A Flawed Historical Viewpoint.

The state of the western political world today:

 

1. USA and Donald Trump (does any more need to be said?)
2. Britain: Brexit, Theresa May and a hung Parliament.
3. In Australia, partisan politics continues to cripple a government that often seems to have more policy disagreements within its own ranks than it has with the official opposition party.
4. France: power to be in the hands of a new, untested, quickly cobbled together party based on the charisma of a young leader. Can such a party provide longstanding stable government?
5. German elections in September… what surprises could that bring?

 

Some religious commentators are attributing the increasing instabilities in the “Western World” to a departure from our historical Judeo-Christian foundations; but I find their view of history is seriously flawed.

What kind of “Judeo-Christian” foundation was “Western democracy” ever built upon? Has there ever (REALLY) been an all-encompassing embracing of Jesus or His gospel?

 

Over over centuries there was a lot of religious superstition, theological rhetoric, and political USE of the Church as a tool of government.

And while there may have been individual pockets of society that at times have shown authentic devotion to God, has there ever been a GENUINE widespread, long-lasting commitment to Jesus and His Kingdom that could result in a claimed blessing of “the West” over past centuries – blessings that are now allegedly being forfeited?

 

If anything, it seems to me that during the period AFTER the claimed abandonment of Judeo-Christian ideals, the west experienced its most peaceful and prosperous period: that is post WWII.

Of course there were ongoing problems, but arguably, things had never previously been better for the average person in the west as the world got back to its feet after the death and destruction of the Second World War.

It’s mostly in the last decade or two (significantly post 9/11) that perceived threats have led to growing fear that blessings (our comforts, safety and wealth) will be forfeited due to a casting aside of Judeo-Christian” ideals. (Proffered evidence of this casting aside can date back a century or two. One case I’ve seen points way back to the French Revolution* as an example!).

Those fears of loss at the heart of the argument seem mostly founded on a fear of others – those “not of the west” . A fear that others coming into our nations will disrupt and compromise our “western values” – values that to a great part are not necessarily Kingdom values anyway.

 

Apart from the current issue of promoting a fear-based ideology, the fictionalising of history projects the cause of perceived problems onto society at large, putting the blame on “THEM” and THEIR (society’s) relationship to God; shifting the focus away from the personal and our own relationships with God and the unbelieving society we live among.

 

 

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*  example here

 

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Radicalisation Environment part 2. (Westernism)

People often don’t want to hear of  things that might complicate the simplicity of the environment they’ve created around themselves, and they shelter behind walls of ideological insularity.

 

Insularity can blind us to the truth – to reality.

An insular environment can create its own “truth” – making sense of a chosen reality in a way that wouldn’t be possible if we took the time to look beyond the exclusion barriers we’ve erected. In a previous post something very like this kind of situation was termed a “radicalisation environment”, a term initially coined and applied to a situation among some young Muslim men.

 

In many ways “western” Christian experience has been built within an insular exclusion zone (its own type of “radicalisation environment), keeping other cultures at bay, even non-western Christians, and holding to a sense of “specialness”. We have viewed western society and culture as being particularly blessed by God; western comforts and prosperity being the outcome of a “Judeo-Christian” heritage. Effectively, blessings gained because of assumed historical national characteristics more than an ongoing personal connection to God.

I often wonder about the truth of those assumed “blessings”.

 

…others, like seed sown among thorns, hear the word; but the worries of this life, the deceitfulness of wealth and the desires for other things come in and choke the word, making it unfruitful.

 

Modern Western Christianity has been relatively safe and mostly free from the kind of hardship we read about in other nations. Our experience of “Persecution” has mostly been no worse than verbal abuse, or being sidelined by general society. It rarely involves imprisonment, torture or murder as it does elsewhere in the world.

In the west Christian faith has been shaped to make it compatible with western values. When challenges to our perceived blessings arise, the blame is placed on a societal shifting from that Judeo-Christian heritage, and we lament the risk of losing those “blessings”.

 

Popular Western doctrines have their foundation in the kind of thinking that sees western comfort and prosperity as a God-given right. Doctrines like: a pre-tribulation rapture to remove the church from earth before bad things happen. Or prosperity doctrines that promise earthly riches and lives of comfort here and now.

 

Instead of Christianity changing western society, it has increasingly BEEN changed to become a westernised religion quite separated from its origins in the Middle East and increasingly distanced from the experience of non-western believers in places of hardship where reports of revival are increasingly common.

 

Sadly, Western Christians seem to identify much more closely with their secular nation’s interests and their unbelieving compatriots than they do with fellow believers from different countries and cultural backgrounds, and they seem to go to great lengths to protect those national interests, even when there is potential for those interests to be at odds with the Kingdom of God.  *

 

You say, ‘I am rich; I have acquired wealth and do not need a thing.’ But you do not realise that you are wretched, pitiful, poor, blind and naked.

___________________

 

* see here:
https://onesimusfiles.wordpress.com/2017/06/08/the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly-attitudes-displayed-not-necessarily-in-that-order/

Compare the message of the video with the message in the preceding quote from the other blog.

A Few Thought About Recent Events

 

Yet another terrorist attack in the west, and who knows how many more outside of western interests where these things are not as rare or infrequent as they are closer to home? (At least one in Indonesia reported today 25th May)

And not unexpectedly, the murderer was a deranged Muslim extremist expecting to get fast-tracked to paradise. Imagine the disappointment on arriving at his eternal destination.

the cowardly, the unbelieving, the vile, the murderers, the sexually immoral, those who practice magic arts, the idolaters and all liars—they will be consigned to the fiery lake of burning sulfur. (Rev 21)

I can see at least two of those labels are clearly relevant to that deluded young man (cowardly and murderer) and possibly more.

 

At these times debates always arise about the nature of Islam. There are inevitable contradictory contrasts presented, with some declaring Islam a religion of peace, others that it’s a religion of violence and hatred.
While arguments fly, with people taking one side or the other, equally valid arguments could probably be made for both views.

 

Firstly, most Muslims are probably no less peace loving, peace desiring than the majority of non-Muslims. They just want to get on with their lives, taking care of their families in safety and security. They are Muslims because they were born into a Muslim family and follow the rituals and practices they’ve been taught. There would be little difference between them and their attitudes and those of most western “Christians”, except the Muslim often has a much more developed daily awareness of their god than the majority of westerners (even church goers) and are often far more devoted to their beliefs than a great number of professing Christians. And remember, it is only in recent decades that the Muslims among us have become targets of suspicion. Previously they lived  among us with little cause for concern, and Christians need to resist  demonising the people no matter how we view the religion they’ve been brought up to follow.

 

Moving to the other side of the argument, we only have to look at those nations where Islam dominates and see how it affects their laws, their governments and the lives of their people. Those nations include some of the most openly brutal and intolerant in the world, often responding to perceived lawbreakers with violent punishments, and dealing harshly with those alleged to have been insulting to Islam. All of that is justified by appeal to Islamic teaching.
Those who insist on portraying Islam as violent need only to point to those nations, and also highlight those parts of the Koran that justify the harshness in those nations – the parts that teach intolerance for and retribution against “the infidel” (or non-Muslim) and the lawbreaker. And parts of the Koran can make that an easy argument to prosecute. It is to this view of Islam that the terrorists belong, seeking to bring down those outside of their particular religious view of the world.

 

However is pointing out Koranic violence the wisest argument for Christians to make, when it is equally easy to turn the accusatory finger to point the other way?
The Bible itself isn’t free of violence commanded by God. God given Law also demands lethal and violent punishment (some punishments the same as in the Koran, which partially draws on the older scriptural writings that preceded it).
It can be non-productive and unhelpful, to make arguments against Islam citing violent instruction in the Koran, that can equally be levelled against Christianity and Judaism through citing the old and New Testaments.

 

So is there any difference? Are Judaism and Christianity any less condemnable that Islam for having violence at their heart (as provable from the evidence of their holy writings)?

I say there is a difference.
The unfolding message of the Bible is different. There is an ongoing purposeful development throughout. The Bible presents a history of God’s relationship to mankind, showing where we came from, through to God’s ultimate purpose for us.
The Bible starts with God’s creation of the universe and the planet where we live, and how he populated it with an incredible variety of living things, culminating in man and woman.
It tells of how His perfect creation was tainted by the introduction of sin (rebellion) and continues with an unfolding account of God’s means of restoring the relationship between God and man that was lost through that initial rebellion.

 

The violent events recorded in scripture fall within the context of that developing history of fallen mankind struggling with a Holy God of perfect justice. A history that continues to unfold, heading towards a complete renewing of creation. In fact a totally new creation where only righteousness can dwell, a creation free of the hatred and violence that became the inevitable result of man’s rebellion against God.
It will be a new creation, a new heavens and earth populated only by those who have chosen to be willing followers of God through the gift given via His Son Jesus.

 

And that is the difference I see – that there’s an end purpose; GOD’s purpose, where the continuing cycle of men’s violence and other corrupt actions are stamped out, and God’s ways become man’s ways.

 

There’s a reason why we are told that the enemies we face aren’t flesh and blood. That we don’t wage war as the world does. And yet Christians often go against that instruction and put hope and trust in, and support, man’s violent military solutions to the evils of groups like ISIS, Al Qaeda, and their blind foolish followers. Support that can take on a misplaced patriotic fervour. Support for military action often conducted against relatively small groups who have established themselves in poor, vulnerable and insecure nations, or nations MADE insecure by earlier military action. Military action that exacerbates the problem and supercharges the recruitment drive of the enemy “we” are intended to defeat, to the extent that it’s “our” purpose that is defeated and not the enemy “we’ve” been fighting.

 

And while they turn their military might against the nations unwillingly harbouring terrorists – our governments continue to align themselves with gulf state sheikdoms, particularly Saudi Arabia, home and supporter of extremist Islam; who have thrown hundreds of billions of dollars into exporting the extremists Islamist ideologies that we allegedly want to destroy.

And why is that the case?
Indian researcher Professor Brah-ma Chellaney of the Centre for Policy Research in New Delhi says:

“Money is the main reason why the United States in particular is unwilling to break its longstanding alliance with the gulf sheikdoms.”
(http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/breakfast/saudi-arabia-responsible-for-worlds-terrorist-ideology/8553832 )

 

As the title of this article says, this post expresses a FEW thoughts about recent events.
There’s probably a lot more that could be said to add to the topics I’ve touched upon. Some of the subject matter is far more complex than many people like to think, and therefore I’m not sure whether I’ve clearly expressed some of the things I wanted to say. I just hope I’ve made enough sense to take a glimpse beyond the glib political and religious rhetoric we tend to be bombarded with through various mass media, so we can avoid the same feelings and expressions of hatred that we accuse others of harbouring.

Stephen Fry and “blasphemy”

I saw an article this morning: “Stephen Fry investigated by Irish police for alleged blasphemy” * and thought it appropriate to draw attention to two articles I posted in 2015 after Fry had made similar rants.

https://onesimusfiles.wordpress.com/2015/02/09/self-aggrandising-foolishness-from-stephen-fry/

https://onesimusfiles.wordpress.com/2015/02/10/the-calvinistic-athiests-attitude-to-god/

Personally I ‘m opposed to blasphemy laws. God is more than capable of facing the rants and ravings of wilfully ignorant fools.

 

A little while, and the wicked will be no more;
though you look for them, they will not be found.

But the meek will inherit the land
and enjoy peace and prosperity.
The wicked plot against the righteous
and gnash their teeth at them;

but the Lord laughs at the wicked,
for he knows their day is coming.

 

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* https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2017/may/07/stephen-fry-investigated-by-irish-police-for-alleged-blasphemy

Luck. Blessing. Desire for truth

In a discussion with a friend about the state of the world, he said how lucky we were to have Jesus in our lives. I agree totally, also realising how difficult it can be to express that sentiment without using problematic terms like “luck”.

It could be avoided by replacing it with “blessed”, but I’ve also come to see that word overused and misapplied, to the extent that it dilutes understanding of what GENUINE blessings are.

Previously I’ve commented on the way that in affluent societies, so many of the things we designate as “blessings” may very well be thorns and weeds that choke the fruitfulness of God’s word out of our lives (see Mark 4) Our idea of blessing may differ significantly from God’s.

The idea of “luck” suggests chance or even worse, chance combined with “predestination” – as if we were fortunate to have our names pulled out of God’s salvation lottery hat, a very simplistic view that far too many people (like Calvinists) believe (though they probably wouldn’t like the way I described that belief).

It seems clear that there ARE so many seemingly “lucky”, random aspects to salvation and our response to it, including:

1) The religious culture of where we are born and raised.

2) Our parents’ attitudes to that religious culture.

3) The non-parental influences we face as we grow up

4) Personal experience and how we respond to it.

5) The availability of the gospel.

6) Our “mood” if and when we hear the gospel.

7) The quality of teaching and encouragement we receive after responding to the gospel.

It seems like some people can be more advantaged than others, to the extent that it doesn’t seem fair for those who don’t have the advantage of free access to the gospel.

In the past I’ve come across people who ask about the fate of those in other countries where Christianity is suppressed or absent in some other way; where conditions like those mentioned above are rarely favourable. That scenario is raised in a way that questions the validity of the gospel, because surely there’s no justice in someone’s eternal fate being dependant on their response to a message they never hear.

Some time ago I came to the conclusion that the key is a person’s desire for truth and that God WILL get the gospel to ANYONE who has a genuine desire for truth wherever they are, no matter what obstacles there seems to be.

And maybe there’s another perspective to consider. Should we recognise the “disadvantage” of having too much access to the gospel where the gospel seems to be freely available to all?
In that latter scenario it can be too easy for compromised messages and diluted gospels that aren’t really THE gospel to be adopted.

But again I see it is all dependent on a person’s genuine desire for the truth. It is that desire, and the integrity of an individual’s search for truth that makes the difference and ultimately protects him/her from the risk of false religions of all kinds, including secular/political alternatives such as nationalism.

Déjà Vu: 1914 or 2017?

I’m reading A Hobbit, a Wardrobe, and a Great War by Joseph Loconte. It is one of several books I’ve read about WWI and its origins over the past couple of years. Some of what I’m reading about the spiritual conditions leading into (and through) the First World War seem disturbingly familiar. Some of the specifics may have changed, but the general spirit of those conditions is unmistakably in the world again today; disguised to a degree – but with a flimsy mask.

The alliance of church and state allowed the secular goals of government to get mixed up with the spiritual goals of Christianity.

Add to this the rise of the most potent political ideology of the hour: nationalism. The nation-state was replacing religion as a powerful source of meaning and identity in people’s lives…
…For devoted nationalists, their patriotic faith was equivalent to membership in an alternative church. For religious believers, nationalism offered a grandiose political outlet for their faith commitments. The result was the birth of Christian nationalism , the near sanctification of the modern state.

Believing God?

I suspect the Lord tailors his teaching to our different capabilities of learning. But while the way we learn may be unique to each individual, the overall intent of the lesson will always be the same: an understanding that conforms to God’s nature and purposes that can be confirmed through a proper addressing of scripture.
But the intended outcome is never knowledge for the sake of knowledge, but deeper relationship with Him and others.

Throughout my Christian life I’ve learned a lot through experience, making a lot of mistakes and taking many wrong paths before stepping back to consider why things went so unexpectedly wrong.
Perhaps out of that, the most important thing the Lord has opened up to me is the need to test everything. What Paul wrote with regard to prophecy can be applied to all areas of revelation and learning: “Test all things; hold fast what is good. Abstain from every form of evil”.
It’s very easy to be attracted by something “good” and then fall for something “evil” – IF we bypass the testing.

I think back around 30 years ago when I was hooked by word of faith teaching. The thing that caught my attention and drew me in was a LEGITIMATE understanding of faith.
A group of friends were bombarding me with arguments recommending the Copelands’ WOF teachings, and in the process (despite their arguments rather than because of them – and I wish I’d realised that at the time) I finally understood something about faith that took it out of the realm of wishful thinking and to a place of greater certainty.

I suddenly saw that Christian faith was simply believing God and His word even when sensory and intellectual evidence seemed to be “proving” something else.

That was the good and if I’d stopped there and studied the Word for myself I might have avoided the bad: a lot of false teaching that took me in a wrong direction. But instead of searching the scriptures for myself to develop my understanding, I searched the Copeland’s teachings and relied on the particular spin THEY placed on the “faith message”.

What I find disappointing now is that I could see that a large portion of their teaching was (at best) questionable, but I pushed my reservations aside.

I can now recognise that by taking that path I wasn’t really believing God and His word, (as per that revealed understanding of faith) I was “believing” what Copeland told me ABOUT God’s word, without actually checking it out for myself to see if he was addressing it correctly, according to its intended context.

I said above that Christian faith is simply believing God and His word. Yes it IS as simple as that. But what is not necessarily so simple is being sure that it is REALLY God and His Word that we are believing. It is extremely easy to pick up wrong ideas that create a distorted understanding of God, and that is where so much of WOF teaching is in error. Its view of God and his purposes are created out of selected parts of scripture, usually applied with no consideration for the intended context of those scripture portions.

It is essential that we develop an overview – an understanding of the broad scope of scripture, and not be satisfied with bits and pieces that seem to support what we want to believe.

Ambition

I can only remember having two ambitions when I was growing up. The first was to become a Beatle.
The group’s early hit “She Loves You” was a big favourite of mine as a six year old.

The second was to be a script writer.
In the latter years of primary school I regularly wrote short scripts to be acted in class, most of which were rewritings of TV shows or films I’d recently seen. Thanks to a visiting student teacher, some of them even made it the “stage” in front of the class.

Neither of those career ambitions was fulfilled.

Sadly John, Paul George and Ringo split up before they could add me as a fifth member of their group, and my writing ambition got lost somewhere on the road of practicality.
I suppose my upbringing didn’t prepare me to take the risks that would have been needed to become a writer. I could only see a similar path as the one taken by my parents: get a secure job, get married, have a family. A writing career wouldn’t easily fit into that scenario, and more importantly, I was never disciplined enough to make it fit.

From my early 20s onwards, another complication came into my life: committed church involvement.
I even gave up a Personnel Management course at college because it clashed with mid-week church meetings
That effectively killed a career direction I could have had, but sparked a desire to be a professional minister.

While I knew I didn’t have the temperament to be a pastor, the idea of being a “professional” preacher was very appealing. Despite a long standing fear of public speaking, I loved having occasional opportunities to preach and for the first time I felt comfortable speaking to a large group.

Thankfully God pulled the rug from under my misplaced feet, with the resulting shakeup eventually leading me to recognise the gulf between my experience within the church system and a biblically compatible life of discipleship.

Now isn’t THAT is an ambition we should all have?
To live a biblically compatible life of discipleship!

When I look at what that REALLY means, it seems like the Beatles and scriptwriter paths might have been easier options – but then I need to remind myself that it’s not an ambition I, or any of us, need to face alone.
HE works WITH us.

“…work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you to will and to act in order to fulfil his good purpose.”

(We work out and He will work in).

God’s Word and Correction

I’m not convinced of the value of expressing beliefs through lists of “supporting” scriptures. To me it seems more like an exercise in concordance use than anything resembling an understanding of scripture.
It’s something I’ve chosen to avoid doing for some time – although far too often I can still be tempted to take a shortcut by using a search engine to find a verse to support what I want to say. However, most of the time when I do that I find the reference I sought doesn’t really give the support I’d hoped it would. Context can be very inconvenient at times, showing that “memory verses” can be very misleading.

Some people seem to think that if they give you a long enough list of scriptures, then the verses provided will make the validity of their point of view obvious – sometimes they think they don’t even need to express their point of view, assuming that the scriptures alone will make their understanding of truth evident (at least to those who are spiritually minded). But can a truth be made evident through a list of verses tracked down through a concordance or search-engine: a list presented with little attention given to what those verses are ACTUALLY saying within their intended biblical context?

Recently I read the following statement: “if any[one] wants to correct anything, just do it with scriptures, let God’s word bring the correction” .
But what exactly is meant by that? Is correction administered through providing a longer list of proof verses than the one “needing” correction can compile? Or is it a matter of duelling with those texts until a participant is beaten into submission by superior firepower?

Scripture is an essential God-inspired resource, but it can be misused.
It is very easy to find individual parts of the Bible to support almost any idea that man can create. Therefore it is also very easy to “correct” anything that contradicts our own ideas by seeking out a favourable collection of bible statements.
While there is a significant lack of respect for scripture across broad sections of Christendom, the opposite approach, making scripture the prime focus, is no less prone to leading to error. So, in using scripture to prove a point can we actually be missing the point?
In using it primarily as a tool to support or refute theological arguments are we missing the revelation of God that’s at its heart.

Instead of trying to shape our Christian life and beliefs according to isolated “texts” from scripture, maybe we should look more to the Person revealed throughout all of scripture, and see how we relate to Him, His character and His ongoing plans for His creation.

Not Really About Hats or Hair Length…(or Burquas)

This morning I came across the following thoughts, posted to my blog almost two years ago. It’s possibly the kind of article that is liable to provoke knee-jerk responses if not read carefully. There’s a reason for the title

Not Really About Hats or Hair Length…

[A] cessationist friend said something that has made me think.

I had made the point that scripture makes it clear that Spiritual gifts were given to the church, but nowhere does it make it clear that those gifts would be withdrawn within less than a century (or even in subsequent centuries).

She made the comparison with what scripture says about womens’ head coverings and hair length. Should we consider THEY are still necessary because scripture doesn’t mention a withdrawal of that requirement?

While that may initially seem to be a valid point, it made me think a little about the reason women no longer wear head coverings in church and how long they haven’t been doing it.
Is it a changed requirement from God’s point of view or is it more a matter of quite recent changes in western fashion?

Until maybe the mid-20th century (or a little earlier) it wouldn’t have been an issue at all because it was common for women to wear hats; and in non-western cultures head coverings of various types are still normal attire for women.

I’m not intending this as a campaign to return hats to the heads of church attending women, it’s not really an issue that I’ve thought to be important and I’ve not looked at what scripture DOES say about it, but it made me think of how easily our understanding of spiritual issues can be changed by the world’s trends or our observations of the world, and then become accepted as spiritual “normality”.

Two years ago I wrote those few paragraphs to encourage thought on the extent that our ideas about acceptability and normality can often be formed more by the secular culture around us than by Godly standards.
My thoughts were brought back to the idea behind this article last weekend when I saw a Moslem woman wearing the full covering that left only her eyes exposed.

In the west many (even Christians) find that kind of clothing more confronting and less acceptable than some of the often revealing apparel commonly seen in Western society.

As the Moslem woman walked by, I was hit by the question of which dress style more closely conformed to the standards of modesty addressed in scripture.
Now again I’m NOT advocating compulsory head wear or hair length, or suggesting that Christian women turn to Moslem dress styles. I AM suggesting that its maybe time to consider the extent to which our understanding and attitudes have been shaped more by the secular culture around us than by God’s standards revealed through scripture.

And could I once again make it absolutely clear that what I’ve written here is Not Really About Hats or Hair Length…(or Burquas).