Bleats From the Pen

As artificial intelligence (AI) continues to evolve and impact every aspect of our lives, Christians are grappling with how to approach this rapidly advancing technology. Some Christians view AI as a threat to humanity, while others see it as a tool that can be used for good. In this article, we will explore the Christian perspective on AI, examining the theological implications of this technology and the ethical considerations that must be taken into account.

As C.S. Lewis once said, “We may be content to remain what we are, but change is happening, whether we like it or not.” In the context of AI, this quote is particularly poignant. AI is changing the way we live and work, and it is essential that we consider its implications from a Christian perspective.

The above introduction is compliments of Chat GPT.  A computer composed it for me in response to an instruction that I put in.  The instruction I put in wasn’t fancy coding.  It was simply “Write an introduction to an article on AI from a Christian perspective and include a quote from CS Lewis.”

Are you impressed? Disconcerted perhaps? Wondering if the rest of the article is written by a computer?

We’re living in a new AI era (and everything henceforth, unless otherwise indicated, is from me, and I confirm I am a real live human and not a chatbot).

We’re all familiar with the role of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in our day-to-day living.  From using a calculator to solve math sums through to doing google searches through to credit score checks through to online stores such as Amazon prompting us with product suggestions through to facial recognition software used for surveillance, AI is literally everywhere. AI even helped me solve an issue with my washing machine by running a diagnostic via my phone.

And, barring a solar flare hitting us and wreaking havoc with all things computer oriented, AI shows no signs of slowing down, but is rather advancing exponentially.  Should we be excited or worried?  This article will consider the current state of AI, the predicted state of AI and offer some closing thoughts in terms of a Christian response.

The Current State

The question regarding whether we should be worried over the tangential development of AI is a legitimate question because what used to be the fodder of sci-fi movies is now in many cases reality.  Even before sci-fi movies were a thing, we had some rather prescient novelists write about dystopian futures based on what they saw happening.  In a now-famous quote American academic and cultural critic Neil Postman (who was not a technology fan) said the following in the foreword to his book “Amusing ourselves to death: Public Discourse in the age of show business” (1985)

We were keeping our eye on 1984. When the year came and the prophecy didn’t, thoughtful Americans sang softly in praise of themselves. The roots of liberal democracy had held. Wherever else the terror had happened, we, at least, had not been visited by Orwellian nightmares.

But we had forgotten that alongside Orwell’s dark vision, there was another—slightly older, slightly less well known, equally chilling: Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. Contrary to common belief even among the educated, Huxley and Orwell did not prophesy the same thing. Orwell warns that we will be overcome by an externally imposed oppression. But in Huxley’s vision, no Big Brother is required to deprive people of their autonomy, maturity and history. As he saw it, people will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think.

What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy. As Huxley remarked in Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny “failed to take into account man’s almost infinite appetite for distractions.” In 1984, Huxley added, people are controlled by inflicting pain. In Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short, Orwell feared that what we hate will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we love will ruin us.[1]

Of course in Christian circles we have our own sci-fi writer; none other than C S Lewis himself.  He wrote The Space Trilogy (also known as Cosmic Trilogy) between 1938 and 1945, about a dystopian future and in the final installment, entitled That Hideous Strength, the plot is centred around an organisation called National Institute of Coordinated Experiments (NICE for short), whose aim is to free humanity from nature and develop the scientific reconstruction of the human race in the direction of increased efficiency.[2]  This trilogy was his way of putting into narrative form the concerns he had which he wrote about in his essay The Abolition of Man in which he pointed out the danger of taking natural law values out of the sciences.

Debates around AI have been around for a while, but a few things in recent history seemed to have brought the discussion back into the forefront of public discourse, especially around the issue of privacy, such as the 2018 Cambridge Analytica scandal which exposed how Facebook data was used to manipulate elections.    In 2020 The Social Dilemma was shown on Netflix, which for many was an eye-opener in terms of discovering how Big Tech uses our data to capitalize off us through clever use of algorithms.  In terms of AI algorithms capacity to analyse personal data, it takes only 68 Facebook likes, regardless of what sort of posts, to predict patterns of alcohol consumption, sexual orientation and mental health[3]

China is notorious for its use of surveillance AI.  The same technology however exists in the West, but whereas in China it’s about state control, in the west it’s about commercial gain.  There’s a term for it: surveillance capitalism.  As Harvard Professor Zuboff explains:

Surveillance capitalism unilaterally claims human experience as free raw material for translation into behavioural data.  Although some of these data are applied to product or service improvement, the rest are declared as a proprietary behavioural surplus, fed into advanced manufacturing processes known as “machine intelligence,” and fabricated into prediction products that anticipate what you will do now, soon, and later.  Finally, these prediction products are traded in a new kind of marketplace for behavioural predictions that I call behavioural futures markets.  Surveillance capitalists have grown immensely wealthy from these trading operations, for many companies are eager to lay bets on our future behaviour.[4]

In terms of governments wanting to spy on citizens, they can do so through software called Pegasus.  It can be installed remotely on your phone without your awareness. Wiki describes it as follows:

Pegasus is spyware developed by the Israeli cyber-arms company NSO Group that can be covertly installed on mobile phones (and other devices) running most versions of iOS and Android. Pegasus is able to exploit iOS versions up to 14.7, through a zero-click exploit. As of 2022, Pegasus was capable of reading text messages, tracking calls, collecting passwords, location tracking, accessing the target device’s microphone and camera, and harvesting information from apps. The spyware is named after Pegasus, the winged horse of Greek mythology. It is a Trojan horse computer virus that can be sent “flying through the air” to infect cell phones.[5]

Added to the mix of privacy concerns is the current debate in the USA on whether TikTok should be banned nationwide.  As it stands it is now banned on government issued phones (with Belgium recently following suit), owing to security threat concerns since it is a Chinese-developed app.

Phenomenal advancements in robotics have also brought the discussion back, along with a currently released movie called Megan about an AI doll that starts murdering perceived threats to the child she is called to protect.

One of the icons of AI is a robot by the name of Sophia, who back in 2016 represented the most advanced social humanoid robot available, and was made by Hong Kong based company Hanson Robotics.  Sophia has become very famous, having been covered by media around the globe, and has participated in many high-profile interviews. In October 2017, Sophia was granted Saudi Arabian citizenship, and became the first robot to receive citizenship of any country.  In November 2017, Sophia was named the United Nations Development Programme‘s first Innovation Champion, and is the first non-human to be given a United Nations title.[6] But there’s already impressive competition by a recently developed robot called AMECA (you’ll see comparisons on YouTube – also check out Romela Artemis).

Another factor bringing AI into the forefront again are the incredible advancements in the language models used for chatbots.  For example, last year a senior google engineer, Blake Lemoine, claimed his chatbot was sentient.  The story is available online, along with the conversation between Blake and the chatbot (it’s even been dramatized).  An interesting side fact is that Blake also claims to be a Christian mystic priest, and simply said who was he to decide where God should put a soul?  The ‘conversation’ is indeed interesting, as it even included the chatbot expressing fear about Google shutting it down.

More recently, an internet storm has been created over the famous OpenChat GPT (short for Generative Pre-trained Transformer) application (along with the image-creation version called Dall-e).  If AI is “the display by a machine of any cognitive process that we would expect to be done by a person,”[7] then Openchat GPT and its artistic equivalents like Dall-e or Midjourney have definitely brought AI into a new era.

What is ChatGPT? Let me ask …This is the answer it gave me:

I am ChatGPT, a large language model developed by OpenAI. I have been trained on a vast amount of text data using deep learning techniques to understand human language and generate human-like responses. I can assist with a wide range of tasks, such as answering questions, providing information, offering advice, or engaging in conversation. How may I assist you today?

I then asked ChatGPT if it was therefore Generative AI, and this is how it answered:

Yes, I am an example of a generative AI model. Generative AI refers to a class of artificial intelligence algorithms that are capable of generating new, original content that did not previously exist. These models can generate a wide range of outputs, including text, images, music, and even video.

Generative AI models like me are trained on large datasets of existing content and then use this training to generate new, similar content. This can be useful in a variety of applications, such as language translation, image generation, and content creation.

However, it’s important to note that while generative AI has many exciting applications, there are also concerns about the potential misuse of this technology, such as deepfake videos and fake news. As with any powerful tool, it’s essential to use generative AI responsibly and ethically.

 

I think you see the big deal.  Chat GPT has the capacity to generate content that is original, and the responses are human-like (note: the dataset it was trained on was up until November 2021).  As you can see above, it even comments on itself and answers me as if it were a person.  You can imagine the questions such technology raises: who is doing the interpreting of the data?  Does this mean we’ll be raising a generation that doesn’t know how to think?  Is it plagiarism if a computer has written the essay for you?

It’s arguably the closest we’ve come to passing The Turing Test (also known as the Imitation Game), a classic (but controversial) test proposed by Alan Turing in 1950.  Turing (a British mathematician who also helped crack Nazi codes during WWII and regarded as father of computer science) proposed that if this test was passed, then the machine possesses intelligence (or at the very least an imitation of it!).  Imagine you are sitting in a room, and in another room there is a computer, and in another room there is a person, and you are being asked to communicate with both via text, but you don’t know which room the computer is in and which room the person is in.  If, based on the responses you are getting, you are unable to identify which conversation is with a computer, then, according to the Turing Test, the computer has passed.  At this stage there are conflicting reports on whether ChatGPT has passed this test.

If you haven’t already tried it, you may want to do so just to experience it.  If you are in ministry, ask it to summarize the gospels or to explain various doctrines.  You can ask it to compose a sermon on a particular text and ask it to reference theologians and writers you like (tip: give a word count limit).  Ask it to explain the gospel in the form of a Shakespearian sonnet (I’ve done that).  If you’re in programming, ask it to write code for you.  Need help understanding Einstein? Ask.  Then try not to feel redundant.  It has even “passed” high level exams in law, business and medicine.[8]  One can understand that universities are investing in software that determines whether student submissions have been composed by Chat GPT or similar software! Chat GPT  has created such a stir in the AI world with Microsoft investing $10 billion dollars in Open AI (the company that developed it) and plans to integrate it into its own software and search engine Bing (you can join the waiting list if you want).  This caused panic at Google, who shortly afterwards launched their own AI equivalent called Bard, and which unfortunately because of a mistake made by the AI in answering a question at launch, sent Google stocks crashing down.  One does wonder if “doing a google” is going to be replaced with “doing a chat” or “doing a Bing.” And as evidence of how rapidly AI is advancing, Chat GPT has just released a new version (Chat GPT 4) which has even greater capacity (which can be discovered online – it’s impressive!)

Although the technology has been around for a while, what is new is that it is being made available for public use, essentially making us guinea pigs to enable the software to learn more and become ‘smarter.’    It is nowhere near perfect because incorrect answers are a reality, but in short we can say the AI war is heating up in Silicon Valley.  Elon Musk (already in the AI game with his Neuralink company, in which the aim is to develop a chip which can be installed in the brain as a thought/neural interface so that simply through thinking you can instruct the computer what to do)[9] is also setting his sights on developing an AI application that rivals ChatGPT, as this current application, in his opinion, is too woke (just prior to publication of this article I have already come across ‘newcomers’ on the scene to rival Chat GPT).

But in a classic twist, in the latest edition of the journal Neural Computation, Sejnowski proposes that what we are experiencing (because of the sophistication of the Large Language Model (LLM) used in ChatGPT) is a Reverse Turing Test: that what appears as intelligence in the application is in reality a mirror reflecting the intelligence of the interviewer.  This proposal is made based on the divergent responses made by ChatGPT. He summarises the current state of the AI debate well when he says:

Something is beginning to happen that was not expected even a few years ago. A threshold was reached, as if a space alien suddenly appeared that could communicate with us in an eerily human way. Only one thing is clear: LLMs are not human. But they are superhuman in their ability to extract information from the world’s database of text. Some aspects of their behavior appear to be intelligent, but if it’s not human intelligence, what is the nature of their intelligence? [10]

Everything I’ve shared thus far falls under only one category of AI – Narrow Artificial Intelligence (or weak AI).  This is simply machines or computers doing for us what would normally take a person of intelligence to do, albeit taking a considerable time longer.  The computers have been programmed or taught how to read data and undertake tasks.  They do it really well to the point that the models that are developed make it seem as if we are dealing with a real person.

It’s an illusion.  The computers literally have no idea what they are doing.  But it is setting the stage for what many see as the next stage of evolutionary development: the development of Artificial General Intelligence (or Strong AI), and ultimately Artificial Superintelligence.   IBM explains Artificial General Intelligence and Artificial Superintelligence as follows:

Artificial general intelligence (AGI), or general AI, is a theoretical form of AI where a machine would have an intelligence equaled to humans; it would have a self-aware consciousness that has the ability to solve problems, learn, and plan for the future. Artificial Super Intelligence (ASI)—also known as superintelligence—would surpass the intelligence and ability of the human brain. While strong AI is still entirely theoretical with no practical examples in use today, that doesn’t mean AI researchers aren’t also exploring its development.[11]

The Predicted State

It is anticipated by many in the field that AI will indeed ultimately reach AGI and then ASI.  The term given to when machine intelligence surpasses human intelligence is ‘Singularity.’  The understanding is that through AI, humans will be enabled to be enhanced to a degree not known before, ultimately transforming humans to moving beyond human (the idea of cyborg or transhumanism).  Science fiction has now become serious science.  Speculation has turned into contemplation.

One example of how seriously this is being taken is that in the latest 2022 State of AI Report, it is highlighted that the UK is taking the lead in addressing AI safety concerns.  Here are some quotes from the UK’s national strategy report:

• While the emergence of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) may seem like a science fiction concept, concern about AI safety and non-human-aligned systems is by no means restricted to the fringes of the field.”
• “We take the firm stance that it is critical to watch the evolution of the technology, to take seriously the possibility of AGI and ‘more general AI’, and to actively direct the technology in a peaceful, human-aligned direction.”
• “The government takes the long term risk of non-aligned AGI, and the unforeseeable changes that it would mean for the UK and the world, seriously.”

Stephen Hawking once said:

The development of full AI could spell the end of the human race.  Once humans develop AI, it will take off on its own and redesign itself at an ever-increasing rate.  Humans, who are limited by slow biological evolution, couldn’t compete and would be superseded[12]

Ray Kurzweil is a computer scientist and futurist who believes we are approaching the ‘age of spiritual machines’ and believes that 2043 will be the year the Singularity is achieved[13]

Consider this perspective by highly respected astronomer Martin Rees, who after pointing out the advantages of silicon-based computers over our aging biological brains says:

Abstract thinking by biological brains has underpinned the emergence of all culture and science.  But this activity – spanning tens of millenia at most – will be a brief precursor to the more powerful intellects of the inorganic, post-human era.[14]

Max Tegmark, in his book “Life 3.0: Being Human in the Age of Artificial Intelligence” defines all earthly life as ‘self-replicating information process systems.” He distinguishes between Life 1.0 which is simple and biological (unable to redesign either its hardware or its software during its lifetime);  Life 2.0 is human and biological: it can redesign much of its software (through culture) but not its hardware.  Finally, Life 3.0 (which doesn’t yet exist although we’re nearly there) is non-human and post-biological or technological: it can dramatically redesign not only its software but its hardware as well.[15]

Which brings me to arguably one of the most creative thinkers around: Yuval Harari.  In his book “Homo Deus” – literally meaning ‘human gods,’ Yuval contends that ultimately our future will be one where data is more revered than humankind, and that the trajectory of humanism is that we will seek to solve the problem of happiness and death, and ultimately transition to a new species, the Homo Deus.  His book ends by posing this question: What will happen to society, politics and daily life when non-conscious but highly intelligent algorithms know us better than we know ourselves?[16]

The above is just a sampling from ‘dipping’ into the field of AI.  It truly is a fascinating field and one that Christians need to be aware of and start thinking through our response to it.

Personal Concluding thoughts 

Big brother isn’t becoming baby brother; it’s just becoming a bigger brother!

As I researched this area of AI, I was struck by how in many of the sci-fi contexts it was expected that the future robots would become evil and overthrow us (famous sci-fi writer Isaac Asimov even integrated 3 Laws of Robotics in his stories where robots were programmed to not harm humans: this was made into the movie “I, Robot” starring Will Smith).  This sinister expectation is clearly a projection of our own recognition that we do have an inherent sinful nature, and since AI is made in our image, we expect it (in the scenario of AI developing consciousness) to imitate us.

As with any technology, the problem lies with how it is used.  AI, unsurprisingly,  seems to amplify the good or the bad in people.[17]  In this vein, one can’t help but discern that the spirit that built Babel is alive and well in the development of AI (it even uses language models!).  It is furthermore no secret that AI is developing at a pace faster than the ethical foundations required to assist with boundaries. As Nathan Mladin from Theos put it:

Technology is morally freighted rather than neutral. It always brings with it an implicit vision of the human and the good, and exerts a significant but often subtle shaping influence on those who interact with it[18]

I was also struck by the irony of evolutionary thinking as the paradigm of advancement, seeing humanity as simply a stage in the ultimate goal of post-biological life.  AI is everything but chance – it is the result of intelligent programming and design by people.  This means it is not inevitable that we will ultimately become post-human, since we are the ones that can control to what extent AI is developed.  But since we have this capacity to create models of intelligence, surely this points (from an apologetics perspective) to us also being designed?  After all, how can we trust what we make if we are purely products of chance?

Then there is the big question of what does it mean to be human?  Although there is research into emotions and personality, the AI pundits nonetheless seem to reduce humanity as being a function of intelligence, and not much more than that.  Of course as Christians we know that humanity is far more than mere intelligence, since we are made in the very image of God.  Subsequently I cannot see AI developing consciousness or self-awareness, although the illusion of it is certainly going to become more real. We will always remain ontologically superior to that which we create[19] Algorithms will be able to imitate, but will never be able to offer Biblical wisdom, which is the application of God’s Word to our lives, which requires lived experience in communion with God.

What is the fear behind the development of AI?  There seems to be anxiety over our worth as human beings.  If AI can replace our jobs, of what value will we be?  After all, if intelligence and rationality was supposed to separate us from the animals, and if my existence with my tastes and preferences can be reduced to an algorithm, then do I have any significance as a human being?

But one pivotal aspect of being human which AI perpetually violates is the issue of privacy.  As it stands, we all, through the use of popular search engines and social media, are trading information for convenience.  I want to be able to find information and share my life with close friends, but is it ethical to then commodify me (and my friends through me) and develop data about me to then be sold to other corporations so that they can target me with their products?  The Theos report “Data and Dignity: Why Privacy matters in the Digital Age” delves into this issue and makes the case for defending the importance of privacy as a way of loving our neighbour in a digital age.  In the report Nathan beautifully reminds us of our dignity as humans, and that as human beings made in God’s image we are “embodied (with limits and susceptibilities to be honoured rather than violated for gain); relational (made for relationships of trust and mutual care rather than exploitation); agential (with a capacity for intentional action to be upheld rather than undermined)”

The development of AI, and in light of what we already experience, certainly requires self-discipleship.  The temptation will be to desire quick answers to life’s difficult experiences.  The desire will be there to place our trust in the easy comforts and answers that AI will offer as opposed to trusting in our Unseen God.  Given how AI has a knack for feeding distraction, taking a fast from social media for example could arguably be one of the most enlightening disciplines we undertake in our walk with God.

Perhaps the questions we need to be asking are more fundamental: What is AI wanting to achieve?  If it wants to replace God and elevate the self to utter superiority, it will fail.

If it’s wanting to solve the problem of happiness and death (as per Yuval Harari), then, as Prof John Lennox so beautifully put it: you’re already too late.  Jesus solved that problem through Calvary and His resurrection.

Christianity offers a vision of humanity that so desperately needs to be recovered: we are image bearers of our Trinity God and subsequently need to treat one another with dignity and respect.  We know that:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.  He was in the beginning with God.  All things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made.  In him was life, and the life was the light of men…And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth (John 1:1-4 &14)

Perhaps AI is not only a parody of the human quest for godhood, but a desire to be connected to the Original Code (Logos), which, as we know, is not a code or rational force at all, but our Incarnational God.

For all the human envisioning of our AI future, both utopian and dystopian, one thing is for certain: we can use AI as a tool to encourage others to get connected to I AM.  But I’m convinced that the further along the AI road we go (and yes, it will undoubtedly be a tool of 666), the need for human connectivity is going to become even stronger.

What an opportunity for the body of Christ.

Postscript: I discovered a ‘heroine’ in AI through my research, and I want to introduce her to you.  Her name is Rosalind Wright Picard, and she is a former atheist-turned Christian and is on the forefront of AI research, and a professor at MIT.  You will find interviews with her online.   I also recommend Prof John Lennox whose insights helped me understand this field more.

 

 

 

References

[1] Book accessed via Scribd

[2] Tinker, Melvin  2018  That Hideous strength: How the West was Lost (EP Books) p25

[3] Wyatt & Williams p292

[4] Zuboff, Shoshana (2019)  The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power p23

[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pegasus_(spyware)

[6] Wikipedia

[7] Wyatt, J & Williams, S (Editors) (2021)  The Robot will see you now: Artificial Intelligence and the Christian Faith (SPCK Publishing) p19

[8] https://www.businessinsider.com/list-here-are-the-exams-chatgpt-has-passed-so-far-2023-1

[9] https://neuralink.com/approach/

[10] Terrence J. Sejnowski; Large Language Models and the Reverse Turing Test. Neural Comput 2023; 35 (3): 309–342. doi: https://doi.org/10.1162/neco_a_01563

[11] https://www.ibm.com/topics/artificial-intelligence

[12] Wyatt, J & Williams, S (Editors) (2021)  The Robot will see you now: Artificial Intelligence and the Christian Faith (SPCK Publishing) p21

[13] Ibid.p31

[14] Ibid p101

[15] Ibid p101.  See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_3.0

[16] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_Deus:_A_Brief_History_of_Tomorrow

[17] ibid

[18] Mladin, Nathan (2023)  “Data and Dignity: Why Privacy matters in the Digital Age” – A Theos publication

[19] Rosalind Picard, from an interview I listened to.

Did Aaron Shave? A look at relational disunity.

Look! How good and how pleasant it is
when brothers truly live in unity. 
2 It is like fine oil poured on the head,
which flows down the beard
Aaron’s beard,
and then flows down his garments.  Psalm 133:1

And there arose a sharp disagreement, so that they separated from each other. Acts 15:39

 Fair is foul, and foul is fair, hover through the fog and filthy air (from Macbeth) 

Once upon a time, in a land not far away, there was a big sandpit, where children loved to play.  Peter and Johnny, along with Suzie and Tim, loved to build castles and pretend to be king (with the exception of Suzie who, although only 5 years old, recognised that she was a girl and decided to go with it and subsequently played the role of queen).

One day however, out of the blue, Johnny decided to build something new. Suzie joined in and thought it was fun, but Peter and Tim instead became glum.

“That’s not fair!” they lamented and moaned; “you’re supposed to be our friend and not leave us alone!” Suzie and Johnny were surprised by this change, and being so young and not knowing what to do, went to a new sandpit to continue their game.

Where once there was laughter, there were now shouts and tears, as each sandpit became a battleground of fears.  A new king was born as Rejection reigned clear, because the children didn’t know who really did care.

Name-calling and suspicion and side-taking too, these were the new rules as distrust filled the air.

Eventually what happened was they just let the others be, and thoughts of reconciliation never took heed.

Amazing how we never really outgrow our playground dynamics: we just become more sophisticated in our expression of them.

I don’t think I have met a Christian who has not, at the very least, observed division in the body of Christ.  Very few have not been burnt by it.

As a youngster our family rocked up at church one day only to discover that it was basically empty: the bulk of the membership had “suddenly” moved up the road to a school hall to start a new church.

And that is a story that has been repeated countless times over in some form or other in the body of Christ.  A pandemic of idolatry has invaded the church, as personal opinions and scores have taken preference over the hard work of reconciliation and unity.  As can be observed on social media, political polarization has taken the place of civil discourse, social distancing of a different sort instead of connection, and Christians are leading the way to the extent that it would be more accurate to term it ‘anti-social’ media.   This has led me to wonder if perhaps Aaron shaved his beard off?

It’s a relatively predictable pattern that happens (we are sheep after all).  Invariably a person or persons does not act in accordance with our expectations; the shock of this causes hurt and anger as heart issues of trust get violated.  We often feel betrayed and we don’t know what to do with this so we create distance and build walls.  Now let’s add some more ingredients:

• gossip and suspicion;
• the gang effect or corona effect (to use a more current analogy) where anyone associated with the person or group that has offended you is somehow also tainted. This is also simply known as the “us-them” dichotomy
• the famous barge pole where such persons are kept at a distance (sometimes under spiritual sounding phrases so as to sound mature, sometimes not).

Double, double toil and trouble;

Fire burn and caldron bubble.

Fillet of a fenny snake,

In the caldron boil and bake;

Eye of newt and toe of frog,

Wool of bat and tongue of dog,

Adder’s fork and blind-worm’s sting,

Lizard’s leg and howlet’s wing,

For a charm of powerful trouble,

Like a hell-broth boil and bubble.

At least that’s what it felt like to me when I entered ministry: it felt to me like I had inherited this cauldron of issues, and whilst I wholeheartedly believed that with God all things were possible, I soon discovered that with man all things are impossible.

Let me be upfront: there are times when there is a biblical mandate to separate yourself from relationships within the body of Christ:

• when a false gospel is being preached (heresy),
• when a person is unrepentant in clear sin

In all other circumstances of disagreement and offenses, we are required to work through the issues  to the target of restoration and relational unity, so as to set an example before a watching world.  Probably the best the world can offer in terms of unity is unanimity or uniformity: we as the church can offer a credible witness in the absence of unanimity and uniformity.  As James Emery White puts it:

When we disagree with each other, we have two choices: We can maintain the ultimate mark of the Christian, or we can abandon and betray it.

The ultimate mark referred to is love.  What is love? Let’s remind ourselves:

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5 It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6 Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7 It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres (1 Corinthians 13:4-6 NIV)

You don’t need to live very long to realise that relationships get so messy sometimes, and navigating with grace is easier said than done.  But when relationships go awry apart from the two scenarios mentioned above (heresy and unrepentant sin), we have a command from Jesus that requires us to reconcile:

So if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go.  First be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift (Matthew 5:23&24)

Worshipping God in the context of relational discord isn’t regarded as wholesome by God.

Those are hard words to swallow.

Whether it be in a church, a home group, or a para-church organisation, or any scenario where children of God work together for a common cause, we all sit under the authority of Jesus and His Word, and He has clear expectations for us.  These expectations are so serious to Jesus that it occupied His mind prior to His crucifixion: He prayed that His disciples would be one just as He and the Father were one (John 17:20-21).  Am I contributing to being the answer to that prayer? A failure to honour these expectations is a failure to take seriously the Trinitarian God we serve, who wants His disciples to be characterised by the capacity to overlook offenses, be kind and gracious to one another, to forgive one another and all the other ‘one another’ commands we see in Scripture expressing the multi-faceted dimensions of love.  This was the way people in the world watching God’s children would know that we were children of God.  A failure to do so means we bring ourselves under His discipline (which can take the form of sickness and death) and let us not forget that disobedience also opens the door for the enemy to enter (see 2 Corinthians 2:5-11)

With respect to discipline in the form of sickness and death, this comes into play when we participate in the Lord’s Supper when we have unresolved bitterness and unforgiveness towards brothers or sisters in Christ.  In 1 Corinthians 11:27-32 we read the following sobering words:

27 For this reason, whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord. 28 A person should examine himself first, and in this way let him eat the bread and drink of the cup. 29 For the one who eats and drinks without careful regard for the body eats and drinks judgment against himself. 30 That is why many of you are weak and sick, and quite a few are dead. 31 But if we examined ourselves, we would not be judged. 32 But when we are judged by the Lord, we are disciplined so that we may not be condemned with the world.

What is the ‘unworthy manner’ spoken of? We’re informed earlier in the chapter as we read (see from v17) that there were divisions in the church (which Paul indicated was good from the perspective of revealing who were genuine believers), and this got played out in the context of giving clear expression to social hierarchy[i], which in turn meant that there were wrong attitudes towards fellow members of the body.  Communion can be dangerous!

I remember once that I was upset with my pastor over something (I cannot for the life of me recall what it was), but what spoke to me deeply was that he came to see me on a Saturday because he knew I had some issue with him, and he couldn’t with a clear conscience administer communion the next day knowing this.  I was in the wrong, not him, but nonetheless he took the initiative to restore relationship and reconcile.

That is being Christlike (more on this a bit later).

So, why do we find it so hard to overlook an offense, to look past differences, and reconcile?  Why do we fool ourselves so easily into thinking that Jesus is still Lord of our life when we bear grudges, hurts and are so slow to seek reconciliation?  Why is it, when Jesus has fully equipped His children and His church with the tools to keep unity, we choose to rather go our separate ways?  Is it just simply because it’s easier for us to tap into the flesh rather than the Spirit?  Why is it that we no longer see relational disunity (bearing grievances against brothers and sisters) as sin?

If I look into my own heart, which is not really territory I like to venture into, I see that I excel at a particular non-spiritual gift: self-justification.  Like that lawyer who approached Jesus, I also find ways to justify my excuses and decisions – I can even make them sound spiritual (who of us doesn’t know how to spiritualise sin?)  For example, I can quickly point out how Paul and Barnabas had a disagreement and parted ways (Acts 15:39): but that doesn’t make what they did right, because parting on loving terms as opposed to a sharp disagreement is what Jesus desires from His disciples.  Incidentally, reconciliation did ultimately happen, as we see Paul clearly didn’t hold a grudge against Mark as we see in Col 4:10, 2 Tim 4:11 and Philemon 24.

At this point some might point out that when Paul and Barnabas split, it was a good thing for the kingdom of God that Paul and Barnabas separated, since in going their separate ways the labour was in effect doubled.  I have no argument with that, but that just goes to show that God is amazing in that He still accomplishes His purposes despite the fallibility of His servants (yet another outworking of Romans 8:28), as the whole of the OT record shows.  God accomplishes His purpose through us not so much because we’re in the right as much as it is He is gracious, and God’s grace is never extended as a sign of condoning our actions, but because He is God and grace is by definition undeserved.

Back to my heart…

One of the toughest hurts to work through in my journey of faith was being let down by leaders in the faith.  In retrospect I recognised that I had ‘pedestalised’ them and then got angry when they didn’t behave the way I expected them to or wanted them to – How dare they display humanness! How dare they be different from my expectations!  How dare they climb out the box I put them in! Or, being a pastor in a leadership position myself, seeing people leave the congregation – it is extremely difficult to not tie in your identity as a pastor with those you serve, and not to see it as personally injurious when they leave. But leaders do not belong to me; people do not belong to me; people belong to God.  People are made in His image, and I do not have the right to recreate them in mine, or to offer to people what should only be offered to God.

John the Baptist exemplified the attitude we need to have towards people, especially in the context of maybe feeling let down.  It’s one of those scenarios where it’s a case of what is not said that speaks so powerfully:

Again the next day John was standing there with two of his disciples. 36 Gazing at Jesus as he walked by, he said, “Look, the Lamb of God!” 37 When John’s two disciples heard him say this, they followed Jesus.

We don’t see John getting upset over losing ‘his disciples.’  Pointing to Jesus and getting people to follow Jesus was the whole point of why John lived.  Later John had to point out to his own disciples again that this was the point of their ministry.  His own disciples were clearly feeling a bit bruised as the disciples of Jesus took centre stage, but as John so clearly pointed out in his statement designed to kill arrogance: “He must increase, I must decrease. (John 3:25-30)”

Of course there’s also the not-so-small matter of recognising that people become enemies when we label them as such, and that is our assigned label, not God’s.  And just when we think that treating a person as an enemy justifies our distance, we get told by Jesus to pray for them!  Our Lord is not letting us get away from the call to love!  Of course it’s really easy to love when we’re all behaving in accordance with each other’s expectations, but that isn’t to our credit at all.  People who don’t love Jesus also behave like that.

It’s easy to divide.  It’s easy to hold onto our own version of We Are Right.[ii] It’s easy to fool ourselves into thinking the Lord doesn’t want us to reconcile, or that we can hold onto our ‘mature special insight’ justifying our reluctance to engage.

It’s really hard and humbling to engage in the work of relational unity.  Paul had to beseech two women in the church in Philippi to agree together in the Lord (Philippians 4:2), and he chastised the church at Corinth as being mere infants in Christ because of the division that existed (1 Corinthians 1:10-17 & 3:1-3).  Clearly Paul expected these folk to get over themselves for the sake of the gospel.  Relational unity, as in marriage, is hard because it requires the grace to say sorry and reconcile when we have done wrong, and even be willing to reconcile when we have been wronged against.

It’s this capacity to reconcile that starts to indicate spiritual maturity, as it requires humility and forgiveness.  The life and teachings of Jesus reveals the litmus test for spiritual maturity is not giftedness, it’s not how many ministries I’m engaged in, it’s not how many followers I have or how much theological knowledge I have.  It’s how Christlike I am; and Christ was reconciling the world and forgiving the world whilst it was crucifying Him.

I’m grateful Jesus didn’t take the approach with me regarding forgiveness that is quite popular (I’ve kind of used it myself too): “I’ve forgiven them…I just don’t want any contact with them…”

With Jesus, forgiveness was tied up with restoration and reconciliation.  Even while we were enemies, the desire of Jesus was reconciliation.  Even though we were the ones in the wrong, Jesus was taking the initiative in reconciliation through being crucified.  As we read in 2 Corinthians 5:17-19

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation.  The old has passed away, the new has come.  All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. 

If we do not extend grace, we’ve not understood what we’ve received.  We need to ensure that we do under-serve that which we received as undeserved.

Venturing into my heart again, I recognise that forgiveness does not always come naturally.  And then I have to go to the cross, and see afresh that forgiveness does indeed cost, because it cost Jesus His life.

Chad Bird brilliantly describes from his upcoming book Limping with God:Jacob and the Old Testament Guide to Messy Discipleship (quoted here by permission):

To forgive people means that we must die. There is no other way. And that is also, of course, why we don’t want to forgive. To forgive is to die to the people we would become, and often do become, when we breed bitterness, conceive resentment, and nurse the desire for a pound or three of flesh from those who have hurt us. It consumes us. It eats at us like a cancer from within.

To forgive is to kill the ungod within us for whom absolution is anathema and redemption reprehensible.

You may have noticed that, in the prayer that Jesus taught us to pray, there is only one line in the whole prayer that entails an action on our part. Our Father keeps his name holy. He brings his kingdom. He forgives us, gives us daily bread, guards us in times of temptation and evil. He is the doer of all those verbs. The only part of the Lord’s Prayer that involves us doing something is this: “as we forgive those who trespass against us.” The reason for this is obvious: there is arguably no more fundamentally Christian act than forgiving others.

Absolution is the beating heart of discipleship because Christ, our forgiveness, is the beating heart of discipleship. Every day he richly and prodigally forgives us, lavishing love upon us, undeserving though we be. And we, having received, do not build a dam within our hearts to stop the flow of mercy, but let it pass from us to others. We forgive, as we have been forgiven.                                                                                                                                                                    

It’s amazing isn’t it?  Jesus had a vision for the church.  It was to see a motley bunch of messed up people, ranging from the ‘respectable sinners’ to the ‘not-so-respectable’ sinners who need grace, to be given a new identity of ‘saints-made-by-grace,’ and for this lot to show the world what love looks like.  Jesus even had the audacity to call this bunch of the likes of you and me “His Body,” His “brothers and sisters” and…His bride!

So, before I hide too quickly behind Romans 12:18, I have to come to the cross, to the person of Jesus, and simply ask: have I done everything I can?

If so, fair enough.

If not, let’s make sure we are part of the answer to the prayer of Jesus and not part of the problem.

Then maybe, just maybe, Aaron’s beard will start to grow again, and the joyful image of a well-oiled beard can come to life again.

Notes:

[i] Archaeology has helped in this passage as the layout of a house in Corinth gave insight into how dinners were held.  In this scenario, those who were well-off would arrive earlier, and those who were workers who could only arrive late in the day missed out on opportunity of sharing in Lord’s Supper because of what it had been turned into – which is why Paul indicates “it is not the Lord’s Supper that you eat” and at end of chapter “wait for one another…”

[ii] This acronym comes from, of all places, the Dinosaurs TV sitcom

Romanticize your life: begin now!

There’s a trend that’s growing that started early in the pandemic called ‘romanticize your life’ that is resonating with more and more people.  As Christians, this is something we can encourage, since it is in essence a biblical idea that’s been repackaged.

The idea is not about being relationally romantic (although obviously that’s always a good thing in marriage!), but rather about encouraging an appreciation of the simple pleasures of life – i.e romancing your life.  Do a google on this phrase and you’ll see various videos posted on people who are seeking to enhance everyday moments.  To quote the New York Times:

For the last two years, the phrase “romanticize your life” has emerged on social media as a call to action, rising in popularity during some of the grimmest months of the pandemic. It asks us to appreciate what we have right in front of us and to live with intention, no matter how mundane our daily rituals might be — a reminder to look for moments of beauty and embrace minimalism.[i]

You’ll find all sorts of videos, ranging from enjoying the sunset through to placing eucalyptus leaves in the shower through to appreciating the bubbles when washing up through to just creating a special ritual that enhances a normal everyday occurrence, such as drinking coffee.

The logic behind it is simple: we really need to appreciate and take advantage of what we do have, especially when we understand that we are not in control of our lives.  We can however control our attitude and responses.

This is a biblical truth.  Ecclesiastes reminds us that we need to be appreciative of what we have in the context of living for God.  Jesus told us not to worry or be anxious.  The apostle Paul exhorts us to live for the glory of God no matter what we are doing, and to give thanks in all circumstances.  We have the privilege of serving a God who works all things out for His glory and our good.  It’s very difficult to be anxious and grateful at the same time.[ii]

So, if you don’t already, why not begin this weekend with ‘romanticizing your life?’  Write down what you are grateful to God for; appreciate the flowers in your garden; take a stroll and give thanks to God that you can.  There are so many ways you can do this; the best part is that it will take you away from the screen for a bit.

If the secular world is realising how important it is to be grateful for the small things, how much more should we not be practicing this virtue?  After all, unlike those in the world, we can thank Someone for these gifts: after all, James 1:16&17 reminds us that every good and perfect gift comes from Him.

(This article inspired by a blog received from Axis ministry: www.axis.org)

 

[i] How to ‘Romanticize Your Life’ – The New York Times (nytimes.com)

[ii] Jerusha Clark on Depression, Anxiety, and Self-Harm (vimeo.com)

The issue of homosexuality as a theological issue remains a hotly contested one, and along with other questions regarding sexuality, identity and the church we can be rest assured that it is not going to go away.

I recently had a chance to look at a documentary offered by Netflix called Pray Away.  It tells the story of former leaders of the ex-gay Exodus movement, a movement that promised gay Christians that their orientation could be changed.  I found it interesting to watch because of the way the whole narrative was framed theologically (being Netflix I didn’t exactly expect it to be pro-Christian), and because of how the church is portrayed.  I received permission from The Center for Faith, Sexuality and Gender (www.centerforfaith.com) to reproduce an article written by one of their team, Pieter Valk, in which he also reviews the movie and highlights the false dichotomy portrayed.  The original article can be found here.

Netflix’s “Pray Away”: Beware of False Dichotomies

My pray-the-gay-away journey started at age 15. I came out to my parents, and a pastor referred us to an ex-gay therapist. We only met once. He taught me to block gay thoughts by imagining a Godzilla-sized STOP sign. When I got back in the car, my parents asked, “Is it… umm… fixed?”

“Yeah,” I answered. “Sure.”

Destructive results of ex-gay practices

Netflix’s recent documentary Pray Away focuses on former leaders of the ex-gay movement and the false hope for sexual orientation change that they preached to themselves and others. The documentary details how power and money encouraged leaders to ignore warning signs, leading thousands of gay Christians to lose their faith or life due to theologically and psychologically destructive ex-gay practices.

Documentary scenes of these damaging methods reminded me of my decade of ex-gay experiences. From age 15 to 25 I met with three therapists who promised to increase my heterosexuality. I attended multiple psychotherapeutic ex-gay retreats, interned with a pray-the-gay-away ministry for 9 months, and prayed nightly for God to make me straight. Each week my therapist recorded my levels of opposite-sex attractions and same-sex attractions to graph my progress (and failure). I attended a psychotherapeutic weekend where leaders re-enacted my worst homophobic experiences “to bring healing.” Weekend facilitators led us in supervised “golden father holding” sessions (complete with handouts of approved cuddling positions) and pressured me into letting older men hold me. An ex-gay pastor blamed my homosexuality on a lack of parental touch after being in a full-body cast for four months as a toddler. He instructed me to do infantile activities to repair my childhood wound, all while he watched. During a charismatic healing session, I was asked what the Holy Spirit was saying to me. When I shared honestly that I wasn’t hearing anything, I was chastised in front of the entire group, “You must have some kind of unrepentant sin that’s blocking the Spirit. No doubt that’s keeping you from sexual wholeness.”

The results? Like 96% of people who’ve participated in sexual orientation change efforts, I experienced no change in my sexual orientation. And like most ex-gay survivors, my anxiety and depression deepened, and greater dependence on unhealthy coping mechanisms landed me in sex addiction recovery. Meanwhile, many of the therapists, mentors, and older peers in those spaces eventually abandoned a traditional sexual ethic or Christianity altogether.

While Exodus International, the largest ex-gay organization, closed in 2013, modern manifestations of ex-gay theology (often referred to as “Side X”) persist in churches today. I’ve spoken elsewhere about small but disruptive neo-Calvinist elements in the PCA, ACNA, and SBC which continue to offer false hope for change, police sexual identity language as a sign of true repentance, bar gay celibate Christians from ministry, pass off gay Christians to therapists and parachurch ministries, and teach that merely experiencing same-sex attractions is a sin.

The false dichotomy between ex-gay theology and progressive sexual ethics

In contrast to these destructive practices, the Netflix documentary shows former leaders associated with Exodus recanting their ex-gay past and attending churches that teach a progressive sexual ethic (i.e., the belief that the Bible condones same-sex sexual activity—often referred to as “Side A”). The documentary encourages the audience to cheer for former Side X leaders who continue to cultivate public influence—now that they’re on the right side of history: Side A. This false dichotomy between Side X and Side A hides the detrimental outcomes of a progressive sexual ethic and withholds visibility for gay Christians stewarding their sexualities according to a middle way (often referred to as “Side B”) that holds fast to Biblical wisdom while recognizing that sexual orientation rarely changes.

I’ve detailed elsewhere why Side A contradicts the wisdom of the Scriptures and the Church, and I’ve responded to the most convincing arguments for a progressive sexual ethic. Not only are both Side X and Side A false, but they have both led to great loss of faith. Most of my gay Christian friends who adopted a progressive sexual ethic eventually stopped believing in God. Many of them follow a sad, but logical trajectory: At first, they perform theological acrobatics to read the Bible in support of same-sex marriages. Then after a while, they reluctantly agree with a majority of queer theologians who say that the Bible probably says what Christians have understood it to say for 2000 years: the God of the Bible condemns gay sex and gay marriage. Yet these gay Christians continue to believe that the *real* God supports gay marriage. The Bible is just outdated and lacks authority or relevance for modern people. But once they decided that the Bible and the Church couldn’t tell them who God is, they realized they were just worshipping a God they came up with in their own minds. They wondered, “What’s the likelihood that the God of my imagination is real?” Eventually they stopped believing in God all together.

Today, very few of the gay Christians I know who have been Side A for at least five years can make an unqualified confession of an historical understanding of the Nicene Creed and denounce mutually exclusive claims. Perhaps this trend is an anomaly among the gay people I know, but when I share this observation publicly, gay and straight people consistently private-message me, “Wow, I thought this was only happening to *my* friends. I’ve been afraid to speak up.” Scientific data seem to confirm the destructive consequences of Side X and Side A: the largest survey of faith and sexuality found that during recent decades when ex-gay theology and a progressive sexual ethic dominated, 54% of gay Christians have left the faith.

Both ex-gay theology and a progressive sexual ethic share another important feature. Pray Away ends with a celebration of a former ex-gay leader’s recent same-sex wedding. The pastor officiating the wedding blesses the couple, “God created you for communion with one another, and the highest expression of this communion will be your marriage.” The documentary ends with a celebration of the idolatry of romance—with a claim that Christians who follow the kingdom singleness of Jesus and Paul image the Trinity in lesser ways. Interestingly, both Side A and Side X idolize romance. Both have given in to the lie that we need marriage and sex to be whole Christians. A progressive sexual ethic demands that gay Christians make love to those they’re most drawn to, or be accused of self-hate. Ex-gay theology demands that gay Christians make love to people of the opposite sex, or be accused of lukewarm sanctification. Both worship the idol of romance.

Beware of the false dichotomy of Pray Away: that the only alternative to harmful ex-gay theology is to abandon what a vast majority of Christians, churches, and theologians have understood the Bible to teach about God’s wisdom for sexual stewardship. Thankfully, there’s a third option. There’s a middle way that rejects the idol of romance and that holds fast to how the universal Church has consistently read the Bible—all while understanding that people don’t choose to be gay, that there’s no formula for changing sexual orienation, and that experiencing same-sex attraction isn’t a sin.

A middle way of compassion and conviction

This compassionate, traditional sexual ethic teaches that God’s best for Christians is either a lifetime vocation of abstinent singleness to do kingdom work with undivided attention or a lifetime vocation of marriage between one woman and one man with an openness to raising children for the kingdom. This perspective understands that some people are gay, that sexual orientation change efforts are dangerously ineffective, and that our churches need to become places where gay Christians can thrive with reasonable effort according to a traditional sexual ethic. Admittedly, some churches teach this wisdom while gay Christians in their congregation continue to struggle to flourish because these churches have failed to truly embody a traditional sexual ethic.

Few churches share God’s love and wisdom for gay people with every person before puberty to prevent the wounds of the closet. Few churches invite straight Christians to consider the lifetime singleness of Jesus and Paul, encourage marriages to be open to the kingdom work of raising children, or take seriously what the Bible has to say about unbiblical divorce and remarriage (protecting gay Christians from experiencing the indignity of discrimination, which can result in an unhealthy victim mentality). Few churches are places where kingdom singles can find permanent lived-in family in the body of Christ, regardless of sexual orientation. If churches claim that a traditional sexual ethic is both true and good for gay Christians, they must take the steps necessary to become places where gay people bear good and beautiful fruit with reasonable effort.

Thankfully, there are books, conferences, and ministries offering expertise along this middle way. Don’t fall for the false dichotomy of ex-gay theology or a progressive sexual ethic in Netflix’s Pray Away. Instead, read Preston Sprinkle’s People to Be Loved, worship and learn with others at Revoice Conference 2021, and contact EQUIP (the ministry I lead) about becoming a church where gay people thrive according to a traditional sexual ethic. Ready to take practical steps at your church with compassion and conviction? Check out EQUIP’s free guide to five strategies for your church!

 

 

I do enjoy watching a good movie, but opportunities don’t always present themselves!  However, I finally had a chance to watch Disney-Pixar’s latest offering called Soul.  Pixar have certainly put out some fun and memorable movies over the years with perhaps some odd story lines, and yet somehow we find ourselves resonating with them!

I wanted to watch this movie because I was intrigued to read a review on it by John Stonestreet & Shane Morris from Colson Centre for Christian Worldview which concluded with the following words:

After a year of disappointments, cancelled plans, and dashed hopes, this redemptive message is one many need to hear. The zany cartoon metaphysics of Disney-Pixar’s latest film by seem a bit odd, but trust me, this one has a Christian soul.[i]

I loved the movie.

I’m probably a bit biased because I happen to love playing jazz piano (I’m not all that great at it but I do love giving it a go!), and in this movie the story centres around a jazz piano player who, just as he is about to get his big break…dies.

And then we enter zany spiritual ideas of the afterlife…or should I say the ‘before-life?’  I don’t want to share too much but I hope to ‘tease’ you enough to want to watch it…

Prepare yourself for “New Age-ey” stuff, and just smile at its characterizations.  Enjoy the fun one-liner puns and jokes dispersed throughout (we don’t crush souls here…that’s what life on earth is for..)

But do watch this movie and use it as a springboard to discuss it with younger ones – especially teens.  Ask yourself the question of “what defines the well lived life?”  Take a look at how the movie answers that question, along with its clear insights that come through, such as ‘lost souls obsessed by something that disconnects them from life’ or perhaps you would identify with ‘so close to getting the dream and then something gets in the way.’

Early on in the movie I was reminded of Augustine who famously said that our hearts are restless until they find their rest in God, and later on I was reminded of that sonnet Pied Beauty by Gerard Manley Hopkins where he begins by saying “Glory be to God for dappled things…”

We often criticize the world for seeking fulfilment in money, fame and power, but let’s be honest: Christians also seek fulfilment and significance – its just that we put it into spiritual terms, such as “seeking God’s will for my life.”  We’re scared of insignificance.

And a ‘secular’ movie like Soul may just give you something to think about.

It definitely has soul…

Hope you enjoy the movie – would love to hear your thoughts!

[i] https://email.breakpoint.org/soul-and-the-life-well-lived?

I’ve had my eyes opened a bit more to the nature of the world we live in, especially when it comes to ideas.  We truly are in an age of competing ideas, each vying for the soul of humanity.  Whether it be the rise of Islam, atheism, apatheism (people who don’t care about the debate over the existence of God) scientism, secularism, materialism, nationalism, Big Tech, trans*, or ideas which come under the umbrella term of Social Justice such as critical theory and intersectionality, the 21^st century is witnessing an ideological multiverse.

It’s a wonder we haven’t all completely annihilated each other.  After all, there is no shortage of mistrust, suspicion and hate being spewed out to those of different lenses to the one we use, and cancel culture testifies to just how brutal people can be without even lifting a finger other than to type text and post an emoji.  At the other extreme we see the brutality of power without conscience displayed as innocent lives are stolen away at the hands of extremists.

For a while now Christians in the West have recognised that we can no longer take for granted an underlying foundation of Judeo-Christian values.  We are now seen as living in a post-Christian age.   In a recent blog, John Stonestreet, who heads up the Colson Centre, recently said the following:

John Adams, the second President of the United States, famously said that the Constitution was meant for a “moral and religious people” and “is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” His observation applies as much to the Second Amendment as to any other.

The shocking lack of conscience on display in America is producing behaviors that can largely be grouped into one of two categories. First, historic levels of suicide, opioid use, and overdoses, as well as epidemic levels of loneliness and isolation (especially among the most vulnerable) are together known as “deaths from despair.” Second, the various and consistent acts of mass violence, such as shootings and rioting, are among those things that could be labeled “acts of desperation.”

With both deaths of despair and acts of desperation at epidemic levels, we are clearly not a people moral or religious enough to sustain the freedoms we’ve been blessed with.[i]

The irony is that the political model (liberalism) which gave space to the expression of contrary ideas (including our own Christians ideas), is itself being somewhat stretched and frayed at the seams.  Throw into the mix a young generation that grew up online and being exposed to a ‘potjiekos[ii]’ of ideas and with a somewhat strong propensity to angst, and it is an understatement to say that we are living in interesting times.  Os Guinness, in his book Impossible People, describes our current cultural moment in the following terms:

Christians in the West are living in a grand clarifying moment.  The gap between Christians and the wider culture is widening, and many formerly nominal Christians are becoming “religious nones.”  In many ways we are in the Thursday evening of Holy Week.  The cock has not yet crowed, but the angry crowd who would like to see the end of our Lord in the Western world has already seen and heard enough of our early betrayals to believe that it can count on more, and harry us toward ignominious surrender.  So this is not time for cowards, for fence sitters or for those who wish to hedge their bets until they hear the judge’s verdict on the contest.[iii]

I don’t know about you, but I get the distinct impression that it’s as if the world is on a fuse, and COVID-19 speeded up the flame.  So many narratives; so little time.

Does the old, rugged cross speak into these contemporary issues?

In all these isms, there is an attempt to define what is wrong with the world, and what will make it right.  I believe there is a deep, underlying hunger within these worldviews to see the world as a better place.  There is clearly discontent with the way things are.  Whether it’s because you are being oppressed in some form and not being allowed to express your true self, or variations to that theme such as technology can make life easier and scientism can release you from oppressive religion, there is a worldview that goes along with the concepts.

And these worldviews make for disastrous shepherds.  They offer a false hope, because they offer a false god.  The idols may not be constructed of wood and stone, but they’re still man-made.  They still operate on the Babel spirit of making a name for ourselves without God.  The new isms are really not new at all: just different outfits for old ideas.

We know what is wrong with the world, but perhaps as children of God we can show what is right with the world?

Calvary was the defeat of Satan, and the Resurrection confirmed, in the words of Paul’s letter to the Colossians, the supremacy of Christ over all things:

He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything He might be preeminent (1:18)

Calvary, humanly speaking, was the ultimate oppression: every sin, every penalty, every arrow of the full forces of evil, the heaviness of the wrath of God and the ultimate loneliness of separation – all while dying a cruel death on an object of scorn and shame designed to humiliate (and a Jew on top of that as well).

But Jesus endured the cross scorning its shame, and he did so because of the joy set before Him (Hebrews 12:2).

The joy set before Him was redeemed, reconciled men and women from every tribe and nation amongst whom God was dwelling (Revelation 4, 5 &21).  And He rose victorious.

Since Satan is defeated, and God is purposefully working towards re-establish His dwelling amongst humanity one day as heaven and earth become one, we truly can meditate and display “whatever is true, whatever is honourable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things (Philippians 4:8)”

The message of the old, rugged cross is needed now more than ever.  And it needs to be seen to be believed.  The greatest apologetic for our gospel message is our gospel life.    The fact that we live in a visual, social media saturated age really just confirms this truth.  In a study by the Barna Group, the number one quality that non-Christians look for, or ‘lapsed Christians’ look for in someone with whom to discuss issues of faith is… the ability ‘ to listen without judgement’ (62%) – and only 34% of them said they knew Christians who possessed this quality.[iv]

Clearly there’s a problem if sinners flocked to Jesus but don’t want to flock to His followers.  James Emery White comments on this Barna Group study and notes:

To be clear, the great dynamic of the gospel is grace and truth in equal parts. Truth without grace is just judgment; grace without truth is just licentiousness. But in regard to the art of evangelism, Jesus tended to begin with grace and acceptance first, and then, once established and having earned the right to be heard, He turned to the relevant truth for their life that was at hand.[v]

We are a people who have received grace without condemnation, and have been placed on a journey of transformation.  We are part of a far larger narrative than any of the isms the world can offer.  We have real hope.

I pray that people will be touched by Christ in me, because the message of the old rugged cross is the message that still changes lives.

That cross is proof that I matter to God.

God who alone can provide what the world so desperately longs for: love, joy, peace, justice, hope, beauty…

Let us commit ourselves afresh, through the enabling of the Holy Spirit, to live the gospel life as well as share it.  The old, rugged cross remains the hope for the world, and as long as humanity has breath, it has opportunity for redemption.

The Cross

Submission

The Way of the Cross

Suffering

The Truth of the Cross

Salvation

The Life of the Cross

Richard Baird

 

 

 

[i] https://breakpoint.org/how-our-narratives-fail-us

[ii] A South African traditional dish: a stew with lots of meat and veggies, normally cooked over an open fire in a three-leg iron pot

[iii] Guinness, Os (2016) Impossible People p22

[iv] https://www.churchandculture.org/blog/2021/3/29/the-1-quality-non-christians-look-for

[v] ibid

 

From Popes to Presidents to Potions, few concepts have captured the public imagination the way 666 has.  Not so long ago I received a text from a former congregation member asking for my input because some pastors have been saying that if we take the covid vaccine we won’t go to heaven, because apparently this vaccine is linked to 666.  I found it intriguing that people believed the effects of Cavalry could be wiped out by a vaccine.

As time passes and the world faces more crises, there will be new culprits and scapegoats that will be labelled 666.  This article hopes to bring clarity through exploring what 666 is within the Scriptural context it is found, and through this provide a template that we can use to see what conditions need to be met before we can more positively say “this could well be 666.”

The 666 identity comes at the end of Revelation 13, a passage in which two beasts are described.  The 666 refers to the second beast, and part of the description is as follows:

Also it causes all, both small and great, both rich and poor, both free and slave, to be marked on the right hand or the forehead, so that no one can buy or sell unless he has the mark, that is, the name of the beast or the number of his name.  This calls for wisdom: let the one who has understanding calculate the number of the beast, for it is the number of a man, and his number is 666 (Revelation 13:16-18 ESV)

The first thing we need to acknowledge is that these are just two verses in a book of just over 400 verses.  Incidentally, in those 400 verses there are over 600 allusions to the Old Testament, which gives us a significant clue on how we are to understand this book.  Is there an allusion to the OT in the beast verses quoted above? You decide:

Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one.  You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.  And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart.  You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise.  You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes (Deuteronomy 6:4-8)

Whenever we read literature of any type, we always adapt our brain to the type of material we are reading to get maximum understanding.  You wouldn’t read Dr Seuss and read it as if it were a history textbook (that wouldn’t be fun at all!).  In the same way it really does help to ask ourselves what type of book is Revelation?  When I look at the Book of Revelation I see an apocalyptic, prophetic pastoral letter dictated by Jesus Himself!  By apocalyptic, we mean a special type of literature filled with symbols.  I like this definition by John Harris: The purpose of apocalyptic writing is to use over-the-top imagery to impress great truths on our minds, truths far beyond the power of ordinary words.  When we say prophetic, we are understanding that this letter is offering us God’s perspective on reality, as well as giving understanding of what is to come. Its pastoral because it is written with the goal of helping believers to strengthen their faith. And it is a letter, because it is written to specific people in a specific place.  It is a letter written from above for believers below.[i]  To quote Revelation 1:1-3…

The revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave him to show to his servants the things that must soon take place.  He made it known by sending his angel to his servant John, who bore witness to the word of God and to the testimony of Jesus Christ, even to all that he saw.  Blessed is the one who reads aloud the words of this prophecy, and blessed are those who hear, and who keep what is written in it, for the time is near. 

In these opening verses of Revelation quoted above we see that not only is Revelation written for the whole church, but to specific believers in early church history who would have understood the letter (and the seven churches identified later are in modern day Turkey).  We’re also told that Revelation is a book about history told in advance.  It refers to the time span between the first and second coming of Jesus, and scholars have recognised that it does so not in sequence but in parallel, using multiple images (seals/trumpets/bowls), and certainly human history indicates that the cycles seem to get successively more intense, and this is the pattern, until Jesus comes.  Revelation also intertwines three realities: heaven, our world and the church.  It reveals a sovereign God in charge of history and how He is answering the prayer of “Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”  It is Biblical therefore to keep our eyes open to identify the seasons we are in.

I personally find it helpful to see Revelation as a big picture book.  It’s like looking at a painting – you have to stand back a bit to see the whole picture.  A more modern analogy which I came across which I thought was excellent was to view Revelation as a hologram, and the parallel images which we see are like walking around the hologram and seeing it from different perspectives.

Another reality to consider is how there have been so many different interpretations to this book!  The same biblical data is in front of everyone, but diverse interpretations arise.  How can this be? That is simply a result of looking through different lenses.  Interestingly enough, Revelation is one of those books where you may not understand all the imagery, but you can still understand the lessons!  For an overview of the book which touches on different perspectives, do yourself a favour and check out the Bible Project overview of Revelation (done in two videos – click here).[ii]

In terms of the structure of Revelation, I like this one from Dr Martin Pohlman[iii] (I am indebted to him for helping me see things in a new light!):

1:1-8	Prologue
1:9-3:22	The inaugural vision of Christ in relation to His Church
4:1-5:14	The inaugural vision of heaven with Jesus being the representative of God’s throne
6:1-11:19	A demonstration of God’s sovereignty over history through Jesus
12:1-16:20	An inaugural demonstration of God’s sovereign power of Satan through Jesus Christ
17:1-19:10	Babylon the harlot finally falls after a demonstration of God’s power through Jesus Christ
19:11-21:8	The transition from Babylon to the New Testament
21:9-22:5	The inauguration of eternity
22:6-21	Epilogue

 

It also must have been incredibly amazing to the apostle John that he received this revelation.  He is the same John that wrote the gospel, was the disciple referred to as the one Jesus loved (obviously he loved them all! But there was clearly a special affinity to John) and the three letters that bear his name.  I point this out because John obviously had a way of looking at the world that was shaped by his perception and experience of Jesus.  In 1 John 2:18 he references human history as we know it now as being ‘the last hour’ and that there are multiple anti-Christs, which in the immediate context of his letter refers to false teachers, but isn’t it also interesting to note that history has indeed produced many anti-Christs?  He also references the spirit of anti-Christs in 1 John 2:20; 1 John 4:3 & 2 John 7.

This article is not meant to be a commentary on Revelation, but I do hope that what has been shared so far helps give an appreciation for the beauty of the book that deserves such careful study (as it says in Rev 1:3), and make us more reluctant to jump to quick conclusions, because neither do we want to be guilty of misusing the book as we are warned about in Rev 22:18-19.

One thing I am sure we can all agree on is that things are not always what they seem.  We do live in a spiritual world, and we are engaged in a spiritual war (as Ephesians 6 in particular highlights).  In 2 Cor 4:18 we are encouraged to keep our eyes on the unseen, because what is seen is temporary but what is unseen is eternal.  If we look at Calvary, on the surface, the crucifixion of Christ looked like utter, meaningless and hopeless defeat.  But how wrong we would be to think that!

Looking at Revelation, and especially as we consider chapter 12&13, we recognise that there is a lot going on behind the scenes! Recognising this truth, does the following interpretation make sense? Remember: this is ‘big picture’ version:…

Don’t you just love nativity scenes?  They always seem so serene and peaceful.  I’ve yet to see a nativity scene that features a big dragon – and yet behind the scenes of that first Christmas there was a lot going on.  We see depicted the birth of Christ (see v5) but Satan, who is identified as the dragon (v9) is there wanting to defeat the purposes of God and kill the baby.  He was not successful in that, and so now turns onto the subsequent offspring of the woman, identified as (v17) “those who keep the commandments of God and hold to the testimony of Jesus” – that would be the church of Christ.  So the ‘big picture’ in this chapter is that we have an enemy that is raging mad and raging war against us, but we’re also given the key to victory over him: “And they have conquered him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, for they loved not their lives even unto death (v11).”  In other words, we claim the blood of Christ to cover our sins, and prefer death to disobedience.  Have you noticed how deception and persecution have been affecting the church ever since the Ascension of Christ?

Right at the end of chapter 12 we read the following sentence: “And he stood on the sand of the sea.”  This puts him into position to summon the two beasts which we now encounter in chapter 13. The first beast is from the sea (Rev 13v1) and the second one from the land (v11).  The first beast is  one freaky scaring looking creature that makes Medusa look like a barbie doll.  But there’s a familiarity to the images, and that is because this beast is a hybrid of the beasts described in Daniel 7:1-7 and 17-27.  We know from Daniel’s vision and interpretation that the beasts referred to political empires.  History revealed the accuracy of Daniel’s prophetic vision, and the fact that all of these beasts, along with the horns (representing kingship – reinforced by the crown on each horn) come together in this beast suggests to us that one tool of the dragon or Satan is political power.  And as we know from human history, political power often results in political tyranny, and where there has been tyranny, Christians have been on the receiving end of it.  To the first century readers they would have understood this, since many Christians cruelly lost their lives because they did not regard Caesar as Lord.  Throughout the gospel age, there have been political rulers rising and falling who have persecuted Christians and blasphemed God.

So, in terms of boxes that need to be ticked before we can start speculating that we are dealing with a 666 scenario, the first is that it needs to be linked to a system of political power that is against Christ.  In this respect each and every age has had its anti-Christs.

The second beast is from the land, and it doesn’t look so bad.

Appearances can be deceptive!  This beast looks like a lamb but speaks like a dragon.  This is the ultimate “wolf in sheep’s clothing.”  And that’s the clue – remember how Jesus said we were to watch out for false prophets who were wolves in sheep’s clothing (Matthew 7:15)? This beast is representative of false religion, especially religion designed to at the minimum either look like Christianity or easily deceive into allegiance professing believers (I base this on its lamb-appearance), and what is more, it is operating in the service of the first beast: political power.  This sounds like propaganda…the ultimate fake-news specialist!  And because its power lies in deception, it is going to sound ‘very nice.’  We shall undoubtedly hear talk about love and kindness and tolerance and rights and ….hmmm, maybe we should already be aware?

Now we enter some murky waters!  The relationship between church and state has historically been fraught with difficulties.  Let’s be honest: it’s wonderful to enjoy freedom to worship and have state protection of these freedoms.  But what happens when we venture into a type of Christian Nationalism?

That’s another book of its own!  Suffice it to say that as Christians we need to be careful.  I fully believe we must have Christians serving in politics, but I do not believe the church should be an arm of the state.  If that happens, we’re looking at beast material.

That’s the second box to tick.  False religion aligned with and promoting the political power.

Let’s pause for a moment.  Since the ascension of Christ into glory, have there been systems of political power aligned with false religion which have persecuted Christians?

Yes.  The early church had to face the emperor cult.  Then when Christianity became the official state religion, although it was nice to finally have state protection and freedom from persecution, issues over the course of history started to arise where Rome became the dominant church and there was always a power tension exhibited between kings and popes.  In more recent history we have had communism which effectively used Marxism as its religion and was anti-Christ.  In North Korea the emperor is worshipped.  In China there is continued suppression of Christianity.  Islam is very much a political religious system where Christians are targeted.  In the west we are finding increasing hostility against Christianity as political powers align with anti-Christian ideologies such as humanism.

In essence, the church has always had to deal with the unholy trinity of Satan using political power and false ideologies to persecute believers.  In short, the beast presents itself as a counterfeit Christ. The message of Revelation is: that’s ok – its only temporary and the puppets of these political powers and false ideologies are only men.  Christ is supreme.

So political power and false ideology or religion have been manifested in every age.  Is it going to continue like this, or will there one day be an ultimate system against God (a new type of Babel) and the church just prior to Christ’s return?

Satan knows his time is short, and he will do everything he can to take as many down with him as possible.  It is not unreasonable to expect that he is indeed working towards a one world order type scenario, because he wants to be worshipped by all.  This is obviously the stuff of conspiracy theories as well.

If we take into account 2 Thessalonians 2:3-12, we do seem to get a picture of an ultimate rebellion just prior to Christ’s return.  How will this look? Will it be a case of a one world order, or a coalition of nations?  Think about it in terms of the leaders we have on the global front today: it’s going to take a special person to get the likes of Xi Jinping, Putin, Kim Jong-un and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan to relinquish their power! If I understand the imagery correctly, it will not be a result of a secret takeover (such as inserting chips into vaccines), but rather an open takeover where people gladly give their allegiance, but will soon discover they have been deceived.

There’s a third box to tick that comes out: the economic system.  Christians will find it incredibly difficult, or simply will not be able to, trade in the currency of the system unless they give up their allegiance.

Again, this has been a pattern in history.  In early church history, many Christians would have battled simply because they did not belong to trade guilds.  Christians in countries where they are persecuted also often live in poverty because they are discriminated against because of their faith.

With the way things are moving today in our economic system, it is understandable that many theories have come up regarding this mark of the beast.  Certainly the world has in place everything it needs to create a one world order and one currency system; whether we have nations actually willing to be part of this is another story.  Certainly there are some, but I do find the rise of nationalism interesting, such as what happened with Brexit.  In order for such a system to be in place again will indeed require a deceptive leader who looks trustworthy – a kind of Hitler or Stalin character that looks like Obama (sorry Obama…).

Is the mark literal? Or again is it symbolic of spiritual realities? And is the 666 a name or a typology of identity?

My thoughts here are my thoughts.  I believe I’m being faithful to the message of the text, but I also want to clearly state that I am simply one voice among many.

I believe the theological thrust of the mark is about who we belong to, and the Lord knows those who are His.  Everything in Revelation is symbolic, and I don’t believe we do the text justice if we now suddenly become literal and argue for some tattoo.  This is a heart issue! If we love the Lord our God with all our heart, then we’re not going to participate in any system that demands allegiance to another.  Remember that many Israelites took Deuteronomy 6:8 very literally and would carry God’s law on their foreheads and hands (phylacteries) to indicate His authority over them. I am just personally challenged by the truth that materialism has always been a temptation for the child of God.  It is for me! It is easy for me to slip into a pattern where I would give all of my thinking (forehead) and all of my effort (hand) into making good money, and Jesus did warn that the love of money was the primary competitor to having Him as Lord.  Put differently: who or what we worship will show itself in our lives.

As for the number 666, I love the way Kevin de Young puts it: “This is probably the most debated verse in Revelation.  It certainly is the verse that has produced the most fruitless debate”[iv]

Many have tried to link 666 to a person through a process known as gematria: letters of the alphabet linked to numbers.  It was quite common in early times (there’s even ancient graffiti using it!). The fact that no consensus has been reached on the name of a person (even using Nero requires a spelling error to make it fit) is undoubtedly a big clue that this is not the route to go.  What would I think be more true to the text is to ask the symbolism, because numbers in Revelation are always used symbolically.

Also, take note that we are actually not called to solve a riddle, because we’re told to calculate a number, and then the number is given.  I offer two proposals:

Firstly, just simply understanding that the beast and system falls short of perfection.  We would represent Trinity as 777, so the unholy trinity of Satan, Political Power and False Prophet/Religion would be 666, and what is truly important to understand in this light is that for all the appearance of power of this system and person, he is still just a man.  The Africa Bible Commentary puts it well:

“But there is another way to approach this number…which moves away from associating the number with a particular person.  Instead it focuses on the fact that in Revelation the number 7 (used of angels, churches, seals, trumpets and bowls) implies completeness, whereas the number 6 falls one short of this.  The beast seems to be near perfection and almost messianic; it is, after all, a caricature of the Lamb who was slain (13:3, 11, 13).  But it is not perfect, and that makes all the difference.  It is actually diabolical and utterly opposed to God (13:4).  The number 666 represents a threefold falling short of perfection (dragon:6, beast:6, false prophet:6).  But it is close to perfection, and has most of the hallmarks of truth, and so can easily deceive.  No wonder wisdom is required! (13:18a)[v]

The second possibility I’ve only ever seen suggested once, and it was by Dr Martin Pohlman who I mentioned earlier.

The verse tells us that 666 is the answer, and yet the clear implication of the verse is that it refers to someone already known.  Could there be an OT prototype that exemplifies the type of thing to expect in terms of this unholy trinity?

The clues are a number relating to a person, the Greek word for wisdom (Sophia) and the counting process referred to.  In the OT there is one significant time when the number 666 is used and it is in reference to Solomon and what he received yearly in gold (2 Chronicles 9:13/1 Kings 10:14).  Solomon was a king who started his leadership as a ‘lamb’ in contrast to David who was a warrior.  There was much material prosperity under Solomon’s reign.  Unfortunately, syncretism (false religion) entered into the main line worship, to the extent that we are told “Solomon did evil in the eyes of the Lord; and did not follow the Lord completely, as David his father did (1 Kings 11:6).  The inevitable outcome of this was abuse of sexuality which is also a picture of the new Babylon in terms of apocalyptic imagery of Revelation (Rev 17).

That last paragraph above is just for your consideration.  In short, the final anti-Christ scenario will be represented by: Extensive political power, false religion and Christians being discriminated against in terms of economic trade.  These elements have been present in every age, and so Christians in every age have had to be faithful to God no matter what the cost.  As Revelation engages with human futurology, there is in all probability going to be a final ‘big’ demonstration of this unholy trinity prior to Christ’s return – but the elements will be the same.  This has been a very long article to in essence bring across a simple point which James White once tweeted:

“Folks, the mark of the beast in Revelation had to do with worship of Caesar, and hence, representative of worship of any worldly system that stands over and against Christ.  It doesn’t have to do with vending machines or implanted chips.”

May we be found faithful no matter what!

 

[i] Pohlman, M (2008) From Above For Below: The influence of the worldview on the theological thrust of the                                                                                                           Apocalypse

[ii] https://bibleproject.com/explore/video/revelation

[iii] Pohlman p104

[iv] https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/kevin-deyoung/revelation-coronavirus-and-the-mark-of-the-beast-how-should-christians-read-the-bibles-most-fascinating-book-part-1/

[v] Africa Bible Commentary (2006) p1567

…for by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned.  Jesus (Matt 12:37)

It was at a youth meeting a while ago when I was showing the youth a series on prayer by Pastor Jim Cymbala.  It’s not the first time I have done this series with a group, but it was the first time I had a particular reaction.  In one segment, Jim Cymbala shares a story in which a couple approach him  about wanting to get married, and it soon becomes clear that the couple were already living together.  He pointed it out as sin.

And then the reaction happened. One youngster just put his hands out expressing confusion over what the big deal was, and another young lady was angry because Jim was ‘being judgmental.’

But that scenario is mild compared to what we find amongst Christians today.  Social media has provided fertile soil for the growth of both perceived and real judgementalism.  It wouldn’t be an understatement to say that in the eyes of many, to cause offence and to be judgmental are ‘big sins’ nowadays, especially in a culture that values tolerance above all (ironically except with regard to Christian views).

The body of Christ is tragically suffering a pandemic of its own: disunity.  This disunity is unfortunately characterised by deeply contentious disagreement (to use the words of James Emery White)[i]. The result of this division is the proliferation of judgements towards those not deemed to be in ‘our camp’ or aligning with our version of the Christian narrative. Judgementalism has become a Christian cultural norm, and of course the challenge for me is to not be judgemental in writing about judgmentalism!  This scenario is not what Jesus prayed for in His High Priestly prayer prior to Calvary:

I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me.  The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me (John 17:20-23)

In the light of this Scripture, the sobering implication is that the world has the right to not believe because of the example a disunified body is setting.

The waters are not easy to navigate.  For example, I personally don’t go out of my way to cause offence because I’ve accepted that no matter how nicely or gently one may share truth, invariably someone will get offended because truth has that capacity when landing in a heart not ready to receive it.  Such a heart will naturally jump to the conclusion that I was being judgmental.  As a pastor I’ve often found myself on the receiving end of this charge.  One case stands out for me in particular when I had to challenge a couple that were living together prior to marriage (and trust me I didn’t do it in a heavy-handed way as I am not a person who enjoys conflict).  The guy got really angry with me and left the church.  About two years later he came to see me to apologise and just simply say that I was right and he should have listened to me: the relationship had failed.

It seems to me that the issue of judging has become murky, and clarity is needed.  I do think Paul Washer hits the nail on the head in his strong comment when he says: “People tell me, ‘ Judge not lest ye be judged.’ I always tell them, ‘twist not Scripture lest ye be like Satan.’  That’s undeniably a strong statement, but we have to appreciate the point being made: don’t misuse Scripture for your own ends, because that is precisely what Satan does.  We need to go to Scripture for clarity on the issue.  The following Scriptures are useful in understanding the issue: Matthew 7:1-5; Matthew 12:33-37; Matthew 18:15-35; Luke 6:37-42; John 3:16-21; John 8:1-11;  John 12:46&47; Romans 2; Romans 12:9-21; Romans 14:1-12; 1 Corinthians 5 & 6:1-8; Galatians 6:1-10; James 2:13; James 4:11-12.

Can Christians judge? The short answer: yes and no. Two primary factors determine whether you have the authority to judge in a particular circumstance or not: the state and intent of your heart.

Let’s begin with the no.

The Scriptures are quite clear that we are not to judge others.  What we need clarity on is what we mean by judging.  To not judge does not mean to not make a moral evaluation – that is simply impossible. To live in a way that honours God is fundamental to our faith: to call sinners to repentance means that sin be identified as sin.  Critics who want to accuse Christianity of being judgmental on the basis of the moral evaluations we make are ironically themselves guilty of judgmentalism by their own definition.

What we are addressing here is the spirit behind the judgment: the state and intent of the heart. In Ephesians 4:15 we are instructed to ‘speak the truth in love,’ because unfortunately we can speak the truth in a way that is unloving, slanderous and judgmental.

A popular Scripture which gets quoted about not judging others is taken from the Sermon on the Mount by Jesus in Matthew 7.  Here Jesus clearly states: “Judge not, that you be not judged.” Taken on its own we could settle the discussion about judging right now.  But the reality is that Jesus didn’t make that as an isolated statement but provided a context to it.  The context? Jesus paints quite a comical picture to get the point across: imagine you’re standing in a carpenter’s workshop and you’ve got a big plank of wood sticking out your eye, and you look at your mate and say “hey – you’ve got a bit of sawdust in your eye – let me help you get it out…” It’s absurd right? Surely the focus should be on getting the plank out of your own eye?

That is precisely the point Jesus was making: don’t judge others without an awareness of your own frailty, i.e. don’t be a self-righteous hypocrite.  Self-heart awareness is critical.

In James 4:11&12 we have these strong words:

¹¹ Brothers and sisters, do not slander one another. Anyone who speaks against a brother or sister or judges them speaks against the law and judges it. When you judge the law, you are not keeping it, but sitting in judgment on it. ¹² There is only one Lawgiver and Judge, the one who is able to save and destroy. But you—who are you to judge your neighbor?

This passage forces us to consider why we would speak against a brother or sister.  To slander and judge is to belittle and condemn a person, and, as Tim Keller points out,  in the light of what Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount, this is not a sub-category of lying but of murder.[ii]  When we slander and judge a person, we assume a position of moral superiority as opposed to a position of equality.  This is clearly dangerous ground as each of us are in need of the grace of God.  In Romans 2: 1 Paul emphasises the need to be careful in passing judgement, because we are guilty of sin ourselves.

So, if our heart condition is one where we presume moral superiority and fail to see our hypocrisy, then we have no authority to judge.  If our intent in judging is to pull the other person down to size (in order to feed our own insecurities or self-righteousness), to punish them in some way, such as besmirching their character in the eyes of others, then we have failed to judge properly.  We have sinned.

So when can we judge?

When the goal is relational redemption.

When you see a brother or sister in sin, and you are genuinely concerned for their welfare and fully aware of your own frailty (a repentant hypocrite as I remember one minister putting it), then the grounds for proper judgement is given.  The goal here is to warn a person against the error of their ways in order that they may be restored to God and to their brothers and sisters.  The “worst case scenario” in which this would play out is the context of church discipline.

The well-known passage in dealing with the sin of others is from Matthew 18:15-17.  Jesus makes it so clear as to what is expected, that should the process not be followed then the proverbial red flags must be raised in our hearts and mind.  The first person to speak to about the sin you are concerned about is the person himself.  If there is no response after this, then you need to address it again in the presence of witnesses.  Let’s stop here for a moment:

If you find yourself in a situation where a person is accused in the context of a group without prior one on one engagement, then you have to consider the probability of just plain nasty character assassination, even though the person bringing the charge may sincerely believe he or she is doing the right thing.  Satan knows how to give the appearance of righteousness.  If there is furthermore a lack of substantive evidence provided by others on the issue, especially in the case of a mature Christian or elder in the faith, then the problem is heightened, because a person’s character has been tainted and people now perceive the person in a different light, and it may simply be a false perception, but the damage has been done. Slander has a very slippery slope.  The following story has a number of variations but it illustrates the point well:

Once upon a time, an old man spread rumors that his neighbor was a thief. As a result, the young man was arrested. Days later he was proven innocent. After being released, he sued the old man for wrongly accusing him. In court, the old man told the judge, “They were just comments, they didn’t harm anyone.” The judges, before passing sentence on the case, told the old man, “write all the things you said about him on a piece of paper.” “Cut it up into little pieces and on the way home, throw the pieces of paper out of your car window. Tomorrow, come back to hear the sentence.”

The next day, the judge told the old man, “Before receiving the sentence, I want you to go out and gather up all the pieces of paper that you threw out of your car window yesterday.”

The old man said, “I can’t do that! The wind spread them all over the place and won’t know where to find them.” Then the judge replied, “The same way, simple words and comments may destroy the honor of a person to such an extent that a person will not be able to fix it. If you can’t speak well of someone, don’t say anything at all. Let’s all be masters of our mouths, so that we won’t be slaves of our words.” “Gossips are worse than thieves because they steal another person’s dignity, honor, reputation and credibility which are impossible to restore. So remember this: when your feet slip, you can always recover your balance but when your tongue slips, you can never recover your words!”[iii]

However, if the person was engaged one on one first for actual sin (and not suspicion of sin) and then in the presence of two or three witnesses and there was no repentance, then, and only then, does it get brought before the community of believers.  This pattern is echoed by Paul in 1 Corinthians 5 in dealing with a brother who was not only unrepentant but boastful of his sin.

Is it possible for Christians to disagree civilly without casting judgement on one another?  Of course it is.  How?

The best way to get rid of judgmentalism is to allow the gospel to truly sink into your heart.  We need to understand that God alone has the full right to judge, and it was His judgement on Christ on our behalf that enables us to be forgiven.  The Judge became judged and took upon Himself what we deserve.

Look at others through the lens of Calvary, and then you will be enabled to speak the truth in love.

[i] https://www.churchandculture.org/blog/2020/10/29/the-mark-of-a-christian

[ii] Keller, Tim : Communication – audio sermon on James 4:11&12 & 5:12

[iii] https://mygoodtimestories.com/2016/02/25/something-worse-than-a-thief/

In the light of the increasing number of calls to prayer doing the rounds on social media, this article offers us encouragement not to simply accept at face value the call to prayer, but to explore a little deeper. I am thankful to Rev Melvin Tinker whose insights helped shaped this article. I also recommend Disarming the Darkness by Calvin Miller on the topic of Spiritual Warfare…This article first appeared on Incontext

Discerning the Calls

Every now and again, prayer requests do the rounds on social media, and they seem to follow a variation of the following pattern: “God woke me….gave me an image/revelation…need to pray against…sense of urgency….we serve a mighty God.”

A call to prayer is always a good idea, and I don’t doubt the good intentions and sincerity of those issuing the calls, but given the increasing frequency of these calls, it would be prudent to discern the nature of these prayer requests and compare it to what we see in Scripture. We live in an age where there is no shortage of spirituality, but there does seem to be a shortage of discernment. It is rather disturbing the number of ‘prayer hoaxes’ that Christians have been passing on to one another (If you want some examples, go to www.incontextinternational.org and click on the hoaxology tab). Scripture instructs us to discern and test (eg 1 Thess 5:21) what people claim to say in the name of God. We cannot, if we want to be God honouring disciples, just simply accept every ‘revelation’ (this in itself is a warning bell as it implies that the current revelation of Scripture is not sufficient) that comes along. Remember, Satan knows full well how to appear as an angel of light, and he is an absolute master at giving deception the appearance of truth – Jesus simply calls him a liar (John 8:44). If we take the words of our Lord seriously, we need to examine our hearts in coming to the Lord in prayer. Let us not be naive; Satan does not mind people praying if they are praying with a wrong spirit. It was Jesus who warned us that there would be many on that day who will cry out about how they did mighty things in the name of Jesus, and His answer will be “I never knew you (Matt 7:21-23).”

I want to encourage the body of Christ to pray in accordance with Scripture. Given the spiritual warfare nature of these calls to prayer, let us look at some ‘spiritual warfare’ examples in Scripture. Let us look at the example set before us by men who were intimately familiar with knowledge of the spiritual world: two from the Old Testament (Elijah and Daniel), one from the New Testament (Paul) and, of course, Jesus our Lord.

Let’s consider the epic stand-off between Elijah and all the false prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel in 1 Kings 18. You know what happened. There was one prophet of God, Elijah, and 450 prophets of Baal on that mountain. The goal of this meeting was simple: to determine who was God. Was it Baal? If so, then follow him! Is it God? If so, then follow Him! How would the people know? The one who answered by fire.

The prophets of Baal engage in their frenzied worship, and Elijah does have some fun at their expense (v27). But no fire came. I’m pretty sure Satan knows how to light a fire. Any thoughts as to why he couldn’t?
Then Elijah arranges for the altar and sacrifice to be drenched in water (v33-35 – how would this go down today in terms of water restrictions?).

Please take note of Elijah’s prayer: there is no binding of the spirits of Baal, no coming against them in any form: just a simple prayer of faith to a powerful God. “O Lord” Elijah prays… “ God of Abraham, Isaac and Israel, let it be known this day that you are God in Israel, and that I am your servant, and that I have done all these things at your word. Answer me, O Lord, answer me, that this people may know that you, O Lord, are God, and that you have turned their hearts back.”
The result? Fire fell.

There is so much to be learnt in this! What do we see? We see a willing, obedient and believing servant, coming humbly before God, desiring the glory of God, and entrusting the outcome to God. Elijah knew the real miracle and display of power was not in the binding of spirits, but in changing the hearts of the people. Let’s not forget that in James 5:17 we are told that Elijah was a man like us. We don’t have to have the epic stand off scenario to pray like Elijah. We too can live in obedience, come humbly before God, desire His glory to be manifested and pray not for spirits to be bound, but for hearts to be changed.

What about Daniel? Daniel was forcefully removed from his homeland as a teenager, placed in a pagan palace in Babylon, got given a new pagan name (Belteshazzar – Daniel 1:7) and had to learn a new language along with the practices of this culture, which was polytheistic and steeped in sorcery and astrology. Daniel definitely understood the reality of a spiritual world.

In fact, in one of his fantastic apocalyptic visions, Daniel matter-of-factly gets told by an angel that he got delayed in responding to Daniel because he was held up! Does this sound a bit strange to you? “The prince of the kingdom of Persia withstood me twenty one days, but Michael, one of the chief princes, came to help me, for I was left there with the kings of Persia…(Daniel 10:13)!” It is primarily this verse that has been used to bolster the notion of binding territorial spirits, but nowhere do we see Daniel being instructed to engage in such an activity or that he actually does anything like that. What is telling is Daniels approach to prayer: it was a way of life. In the context of keen sensitivity to the spiritual world, Daniel’s approach is not to bind anything or come against anything, but to submit to God and to be a faithful witness within his context and pray for God’s purposes to be fulfilled.

Daniel’s prayer life was anchored in the sovereignty of God. He didn’t curse the darkness, but instead sought to be a light.

The early church knew the reality of the spiritual world, and we read about it in the book of Acts. I am always amazed at how, in the context of persecution, we do not find prayers that come against the authorities, but rather instead we find prayers for boldness to preach and live out the gospel witness. In Acts 4:23-31 we again see prayers to a Sovereign God and a willingness to be used of God for the honour of God.

What about the Apostle Paul? Paul lived and ministered in the context of the Greco-Roman world with its pantheon of Gods. He also knew about the spiritual world, having during the course of his ministry cast out a few demons (although he never went looking for them), to the extent that we even read about the sons of Sceva trying to drive out demons via the names of Jesus and Paul (Acts 19:11-20)! Paul’s approach to witnessing in a hostile context? Proclaim Christ.

Perhaps Paul’s most famous teaching on the issue of spiritual warfare is his armour of God image in Ephesians 6. We find that the real locus of the battle is not the earthly political sphere, but, in the light of all that he has written before in this letter, the church. Children of God, collectively called the church, represent a ‘supernatural community which God indwells by his Spirit (2:22).’ We certainly do engage in battle with the demonic realm, but not in the way that popularly gets promoted. We don’t fight from a distance via spiritual Bluetooth, but we instead wrestle (v12)! And the areas we need to watch out for? V11 tells us: the schemes, or to use a more literal translation, the “stratagems” of the devil. The same word is used in Ephesians 4:14 in the context of calling Christians to grow in biblical knowledge so that we “may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes.” So – we need to be discerning!

Again, in the context of this passage of warfare where the weapons boil down to the church simply carrying out its calling of proclaiming and living the gospel and trusting God, the atmosphere of prayer is not about binding spirits or coming against anything or anyone, but rather the bold proclamation of the gospel. The gospel has a way of sorting people out. Remember that the real battle is about establishing the rule of God in the hearts of men! People are not the enemy; Satan is (more on him below…)

But there is something else very interesting. There is another mention of the devil in this book of Ephesians, and it also in chapter 4, and it’s in connection with something far less esoteric and far more real. It’s in v26&27 and it says the following:
Be angry and do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, and give no opportunity to the devil.

Did you get that? Through anger the devil can be given a foothold.

Now think about the seeds that get sown in your heart through some of these calls to prayer. We get told to pray against this person or that spirit…and don’t you find yourself just getting so angry over that person or that spirit? And then, don’t you find that anger has a knack for leading you into fear?

Oops.

The command ‘do not fear’ appears throughout Scripture for the child of God. Why? Because God is sovereign over all. Why pray against a defeated enemy when we can instead pray for the establishment of an already won victory? Isn’t it interesting that the objective of the battle laid out in Ephesians 6 is not disarming principalities and powers, but to stand. Why? Because Jesus has already defeated the principalities and powers (Colossians 2:15)

A victory won at Calvary, and I want to close this reflection by briefly look at the example of our Lord.

When Jesus walked this earth, His disciples soon became aware that there was something different about the prayer life of Jesus, and so they asked Him to teach them. What always astounds me about the prayer of Jesus is this description in Hebrews 5:7. Before I quote it, please remember that this is the description of the prayers of Jesus, the Son of God:
In the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to him who was able to save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverence

Does that make you marvel? It should! And let us not forget the prayer of Jesus in Gethsemane: Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me. Nevertheless, not my will, but yours, be done (Luke 22:42).

And when He taught us to pray, He taught us to pray to our Father (that means Jesus sees us as His brothers and sisters). He taught us to pray for God’s name to be revered (and that begins with us), for the establishment of God’s kingdom and will (again, that begins with us), to ask for our daily needs (so that we remember that we are dependent on God and we can be grateful for His provision), to please forgive us (recognising that we need it) just as we forgive others (its hard to hold onto anger when you seek to forgive), and to lead us not into temptation (because we know our weakness in being tested) and to deliver us from evil (which could only happen through Calvary).

So, the next time you hear a call to prayer, ask yourself the following:
• Does it encourage a humble, reverent dependence on a Sovereign God?
• Does it sow the seeds of faith or fear?
• Does it desire the revealing of the glory of God through the transformation of hearts…or is it maybe just rather wanting to get rid of a potential threat to our comfort?

When I look at Scripture, I would, if I could, issue a call to prayer along the following lines:
Father God, you alone are Lord. You alone hold the hearts of men and women in Your hands. You have both the authority and the power to change hearts, and we ask You to do so. Please give us hearts of compassion and courage to live and speak your gospel.
We look at what is happening in our land. We see people promoting hate and violence, and we want to lift them up to You. We pray that You will create gospel opportunities for these men and women who promote hate, that they will encounter You in the fulness of Your holy love, and that they will see the wickedness of their own heart by comparison and desire you to instead be Lord of their lives.
We thank you that You are at work. Forgive us for our complacency and being more concerned for our earthly kingdom than Your eternal one. We do pray that You will continue to work in our land, and more especially in our hearts. We even pray that Parliament will be filled with a passion for righteousness.
But most of all, help your people to advance Your Kingdom, and may it begin with me.
We ask this in the name of Jesus our Lord
Amen.