workers, pray-ers, comrades, partners, managers, comforters, the circimcision, faithful, fulfilling, labourers, soldiers, children, entrusted, examples, assistants, guards, gifts, kindred spirits, fellow workers, fellow competitors, fellow soldiers, fellow prisoners, fellow sufferers, fellow servants.
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From the Sola Panel:
I’ve been enjoying Paul’s series on lousy arguments. At the risk of stealing Paul’s thunder, I’ve got another argument to add to the mix: the Argument from Silence. The Argument from Silence is rather simple, often wrong, but sometimes spot-on. The Argument from Silence happens when you listen to a speaker, or read a blog or book or article, and notice that they don’t mention some particular topic. You conclude that, since they didn’t mention that topic, they are ignorant of it, or it’s not important to them. To give an example that I’ve been thinking about recently, what should you conclude when you don’t hear much about the Holy Spirit in your church’s preaching program, your Bible Study series, your favourite podcast, etc.?
You could, perhaps, conclude that the church/leader/speaker doesn’t really believe in the Holy Spirit: either they don’t know him, or he’s not important to them. This conclusion, however, might be quite wrong. The Apostle Paul wrote a whole letter to the Colossian church full of densely packed theology, urging them to stick to the truth of Christ crucified and risen. But Colossians only directly mentions the Holy Spirit once in an almost offhand phrase (Col 1:8). It would be quite wrong to conclude on the basis of this letter that Paul didn’t believe in the Holy Spirit. You only need to read his other letters to see references to the Spirit everywhere!
Indeed, this is in line with the reality of the Spirit’s own person. The Holy Spirit is not the Showbiz Department of the Trinity; according to the Bible, the Spirit points away from himself, glorifies the Father and the Son, and brings us to relationship with God through the word of the Father and Son (e.g. John 14:16, 14:26, 15:26, 16:7-11, 1 Cor 12:3, Rom 8:15). Where God the Father is being glorified (Col 1:3, 1:12, 3:17), where the word of God is faithfully spoken (Col 3:16, 4:3), where people are living in trusting, repentant, hope-filled submission to Jesus Christ (Col 1:4, 2:5-7), where love is reigning among our brothers and sisters (Col 3:14), there we can be sure that the Spirit is doing his work. We shouldn’t expect him to crave seeing his name up in lights.
However, there are times when our silence about the Holy Spirit may point to a deeper problem. This is especially the case when we are talking not about God or Christ or the gospel directly, but about ourselves, and about the way in which God’s truth is made real in our lives, our communities and our world. At times like this, we often need to acknowledge God’s Spirit somehow, or we may end up replacing the Spirit with something else.
For example, I recently had the opportunity to sit in and listen to a group of Bible College graduates from all over the USA and UK as they tried to formulate a list of eight important summary statements about the relationship between God, the Bible and modern Bible readers. They produced fascinating and often insightful statements about the way God can speak through human writings, the significance of narrative (or the ‘story’ nature of the Bible), the role of the church in reading Scripture, and the kinds of methodologies that readers of Scripture could or should use to understand the text better.
But none of these summary statements included any mention of the Holy Spirit. Of course, none of the participants, when asked, denied that they believed in the Holy Spirit or that he had some relationship to Bible reading. Nevertheless, there was still something wrong here. Why was the Holy Spirit completely absent from the discussion? Maybe it was because deep down, we prefer to think that the work of reading, living and applying God’s word is nothing more than an exercise in human wisdom, human industriousness or communal reflection. All of these are, of course, involved in Bible reading. However, a true understanding and application of God’s word will always involve God himself, who opens our blind eyes and brings us to know and trust the Father and the Son. This is, in fact, one of the key works of the Spirit (e.g. Rom 8:5-7, 1 Cor 2:12-14, Eph 6:17, 1 Thess 1:5, 2 Tim 1:13-14). Sometimes a failure to speak meaningfully about the Holy Spirit while we are talking about our reading and application of God’s word might point to a deeper problem: our own arrogance before God’s revelation. This caused me to reflect on myself (as I do a PhD in biblical studies), and to admit that sometimes I’m guilty of this implicit attitude, and that I need to repent.
There might be other instances where silence about the Spirit points to a deeper problem. Another recent observation I’ve had about this significant silence about the Spirit is less directly relevant to this Sola Panel article (which is long enough as it is), so you can check it out on my own blog if you’d like to read further.
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On the Sola Panel:
I’d like to admit something to you. My admission isn’t particularly juicy or scandalous, but it’s an admission, nonetheless. The admission is this: I’m not honest enough with people when it comes to my sins. I don’t admit my sins to others often enough. The reason I don’t do it is pride, fear of what people will think, and general obliviousness to my own sin.
It’s true that God doesn’t require me to formally admit every individual sin to another human being in order to receive forgiveness. I certainly don’t need a special ‘priest’ to hear my sins. Because of Jesus’ perfect atoning death (1 John 2:1-2), all we ultimately need is to confess that we’re sinners before God: “If we confess our sins, [God] is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9). I can have full assurance of forgiveness through faith in Jesus Christ alone. So why do I think I should admit my sins more often to other people?
Firstly, it’s because even the verse I have quoted above appears in the context of Christian fellowship. 1 John isn’t written to isolated individuals; when he tells them to confess their sins, the Apostle John wrote to people who were together, striving to live in fellowship in God’s truth (1 John 1:7). We may confess some sins privately to God, but admitting our sins is also, to some extent, a communal thing.
Secondly, it’s because admitting our sins to one another enables people to pray for us and encourage us, which is good for our souls (Jas 5:16-20).
Thirdly, sometimes we actually need to ask another person directly to forgive us for a particular sin against that person. Admitting our sin to him or her is a crucial first step towards that important interpersonal forgiveness process (Luke 17:3-4; Eph 4:32; Col 3:13).
Fourthly, we are told to speak the truth in love to one another (Eph 4:15), and to have the word of Christ dwelling in us richly as we teach one another (Col 3:16). One key aspect of the word of Christ is that our sins are forgiven (Eph 1:7; Col 1:14, 2:13, 3:13). It would be strange to speak this word to one another “richly“ without ever admitting to times when we ourselves have sinned.
Fifthly, I have noticed that many (if not all) of the people I know who are faithful and ‘effective’ in the ministry of God’s word are people who are in the habit of occasionally admitting their own little sins and foibles to others—in public and private, describing how God has changed them. It helps their hearers to remember that Christ came into the world to save sinners (1 Tim 1:15), and to realize that what matters in the Christian life is progress in godliness, rather than unattainable perfection. Not only is admitting our sin to others a good way to stay humble as a leader, it’s also an act of leadership by example—particularly when it’s accompanied by obvious progress and growth in godliness (1 Tim 4:15-16). It helps people see how to admit their own sins and failures, and to repent and grow. Often admitting our own sin can be an act of love for others.
So I think I need to be more deliberate in speaking of my own sins and failures in my day-to-day conversations—my lack of patience, for example, or my lack of love, joy or kindness. My envy. My greed. It’s not that I should go around confessing every sin on every occasion, or that I ought to admit everything to every individual indiscriminately, or that I should pour out my deepest secrets to everyone I meet. But I reckon it would be a good idea to work on being more realistic and open about examples of where I fail—and where Jesus forgives me and changes me.
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From the Sola Panel:
One of Jesus’ most jarring statements occurs in the story of the Syrophoenician woman, Mark 7:24-27:
And from there [Jesus] arose and went away to the region of Tyre and Sidon. And he entered a house and did not want anyone to know, yet he could not be hidden. But immediately a woman whose little daughter had an unclean spirit heard of him and came and fell down at his feet. Now the woman was a Gentile, a Syrophoenician by birth. And she begged him to cast the demon out of her daughter. And he said to her, “Let the children be fed first, for it is not right to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs.”
This saying of Jesus, spoken as it is to a poor, vulnerable woman with a suffering, oppressed little girl, sounds uncharacteristically harsh. Not only does it seem to reflect a nationalistic, even racist, attitude to God’s blessing (God’s blessing is for his children, not for Syrophoenicians), it’s couched in the most derogatory terms imaginable. (When Jesus mentions “dogs”, he means dirty little mongrels, not adorable Labrador puppies.)
Jesus is, of course, reflecting a biblical pattern. The gospel is for the Jew first and then for the Greek (Rom 1:16), and at this stage in the unfolding plan of God before Jesus’ death and resurrection, the gospel had not yet been sent out to all nations (Matt 28:19-20). But not even that fact explains the severity of Jesus’ initial answer. At the very least, Jesus could have been a bit more sensitive! Isn’t Jesus’ Father the one who cares for the oppressed, the outsider and the vulnerable? What’s going on?
Some people have pointed out that there is an important Old Testament background element to this story. The woman isn’t just described as a Gentile; Mark is careful to tell us that she is a Syrophoenician, a resident of Tyre and Sidon. This should remind us of the time when the great prophet Elijah visited this very same area, provided bread for a desperately poor widow and then brought her son to life from the dead (1 Kgs 17:8-24). But if you compare Jesus with Elijah, it actually makes the problem worse: Jesus’ initial response to his Syrophoenician acquaintance is much more severe and insensitive than Elijah’s unhesitated willingness to provide bread for the widow and heal her son.
However, there was another very significant Syrophoenician woman in the life of Elijah: Jezebel. Jezebel was a Sidonian woman who had married Ahab, king of Israel. Ahab’s marriage to Jezebel was a significant factor in the apostasy and eventual downfall of his own royal house, and indeed, the entire nation of Israel. Through Jezebel, Baal worship was introduced to Israel (1 Kgs 16:31-33, 21:25-26). Jezebel was the driving force behind the wholesale slaughter of the prophets of God (1 Kgs 18:4, 13). Indeed, Jezebel tried to assassinate Elijah himself (1 Kgs 19:2). Jezebel arranged the cold-blooded murder of a man just to get hold of his property (1 Kgs 21:1-16). Finally, God’s word came through Elijah and predicted that dogs would come and eat Jezebel’s flesh (1 Kgs 21:23-24). Jezebel remained forevermore an object lesson for Israel of the disastrous consequences of consorting with the surrounding nations—especially those corrupt Sidonian Baal-worshippers.
So here in Mark 7, with these Old Testament stories in mind, what are we to think when this Syrophoenician woman approaches the king and teacher of Israel for help with a demon? Are we to recall immediately the vulnerable, poverty-stricken Sidonian widow of Elijah’s day, who was in desperate need of bread and life for her child? Or should we remember the oppressive, murderous, proud Sidonian woman Jezebel, who was committed to worshipping false gods, who was an enemy of God’s word, and who turned Israel and her king away from God?
Jesus’ answer is indeed harsh, but he is reflecting, in a nutshell, the tumultuous and ambiguous relationship between Israel and her idolatrous Syrophoenician neighbours. Bread and dogs: perhaps there is a question behind his statement—something like, “Well, your daughter has a demon, so what kind of Syrophoenician are you? Are you like the humble, desperate widow, or are you like the proud idol-worshipping Jezebel?”
In one sense, Jesus’ answer to the Syrophoenician woman is a way of righting the wrongs of Israel’s history. Through Jesus, we can see that God is blessing his people; no longer will Israel’s Sidonian enemies take the kingdom away from God’s children.
Yet there is more than that. For when we see the depth of the enmity between Israel and the Sidonians, which forms the backdrop to Jesus’ initial statement, we can understand the depth of the radical and gracious nature of God’s blessings through Jesus. When the Syrophoenician woman demonstrates that she is no Jezebel—when she admits her humility before Israel’s king and teacher—when she begs for mercy—we see that even a former enemy can receive the deliverance and blessing that belongs to God’s children:
But she answered him, “Yes, Lord; yet even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.” And he said to her, “For this statement you may go your way; the demon has left your daughter.” And she went home and found the child lying in bed and the demon gone. (Mark 7:28-30)
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On the Sola Panel:
In my previous post, I mentioned a powerful and dangerous combination:
A need in the world
+ an implication of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
This formula is like dynamite. Used properly, it has the power to move mountains. But unless it is handled with care, there is the potential for grave and even life-threatening danger.
The concept of ‘community’ is one example of the great power and also the great danger of this combination.
The need for human community is great in our world (or at least it’s perceived to be in the West). The fragmentation of families, the sense of dislocation and alienation in cities, the loneliness of city living, and the fact that so many elderly people die in their homes without being discovered for weeks—these are just some of the issues that touch the lives of so many of us. There is a great need felt by many people to connect, reach out, be included, belong and be part of a community (a village, a home, a network, a mini-micro-blogosphere, a ‘scene’).
Human community is also a necessary implication of the gospel of Jesus Christ. God himself is one God who is Father, Son and Spirit—three persons in perfect ‘community’. The Son himself, by coming into the world, giving up his life in love for us, dying for our sins, rising to the Father’s side, and pouring out his Spirit, brings us human beings into relationship with this God who himself exists in loving relationship (e.g. John 17:20-24). Because we participate through the gospel in the life of God, we ourselves must live in community with one another, following the way of Jesus Christ (e.g. John 15:9-17, 1 John 4:16-21, Phil 2:1-11). So community, fellowship, church (in the true biblical sense) is not just an optional extra to the Christian life; it is a necessary implication of the gospel itself. When we fail to pay due attention to the importance of encouraging and fostering community amongst our Christian brothers and sisters, we have failed to follow through on a fundamental implication of the gospel itself. I have to admit I have failed a number of times in this regard, and I’m sure I’m not alone.
‘Community’ is both a need in the world and an implication of the gospel. This is a powerful combination.
It’s not surprising, therefore, that churches who seek to focus on the fact that they are indeed a ‘community’ (as opposed to, say, an institution, or a building) will often enjoy great success. People who are seeking community may well find it at these churches—especially if the churches make consistent efforts to be outward-looking. How many conversion stories have you heard where a welcoming Christian community was a key element in a person coming to faith in Christ? You yourself may have such a testimony! Isn’t it a fantastic thing? Indeed, the ‘community’ idea is so powerful that many churches are choosing to name their churches after it: witness how many churches are abandoning their old names (with their references to long-dead Christian saints) in favour of the formula ‘X community church’.
But such positive power is also very dangerous. The danger is that we can be so swept away with the transformative power of human community that ‘community’ (especially as it is understood and longed-for by the world) actually becomes our gospel. If so, then little by little, if we are not careful, we may stop speaking about personal sin, personal judgement, substitutionary atonement, justification by faith in Christ, bodily resurrection, and so on, and prefer instead to concentrate more and more on concepts like togetherness, care, fellowship, welcoming, reaching out, transforming the community around us, and even love. The reason it’s so tempting to focus on these latter concepts is that they will always meet with warm approval, especially in a world that craves community. None of these latter concepts are wrong in themselves, of course. (How could anyone ever criticize ‘love’?!) But unless they are spoken and lived out in the context of the clear, biblical gospel message, they lose the meaning given to them by God himself, and instead become invested with the world’s ideas and ideals. In short, if we focus on the centrality of our ‘gospel community’, we are in danger of losing the gospel and ending up with a ‘community gospel’. And when this happens, people will be converted to the community, but not to Christ. This is where lives can be destroyed.
Of course, the fact that this danger exists isn’t a reason for us all to abandon our communities and run into the desert like hermits! Like dynamite, Christian community can and should be a powerful force for God’s glory. But we must guard against the danger of a ‘community gospel’—by constantly coming back and reminding each other of the gospel; by rooting ourselves deeply in God’s word as he himself has spoken it to us; by continually evaluating our actions, our speech and our fellowship in the light of that true gospel; and so on. Let’s keep making sure that the gospel defines our community, rather than our community defining our gospel.
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