Talk Four: Saved from the Wrath of God
Recently, a friend told me how annoyed he got when other Christians suggested that God was going to send people to hell. He was reacting to a sermon he had heard in which a Christian preacher said just that. My friend a Christian preacher himself said that it was unthinkable that a God of love would ever reject anyone. I don’t particularly like the idea of people being tormented forever in the fires of hell myself, but I asked my friend what he made of those passages in the Bible that suggested that one day God would judge the world. And what he made of the church’s teaching down the ages, which asserted that we would all one day have to give an account of ourselves to God?
The passages in the Bible, he said, were just the products of people who knew no better. They reflected a primitive worldview. Now we know better and understand God better. As for the Church’s teaching, well the Church had just got it wrong as it had got many things wrong in its history. God loved the world and the teaching of Jesus was that God welcomed everyone no matter who they were, where they came from, or what they did. The love of God would triumph in the end and everyone after death would meet a God who accepted them regardless of what their life on earth had been like.
At first sight, this is an attractive message. We all respond to the parable of the prodigal son in which the father forgives the son who had wasted his inheritance in riotous living. We like to think of God as a God of love who understands us and who is always there for us. And it is true, as my friend pointed out to me, that the God of some of the Church’s teaching in the past really wasn’t very nice, not someone you would want to spend much time with, and certainly not the rest of eternity. Why would God want to torture people?
And yet is the message that God will accept everyone regardless of what they have done really more attractive? It means, for example, that Hitler, Stalin, and Saddam Hussein will all be there to meet us when we get to heaven, alongside many other torturers and mass murderers. We may be happy with that idea, but most people do have a sense of justice. We believe that people should not be able to rape or murder without facing the courts and receiving a proper sentence. Many victims of crime, while not wanting revenge, nevertheless find some comfort, no matter how small, from knowing that the legal system will track down the person for the wrong that has been done against them and will punish them accordingly. Most of us feel that people need to be held to account if they commit, for example, genocide or war crimes. We do believe that there should be consequences for wrongdoing.
So why do we find it so difficult to accept that God is going to hold people to account for the way they have lived? One of the main accusations levelled against God is that he allows evil to continue in the world. The Christian response is that God respects human freedom, and evil in our world is one of the consequences of that freedom, but one day God will put everything right.
How, though, is ignoring what people have done and not holding them to account in any way at all putting things right? We demand temporal justice for crimes committed in our society. Surely there must be eternal justice as well?
Yes, Christians have, at times, focused inappropriately on the idea of heaven and hell and eternal judgement. God has not seemed very nice or attractive. But to get rid of the idea of justice altogether makes him seem indifferent and unbothered by wickedness and sin. The message of Easter is that God will one day judge the world by the One he has raised from the dead and that all will appear before him. There will, indeed, be eternal justice. For those who belong to Christ, there is no fear for the One who will be their judge also died for them as their Saviour and freely forgives and accepts all who turn to him.
It is him who saves us from the wrath to come.
Showing posts with label Idolatry. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Idolatry. Show all posts
Saturday, April 21, 2007
Monday, April 16, 2007
Talk 3: Raised from the Dead
First, we had the Da Vinci Code, which claimed that Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene, fathered a daughter by her, and that Mary escaped with the daughter to France where she established a royal blood-line. We were told by author Dan Brown that all this was carefully researched and based on established historical fact. There was no difficulty showing people how ludicrous these claims were, although it took rather a long time to do it. Recently, we have had the claim, on the Discovery Channel no less, that the tomb of Jesus has been found, and he had been buried with Mary Magdalene and his son together with other family members in Jerusalem. Fortunately, there was not only no difficulty showing how ludicrous these claims were, it also took rather less time. It would seem that a Mary Magdalene who escaped alive from Jerusalem with a daughter was more attractive to the public than a dead one with a son!
Why do people, often intelligent people, insist on making these claims and why are so many people interested and taken in by them? Well, there is money to be made and publicity to be had for one thing. Jesus still haunts our culture and people are still fascinated by him even if they do not want to worship him or follow him. They may have lost interest in the Church, but there remains a residual interest in Jesus.
We are also frightened by him. For if the Gospel writers are to be believed, this Jesus was no mere mortal. He was the divine Son of God sent by God to a world that had lost sight of its creator and had fallen into error and idolatry. The Gospels claim he was not just another teacher, prophet, or leader, but the way the truth and the life. The One who was sent to save us from the mess we had made of things through our stupidity and wrongdoing.
But that would mean admitting that we are not nearly so clever as we like to think we are, that as a human race we had got it terribly wrong and needed help. As any counsellor will tell you it can be very hard to get people who need help to admit it. We are proud people and like to think we need no help. We hide our need for help from even ourselves. So we try to domesticate Jesus. We can’t simply ignore him: his call is too persistent and his personality too compelling.
So we say he was a good man nothing more. Or a prophet who certainly said many true things. Or a teacher who shows us how to live and to be kind to one another. A leader of a large religion certainly, but not the divine son of God. And definitely not the One on whom our salvation depends.
The Bible, however, is less concerned with Jesus’ life and far more concerned with his death. His death, the Biblical writers tell us, is the key to understanding his meaning and significance for everyone not just those who followed him or heard him during his lifetime. His death, they say, was the cure for our blindness and foolishness that led us to reject our Creator and pursue behaviour that was damaging to us, to others, and to the creation around us. This was God’s answer to our sin and rebellion.
How did they know? Because, they said, God had raised Jesus from the dead. The central question then for us is did he? Christians proclaim at this time of the year that he did. That Jesus Christ is alive today, that the Lord is risen indeed. God showed who Jesus was by raising him from the dead and making him the Lord of life so that all who turn to him find the life they long for.
Why do people want to focus on theories that suggest that Jesus was just another ordinary man? Why we are so entranced by them in a way we would not normally be with such fanciful theories? Is it because we want to avoid the challenge of facing up to the possibility that Jesus really is alive? Are we afraid that his resurrection raises questions not only about how we see the world and live in it, but about our own relationship with God as well. Is the truth just too hard for us to face? Millions have found that by having the courage to face it, they discover that not only is Jesus alive, but that in him they can find life as well.
First, we had the Da Vinci Code, which claimed that Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene, fathered a daughter by her, and that Mary escaped with the daughter to France where she established a royal blood-line. We were told by author Dan Brown that all this was carefully researched and based on established historical fact. There was no difficulty showing people how ludicrous these claims were, although it took rather a long time to do it. Recently, we have had the claim, on the Discovery Channel no less, that the tomb of Jesus has been found, and he had been buried with Mary Magdalene and his son together with other family members in Jerusalem. Fortunately, there was not only no difficulty showing how ludicrous these claims were, it also took rather less time. It would seem that a Mary Magdalene who escaped alive from Jerusalem with a daughter was more attractive to the public than a dead one with a son!
Why do people, often intelligent people, insist on making these claims and why are so many people interested and taken in by them? Well, there is money to be made and publicity to be had for one thing. Jesus still haunts our culture and people are still fascinated by him even if they do not want to worship him or follow him. They may have lost interest in the Church, but there remains a residual interest in Jesus.
We are also frightened by him. For if the Gospel writers are to be believed, this Jesus was no mere mortal. He was the divine Son of God sent by God to a world that had lost sight of its creator and had fallen into error and idolatry. The Gospels claim he was not just another teacher, prophet, or leader, but the way the truth and the life. The One who was sent to save us from the mess we had made of things through our stupidity and wrongdoing.
But that would mean admitting that we are not nearly so clever as we like to think we are, that as a human race we had got it terribly wrong and needed help. As any counsellor will tell you it can be very hard to get people who need help to admit it. We are proud people and like to think we need no help. We hide our need for help from even ourselves. So we try to domesticate Jesus. We can’t simply ignore him: his call is too persistent and his personality too compelling.
So we say he was a good man nothing more. Or a prophet who certainly said many true things. Or a teacher who shows us how to live and to be kind to one another. A leader of a large religion certainly, but not the divine son of God. And definitely not the One on whom our salvation depends.
The Bible, however, is less concerned with Jesus’ life and far more concerned with his death. His death, the Biblical writers tell us, is the key to understanding his meaning and significance for everyone not just those who followed him or heard him during his lifetime. His death, they say, was the cure for our blindness and foolishness that led us to reject our Creator and pursue behaviour that was damaging to us, to others, and to the creation around us. This was God’s answer to our sin and rebellion.
How did they know? Because, they said, God had raised Jesus from the dead. The central question then for us is did he? Christians proclaim at this time of the year that he did. That Jesus Christ is alive today, that the Lord is risen indeed. God showed who Jesus was by raising him from the dead and making him the Lord of life so that all who turn to him find the life they long for.
Why do people want to focus on theories that suggest that Jesus was just another ordinary man? Why we are so entranced by them in a way we would not normally be with such fanciful theories? Is it because we want to avoid the challenge of facing up to the possibility that Jesus really is alive? Are we afraid that his resurrection raises questions not only about how we see the world and live in it, but about our own relationship with God as well. Is the truth just too hard for us to face? Millions have found that by having the courage to face it, they discover that not only is Jesus alive, but that in him they can find life as well.
Thursday, April 05, 2007
Happy Easter!
Here is the second in the series of talks.
I hope you all have a very good weekend. It is all about to start in earnest here with the Maundy Thursday Supper! I know many of you will be very busy indeed. Don't get too tired!
Talk Two: Modern Day Idolatry
Idolatry, that is the worship of idols or images, was just a normal part of everyday life in the ancient world at the time of the New Testament. The Jews rejected it, but they were a comparatively small minority who kept themselves to themselves. The Christians, however, saw it as their task to tell the world about the living and true God, who they believed had created everyone. We are all his offspring, they told people, and ‘in him we live and move and have our being’ - whether we realize it or not.
The images and idols that people worshipped were just substitutes for the real thing; substitutes, which turned out to be no substitute at all. We adopted them when we stopped thinking clearly and fell into error. Today we pat ourselves on the back that we do not worship images as such any more. We don’t have pagan temples at the heart of our cities and sacrifices to pagan gods are not part of the daily routine of city life.
Paul, I think would not see our position quite so positively. He believed that images and idolatry were what came after worship of the living and true God had been abandoned. It was, if you like, the next step down the ladder. At least, however, the pagans with their idols were reaching out in search of something. They knew that this world is not all that there is and that there is a spiritual reality beyond us, a reality every bit as real as the physical world we inhabit. Paul thought that their foolish minds had become darkened so that they could not see the truth, but at least they saw that there was truth to search for.
We have gone one step further down the ladder. Not only have we been foolish, we have become total fools. We now deny the evidence of our own eyes and pretend that there is no spiritual reality. We even act as if this foolishness is cleverness. But still we need something to take the place of the God and the reality we deny. Instead now of making gods of things in the world around us we have made gods of our physical appetites and desires, we have internalised our idolatry, but idolatry it still is. Worship is not simply about where we go to sacrifice. It is about the whole of our lives. About the values we live by and what we consider to be important.
We pursue money, career, ambition and status. Sex, pleasure, and possessions are given a significance that it is hard for them to bear. Our new shrines are the malls and arcades where we try to blot out the feeling that there must be more to life than what we can buy, eat, drink or experience. The consequences of our lifestyles and the effects of our new idolatry are there for all to see no less than was the idolatry of Athens when Paul visited it. Drunkenness, obesity, debt, disease, family breakdown and social disintegration are all the consequences of the new idolatry.
The Bible calls us to return to our right minds. To see that the denial of God and the rejection of spiritual reality rather than being a sign of intelligence and progress is rather an irrational rejection of the evidence of the world around us. It is the fool who says in his heart that there is no god and living without god brings only pain, sadness, and loneliness.
The time has come to tear down our altars and to return to the living and true God, who alone can bring peace, purpose and fulfilment.
How are we to find this God? The message of Easter is that he is revealed not in the writings of the philosophers and intellectuals, not in the experiments and discoveries of the scientist and scholars, nor in the sayings of the wise and famous, rather he is revealed in the person nailed to a Cross. In the same way that we rejected knowledge of our Creator in favour of first the image and the idol, and then of our appetites and desires so we rejected the One who came to reveal that Creator to us and to call us back to the living and true God, who alone can satisfy our deepest needs and longings. But still God waits for us and in Christ offers us the chance to know him once again.
Here is the second in the series of talks.
I hope you all have a very good weekend. It is all about to start in earnest here with the Maundy Thursday Supper! I know many of you will be very busy indeed. Don't get too tired!
Talk Two: Modern Day Idolatry
Idolatry, that is the worship of idols or images, was just a normal part of everyday life in the ancient world at the time of the New Testament. The Jews rejected it, but they were a comparatively small minority who kept themselves to themselves. The Christians, however, saw it as their task to tell the world about the living and true God, who they believed had created everyone. We are all his offspring, they told people, and ‘in him we live and move and have our being’ - whether we realize it or not.
The images and idols that people worshipped were just substitutes for the real thing; substitutes, which turned out to be no substitute at all. We adopted them when we stopped thinking clearly and fell into error. Today we pat ourselves on the back that we do not worship images as such any more. We don’t have pagan temples at the heart of our cities and sacrifices to pagan gods are not part of the daily routine of city life.
Paul, I think would not see our position quite so positively. He believed that images and idolatry were what came after worship of the living and true God had been abandoned. It was, if you like, the next step down the ladder. At least, however, the pagans with their idols were reaching out in search of something. They knew that this world is not all that there is and that there is a spiritual reality beyond us, a reality every bit as real as the physical world we inhabit. Paul thought that their foolish minds had become darkened so that they could not see the truth, but at least they saw that there was truth to search for.
We have gone one step further down the ladder. Not only have we been foolish, we have become total fools. We now deny the evidence of our own eyes and pretend that there is no spiritual reality. We even act as if this foolishness is cleverness. But still we need something to take the place of the God and the reality we deny. Instead now of making gods of things in the world around us we have made gods of our physical appetites and desires, we have internalised our idolatry, but idolatry it still is. Worship is not simply about where we go to sacrifice. It is about the whole of our lives. About the values we live by and what we consider to be important.
We pursue money, career, ambition and status. Sex, pleasure, and possessions are given a significance that it is hard for them to bear. Our new shrines are the malls and arcades where we try to blot out the feeling that there must be more to life than what we can buy, eat, drink or experience. The consequences of our lifestyles and the effects of our new idolatry are there for all to see no less than was the idolatry of Athens when Paul visited it. Drunkenness, obesity, debt, disease, family breakdown and social disintegration are all the consequences of the new idolatry.
The Bible calls us to return to our right minds. To see that the denial of God and the rejection of spiritual reality rather than being a sign of intelligence and progress is rather an irrational rejection of the evidence of the world around us. It is the fool who says in his heart that there is no god and living without god brings only pain, sadness, and loneliness.
The time has come to tear down our altars and to return to the living and true God, who alone can bring peace, purpose and fulfilment.
How are we to find this God? The message of Easter is that he is revealed not in the writings of the philosophers and intellectuals, not in the experiments and discoveries of the scientist and scholars, nor in the sayings of the wise and famous, rather he is revealed in the person nailed to a Cross. In the same way that we rejected knowledge of our Creator in favour of first the image and the idol, and then of our appetites and desires so we rejected the One who came to reveal that Creator to us and to call us back to the living and true God, who alone can satisfy our deepest needs and longings. But still God waits for us and in Christ offers us the chance to know him once again.
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