Rivendell Regenerating

 “Be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power. Put on all of God’s armour so that you will be able to stand firm against  all the strategies of the devil.  For our struggle is not against flesh-and blood enemies, but against evil rulers and authorities of the unseen world, against mighty powers in this dark world, and against evil spirits in the heavenly places”. Ephesians 6: 10 -12

“I love God’s law with all my heart. But there is another power within me that is at war with my mind. This power makes me a slave to  the sin that is still within me. Oh, what a miserable person I am! Who will free me from this life that is dominated by sin and death? Thank God! the answer is in Jesus Christ our Lord”. Romans 7: 22 -25a

Live clean, innocent lives as children of God, shining like bright lights in a world full of crooked and perverse people.  Philippians 2: 15b

In my last blog, I was talking about how our culture trains us to be preoccupied with an identity that is either formed by,  or in reaction to, how others see us -  the Horizontal Self, (e.g. trying to prove that we Christians can be “cool” not “dorks”.) To do so is to forget that our true Self should  be formed in the Vertical relationship with God and that our priority must be to resist narcissism and the obsession with personal freedom, individualism and self fulfilment. Christlikeness is   self-giving love and self-forgetfulness.  This is best summed up in words  of the Apostle Paul :

“Don’t be selfish; don’t try to impress others. Be humble, thinking of others as better than yourselves. Don’t look out only for your own interests, but take an interest in others too.” Phil 2: 3,4

There is already a great deal of excellent knowledge about what good discipling should involve if we are to become Christians who are radically different   in a selfish society. But before we move on to looking at that, I am still wanting to reinforce the seriousness of  what we are dealing with, because there is so much to lose if we fail to take up the challenge of being Christlike and therefore a positive counter-cultural influence, (being “bright lights” as Paul call us)

We are, as Christians, fighting wars on several fronts, and we still need to not lose sight of where our energies should be focused. Yes, our freedom to operate  as  Christians with our values being tolerated in society is under  massive attack, but   I worry  that the enemy has kept many people focused on the “culture wars”  as Americans see it, and in doing so,   becoming blind to  the evils of  tribalism, (I will do whatever it takes to keep  my tribe in  political power, even if it means  using guns or aligning myself with evil people who have power) or believing in  stereotypes and  conspiracies that attribute all evil and secularizing forces  to the political “Left“ while ignoring deep seated evils in capitalist societies. What would the OT prophets say today  if they saw the way the rich and powerful “big business” and the  wealthy “celebrity class” oppress the poor  without accountability from government? The idolatry of  greed, of  consumerism,  of personal freedom and   the cult of the individual are  all products of wealthy western society. This idolatry has its roots in social change that is not a product of Marxism. 

  Behind all the anti-God  forces in society are evil celestial beings whose schemes and power have operated for millennia and  who are beyond simplistic labels of human political leanings. The evil in humans is what gives them their power to destroy, and they will operate equally  through  fascism, Nazism, communism, capitalism, liberalism, autocracies, oligarchies, monarchies,  etc etc..  to get humans to oppress and destroy each other and to persecute God’s people. If we focus on fighting humans and think we can re-establish God’s kingdom by politics and legislation, then we have been hoodwinked by Satan to lose sight of the real power of Christianity that makes  the forces of darkness  tremble. The real war is spiritual and our weapons are supernatural.  We should be busy discerning  the demonic strongholds in each section of every  society, including the Church,  and tearing them down through prayer, the power of knowing the biblical truth of  what righteous living really is and  living it out in our community through lives that are genuinely transformed. Christ overcame not by force but by the power of  his self-sacrificing love  that included  his enemies. 

The thing about a society where selfishness and narcissism is  valued and encouraged and rewarded, is that  it is more potent than aggressive secularism in keeping Christians dysfunctional and unable to follow Christ and deny ourselves. The war between good and evil rages in the psyche of every person, as Paul describes in his own experience. It must be won in the hearts of Christians or we  lose the capacity to wage war on evil outside ourselves,( if the salt has lost its saltiness, it is useless, as Jesus  once remarked.)  Christians who fail to be transformed do more to harm the cause of Christ than any hostile ideology.  It is only by being “little Christs” that we get  the victory. If we are living only for our self fulfilment and the avoidance of pain, we will see our needs as more important  than others and the power of love is lost. 

Mark Sayers, in “Facing Leviathan” says that our modern world “is a return to paganism. In paganism one could manipulate the gods though offerings, prayers, and incantations. The idols, made in the image of their own creators, were really always just extensions of the individual, In the pagan universe, the desires and wishes of the individual remained triumphant. Christianity turned everything in the pagan order around. It was a cultural revolution in a Greco-Roman world  built not only on power, order, and violence, but also debauchery, exploitation, and the spectacle. Into this world, Christianity’s teachings exploded because the people, especially the sexually exploited women and slaves, found Christian belief liberating. It restrains male eros and elevated the value of the women and slaves to more than just how many children they could bear or how much sexual pleasure they could provide. .. 

“... Either way, Christ’s love controls us. Since we believe that Christ died for us all, we also believe that we have all died to our old life. He died for everyone so that those who receive his new life will no longer live for themselves.  Instead, they will live for Christ who died and was raised for them. So we have stopped evaluating others from a human point of view. At one time we thought of Christ merely from a human point of view.  How differently we know Him now! This means that anyone who belongs to Christ has become a new person. The old life has gone, a new life has begun!” 2 Corinthians 5:14-17  

“For His Spirit joins with our spirit to affirm that we are God’s children, And since we are his children, we are his heirs. In fact, together with Christ we are heirs of God’s glory. But if we are to share his glory, we must also share his suffering.” Romans 8:16-17

In the Christian understanding of  our humanity, the self that we have that has operated in independence from God and  which is committed to self worship, is not our true self. We were never made to be functioning away from union and communion with our Creator, and so we become something other than who God intended us to be.   God has a plan to radically remake us in His image when we surrender to Him and  our spirits become  united with His Spirit . We are then, if we allow it,  progressively transformed into our true identity as children of God, this reaches its full and glorious  perfection when we step into eternity.  We are each uniquely different  but we are  now expressing the character of Jesus in our own unique way.  This is basic  biblical teaching but our culture exerts a great deal of pressure  on us, to lose sight of the importance of   the formation of   this identity and instead we can  get pulled into creating our own  primary identities in line with cultural definitions, expectations, and socially desirable models. We can  also  have identities forced on us by the way we are perceived by others, such as in racial stereotypes, or in reaction to how others  treat us, eg victim identity, sex object. 

Leanne Payne in her book The Healing Presence, talks of how our  initial separation from God creates an existential loneliness : “Born lonely, we try hard to fit in, to be the kind of person that will cause others to like us. Craving and needing very much the affirmation of others, we compromise, put on a face, or many faces; we do even those things we do  not like to do in order to fit in. We are bent, toward the creature, attempting to find our identity in him. Slowly and compulsively the false self closes its hard brittle shell around us, and our loneliness remains. 

Spiritually and psychologically, to use C. S. Lewis’s telling image of fallen man, man is “bent”. The unfallen  position was, as it were, a vertical one, one of standing erect, face turned upward to God in a listening-speaking relationship. It was a position of receiving one’s true identity from God. But fallen man is bent toward the creature and trapped in the continual attempt to find his identity in the created rather than in the Uncreated. “

Mark Sayer,  in his book  “The Vertical Self” has an incisive commentary on the power of our culture to lure us into what he calls “horizontal” selves. The vertical self was founded on a spiritual worldview.  “The belief that humans were created in the image of God was the centre point of understanding of self. It was the cornerstone on which identity was built.” But the profound changes in our society with the scientific and industrial era that led us into a seeing ourselves only in the context of a material world where we could create heaven on earth. And   “no longer did people find their identities dictated by church, king, class or state. The rise of democracies meant that the individual defined his or her own identity and place in the world. Never before had the individual been so free, but that freedom came with a massive price tag- our sense of self.” Also, “culture started telling us that we could find identity through what we did and what we achieved.”

“The horizontal self looks to others for a sense of identity rather than to something larger than oneself, thus finding a sense of self in one’s status within society. With God playing no real authoritative role in informing identity, people look to others as the ultimate judge. Whereas the vertical self looks to heaven for favour and approval, the horizontal self looks to the world for approval and acceptance. For people who hold a horizontal sense of self, the creation and cultivation of a public image are paramount. 

Peers and society act as a mirror: we look to them to gain a sense of identity, yet they can only relay back to us the messages that we communicate to them, You cannot describe yourself as cool. Others must label you as cool. In that way our identities are dependent on what others think of us. However, this means we do not think of others as being created in the image of God. We turn them into mirrors with one purpose - to tell us who we are. They are our audience. Whereas people with a vertical sense of self look to their God-given identity to  find a sense of self, those with a horizontal sense of self can only hope that they will project the right image into culture so that they will receive the right messages back from  their peers.”

“The horizontal self places the incredible burden of finding  and forging an identity upon the individual.... With good character and personal virtue a thing of the past, and with no agreed upon cultural values on which to build an identity, those who maintain a horizontal sense of self must then find themselves. They must discover who they are, but with no solid ground. The rules of the game keep changing. And so, to discover a sense of identity, individuals must constantly reinvent themselves.”

In applying this issue to the state of the church in Western society, Sayers came to the conclusion that “all our attempts to reshape Church in the West will at best be sabotaged and at worst fail because there is a huge unnamed problem with people inside the Church.,, there was a basic problem of discipleship. The best way to describe the problem was to say that it was a crisis of identity,,, people inside churches... seemed filled with insecurity about who they were and what difference their faith made in their lives. Jesus’ mandate to go out and preach the gospel in Mark16:15 seemed to have been replaced by the maxim to “go out into the world and convince people that you are not a Christian dork.”

So now there is  no condemnation for those who belong to Christ Jesus. And because you belong to him, the power of the life-giving Spirit has freed you from the power of sin that leads to death... you have no obligation to do what the sinful nature urges you to do. For if you live by its dictates you will die. But if by the power of the Spirit you put to death  the deeds of your sinful nature, you will live. For all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God.  Romans 8: 1,2, 12-14

We live in a society where  the concept of “sin” has been thoroughly  rejected, along with many of the Christian moral values.  It is a “loaded” word. No one “sins” (except Christians) everyone just “makes mistakes”. To talk about “sin” as a  problem of the human condition  causes great offence, reeks of judgementalism, intolerance and negativity.  In spite of the evidence to the contrary, in our society we like to believe that humans are basically good, and that given the right influences and education, we will all become  kind and   altruistic and we can eradicate all prejudices.  The Bible’s view of humankind  on the other hand, seems to be the lone voice of   cynicism about humankind’s ability to  refrain from destructive selfishness. If we were to take the references to sin out of the Bible we are not left with much! Someone once said that the OT is about the seriousness of sin and the NT is about the remedy to that. Our problem as Christians in a post Christendom culture is to stick to God’s perspective on the human condition and focus on the challenge to become radically selfless in  a culture of  rampant narcissism and the idolatry of personal freedom.  We have to really understand  that God is deeply distressed as he sees  us as heading to destruction if we refuse to return to a life in  eternal union with him. We have to talk about what sin means without compromise, avoidance and whitewashing but without the bad religion of blaming,  shaming,  hypocrisy  and any suggestion   that we can earn Gods approval by “being good” according to  any criteria of outward behaviour. We need to be true to  God’s brutal honesty about human nature, and find ways to overcome the misconceptions -aware that we are up against  the enormous  human capacity for denial and minimisation.   At the same time  we cannot be offensive through our own evil self-righteousness or Pharisaism.  Nevertheless, we must expect the truth to cause offence anyway.  Jesus who was never unloving and noticeably didn’t  launch into diatribes against the sins of the reviled and godless Roman oppressors,  was nevertheless  a great offence to the pride of those  who resisted him, Jew or Gentile.  Like Jesus, we will be seen as intolerant and viewed as offensive  regardless of how  much we try to be  loving like Him.  Causing  offence  is now viewed as one of the worst “sins” in our society but we  must relinquish our need to be liked by everyone and our  comfortable self-image as “nice people” because  we will not be able to prevent some people being offended by the challenge that counter- cultural Christianity is to the beloved  idols of our Age.

  I have NOT  got  this issue (of how to talk effectively about sin)  all worked out, I am raising it because it is something that is critically important for maintaining true biblical Christianity  and the “Good news of Jesus” message that I believe is the only hope for humankind.

In my thinking so far, I am wondering if  it may be better to focus on describing and explaining what is the heart of the matter of the human problem rather than focus on calling out individual kinds of sin to those who have not encountered Jesus and do not understand the basis for Christian morality. We also need to be clear ourselves about what the transformation to becoming truly Christlike actually means.  I have re-read  a journal  article by David Benner  called “Living in Truth” and found it quite helpful in how he expresses what is wrong with us. I will quote most of it:  

“We want to be like God, and this itself is fine. This is how God fashioned us- in the divine image. The problem, however, is that we want to be like God without surrender of our wilfullness and autonomy. We want a life of god-like existence independent of God. We want to keep one foot in the kingdom of self while awkwardly attempting to plant the other in the kingdom of God. 

The false self is the tragic result of trying to steal  something from God that we did not have to steal. If only we would dare to trust God’s goodness, we would discover that everything we could ever long for most deeply will be ours in God. By trying to gain more than the everything God offers, we end up with less than nothing. By rejecting unconditional surrender to God’s way of truth, we end up with a nest of lies and illusions. By displacing God we become a god unto ourselves. we become false selves. 

Rejecting the self that is created in God’s likeness, the false self is the one we develop in our own likeness. This is the person we think we would like to be- the person we would create if we were God.  But such a person cannot exist because he or she is an illusion. Intuiting that we are but a shadow, we seek to convince ourselves of our reality with what we have, what we can do, and what others think of us. 

The false self helps us forget that we are naked. Wrapped in this hastily prepared garment of our own making, we lose touch with our vulnerability. But God wants something better than fig leaves for us. God’s deepest desire for us is that we become the self that we were destined from all eternity to be. This self is our truest and deepest identity- the only one in which we can find ultimate fulfilment. 

Every moment of every day of our lives, God wanders in our inner garden, seeking our companionship. The reason God can’t find us is that we are hiding in the bushes of our false selves. God’s call to us is gentle and persistent; “Where are you? Why are you hiding?”

Coming out of hiding means meeting God on God’s own gracious terms. Coming out of hiding means surrendering the keys of the kingdom of self (even the duplicates!) and accepting the keys to the kingdom of God. Coming out of hiding means daring to know God in the only way God can ever be genuinely known- in a deep encounter with ourselves. Coming out of hiding means daring to know ourselves in the only way the self can ever be fully known- in a deeper encounter with God. 

In Christian spiritual transformation, the self that embarks on the journey is not the self that arrives. The self that begins the spiritual journey is the self of our wilful creation. This is the self that dies on the journey. The self that arrives is the self that was loved into existence by divine Love. This is the person we were destined to become- the “I” that is hidden in the “I AM”. 

“When he finally came to his senses, he said to himself, “at home, even the hired servants have food enough to spare, and here I am dying of hunger! I will go to my Father and say, “Father, I have sinned against both heaven and you, and I am no longer worthy  of being called your son. Please take me on as  a hired  servant.  So he returned to his father. And when he was still a long way off, his father saw him coming. Filled with love and compassion, he ran to his son, embraced him and kissed him. His son said to him “Father, I have sinned against both heaven and you, and I am no longer worthy of being called your son.” But his father said to his servants, “Quick! Bring the finest robe in the house and put it on him. Get a ring for his finger and sandals for his feet. And kill the calf we have been fattening. We must celebrate with a feast, for this son of mine was dead and now has returned to life. He was lost, but now he is found” So the party began. Luke 15:17-24

Jesus shouted to the crowds, “If you trust me, you are trusting not only me, but also God who sent me. For when you see me, you are seeing the one who sent me..........I don’t speak on my own authority. The Father who sent me has commanded me what to say  and how to say it. And I know his commands lead to eternal life; I say whatever the father tells me to say.” John 12: 44, 45, 49,50,

So many of the words and concepts of Christianity have taken on negative connotations that provoke aversion due to distortions and misunderstandings. This  makes it is difficult to speak about the  essence of what it is all about without triggering some reaction.  Words such as  “obedience, submit, commands,  authority,  slaves, sin”;...    can come across as legalism, or authoritarianism  or  sounding like we have to earn God’s acceptance, etc.  We can  try to use different words but we still need to retain the biblical  truth of how God sees humanity and how He sees our dire situation and the remedy for it, because at the heart of our human problem is self-deception -  left to ourselves, we don't see ourselves honestly  (nor do we  see  the character of God clearly.)   Many of the distortions come from our own  personal woundedness, as well as genuinely bad “religion”.  We react to God as though He is other than who he really is, and mostly we attribute to Him the human versions of emotions like anger,  conditional love etc..  We effectively  create God in our image,  e.g, if He is the ultimate  authority figure then we  react to him in whatever way we feel towards human authority figures and perceive Him as behaving the way we expect authority figures to treat us.  He is God, we can’t change the fact that He really  is the ultimate authority figure and in the end,   all creation will submit to Him whether they like it or not. But none of us have  ever known any human authority figures who are like him, whose essence is perfect love.  God is at pains  to   reminds us that  He isn't at all like us humans. 

   If we don't wrestle  with the concepts that trigger bad reactions and just dismiss them,  we are  just accommodating to our woundedness, not actually allowing God to  bring healing  to those distortions so we can worship him in the fullness  of who He actually  is.  We are still  making for ourselves  a comfortable God, to our own liking.  And this brings  us to the other factor that complicates this issue.  It is not just about our being deceived or wounded that muddies our perception of God, it is also the intractable tendency to pride and the enthronement of Self. Right from the beginning, the enemy has always whispered to each one of us  that   God does not have our best interests at heart and that we need to take charge and look after ourselves, creating  our own identity and deciding for ourselves what we need to make us feel fulfilled. I can truly say that I have lived my life showered in kindness, treated with gentleness and protectiveness by God, but as soon as God shows any sign of thwarting what I want for myself, my first reaction is for Self to rear up and accuse Him of being against me, and not having my best interests at heart. I  am choosing to agree with the enemy, Satan,  and it suits my sinful self to agree with him. I am not just a victim of a lack of love, I am like a petulant child who says accusingly “you don't love me any more!!” to a parent who has to deny a child because  what they want it is not good for them. The battle between good and evil is fought  in these moments, this is the arena of the  transformation process.  This is why becoming Christlike is painful  and  difficult and  it feels like  we are struggling with an addiction that we are powerless to overcome.  

But it is in the acknowledgment of our  total inability to win this war, lies the  wonder of what Christ can do for us and the freedom it brings.   When Christ calls us to "deny ourselves” and become like Him by surrendering ourselves to him, it is that very act of surrender to a God of perfect Love that empowers that capacity to obey his request to “deny ourselves.” 

Here are some quotes from David Benner in his excellent book “Surrender to Love”. Surrender goes against the grain of autonomy and self-control. Under any circumstances other than trustworthy love, it may be extremely unwise. But in response to Perfect Love, personally known, resistance can quickly dissipate and surrender become effortless - almost natural. ...The surrender Jesus invites from us - choosing his will and his life over our own - can never be motivated by anything but love... doing what God asks is not something we can ever achieve in ourselves. Not only did God never mean us to do so, he intended that our failures in obedience lead us to surrender. Rather than drive us to .ever-increasing efforts to get it right ourselves, God wants our sin to make us aware of our need of him. This is what Paul means by God’s strength being made perfect in Paul’s weakness... “

‘Listen, O Israel! The Lord is our God, the Lord alone. And you must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your strength.” Deuteronomy 6:4-5

“Righteousness and justice are the foundations of your throne, Unfailing love and truth walk before you as attendants.” Psalm 89:14

“Our Father, may your name be kept holy, May your kingdom come soon, May your will be done on earth as it is in Heaven.”  Matthew 6:9b, 10

No one can serve two masters. For you will hate one and love the other; you will be devoted to one and despise the other.  You cannot serve both God and money”   Matthew 6: 24

 In the previous blog, I touched on how challenging the serious business of following Christ actually is, and how we are invited by Christ  to see that a life lived with a commitment to material comfort and self-gratification is not the path to eternal life. When we get down to basics as far as God is concerned - the question is: where is our allegiance?  Is God our first loyalty or is it something else? (i.e an expression of our choice to seek life for ourselves away from dependence on God?)  Who is on the throne? God or self?  even though this question has been asked of every generation that has ever lived, the   issue is very crucial if genuine Christianity is to continue in western society. The high standard of living of western society and its move away from a Christian worldview has made a life of self-gratification and apparent self sufficiency more possible and attractive to more people. It is not just wealthy elites that  display self indulgence, a sense of entitlement to the pleasures available,  and a sense of control over your own  life,  our culture teaches those who lack the funds to live this way,  to aspire to it as the path to happiness for all. The message that is penetrating  our society amounts to a worship of self and it seeps into our lifestyle choices even as committed Christians.  The “gospel of self”  is not a left wing conspiracy to destroy Christianity.  Those on the” right wing ” who advocate most strongly for individual  freedom, and resist pressure to give up any freedom of choice   for the sake of the common good are expressing it too.  They are also  offering no serious challenge to the worship of money in a capitalist society where  ruthless greed  is excused or even celebrated,  and consumerism is normal and unremarkable. 

Michael Frost comments in “ ReJesus”: “One of the most urgent reasons why we need to re-envision ourselves around Jesus is that our imaginations so easily become captive to the dominant forces in our culture, whether those forces are  economic, political, religious or ideological. Furthermore .. our perceptions  of Jesus readily become domesticated through familiarity, fear of change, spiritual indolence or whatever keeps us from engaging Jesus as living Lord.. There seems to be little ideological or religious alternative to the domination of the free-market based consumption other than the reactionary responses of Islam. The Western church seems to have totally capitulated to the economic ideology of our day” (p46)

Mark Sayers in “The Disappearing Church”  talks about the “Gospel of Self” : “what we are experiencing is not the eradication of God from the Western mind, but rather the enthroning of self as the greatest authority. God is increasingly relegated to the role of servant, and massager of the personal will. We will find that progressive, contemporary Western culture is shaped by an ancient heresy- Gnosticism. Gnosticism at its heart is an alternative gospel, which moves authority from God to the self, in which the individual seeks to power their own development and salvation”... Scot McKnight observes that contemporary Christianity “has increasingly displaced the Bible as its foundation for knowing what to think and how to live and supplanted it with experience, desire, and preference. In other words, it has surrendered its heart to personal freedoms” Elsewhere, Mark Sayers has  “noted that one of the most alluring religious appeals of consumerism is that it offers us a new immediacy , a living alternative to what Heaven has always stood for in the Judeo-Christian tradition - the fulfilment of all our longings. We have at our fingertips experiences and offerings  available only to kings in previous eras. Offered “heaven now” we give up the ultimate quest in pursuit of that which can be immediately consumed, be it a service, product, or pseudo-religious experience. Consumerism has all the distinguishing traits of outright paganism - we need to see it for what it really is” Alan Hirsch in “The Forgotten Ways”  suggest that we must re-orient church around the central confession that “Jesus is Lord” and he has “become convinced that it is Christology, and in particular, the primitive, unencumbered Christology of the NT church, that lies at the heart of the renewal of the church at all times and in every age.”

Then he said to the crowd, “if any of you wants to be my follower, you must turn from your selfish ways, take up your cross daily and follow me. If you try to  hang onto to your life, you will lose it. But if you give up your life for my sake, you will save it.    And what do you benefit if you gain the whole world but are yourself lost or destroyed? If anyone is ashamed of me and my message, the Son of Man will be ashamed of that person when he returns in his glory and in the glory of the Father and the holy angels.” Luke 9: 23 - 27

“Following” behaviour   is hardwired in many species including humans. Birds who have chicks that hatch ready to fend for themselves, (eg ducks, geese),  imprint onto the first available caregiver and follow them everywhere. Sheep follow  the dominant sheep, or shepherd, and dogs joyfully  follow  their masters. Most  of the mechanism for this is the attachment processes in the brain.  We see this delightfully in small children who identify with their parents (and grandparents), wanting to do what they see them doing, wanting to  become like them and follow their lead. Most of us stay followers into adult life,  which is excellent when compliance is needed for the common good but dangerous when we bond to the wrong leaders who manipulate us and lead us to sacrifice ourselves for their  own  evil selfish needs. Those who are natural leaders have enormous responsibility for their power to influence others and are answerable to God for that. ( e.g Matthew 23)

When we decide to become followers of Christ,  we are meant to re-engage this following behaviour with Jesus, (which is how God intended it to be from the beginning). God’s love for us enables us to respond in love and attachment.  We can safely follow Christ trusting him with our lives and welfare. We are to  identify with him, we become “little Christs” saying what he would say, doing what he would do, going where he leads us, and having the same priorities and motivation. This process of  learning to  follow Christ  is what we call “discipleship”. 

The problem with it is that it seems to be counter-intuitive to our other “inbuilt” need to be independent of God -  i.e. wanting to be self determining, autonomous,  deciding for ourselves how to  get our needs and desires  met in ways that are selfish and focused on creature comforts, pleasure,  personal freedom and “happiness”.  This is what  is making Christian discipling so hard, so challenging and so radical.  In a society where we have so much of life under control that we don’t need to depend on God, It is so easy to fall back into something less demanding and convince ourselves that our comfortable lifestyles are  not a danger to our eternal well being. But  Jesus makes it clear we do this at our peril. (”If you try to hang onto your life , you will lose it”)  He talks in graphic images of “taking up our cross daily”.  F. F. Bruce, interpreting this verse,  reminds us that this image is something that we often fail to appreciate in our society where there is no capital punishment. “Taking up our cross” refers to condemned prisoners in the Roman world, carrying the cross -bar through the streets of the town on their way to being crucified.  Jesus had been talking previously to his disciples about his own prospects of persecution and execution, so now he warns everyone of the costs of becoming his follower i.e  ending up sharing the same kind of suffering.  

 But he talks about 2 kinds of death to face- The first is giving up our selfish ways (also referred to as “denying” ourselves), this involves starving to death our  desires for self gratification. Jesus has done this  death ahead of us too - he lived only to serve in self-giving love. I don't know about you, but I need more than a weekly sermon that might occasionally focus on this issue in order to keep me committed to  following Jesus into these deaths and beyond  into eternal life. I need accountability,  encouragement , exhortation and correction that comes from time with Jesus in self examination and prayer, time with those who see my life and can speak prophetically into it,  and time in the Bible where truth is expressed.  We cannot do this alone, and were never meant to, we are called into a Family, a  Body of many parts. We are too prone to self deception to safely operate in the isolation of a private individualistic spirituality.   Our society where we have more people with more  riches than ever before in history, puts us in the greatest spiritual danger of  making the wrong deadly choices. If our prosperity is killing our capacity to follow Jesus,  then if we can’t choose to unburden ourselves from slavery to material “treasures of earth” then you can understand that God may want to save us by allowing our  disordered  society to lose its prosperity. 

The problem of our commitment to   material wealth and  maintaining our standard of living is not just an  issue of individual  reluctance, but it is causing horrific injustice as we require governments to maintain prosperity   for us at the expense of poorer regions or nations. This is a really serious offence to God, and whole nations  will be  held to account and judged by him.  This terrible selfishness which is also ultimately  self- destructive   is illustrated in the failure to share enough vaccines with poor nations  in the pandemic. there is also the  failure to be prepared to risk our standard of living in order to ensure that poorer nations are not the ones to suffer from the effects of climate change, of which the wealthy nations have been the main cause. 

“Anyone who listens to my teaching and follows it is wise, like a person who builds a house on solid rock. though the rain comes in torrents and the floodwaters rise and the winds beat against that house, it won't collapse because it is built on bedrock. But anyone who hears my teaching and doesn’t obey it is foolish, like a person who builds a house on sand. When the rain and floods come and the  winds beat against that house, it will collapse with a mighty crash.”  Jesus, in Matthew 7: 24 - 27 

“Because of God’s grace to me, I have laid the foundation like an expert builder. Now others are building on it. But whoever is building on this foundation must be very careful. For no one can lay any foundation other than the one we already have - Jesus Christ.”  Apostle Paul, I Corinthians 3:10-11.

The photo is the famous  Mont St Michel. If ever there was a building built on bedrock this is a great example! It has survived more than a 1000 years of repeated assaults by wind, storms and invading armies,  and is an  amazing collection of buildings built on  top of each other piled  on the same foundation-it would take more than one visit to really explore.  We joined the endless stream of tourists ascending the mount, and as we walked along one of the passageways, a door opened, and a monk appeared. He looked directly at me and smiled warmly. It was one of those moments when you recognize the reality of Christ literally  dwelling within his followers. I knew in my spirit it was not just the monk smiling but it was Jesus himself saying “Hi,  I am here too!” It was very powerful. The abbey itself has had a very colourful history, and times when the Enemy was reigning there, and not Christ.  It is not a very “sacred” mount, full of commercialization -  tourist shops  in the village below.  But it seems now that with a new order of monks living there, Christ is reclaiming  the territory.  It is God’s people that bring God’s presence. The monks get on with their lives and liturgy, and do their best to bring the presence of God into the midst of all those overwhelming numbers of  (seemingly annoying) tourists  who can join in the worship and  also ask for personal prayer. They are certainly modelling how to be” in the world and not of it”! 

I have been reading, and continue to read  lots of books that have been written over the past 15 years that focus on calling us to adapt to being in exile in a post - Christian society. The discussions includes among other things : rethinking everything about how understand what being Christian means -(especially the big picture of  what “mission” into society looks like , secondly, rethinking how  we  communicate the gospel to those who don’t understand our concepts anymore. Thirdly, how to  disciple people into Christ so that they can  genuinely express the character of Jesus, and lastly the need to shed “old wineskins" of institutional church life that actually interfere with our ability to disciple effectively.  I think all of them would agree with Apostle Paul that the foundation of any  missional community must be Jesus alone. You don't make your starting point  new organisational structures or  new programmes or “building community”. You start with a Person and you make it your business to cement yourself into Him individually and collectively  and then you get the ears and eyes to perceive  what He is doing in your part of the world and join in. We can’t build anything for God, it can only be with God. “Unless the Lord builds the house, its builders labour in vain, Psalm 127. The “house”  being built is the people of God, but the foundation is not just hearing of  Jesus’ truth, but  the whole point of what Jesus said in this metaphor is obedience - following his teaching- that is the crucial part of having a firm foundation. Just hearing the truth without it radically  changing our lives results in spiritual catastrophe. 

 We really need to let that sink in and make sure we give people every opportunity to learn how to follow in obedience.  Our church structures are designed for lots of passive listening, an emphasis on  intellectual input by itself,  and not much relational  mentoring and  “learning by doing” even though we have known for a long time  that this is not the best way to help people be educated into lifestyle change.  Frank Viola suggests in Finding Organic Church,  that “The Lord’s way of training produces transformed disciples, while the modern method breeds isolated consumers of mental information.” Jesus taught his disciples on the run, immersing them in His mission- doing  what God the Father was showing Him to do,  and  then  getting the disciples to practice doing it. It was challenging, scary, and a huge  adventure, Jesus was so radical that they were forced  to  think about all kinds of things about their own society  and religious culture  that  had never occurred to them to question before and they could never go back to the life they lived before.   

What if we got rid of all the clutter to focus on Jesus our foundation,  and how to think of nothing else but becoming “ Little Christs”?  I will let C S Lewis have the last word: 

...”the Church exists  for nothing else but to draw men into Christ, to make them little Christs. If they are  not doing that, all the cathedrals, clergy, missions, sermons, even the Bible itself, are simply a waste of time. God became man for no other purpose”.  (Mere Christianity)

“I told them many things while I was with them in this world so they would be filled with my  joy. I have given them your word. And the world hates them because they do not belong to the world. I’m not asking you to take them out of the world, but to keep them safe from the evil one. They do not belong to this world any more than I do. Make them holy by your truth; teach them your word, which is truth. Just as you sent me into the world, I am sending them into the world.” John 17: 13b - 18. (Jesus’ prayer for his disciples) 

“if you need wisdom, ask our generous God, and he will give it to you. He will not rebuke you for asking. But when you ask Him, be sure that your faith is in God alone. Do not waver, for a person with divided loyalty is as unsettled as a wave of the sea that is blown and tossed by the wind. Such people should not expect to receive anything from the Lord. Their loyalty is divided between God and the world, and they are unstable in everything they do. James1:5 - 8

John and I are both prone to sea-sickness, so  riding the waves of the sea is not a comfortable experience. The strategy John has always used to minimise the risk of getting ill is to find the centre of gravity, the balance point,  of the boat and stay right there, to minimise the rocking  motion that is greater on the sides. 

Christianity has always required we hold many  things in tension and find a balance point for truth and right living. If we focus too much on one thing, such as discerning sin and error, we forgot that the gospel is about grace and love. We are in as much inbalance if we fail to address error and sin by only ever focusing on  love and grace, ignoring the need for  radical transformation. 

As  exiles in a hostile world, the challenge is always to be “in the world and not part of it”.  Here  is another tension  where it is difficult to maintain a balance. The bigger the conflict between the lifestyle and values of our culture and Christianity the more the temptation is to either accommodate to the current culture and lose the distinctiveness of our faith and also compromise our allegiance to Christ, or else, retreat from the world in attempted self -preservation into ghettos of  “purity” by avoiding contact with the culture around us, an isolation that violates our calling  to bring Christ into the  world around us. But finding that balance point is  a task that has to be repeated with every generation as our society changes so quickly .

As I mentioned in previous blogs, the powerful intrusiveness of the world through digital technology makes it especially hard to fill our minds with the things of God or to resist the force of value-changing propaganda, when we know that sheer constant repetition   makes any idea feel true or “normal”.  The apparent lack of a distinctive biblical worldview among so many who call themselves Christian may be testimony to how much people have succumbed to stronger cultural influences and maybe as well the failure of the churches to disciple people into a sound understanding of biblical truth, an ability to  critique the influences of our culture from that perspective  and how that applies to living in a postmodern society where truth and reality have been reduced to subjective experience. 

“Set a guard over my mouth, O Lord, keep watch over the door of my lips. Let not my heart be drawn to what is evil, to take part in wicked deeds with men who are evildoers; let me not eat of their delicacies...... But my eyes are fixed on you, O sovereign Lord; in you I take refuge- do not give me over to death. Keep me from the snares they have laid for me, from the traps set by evildoers. Let the wicked fall into their own nets, while I pass by in safety.  Psalm 141: 3,4, 8-10.

The photo is our possum friend who was snared by her curiosity and greed and found herself caught in the trap we had set for feral cats, (the  local “evildoers”) After a miserable night repenting of her foolishness, we rescued her safely the following morning.

Last blog I commented on how powerful  a force is the digital Babylon in which we now inhabit. Escaping its snare is  probably the biggest challenge facing followers of Jesus in this period in our society. To be ensnared ourselves not only means we lose our way again spiritually, we lose our distinctive lifestyle as exiled followers of Jesus and we are unable to liberate others from the same trap. As part of the older generation, it may be easier for me to see some things that we are losing in this present culture, like quality of relationships, because I am  not a “digital native”. I had a life before the digital era to which I can make comparisons. But the older ones are not the ones to lead the way forward into navigating the complexities  of our online world.   The task of those younger than us will be to figure out how to  maintain a Biblical worldview and  a lifestyle of successful family and community relationships through which  Jesus is operating and the power of the Holy Spirit is working to rescue others. A society dominated by the internet is new territory, and the internet is now regarded by us all as an indispensable asset at the same time as it can be the fastest route to self destruction and the multiplying of human evil.  But the good aspects makes it so easy to ignore the bad, so we tolerate its destructiveness because we  feel  we are no  longer able to live without it. We need leaders who are alert to what is going on, who  will seriously grapple with the issues and forge these understandings into more effective discipleship. 

 This challenge was highlighted in the past few days in  several instances:  Firstly, reading the sobering details of what Jaron Lanier, one of the pioneers of Virtual Reality, had to say about all the negative effects of social media.  In  commenting on how social media  technology operates, he says  “ .. the algorithms have to maximize value from all the data that’s coming in. So they test use that data . it just turns out as a matter of course, that the same data that is a positive, constructive process for the people who generated it...can be used to irritate other groups. And unfortunately there’s this asymmetry in human emotions where the negative emotions of fear and hatred and paranoia and resentment come up faster, more cheaply, and they’re harder to dispel than the positive emotions. ..” 

 Secondly, I read an ABC  news article of what has happened in a small rural town in Victoria  to a community Facebook page that was meant to bring the town together. It did successfully do that  until the covid controversies about vaccines etc  surfaced in it. Then angry, aggressive and abusive posts came to dominate and the divisive conversations online were affecting the town’s otherwise treasured sense of community. The online divisions  spilled over into everyday life making  face to face contacts  toxic, and the ability to have amicable differences stopped, because of a few intolerant but very  vocal people. Those who had the difficult task of administrating the Facebook page, got accused of suppressing freedom of speech if they tried to keep out the kind of material that is inflammatory and divisive and they are left feeling that what had been a good attempt at community connections has now become  negative and unmanageable.  

Thirdly,  I had a conversation with someone about their adult daughter, who has a history of emotional maladjustment. The daughter has spent a lot of time in lockdown immersed in the gaming world, and has now decided to take on the name and identity of her avatar in the gaming world and now declares herself to be “gender fluid” in the process. Her mother is clearly concerned that she has become immersed in unreality, and has  created  for herself  an artificial “self” that will not be a successful way to relate in real life.

“Do not love this world, nor the things it offers you, for when you love the world, you do not have the love of the Father in you. For the world offers only  a craving for physical pleasure, a craving for everything we see, and pride in our achievements and possessions. These are not from the Father, but are from this world. And this world is fading away, along with everything that people crave. But anyone who does what pleases God will live forever.  I John 2: 15 -17

 I am continuing on the theme of exile and the challenges for Christians as Christendom has faded  and with it a diminishing of our  social acceptability,   our religious  freedoms, and  our power to influence society. I want to reflect on the Biblical image of “Babylon” as  a metaphor for all that seduces or destroys the people of God. 

The people of Israel were sent by God into exile, in judgement for their failure to love and be loyal to  the God who had rescued them and built  them into a nation under His sovereignty alone.   The northern kingdom was destroyed by the Assyrians army and later, the southern kingdom,  based around Jerusalem, by the Babylonians, who were the world dominating Super- Power of that era.  Babylon was a fortified  capital city and centre of all commerce etc. The upper echelons of Israelite society were kept alive, settled in Babylon and their talents put to use for the Babylonian empire. Those who stayed loyal to God had a tricky time both serving the empire as honourably as they could (and were a blessing to their overlords) but they also could not compromise their first loyalty to God, and were always at risk of death for not bowing down to the gods of the empire or  worshipping the king as divine. 

Babylon became in biblical prophetic literature, the symbol of  what the New Testament describes as “the  world”.  It is a descriptor for not just one empire in history, eg the Roman Empire, but all political and religious systems that exalt humankind and stand against loyalty to the God who seeks for us to live in dependence on Him, under His sovereignty. Ray Barnett in his book on  Revelation, puts it this way: ”it is the pride and vanity of mankind making a name for itself, pleasing themselves, exalting themselves and their own desires and pleasures above God, and yet all the while remaining a puppet of an unseen master. ....It is that system which provides pleasure and security for fallen humanity, independent of God. It is organised human vanity. It is everything that seduces people away from God and the realities of life in God’s world. It encompasses everything that attempts to provide security outside a relationship with our Creator.“

So Babylon is with us in every generation, and is in the ascendency in our western society as  the Christian influence wanes.  The pressing issue is still the same as it was for ancient Israel -  how to live in exile in Babylon without compromising our loyalty and assimilating its values and priorities.  But the situation is now harder and more complex in our technological environment.  We now carry Babylon in our pockets and it is sending its seductive  messages as soon as we move our fingers over the screen of our phones. Kinnanman and Matlock  (”Faith for Exiles”) describe how insidious is what they call “digital Babylon” I quote:

“the idea of digital colonisation may seem extreme, but here is the point: screens inform and connect, but they also distract and entertain. Through screens’ ubiquitous presence, Babylon’s pride, power, prestige, and pleasure colonise our hearts. Pop culture is a reality filter. Websites, apps, movies, TV, video games, music social media, YouTube channels, and so on, increasingly provide the grid against which we test what is true and what is real. The media and the message blur the boundary between truth and falsehood.  What is real is up for grabs. ... All these contest to define reality are features of the current Babylonian landscape.  Screens demand our attention. Screens disciple.   .... These authors point out research on young people in USA showing that using screens for entertainment has become the dominant activity of childhood, and that “youth groups used to serve as a main social outlet for teens and kids but it is being replaced by sports and social media. The number of hours connecting, learning and being discipled in a close-knit church community is now a drop in the ocean of content pouring out of their screens”.  ( I would also suggest that pandemic lockdowns have strengthened these habits of dependence on screens to fill our lives in preference to face to face relationships, even while they have at the same time saved us from going insane from social isolation.) These authors also point out that from their research, ”the main reason young people drop out of church is insufficient discipleship. The verdict of that research is that many families and churches have lost their way in terms of effectively discipling  the next generation. “Given that  George Barna’s surveys at the  Cultural Research Centre also show how few people who call themselves Christian actually hold a  distinctly biblical worldview, (6% in USA) then  working out how to effectively disciple people into a lifestyle of following the Jesus of the Bible  needs urgent rethinking in light of the power of digital  Babylon. 

“ ...The seeds on the rocky soil represent those who hear the message and receive it with joy. But since they don’t have deep roots, they don’t last long. They fall away as soon as they have problems or are persecuted for believing God’s word. The seed that fell among the thorns, represents others who hear God’s word, but are all too quickly the message is crowded out by the worries of this life, the lure of wealth, and the desire for other things, so no fruit is produced. .And the seed  that fell on good soil represents whose who hear  and accept God’s word and produce a harvest of thirty, sixty, or even a hundred times as much as had been planted.” Mark 4:16 - 20

This passage is part of Jesus’ explanation  of his “parable of the soils.”  In blog # 21, I mentioned the necessity to put our roots down deep in God so that we can persevere. Here, in this parable,  Jesus is using the metaphor of rocky soil and the problem of being shallow- rooted and unable to keep growing and thriving  under hardship and persecution. He then identifies the other issue that also leads to failure to thrive and fruitlessness, which is that of  developing other priorities that take a person  away from seeking life from Jesus alone.

This message is timeless, (there is never a season when it doesn’t apply!)  but  the world seems to be starting to accelerate  away into even greater  chaos, tribalism, lawlessness,  environmental disaster and unprecedented levels of persecution. We  have been living  in  a society of wealth and security that also included being able to practice our faith in freedom. Others have commented that historically, this  should be regarded as  more of an aberration than the norm. But it has its downside and we are now moving out of the frying pan into the fire, to use another metaphor. A society that gives us such security and wealth is dangerous as it lures us away from God into  selfishness, greed, materialism. It  is severely thorny soil and we can be  overtaken by these things or, at the very least, we can become spiritually and emotionally weak and flabby, unprepared for tough times ahead and not used to having to depend on God. This  then sets us up for having no spiritual  strength or resilience, and we are at grave risk of  giving up under  economic hardship or religious persecution. If we don’t see the peril we are in, we will not be able to persevere to the end or produce the wonderful  “harvest” that God intended.

It is very hard for those of  us living  in such a long  period of wealth and economic growth, to actually  imagine that it might  not keep continuing indefinitely  and to think that we might need to be prepared for it to end. It is also very hard  to come to grips with how compromised we are in our discipleship compared to our brothers and sisters who are poor and depend on God to survive.  We pay lip service to this reality, then proceed as usual. The same applies for living in a society where Christian thought and values were accepted by the majority.  We have to come to terms with the change upon us. Followers of Jesus are a minority subculture that is being devalued and silenced.  Sadly,  there is still a large number of deluded American Christians who want to keep fighting the cultural war that is already lost and to use  political power, or even civil war, to force society back into  “Christendom.”  While we should not retreat from trying to protest abuses and speaking up for  just causes, I, like many others, can’t see see how political power could possibly achieve what spiritual transformation can. If our society has sold out to other ideologies, worldviews and the forces of darkness, we cannot reverse it by enmity  but by the power of Christ who turns enemies into servants of the God of love. They   will  then value what is important to God and behave differently. Jesus actually had to keep working hard to get his disciples to make the paradigm shift from seeing the kingdom of God not as an earthly kingdom that needed to be established by use of earthly  power. He did not want them  to fight to keep  Israel as a nation of God,  and God allowed  Israel and Judaism to be smashed soon afterwards by the Romans. But this new spiritual movement of Christians grew fast  and outlasted their oppressors. We need to keep remembering that God is  at his brilliant  best at appearing to have His cause look completely defeated while he actually has at the same time got the victory over His Enemy.

It wont do to huddle in our near empty churches, pretending to ourselves  that outsiders would still want to come inside, and “tut-tutting” about how awful society has become. We must embrace the journey into exile  and get  spiritually fit for it. As Michael Frost  (in ”Exiles”) says, we must “resist assimilation and refuse despair.”

By the rivers of Babylon, we sat down and wept when we remembered Zion. There on the poplars we hung our harps, for there our captors asked us for songs, our tormentors demanded songs of joy; they said” Sing us one of the songs of Zion!” How can we sing the songs of the Lord in a foreign land?

 Psalm 137 : 1- 4

The news on television has been showing us heart-rending footage of the plight of Afghanis who are fleeing for their lives into exile from their homeland. Many don’t ever expect to return and are  grieving deeply to lose family, culture and their identity - all the things that made their lives rich and meaningful. They now face an uncertain future as refugees, often unwanted, resented, or treated with suspicion. They now  lack  status and value in a new culture that may not  welcome them or give them  a place for them to feel at home. If they were well off  before, they may now be poor, and stripped of all their possessions. If they had a good job it may be a long time before they can get anything but menial work especially if they do not speak the language in their new country. They may also be at risk of living in limbo for years, stuck in refugee camps, unable to find anything to call home. 

The numbers of people being  forced into exile or into “internal displacement camps” is growing dramatically across the globe. We  also hear of so many of our Christian brothers and sisters not only in Afghanistan, but in  Myanmar,  sub- Saharan African states  etc, who have had their homes destroyed by militarized anti-Christian forces and had to flee for their lives with nothing to sustain them and  governments lacking the will  to protect them.  The Jews have been in and out of  heart - breaking exile for most of the past 2,500 years at least. “Exile was a defining experience for the nation of Israel.” (Beach) The  modern state of Israel was set up to provide for the traumatized, and stateless remnant of the holocaust of WWII in Europe. Jesus himself lived in exile  in Egypt as a small child, and in a condition of homelessness in his ministry years, but his greatest dislocation was to leave Heaven to suffer in the world of humankind, (we have absolutely  no idea how hard that was to do.)   Abraham, the founder of the people of God, chose to live in exile from Mesopotamian society to  follow the call of a God he hardly knew, to  go to another land, living in tents as a migrating herdsman. He had to purchase burial plots because he had no rights to any land holdings in Canaan.  Adam and Eve were the first exiles, forced from Eden, the protected garden God had given them, into the hardships of life “in the wild”. Sometimes it is God pushing people into exile as a  consequence of   sin and idolatry in order to save them from themselves,  and other times it is the harassment of the Enemy who is resisting what God has been doing through His people.  Whatever the circumstances,  it can be a devastating experience, so much loss, grief and hardship. But it is also such a common  experience across human history, and the Bible has  much to say to God’s people who so frequently find themselves in a state of exile.  God works through the experience of exile  to bring us to maturity and to show His power in human weakness, defying an enemy who exults in raw power for its own sake.  God  is never truly absent, nor abandons His people even when the whole  institutional structure around traditions of worship and meeting together are destroyed. 

The Bible encourages us to never put our roots down too firmly even in our own culture, but to see ourselves called like Abraham, to go on a journey, looking towards an eternal home (Hebrews 11)   that totally outclasses whatever we consider to be earthly “Paradise”.   

How does this relate to us now?  There have already been many Christian thinkers who have recognised the changes in Western society, moving into “post Christendom” that is now causing Christians to feel alienated within our own society. Walter Brueggemann, Michael Frost,  Alan Hirsch and Lee Beach, to name some, who have described this as “exile”.  We have a choice to adapt or die out but change is unavoidable. 

 Because the challenge is also an opportunity, I want to focus more of my blogs on this concept of moving into exile.  We can have real hope by being able  to see what God may be doing rather than just mourning or resenting our losses. 

Here is the perspective of  Lee Beach who can express it better than I can, 

Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord, whose confidence is in Him. He will be like a tree planted by the water that sends out its roots by the stream. It does not fear when heat comes; its leaves are always green. It has no worries in a year of drought and never fails to bear fruit.  Jeremiah 17: 7 - 9

This  tall white tree is a southern blue gum (eucalyptus globulus). It is not indigenous to the Shoalhaven, I planted it when we set up the property,  because I love this variety of gum, it is beautiful, and useful- it is harvested for the fragrant oil and you can  make dyes from its leaves.  I planted it on the top side of a swale, leading to the dam. I planted others further away from the swale and dam, but they have struggled and look pathetic and stunted, their root systems have not developed well. The difference between them and this one is stunning. We have had a lot of drought and the trees on this part of the property do not get hand- watered and are left to fend for themselves. But  in 12 years this tree has become one of the tallest trees on the property. It is straight, and healthy because its roots have found the water and light it needs to thrive. 

I have been reflecting on spiritual drought in Australia and the truth of those verses above from Jeremiah.  I have lived my life as  a “baby-boomer” and been blessed with consistent opportunities and economic wealth, probably the most fortunate and  wealthiest generation on earth, with    a lifetime of peace, security and comfort. But there does not seem to have been a major move of God in Australia since Billy Graham’s crusades. (the 1959 crusade was when I surrendered to Jesus, and that is 62 yrs ago!) The material abundance has not been paralleled by spiritual abundance, people have been   abandoning Christianity,  and others  have not been  asking us how to connect them to Jesus. How many of us have experienced the joy of seeing someone wholeheartedly  surrender  themselves to God’s love?  God never stops working in people’s lives but it is also true that there seems to be seasons  for “Harvest” that come out of an abundant  outpouring of the  Spirit touching people.  In that season many people respond to God.  While I am not going to explore possible reasons for this sense of spiritual drought right now,  there does seem to be a direct correlation  between material self sufficiency and spiritual dryness.  I do have to say that I have found it challenging to live through a prolonged spiritual drought. I  have spent many years  trying to be faithful about being “salt and light” in my setting , “planting seeds”,  and wondering what has germinated as I can’t yet see the results for my efforts. I am not patient. 

Australian farmers are famous for their patient perseverance. Many of them have just endured terrible drought and for some of them that was followed by devastating bushfire or flood.  It has taken a terrible toll, including suicides, and many lacked the financial and emotional resources to keep going.  

  Drought is a test of endurance- year after year working harder for no results, trying to cope with more losses and no gains. There is  even the boredom of living in a situation where there is so little life or  colour - the landscape has become barren and monotone.  When nature is vibrant we come alive too, we are stimulated when we see life bursting forth around us. I think spiritual drought can also feel soul destroying - we can sense the lifelessness and find ourselves losing focus and  getting terminally bored with church. If we depend on the activity we see around us to keep us persevering in our faith we are not going to survive drought. 

Eventually all droughts come to an end, and farmers stoically persevere because they know that this is true. This is the hope that keeps them going in the years of pain.  Those fortunate ones who did survive are now rejoicing in a bumper year. We see this as we watch ABC’s “Landline” programme.  Their latest  problem  is an echo of Jesus words:  “The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few.”  as they have to watch crops go to waste because they can’t access migrant workers.

Simon Peter answered, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” Jesus replied, “you are blessed, Simon, son of John because my Father has revealed this to you. You did not learn this from any human being. Now I say to you that you are Peter (which means rock) and upon this rock I will build my church, and all the powers of hell will not conquer it.”       Matthew 16:16-18

“I don’t want you to forget, dear brothers, about our ancestors in the wilderness long ago. All of them were guided by a cloud that moved ahead of them....All of them ate the same spiritual food, and all of them drank the same spiritual water. for they drank from the spiritual rock that travelled with them, and that rock was Christ.”  I Cor.10:1, 3

“You are coming to Christ, who is the living cornerstone of God’s Temple. He was rejected by people but he was chosen by God for great honour. And you are living stones that God is building into his spiritual temple. What’s more, you are his holy priests...” 1 Peter 2:4-5 

In what I have written in blogs so far,  the  underlying  concern has been  the challenges of  life in a post Christian  culture.  These challenges  require us to urgently re-assess whether our “Christian sub culture” and the institutions we have developed  are still able to effectively disciple new Christians and teach us how to live in deep connectedness to God.  Are they effectively bringing us to spiritual maturity and  are we able to pass on the life of Christ to others, outside our subculture, who  need to  see Christ in our attitudes and behaviour? 

There are so few people  now, not raised in Christian homes, who would feel at all able to understand and feel comfortable with what is said and done in churches.  To overcome this disconnect, it requires the same adaptability, sensitivity and capacity to step outside one’s own  culture to find ways to connect to others as it does to work in another culture overseas. We need a new generation of those who can operate this way. We can no longer kid ourselves  that church sponsored  “outreach”  will work, (i.e  what Gavin Reid back in 1969  referred to as “in-drag” and it was failing  50 yrs ago, so how long does it take to get the message?)  We would do better to imitate those who live in cultures hostile to Christians, where you cannot set up  buildings and programmes to draw in the crowds but must convince others of the beauty of Jesus by developing authentic relationships, doing without formal meetings and organisations,  discipling one- on- one, and meeting in small groups in houses. These meetings  need to allow  true community to operate-   people can experience Christ in their midst when they have to depend solely on His Presence to teach and guide through exercising the gifts of the Spirit.

I am aware that many of us are very “institutionalized” and it is beyond us to move outside our traditions. God graciously meets all of us where we are at, and enjoys fellowshipping with us in whatever manner or culture we have learnt and will continue to work through our institutions as much as He can. He is infinitely adaptable!  But there are fewer and fewer church buildings, mostly used by older people, and where are the younger generations? The statistics are truly frightening in the numbers who have abandoned the  institutional church. Many of them are not disaffected with God, but church doesn't work for them or hold a place of respect in their hearts. Are leaders too busy keeping the machinery operating to realize that the machine  is an out of date and ineffective “harvester”? 

I am also not advocating a simplistic changing of  “wineskins” i.e  that we just swop to doing house church instead, as though that will magically make us into effective disciples. Frank Viola  has reviewed  the house church movement in the West and its track record is pretty poor too (see “Finding Organic Church”). He concludes that “the most important ingredient for  a new organic church is to strip down to Christ alone. Doing so will give the Lord a clear shot at revealing Himself to you in a new way. He will be free to express Himself in a way that is natural, organic, and free of traditional baggage.” p183

“But the time is coming - indeed it’s here now - when true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth. The Father is looking for those who will worship him that way. For God is spirit, so those who worship him must worship in spirit and in truth.  Jesus, in John 4: 23, 24

“It is the depravity of institutions and movements that given in the beginning to express life, they often end in throttling that very life. Therefore, they need constant review, perpetual criticism and continuous bringing back to the original purposes and spirit. The Christian church is no exception. It is the chief illustration of the above. “ E. Stanley Jones. 

This photo of the chancel/sanctuary area of our historic Anglican church  unfortunately doesn’t show the words emblazoned on the archway above it which say ”Reverence My Sanctuary”. I don’t know why those words were chosen back in the early days, but reading them now I think it epitomizes our tendency to focus on the physical representation of God’s Presence- the sacred building with its special sanctuary area, and its altar where the priest helps us do business with God through the sacrifice of Jesus. It seems to echo the OT practices of encountering  God primarily in a physical temple and the rituals performed there on the Sabbaths and festivals. Back  then in Judaism,  the people go back home to ordinary life,  coming later to meet with God again under the assistance and supervision  of the professional clergy. When we look at the history of the Jews and Christianity we can see how powerful is that pull towards having the focus of religious  experience  based in sacred spaces, and special ceremonies and special people, that are a culture in themselves. - visible, predictable, full of rich symbolism and  comforting, but we can fall into   believing that we are doing the right thing by God just  by our attendance at them. Things that are material, organised and scripted for us are so much easier to do  than trying to develop a personal relationship with God,  and develop  a richness to our “ inner Temple.”  But that is why they are such danger to the very thing they are meant to facilitate- becoming mature in Christ. When Jesus had the conversation with the Samaritan woman, and she was wanting to engage him in the  longstanding controversy over where was the right place to worship God, he told her all the institutional Temple worship was about to  be superseded and true worshippers would now worship God in spirit and truth and that is the kind of worshipper  the Father is wanting to see. So it seems to be implying that the primary task of anyone responsible for discipling and leading others is help us worship “in spirit and truth.” I am struggling to remember if I have heard anyone expound on this and explain exactly what that means to “worship in spirit and truth”, but it is obviously something that is more powerful than church attendance by itself. I am not trying to say they are mutually exclusive things or that what is done in church can  not be powerfully inspired by God and used by God for our benefit, but that having a primary focus on the external organized meetings with a passive laity, sets us up for a shallowness in our relationship with God and people lack the motivation and the confidence to go deeper with God in their everyday lives.  In Jeremiah 7:1 -15, God speaks in no uncertain terms to his people, that he has no time for empty religiosity and warned the people that they could not operate on the false assumption that they were safe from attack because  God would never bring calamity on his Temple. He reminds them that He destroyed Shiloh, where the Tabernacle had resided, and in fact he  He has a track record of organising the destruction of every Temple the Jewish nation ever built. He  hates outward piety that hides unsurrendered hearts, and lives that do not reflect his concern for justice and care of the marginalised (Jer 4: 5, 6)   He has a commitment to getting rid of whatever gets in between Him and the hearts of his people. We may  feel our modern structures and organisations are never too bad to need dismantling, but  I don’t think God has changed.   if our religious institutions are more precious to us than the God in whose name they are established, then it is idolatry, and  He can organise their destruction.. 

“The Lord God planted a garden in Eden in the east, and there he placed the man he had made. The Lord made all sorts of trees grow up from the ground - trees that were beautiful and that produced delicious fruit....A river flowed from the land of Eden, watering the garden and then dividing into four branches... The Lord placed man in the Garden of Eden to tend and watch over it.” Genesis 2:8,9a,15

“In my vision the man brought me back to the entrance of the Temple. There I  saw a stream flowing east from beneath the door of the Temple.....,then he led me back along the riverbank... I was surprised by the sight of many trees growing on both sides of the river... Life will flourish wherever this water flows... fruit trees of all kinds will grow along both sides of the river. The leaves of these trees will never turn brown and fall, and there will always be fruit on their branches. There will be a new crop every month, for they are watered by the river flowing  from the Temple. The fruit will be for food, and the leaves for healing.”             Ezekiel 47:1, 6, 9a,12.

“On the last day, the climax of the festival, Jesus stood and shouted to the crowds, “anyone who is is thirsty may come  to me!  Anyone who believes in me may come and drink! For the scriptures declare  “Rivers of living water will flow from his heart”.  John 7:37- 38

“Now the angel showed me a river with the water of life, clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb. On each side of the river grew a tree of life, bearing twelve crops of fruit, with a fresh crop each month. The leaves were used for medicine to heal the nations.”   Revelation 22 :1.

As you can see from the  sample of  texts above, the theme of a life- giving river with  God as its source is a major imagery  thread from  the beginning to end of the Bible.  It deserves a much more thorough exploration than what I can do here. But  I think this shows that  God is telling us something important about  what he intended for us in the beginning, that he kept the hope alive of  a return to   this during the time of the Hebrew  prophets and in the hearts of the Psalmists, and how Christ opened the flow of the river directly into those who trust him and how the ultimate fulfillment is the river flowing eternally  in God’s restored world.  Commenting on this theme, author Dutch Sheets, explains that   Firstly: to be in the river is to be in God, secondly: To drink of the river is to drink from God and thirdly: to release the river is to release God.

The river is the very life of God that flows into us as we “drink from God” by spending time in His Presence, allowing the Holy Spirit to grow us into maturity - heal our emotional  wounds, cleanse us from harmful  attitudes and behaviours and fill us with the power of God to bring  truth, cleansing, healing to others.  The Temple in the vision of Ezekiel represents the Presence of God living  with and in His people. The temple will not be a material building but a metaphor for God’s people who each have a Temple within, where God dwells and the life of God flows into us now, not just in Heaven. Jesus said to the Samaritan woman “those who drink the water I give will never be thirsty again, It becomes a fresh, bubbling spring within them, giving them eternal life.”  Eternal life starts when we surrender  ourselves to Jesus and His Spirit takes up residence in  our spirits. All the life and power of God is available to flow into us. Apostle Paul prays this for the Ephesian Christians:  “I pray that from his glorious unlimited resources He will empower you with inner strength through His Holy Spirit. Then Christ will make his home in your hearts as you trust in him. Your roots will grow down into God’s love and keep you strong... may you experience the love of Christ, though it is too great to understand fully. Then you will be made complete with all the fullness of life and power that comes from God..” Eph 3:16,17,19. We grow and flourish as we drink from God, the way a tree draws from a river. We are  the trees that produce leaves and fruit for  spiritual growth and  healing of others, “the nations”.  There is a great  urgency that  we have a depth to our faith that can truly deliver life and healing to a world that cannot see what the institutional  church has to offer. It has always been true that people, not organisations, are the best salespeople for Jesus - people who are full of love, truth, and are healed themselves and from whom the healing waters of God can flow to others.  Are we drinking deeply enough that the river can flow out from us? Have we got something worth passing on? We need to keep  allowing the  springs of   living waters to well up and fill us to overflowing. Dutch Sheets again: ”we have received the fullness of Christ, but we must stay filled with His Spirit. We can be 100 percent saved but walk in 30 percent power and efficiency.” Dwight Moody was asked why he needed to be filled and refilled with the Spirit.  “that’s’ very simple”, said Mr Moody, “I leak” . .  His [God’s] desire is that we keep coming, keep drinking, keep being filled. Why? so the river can keep flowing.” 

One advantage of growing older is that you need to depend more on God  to do life well. We can’t pretend that we have it all together and can do it all in our own strength. My times of soaking in God’s presence are becoming increasingly precious. I  come out of them feeling strengthened physically, better prepared  for the day by  inviting God to work through me and curb my sinful tendencies.  I have already learnt, and passed on to  others, how  so much emotional healing  can come from allowing Jesus to speak into our pain and disordered emotional lives and heal our wounds. Spiritual maturity is hindered if our emotional wounds are not addressed. 

“As Jesus and the disciples  continued on their way to Jerusalem, they came to a certain village where a woman named Martha welcomed them into her home. Her sister, Mary, sat at the feet of Jesus, listening to what he taught. But Martha was distracted by the big dinner she was preparing. She came to Jesus, and said, “Lord, doesn’t it seem unfair to you that my sister just sits here while I do all the work? Tell her to come and help me”  But the Lord said to her, “My dear Martha, you are worried and upset over all these details! There is only one thing worth being concerned about. Mary has discovered it, and it will not be taken away from her.” Luke10:38f

This is a revolutionary remark that  Jesus made, and  it still challenges us powerfully today whether we are men or women. In that cultural setting,  Jesus was giving  Martha permission to abandon  the gender role assigned by a patriarchal society to women as servants and hostesses, which would have taken priority  over doing what the male disciples could do - feel free to focus on  hanging around him and soaking up  his teaching. I feel sorry for Martha, she felt very responsible, there was probably a lot of people to feed and  I guess she felt she would miss out on hearing  the conversations with Jesus if her sister left her to do all the work and she was trapped in the kitchen. She took the initiative to invite  Jesus to dinner, so it was an act of love on her part - to serve him in this way. If he was her most honoured guest ever, she would feel pressure to make the meal really special as an act of respect, especially in her Jewish culture. So I can relate to her getting stressed about  the details of the meal, most of us would feel that way if we hosted a much respected VIP. We don't know how many other people showed up with Jesus for the meal, but it may have been quite a few, so the logistics may have been tricky too! Martha was really trying to do her best for Jesus - giving love through an act of service that was quite costly in time and resources. Service was her expression of love and commitment. 

All of us are called to sacrificial   service following the example of Jesus himself, who was often exhausted and depleted in serving the needs of desperate people wanting his help. His remedy for that was to go to a lonely place, to spend the night in God the Father’s restorative company.  Serving is deeply ingrained in our Christian culture and many of us feel very guilty or useless  if we are not actively “doing service”. I think the cultural pressure to be very busy with Kingdom work is strong and so there are many of us of both sexes who may be like Martha. Giving and doing  is viewed as much more of a priority than receiving and just being with Jesus. Mary was so hungry for time with Jesus that she was prepared to be thought as  lazy or selfish or rebellious -  not doing her feminine duty. Jesus applauded her choice, regarding it as far more important that  Mary receive her spiritual sustenance from him than  join Martha in  providing the service of food for  Jesus.

 The power of the expectations that we put on ourselves and each other is forceful. I wonder  if Martha was able to give herself permission to do what her sister did, then or next time? did she appreciate the opportunity that would have been there for both of them, to spend more time receiving from him,  or did she  see it as impractical or impossible to relinquish her role  as hostess. Was it too far outside her comfort zone to  change? Did Jesus offer her a solution to her dilemma?  Could she trust him to find a way forward if she took the risk and accepted the challenge to become like  her sister?  From Jesus’ perspective it is one of those situations where “the good was the enemy of the best”. Again it shows us that God values our time with Him more than our service but we tend to see things the other way, exhausting ourselves in service that we regard as essential while we grow weary and depleted, doing things in our own strength and not checking whether these essentials are actually a priority with God. Do we have the courage to say “no” to expectations and pressures to keep the machinery running in order to radically re-organise our spiritual lives?  Are we hungry enough   for God or fed up enough to take the risk?  Do we need to re-evaluate our  culture of “doing”  in order to develop and disciple others into a spirituality of “being” that values and teaches us how to live in God’s presence so that we are filled with all the fullness of God when we go out to serve?  Do our leaders teach us how to commune with God? or do we only know how to become “Marthas”? So much of the time and energy of so many people is spent in keeping the machinery of church meetings happening, but are they the good that is the enemy of what God really wants for us -  more  time feasting on  Him, the Bread of Life?