Life on the front line

A church that is merely comfortable, that never evangelizes, never encourages its people to stand on the front line, will never be strong, never beg grateful, never be able to sort out profoundly Christian priorities.

- D. A. Carson, How Long, O Lord?, (Second Edition, Baker Academic, 2006) p. 78.

Our beliefs are to be used

[I]n the dark hours of suffering, Christians want more than the assurance that their beliefs are consistent. They draw comfort only from the living Lord himself, from the Spirit whom he has graciously given, from a renewed grasp, a felt experience, of the love of God in Christ Jesus (Eph. 3:14-21). That is not to say, however, that the set of beliefs is irrelevant. It is to say that, in addition to holding that Christian beliefs are true and consistent, the Christian, to find comfort in them, must learn how to use them. Christian beliefs are not to be stacked in the warehouse of the mind; they are to be handled and applied to the challenges of life and discipleship. Otherwise they are incapable of bringing comfort and stability, godliness and courage, humility and joy, holiness and faith.

- D. A. Carson, How Long O Lord?, (2nd Edition, Baker Academic, 2006) p. 20.

Perspectives on Pain (Part 1)

One of the hardest questions to deal with in life runs something like this: Why is there (so much) suffering in the world? Each of the major religions has something to say in response to this question. In this article, I will attempt to capture the kernel of each of these responses for Buddhism, Hinduism, Christianity, Islam and (not a religion, but still worthwhile considering) atheism.

Hinduism: Suffering brings balance

Most of us will have come across the concept of 'karma', the universal principle by which all events in the past balance out with present and future events. This balance spans not only your life, but all of your past and future lives (i.e. incarnations). When you die, according to a Hindu, you will continue being reincarnated until your personal karma allows you to escape physical existence altogether and reach a state of nirvana.

As a result, a devout Hindu encountering a person suffering from disease, illness or poverty will consider it to be 'payback' (to put it crudely) for that person's actions, either in this life or in a previous one. Similarly, a child who dies at birth was obviously wicked or cruel or unjust in a previous life. Which is not to say that Hindu people are any less compassionate or humane than their counterparts who subscribe to other world views; rather this is how, philosophically speaking, a devout Hindu would explain the presence of suffering.

The solution offered is to seek to improve your karma, until such time as you are able to achieve nirvana.

On the one hand this is a brilliant explanation: it is intellectually satisfying and all but impossible to gainsay. On the other, however, such a world-view leaves little room for consolation. Granted, Hinduism emerged well before our therapeutically intensive society, and so does not share what John Dickson calls our "modern Western fixation with consolation," (John Dickson, If I were God I'd end all the pain [Matthias Media, 2001] p. 21) this remains cold comfort to those suffering under oppression, persecution, poverty, illness or grief.

Buddhism: Suffering is an illusion

Buddhism arose in direct response to the problem of suffering. Sometime around 500BC a man named Siddhartha Gautama, the Prince of a regions near the present-day borders of Nepal and India, left his palace and stumbled across 3 examples of human misery on his doorstep: a man withered by age; a man incapacitated by illness; and finally a dead body. On returning to his palace he decided to devote the rest of his life to understanding the problem of human suffering.

After searching diligently for 7 years, lived in self-denial and asceticism, he still did not have any answers. According to legend he vowed to meditate day and night under a Bo Tree until he had gained the insight he sought. One night, under a full moon in the month of May, Siddhartha found what he was looking for: all pain is an illusion through which we must train ourselves to see. According to Gautama (known to later generations as the 'Buddha' or Enlightened One, in honour of this insight) suffering is directly related to our desires and affections for the things of this world. Thus the pain of losing a loved one is caused not by the loss itself but by the affection I feel towards my parent, spouse, child or friend. If I lose my job, my anguish is brought about by my desire to be employed. If I desire intimacy then being single will bring anguish.

To overcome suffering, therefore, you must follow the Buddha's eightfold path in order to purge yourself of all desires and affections.

There is little doubt in my mind that the Buddha's solution is an insightful one: who can argue that our experience of suffering is unrelated to our desires. But does this 'solution' provide us a way forward? Is it possible to live this way, to isolate myself of all desire and affection? What kind of life will I be left with?

Islam: Suffering is the will of Allah

Unlike Buddhism, Islam deals with questions of suffering only peripherally. Nevertheless the Muslim position is clear: all events in history, from the least to the greatest, occur according to the will of Allah. The word Islam translates as 'submission' (to Allah's will) and the word Muslim translates 'one who submits'. Suffering becomes an opportunity for the devout Muslim to 'submit' to Allah's will; to do otherwise, to cry out 'Why God?', is to presume to question the Almighty, and therefore all but blasphemy.

Thus, all that happens in this world - good or bad - is attributed to Allah: a young woman dies of cancer; chemists develop a life-saving drug; a family breadwinner dies of AIDS, plunging their family into poverty; a couple get married; a child is born with a heart problem... all these things are according to Allah's will.

Perhaps of more importance, however, is Allah's reaction to all of these things: none. According to standard Muslim theology, Allah is the 'unmoved mover'. He causes all things to happen, but is impacted by none of them.

The Muslim solution, then, is to train yourself to submit to the will of Allah.

Atheism: Suffering is natural

For an atheist, the question "why does God allow suffering?" is meaningless as God does not exist. Instead, suffering is purely according to chance, and is the outworking of the interplay between our actions and the laws that govern the universe.

In a universe of blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and we won't find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice. The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is at the bottom no design, no purpose, no evil, and no good; nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.

- Richard Dawkins, "The Evolution of the Darwin Man", published during 2000 in The Sydney Morning Herald and cited in John Dickson, If I were God I'd end all the pain, (Matthias Media, 2002) p. 29.

There is no point searching for meaning or purpose in life, because there is none to be found. That's just the way things have always been and will always be. There is no solution to be found.


So, we have now looked at 4 of the main approaches to understanding suffering in the world today. Next time, we will look at how Christians understand both the problem, and its solution.

Professionalism

In all our concern to get things "right," there is the hidden danger of professionalism. Not for a moment am I suggesting that Christian leaders should be unprofessional. I detest for example, the kind of public services where ministers prattle on with shallow patter and self-conscious asides, where little is planned and clichés are the highest form of verbal reverence. But mere professionalism projects an image a long way from the cross. It sacrifices something of the passion of, say, 1 Corinthians 2:1-5 or 2 Corinthians 5. It draws plaudits from admiring hearers, but humbles no one, least of all the minister. In our desires to maintain or attain a certain professional status at a time when ministerial credibility is in decline, we have lost something even more important: passionate God-centeredness, passionate gospel-centeredness.

- D. A. Carson, The Gagging of God, (Zondervan, 1996) pp. 478-9.

Formal boredom

The deep fellowship of love that joins the Lord's people finds little expression in churches that meet for one brief hour of formal boredom every Sunday morning.

- Edmund P. Clowney, The Politics of the Kingdom (Berea Publications, n.d.), p.9; cited in D. A. Carson, The Gagging of God, (Zondervan, 1996) p. 469.

Evangelicalism

Some writers deploy "evangelical" and "evangelicalism" strictly in a theological sense, often associated with the theology of "the Evangelical Awakening," (known in America as the "Great Awakening"). Perhaps the ablest exponent of this view is the late Dr. D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones. In three addresses first delivevered to IFES students in 1971, he set forth his case. Beginning with the opening verses of Jude, Lloyd-Jones argued that sometimes the most urgent thing that Christian leaders can do, even when they much prefer to do something else, is urge fellow-believers "to contend for the faith that was once for all entrusted to the saints" (Jude 3)...

[D]oubtless Lloyd-Jones would have been the first to insist that our touchstone is not the Evangelical Awakening, but the Bible. Put differently, our attempts to "contend for the faith that was once for all entrusted to the saints" must never be cast as merely a conservative call to an earlier period of the evangelical movement, ... but to the Bible itself.

- D. A. Carson, The Gagging of God (Zondervan, 1996) pp. 448-9 (emphasis included).

Consensus

On achieving consensus between evangelicals and other groups, Don Carson writes:

(a) One must distinguish between agreement on specific issues and agreement across a broad plain. If there is any hope of sustained cooperation between evangelicals and other groups on any part of the social or political agenda - whether the group is Catholic, Mormon, Jewish, or for that matter the ACLU - it will be achieved by articulating the areas of agreement and nothing else. Various individuals and subgroups will inevitably try to make the agreement seem broader than it is, in orer to win points for their agendas. The result will almost always be futher fragmentation. If we are serious about certain cultural agendas, the aims must be clear, specific, and limited.

(b) One must distinguish between strategies designed to win favor for certain values that are faithful to the Christian heritage, and strategies designed to help more believers become active in influencing society for good. The former provide fertile ground for inter-group cooperation in order to achieve certain specific goals; the latter are best handled entirely within confessional communities. To put this in the framework of the recent evangelical/Catholic dialogue, efforts to arouse a united front on specific moral issues may prove fruitful, but efforts to urge tight general alignment between two quite different groups in order to form a general public policy are doomed to frustration, suspicion, and resentments.

(c) More generally, one must distinguish between espousing philosophical pluralism as an ultimate good, and defending empirical pluralism as a pragmatically useful ally in the preservation of democracy. The former is an implicit denial of the transcultural claims of God himself, while the latter recognizes that in a fallen world there may be many reasons for fostering and preserving a form of government that allows the articulation of ideas we hold to be wrong.

- D. A. Carson, The Gagging of God (Zondervan, 1996) pp. 419-420 (emphasis included).

Election

Tim Challies has written an insightful post describing his understanding of election in the Christian sense. From his post:

God has chosen a people for Himself, and thanks be to Him, He has done so using Divine wisdom that transcends any human mind. We do not know on what basis He chose us, but we do know why we were chosen.

The Journey of Life

Our Father refreshes us on the journey with some pleasant inns, but will not encourage us to mistake them for home.

- C. S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain (HarperCollins 2002) p. 116

Pain: God's megaphone

God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our consciences, but shouts in our pain: it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world.

- C. S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain (HarperCollins, 2002) p. 91

Total Depravity

C. S. Lewis on the doctrine of Total Depravity:

I disbelieve that doctrine, partly on the logical ground that if our depravity were total we should not know ourselves to be depraved, and partly because experience shows us much goodness in human nature.

- C. S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain, (HarperCollins, 2002) p. 61

Rules

In a game of chess you can make certain arbitrary concessions to your opponent, which stand to the ordinary rules of the game as miracles stand to the laws of nature. You can deprive yourself of a castle, or allow the other man sometimes to take back a move made inadvertently. But if you conceded everything that at any moment happened to suit him - if all his moves were revocable and if all your pieces disappeared whenever their position on the board was not to his liking - then you could not have a game at all. So it is with the life of souls in a world: fixed laws, consequences unfolding by causal necessity, the whole natural order, are at once limits within which their common life is confined and also the sole condition under which any such life is possible. Try to exclude the possibility of suffering which the order of nature and the existence of free wills involve, and you find that you have excluded life itself.

- C. S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain (HarperCollins 2002) p. 25.

Typology

In simplest terms, typology is a methodology in which the New Testament is read back into the Old Testament. It is a type of allegory, particularly popular in Medieval theology, and still wide-spread today. Paul describes it like this:

Therefore do not let anyone judge you by what you eat or dring, or with regard to a religious festival, a New Moon celebration or a Sabbath day. These are a shadow of the things that were to come; the reality, however, is found in Christ.

- Colossians 2:16-17

An example might be Jonah, who prefigures Christ's death, burial and resurrection - the belly of the whale is Jesus' tomb; as Jonah was freed from the whale after 3 days, so too was Jesus from the grave etc.

Another example I have heard is that the rock from which waters flowed in the desert foreshadows Jesus, from whom living waters flow. As Christ had to be 'struck' in order for us to receive salvation, so too did the rock - but only once! (Moses gets in trouble for doing it a second time!)

Personally, I reckon that the first is a reasonable parallel to draw, since Jesus himself draws it (see Matthew 12:38-42). The second is less convincing, in my eyes - whilst it may be a useful illustration, I'm not sure what is to be gained by pushing the parallel.

Dispensationalism

Reading this post, a passing reference to dispensationalism caught my eye. This was further reinforced as I was reading Ephesians 3 tonight which, in the KJV, starts out like this:

For this cause I Paul, the prisoner of Jesus Christ for you Gentiles, If ye have heard of the dispensation of the grace of God which is given me to you-ward...

- Ephesians 3:1-2

Since I didn't know what dispensationalism is, I went and looked it up on Wikipedia. It is described there as "an interpretive or narrative framework for understanding the overall flow of the Bible," with the basic premise being that "biblical history [is] a number of successive economies or administrations, called dispensations, each of which emphasizes the discontinuity of the Old Testament covenants God made with His various people."

Whilst the delineation between dispensations varies from tradition to tradition, here is one of the most common:

• the dispensation of innocence (Gen 1:1–3:7), prior to Adam's fall;


• of conscience (Gen 3:8–8:22), Adam to Noah;


• of government (Gen 9:1–11:32), Noah to Abraham;


• of patriarchal rule (Gen 12:1–Exod 19:25), Abraham to Moses;


• of the Mosaic Law (Exod 20:1–Acts 2:4), Moses to Christ;


• of grace (Acts 2:4–Rev 20:3, the current church age; and


• of a literal, earthly 1,000-year Millennial Kingdom that has yet to come but soon will (Rev 20:4–20:6).

This view is generally contrasted with Covenant Theology, which views history in terms of covenants, rather than dispensations.

Squirrels from the dark side

squirrels with lightsabers
Originally uploaded by rylanddotnet

These are not the squirrels you're looking for...

Grey matters

Just read an article on boundless.org about discernment in grey areas of our lives. I found it to be full of useful insights. From the article:

Does Scripture address R-Rated movies? Music styles? Not directly. But God has provided principles in his Word to help us discern how to live, what to choose, and what to reject. We need principles from Scripture to inform how our practice of living.

So here are five principles for growing in discernment that have implications for our daily lives:

• Imitate God


• Distrust your heart


• Think biblically


• Involve others


• Decide to worship

Hell

Hell may be described as rather like watching the news on television. On any night, in almost any country in the world, we are shown a fire, a bank robbery, armed warfare, an assault victim, etc. Yet, however grim the situation is, someone is trying to make it better. Firemen fight fires, the police are trying to catch the thief; someone is attempting to negotiate a solution to restore world peace; help is available for an assault victim. These people may not be able to solve everything immediately, but at least they are there and represent good opposing evil.

Now imagine an existence where every force which resists evil, and every helpful agency, is removed and evil is left to take over. This is the Bible's picture of hell. Robbery, arson, violence rampant, all with no one to help. War with no solution. Complete and utter loneliness and desolation. No wonder the Bible warns us about it, and urges us to take steps to avoid it.

- John Chapman, A Fresh Start (St Matthias Press, 1997) p. 146-147

Outreach... or In-drag?

South Street Baptist Church is planning what it calls "an outreach". Being a thoroughgoing and business-like church it sets up a committee to plan. After prayer and the consideration of a few verses of scripture the small planning group get down to work. The air is full of such phrases as "attractive publicity", "modern posters", "good refreshments", "bookstall", "street visitation", "a good speaker", "a coffee bar setting", "guitar group" and so on.

All of which proves one thing - they are not talking about outreach. In fact they are talking about exactly the opposite - "in-drag"!

- Gavin Reid, The Gagging of God: The failure of the church to communicate in the television age, (Hodder & Stoughton, 1969) p. 87.

It is sad that these words, written nearly 40 years ago, nevertheless continue to capture the essence of conservative evangelism today. Reid continues:

To many churches "outreach" means opening the church doors wider than usual and waiting for someone to come. This assumption that people will come to services or meetings if the format is changed around somewhat or modern language is brought in to replace "thees and thous", is still being made in the majority of those churches that care deeply about communicating the gospel. The assumption is a false one.

- ibid. p.87.

The obvious question, then, is: Is there a better way?

The Elephant

It was six men of Indostan
    To learning much inclined,
Who went to see the elephant,
    (Though all of them were blind),
That each by observation
    Might satisfy his mind.

The First approached the elephant
    And happening to fall
Against his broad and sturdy side,
    At once began to bawl:
"God bless me! but the elephant
    Is nothing but a wall!"

The Second, feeling of the tusk,
    Cried "Ho! what have we here
So very round and smooth and sharp?
    To me 'tis mighty clear
This wonder of an elephant
    Is very like a spear!"

The Third approached the animal,
    And, happening to take
The squirming trunk within his hands,
    Thus boldly up and spake:
"I see," quoth he, "the elephant
    Is very like a snake!"

The Fourth reached out his eager hand,
    And felt about the knee:
"What most this wondrous beast is like
    Is mighty plan," quoth he;
"'Tis clear enough the elephant
    Is very like a tree."

The Fifth, who chanced to touch the ear,
    Said: "E'en the blindest man
Can tell what this resembles mos;
    Deny the fact who can,
This marvel of an elephant
    Is very like a fan!"

The Sixth no sooner had begun
    About the beast to grope,
Than, seizing on the swinging tail
    That fell within his scope,
"I see," quoth he, "the elephant
    Is very like a rope!"

And so these men of Indostan
    Disputed loud and long
Each in his own opinion
    Exceeding stiff and strong,
Though each was plainly in the right,
    And all were in the wrong!

So, oft in theologic wars
    The disputants, I ween,
Rail on in utter ignorance
    Of what each other mean,
And prate about and elephant
    Not one of them has seen!

- John Godfrey Saxe