Myarticles&reviews

FROM JESUS TO CHRISTIANITY

2005-01-28T22:55:00.000-08:00

Book Review: From Jesus to Christianity, by L. Michael White (HarperSanFrancisco, 2004)

English-speaking New Testament scholars perhaps belong to one of three categories: Fundamentalist/Conservative; 'Mainstream'; and 'Liberal/Radical'.

One way an amateur can test a scholar's presuppositions is in terms of their treatment of so-called/alleged discrepancies within or between NT documents.

Conservatives try to reconcile/'explain' them, to avoid the cognitive dissonance of believing that Divinely-inspired material can be in error. ('There are various explanations offered by the experts to explain this apparent discrepancy').

Mainstream scholars usually put discrepant accounts side by side, weigh up alternative possibilities or explanations, and let the reader do what they will with them. ('These are difficult to reconcile'...)

Liberal/radical scholars often go a step further and not-too-subtly deny the integrity of the text and/or its Divine inspiration ('Both can't be right')

to the shock/horror of ordinary folks whose faith is bound up with what they're 'liable to read in the Bible'.

L. Michael White's new 500-page book 'From Jesus to Christianity' belongs squarely in the mainstream. How can you tell? One way is to look at his citations and recommended reading lists. He suggests we study conservatives like F. F. Bruce, Gordon Fee, I. H. Marshall, R.P. Martin and authors of the Word Biblical Commentaries, but he especially recommends scholars who, like himself, write articles for the respected Anchor Bible Dictionary (Raymond Brown, J. T. Fitzgerald, H. L. Hendrix, et al), and/or have been 'household names' for decades in the world of biblical scholarship (J.N.D. Kelly, J.D.G. Dunn, C. K. Barrett, Ernst Kasemann, W.G. Kummell et al). He cites the Jesus Seminar scholars and Marcus Borg only once or twice, and popular radical authors like Bishop Jack Spong and Barbara Thiering not at all, so far as I can tell.

L. Michael White occupies the chair of Classics and Christian Origins at the University of Texas. In this highly-readable book he examines the documents - canonical and non-canonical - which help us understand the provenance of 'the Jesus movement'. White takes a historical approach, looking at these diverse writings in the sequence in which they were probably written, to discover what we can know of Jesus and the various groups of his followers. In the process he summarizes the debates about Jesus' humanity and divinity, the role of women in the early churches, the diversity of beliefs between different Christian communities, Gnostic influences, midrash, and the process of determining the 'canon': why certain books were included in the NT and others were eventually excluded.

Briefly: 'The Christian Church did not simply erupt onto the scene as a fully developed and separate religious institution at a single moment fifty days after the death of Jesus. It was still a Jewish sect' (p. 142). White (with all mainstream scholars) believes that 'the way each Gospel tells its story of Jesus [reflects] influences and concerns that come from the time of the author and audience rather than from the days of Jesus himself' (p. 3). He is not sympathetic to the post-Enlightenment scientific skepticism questioning the reality of the miracles: 'In more recent scholarship, it has been recognized that magic and miracles were much more commonly accepted in the ancient world' (p.104). On the issue of the 'Synoptic Problem' (the fact that Matthew, Mark and Luke have so much material in common - including verses with identical wording) White has an excellent summary of the various theories, without endorsing any of them totally. I sense he feels the jury is still out on the influence of a 'Q' source behind the Synoptic Gospels.

Some of the interesting trends in early Christianity (at least to me)

include the growing degree of formalization in liturgical matters and church offices reflected for example in the Didache and Letters of Ignatius. (The well-known sociological phrase for this is 'the routinization of charisma'). Ignatius famously refers to the Eucharist as 'the medicine of immortality', and asserts that the presence of the Bishop is essential for the valid constitution of a Christian assembly: the church is to be "as closely tied to the bishop as the strings to a harp."

And then there were some weird methods of exegeting passages in the Hebrew Scriptures by the church fathers. Like the epistle of Barnabas' 'perfect gnosis code' for discovering a prefiguring of the incarnation and crucifixion of Christ in Abraham's circumcision of 318 - important number for Barnabas! - household servants. Or Justin Martyr's quoting of (a variant translation of) Psalm 96:10 - 'The Lord reigns from the wood' as meaning 'The Lord reigns from the cross!'. (Interesting that the Epistle of Barnabas and 1 Clement were considered scripture even in orthodox circles down to the fifth century).

And it's puzzling that Ignatius of Antioch showed little awareness of contemporary writings which eventually became part of the NT canon (he didn't quote texts from other 'authorities' partly because he claimed to have divine inspiration himself).

And then there were some very interesting people in post-apostolic 'Jesus Movement'. I wonder if anyone has written a psychological profile of Marcion, who labelled as 'heretic' any Christian who read the Septuagint! He was a specialist in what someone has called 'othering language'. Highly intelligent and gifted 'losers' are always colorful characters!

And now, a quiz for you on topics highlighted by White (his answers at the bottom):

1. True/false: 'Proper Hebrew, the language of most of the Jewish Scriptures was largely unknown and certainly unspoken, except by a very few in Jesus' day.'

2. True/false: 'Jesus did not appear as the founder of a new religion, and what we now know as Christianity did not exist for perhaps two generations after his death.'

3. True/false: 'Writing in the name of another person from a past time is often called "pseudepigraphy". It was quite common in antiquity, but was not considered a form of forgery or deception.'

4. True/false: 'Prior to 70 C.E. the Sanhedrin was, in effect, the city council of Jerusalem; it had judicial as well as legislative authority, but was not a "religious"governing body per se... It is not clear that its authority extended much, if at all, beyond the city of Jerusalem.'

5. True/false: 'It is not likely that the Sadducees constituted a religious sect or even a political party as such.'

6. The Dead Sea Scrolls include copies of fragments of each of the books of the Hebrew Bible except one. Which is that?

7. True/false: 'There is no evidence of any connection between Jesus and John the Baptist with the Essenes, other than a sharing of the broad streams of Jewish apocalyptic thought.'

8. True/false: 'That Jesus was a real figure of first-century Judean history is no longer much questioned.'

9. Which of the four gospels suggest that the duration of Jesus' ministry is more than two years?

10. True/false: 'Paul never mentions Jesus' miracles'.

11. Do any of the four Gospels have no exorcisms practised by Jesus?

12. True/false: 'The Gospel authors were far more interested in the theological significance of a story than in historical accuracy... They tell us more about the development of the early Jesus movement than about Jesus himself.'

13. With just about all NT scholars, White believes the earliest writings in the NT are the genuine letters of Paul. Now... which are these 'genuine letters', do you think?

14. True/false: 'Paul was the "first Christian".'

15. True/false: 'Baptism [in the early churches] was performed in the nude.'

16. Which is the only letter of Paul addressed to an individual?

17. True/false: 'Half a million Jews were 'casualties' in the 70CE destruction of Jerusalem.'

18. True/false: 'Luke-Acts was probably written in the mid-second century.'

19. True/false: 'In the early centuries the book of Revelation was quite controversial and not uniformly considered Scripture. It was not received into the Western canon until 393-4 CE.'

20. Who wrote Hebrews?

21. True/false: 'The earliest discovered "complete Christian Bible" actually dated to the early church included two letters of Clement. An earlier Alexandrian Christian list included 1-2 Clement, the Didache, the Epistle of Barnabas, and sometimes the Shepherd of Hermas as inspired Scriptures.'

22. True/false: 'There was no single Bible "book" containing Old and New Testaments until about 400 CE.

As I said earlier, White confronts the discrepancies, but generally leaves us to decide what to do with them. These include, for example, the timing of events like the cleansing of the temple (John puts this event at the beginning of Jesus' ministry, the others at the end); the details and timing of the cursing of the fig-tree; the Last Supper (in the Synoptics, it is the first seder of Passover, in John it occurs 'before Passover').

A small point: I found quite irritating White's use throughout of "Jesus's" rather than the more common "Jesus'". (And "Ephesus's" - try saying that quickly ten times!).

But remember this is a textbook, so non-academic folks won't find too much 'inspiration' or 'soul-food' here. But for serious students of Christianity, I'd give it a must-read grading.

White's answers to the quiz-questions: 1. True. 2. True. 3. True. 4. True. 5. True. 6. Esther. 7. True. 8. True. 9. Only John's. 10. True. 11. Yes - John's. 12. True. 13. White's list: Romans, 1 & 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians, 1 Thessalonians, Philemon. 14. False: Paul never uses the term "Christian". 15. True. 16. Philemon. 17. False. According to Josephus there were 1.1 million casualties, and 97,000 Jews were taken prisoner. 18. False. White believes 80-90 is more likely. 19. True. 20. 'The earliest manuscripts of Hebrews place it among the letters of Paul. Origen [was more cautious]: "As to who wrote it, God alone knows".' 21. True (p.328). 22. True.

(Rev. Dr.) Rowland Croucher

January 2005.

INTERVIEW WITH MYSELF

2004-09-21T01:46:00.000-07:00

Here's an interesting bit of history: Google's first archived article from me to a couple of Oz. religious Usenet groups.

From: rowlandc@werple.net.au (Rowland Croucher)

Subject: Fundamentalists vs Liberals Part 2

Date: 1995/11/04

Message-ID: <47eemd$g51@eplet.mira.net.au>

organization: werple public-access Internet, Melbourne

newsgroups: aus.religion.christian,aus.religion

Fundamentalists vs. Liberals Part 2

Hi! My machine's been at the computer-hospital, and I've come back to 18 responses to my post about Fundamentalists and Liberals...

Interesting how cognitive dissonance works: if the clues aren't complete our finite post-Fall minds have to complete the puzzle somehow...

Best way to respond to the eight or nine key issues is to conduct an interview with myself.

Interviewer: Rowland, are you a fundamentalist?

Rowland: Yes, if you mean by that an orthodox Christian who believes that the supreme authority of Scripture for all matters of faith and conduct takes supremacy over other authorities (like reason, tradition etc.) However, it's not so simple: reason and tradition influence so much of our interpretation of the Bible...

Billy Graham when asked this question used to say 'Yes, if you mean I hold to the ultimate authority of Scripture. No, if you mean I'm belligerant, dogmatic, unloving, and unteachable.' I like that.

I: Are you liberal?

R: Yes, if you mean there are many ways of relating to God-through-Christ. And if you agree that the Bible itself affirms diversity

I: But I'm confused. Back to the Bible, do you think it's inerrant?

R: I'd prefer the word 'infallible', which relates to its purpose to disclose God's will to us. A doctrine which posits a notion of 'inerrancy in the original autographs' is too liberal for me. I don't believe something like that because the Bible doesn't say so, and I'd prefer to stick to the Bible...

I: So there are mistakes in our Bibles?

R: Sure. Plenty. There are discrepancies between parallel accounts of stories in Kings/Chronicles... what did the voice from heaven say to Jesus at his baptism? etc. etc. Simple proof humans are fallible (which doesn't alter God's Word being infallible...)

I: So you're saying your view of Scripture being authoritative doesn't depend on its 'inerrancy-in-the-original-whatevers'.

R: Yep. I believe in the authority of Scripture because Jesus and the apostles did. Our faith is to be in Christ, not our clever liberal theories about inerrancy...

I: So what are you - liberal or fundamentalist?

R: Neither, and both. Probably you'd best put me into the category 'Charismatic progressive/ radical evangelical' (like Jesus :-)

I: Are you ecumenical?

R: Yes, if you mean by that I believe the devil is active in _all_ 25,000 [now 34,000] Christian denominations, and the Holy Spirit is doing something in _most_ of them. But no, if you want me to be an uncritical fan of the World Council of Churches: I think that body is somewhat spiritually arid in many respects.

I: Your consultancy job: do you go to all churches, as you said in your original post?

R: Pretty well - unless a church isn't teachable :-)

I: Charismatic/Pentecostal churches?

R: Yep. Love 'em. I had a dynamic experience of the Holy Spirit in Seoul in 1978, and have a marked affinity with those people... I'm doing some seminars with AOG pastors in Queensland in Feb - also with an AOG church in Victoria. I've been privileged to share pulpits at charismatic conferences with Dr. Paul Yonggi Cho, Bob Mumford and others...

I: Shouldn't you have put the liberals on the left, fundamentalists on the right, as <> suggested?

R: Yes. Social psychologists say any group committed to the perpetuation of an ideology, whether political or religious, will have people ranged across a spectrum (from left-to-right):

Radical - Progressive - Conservative - Traditionalist

I: Where do various Christians fit across this spectrum?

R: Well, a few examples would be:

Liberationists - Mainline churches - Evangelicals/ - Fundamentalists/Orthodox/Hyper-Calvinists

I: Back to the two groups in the original post. You said there was a fatal flaw in both. What?

R: Liberals tend to be theologically too open, fundamentalists too closed. L's fall prey too easily to current rational/theological fads; F's are too unteachable and dogmatic. Liberals let you believe anything; Fundamentalists insist you agree with their (narrow)interpretation of Scripture. Liberals, over time, lost their sense of urgency about preaching the Good News, because they can't easily agree with Jesus and Paul about the 'lostness' of people without Christ. Fundamentalists sometimes tie their gospel preaching into a legalistic system of beliefs and behaviors. Jesus and the apostles wouldn't have fitted into either general category I believe.

I: Final question: who's going to heaven?

R: As I said in my post 'Is Ghandi in Heaven?' (it's on our website)I think God can handle that without our help, and we're all going to be surprised.

Shalom!

Rowland Croucher

THEOLOGICAL LIBERALISM

2004-08-30T22:59:00.000-07:00

'Christians' can roughly be put into about ten _theological_ categories. They are (from left to right): 'radical liberal' (eg. Cupitt), 'liberal' (Tillich, Robinson, Kung, Spong), 'neo-orthodox' (Barth), 'liberal evangelical' (Fosdick), 'radical evangelical' (Wallis), progressive/ Lausanne evangelical' (Stott), 'conservative evangelical' (Packer), 'fundamentalist' (Bob Jones III), 'sectarian' (the JW's), and 'cultish' (Koresh).

Now it's common to call everyone to the _left_ of one's theological position 'liberal'. But I'm ahead of myself. Let's define our terms.

Political liberalism (Latin 'liberalis', 'of a free person') is about liberty, equality, tolerance. Philosophers like John Stuart Mill believed that democracy, individualism, and the rule of law could be reconciled. Today political liberals argue about how a liberal society should accommodate illiberals - like fundamentalist Moslems, for example. (See e.g., John Rawls, 'Political Liberalism', Columbia University Press, 1994).

Theological liberalism is, broadly, the attempt to adapt religious ideas to modern culture and ways of thinking. These 'Modernists' say Christianity has always adapted itself to various cultural situations. (It is possible, by the way, for a person to be politically liberal but theologically conservative, and vice versa).

>From this it's a short step to rejecting religious beliefs which are based on authorities other than reason. Liberals say that because the Bible was authored by people limited by their ignorance it can't be our sole authority for faith and conduct. The _scientific_ ignorance of the ancients, for example, caused them to believe in miracles: today we have other explanations for many of these events. (A distinguishing feature of most liberals is their doubt about the physical resurrection of Jesus). Higher criticism has questioned many assumptions about the Bible - like the authorship and dating of many of its books, the 'accuracy' of the biographical details of Jesus' life etc.

Liberals also tend to be somewhat humanistic and optimistic (though two world wars put a dent in that!). They accommodate easily to scientific 'advances' (like Darwinian evolution).

Christian liberalism varies from place to place and time to time. In the U.S. the Unitarians have been the most liberal major denomination. Recently it's the United Church of Christ (whose recent hymnbook de-genders Jesus!). Some Southern Baptists prefer to call themselves 'moderates'.

Theologically, twentieth century liberalism has tended to believe that corrupt society corrupts people (rather than the other way around) so the Church ought to major on saving society rather than saving 'souls' (Rauschenbusch). 'Sin' is a product of apathy and/or ignorance. And the radical liberals believe that the traditional God is dead in this secular age (Paul van Buren, Harvey Cox. Bishop Robinson's 'Honest to God' edged the New English Bible into second place among religious best-sellers in 1963). Today's 'Christian atheists', like Don Cupitt, do not deem it necessary to believe in the objective existence of God to account for the phenomena of Christianity.

As the conservative IVP Dictionary of Christian Ethics and Pastoral Theology points out, liberalism has been a healthy corrective in some areas. Yes, humans are 'made in the image of God'. Yes, the church ought to be 'an ethical - and not a solely spiritual - community' [1995: 553]. And I would add that it's also a corrective to a naive biblical literalism and fundamentalist privatism. Jesus was truly human. We must emphasise again the prophetic notion of social justice. And we ought to take the idea of 'natural (or general) revelation' more seriously.

But there are grave dangers in theological liberalism. The New Zealand Presbyterian Professor Lloyd Geering confessed back in the 1960s that 'many of the things I have said and believe are at variance with the Westminster Confession.' 'We can no longer draw a clear line between what is orthodox and what is not.' Today Bishop Spong is similarly contemptuous of the term 'orthodox'.

Liberals are more at home asking questions than providing answers. But authentic Christianity is about truth, not just opinions. Sin is more than alienation from oneself and others: it's rebellion against God. In ethics our aim is not simply to do what is good but what is right. And although I would encourage scholars to study the Bible 'critically' we must never forget that (a) our stance is primarily to be 'under' rather than 'over' the Word, and (b) we do not have a mandate to destroy the faith of the less theologically-literate.

Liberal preachers have tended to use Biblical texts as ornaments - attached to already arrived-at conclusions and convictions; a 'resource' rather than a 'source'. As an atheist put it: 'You hear what the psychologist says, what the historian says, what the New York Times editorial writer says, and then the sermon concludes with, "And perhaps Jesus said it best..."' [Martin Copenhaver, 'The Making of a Postliberal', Christian Century, Oct. 14, 1998, 937].

Liberals have little idea what Jesus and Paul meant by humanity's lostness. Evangelism and conversion are alien to their thinking: they tend not to get excited about Billy Graham. But people need good news rather than simply good advice. And liberals can't seem to understand why Elijah would mock the priests of Baal, Isaiah deride Bel, or Paul argue with the pagans of Lystra.

The story of salvation is not simply an extension of human wisdom or an expression of common sense.

This all came home to me when I met a 50-ish man who'd been to a mainline church all his life, but had always been uneasy talking about his faith. Then he got 'converted', and attended an evangelical church. They sent him with some others on an evangelistic tour to Indonesia. There he had to give his testimony. 'It changed my life. Now Jesus is a reality to me rather than an ancient nice man. I now want to share my faith. The Bible is alive for me. God speaks to me every day...'

Today liberalism has lost its appeal to laypeople - I don't know any liberal preacher today who gets the crowds Fosdick used to draw - but it's still alive in mainline seminaries (note, eg. the work of the Jesus Seminar). Folks today want the preacher to be certain about core Christian beliefs and values. Liberalism is just too sophisticated, too nice, essentially a _university_ brand of Christianity. It is humanism in religious garb.

'Christ has set us free,' writes Paul to the Galatians (5:1). 'Stand firm therefore...' Followers of Jesus are called to be 'both liberal and conservative at the same time,' the Reformed Churches radio preacher Dr. Peter Eldersveld used to say. 'We are instructed to conserve our liberty... You might say that the whole Protestant Reformation was truly liberal, in the true meaning of that term. But in order to be liberal it had to be truly conservative - that is, it [called us] back to the historic [Christian] faith. In fact its "liberalism" [was in] its commitment to the gospel of liberty in Christ.' ['Liberal and Cnservative', Back to God Hour, date unknown].

The last word is from an excellent article in the British 'Expository Times': 'The tragedy of liberal theology [is that] it has become all too skilled at telling us what is _not_ the case, what it is that we can no longer believe; but it shows little sign of being able to replace these negatives with convincing and intelligible positives. "Conservative" Christianity, at its best, combines a faithfulness to the founding traditions of the Christian faith, a proper graciousness, humility and teachability, an awareness of and an engagement with the intellectual and scientific issues of the day, and a confident message which people... can understand and rejoice in. In a word, while it may yet be far from perfect, it is the closest approximation on the market to the phenomenon of which we read in the New Testament - a phenomenon which changed the world.' [Colin Sedgwick, 'Where Liberal Theology Falls Short', Expository Times, October 1992, p.3].

Rowland Croucher
June 1999

WOMEN AND MEN: LOVE AND ALIENATION

2004-08-08T03:50:00.000-07:00

Here's a chapter about women from my book The Family: At Home in a Heartless World (HarperCollins 1995). I don't claim significant expertise here (wrong gender to start with): these ideas come from being married for 44 years, followed by three daughters, three granddaughters, and 13000 hours of listening to women (6000 counseling men - about the ratio of women to men who generally seek counseling).

Shalom! Rowland Croucher

~~~

The most widespread injustice in human history is that of 'patriarchy' or 'sexism' - the oppression of women by men. Sexism is as much a sin as humankind's domination over nature, the oppression of one race by another, and the oppression of slavery. It has resulted in 'the feminisation of poverty'. The often-cited statistics from the United Nations tell the sad story: women constitute half the world's population, perform nearly two thirds of its work, receive one tenth of its income and own less than one hundredth of the world's property. Three-quarters of the very poorest people in the world are women and their dependent children.

Different cultures and eras have different household practices. Modern technological societies, both capitalist and socialist, have dramatically altered and reshaped gender relations and the status of women. In poorer nations urban migration has weakened traditional women's cultures and isolated them from social supports. Women become disempowered easily when poverty threatens. For example, recently in Helsinki, Finland, I saw several Russian and Lithuanian prostitutes plying their trade. In Thailand and other developing nations, poor rural families sell their daughters for 'job opportunities' (mostly prostitution) in cities. 'Sweat shops' all over the world employ women at subsistence-level wages to make clothing, footwear, toys etc. Wealthier families have 'domestics' - a word that may cover for 'white (or brown) slavery' or concubinage. Where young women are transported from one country to another (say, from Bangladesh or the Philippines to Saudi Arabia), they have few legal supports in that foreign place.

Sex roles and identities vary greatly across time and between cultures. But relations between the sexes are foundational to the health of all societies. Whilst they may not be as rigidly fixed by nature or by divine decree as some would have us believe, in general women and men are different both biologically and psychologically. Women do some things better than men, and vice versa. For example, women are better 'nurturers' but men can learn to develop this role too. Women are more in touch with their feelings (men are better at chess!). When women make ethical decisions, they are concerned about relationships; men can be more abstract. (In my calling as a counselor to pastors, when I ask how they're going, a woman pastor will invariably answer in terms of relationships, a man in terms of measurable success - numbers, programs, money or buildings!). Publicly women may express sorrow, sadness, or joy, but never anger (the reverse is true of men). A woman's sexual experience is inextricably bound up with her total personhood and the total relationship with her lover; for men sex can be divorced from other dimensions of relating.

One theory has it that of the seven deadly sins men have a greater temptation towards pride, women towards sloth: pride tempts us to be more, sloth less, than we really are; the first tends towards independence, the second towards dependence; each is a denial of our God-ordained uniqueness. One of males' greatest fears is to be laughed at; females have a greater horror of being raped or killed. Women commit far fewer crimes - especially violent crimes - than men; they are far more likely to be victims of sexual abuse (Kinsey estimated that 25% of women in America were victims of incest).

Now why do women and men have different psychologies and abilities? Social scientists debate this issue with great fervour. Some anthropologists explain the differences in terms of the 'biogrammar' in our genes. Men are more aggressive because they have been hunters for most of their history; women bear and bond with small children, so their biogrammars predispose them towards enjoying the emotional dimension of relationships. Sociobiologists, on the other hand, may begin with the fact that human males produce millions of sperm during their lifetime, but women usually produce only one egg at a time - about 400 during their lifetime. Men are therefore predisposed to be predatory, sexually, whereas women are highly selective in the choice of a 'quality mate'. This is supposed to explain why women can tolerate infidelity by their partners more readily than men: if the man's woman is unfaithful, he will have to devote energy to raising someone else's child, whereas women are always certain that the child is genetically hers.

Radical feminists say women have always been exploited by men, and role differences are simply the product of the propensity of men to be violent to make women conform to their wishes. Other feminists may begin with women's biology: the 'handicaps' of menstruation, menopause, pregnancy, childbirth, breastfeeding and caring for infants mean women are dependent on the males in their family, clan or tribe for protection and physical survival. Women suffer more often from depression than men (one theory, the 'learned helplessness theory' suggests that women are less able in all cultures to control the sources of reward and reinforcement in their lives than men). The 'brain sex' theorists tell us that boy babies react with aggression and girl babies with helplessness when confronted with a frustrating situation because they are genetically 'programmed' that way.

The 'nature versus nurture' theories fall over one another to explain why women and men are the way they are. What women and men have in common is far greater than what separates them. Women's lives do not have to be conditioned by the biological reality of their capacity to bear children, nor do women because they are women have to provide domestic stability. You'll have to forgive my simple view on all this, which is: while some components of male/female differences may be genetic/hereditary/evolutionary or cultural/learned, basically they are different because God has created them that way, so that they may enjoy a God-ordained complimentarity.

A woman's greatest need is to receive constant, affectionate, tender love especially from the two key men in her life - her father and her mate. She has a deep emotional need, which her partner had better recognize, to hear tender words, to experience a servant-spirit in her man to back up those words, and to spend a lot of quality time with him. She cherishes the hours she spends with her man, the intimate experiences, the romantic dinners and nights and movies and soft lights. A man wants the special woman in his life to be a companion, sharing mutual interests; he wants her to be healthy (physically and emotionally) and attractive; to be responsive sexually; and to respect him. St Paul had an amazing knowledge of the varying needs of the sexes when he told husbands to love their wives and wives to respect their husbands. They are the two biggest clues in male-female relationships.

A prayer for women:

So, Jesus, my friend and companion, I with other women are at a crossroad. All over the world, and throughout all of history, men have ruled us, sometimes in an authoritarian, and occasionally in a cruel way. I and my sisters have suffered and in some places are still suffering awefully. At the very least we are not taken seriously and respected by men; at worst we women are treated as objects to satisfy men's desires for lustful sex or power.

Jesus, if you had been a woman, how would you have responded to all this? I am grateful that you were in touch with the 'feminine' side of your nature: you sometimes wept; you were gentle, very gentle, with those who were oppressed; you did not care for power or prestige or the superficial rank-orderings of people in society in terms of wealth or status or privilege. You reacted with dignity and restraint when others abused you, but spoke out fearlessly when the abuse was directed towards the helpless. You spoke words of healing; you honoured children; you enjoyed the companionship of both women and men; you enjoyed your family so much that you stayed at home until you were thirty; you noticed beautiful things like birds and flowers; you loved to pray in quiet places. Jesus, I want to be like you.

I affirm that I am made in the image of God. I affirm that when God conceived of me before my parents did that I was and am a delight to him. I am not a 'mistake'. Therefore I will enjoy my giftedness, my beauty, my body, my emotions, my spirituality. I will allow myself to celebrate life, whatever hardships life has dealt me. I will not 'should' on myself. I will accept each new day as a gift. I will enjoy being a servant of others, and if they sometimes serve me, that will be a bonus.

Thank you Jesus. Amen.

A Benediction

May the One who invaded our history via the womb of a woman, and who modeled feminine and masculine virtues in a wonderfully- integrated human life, give you courage when times are hard, faithfulness in your calling to be a woman of God, whether that involves mothering and wifing or not, and above all, a delight in being a daughter of God Most High. Amen.

'WHAT WOMEN WANT'

2004-08-08T03:46:00.000-07:00

In the movie What Women Want, released December 2000, a Chicago advertising executive Nick Marshall (played by Mel Gibson) gets a whole new outlook on life when a fluke accident gives him the ability to read women's minds. At first this 'gift' provides Nick with way too much information, but he then realizes he can use it to good effect, especially when it comes to outwitting his new boss Darcy McGuire (Helen Hunt). In spite of his best efforts, of course he falls in love with her...

I haven't seen the movie, but here are some reviewers' comments:

* 'It's a puerile piece of junk'

* 'A bit of farce, sometimes funny, but which will alienate both genders equally'

* 'Set your standards on neutral, and enjoy it for exactly what it is -- mindless entertainment that will make you laugh but won't linger in your mind much farther than the theater's parking lot'

* 'It's a great concept, but the movie doesn't do anything with it...'

If you want to learn what women want, you won't get the lowdown here.

One of the most interesting things I do is speak to women's groups. The title of my current talk: '13,000 hours counseling women, what have I learned?' The idea is that women bring their women-friends, the men do all the work - setting up, catering, waiting-on-tables, cleaning up. I generally ask: 'How many of you have _never_ been out to a dinner like this where men cooked, waited on you, and cleaned up?' A third to a half of all the hands will go up, and I see some tears glistening in the candlelight...

Now I'm a mere male, and can't pretend to be an expert here. What follows is a summary of my reflections having been married to a wonderful woman for 42 years - with three beautiful adult daughters and two gorgeous granddaughters. And I counsel and listen to women most working days...

WHAT'S NEW

It should not surprise us that what women _do_ is changing - at least in Western nations. Take these:

* By the year 2005, 40 percent of all American firms will be female-owned.

* Four out of five Japanese small business owners are women.

* Western women control 80 percent of household spending.

* Women purchase 75 percent of all over-the-counter drugs.

* In the year 2000, women bought 50 percent of all Personal Computers, and reached parity in the online community.

* Women influence 90 percent of all car purchases.

* Women own 53 percent of all stocks.

However:

* Women still constitute half the world's population, perform nearly two thirds of its work, receive one tenth of its income and own less than one hundredth of the world's property. Three-quarters of the very poorest people in the world are women and their dependent children.

WOMAN AND MEN

Women do some things better than men, and vice versa. For example, women are better 'nurturers' but men can learn to develop this role too. Women are more in touch with their feelings (men are better at chess!). When women make ethical decisions, they are concerned about relationships; men can be more abstract.

In my calling as a counselor to pastors, when I ask how they're going, a woman pastor will invariably answer in terms of relationships, a man in terms of measurable success - numbers, programs, money or buildings!

Publicly women may express sorrow, sadness, or joy, but never anger (the reverse is true of men). A woman's sexual experience is inextricably bound up with her total personhood and the total relationship with her lover; for men sex can be divorced from other dimensions of relating.

One theory has it that of the seven deadly sins men have a greater temptation towards pride, women towards sloth: pride tempts us to be more, sloth less, than we really are; the first tends towards independence, the second towards dependence; each may be a denial of our God-ordained uniqueness. One of mens' greatest fears is to be laughed at; women have a greater horror of being raped or killed. Women commit far fewer crimes - especially violent crimes - than men; they are far more likely to be victims of sexual abuse (Kinsey estimated that 25% of women in America were victims of incest).

Now why do women and men have different psychologies and abilities? Social scientists debate this issue with great fervour. Some anthropologists explain the differences in terms of the 'biogrammar' in our genes. Men are more aggressive because they have been hunters for most of their history; women bear and bond with small children, so their biogrammars predispose them towards enjoying the emotional dimension of relationships.

Sociobiologists, on the other hand, may begin with the fact that human males produce millions of sperm during their lifetime, but women usually produce only one egg at a time - about 400 during their lifetime. Men are therefore predisposed to be predatory, sexually, whereas women are highly selective in the choice of a 'quality mate'. This is supposed to explain why women can tolerate infidelity by their partners more readily than men: if the man's woman is unfaithful, he will have to devote energy to raising someone else's child, whereas women are always certain that the child is genetically hers.

Radical feminists say women have always been exploited by men, and role differences are simply the product of the propensity of men to be violent to make women conform to their wishes. Other feminists may begin with women's biology: the 'handicaps' of menstruation, menopause, pregnancy, childbirth, breastfeeding and caring for infants mean women are dependent on the males in their family, clan or tribe for protection and physical survival.

Women suffer more often from depression than men (one theory, the 'learned helplessness theory' suggests that women are less able in all cultures to control the sources of reward and reinforcement in their lives than men). The 'brain sex' theorists tell us that boy babies react with aggression and girl babies with helplessness when confronted with a frustrating situation because they are genetically 'programmed' that way.

So the 'nature versus nurture' theories fall over one another to explain why women and men are the way they are. But what women and men have in common is far greater than what separates them. Women's lives do not have to be conditioned by the biological reality of their capacity to bear children, nor do women because they are women have to provide domestic stability. You'll have to forgive my simple view on all this, which is: while some components of male/female differences may be genetic/hereditary/evolutionary or cultural/learned, basically they are different because God has created them that way, so that they may enjoy a God-ordained complimentarity.

WOMEN ON MEN

What do women want in a man? Two qualities basically - tenderness and strength. But not one without the other. Men who are tender but not strong are 'wimps'; if they're strong but not tender they're 'macho'. Women generally want neither. But tenderness and strength need another quality to make them work: love. In its highest form, agape love. This is 'the relationship between subject and object that creates worth in the object rather than responding to worth in the object.' It's grace, acceptance, love-before-worth.

Paul's and Peter's words about women 'submitting' to their husbands are frankly not a problem when viewed both in the context of their cultures, and in the 'culture' of a loving relationship, and provided we submit to one another (Ephesians 6:21).

But we don't have to submit to bullying. Often in counseling a woman and I discuss the 'Three sentences to your man': 'I love you as a person; I respect you as my partner/husband; but I am not going to submit to abuse - being treated as an object rather than as a person.'

SO WHAT DO WOMEN WANT?

* Respect. Throughout history, and in many cultures even today, women have been second-class citizens. Patriarchy is the still the most widespread injustice in the world. Women want to be honored and appreciated as persons. They don't want to be 'partonized' or treated as a child. One female counselor put it this way: 'Don't judge or criticize her. Don't ignore her or take her for granted. Don't be rude. Treat her like a lady at all times and she'll treat you with the respect that you expect and enjoy.'

* A soul-mate. Someone to 'be there' as a companion to share life's joys and troubles.

* Security. Women have a deep biological and psychological need to feel secure, to have a man provide for her and protect her. This involves unambiguous commitment to her - to her alone.

* Communication. Most - not all - women talk for the sheer pleasure of talking. It's how they connect to / 'network' with people. And for a married woman the five words she loves to hear are, 'Darling, we need to talk!'. Most - not all - men talk to exchange information or solve problems. Men communicate more competitively, women more cooperatively. A female counselor's advice to men: 'You know how she's always trying to get you to be "more intimate"? All you have to do is look at her and pay attention; she'll think she's died and gone to heaven. It's that important to her, and that simple.' And again: 'Of course, she wants to hear you say "I love you," but anything you say to let her know you care and appreciate her will earn you major points: "You're wonderful, do you know that?" "I'm so fortunate to have you." "Do you know how much I love you?" Big points on that one. Whenever you say these things, look into her eyes and mean it.'

Women are most responsive when their man sets aside time to attend to her exclusively... Who was it said: 'Treat a woman like a thoroughbred and she won't become a nag?'

* A little romance - often! Romance is all the little things a man does to let her know she is special. He calls her just to say hi. Buys her a gift 'just because.' (It isn't the cost of the gift, it's the thought). And flowers, even the smallest bouquet... Mails a card or leaves a note where she'll find it. For a woman, romance and sex go hand-in-hand. As one psychologist put it: 'If he wants more sex, he should give her more romance.' When asked what sex advice they'd give to men, women almost always say, 'Tell them to SLOW DOWN!' (And women often complain that men don't kiss enough.)

* Physical attractiveness. In our John Mark Ministries retreats, I might ask a woman how she feels about herself on a scale of 1 to 10. If her score is low, it's usually got something to do with her relationship with her father (particularly as a young teenager) and/or her feelings about her body image. A woman needs to hear from her man that she's attractive. In today's culture, because of what they are taught as girls and read in magazines and see on TV and in films, women get insecure about how they look. 'Hey you look nice' are very special words!

* Her feelings need to be honored. Feelings are as important to a woman as work (and maybe sport) is to a man. That's why she likes to talk about them. She needs her man to acknowledge what's going on for her when she's being emotional. So it's best not to try to tell her that what she's feeling is "wrong" or 'fix' the problem unless she asks. And, husbands: Never tell her 'not to feel' her emotions. A sensitive person asks 'How do you feel about that?' then sits down and listens. Most women understand that most men get uncomfortable when she's being emotional, but if she can express herself and listen with her man's full attention, she'll think he's the most sensitive man on the planet!

DISCUSSION STARTERS

(Allow members of the group to nominate important questions for them).

1. 'Men are From Mars, Women are From Venus' (John Gray PhD). Are men and women so different?

2. 'God made Adam a mate because he was lacking something. Woman completes and compliments who man is.' True? (But also discuss the gift of singleness - 1 Corinthians 7:7).

3. 'Women tend to be more concerned about their marriages than men. They buy most of the books on marriage to try to improve them and initiate most marriage counseling. They often complain about their marriages to their closest friends and sometimes to anyone who will listen. And they also file for divorce twice as often as men.' Why?

4. An experienced marriage counselor: 'Surprisingly few women divorce because of physical abuse, infidelity, alcoholism, criminal behavior, fraud, or other serious grounds. In fact, I find myself bewildered by women in serious physical danger refusing to leave men that threaten their safety. Simply stated, women leave men when they are neglected. Neglect accounts for almost all of the reasons women leave and divorce men.' Is that your experience?

5. 'Wives tend to see themselves as the major force for resolving conflicts, and when they give up their effort, the marriage is usually over.' What do you think?

6. A marriage counselor reflects: 'Husbands often feel that the expectations of women in general, and their wives in particular, have grown completely out of reach. These men, who feel that they've made a gigantic effort to be caring and sensitive to their wives, get little credit for their sizeable contribution to the family. They feel under enormous pressure to improve their financial support, improve the way they raise their children, and improve the way they treat their wives. Many men I see are emotionally exhausted and feel that for all their effort, they get nothing but criticism.' What can be done about that?

7. Why do husbands and wives fight? What suggestions would you make to encourage reconciliation after a marital argument?

8. What wisdom would you give to a woman whose partner is a 'bully'? How can 'assertiveness' produce more win-win outcomes?

9. A feminist wrote this about Promisekeepers: 'The PK rhetoric is incredibly insulting to men. Their line is: "All men are pigs until they find Jesus." ... PK leaders call for men to do the right thing if AND ONLY IF their wives are willing to submit to their leadership. And they are pretty clear that men are entitled by virtue of their maleness alone to demand (by any means?)

submission from their wives. PK claims that the problem is that men have been "feminized" and women are too strong. And their solution is to weaken women in order to strengthen men.' Some discussion material there!

10. 'The study of power begins when we are young. Our teachers in the lessons of power are parents, the schools, bullies and bosses. As girls, we don't learn to exercise power. We live with it. Power frightens us. Instead of acting with power, we act against it. We become passive. Instead of saying clearly what we want, we complain, become passive or withhold affection. We hint or suggest, whine, tease or even lie. We use power, but mostly in destructive ways, not in winning ways. We could get much more, more effectively, if we weren't afraid of being outwardly powerful.' What do you think about that?

11. 'Since the feminist movement, chivalry is out.' Is it?

12. A woman parishioner says to you: 'The only time he pays attention to me is when he wants sex.' How do you respond?

13. 'Men tend to offer solutions before empathy; women tend to the opposite.' What can women and men do about that?

14. 'Women are more likely to ask for help when they need it than men are.' The classic observation by many wives is that their husbands refuse to ask for directions when they might be lost. Why is that?

15. Title of a recent book: Why Men Don't Listen and Women Can't Read Maps. What do you think?

16. 'Because men receive so much significance from their vocation - what they do, and how well they do it - they can sometimes become "married singles", or "married to their jobs".' What do you do about that? Which raises another, most important question: 'What about the "church-as-mistress" syndrome?' Some pastors' wives complain that they're really in a bigamous relationship: their husbands are married both to them and to the church. Do you feel that sometimes?

17. A controversial issue (from one of my books): 'There seem to be two paradigms relative to male/female relationships in the Scriptures - a male-dominated patriarchical or hierarchical paradigm, and an egalitarian one. Both are there, and it generally depends on one's religious, cultural and psychological predispositions which paradigm one prefers. We then interpret all the difficult texts to conform with that chosen paradigm... But fortunately God is not a legalist, and Jesus uttered not one patriarchal statement. Even if male-dominated cultures produced the Scriptures, God raises up a Deborah to lead the whole people of God. Some of us wouldn't have let him do that... The four daughters of Philip were prophetesses: can you name one or two in your church?'

18. Brethren scholar F.F.Bruce suggests our understanding of male/female relationships must be viewed through the 'window' of Galatians 3:28: '[In Christ] there is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus'. Agree?

~~~

A PRAYER FOR WOMEN:

So, Jesus, my friend and companion, I with other women are at a crossroad. All over the world, and throughout all of history, men have ruled us, sometimes in an authoritarian, and occasionally in a cruel way. I and my sisters have suffered and in some places are still suffering awfully. At the very least we are not taken seriously and respected by men; at worst we women are treated as objects to satisfy men's desires for lustful sex or power.

Jesus, if you had been a woman, how would you have responded to all this? I am grateful that you were in touch with the 'feminine' side of your nature: you sometimes wept; you were gentle, very gentle, with those who were oppressed; you did not care for power or prestige or the superficial rank-orderings of people in society in terms of wealth or status or privilege. You reacted with dignity and restraint when others abused you, but spoke out fearlessly when the abuse was directed towards the helpless. You spoke words of healing; you honoured children; you enjoyed the companionship of both women and men; you enjoyed your family so much that you stayed at home until you were thirty; you noticed beautiful things like birds and flowers; you loved to pray in quiet places. Jesus, I want to be like you.

I affirm that I am made in the image of God. I affirm that when God conceived of me before my parents did that I was and am a delight to him. I am not a 'mistake'. Therefore I will enjoy my giftedness, my beauty, my body, my emotions, my spirituality. I will allow myself to celebrate life, whatever hardships life has dealt me. I will not 'should' on myself. I will accept each new day as a gift. I will enjoy being a servant of others, and if they sometimes serve me, that will be a bonus.

Thank you Jesus. Amen.

A Benediction

May the One who invaded our history via the womb of a woman, and who modeled feminine and masculine virtues in a wonderfully-integrated human life, give you courage when times are hard, faithfulness in your calling to be a woman of God, whether that involves mothering and wifing or not, and above all, a delight in being a daughter of God Most High. Amen.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

RESOURCES

Women and Men: Love and Alienation http://www.pastornet.net.au/jmm/articles/4913.htm

Women in Ministry - a sermon http://www.pastornet.net.au/jmm/articles/8195.htm

MANHOOD

2004-08-08T03:39:00.000-07:00

Then the Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and the man became a living being. And the Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the east; and there he put the man whom he had formed... The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to till it and keep it. (Genesis 2:7,8,15)
Then Moses summoned Joshua and said to him in the sight of all Israel: 'Be strong and bold, for you are the one who will go with this people into the land that the Lord has sworn to their ancestors to give them; and you will put them in possession of it. It is the Lord who goes before you. He will be with you; he will not fail you or forsake you. Do not fear or be dismayed.' (Deuteronomy 31:7-8)

The God who has girded me with strength has opened wide my path. He made my feet like the feet of deer, and set me secure on the heights. He trains my hands for war, so that my arms can bend a bow of bronze. You have given me the shield of your salvation, and your help has made me great. You have made me stride freely, and my feet do not slip. (2 Samuel 22:33-38)

O Lord, who may abide in your tent? Who may dwell on your holy hill? Those who walk blamelessly, and do what is right, and speak the truth from their heart; who do not slander with their tongue, and do no evil to their friends, nor take up a reproach against their neighbors; in whose eyes the wicked are despised, but who honor those who fear the Lord; who stand by their oath even to their hurt; who do not lend money at interest, and do not take a bribe against the innocent. Those who do these things shall never be moved. (Psalm 15:1-5)

A gentle tongue is a tree of life, but perverseness in it breaks the spirit. Scoffers do not like to be rebuked; they will not go to the wise. Better is a little with the fear of the Lord than great treasure and trouble with it. Without counsel, plans go wrong, but with many advisers they succeed. To make an apt answer is a joy to anyone, and a word in season, how good it is! (Proverbs 15:4,12,16,22-23) It is good for one to bear the yoke in youth (Lamentations 3:27)

I am distressed for you, my brother Jonathan; greatly beloved were you to me; your love to me was wonderful, passing the love of women. (2 Samuel 1:26) Two are better than one, because they have a good reward for their toil. For if they fall, one will lift up the other; but woe to one who is alone and falls and does not have another to help. (Ecclesiastes 4:9-10)

A man may beget a hundred children, and live many years; but however many are the days of his years, if he does not enjoy life's good things, or has no burial, I say that a stillborn child is better off than he. (Ecclesiastes 6:3)

.....

There's an old Celtic motto: 'Never give a sword to a man who can't dance.' Although the sword has been, from ancient times, a potent phallic symbol, there is now a wider wisdom in this saying. Men, particularly those who are fathers, suffer more 'role confusion' in our Western cultures than any other group, with the possible exception of teenagers. And yet their importance in the developing self-esteem of their daughters, and the initiating of their sons into manhood, can't be overestimated.

I have had a thin file on `men' and a very fat one on `women'. But that is changing: from the mid-1980's the burgeoning American 'men's movement' is addressing the severe role conflicts in the modern male.

Robert Bly begins his seminal book Iron John: 'We are living at an important and fruitful moment now, for it is clear to men that the images of adult manhood given by the popular culture are worn out; a man can no longer depend on them. By the time a man is thirty-five he knows that the images of the right man, the tough man, the true man which he received in high school do not work in life. Such a man is open to new visions of what a man is or could be... We know that our society produces a plentiful supply of boys, but seems to produce fewer and fewer men.' [Robert Bly, Iron John: A Book About Men, New York: Vintage Books, 1992, pp.ix, 180]. [107]

Previously (unless they were sailors or travelling merchants) men worked at or near home. The Industrial Revolution changed all that. Then in the 1960s women invaded the work-force, and in the 1970s were demanding equal pay and status. At the same time the counter-culture mounted the first overt challenge to male sovereignty: the hippies were a put-down of the success-driven `organization man' of the 1950s, and the Vietnam protesters heaped scorn on the consecrated masculine proving ground of war. (They had studied war in college and learned, for example, that in World War 1 at Ypres in 1915, one hundred thousand young men died in one day. None saw the machine-gunners who mowed them down. For some reason these 'post-war' students couldn't understand why anyone would 'glory' in that.)

Little girls may either play with dolls or be a `tomboy', but little boys are not allowed to be `sissy'. Because father isn't around the house much, many boys have few intimate male models. As a growing boy grasps for a definition of his maleness, it seems to be that which is not female. And media models don't help - on TV men are generally self-concerned, unemotional, preoccupied with career and dominating of women. The whole `macho' thing may cover up a deep sense of insecurity.

So males are mixed up in a historically novel social arrangement. A sociologist writes: `Our young are the first people of whom the following can be said: if they are males they and their fathers and their brothers and their sons and all the males they know are overwhelmingly likely to have been reared under the direct domination and supervision of females from birth to maturity... To put the matter as dramatically as possible, we do not even know whether viable human beings can over any long period of time be reared in such a fashion. After all, this has never held true of any substantial proportion of any population for even one generation in the history of the world until the last 50 years...'

Here's the 'composite male' I come across in my counseling: he is marginal to his family, has no deep relationships with anybody, and angrily 'comes on heavy' with the kids as almost his sole contribution to parenting. He has no deep religious faith - that's something for women in church and kids in Sunday School. He is undeveloped emotionally, and has never before talked to someone meaningfully about his inner life. When his wife mentions any marriage difficulties he can't see the problem (so long as she keeps the home - and sexual - fires burning). He is very reluctant to change into a caring, (and cared for) growing person...

A German psychologist, Alexander Mitscherlich, has written that society has torn the soul of the male, and into this tear demons have fled - demons of insecurity, selfishness, and despair. So men do not really know who they are; they define themselves by what they do, who they know, or what they own.

Back to Robert Bly's Iron John. In essence Bly says that we have inherited a 'responsible workaholic male' from the 50s; the 60s male, reacting to the Vietnam War got in touch with his feminine side; then there was the 70s 'soft male'. The key challenge for the 80s and 90s male is to get in touch the 'hairy, primitive Wild Man' at the bottom of his psyche. This ought to happen when boys are initiated into the ranks of the men of the tribe. Modern fathers are too preoccupied to do this properly; and, anyway, our society has given them a 'Dagwood Bumstead' image. Our modern psychology, says Bly, comes from two 'mothers' men', Freud and Jung. So the young are angry; they 'rage'.

But there is positive energy buried deep within the male psyche. As 'Wild Man' (in touch with positive sexuality, and nature as protector of the earth), 'Warrior' (in the service to the 'True King', i.e. a transcendent cause), Lover, 'Trickster' (who does not 'go with the flow' but reverses it), Magus (in touch with energies in the invisible world), and Grief Man (deriving great strength from the power to grieve) men can endure and achieve almost anything. But such energy comes only through 'wounding' (an old tradition describes Jesus walking with a limp).

Another writer, Verne Becker , defines this woundedness in terms of passivity: modern men (particularly in the family) respond and react rather than initiate; they feel a vague sense of loss and are alienated; they don't know how to relate to other men; they avoid responsibility, struggling with addictions or compulsions; they don't know how to get angry; they are entranced by women; they say yes too often; they have difficulty defending and setting their boundaries; they have no idea who they are on the inside, having lost touch with the core of their being buried deep in their psyche. This passivity, writes Becker, finds its origins in a wound, actually several kinds of wounds: techno-wounds (since the Industrial Revolution they left home to relate to machines, and, now, computers); entertainment-wounds (TV is our society's greatest passivity-creator); religious wounds (where religion does not introduce us to a deep experience of God); and eco-wounds (man's relationship to the earth has been severed). So we have a couple of generations of underfathered and overmothered sons, a suicide rate among men that is four times that of women, and a life expectancy 10 percent shorter. 'Men account for two-thirds of all alcoholics, 90 percent of all arrests for alcohol and drug abuse violations, 80 percent of America's homeless, and 60 percent of high school dropouts. Among minority groups the statistics are even worse... Together these data show the despair and desperation so many men feel.' (Verne Becker, The Real Man Inside, Zondervan, 1992, p.57). [51]

So everything conspires to rob modern men of 'masculine grandeur'. We have few adequate mentoring relationships. Women have had two or three decades to sort out who they are (that process isn't finished yet), but men have a lot more work to do. Patriarchy has kept women in their place, so (as with any systemic injustice) women have had to be demanding and shrill in claiming equality with men. Within churches the issue of women in leadership is not, I believe, a theological or hermeneutic problem at its core. It's a problem of masculine psychology. The greatest horror for any male from puberty onwards is to inhabit the same house (or church) with a domineering authoritarian mother-figure. (Read the many allusions in the Book of Proverbs: that wise man would rather be anywhere than in a house with a ranting woman). Males marry to get away from such mothers (and if they marry a 'shrew' they'll spend evenings in the pub with the boys). So the last thing male-controlled churches want is to let women loose in positions of authority!

I believe we should be 'liberal' in our view of the equality of the sexes, and 'conservative' in our view of their God-given roles. Generally (but not always, for God is not a legalist) men are initiative-takers, women are 'responders'. Sometimes (e.g. Deborah in the Old Testament) women are better leaders, so God doesn't mind them leading. Sometimes men are better in a subordinate role (e.g. Deborah's lieutenant Barak) so that's what God ordains for them.

When women who are not given leadership gifts usurp the role of leader then there's trouble. If men refuse to be initiative-takers when God ordains that role for them, there's also trouble. Part of Eve's 'original sin' was in her taking the lead in response to the serpent's offer, and one of the results of the Fall was men 'ruling' over women. But the Fall is reversed in Christ. Nowhere in Jesus' teaching is there any note of women's subordination. Most of the evils of patriarchy result from our fallenness. In Ephesians 5 we have a beautiful picture of the church as the Bride of Christ, and husbands loving their wives with Christ's love. Women ought to 'respect' their husbands; husbands ought to love their wives sufficient to die for them: that's the evangelical ideal. After counseling with women for 7000 hours, I've yet to meet one who knows her husband loves her like that and is not prepared to respect that man! The pre-Fall creation mandate, and the ideal of our re-creation in Christ is of a man and a wife enjoying complementarity, living in unity and equality and interdependence.

.....

Grown men are, deep down, only little boys, with more expensive toys.

Benjamin Franklin [12]

Approximately 140 boys are conceived for every 100 girls. The rate of miscarriage is so much greater for boys that the ratio of live births is only 105 boys to girls, and the greater early mortality rate for boys is such as to make the ratio an even 1:1 by age one.

Mary Stewart van Leeuwen, Gender and Grace: Women and Men in a Changing World, England: Inter-Varsity Press, 1990, p.56. [48]

Men of all ages in our culture are in such a sad state that it is a national crisis.

George Lough and John A. Sanford, What Men are Really Like, Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1988, p.3, quoted in Presbyterians and Human Sexuality 1991, Published by the Office of the General Assembly Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), Lousiville, KY, p.36. [19]

The boys in our culture have a continuing need for initiation into the male spirit, but old men in general don't offer it. The priest sometimes tries, but he is too much a part of the corporate village these days.

Among the Hopis and other native Americans of the South-west, the old men take the boy away at the age of twelve and... he does not see his mother again for a year and a half.

The fault of the nuclear family today isn't so much that it's crazy and full of double binds (that's true in communes and corporate offices too - in fact in any group). The fault is that the old men outside the nuclear family no longer offer an effective way for the son to break his link with his parents without doing harm to himself.

The ancient societies believed that a boy becomes a man only through ritual and effort - only through the active intervention of the older men.

It's becoming clear to us that manhood doesn't happen by itself; it doesn't happen just because we eat Wheaties. The active intervention of the older men means that [they] welcome the younger man into the ancient, mythologized, instinctive male world...

When women, even women with the best intentions, bring up a boy alone, he may in some way have no male face, or he may have no face at all... A clean break from the mother is crucial, but it's simply not happening. This doesn't mean that the women are doing something wrong: I think the problem is more that the older men are not really doing their job...

In New Guinea [they say]: 'A boy cannot change into a man without the active intervention of the older men.' A girl changes into a woman on her own, with the bodily developments marking the change; old women tell her stories and chants, and do celebrations. But with the boys, no old men, no change...

Robert Bly, Iron John: A Book About Men, New York: Vintage Books, 1992, pp. 14-15, 17, 19, 86-87. [328]

When a man reaches his twenties, he sets out to make his place in the world. It is an exciting time for him as many aspects of his life begin to change. He starts to put most of his life's energy into building his career and, if he is married, into his marriage. He may be acutely aware of the burden he carries to meet his family's financial needs and may work fifty to seventy hours a week in order to provide the best of everything for the family he loves. He may jump through hoop after hoop in an effort to meet his driving need for achievement and his family's need for financial security.

In the midst of these compelling concerns, a man has little time for friends. There is no time to maintain close, caring friendships with his peers, or to develop relationships with older men who could support him in his growth as a husband and father and guide him as he navigates the twists and turns of his career. At this point in his life, a young man's energies are focused on priorities other than relationships.

Unfortunately, this is also a dangerous time for a young man. Every man needs close relationships with other men. When those relationships are lacking in a young man's life, trouble lies ahead. The emptiness a man feels inside from the woundedness of his relationship with his father can only be filled through relationships with other men and with God. Often, however, a man will seek to fill that masculine woundedness through relationships with women, but women cannot meet this deep emotional need. A man who shares his deeper feelings exclusively with women is either in trouble emotionally or is setting himself up for trouble later on.

This period of life is also risky because at this age most men... are disconnected from their feelings. When a man is out of touch with his feelings of grief, emptiness and loss, he is simply unable to recognize the emotional needs of others around him. He cannot really identify with another person's feelings or what they are going through unless he has some understanding and connection with his own feelings. Since family relationships are emotionally intimate, an emotionally disconnected man will have a destructive impact on his loved ones.

Dr. Earl R. Henslin, Man to Man, Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1993, pp.47-48. [386]

Around thirty-five, men begin to realize that the images they were given of what a man is don't work. They don't work in their jobs; they don't work in a relationship; they don't work in a marriage; they don't work! But when the childhood myths die, what can take their place?

Robert Bly, in Bill Moyers, A World of Ideas, 2, New York: Doubleday, 1990, p.265. [52]

Popular writers aren't saying complimentary things about Australian males. Donald Horne (The Lucky Country) says they're creatures committed more to mediocrity than excellence: `Much energy is wasted in pretending to be stupid, to appear ordinary, just like everybody else, is sometimes a necessary condition for success in Australia.' 'The well-balanced Australian,' said English journalist Jilly Cooper recently, `has been described as a man with chips on both shoulders.' Perhaps the `Bazza McKenzie' image is our loutish way of coping with a national inferiority complex.

Rowland Croucher, from an unpublished sermon, 'God and the Australian Male'.

[The following are some ways men tend to appear emotionally unaffected and in control of their lives]:

* Men rationalize a course of inaction by telling themselves 'What good is it going to do to talk about it? That's not going to change anything!' * Men worry internally, but rarely face what they really feel. * Men escape into new roles or hide behind old ones. * Men take the attitude that the 'feelings' will pass and shrug them off as unimportant. * Men keep busy, especially with work. * Men change one feeling into another - becoming angry instead of experiencing hurt or fear. * Men deny the feeling outright. * Men put feelings on hold - put them in the file drawer and tend to forget what they were classified under. * Feelings are confronted with drugs and alcohol. * Men are excellent surgeons. They create a 'thinking bypass' to replace feelings with thought and logic. * Men tend to let women do their feeling for them. * Men sometimes avoid situations and people who elicit certain feelings in them. * Some men get sick or behave carelessly and hurt themselves so they have a reason to justify their feelings.

Ken Druck, The Secrets Men Keep, New York: Ballantine Books, 1984. pp. 27-28. [189]

Men, by nature, are task-oriented. Most men find it hard to come before the God who says, 'Be still, and know that I am God' (Psalms 46:10). Unless they are writing something, building something, moving something, or changing something, they don't believe they are getting anywhere. Daily quiet times don't come easy for men, not even for pastors. It has to be cultivated, developed, and groomed before it becomes a natural part of the day.

Dr. Bob Moorehead, The Husband Handbook: Essentials For Growing a Successful Marriage, Brentwood, Tennessee: Wolgemuth & Hyatt, Publishers, Inc., 1990, pp.85-86. [75]

It is not a very encouraging picture. We are hurting. But the hurting goes beyond the physical. It is found in our yearning for emotional intimacy with other males - sons, fathers, and friends - yet finding ourselves unprepared, unequipped, and fearful of that intimacy. The hurt is in our wanting relationships of genuine equality and mutuality with women, yet finding ourselves crippled by centuries of male sexism, and by our emotional dependencies on the opposite sex. The hurt is in our discovery that we have bought heavily into the message that our self-worth is directly dependent upon our occupational success, and yet the idol of work somehow does not deliver its promised salvation.

James B. Nelson, The Intimate Connection: Male Sexuality, Masculine Spirituality, Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1988, p.13. [113]

God created us in the divine image, and we returned the favor, creating 'God' in our own. Traditional male-constructed theism has perceived God as autonomous and unrelated. Transcendant. Wholly other. Sovereign in 'his' absolute power. But there is an irony to this theological creation. Male theologians uncritical of patriarchal sexism, who themselves enjoyed and defended ecclesiastical male power monopolies, erected theologies that located all legitimate power in God and virtually none in humanity. God was imaged as male, and that meant power, control, and the demand for obedience. Many men are hungering for a fuller experience of God than this. Perhaps intuitively we sense that such a God is a 'wounded father' we carry inside us, an image of God distant, cold, controlling, unavailable. We have had enough of separation. Yet healing that wounded God image is complex. The image has served what we thought was our self-interest. When God became male, males were divinized, and patriarchy had cosmic blessing.

James B. Nelson, The Intimate Connection: Male Sexuality, Masculine Spirituality, Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1988, p.45. [162]

The Roman Stoics, who so influenced early Christianity, prized a life devoid of passion. Some early Christian Stoics, following their lead, wished that sexual intercourse (obviously necessary for the continuation of the race) might be as passionless as urinations. Medieval theologians were largely suspicious of sexual pleasure because in orgasm people seemed to lose their rationality, and to the medievalist, rationality was the key to human dignity. The Protestant Reformers of the sixteenth century abandoned the notion that celibacy was a higher virtue than married love, but they could not quite believe that sexual pleasure was good in its own right. It still remained God's enticement to procreation. The nineteenth-century Victorians simply assumed that sexual pleasure was animalistic. Each of these antipleasure chapters in the book of church history was dominated by male thought.

James B. Nelson, The Intimate Connection: Male Sexuality, Masculine Spirituality, Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1988, p.58. [135]

The most delicate and important questions... were about male sensibility when the child entered his world. I often found that I was one of the few people, sometimes the only one, to whom the man had spoken his feelings. He may not have done this with the woman ('I never knew you thought that' was a common interjection in the interviews), perhaps because she excluded him, or did not expect it of him or was obviously much better at such discussion herself. He hardly ever explored his private response with male colleagues at work. Conversation there was ritual, stylized, public - wages, sport, weather, holidays, politics, the job in hand ('my mates just didn't want to know', 'Don't know whether they were bored or embarrassed, may be just plain not interested'). I doubt if that was wholly so. Women inherit a culture which enables them to express intimate feelings. The mothers talk openly, freely and at length, between themselves about the minutiae and sensation of parenthood. Not every woman will use this chance, but nevertheless it is there, and the mothers are far more practised, skilled, and confident than the men in discussing and sharing the delights and depressions of parenthood. This does not mean that the fathers care or feel any less. They are anxious to express fatherhood. But they often met dilemmas. One was their lack of practice in articulating the gentler feelings, whether in word, touch or action... The first-time father needed a new vocabulary of expression if he was to attune his private with his public self. Perhaps the mothers, sharing intimate life, had always known this of him: voiceless love in the dark... The tap-roots of fatherhood run deep. The image I take away is of men in tears at the birth, and yet feeling they had to disguise them. The question I most remember asking is 'When did you last cry?', knowing that so often it would be countered with 'Not since I was a child myself.' To release the full force of fatherhood will mean breaking the masculine taboo on tenderness.

Brian Jackson, Fatherhood, London: George Allen and Unwin, 1984. pp.134-135. [349]

[Boys tend to]... separate sexual feelings from emotional attachment... Early in life boys have learned that sexual feelings have their own independence. Not so for the girl, for whom the explicitly sexual feelings were repressed in the early childhood experience with her mother. As Lillian Rubin remarks, 'For a woman, sex usually has meaning only in a relational context - perhaps a clue to why so many girls never or rarely masturbate in adolescence or early adulthood.'

James B. Nelson, The Intimate Connection: Male Sexuality, Masculine Spirituality, Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1988, p.78. [73]

Male preoccupation with sexuality is widely assumed and has even been documented in various studies. Karen Shaner reports, for example, that men between twelve and forty-five think of sex an average of six times per hour. Between twelve and nineteen, it is twenty times per hour, or every five minutes. Such content of men's thoughts, as well as their frequency, is revealing. For the most part, the mental images of heterosexual men include the sexual 'conquest' of women and fantasies of being the warrior and the victor... While we caution against the over-generalization that all men are obsessed with predatory notions of sexuality, studies such as this confirm what we have come to recognize as normative for maleness in this culture - a mystique of masculinity that fashions images of power and sexual dominance, again and again, in the mind's eye. We believe the model of masculinity and male sexuality that men have been socialized to adopt is a violation of the biblical calling to live in justice-love and right-relatedness.

Presbyterians and Human Sexuality 1991, Published by the Office of the General Assembly Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), Lousiville, KY, p.37 [173]

In Genesis 3:16 the woman is being warned that she will experience an unreciprocated longing for intimacy with the man.

[The woman's] desire will be for her husband so as to perpetuate the intimacy that had characterized their relationship in paradise lost. But her nostalgia for the relation of love and mutuality that existed between them before the fall, when they both desired each other, will not be reciprocated by her husband. Instead of meeting her desire, he will rule over her... [In short], the woman wants a mate and she gets a master; she wants a lover and she gets a lord; she wants a husband and she gets a hierarch.

Gilbert Bilezikian, Beyond Sex Roles: A Guide for the Study of Female Roles in the Bible, Grand Rapids: Baker, 1985, pp. 55 and 229. [111]

Man is the key to a happy family life because a woman by nature is a responding creature. Some temperaments, of course, respond more quickly than others, but all normal women are responders. That is one of the secondary meanings of the word submission in the Bible. God would not have commanded a woman to submit unless he had instilled in her a psychic mechanism which would find it comfortable to do so. The key to feminine response has only two parts - love and leadership. I have never met a wife who did not react positively to a husband who gave her love and leadership. Deep within a woman lies a responding capability that makes her vulnerable to that combination. It is so powerful, in fact, that many respond when they are only given love. (This is less likely when a woman is subjected only to leadership.) The combination of love and leadership is unbeatable. An interesting facet of that two-sided key is that most men must consciously work on one or the other. The temperament which naturally exudes love must consciously make an effort to exercise consistent leadership. By contrast, the man gifted in leadership must concentrate upon a regular display of love.

Tim LaHaye, Understanding the Male Temperament, Old Tappan, NJ: Fleming H. Revell company, 1977, p.178 [205]

In the last analysis a man can usually enforce his wishes upon his wife. Even if he never lays a finger on her, he will almost always be capable of bullying her to get what he wants... We should simply face up to the fact, on the basis of Genesis 3:16 and empirical evidence, that the fall gives a man a certain power over a woman which he can easily use at her expense. His 'strength' can be his wife's enslavement.

Anne Atkins, Split Image: Male and Female after God's Likeness, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1987, pp.168-169 [80]

Am I really all that which other men tell of? Or am I only what I know of myself, restless and longing and sick, like a bird in a cage, struggling for breath, as though hands were compressing my throat, yearning for colours, for flowers, for the voices of birds, thirsting for words of kindness, for neighbourliness, trembling with anger at despotisms and petty humiliation, powerlessly trembling for friends at an intimate distance...? Who am I? They mock me, these lonely questions of mine. Whoever I am, thou knowest, O God, I am thine.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, quoted in Presbyterians and Human Sexuality 1991, Published by the Office of the General Assembly Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), Lousiville, KY, p.36. [94]

.....

So, Jesus, what kind of man were you?

You were strong and tender, introvert and extravert, and had an easy familiarity both with men and women (and with children).

You knew who you were, so you didn't need anyone's approval (except your Father's).

You knew what you were on this planet to do, and you didn't hang around here after it was done.

You challenged people who were infected with their own self-importance.

You were gentle with others who did not think of themselves as important at all, whose self-esteem needed an injection of love.

You had the strength to confront the Powers, and they thought they 'did you in'. But such Life could never be extinguished.

You are alive in the world - your world - and in the church - your church. You are still doing your Father's will in the same way you did it in Judea and Galilee and Samaria (though now unseen).

Jesus, help me to be the man of God I was destined to be. Your Spirit is available to give me life, and truth, and comfort, and love and power. As a modern male I need a special dose of all of these.

I ask all of this for your glory. Amen.

A Benediction

May Jesus the Messiah, Son of a woman and Son of God, who lived in the power of the Spirit and taught the truth of God his Father and who died and rose again and ascended into heaven and who is coming at the end of history to judge the living and the dead; may Jesus the Lord and Christ empower you to do in your world what he did in his. Amen.

BIBLICAL INERRANCY

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(Adapted from chapter one of Recent Trends Among Evangelicals by Rowland C.Croucher, John Mark Ministries 1986/1995.)

Authority and our view of scripture

the most contentious issue within evangelicalism today is still the question of biblical inerrancy.

In 1976 a book appeared which did more than any other in the last thirty years to polarise evangelicals: Harold Lindsell's 'The Battle for the Bible' (Zondervan). Lindsell had just concluded as editor of Christianity Today, the world's most widely-read evangelical magazine. In that same year 'Newsweek' (October 25, 1976) had a cover story entitled 'Born Again' and said evangelical Christianity was 'the most significant - and overlooked - phenomenon of the '70s'. Evangelical Christianity had emerged 'into a position of respect and power'. Also in 1976 a US Gallup Poll revealed that nearly half of all Protestants and a third of all Americans said they had been 'born again'. The most famous of those Americans, Jimmy Carter, was running for President. Carter's opponent, president Gerald Ford, also declared himself to be an evangelical Christian. 'The Christian Century' (December) stated: In terms of public attention and news coverage, 1976 was unmistakably the Year of the Evangelical.'

Then that book appeared!

Lindsell branded many evangelical people, churches and seminaries as 'false evangelicals'. As Jack Rogers of Fuller Theological Seminary put it: 'Lindsell's criterion was a single one. He refused to grant "the evangelical label" to those who failed to conform to his particular theory of the inerrancy of the Bible. Those who advocated interpretations of the Bible with which Lindsell disagreed, for example the ordination of women, were charged with denying the authority of the Bible.

Of the three canons of authority - reason, tradition and scripture - evangelicals have always affirmed that scripture is 'God's word in our words' and therefore is always our primary and supreme authority for all matters of faith and conduct. Although reason and tradition may have been illumined and guided by the Holy Spirit, they have a secondary and subordinate place to scripture. Why? Because this was Christ's view of scripture. John Stott puts it simply in various writings: 'The conservative view of scripture... is Christ's view of scripture. He endorsed the Old Testament, made provision for the New Testament, and because of Christ we accept the authority of the book.'

But as Reformed theologian G.C. Berkouwer expressed it somewhere: 'To confess holy scripture and its authority is to be aware of the command to understand and to interpret it. It always places us at the beginning of a road that we can only travel in fear and trepidation.' If God has yet more light and truth to break forth from his holy word, then we must face the hard questions and continue to wrestle with them.

If the Bible is 'God's word in our words', we are immediately presented with two dangers: biblical docetism, which to varying degrees denies the real humanness of the written documents; and biblical Arianism, which denies that scripture is truly the word of God.

But if scripture is truly the word of God, what do we mean by 'truly'? The founder of L'Abri, Francis Schaeffer, used to ask: 'Is the Bible true truth? The issue is whether the Bible gives propositional truth where it touches history and the cosmos ... or whether it is only meaningful where it touches that which is considered religious.' For Schaeffer this was the watershed issue: 'we draw the line here with love and tears, even if evangelicals have to separate from one another.'

Then, too, it's a question of priority. For James Boice and Harold Lindsell, the authority of the Bible is an outcome of its inerrancy: 'If you don't have an inerrant Bible, you don't have an authoritative Bible' (Boice). Carl Henry objects to this elevation of inerrancy over authority as the first claim to be made for the Bible: 'To concentrate on inerrancy as the sole decisive issue is to wage the battle on too narrow a front.'

Billy Graham's position is similar to his mentor, Carl Henry's: 'I believe the Bible is the inspired, authoritative word of God, but I don't use the word "inerrant" because it's become a brittle, divisive word.' It certainly has, but Graham went on to say something truly prophetic: 'The issue [of the '80s] is going to be hermeneutics, or how to interpret scripture properly and apply it to personal and social life.'

The inerrantist view assumes that unless the Bible can be shown to give trustworthy information on non-religious matters, then it can't be trusted in the more important religious realm. The neo-orthodox view says the Bible is a witness to God's primary revelation in Christ, but as all human words are fallible it is not helpful to speak of the Bible as being in itself the word of God. It may become the word of God as we encounter God himself in Jesus Christ through its preaching.

A third model we might call 'progressive evangelical'. We find an exposition of it in John Stott's chapter, 'The Authority and Power of the Bible', in Rene Padilla (ed.), 'The New Face of Evangelicalism (Hodder and Stoughton, 1976). Commenting on the Lausanne Covenant phrase 'without error in all that it affirms', Stott writes: 'Not everything included in scripture is true, because not everything recorded in scripture is affirmed by scripture.' It would be naive, he argues, to declare that 'every word in the Bible is true'. Consider, for example, the Book of Job. Of the speeches recorded there God says, 'You have not spoken of me what is right' (42:7). So in declaring that the scripture is 'without error in all that it affirms', we are committed to 'the responsible work of biblical interpretation, so that we may discern the intention of each author and grasp what is being affirmed'.

Jack Rogers has a helpful comment on these three models. He says all three are useful inasmuch as they are seeking to answer different questions. The first model asks the question: Is the Bible an authoritative and trustworthy revelation for all of life? We can answer with the inerrantists: 'Yes!' The second model asks: In whom is God most fully revealed? We should answer with the neo-orthodox: 'Jesus Christ, to whom scripture bears unique and authoritative witness.' The third model asks yet another question: How is the Bible most helpfully to be interpreted? Answer: 'It is a divine message given in human words which are best understood in their various historical and cultural contexts.'

Rogers goes on to illustrate the three models by analogies. The first model is like the President of the US dictating a letter to his personal secretary. Thus the International Council of Biblical Inerrancy's Chicago Statement, Article VIII, states: 'God, in causing these writers to use the very words that he chose ... ', thereby asserting a notion of dictation. However, in affirming that 'what scripture says, God says', this declaration also denies that in choosing the words, God overrode their [the writers']
personalities.

The metaphor suggested by the second model, says Rogers, is that of an incumbent President running for re-election, with editorial writers who report on and interpret his sayings and doings. These biblical editorialists encourage the readers to meet the candidate in person and give him their allegiance.

The metaphor suggested by the third model is that of the President's press secretary speaking to the public. Such a person has been with the President and knows his inmost thoughts. When the press secretary speaks, he carries the authority of the President. But he uses his own words and adapts them to the questions being asked by the public.

'The issue', says Rogers, 'among evangelicals is not whether there is transcendent truth in the biblical revelation, but how that truth is incarnated in human, literary forms. The problem is not one of authority, but of interpretation' (J. Rogers, 'Mixed Metaphors, Misunderstood Models, and Puzzling Paradigms', unpublished paper, Fuller Seminary, 1981).

Rowland Croucher

For the entire book visit here

RECENT TRENDS AMONG EVANGELICALS

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My first published book (several editions in the 1980s and 1990s) was Recent Trends Among Evangelicals. I tried there to touch base with some distinctions between 'progressive evangelicalism' and the older fundamentalism.

Here's some material adapted from chapter one.

What is an evangelical?

There are now, says one evangelical seminary professor on the US west coast, sixteen kinds of 'evangelicals'! If, as the truism puts it, the only constant thing is change, that dictum is certainly true of evangelicals today. According to our dictionaries, the word 'evangelical' has at least six meanings. It can pertain to the four Gospels; to 'Protestant churches that emphasise Christ's atonement and man's salvation by faith' as the most important doctrines of Christianity; (since the Evangelical Awakenings of the Anglican communion) to 'those who actually believe the thirty-nine articles'; (in Europe) to the Lutheran as distinct from the Reformed/Calvinistic churches; or (in other parts of Europe) Protestants generally.

A US Gallop poll (1977-1978) defined an evangelical as one who 'has had a born again conversion, accepts Jesus as his or her personal Savior, believes the scriptures are the authority for all doctrine and feels an urgent duty to spread the faith'. For its purposes, an evangelical also places a strong emphasis on a personal relationship with God and adheres to a 'strict moral code'.

'One word is too often profaned', wrote Shelley. Well, this is the feeling of some about the word 'evangelical'. In my travels to pastors' conferences, I find hardly anyone who doesn't want to be thought of as 'evangelical' at least in some sense. I only know one 'liberal' in the older usage of the word - a Congregational minister, now retired and in his eighties. 'Newsweek', in an article on evangelicals (April 26, 1982), says: 'So many different kinds of Christians now call themselves evangelical that the label has lost any precise meaning.' US church historian, Martin Marty, says the best he can suggest is that evangelicals be defined as 'people who find Billy Graham or his viewpoints acceptable.'

Our aim is to clarify the distinctives and suggest current mega-trends in evangelicalism in Western countries in the 1980s. Some may view these trends with disquiet - that is understandable. My own appraisals of these trends will be apparent - that, perhaps, is unavoidable. Some of the terms ('fundamentalist', 'conservative', 'radical' etc.) have had pejorative connotations. I hope later to show some sympathy with some tenets of all these positions and will try to use such terms objectively.

History

The word 'evangelical' comes from the Greek 'euangelion', meaning good or appropriate news, the gospel, the message of salvation. The word came into vogue at the Reformation, as Protestants affirmed that the Roman Church had lost the essence of the good news. Their well-known catchwords were 'sola scriptura', 'scripture alone' (human reason, traditions and churches must submit to its authority in all religious and moral matters); 'solus Christus', 'Christ alone' (he is the only mediator between us and God); 'sola gratia', 'by grace alone' (we are not saved by our own efforts, but by God's grace in Jesus Christ); and 'sola fide', 'by faith alone' (personally accepting Jesus and his sacrifice on the cross).

So evangelical theology was formulated before the European Enlightenment. Evangelicals claim their thinking is rooted in the Bible and in the history of Christian thought before people like Kant, Darwin, Strauss, Marx or Freud came along to confuse everything!

The modern evangelical lineage includes such people as the English nineteenth-century bishop, J.C. Ryle. In his 'Knots Untied' (1877), he asserts that the leading feature of evangelical religion is the absolute supremacy it assigns to holy scripture as 'the only rule of faith and practice, the only test of truth, the only judge of controversy'.

English evangelicalism also sees Charles Simeon (Holy Trinity Church, Cambridge) and the visits of US evangelist D.L. Moody as formative. The Student Volunteer Movement (later the Student Christian Movement from which the Cambridge Inter-collegiate Christian Union disaffiliated itself in 1909 on doctrinal grounds)grew out of Moody's visits. Such volumes as Douglas Johnston's 'Contending for the Faith' (IVP London) and C. Stacey Woods' 'The Growth of a Work of God' (IVF 1928) trace the histories of the evangelical student movements on each side of the Atlantic during the first few decades of this century. C.S. Lewis and John Stott in England, and Benjamin Warfield, Harold Ockenga, E.J. Carnell, George Eldon Ladd, Bernard Ramm and Carl F.H. Henry in the US, would all be 'household names' among English-speaking evangelicals.

C.S. Lewis believed the vast majority of people becoming Christians enter the faith through the 'evangelical end' of the theological spectrum. He persuaded the more liberal Elton Trueblood that the Christian message must be taken, or left, in its wholeness. The US scholar, J. Gresham Machen (1881-1936), was another outstanding evangelical - one of the few Bultmann felt obliged to take seriously.

A form of evangelical orthodoxy in the US developed a theological epicentre known as the 'five fundamentals'. These did not embrace all of orthodoxy, but represented common ground among evangelicals, who still differed among themselves on such issues as the nature and mission of the church, the relationship of justification to sanctification, and eschatology. The five fundamentals were: the inspiration of scripture, the virgin birth of Christ, the substitutionary atonement, the physical resurrection of Christ, and his personal return. Billy Graham, America's most famous evangelical, had his Christian thinking planted deeply in this theological soil. The earlier evangelicalism (up to about 1918) saw only two major divergences: the holiness and Pentecostal movements. But the 1920s were very divisive. 'Modernism' was attacked by people now calling themselves 'Fundamentalists'. This was succeeded in the later 1920s through to the 1940s by increasing fundamentalist belligerence. In fact, various degrees of 'separationism' were espoused almost as tests of orthodoxy. In 1954, Harold Ockenga, when speaking at the inauguration of E.J. Carnell as president of Fuller Theological Seminary, first used the term 'new evangelical':

The new evangelical embraces the full orthodoxy of fundamentalism in doctrine, but manifests a social consciousness and responsibility which was strangely absent from fundamentalism. The new evangelicalism concerns itself not only with personal salvation, doctrinal truth and an external point of reference, but also ... believes that orthodox Christians cannot abdicate their responsibility in the social scene.

Donald Bloesch has claimed that the new evangelicalism is more of a 'mood' than a theological system. This is evidenced, for example, in Carl F.H. Henry's final editorial in 'Christianity Today' (1970). He asked why evangelical Protestants were not more involved at the frontiers of modern doubt and despair, and then listed four weaknesses he saw in contemporary evangelical Christianity: a tendency for evangelicals to continue to fragment and not show thir spiritual unity to the world, a tendency to attack unacceptable views rather than put up an alternative, a lack of willingness to become seriously involved in the academic arena, and a failure to engage in interracial liaison in the big cities. Ten years later (1980), Fuller Seminary's president David Hubbard noted the following areas of tension among evangelicals: women's ordination, the charismatic movement, ecumenical relations, social ethics, strategies of evangelism, biblical criticism, biblical infallibility, contextual theology in non-Western cultures, and applications of insights from the behavioural sciences to the church. Two important convocations - the Berlin Congress on Evangelism (1966) and the Lausanne Congress on World Evangelization (1974) - were the most formative events in the last twenty tears for evangelicals. The Lausanne Covenant (with John Stott as its key prime mover) has become a sort of 'confession of faith' for evangelicals in the last decade.

Fundamentalism and evangelicalism Before examining further the 'mood' of modern evangelicalism, we must ask another question: what was the essence of the neo-evangelicals' dissatisfaction with fundamentalism? Both groups believed, and still believe, that Christian liberalism is a road leading to irreligion. However, as Kenneth Kantzer has pointed out ('Christianity Today', February 18, 1983), evangelicals have generally misunderstood liberalism. They have considered liberalism as:

... an attack focused against orthodox Christianity out of hatred for biblical revelation and supernatural Christianity. Not so. It is safe to say that no liberal ever reckons himself as an enemy of traditional Christianity, but as a preserver. Harvard dean, Willard Sperry, characterised it as the 'Yes, but' religion in a volume by that title: Yes, I believe in the deity of Christ, but the language of Chalcedon has become meaningless. We must redefine the doctrine so as to make it intelligible to us who live in the twentieth century. Yes, I believe in the virgin birth of Christ, but the important thing is not any biological fact but the value of Jesus for us. Liberalism always wanted to be Christian, but it always wanted to be 'with it', too.

Now, fundamentalists make the same attack on 'neo-evangelicalism' - they, too, want too much to be 'with it'. When John Stott was asked what were the differences between evangelicals and fundamentalists, he replied: 'The evangelical Christian is a gospel Christian who accepts the plenary authority of scripture and the centrality of the good news of Jesus Christ. So-called fundamentalists, on the other hand, tend to be obscurantist and despise the intellect.' Again, in another context, Stott said: 'I strongly dislike being labelled "conservative"'! The world creates a false image. The evangelical Christian, whose concern is not only to conserve God's ancient revelation but also to relate it to the modern world, has as much right to be dubbed "radical" as "conservative"!' Evangelicals today feel most uncomfortable with what they would call the 'wooden literalism' of fundamentalists and also, temperamentally, shrink from fundamentalism's militancy. So there are both theological and psychological elements in the divergence of the two groups from one another over the past twenty years. In a recent book, 'The Fundamentalist Phenomenon' (Doubleday), Jerry Falwell argues that fundamentalist Christians are indeed 'the militant and faithful defenders of biblical orthodoxy'. This book pictures the evangelical movement as a jumbo jet operated by a timorous evangelical establishment that, thanks in large part to Falwell, has been 'suddenly hijacked by fundamentalist pilots'. Fundamentalists, according to pregressive evangelicals, have what might be called a 'sacramentalist' view of scripture: the mere reading of the words of the Bible conveys grace. Fundamentalists have too much defined their positions in terms of their more liberal opposition and, in the heat of the debate, have been accused of violating the second commandment (see for example H.E. Fosdick's autobiography, 'The Living of These Days'). For 'dispensationalist' fundamentalists, the baby in Bethlehem could have been nailed to the cross: there is little room for the life, teachings and healings of Jesus. 'God became man and died' is the essence of their creed. Harold Ockenga further criticised the fundamentalists' propensity towards schism: 'Fragmentation, separation, criticism, censoriousness, suspicion, solecism are the order of the day for fundamentalism.' He says evangelicals would hold with separation only on grounds of evident apostasy, not on minor credal variations.

The fundamentalists' anti-intellectualism and belligerence were also frequently attacked by Carl Henry. For example: 'If and when evangelical Christianity becomes primarily a "search and destroy" operation, it will have forfeited its biblical right to survival... Paul made love so much the final test of Christian integrity that even the truth of revelation is invalidated by lovelessness, just as love is falsified by untruth... [We are not to be] anti-this and anti-that... [but pro-Christ]... The time has come for evangelicals to lower the fences that divide them.

'Let us carry placards of proclamation, not billboards of condemnation; let [us] dare to show the dawn rather than merely to damn the darkness... It is time to "ring the bells" again, to [emphasise] the joy of being a Christian, the delight and dignity of walking with God. Augustine was one of the greatest of all Christian philosophers, but that brilliant mind was first attracted to faith in Christ by the spontaneous joy of the first believers he met.' ('Christianity Today' September 13, 1968).

Next article in series

PHILOSOPHERS WHO BELIEVE

2004-07-28T04:05:00.000-07:00

Why Some Eminent Philosophers Believe in God

One of the common assumptions in theism-vs-atheism debates is that one probably passes from non-belief to belief (or vice versa) *rationally*. A cursory reading of the biographies of eleven leading contemporary philosophers in Kelly James Clark (ed.) *Philosophers Who Believe* (IVP, Illinois, 1993), tells a different story. I'm posting this in three stages, to make it easier for us to read/digest/respond.
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'The sense of a divine presence was something I had never been entirely without, and my Sufi upbringing had helped to nurture it. What made me a Christian, or brought me back to Christianity, was above all the crisis of the war... [This] experience... taught me... that love was the one thing necessary... Men and women are to be loved as those whom God has loved - created, redeemed and destined to eternal life.' (pp. 43-44) - Basil Mitchell, Nolloth Professor of the Christian Religion at Oxford University, previously for twenty years tutor in philosophy at Keble College, Oxford.

'Belief in God can be perfectly rational even if none of the theistic arguments works and even if there is no noncircular evidence for it... It is perfectly rational to take belief in God as *basic* - to accept it, that is, without accepting it on the basis of argument or evidence from other propositions one believes... 'The popular contemporary myth of science as a cool, reasoned, wholly dispassionate attempt to figure out the truth about ourselves and our world entirely independent of religion, or ideology, or moral convictions, or theological commitments is just that: a myth.' (pp. 74,77). - Alvin Platinga holds the John A. O'Brien Chair of Philosophy, University of Notre Dame.

'The more I thought... the more obviously grotesque it became to suppose that Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot and Idi Amin, not to speak of countless smaller-scale murderers and torturers, would all have been like Socrates or St. Francis if they had had a better education or if their parents had not divorced, as the current orthodoxy seemed to hold. I became convinced that God's grace - I would not have so referred to it at the time - is needed for right action...' (p.101). - John Rist, professor of classics and philosophy at the University of Toronto.

'The figure of Jesus intrigued, fascinated and overwhelmed me. I formed the impression that Jesus must have been an extraordinary person... 'The set of people who have been changed by Jesus is a set that includes me. I was once on a wrong path that was leading nowhere but to sloth, inertia, self-pity, self-centredness, self-indulgence and destruction. In Christ, I found the right path. I have a strong sense of having been created, guided, forgiven and redeemed by God in Christ. This conviction, as I suppose, is much of what makes me a Christian.' (pp. 107,108). - Stephen T. Davis, professor of philosophy and religion, Claremont McKenna College, California.

'Some people are led to deepen their religious commitment by *thought* - by reflection on the rational fabric of theological deliberations. Others are impelled by *experience* - by a reception of some sort of sign or signal. In my own case, however, it came by way of *feeling* - through awe and wonder at the mystery of existence and, no less importantly, by a sentiment of solidarity with those whom I admired and respected as part of a community of faith transcending the boundaries of dogma and doctrine...' (p.133). - Nicholas Rescher, professor of philosophy and history and philosophy of science at the University of Pittsburgh.

'I came to realize that I lack in myself even the resources to accept God. My very faith, my very acceptance of God, is not in my power. It is a gratuitous gift of God, and I struggle to make that realization more than episodic in my life. Because of all the abuse [from my father], the suffering, I don't really trust love. I don't believe in love. But God is love... I must learn to trust God if I am to learn to love. 'Meanwhile I continue seeking to follow God and Christ - but with fits, starts, doubts, backsliding and much self-incrimination. My feeble efforts are humbling. My sinful past alone should be humbling. Yet there is hope... 'I am coming to see that my self-doubts, my insecurities, are a gift from God. *They* are the seeds of humility.' (pp.176-177). - Frederick Suppe, professor of philosophy, University of Maryland.

'As far back as my memory stretches, I recall having thought in Christian terms; and from early years I recall having prayed. Since neither of my parents was Christian, any human contribution to this process must be attributed to my early schooling. By the time I had... come up as an undergraduate to Oxford University in 1954, being a Christian was, I claimed to myself, the most important thing in my life 'The basic idea of [my book] *The Existence of God* is that the various traditional arguments for theism - from the existence of the world (the cosmological argument), from its conformity to scientific laws (a version of the teleological argument), and so on - are best construed not as deductive arguments but as inductive arguments to the existence of God. A valid deductive argument is one in which the premises (the starting points) infallibly guarantee the truth of the conclusion; a correct inductive argument is one in which the premises confirm the conclusion (that is, make it more probable than it would otherwise be). Science argues from various limited observable phenomena to their unobservable physical causes, and in so doing it argues inductively. My claim was that theism is the best justified of metaphysical theories. The existence of God is a very simple hypothesis that leads us to expect various very general and more specific phenomena that otherwise we would not expect; and for that reason it is rendered probable by the phenomena. Or rather, as with any big scientific theory, each group of phenomena adds to the probability of the theory - together they make it significantly more probable than not...' (pp. 179, 188-189). - Richard Swinburne, Nolloth Professor of the Christian Religion at Oxford University.

In my view of the matter, I had no religious upbringing. My parents may have thought otherwise. In my preadolescent years, I was taken by my mother and my maternal grandmother to religious services in a Reform synagogue on Saturday mornings, but without any effect on my mind or soul...

[In preparation for my] bar mitzvah... I do not recall the rabbi's ever asking me whether I believed in God... In my adolescent years... I ceased to have anything to do with the Jewish religion...

In 1979, when I wrote *How To Think About God*, I was not yet a Christian. I wrote that book as a pagan for pagans... The argument therein for God's existence was, for me, the satisfactory culmination of fifty years of dissatisfaction with the arguments adapted by Aquinas from Aristotle...

The soundest rational argument for God's existence [carries] us only to the edge of the chasm that separates the philosophical affirmation of God's existence from the religious belief in God. What is usually called 'a leap of faith' is needed for anyone across the chasm. But the leap of faith is usually misunderstood as being a progress from having insufficient reasons for affirming God's existence to a state of greater certitude in that affirmation. That is not the case. The leap of faith consists in going from the conclusion of a merely philosophical theology to a religious belief in a God that has revealed himself as a loving, just, and merciful Creator of the cosmos, a God to be loved, worshipped and prayed to...

After a trip to Mexico [in 1984]... I fell ill... The illness was protracted... I suffered a mild depression... When [an episcopal priest] prayed for my recovery, I choked up and wept. The only prayer I knew word for word was the Pater Noster. On that day and in the days after it, I found myself repeating the Lord's Prayer, again and again, and meaning every word of it. Quite suddenly, when I was awake one night, a light dawned on me, and I realized what had happened... After many years of affirming God's existence and trying to give adequate reasons for that affirmation, I found myself believing in God. (pp. 203, 204, 212, 215, 216).

- Mortimer Adler, director of the Institute for Philosophical Research, and chairman of the board of editors of the Encyclopaedia Britannica.

...I found myself in 1978 asking our parish priest if he could present me for confirmation. I still find it hard to say what led to this - what factors in my own thinking and feeling served as the vehicles of the mercy of God. I cannot look back on any conversion experience, and feel no kinship with, and at most a mild envy of, those who do...

There was another reason [for believing God was at work in me]... Our son died, suddenly and accidentally, a few days before his nineteenth birthday. His death, needless to say, was a great trauma for us and for his sister. No parent, especially a career-minded father, can experience this grief without major admixture of guilt, and I was deeply conscious of many failures of love. Praying for the repose of his soul was, and is, the only thing left to do for him. I do not say I turned back to the church because of guilt. (Not that this would have been an inadequate reason.) I say rather that these prayers for the dead were and are necessities for me, and I could not and cannot believe them to be unnecessary or unefficacious...

I had all sorts of intellectual difficulties with the faith that I would go on sorting out, or failing to sort out, forever... On the day when the bishop confirmed me I remember the nearest thing in my life to a distinctively and unambiguously religious experience... All obstacles had been imposed by myself, and... had melted away when God's minister had quietly ignored them and not argued.

- Terence Penelhum, formerly professor and head in the philosophy department, University of Calgary in Alberta, Canada.

During my elementary-school years I especially enjoyed reading lives of the saints. I do not think I have ever had role models or heroes except for those saints... The experience of knowing holy people is still the most important evidence to me for the truth of Christianity...

As philosophers, we usually like to pretend that most of our philosophical positions are arrived at exclusively through something called 'reason', but I believe that even the most careful thinker is heavily influenced by qualities of temperament, and that these qualities unify the pattern of one's beliefs. Reason alone underestimates coherence, and it does not give one's belief system a style. Religious faith helps to produce such a style, and that is probably why the minds of the great theistic philosophers of the past are interesting in a way that is rare among more arid minds of even the best of nontheists... Religion... gives one's beliefs a flavor, a strength and an intensity lacking in those whose beliefs are merely beliefs...

Having children forces parents to come to terms with their own beliefs. While our sons were in preschool I had to make up my mind about what I believed... I decided I had to think about the connection between faith and reason and my own reasons for leaving the church. Philosophy makes us yearn for the truth, but it does not always show us how to find it... I was astonished at the beauty of the liturgy. It is true that there had been liturgical changes during my absence, but the primary change was in me...

In my experience everybody loves Plato, but hardly anybody is a Platonist. Plato was right about one vitally important matter, though, and that is his understanding of the urge to self-transcendence, found in numerous places in the dialogues. My favorite is the analysis of love in the Symposium. There Socrates defines love as the desire for the perpetual possession of Beauty, or the Good. Plato's brilliant way of connecting love with both the aesthetic and the intellectual urge is one of the most important of the Greek ideas assimilated by Christianity. While philosophers and mathematicians are often faulted for being exceedingly cerebral, both have much in common with artists and mystics.

- Linda Trinkaus Zagzebski, professor of philosophy at Loyola Marymount University. [At the Dutch Reformed Church in Begelow, Minnesota] elements of the liturgy and of Scripture sank their roots so deep into consciousness that nothing thereafter, short of senility, could remove them...

Tradition is usually seen as burden, not grace... [but] if you ask me who I am, I reply: I am one who was bequeathed the Reformed tradition of Christianity...

[But] the gospel had never been presented to me as best explanation, most complete account; the tradition had always encouraged me to live with unanswered questions. Life eternal doesn't depend on getting all the questions answered; God is often as much behind the questions as behind the answers...

Was it grace I experienced when I heard God saying to me, in the voice of the Palestinians and the South African blacks, you must speak up for these people? ...And was it grace I experienced when my son was killed?

God is more mysterious than I had thought - the world too. There's more to God than grace; or if it's grace to one, it's not grace to the other... And there's more to being human than being that point in the cosmos where God's goodness is meant to find its answer in gratitude. To be human is also this: to be that point in the cosmos where the yield of God's love is suffering.

- Nicholas Wolsterstorff has a joint appointment in the divinity school and the philosophy and religion departments of Yale University.

Rowland Croucher

WOMEN AND MINISTRY

2004-07-21T23:39:00.000-07:00

Text: Romans 16: 1 - 27

Caller to American Christian radio talk show: 'What do you think of Philip's four daughters who prophesied?' Guest clergyman: 'It just means they witnessed for Christ.' Caller: 'But why can't women teach and preach?' Clergyman: 'That ministry is for men only and I can give you a very good reason: God made roosters to crow and hens to lay eggs.'

Today we celebrate the calling and induction of .... into the pastoral ministry of this church.

In this 'charge' I want to look at one of the most controv- ersial questions in the church: the issue of women in leadership ministries - a contemporary issue for Australians, with the Anglican church agonizing about whether or not to ordain women priests. I will be presenting a point of view which I believe is correct, biblically, but I acknowledge there are other views (and no doubt your letters will help clarify those!).

This article is not addressing the issue of women in ministry. That's not in question: all Christian women and men are ordained to ministry at their baptism. The issue is one of women in ministries of leadership.

First, eight general observations; then we will look at the ministries of eight women named by Paul in Romans 12. [The full sermon concluded with four ideas about pastoral ministry: this ministry is about (1) disciplining the church's trouble-makers (Romans 16:17-18), (2) developing a Christian character (16:19-20), (3) building a Christian family (16:21-23), and (4) proclaiming the Christian gospel (16:25-27)].

(1) No one can read the Bible intelligently without taking into account the cultures which produced the various Scriptures, and the 'cultural baggage' we bring to their interpretation. Some say, 'You just simply read what's there!' but 20,800 different Christian denominations in the world today are each asking 'Be reasonable - interpret the Scriptures my way!'
A girl in a Christian sect told me God is like a giant man. He 'walks on the mountains' so they'd measured his size (with help from the geography of Palestine, and some trigonom- etry!). 'Does he have wings?' I asked. 'No, he's like a giant man.' 'But what about the Scriptures that tell us he hides us under his feathers, etc.?' She then had an attack of cognit- ive dissonance: her whole interpretive apparatus collapsed: she'd never thought of that!
Most who 'take the Bible literally' don't stone adulterers or practise footwashing, or enrol widows over sixty. Some read the Bible and become pacifists, others militarists. Our reading of the Bible is always conditioned by our exper- iences, our culture, our traditions.

Within our own culture many have inferred from the paucity of women in the highest levels of corporate management that 'women are not leaders and therefore shouldn't be'. However, others have noted the splendid work of women as pioneer missionaries, or leading whole denominations (like General Eva Burrows of the Salvation Army) and ask 'why not?' Because I am married to a female pastor, every day I share experiences of God using her to bless others, and that has helped shape my approach...
But, more importantly, I believe the Lord has yet more light and truth to break forth from his holy Word.

(2) There seem to be two paradigms relative to male/female relationships in the Scriptures - a male-dominated patriarchical or hierarchical paradigm, and an egalitarian one. Both are there, and it generally depends on one's religious, cultural and psychological predispositions which paradigm one prefers. Or we align ourselves with the teaching of an admired pastor, or the church of our childhood, or a well-known author. We then interpret all the difficult texts to conform with that chosen paradigm. Generally, males have a tendency to lead; women are generally better than men at 'adapting' to others' leadership. (Notice I didn't use words like 'domination' or 'authoritarian'...)
But fortunately God is not a legalist. Even if male-dominated cultures produced the Scriptures, he raises up a Deborah to lead the whole people of God. Some of us wouldn't have let him do that... The four daughters of Philip were prophet- esses: can you name one or two in your church?

(3) Both males and females were created in the image of God. Roberta Hestenes writes: 'In Genesis 1 and 2 it seems clear that God's intention for man and woman is that of complementary partnership... and jointly given the charge to be fruitful, subdue the earth and have dominion... As a result of their sin the note of subordination is introduced (Genesis 3:16: 'Your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you.')... In Jesus Christ [we have a] priesthood of the whole people of God, female and male (1 Peter 2:9)... The church is built (Ephesians 2:20) upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets. Women are part of that foundation.' (1) Hierarchy results from the Fall, in which both the man and woman participated. But you say Eve was to be a 'helper' of Adam, implying inferiority. Not at all. The same word is used of God, helping Israel.

(4) Jesus, Paul and Peter were way ahead of their chauvin- istic cultures in granting personhood and dignity to women. Some rabbis debated as to whether women had souls! Women were there at the cradle of the Messiah, and at the cross and the resurrection. Women had never known a man like Jesus - he never put them down or flattered or patronized them. He had no uneasy male dignity to defend... 'Women itinerated with Jesus (Luke 8:13)... They were commissioned by him to tell the good news of the resurrection... (Luke 24:1-11). The double sexual standard for men and women was firmly rejected by Jesus (Matthew 5:27-28; 19:3-9; John 8:1-11). Not a trace of hierarchical behaviour or teaching appears in any of the gospel accounts.' (2)

(5) At Pentecost the Spirit fell on women and men: 'sons and daughters' both prophesied. In the apostolic church ministries were exercised according to giftedness, rather than 'office'. That system came later... The early church was more 'charismatic' and less institutional, more given to informal contacts than dependent on structures and constitutions. Prophecy is quite common in younger churches, and almost non-existent in older churches. Prophecy, says Paul, is the highest spiritual gift: and both men and women prophesied in the early church. (3)

(6) Brethren scholar F.F.Bruce suggests our understanding of male/female relationships must be viewed through the 'window' of Galatians 3:28: '[In Christ] there is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus'. Although Jewish women did not need to attend worship and were certainly not permitted to participate vocally in it, Christian women participated freely in worship, prayer and prophecy (1 Corinthians 11:5, 14:6; Acts 21:9). 'In Christ' is a phrase that occurs 164 times in Paul - ie, 'within the Body of Christ' there is neither male or female.

(7) Evangelical Anglican scholar Dr. Leon Morris says of the Titus 2:5 injunction that women should be 'submissive to their husbands so that the word of God may not be discredited' that 'these days it would be brought into disrepute by a strict subjection. Again, women's subjection is to be such "as is fitting in the Lord" (Colossians 3:18). In a day like our own we must ask "What is fitting?" It seems impossible to empty such passages of cultural standards.' (4)

The apostles seemed to be putting their foot on the brake a little so as not to create a scandal by women blatantly abusing their new-found freedom in Christ. The early Christians were way ahead of their culture in their attitudes to women (eg Paul's radical injunction that husbands love their wives as Christ loved the church). But many churches today are way behind their culture - we are creating a scandal for the opposite reason.
(8) The main reason why there aren't more women in positions of leadership is, I believe, psychological. The little boy in us men can't cope with strong women: we left home to get away from maternal authority. Indeed, many men seem to have a near- pathological fear of losing power to a woman. Few men have women mentors. They usually don't read books by women. Men usually define themselves in terms of job success; women in terms of relationships. When I talk to male clergy they usually volunteer statistics which measure progress or growth. Women clergy tell stories about people...

Men and women bring different value-systems to the task of ministry: they are complementary if we are smart enough to maximize the potentials of each...

TEN WOMEN IN MINISTRY.

In Romans 16, we have people from at least three races - Latins, Jews, and Greeks, who are 'all one in Christ Jesus.' They are from lower and upper classes, including slaves and freed slaves - these, with people from the privileged groups are now all 'one in Christ Jesus.' Of the 29 people, ten are women. Apart from Priscilla, none is mentioned elsewhere in the NT. And Paul - who some think belittled the status of women in the church - honoured these women and held them in high regard. 'In spite of the lack of information on these women, it is reasonably certain that they must have had some importance in the Church to be included in this list of greetings.' (5) Paul also held the church in high regard: in these verses (1-16) Paul mentions the church at Cenchrea (1), all the churches of the Gentiles (4), the church in their house (5), the churches of Christ (16). Paul had a great concern for the welfare of individuals, and for the churches. The church of Jesus Christ is glorious, not because it's perfect, but because it is being redeemed!

The phrase 'In Christ' is mentioned ten times in the first 16 verses. Whether Paul talks about Christians suffering or serving, the supreme thought in Paul is that these believers in Rome were all 'in Christ' or 'in the Lord' (vv. 2,3,7,8, 9,10,11,13; cf. 8:1; Philippians 3:14; 4:13).

In the ancient world (as today) when someone is applying for a position or job they seek testimonials or references from others who know them well. In the Brethren Assemblies I grew up in we had 'letters of commendation' from one assembly to another if someone was traveling or moving residence. These sustatikai epistolai, letters of introduction, were common in business transactions in the ancient world as well.

So Paul is here commending Phoebe (16:1) to the church in Rome. She is the bearer of this letter. He asks them to welcome her.
Two terms describe her - diakonos - deacon, servant, minister, and prostatis - a great help to many people. Is diakonos a reference to a special 'order' of ministers? We don't know. The term is used generically in 1 Thess. 3:2, 2 Cor. 3:6, 11:23; of a specific group or function in Phil 1:1, 1 Timothy 3:8,12. And it is used of Christ (Romans 15:8), Apollos (1 Corinthians 3:5), Timothy (1 Timothy 4:6) and of Paul himself (1 Corinthians 3:5, Ephesians 3:7; Colossians 1:23,25). An evangelical NT scholar, E Earl Ellis, in an article 'Paul and his Co-Workers' (1971) concluded that diakonoa in Paul referred to a special class of co-workers who were active in preaching and teaching. (6)

She is also a prostatis - the only time in the NT this word as a noun appears. In secular Greek at that time this was a relatively strong term of leadership. The verb is used by Paul in three out of five occurrences to refer to leadership in the Church. Thus the word probably suggests Phoebe had a prominent role: one translator uses the word 'overseer'. And I still meet churches which won't have a woman on their diaconate!

Prisca and Aquila (16:3) were a fascinating couple. Prisca is sometimes called Priscilla (Acts 18:2,18,26) - an affectionate version of the same name.

When they first appear on the pages of the NT (Acts 18:1-2) they're in Rome. Claudius banished Jews from Rome in AD 52 and this couple settled in Corinth. They were tent-makers - the same trade as Paul's - so in Corinth he stayed with them. They and Paul left Corinth together and went to Ephesus where Prisca and Aquila settled (Acts 18:18). A brilliant Alexandrian scholar Apollos visited Ephesus, and stayed with Prisca and Aquila. Apollos did not have a full understanding of the Christian faith, so in addition to hospitality this special couple taught him as well (Acts 18:24-26). Later, when Paul wrote his first letter to the Corinthians from Ephesus, he sent greetings from Prisca and Aquila and from the church in their house (1 Corinthians 16:19). Next we hear of them back in Rome: the edict banishing Jews must have lost its steam, and many people like Prisca and Aquila no doubt drifted back to that city to their old homes and jobs. Once again we discover they have a church in their home. The last time they appear is in 2 Timothy 4:19, and they're back in Ephesus. One of the last messages Paul sent to anyone was to this couple, who had come through so much with him.

So wherever these nomadic people are - Rome, Corinth, Ephesus, back in Rome, or finally again in Ephesus - their home is a centre for Christian ministry, worship and hospitality (1 Cor. 16:19, Philemon 2).

But there's something odd about the way they're mentioned in despatches in the NT: they are always mentioned together, and on four of the six occasions Prisca is named before her husband. Normally - then as now - the husband's name is mentioned first - 'Mr. and Mrs.'. One theory suggested by (Presbyterian) William Barclay is that she was a member of a noble Roman family: 'It may be that at some meeting of Christians this great Roman lady met Aquila the humble Jewish tentmaker, that the two fell in love, that Christianity destroyed the barriers of race and rank and wealth and birth, and that these two, the Roman aristocrat and the Jewish artisan, were joined forever in Christian love and Christian service.' (7) Maybe. But perhaps it's more likely her leadership gifts or her role in the church was the reason she's mentioned first.

Paul calls them fellow-workers: the same term is used of men such as Timothy and Titus, as well as of women such as Euodia and Syntyche. 'He also considers Apollos and himself God's "fellow- workers" (1 Corinthians 3:9). It is in this group of people who take leadership in the ministry of the gospel that Priscilla, without any distinction related to her sex, is included as well as her husband Aquila.'(8) We don't know what roles all these people had as 'fellow-workers' - perhaps their roles were as diverse as their gifts.

Mary (16:6). There are at least six Marys in the NT story - and they are all special people. We don't know anything more about this Mary than that 'she has worked very hard' among them, a similar expression to that used of Tryphena and Tryphosa and Persdis (16:12). What kind of hard work? Did she grow flowers for Sunday services? Clean out the room before house-church? Serve eats after the worship? Perhaps - these so-called menial tasks are honoured when the Lord Christ is served. But the Greek verb 'work very hard' is used regularly by Paul to refer to the special work of the gospel ministry. Only twice does Paul use it in a common or secular sense - both within a proverbial expression (Ephesians 4:8, 2 Timothy 2:6). Paul frequently describes his apostolic ministry with this word, and also the ministry of other leaders and persons of authority: the context of some of these stresses the need for respect for and submission to such workers. [Cf. Euodia and Syntyche (Philippians 4:2,3) two women Paul describes as having '...contended at my side in the cause of the gospel' (NIV)].

Andronicus and Junia (16:7) were Christians before Paul was - their conversion goes right back to the time of Stephen, so they must have had a direct link back to the earliest church in Jerusalem.

There is some debate about the sex of Junia or Junias. Paul's word junian may be either masculine or feminine. So we have to be a bit tentative here. Andronicus was certainly a common male name, but there's no evidence Junias was used as a male name. John Chrysostom (d. AD 407), one of the first Greek fathers to write extensive commentaries on Paul, and known for his 'negative' view of women, understood that Junia was a woman. He marveled that this woman should be called an apostle! In fact... the first commentator to understand Junia as a male name (Aegidius of Rome) lived in the 13th century. (9)

He/she is outstanding among (en) the apostles: does this mean Junia was well known by the apostles or well known as an apostle? '[The] natural meaning in Greek is that these two were outstanding as apostles.' (10) The term 'apostle' was used in the early church not just for the Twelve but for any authorised Christian missionaries.

Were Tryphaena and Tryphosa (16:12) twin sisters? Their names mean 'dainty and delicate' but they worked (kopian) to the point of exhaustion! Barclay suggests Paul may have had a smile on his face when he wrote that!

The mother of Rufus (16:13) was one of two women mentioned specifically but not named. She brought to Paul the help and comfort and love which his own family refused him when he became a Christian. Julia and the sister of Nereus (16:15) were both greeted without comment.

Note that all these people were commended for their work: we are called to serve, not just to be church consumers! Note also the way Paul encourages people: when did we last do that?
Finally three scholarly comments. # 'Romans 16:1-16, then, in an incidental way, allows us to see that Paul had several women co- workers in the church's ministry. Mary, Tryphena, Tryphosa and Persis (as well as Euodia and Syntyche mentioned in Philippians 4:2-3) all shared in the hard labours of a gospel ministry. Priscilla also was a fellow worker with Paul in the ministry. Phoebe was a minister of the Cenchrean church and a leader in the Church. Junia was, along with Andronicus (her husband?) an outstanding apostle. When the issues of Paul's view of women in the church are addressed in reference to such texts as 1 Corinthians 14: 34-35 and 1 Timothy 2:8-15, these women co-workers in the ministry must not only not be forgotten; they must be accounted for in the overall assessment of Paul's view.' (11)

# 'That Paul should not only include a woman among the apostles but actually describe her, together with Andronicus, as outstanding among them, is highly significant evidence (along with the importance he accords in this chapter to Phoebe, Prisca, Mary, Tryphena, Tryphosa, Persis, the mother of Rufus, Julia and the sister of Nereus) of the falsity of the widespread and stubbornly persistent notion that Paul had a low view of women and something to which the Church as a whole has so far failed to pay proper attention.' (12)

# 'Just as the church has moved beyond the NT toleration of slavery to a recognition that Christian principles forbid slavery, so too we can with a good conscience accept a larger place for women in the ministry of the church than was possible in first- century society.' (13)

When I visited the largest church in the world in Seoul, Korea, in 1978, I was not surprised to learn that 80% of their small group leaders were women. I attended one of these, led very capably by a woman. The church is immeasur- ably impoverished when more than half its members are debarred from exercising leadership ministries not on the basis of the presence or absence of giftedness or competence, but simply because of gender. I thank God for the many women who have toiled so graciously for the Lord despite this discrimination. The time has now come to practise the principle that in Christ social, racial and sexual barriers have been removed.

Rowland Croucher

.....

Endnotes:

(1) 'Scripture and the Ministry of Women' in Roberta Hestenes and Lois Curley (eds.), Women and the Ministries of Christ, Pasadena, California: Fuller Theological Seminary, 1979, p.7
(2) Hestenes, ibid., pp. 7-8.
(3) See Avery Dulles, Models of the Church, New York: Doubleday, 1987, chapter 2, 'The Church as Institution'.
(4) 'The Ministry of Women', in Leon Morris, John Gaden, Barbara Thiering, A Woman's Place, Sydney, Anglican Information Office, 1976, p. 27.
(5) David M Scholer, 'Paul's Women Co-workers in the Ministry of the Church', Atlantic Baptist, 23:4, April 1987, p. 19.
(6) Ibid, p. 20.
(7) The Letter to the Romans, Edinburgh: The Saint Andrew Press, 1958, pp. 230-231).
(8) Scholer, p. 20.
(9) Ibid.
(10) Ibid.
(11) Scholer, op. cit., p. 21.
(12) C E B Cranfield, Romans: A Shorter Commentary, Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 1987, p. 377.
(13) I. Howard Marshall, 'The Role of Women in the Church', in Shirley Lees, (ed.), The Role of Women: Eight Prominent Christians debate today's issues, Leicester: IVP, 1984, p. 196.

THE END OF MY SEARCHING

2004-07-20T00:42:00.000-07:00

Here's my daughter Lindy's first sermon (she was then 22), preached at Heathmont Baptist Church, Victoria, Australia... She is now a missionary in a poor area of Melbourne, with Urban Neighbours of Hope.

She's happy to share this with you, and for you to give it away to others...

Shalom! Rowland Croucher

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'THE END OF MY SEARCHING?' (Lindy Croucher).

You will seek me and you will find me when you seek me with all your heart (Jer 29:13).

Taste and see that the Lord is good; blessed is the one who takes refuge in him (Ps 34:8).

Without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to God must believe that he exists and he rewards those who earnestly seek him (Heb 11:6).

There are only two kinds of people who please God: those who serve him with all their heart because they know him, and those who seek him with all their heart because they don't know him.

Some of you here tonight are more devoted servants of a God you know much better than I do. And I'm sure there are others who, like me, struggle to serve a God you're not sure you know or understand too well. Or perhaps you're not serving him at all while you wait and wish he'd show up in your life.

We hear many sermons about serving God better, but tonight I want you to attempt with me to understand a little more how we might *know* him better. Not just about him, but how we can relate deeply to the only real and loving God by seeking him with all our hearts.

I wonder if God makes little sense to you and your confusion has you holding him at a distance? Do you see him as a stern uninvolved father who gets put out when you don't meet his expectations, yet doesn't seem to care much about the things that hurt you? Do you see him as a spiritual vending machine: you slot in your requests for help in exams, for a certain person to like you, and for anything else that might help you get through your day, and you assume that if he cared about you he would ease your pressures in life, enable you to feel good about yourself, and cater for your happiness? Even if you live in humble and grateful dependence on a God whose love for you is the essence of your life, I'm sure there are times when your faith is attacked till it's war-torn, or when the pain of life is so deep there is no relief and God seems far away.

If you've hung out with God for a long time I'm sure you've discovered, like I have, that problems don't go away, and the Christian life turns out to be no easier or less painful than before. When we're honest there's little difference between the circumstances of those who are following Christ and those who are not. And Christians can be as wounded and low in self-esteem as those who have not responded to Christ.

Dr. Larry Crabb, in his book Finding God asks the questions 'How can an unmarried man or woman struggling with loneliness find God? How can a bereaved parent enjoy God's goodness? How can a bankrupt businessman with a large family rest in what he knows about God? How can an intellectual rationalist be satisfied that truth is found in Jesus? And how can a discouraged, confused, and unmotivated teenager find enough confidence in God to continue living?'

The human response is to either pretend things are better than they are, or to self-reliantly pull together all our resources to relieve our pain. I believe the only thing that can make you and me different is truly finding God and coming to a profound realization that he can be trusted.

In order to find God, our passion to know him must exceed all other passions. We must desire him more than we desire a new house or a better friend or relief from our grief and loneliness, or the solutions to our problems, or the answers to our questions, more than we desire becoming a better person, feeling happy, or even enjoying good health. And God longs to be known by us far more than we long to know him, and he is relentlessly committed to working on our hearts until our passion to know him is stronger than all other passions.

There are many different obstacles to finding God. For me one of the greatest has been my demands that he make sense to me. In my stubborn arrogance I've sometimes refused to believe about God anything but what is understandable and appealing to my fallen, selfish, limited mind. It can seem strange to me that God would enter his world as a Jew raised in Galilee and then trust his followers to make him known to the rest of the world. I struggle to understand some of the fundamentals of the Christian faith, and this can drive me into immobilizing disillusionment.

Do you remember ever playing hide and seek with a friend who really knew how to hide, and delighted in not being found? They would never call out to you, or jump out and surprise you. And so you carry the full responsibility of working out where this kid is. I have sometimes assumed this role in my search for God. I set about trying to discover for myself, independently, what is really truth: and it has felt as hopeless as searching for a clever kid who doesn't want to be found. It makes all the difference when I realize I am looking for the living God, and he is a person who longs to be found more than I long to find him. He is only hidden because I am blind. He is continually calling my name and directing my next step, and sometimes I am even aware that he is holding my hand. He calls me to search and to obey, and he promises to take care of being found, and I know in my heart of hearts he can be trusted for that. Yet I am so often of the 'wicked, faithless generation that asks for a sign'... and I forget that a sign has been given, and I have known and trusted him well... I just sometimes fail to recognize him.

The last time I felt like screaming at God 'Why don't you make yourself more obvious?', I happened to return to John 14 where Philip said, "Lord, show us the Father and that will be enough for us." Jesus answered: "Don't you know me, Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, 'Show us the Father'? Don't you believe that I am in the Father, and that the Father is in me? The words I say to you are not just my own. Rather, it is the Father, living in me, who is doing his work. Believe me when I say that I am in the Father and the Father is in me; or at least believe on the evidence of the miracles themselves."

And later Jesus promises the Spirit of truth and I acknowledge with him that "the world [and part of me] cannot accept him, because it neither sees him nor knows him. But [and he reminds me too] you know him, for he lives with you and will be in you. I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you. Before long, the world will not see me anymore, but you will see me. Because I live, you also will live. On that day you will realize that I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you. Whoever has my commands and obeys them is the one that loves me. Those who love me will be loved by my Father, and I too will love them and show myself to them."

I have to admit again and again, like Peter, that I have nowhere else to go; I am convinced that Christ has the words of eternal life. Still I am searching, but I know that searching elsewhere is futile. I have taken as my motto Elizabeth Elliot's statement: 'Faith does not eliminate questions; it just knows where to take them.' And my search now is for more of God through Jesus... because when he has breathed new life into you, you just can't get enough knowledge and experience of him. And when I wonder desperately how this gospel can reach a world of people disinclined to believe it, I have to remember that it does not depend on my ability to convince them. Faith is of a different order to any scientific, philosophical or theological proof, and it is only given birth in us by the Spirit of God.

And so I believe with Charles Malik that 'All people of ambition - the conquerors and scientists and philosophers, the industrialists and statesmen, the celebrities and media moguls - are really seeking Jesus of Nazareth, and if only they would meet him, they would understand why. Every alienated person who is profoundly unhappy with himself/herself and with the world, every drug addict trying to escape the burden of existence, every prostitute who does not realize what is happening to her, every victim of a terminal illness facing the grave in terror of the unknown, is really seeking Jesus Christ of Nazareth, and if he or she would only meet him, they would understand why.'

And though often I don't fully understand this myself, I no longer seek to understand so that I may believe; I believe so that I may understand, as Anselm put it so memorably. We all know that you don't have to understand physics to press a switch enjoy the light. And I have learned that if I wait till I understand everything about God before offering him my reverence and devotion, I will never find him.

My passion to know God, in humble dependence on him, has to exceed my passion to understand everything about him.

Larry Crabb says that today we've become far more interested in finding ourselves than in finding God. The church has become aware that beneath cheerful fellowship many people suffer desperate loneliness and discontentment, not liking God, themselves or anyone else. But Jesus 'invites us to come to him as we are, pretending about nothing, feeling our pain, admitting our rage, and longing to satisfy our souls with rich food.'

Yet what begins as an honest recognition of how damaged we are has too often be come a preoccupation with ourselves. The truth that God loves us is twisted to honour ourselves rather than give humble gratitude to God. Instead of drawing us closer to God and freeing us to care more deeply about others, we become aware of how intensely we long to feel better about ourselves. The spotlight falls on us as abused, wounded, needy people, and God is now cast as the great Higher Power, whose job is to heal our hurts. Feeling better has become more important to us than finding God. And we assume that people who find God always feel better.

In contrast, others have maintained that longing to feel better is selfish, and they warn against the corrupting influence of humanistic psychology. So we're presented with two options: either our needs matter more than anything else, or it is wrong to mention them.

There is another more biblical perspective that combines a passionate sensitivity to our deepest struggles with a tender insistence that something matters more than how we feel. God cares about us deeply and he wants us to enjoy our new identity as unique, forgiven, valuable individuals with something important to contribute, but he matters more. I am not the point. God is. I exist for him. He does not exist for me. Maybe that triggers in you a twinge of resentment - why should he matter more? Which, unless you're totally rotten to the core, you'll realize is a crazy thing for creatures to say to the Creator who knows why he made them. Or maybe you feel relieved, that in this life there is someone bigger than you, and someone far more important than you.

I have told you that I sometimes pull off the shelves all my unanswered questions and shoot them at God. When I demand answers from God I naturally withdraw much of my trust and dependence until explanations are given and I can agree that he knows what he's doing. Yet every time, I very quickly become the centre of my universe and have to face the consequences of that. This year I have wrestled with a loneliness more intense than I ever thought I would experience. I was grieving the loss of some significant relationships, but what I was most aware of were my many unmet needs. I became appalled at how hard done by I am. A few unmet needs I have always tolerated, but feeling so alone seemed to me undeserved and intolerable. And I was angry, that I could be surrounded by so many people and yet feel so overlooked. Of course, my life has been pretty easy, and this experience was nothing in comparison to what many of you have been through, but it was enough to have me well and truly preoccupied with myself for a while.

To start with I had let my primary purpose shift from loving God to finding satisfactory answers to all my questions. Then faced with the terror of aloneness, my primary purpose quickly became looking for ways to restructure my life so there were people to meet my needs. I found that I can't do either very well. And I have since realized that my attempts to arrange for my own comfort are such a 'giveaway' that I am, at my core, a fallen, sinful person. At the foundation of our fallenness is our inclination to believe that God is not good, or at least not good enough to be fully trusted with what matters to us. And so to make up for his deficient involvement in our lives we choose to trust ourselves and take things into our own hands.

Ask yourself 'Am I bothered more when I hurt or see others hurting than I am to see myself or others acting selfishly? Do I value God's healing (his making me feel better) more than I value his mercy (his forgiveness for an arrogant, demanding, self-serving sinner)?'

Well I don't know how long you can last carrying the weight of your world on your shoulders, feeling responsible to fix things up. But if you've ever known the alternative, the freedom of trusting God, it won't be long before you'll want it back. When I finally collapsed in utter exhaustion, what emerged was my desperate need not for solutions from God, but for fellowship with him.

Joni Eareckson Tada became a paraplegic in a diving accident when she was seventeen. In her book Seeking God, she uses the illustration of squeezing an orange . Of course what comes out is orange juice, unless someone has tampered with the orange. She then asks 'What happens when life squeezes a Christian? What is revealed is whatever is inside. A hypocrite, or someone who simply pretends to be a child of God, resents affliction and runs when troubled times come. Their cowardice and pretense come out. A self-centred Christian may complain for a while, but, in time, affliction can bring them to their knees. Then their heart can be drained of the selfishness and resentment, making them better able to approach God as a child would seek their father.' Only when knowing God becomes our greatest passion can the struggles of life become an impetus to find God.

Think back to John 14:21. Jesus says, 'Whoever has my commands and obeys them is the one who loves me. Those who love me will be loved by my Father, and I too will love them and show myself to them.' Earlier in John 7:17 he says 'If anyone chooses to do God's will, they will find out whether my teaching comes from God or whether I speak on my own.' Jesus so clearly states in this passage that if we want to find God we have to obey him first, and then we'll get to know him.

Obviously if you want to walk together with God you have to go in the same direction. And God doesn't negotiate. He invites you and me to join him. And he doesn't come along on our side trips. God has clearly stated his purpose: Paul says in Ephesians 1:10 that he is committed to bringing 'all things in heaven and on earth together under one head, even Christ'. So agreeing to join him requires that we have the same agenda. Every other ambition in our hearts has to become secondary to promoting Christ. And if anything contradicts that purpose it should be abandoned. We so easily come to God not to walk with him, but to persuade him to supply the energy and power needed to fulfill our own purposes. God's terms for relationship with him are that we surrender our own agenda to serve his instead, fully aware that he does not always guarantee the immediate comfort of his children.

If we want to walk with God we need more than a prayer of commitment and a few extra efforts to discipline ourselves into spiritual shape. We need to agree to go in for surgery that will probably be painful and will definitely be ongoing. Our lack of trust in God's goodness, and our self-centredness are so deep rooted in us that if we want to be aligned with God's purposes, we have to let him cut out every demand that things go our way.

Perhaps, like me, you struggle to see that you're all that self-centred. I have become convinced that when we really, truly, want to find God, and plead with him to do whatever it takes, he will work all things together to achieve that good purpose. Often he will use the circumstances of our lives to 'squeeze' us, so that we can see just what ugly stuff is still within us. And if we're still willing the surgery continues. And the effect of the operation is that down the track we realize that we're giving more energy to pursuing God's purposes, and that we're more acutely aware of any contrary agendas of our own. Still we hurt when others let us down, but we begin to grieve more over our weak commitment to Christ than over whatever harsh treatment we endure. And we rejoice more that God is good, than that we feel good about ourselves.

In the midst of our suffering (or God's surgery), Christ offers hope, not necessarily relief, and he commands us to pursue him ardently even when we'd rather stop and look after our own well being. And God's peace that passes understanding is promised to those who have confidence in his goodness even when life is tough and their self-esteem is low. We must call God good even when we suffer - because he is! And, when things are going well, we must call him good for reasons that go beyond our immediate blessings. Otherwise, when we hurt, we will speak harshly against God, and we will continue to do whatever it takes to satisfy our selfishness. We will be more troubled by our discomfort than by our unholiness.

And so often God does relieve our suffering and solve our problems, because he cares about us deeply. But his much better gift is someone far greater and more interesting to live for than ourselves.

I have said that to find God we need to desire him more than any other thing - more than answers to our questions, more than solutions to our problems, more than our personal comfort or happiness or a sense of self-worth, and more than relief from our pain.

We need to ask ourselves 'Are we just living out our days or are we walking with God? Are we merely committed to feeding our own souls, to arranging our lives around getting our needs met, to building our own castles in this temporary life? Can we get so immersed in ourselves that we forget there is something more wonderful to think about? Or are we committed to knowing God, to cooperating with him as loved participants in a plan larger than ourselves, to becoming like the Son whom the Father adores, and to looking forward to a better home that God is preparing for us?'

Augustine challenges us to picture God as saying to us, 'My child, why is it that day by day you rise, and pray, and genuflect, and even strike the ground with your forehead, nay sometimes even shed tears, while you say to Me: "My Father, give me wealth!" If I were to give it to you, you would think yourself of some importance, you would fancy that you had gained something very great. Because you asked for it, you have it. But take care to make good use of it. Before you had it, you were humble; now that you have begun to be rich you despise the poor. What kind of a good is that which only makes you worse? For worse you are, since you were bad already. And that it would make you worse you knew not; hence you asked it of Me. I gave it to you, and I proved you; you have found - and you have found out! Ask of Me better things than these, greater things than these . Ask of Me spiritual things. Ask of Me Myself!"

Joni Eareckson Tada says her teenage prayers consisted mainly of requests to lose a few pounds, to get through her homework without going crazy with boredom, and for the latest guy she was in love with to like her in return. Until one night, when she was home without a date and suffering a new pimple on her chin. That night she prayed 'God just do something. I don't care what happens, I'm just sick of being miserable!' When, a month later, she dived into shallow water and broke her neck, she strangely knew she was experiencing the answer to her prayer. Her health and all her hopes and dreams were shattered. But in having God only and none of these other things she has become a most beautiful and Christ-like lady with a contagious love for God and love of life.

(As the medieval mystic put it: those who have God and everything else have no more than those who have God only; and those who have everything else and not God have nothing...)

What God has done for Joni he can do for you. Well?

Lindy Croucher

HOW TO KNOW THE LORD

2004-07-20T00:39:00.000-07:00

(1) Thinking Biblically About Justice

"Justice and righteousness...Caring for the poor and needy ... Is not this to know me? says the Lord". Jer. 22:15b-16

Christians of all kinds - Catholic, Conciliar and Evangelical - are now more concerned than ever about social justice. Theology is never a "value-free" discipline, and in a world of stark injustices, many are doing theology from the side of the poor, rather than from an acquiescent, privatised Western perspective.

For CATHOLICS, Mater et Magistra (1961) broke the long alliance between Catholicism and socially conservative forces. Twenty years later Laborem Exercens inveighed against multinationals fixing high prices for their products and very low prices for raw materials.

EVANGELICALS in Berlin (1966) saw social involvement as the enemy of "biblical evangelism'; Lausanne 91974) viewed them as complementary; Wheaton (1983) saw social action and political engagement as integral to evangelism.

The WCC's Towards a Church in Solidarity with the Poor (1980) urges us to read the Bible from the perspective of the poor: :The Bible is a book of hope, concern and solidarity with the poor .... Unfortunately when the poor were given low priority in the life of the churches ... ecclesiastical institutions frequently become part of oppressive systems."

...

Who am I to write on this subject? I belong to the group least qualified to speak about justice and the poor. I am a white, Anglo-saxon Protestant evangelical, middle-class, middle-aged, well-educated (and beardless) living in a rich, lucky country (Australia) with a happy family in a quiet, treed suburb. I can "work" most systems to my advantage. My job's fulfilling, I earn about the national average, I've been twice around the world. I've worked hard, saved hard, studied hard, and I play hard. As a kid I scrounged bottles, animal manure and scrap metal for pocket money. We were not rich, but we were never hungry.

I grew up believing most of the poor were either lazy or stupid. Why the constant shortage of bricklayers? If Japan can do it, why not Bangladesh?

Righteous indignation focussed on things like pornography, violence and sexual sins, rarely such macro-ethical issues as poverty, injustice, race and war.

My "conversion" began when I found that most of those who served the poor did not share these ideas. Dom Helder Camara, for example, flirted with fascism (God, Fatherland and Family", "order is more important than justice") until he worked in the favelas in Rio - those festering piles of human beings separated by bits of cardboard and corrugated iron.

Paulo Freire says the middle class have a choice - to identify with the rich and influential, or with the poor, who have very few choices. Such a conversion is scary: there's fear of giving up what we have worked hard for; guilt that what we spend on luxuries would keep many starving families alive; a feeling of helplessness ...

The income gap between the poor and the rich, everywhere, is widening. Since the Industrial Revolution we've never learned to share it properly. It's not "trickling down" to the ever-increasing poor.

*****

THE BIBLE is certainly big on justice. The hebrew and greek words for justice (yashare and tsedeg, and dikaiosune) may have three meanings: personal virtue (Noah, or Joseph, were "just" Gen. 6:9, Matt. 1:19); judicial fairness (:Lev.19) or social responsibility: behaviour towards others which is like a covenant God's gracious concern for us. Unfortunately the KJV's use of "righteousness" for tsedeg gives the impression, not of justice, but rather holiness of living, which is an important but diminished understanding of the biblical idea.

Social justice concerns attitudes to the least privileged - the poor, widows, orphans, foreigners. When harvesting, the Israelites were to leave them something (Deut. 24:19-21). Interest on loans is forbidden (Ex. 22:25). All persons - including slaves and migrants - are entitled to rest on the sabbath (Ex. 23:12, Deut. 5:14). Slaves must not be treated harshly (Lev. 25:39-43). There is a clear relationship between oppression and poverty: "Remember you were once slaves" (Deut. 26:5-8). The God of the Exodus intervenes on behalf of the powerless and oppressed: so must his people.

The message of the prophets: "Seek justice, correct oppression" (Is. 1:17). They thunder against the rich and powerful who oppress the poor but their outrage is strongest against a religion devoid of justice (Hosea 6:6, 8:13; Amos 5:15, 21-25; Micah 6:6-8, Is. 58:1-11; cf. Prov. 21:3). God accepts or rejects Israel's worship according to their concern for the poor. Even prayer mustn't be a substitute for helping the poor (isa. 1:15-17). In the relatively affluent 8th century Israel, poverty was not accidental. The prosperity of the rich rested largely on the exploitation and mistreatment of the poor - through a legal system biased towards the rich, monopoly control, restrictive trade practices, unjust wages and arbitrary price increases. Many of the poor had lost their land to large property owners. Later, Ezekiel rebukes the rich for unscrupulously accumulating real estate for profit (22:28).

Many of the Psalms describe God judging the world with justice (e.g. 96:13; cf. 97:6, 98:9). His will is that justice and peace kiss each other (85:10-11). "The Lord executes justice for the oppressed" (146:7).

The angel's message to Zechariah promises that John, in the prophetic tradition, would summon a people "back to the way of thinking of the righteous" (Luke 1:17) (not "national self-interest"!).

Mary's Magnificat praises a God who shows mercy, scatters the proud, puts down the mighty, lifts up the lowly, feeds the hungry (and by these means "helps Israel" Luke 1:46-55).

Jesus" ministry will bring good news to the poor ... announce a "jubilee" (Luke 4:16-19). In the Jubilee (Lev. 25:3-5, 8-12) soil was to be left fallow, debts remitted, slaves liberated, and property returned to owners who had forfeited it by debt.

God in Christ becomes poor, choosing the weak, as Paul says, to "confound the mighty". The Kingdom, says Jesus, is given to the poor (and to the rich if they will repent). It is all about new relationships - with God, with others. It turns our customary values upside down: so the "first in the kingdom" are those with no status in society. The poor are blessed, not because of their poverty and misery, nor because they are "better" than others but because they recognize their need for God (Matthew 11:5, 5:3-11, Luke 6:20). To the rich, the gospel is "bad news before it is good news", so the rich young ruler, with his inordinate love of money and power is told to sell his possessions and give them to the poor so that he could have "treasure in heaven" (Matthew 19:16-30). It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the Kingdom. We echo the words of Jesus' friends: "Who then can be saved?" No wonder the poor, the outcasts, the "excluded" heard him gladly. He enjoyed parties with disreputables, so the religious establishment was outraged at his behaviour. They "rubbed in' the fact that he was from Nazareth, an obscure therefore despised town.

The Kingdom is not something we passively await (as the Thessalonians later thought), but we help make the kingdom happen. There is mystery here: we must sow seed, God gives the gift of life, so that we can reap the harvest. He calls us to be co-redeemers with him. "They have no wine" at Cana, so Jesus asks for the cooperation of the servants as he produces some. Today, they have no jobs, no justice, no opportunities, no freedoms, no homes, no hope. If we don't fill the jars, there will be no miracle......

Jesus cut across selfish patriotisms and universalized the idea of "neighbour". Injustice done to anyone, anywhere, is my concern. One's neighbour is chosen, not given, as Hans King put it.

At the great judgement (Matt. 25:31-46) we shall learn that to serve others in their need is to serve the Lord himself. To ignore the poor is to turn away from the Lord. To be persecuted for the sake of justice is to be persecuted for the sake of Jesus (Matt. 5:6, 10,11).

The NT epistles are replete with admonitions to care for the poor (e.g. Gal. 2:10, James 2:5-7, 5:1-6, 1 John 3:17, 1 Tim. 6:17-19). Greed is a cardinal sin, a form of idolatry (1 Cor. 5:10-11, 6:10, Eph. 4:19, 5:3, 5, Col. 3:5).

The Bible does not condemn inequality of possessions per se. Redistribution so that "all have an equal share" is not a biblical idea. Those who argue this way will have to do it on philosophical or socio-political rather than biblical grounds. (Jesus enjoyed Galilee's feasting and suffered Golgotha's thirst. Paul experienced both prosperity and poverty, Phil. 4:12). What the Bible condemns is indifference by the affluent to the plight of the destitute. We "bless the poor", not paternalistically, but as God has blessed us - "grace justice" rather than "parity justice". The goal of justice is not equality, but shalom, a peace which assures the true humanity of individuals and communities.

*****

A THEOLOGY OF SOCIAL JUSTICE must include the following:

* Every human being is made in God's image. (So we uphold the right of every person to live in freedom, in dignity, in peace, in health, and to know the One whom to know is to experience fullness of life).

* Our generous Creator has entrusted us with a bountiful world, which we "subdue" but also "replenish". The earth was given to all, not just to the rich. (There is enough food to go around - for our need, but not our greed. It is not God's will that a quarter of us live in luxury while the rest struggle to survive).

*The "mark of Cain" is upon us - we are all sinners - but God's gracious concern is for both Cain and Abel, exploiter and exploited. (Jesus differentiated between "sinners" and "sinned against". To the Pharisees he preached judgement, so that they might receive forgiveness; to the sinned-against - 'I do not condemn you: go and sin no more").

* I am my brother's keeper. (I must not walk by on the other side of the road/tracks/sea).

* He sends his prophets who say "The effect of justice will be peace" (Isa. 32:17). False prophets want "peace, peace" without justice).

* Abundance may betoken God's blessing, but it carries an awesome stewardship. Because God's shalom issues in and from right relationships between us and God and each other, we have a simple choice: his kingdom, or violence. (Outside the kingdom all are oppressed, some by unjust systems and persons, others by their selfishness and greed. Jesus said the second oppression is much worse than the first).

* God comes among us both as judge and victim (rebuking our selfishness and being nailed to a cross).

* He calls upon us to repent, to live in radical obedience to the Kingdom's demands, not just as individuals, but in loving community. (A mural in a Romanian church shows people ascending into heaven in community, but falling into hell alone and isolated).

* We pray "Give us this day our daily bread". (If I am hungry that is a material problem; if someone else is hungry, that is a spiritual problem - Berdyaev).

* Our mission in a lost world includes word (preaching good news), deed (faith without works is dead), and sign (words and deeds without the Spirit's power may not be Christian, 1 Thess. 1:5, I Cor. 4:20).

Finally, something to ponder from Billy Graham's latest book Approaching Hoof Beats: "My basic commitment as a Christian has not changed, nor has my view of the Gospel, but I have come to see in deeper ways that implications of my faith and the message I have been proclaiming. I can no longer proclaim the Cross and the Resurrection without proclaiming the whole message of the Kingdom, which is justice for all."

In the next section we shall look at the five practical ways of Doing Justice (research, reflection, prayer, compassion, action).

*******

(2) DOING JUSTICE

"The really important teachings of the Law (are) justice and mercy and honesty. These you should practise...." (Matthew 23:23)

(1) RESEARCH: GET THE FACTS. Talk to the "poor" - single parents, unemployed, migrants - and to social workers, district nurses, etc.

Who are the poor? Definitions are elusive, but the poor know who they are. They have no "place". Some are poor geographically, "displaced". Others are poor emotionally, with no place in a loving family/community. Others are poor spiritually, having no place in Christ's kingdom. Many are materially poor - they are deprived, within their communities, of the basic necessities to "live decently". In Australia, they may not be starving, but they can't afford a good education or holidays, or car repairs, or all the bills.

Why are they poor? Is it their own fault? Most answers are either too simple or untrue. Perhaps it's the death of a parent, ill-health, physical/mental disability, collapse of a business, breakdown of marriage, lack of basic education, medical bills for sick children - the list may be endless. Bishop Peter Hollingworth: "....the causes of poverty are precipitated more by problems in the organization and structures of society than by individuals themselves."

Which brings up to economics. Our national and international systems revolve around greed and power: "the international imperialism of money" (pope Paul VI). People are rich or poor because of the "distribution system"; what makes money gets done, what doesn't make money doesn't get done. Richard Nixon, when U.S. president said in a moment of candour, "The main purpose of American aid is not to help other nations, but to help ourselves."

Selling powdered milk to poor people (who can't read the directions) makes money, so - until too many babies die - why not? And your morning cuppa coffee: it's grown in the two-thirds world, where people are hungry. We have money for coffee while people in Sao Paulo's favelas have no money for food. So the plantation owners grow coffee for us instead of black beans for them. Understand? (It's the same with tobacco: and, incidentally, if you smoke and drink coffee you are 40 times more likely to get lung cancer than if you imbibe neither). Brazil has more cultivated acreage per person than the U.S. , yet in recent years the proportion of undernourished there has risen from 45% to 72% of the population.

1.9% of El Salvadorans won 57.5% of the land - mainly selling cash crops abroad while at home hunger is endemic. Archbishop Oscar Romero spoke out against his country's injustices and the newspapers almost daily vilified him as corrupt, insance, a communist - and never printed his sermons. (Many wealthy El Salvadorans are mass-going Catholics too). Behind him on an office wall were huge photos of two priests who were murdered, and a banner HE WHO GIVES HIS LIFE FOR ME IS SAVED. Romero was shot while celebrating the eucharist on 24 March, 1980. In El Salvador, to work among the poor is an act of subversion.

The multinational corporations exist to make money for their stockholders, and they do it very well (Coco Cola invested $80,000 in India and by 1977 had made $16m. profit). Dom Helder Camara has been saying for years that if rich nations paid fair prices to developing countries for their natural resources there would no longer be any need for aid and relief projects. Most developing countries rely on cash from one or two products. For example, in 1960 three tons of bananas in Honduras could buy a tractor; but in 1970, the equivalent was eleven tons. They says it's each government's role to legislate morality. (But if the government is in the pocket of the multinationals, and against the poor.....?).

Heard of Minimata disease? A company in an Asian country kept dumping mercury into the water for years after knowing it was causing paralysis, retardation, insanity and death. The company was simply making money. There's money in mercury poisoning, red dye #2, fluorocarbons, alcohol, and a million other harmful things.

Back home, # 50% of Australian uni students are from families in the top 16% of the occupational scale # About 35,000 households in Victoria alone have their gas and electricity disconnected each year: many others go hungry to avoid this (they choose hunger to being cold). Over 100,000 each year are now seeking help for food, clothing and rent from relief agencies.

What are the functions of poverty in a country like Australia? Peter le Breton (Australian Politics, A Fourth Reader , pp. 99-100) says they include: (1) Dirty, repetitive, dangerous, undignified and menial work is done (mostly for low pay) (2) The rich can divert a higher proportion of income to savings and investment, to foster economic growth the benefits of which mostly favour the rich (3) If you're rich enough you'll pay little or no tax: the tax burden falls unequally on poorer wage-earners (4) Poverty creates jobs like corrective services, police, social workers (5) The poor buy goods no one else wants - secondhand cars, clothes etc. - enhancing incomes for sellers of these commodities (6) Those who espouse social norms of the desirability of hard work and thrift can accuse others of being lazy and spendthrift. So these latter are, of course, undeserving of the privileges the former enjoy (7) The deserving poor (e.g. the disabled) can allow the rest of us to feel altruistic, moral, and practise the Judaeo-Christian ethic (8) The powerless absorb the economic and social costs of change and growth: they are pushed out of their communities by high rents, urban "development" and freeways to convey the middle-class from the suburbs to the central business district .....

For Jesus when a system got in the way of people's wholeness, it had to go. Inveighing against the pharisees' legalistic religious system he said, "The sabbath was made for man, not man for the sabbath" (Mark 2:27). Our systems are mostly serving mammon, so we too will call for systemic change. We may not hold to any particular economic/political theory: a Christian is called to critique all ideologies. (As the cynic put it, capitalism is man exploiting his fellow-man; with communism it's the other way around!!). Systems either do God's will, or they are under his judgement .....

(2) REFLECTION; THINK ABOUT THE FACTS Working hard to think clearly is the beginning of moral conduct (Pascal). Reflection and praxis go together. If one is sacrificed the other suffers (Freire). Some are too quietist, seeking only bliss, or too philosophical, seeking only ideas, or too activist, seeking only bread. (Don't just do something, sit there!).

Beware of temptations not to think objectively. Our church congregations are mostly embedded in the rich half of society, so our "suburban captivity" can be self-protective. We meet few destitute "hidden people".

The problems are complex, but some things can be said simply:

2-1 Poverty is not just a lack of resources, but of power, of knowledge, of help and of hope. Poverty is loneliness. So it's not alleviated by handouts alone, but when the poor themselves become givers.

2-2 The best prophet of the future is the past, Lord Byron said. Reinhold Neibuhr has argued (convincingly in my view, in Moral Man and Immoral Society) that is we wait for the powerful to come altruistic we will wait forever. Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. The powerful have never - well, hardly ever - relinquished their privileges without some form of coercion being applied to them., Those with a biblical view of sin and evil won't find that surprising.

The dictionary says power is "the capacity to act". Because the exercise of power-for-good may be dangerous Christians often have an aversion to the use of power. Power means responsibility: and flight from power may mean a flight from responsibility.

2-3 Let us beware of "selective indignation", preaching only against evils threatening my family/group/church. Ask what Jesus got mad about .... And I accept myself as part of the problem, rather than blaming others: what have I not done that causes this one to be poor?

2-4 Our education system encourages us to "succeed" - which may not be the same as enhancing good human relationships. There's a tension in education between conformity to and the transformation of society. Some education may aim at collecting knowledge and certificates; transformation means asking how education can be liberating. (In Latin America learning to read is more than learning a skill, as in the West. It's a revolutionary activity as people learn about values and rights. That's why the powerful keep people illiterate).

2-5 Each of the world's peoples has its own particular cultural, ethnic and political distinctives: these must be respected. "First world" models of development may not be appropriate to developing countries. May we arrogant westerners be sensitive to the feelings of some overseas oppressed who consider us impertinent meddlers in their affairs. In the film "Gandhi" I remember that great man saying to the British, "Let us fail, if necessary, but with dignity, rather than have you here running things better while we are deprived of our liberty." The "excluded" must become the subjects of their own history, being part of the decision-making, and encouraged to control their own destinies. If an oppressed group is not crushed completely, they will organize themselves to defend their rights and values. With regard to injustice, we - the helpers - must always ask, What do the helpees want us to do? Speak out or not? Exert pressure on their oppressors or not? Engage in some form of activism or not?"

2-6 "Uou can't legislate morality" is a cop-out. All that is legislated is morality: the question is "What kind?" When the state fails to legislate mercifully, the church will do what it can, and will call the state to account, as the prophets did.

2-7 Jesus grew up in an oppressed country. The Zealots were "freedom fighters", Herodians and Sadducees went along with the status quo; Essenes withdrew to the desert; Pharisees debated questions of private morality. Jesus disappointed them all, renouncing violence, exploitation, apathy and moralism: they're all dehumanizing. His was the way of sacrificial love.

(3) PRAY. Ask "Who are my people?" then pray fervently for them - and their oppressors. Prayer, says Jacques Ellul (Prayer and Modern Man) is the ultimate act of hope. Prayer is "God with us" in our struggle. It is the only possible substitute for violence in human relations. Without sincere and earnest prayer the church can easily develop a bureaucratic oppressive mind-set, becoming an ally of, and operating like, worldly powers. Prayer rescues action from activism, and inaction from bewilderment and despair. But prayer is not a substitute for action. Contemplative love is not the end, but a means to the end of authentic love. As Thomas Merton once put it, let us not forget that Mary and Martha are sisters.

(4) FEEL. This is "listening presence", compassion, identification and encounter (i.e. incarnation). We won't do this as well as Jesus did but we must try. Reality is much more than objective facts. We must not act for others merely through feelings of personal outrage, but when - and until - through caring friendship we earn the right to be invited to be their helper or advocate. Such feeling presence enables us to transcend narrow bigotries. (Pharaoh's daughter saw more than a baby crying; she saw the baby of an oppressed Hebrew crying). Our practical help and advocacy for the poor will have the marks of suffering - the beatings, crown of thorns, and the nails - if we are truly the church of Jesus Christ. Only thus will it be sacramental, mediating the grace of God to those in need.

(5) ACT CREATIVELY. We must do theology, not just be committed to reflection on reflection.

Let us not ever be overwhelmed by the magnitude of the problems: if enough individuals act, in concert, almost any problem can be solved. To act is to effect change; godly action is to bring in the kingdom somewhere on earth. Robbers move against their victim; the priest and levite have a passive mind-set and move away - to be "neutral" (encouraging more injustice); the Samaritan uses the materials at his disposal (donkey, oil, wine, clothes, money, physical strength, compassion. In our culture he would also make representations to the police about security on the Jericho Road).

The church is involved politically if it does nothing: it is voting for the status quo. All it takes for evil to triumph is that good people do nothing. The villains in Jesus' stories were seldom men who did things they ought not to have done; usually they were people who left undone the things they should have done. The rich man let Lazarus lie unhelped at his gate; the servant made no use of his talent - these received the severest condemnation. The opposite of love is not hate, but indifference. Churches are bearers of traditions concerning ultimate meaning and value, and are already organized, so they are ideal mediating groups in our society.

If "charity begins at home" then a church will ask: "What needs exist in our neighbourhood, and what resources do we have to meet them?" Day-0care facilities, a food box in the foyer, counseling centre (with fees related to ability to pay), housing for the homeless/elderly, writing letters to keep elected officials honest - these are some beginnings. Above all, let us build "shalom churches" where the values we preach to the world are incarnated in the faith community.

However, charity is not justice. A charitable act is a somewhat spontaneous, temporary, non-controversial response to an accident or tragedy. Conditions of injustice are not accidents. They are never "acts of God" but acts of men. To relieve victims of injustice demands that the root causes of injustice be addressed and removed. Charitable acts must not be a substitute for this more controversial pursuit. Giving a pneumonia sufferer a box of tissues may be of some comfort, but it is irrelevant to the victim's recovery, which depends on other factors.

Father Brian Gore, an Australian priest held for 14 months in a Philippine prison, said recently that aid organizations were actually supporting a system of injustice when they do not ask why Filipinos went hungry. "An organization which exclusively looks at the effects rather than the causes is a dead loss", he said. We must therefore be involved in process as well as projects. Camara's best-known quote is devastating on this issue: "When I give money to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask 'why are they poor?' they call me a communist!" From a biblical perspective, mercy and justice belong together.

Individual activism can be encouraged. Jeremiah got across ideas through "prophetic signs" - going around in a loin-cloth, wearing a wooden yoke, etc. These are more than symbols, they are dramatic parables of judgement, arousing peoples' inquisitiveness and enabling them to hear God's message more clearly. Our mass media would notice this sort of thing! Collective advocacy is usually more effective however )prophets today can also be dismissed as crackpots). Public opinion can be changed. (In Australia, unfortunately, it's not the quality of the opinion that counts, but how many hold it. Our elected representatives mostly follow public opinion, they do not lead it, as in some European countries).

Often church councils and assemblies think they're doing something when they pass resolutions. Being reactive rather than active, these often change nothing, if they are not linked with other courses of action. (An offensive U.S. TV show interviewed married couples in their bedrooms about their sex lives. Churches passed resolutions which changed nothing - until someone organized 5000 families to boycott the sponsors!)

Such activities force us to ask tough questions. Polarizations will occur; we may find ourselves crusading with the "ratbag element"; and we'll discover that self-interest and power games exist even in churches!

FINALLY, the evils here are ubiquitous, huge and complex. But we must not succumb to immobility: let us do something, and be free to learn through failing, if necessary. Let us repent of our sins of omission before we blame others for their sins of injustice. Then let us get involved. Fighting poverty is war: the violence of poverty kills just as surely as bullets. I am convinced, however, that we must fight this war non-violently. Christ gave his life for others who could not save themselves: let us give our lives for the wretched of the earth. Let us begin with ourselves, and in a world of crying need, adjust our lifestyle accordingly. Let us renounce addictions, especially those involving the desire for immediate gratification. Let us be Christ to others", as Luther put it - serving the, being advocates for them, acting as agents for change. Albert Einstein once said: "The problems of the world cannot be solved with mechanisms, but only by changing the hearts and minds of man and speaking courageously."

But remember, there's no point in bearing a cross if you don't believe in resurrection.

Rowland Croucher

WAS JESUS A CHRISTIAN?

2004-07-20T00:37:00.000-07:00

Christians come in about 13 varieties. These varieties (or mindsets) can be found in all religions. You mustn't judge any religion simply on its caricatures. My theses:

Each mind-set makes *part* of Christianity the *whole* of it.

There's nothing wrong with the parts. But like a car, if you've only got parts lying around you're not going anywhere.

Jesus rejected all these mindsets (but not the essential concerns of each of them). For convenience I'll use terms from early Christianity, and for the sake of brevity I'll oversimplify each mindset:

Sadducees are rationalists. If your *reason* can't comprehend something (miracles, resurrection, angels) you don't have to believe it. Their God is very reasonable; their theology is 'liberal'; they inhabit mainline church seminaries.

Zealots are passionate about *justice*. Justice is all about fairness, the relationship of the strong to the weak, the right use of power. Their God sanctions terrorism; their theology is 'liberationist'; today they're priests and others who advocate the violent overthrow of oppressive Latin American regimes.

Herodians love *power*. They climb to the top of religious institutions. Their God bestows favours on the 'haves' who are 'born to rule'. They do not realize that love of power is inimical to a devout spirituality.

Scribes, elders, teachers-of-the-law regard *tradition* as master, rather than servant. Their religious way of life is ruled by precedent, what has been. 'Come weal, come woe, their status is the quo'. If it's new, it's suspect. Their God is unchanging, not merely in faithfulness, but operationally.

Essenes are liturgists. 'If only we get our *worship* right, the Messiah will come.' Their God is 'wholly other'. Their liturgies are exact, their worship-forms utterly predictable.

Mystics major on *experience*. They are right-brain, rejecting rationalism, cerebralism, dogmatism. For them prayer (perhaps divorced from labour) is the essence of the spiritual life. They sometimes form monastic orders.

Gnostics are syncretists. They believe there's truth in every *religion*. They invite us to make up our own identikit picture of God. They're at home somewhere in the New Age Movement; they develop conspiracy theories from the Dead Sea Scrolls; they love the Gospel of Thomas.

Sophists or sages place a high premium on *knowledge* or *wisdom* (they're not the same). They develop beautiful theories about redaction criticism, whether the four gospels are 'reliable' when they describe what Jesus said and did. They write learned papers, which like those of their predecessors, will be seen in future academic circles to be largely nonsense.

Sign-seekers love *miracles*. With Herod (in Jesus Christ Superstar) they'd love Jesus to 'walk across their swimming-pool.' Their God wants everyone to be healthy, wealthy (but not necessarily wise: academia is suspect). Anything can be cured, instantly, given enough faith.

Materialists measure everything, not just *money*. The bigger, faster, more brilliant, the better. Bigger churches are better than smaller churches; brilliant preachers than ordinary ones. Success, fame, ambition, optimism, 'imaging' are their watch-words. They attend Amway conventions.

Do-gooders are given to paternalism. They do works of *mercy* for their own benefit, not just for the sake of the one done good to/against. Thoreau said of them, 'If you see someone coming towards you with the object of doing you good, run for your life.' These 'people-helpers' don't realize they're in it to solve their own problems: pure altruism is very very rare.

Antinomians despise holiness - at least for themselves in private. As the term implies, they're 'against law' and misuse *grace*. 'God loves to forgive, it's his business' - so they give God every opportunity to do just that.

Finally, pharisees are preoccupied with two things - *law* and *doctrine*. So they become legalists and dogmatists. They talk a lot about 'truth' and 'error'. Their God is unambiguous, reducible to creeds and doctrinal statements. Their 'gospel': repentance precedes acceptance (with Jesus it was the other way around). The acid test: their non-concern for social justice and mercy amd true faith (Matthew 23:23, Luke 11:42, cf. Micah 6:8). They're fundamentalists, and proud of it.

All the entities *emphasized* are O.K. as part of a religious system, but are deadly if divorced from any/all of the others. Jesus did not align himself with any of the above groups: go and do likewise!

Shalom! Rowland Croucher

CHRISTIANS AND USENET

2004-07-20T00:34:00.000-07:00

In a recent/current thread filled with some horrible ad hominem stuff two posters wrote:

Since you hate Christians and Christianity so much why do you call yourself a Christian?

and

I wish all you squabbling xtians would shut the f___k up!

After a decade of wandering around Usenet religious (and other) groups, I've come to these conclusions:

1. People who are not Christians - atheists, agnostics, God-seekers, whatever - are *not* generally going to be positively influenced towards the Christian faith by what happens in most of these groups. I've noticed them coming and going, and, metaphorically, often shaking their heads in bewilderment, anger or sadness. Some have actually hung around, and I've met a couple of these personally and had a cappuccino with them. Why they do stay on here beats me!

2. Are Christian posters to Usenet groups representative of Christians generally? Yes and no. Many here, by their own confession, inhabit these groups looking for community, friendship, or answers-to-deep-questions. Many are lonely, with family/marriage/ personal issues, or have collided with church authorities etc. and are wanting an all-comers locale where they can hang out and be heard. We/they bring their baggage with them. Fair enough. But yesterday I concluded an interim pastoral ministry at a church which is nothing like alt.christnet* groups. They truly love one another, pray for each other, and generally get along very nicely. (They remind me of the critic of the first century Christians who nevertheless said, 'Behold how these Christians love each other' - and apparently without the sarcasm I often read here!).

3. So Usenet populations may not be representative of the community-at-large, Christian or otherwise. Vitriol is not just a Christian newsgroup flavour: have you dropped into alt.atheism recently? People on all sides of the religious divides can attack each other rather than be open to irenic discussion.

4. Back to Christians: we are supposed to treat others, including God-seekers, with 'reverence' or 'respect' (see 1 Peter 3:15,16). I want to be the first to apologize if/when I have not done that. But I have decided, with God's help, never to respond to ad hominem stuff, and want to invite you all to do the same. If people want to attack one another in the 'yes you did no I didn't' style let's not respond, but simply leave them to it. (Note: because I said 'I invite you all' to join me in something a couple will read into that some kind of desire to 'be political' - ie. use some kind of authority here. I'm frankly not interested in all that, and enjoy the freedom of give-and-take in unmoderated groups, when the exchanges are friendly and constructive).

5. Now, this thread will also probably have posts-in-response which include 'Don't listen to him, he's... (a heretic, from Australia, whatever).' There's nothing much we can do to stop that, but we *can* mostly agree to talk about ideas, or encourage each other prayerfully. A common technique in constructive communication is prefaced by the words 'Help me to understand...'

6. So, my God-seeking friend, Christians are not perfect. They even sometimes say 'Don't look at us, look at Jesus Christ for a model'. That's frankly a cop-out. If Christ is in our lives we should be more like him: loving those who are marginalized, different, and even treating people from the religious group - the Pharisees - who opposed him most, like Nicodemas, with respect.

7. The Christian Good News is that if God is like Jesus nothing is too good to be true (as the 'Jesus Freaks' used to say). Jesus taught us that we are loved by God before we change, as we change, after we change, and whether we change or not. (The classic parable on all that is the story of the Prodigal Son). Some dispute that summary of the Christian notion of grace. They might give assent to the great commandment, to love God with everything we are and to love others, but in their/my worst moments their behavior belies their creed. Believing 'right doctrine' (as they interpret that) is most important for them. The New Testament - particularly Jesus, Paul and John - however, puts *love* first. Beliefs and obedience are a concomitant of love for God and others.

8. I'm not going away (though one or two here have wished that). I have a little more time now and believe these venues provide valuable contexts for exploring faith and life together. But I'm going to ignore the 'ad hominem-ites' and character assassins and their negativity (but not block them - that's childish and unchristian in my view). Billy Graham has been a good model for us in these respects: he's made a life-long commitment not to 'answer back'. Again, I am sorry if I've been guilty - or deemed to be guilty - or guilty-by-association in this respect.

9. I'm posting this to the three newsgroups I read most at the moment - ACC, ACE, and ARC. If any responses cross-post to other newsgroups, I'd encourage us to delete those extra groups.

God bless you all: most of you on the other side of the Pacific (now that's a good name for the relationship between peoples across divides :-) are (or should be) asleep now. Sleep well!

--

Shalom!

Rowland Croucher

May 31, 2004

PHARISEES - ANCIENT AND MODERN

2004-07-19T19:37:00.000-07:00

Being an itinerant ('hit-run') preacher has some advantages. I remember a Sunday evening service in a conservative church in rural Victoria, Australia. They had big black Bibles and severe expressions... And they knew their Bibles, and were proud of that. It was a smallish group, so I decided to engage them in dialogue:

'Who knows who the Pharisees were?' They did. 'The Pharisees got a pretty nasty press in the New Testament - particularly Matthew.'

'Now tell me all the *good* things you can think of about the Pharisees.' I wrote them up on a blackboard:

The Pharisees knew their Bibles; were disciplined in prayer; fasted twice a week; gave about a third of their income to their church; were moral (very moral); many had been martyred for their faith; they attended 'church' regularly; they were evangelical/orthodox; and evangelistic (Jesus said they'd even cross the ocean - a fearful thing for Jews - to win a convert).

There was a deep silence. I asked 'Peter' sitting at the front: 'What's wrong?' He pointed to the list and said 'That's us!' 'Is it?" I responded. 'Then you've got a problem: Jesus said these sorts of people are children of the devil!'

Then we did an inductive exercise on the question: 'What's so wrong with this list of admirable qualities?' Short answer: it omits what was most important for Jesus. Whenever in the Gospels he used a prefatory statement like 'This is the greatest/most important thing of all...' none of the above were emphasized by him.

What were they? Yes, loving God, loving others, seeking first the kingdom = obeying God the King ... And, from two Gospel verses the evangelicals/orthodox have rarely noticed - Matthew 23:23, Luke 11:42 - justice/love, mercy, faith.

None of these were on the Pharisees' list. But they're the most important of all, according to Jesus. Have you noticed items like justice/love don't get into our creeds or confessions of faith or 'doctrinal statements' either :-) ? (I've written a book about that: Recent Trends Among Evangelicals, if you want to chase that line).

Back to the Pharisees. Our text (Matthew 12:1-21) is about the problem of religious 'scrupulosity'... Jesus and his disciples were walking on the Sabbath through the fields on their way to the synagogue, to church, and they were hungry. So as the law (Deuteronomy 23:25) allowed, they plucked some ears of corn to eat. The Pharisees had problems with their 'reaping' on the sabbath. In fact, the disciples were breaking four of the Pharisees' 39 rules about work on the sabbath: technically they were reaping, winnowing, threshing, and preparing a meal!

Now the modern picture of the Pharisees almost certainly trivializes - or demonizes - their piety These were good people with good motives. But they were 'good people in the worst sense of the word'. More of that later...

Jesus' response is to argue from two precedents (lawyers/legalists are at home there) - precedents about necessity and service. David and his friends were hungry, so ate the forbidden bread (though note that when King Uzziah invaded the sacred area from another motive - pride - he was struck with leprosy, 2 Chronicles 26:16). Then the priests did a lot of 'work' on the sabbath - killing and sacrificing animals: so Jesus is saying that if sabbath-work has to do with the necessities of life and duties of sacred service, it's O.K. and the *spirit* of the fourth commandment is not violated. Then Jesus reinforces all this with three arguments: someone greater than the temple is here; God wants mercy to have priority over sacrifice; and 'the Son of man is lord of the sabbath'. Or, as the New Interpreters' Bible Commentary puts it (in a way that would appeal to a rabbinical way of arguing): 'Since the priests sacrifice according to the law on the sabbath, sacrifice is greater than the sabbath. But mercy is greater than sacrifice... so mercy is greater than the sabbath' (Abingdon, 1995, p.278). I like Eugene Peterson's translation of this section in The Message: 'There is far more at stake than religion. If you had any idea what this Scripture meant - "I prefer a flexible heart to an inflexible ritual" - you wouldn't be nitpicking like this.'

Then we have the story of the man with the withered hand. Jerome, the fourth century bishop-scholar, says some ancient Gospels tell us his name was Caementarius - a bricklayer - and he said to Jesus: 'Please heal my hand so that I can earn a living by bricklaying rather than begging'. The Pharisees challenge him: 'Is it lawful to heal on the sabbath?' Now there's a technicality behind that question, and Jewish scribes used to debate it: is it lawful for a physician to heal on the sabbath? If the answer's 'yes' how about someone else, like a prophet? The Shammaite Pharisees did not allow praying for the sick on the sabbath, but the followers of Hillel allowed it. Arguments, arguments: 'arguments by extension' to which Jesus answers with an 'argument by analogy'. If the sabbath laws allow you to help a sheep, why not a person? (But then, the Essenes wouldn't have rescued a sheep either: gets complicated!).

So Jesus healed the man. Two notes at this point: #1 Jesus asked the man to stretch out his hand, to do as much as he could. Jesus often did that in his healings. It's the same today: we get help any way we can, and do what we can. Jesus still heals: sometimes slowly (always slowly in cases of sexual/emotional abuse), sometimes instantly; sometimes with, sometimes without, the help of medicine... #2 I was a co-speaker at a conference with the Dr Paul Yonggi Cho, pastor of the largest church in the world. He said: 'Every miracle recorded in the New Testament, including the raising of the dead, has also happened in Korea: we are praying for some miracles not mentioned in the Bible, nor recorded in Christian history. Like the replacement of a limb - an arm or a leg - that's not there . We're believing God for that...!' Do what you like with that one!

We ought to make a little excursus at this point. What's the Sabbath all about? Two things, basically: faith and rest. Faith that God will supply our needs if we don't have to work all the time; and rest so that our lives will be in balance. As you know, I counsel clergy: that's what John Mark Ministries is about. They're often burned out. But when they are, it's almost always associated with a failure to take the idea and practice of sabbath seriously. They don't take a day off: a day off is any day (for pastors it's often Thursday) when from getting up to going to bed at night you are not preoccupied with your vocation. Isn't it interesting that in our leisure-oriented culture, there's also more fatigue? A lot of people are just plain tired. The five-day work week is a recent innovation, but 'leisure' and 'sabbath-rest' are not the same. Gordon McDonald, in his excellent book Ordering Your Private World has a chapter 'Rest Beyond Leisure' which I urge you to read. He writes: 'God was the first "rester"...Does God need to rest? Of course not. But did God choose to rest? Yes. Why? Because God subjected creation to a rhythm of rest and work that he revealed by observing the rhythm himself, as a precedent for everyone else... [For us] this rest is a time of looking backward. We gaze upon our work and ask questions like: "What does my work mean? For whom did I do all this work? How well was my work done? Why did I do all this? What results did I expect, and what did I receive?" To put it another way, the rest God instituted was meant first and foremost to cause us to interpret our work, to press meaning into it, to make sure we know to whom it is properly dedicated' (Highland, 1985, pp.176-7).

The Pharisees had lost sight of the essence of the sabbath. Alister McGrath says in his NIV Bible Commentary: 'The Sabbath was instituted to give people refreshment, rather than to add to their burdens' (H&S, 1995, p.242). Precisely how you keep the Sabbath today will be governed by love for God and neighbour, and the kind of work you do. If you're a manual worker, rest. If you're sedentary, do something physical. Make sure it's 'recreational' for you - re-creating your body, mind, emotions and spirit.

Jesus healed... and 'the Pharisees conspired... how to destroy him' - destroy the One through whom we have life. (When you're beaten by goodness, reason and miracle, you have no other option but rage). And 'great crowds followed Jesus'. They knew he loved them. He taught them and healed them. While the Pharisees were into destroying, Jesus was healing. The Scottish Baptist preacher Matthew Henry makes a good point here: though some are unkind to us, we must not on that account be unkind to others.

Sometimes I talk to a pastor who is being 'destroyed' by Pharisees. They are still with us. Why? It's all about what American social scientists call 'mindsets': the mindset of the Pharisee and that of the prophet are antithetical: they can't get along. Let me explain.

The Pharisee is concerned about law: how to do right. Now there's nothing wrong with that as it stands. Except for one thing: you can keep the law and in the process destroy persons. I have a friend who lectured in law in one of our universities, before he got out of it all in disgust. He said with some conviction: 'The whole of our Western legal system is sick, unjust. For one thing: if you're rich, and can afford the cleverest advocacy, you have a pretty good chance of not going to gaol; but not if you're poor.' There's something wrong with a system supposed to preserve 'fairness' when double-standards operate...

There's a tension between law and love. Law is to love as the railway tracks are to the train: the tracks give direction, but all the propulsive power is in the train. Tracks on their own may point somewhere, but they're cold, lifeless things. But love without law is like a train without tracks: plenty of noise and even movement but lacking direction. Both law and love ultimately come from God. We need God's laws to know how to set proper boundaries and behave appropriately: without good laws we humans will destroy one another. Prophets, in the biblical sense, try to tie law and love into each other. The O.T. prophets were always encouraging the people of God to keep the law of God. But the greatest commandment is love: love of God and of others.

The Australian Uniting Church Interim Report on Sexuality looks at these two issues. It answers one of them very well and the other poorly. The question: 'How can homosexuals (etc.) know they're loved by us?' is addressed with deep compassion. Marginalized people ought to feel they're accepted in our churches. But they don't, generally, so we're more like the Pharisees than Jesus in that respect. (I once discussed the issue of the legalization of brothels with a couple of women from the Prostitutes' Collective on ABC TV. In the middle of it, one of them turned to me and said, 'You Christians hate us, don't you?' How would you have responded?)

But the other question: 'What is God's will in God's word-in- Scripture about all this?' is answered poorly in the UC report. It gives us permission to be revisionist when it comes to the clear mandates of Scripture, and that's not on, for a follower of Jesus. He came not to set aside God's law, but to fulfil it, by embodying the great law of love in himself.

where Tony Campolo was one of the plenary speakers. One of my friends told me he heard Tony interviewed on ABC radio. 'Tony, what are your views on homosexuality and the church?' Tony: 'I am conservative on this issue: I believe erotic attraction between members of the same sex is not God's intention for us.' 'Au-huh, so what should the church do?' Tony: 'The last thing the church should do is to be legalistically prescriptive about the behaviour of people like homosexuals. We have to do more - much more - than simply prescribe celibacy for other people!' (The interviewer didn't know where to go after that!].

The last section of our Gospel reading takes all this further: Jesus the prophet was fulfilling the Scriptures. As God's chosen servant whom God loves and in whom God delights, Jesus was a meek Messiah, not a warlike one. And he 'proclaims justice' (v.18), indeed 'brings justice to victory' (v.19). Now why is justice so big for prophets - and for Jesus (but not for Pharisees)? Hang in there. Fasten your seat-belts. There's some turbulence coming as we close.

First a word to the prophets in this congregation. 'Prophets'? 'Here?' Sure. Well, who are they, and why don't they - or the church - know who they are? Why don't we recognize and commission them? Why don't we hear them speak a special revelation of God to us? Ah, there are several answers to that. Mainly, of course, prophets are somewhat unpredictable. I'm studying the second half of Jeremiah at the moment to write some Scripture Union notes: here's a guy who tells the king and the army to surrender to the enemy, otherwise they'll be wiped out and/or carted off into captivity. Not the sort of message to stiffen the resistance of your armed forces! So they tossed him into a septic tank. Prophets disturb the comfortable; pastors comfort the disturbed. But we don't want to be disturbed. And so the church organizes its life - its doctrines (like 'prophecy isn't needed anymore, we've got the Bible, and preachers') and its structures (by-laws and committees to cover everything) to exclude this more spontaneous 'word from the Lord.' And prophets tend to major on social justice which isn't nice for middle-class people - more about that in a moment.

But you can't get away from the high priority the early church and the Hebrew people put on prophecy.

What is this gift? 'The gift of prophecy is the special ability that God gives to certain members of the Body of Christ to receive and communicate an immediate message from God to his people through a divinely-anointed utterance' (Peter Wagner, Your Spiritual Gifts Can Help Your Church Grow, Regal, 1979, p.228). Prophecy isn't just predicting the future, though it can include prediction. Prophets aren't always right: so they ought to be in submission to the leadership of the church (I ran these ideas by our senior pastor during the week). Prophets aren't adding a 67th book to the Bible. The canon of Scripture is closed: the prophet is simply bringing a biblically-relevant message from God to us today, for our situation. Are prophets sort of carried along by the Spirit? In a sense, yes. Michael Green writes: 'The Spirit takes over and addresses the hearers directly through [the prophet]. That is the essence of prophecy' (I Believe in the Holy Spirit, Eerdmans, 1975, p.172). Do prophets tend to be political activists? Often yes - as in the Bible. And today, therefore, such people are unlikely to be pastors of churches - if a pastor has a prophetic gift they'd better have also an independent income! 'Since their message is frequently unpopular, they would feel restrained if they were too closely tied to an institution. And many church institutions feel uncomfortable with such prophets around too much... they tend to shun church bureaucracies and prefer to be outside critics' (Wagner, p.230). Now there are varying points of view - between and among Pentecostals and Evangelicals about the ministry of prophets, and this is as much as I want to say about it all here. Except for this: if God gives you a special message for your church, write it down, and give it to the leadership: and hold the leadership accountable about praying over it, and then leave the decision about whatever happens with it to them.

Let us go back to those two Gospel texts evangelicals (like me) have ignored for 500 years: Matthew 23:23, Luke 11:42. Jesus is inveighing against the Pharisees, and saying that despite their religiosity they've missed the point - which is justice/love, mercy and faith. Justice comes first (as with the prophet's message Jesus is quoting: Micah 6:8). Why? Simple: justice is all about the right use of power; it's about fairness; it's about doing right - particularly for the poor and oppressed. Social justice is all about (it's *only* about) treating others as being made in God's image; human beings with respect and dignity and infinite worth. Justice is about the most important characteristic of human beings - their Godlikeness. Homosexuals, for example, aren't just individuals who parade their gayness in Mardi Gras festivals. They're made in the image of God. Hitler was made in the image of God; so was Stalin; so is Pol Pot and Idi Amin and Saddam Hussein... And so are the people in church next to you this morning. CSLewis says somewhere (The Weight of Glory?) that if we realized who the others really were with whom we were worshipping, we'd be tempted to fall down and worship *them*!

There's probably something of the Pharisee in all of us. We take two good gifts from God - law and truth - and create all sorts of legalisms and dogmatisms to save us the trouble of loving people we don't like. What is your spiritual 'achilles' heel'? How does the devil get to you? One of our '19 questions' (see our home page) for retreatants asks: 'For what non-altruistic motives are you in ministry?'

Have you noticed that in the ministry of Jesus, the message of repentance was mainly aimed at religious people, church-folk, like us? When we elevate law over love; rules and precedents and structures above persons; when social justice is not at the top of our agenda; then we've got some repenting to do. Pharisees are people who know the Bible and miss the point. Lord help us!

(P.S. The statement about 'trivializing the Pharisees' refers to several problems biblical scholars have about the Pharisees in the NT in general and Matthew in particular. See, eg. the excellent article on the subject in The Anchor Bible Dictionary (Doubleday, 1992)

Shalom!

Rowland Croucher

http://www.pastornet.net.au/jmm/ (now 13,000 articles)

http://ameliasgranddad.blogspot.com/

IS GANDHI IN HEAVEN?

2004-07-19T11:57:00.000-07:00
Here's the first of many articles/book reviews I'll post on this blog. Some have difficulty finding their way among the 13,000+ articles on the John Mark Ministries website for my stuff.

IS GANDHI IN HEAVEN?

(by Rowland Croucher).

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father's only son, full of grace and truth.
You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make cast idols. You shall not bow down to their gods, or worship them, or follow their practices. Take care that you are not snared into imitating them, after they have been destroyed before you: do not inquire concerning their gods, saying, 'How did these nations worship their gods? I also want to do the same.' And when you look up to the heavens and see the sun, the moon, and the stars, all the host of heaven, do not be led astray and bow down to them and serve them, things that the LORD your God has allotted to all the peoples everywhere under heaven.

For the customs of the peoples are false: a tree from the forest is cut down, and worked with an axe by the hands of an artisan...

If you turn aside from following me, you or your children, and do not keep my commandments and my statutes that I have set before you, but go and serve other gods and worship them, Then they will say, 'Because they have forsaken the LORD their God, who brought their ancestors out of the land of Egypt, and embraced other gods, worshiping them and serving them; therefore the LORD has brought this disaster upon them.'

The Lord said: Because these people draw near with their mouths and honor me with their lips, while their hearts are far from me, and their worship of me is a human commandment learned by rote;

For all the peoples walk, each in the name of its god, but we will walk in the name of the LORD our God forever and ever.

Do not oppress the alien, the orphan, and the widow, or shed innocent blood... do not go after other gods to your own hurt. They exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling a mortal human being or birds or four-footed animals or reptiles... they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever!

'And you know the way to the place where I am going.' Thomas said to him, 'Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?' Jesus said to him, 'I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.'

Timothy, guard what has been entrusted to you. Avoid the profane chatter and contradictions of what is falsely called knowledge; by professing it some have missed the mark as regards the faith. I am saying this so that no one may deceive you with plausible arguments. Holding to the outward form of godliness but denying its power. Avoid them!

I anyone says to you, 'Look! Here is the Messiah!' or 'There he is!' do not believe it. For false messiahs and false prophets will appear and produce great signs and omens, to lead astray, if possible, even the elect.' He opposes and exalts himself above every so-called god or object of worship, so that he takes his seat in the temple of God, declaring himself to be God.

Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, said to them, 'Rulers of the people and elders... Let it be known to all of you, and to all the people of Israel, that this man is standing before you in good health by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead... There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among mortals by which we must be saved.

John 1:1, 3, 14; Exodus 20:3; Exodus 34: 17; Exodus 23:24; Deuteronomy 12:30; Deuteronomy 4:19; Jeremiah 10:3; 1 Kings 9:6,9; Isaiah 29:13; Micah 4:5; Jeremiah 7:6; Romans 1:23,25; John 14:4-7; 1 Timothy 6:20-21; Colossians 2:4; 2 Timothy 3:5; Matthew 24:23,24; 1 Thess- alonians 2:4; Acts 4:8,10,12.

.....

'God is dead, Marx is dead, and I don't feel too good myself!' In a pluralistic culture we are more aware of others' beliefs.

A missionary in Nigeria visited a young man in back street of Lagos. On his bedside table were the Bible, the Book of Common Prayer, the Koran, three copies of Watchtower (magazine of the Jehovah's Witnesses), a biography of Karl Marx, a book of Yoga exercises, and How to Stop Worrying and Start Living by Dale Carnegie.

These days we travel more, TV shows documentaries of foreign cultures, students study abroad, multicultur- alism in the West is here to stay...

Intolerance is increasing too. Militant Hindus have a motto 'Save India from Christian imperialism!' Many Moslem countries make it a punishable offense to proselytize. Then there's Lebanon, and Northern Ireland... Religion and politics can be volatile subjects, particular- ly when they mix.

Something else has happened that has never happened before. People (to paraphrase T.S.Eliot) have left God not for other gods, they say, but for no gods; and this has never happened before. It is possible both to deny gods and worship gods - gods like rationality, money, power, sport etc. And it will all lead to an age advancing progressively backwards...

Of all the world's religions, Christianity has the greatest number of followers (33%), followed by Islam (18%), Hinduism (13%), and Buddhism (6%).

What is religion? Definitions are legion: 'what we do with our solitariness'; 'how we relate to others'; 'our answer to fear'; 'an ultimate attempt to enlarge and complete one's personality by finding the supreme context in which we rightly belong'. Everyone is religious, in some sense.

Although Freud termed religion 'mass neurosis' -- religious believers were infantile, unable to break outgrown ties with their parents -- Carl Jung said of his patients over thirty-five, 'all have been people whose problem in the last resort was that of finding a religious outlook on life.'

There is an increasing hunger for religious reality. 'Baby-boomers' under 45 are not in church as often as their elders, but they claim to be as religious. They read Shirley Maclaine and play around with the New Age movement. In a noisy world people searching for 'God who is Sound and Silence' as the Maitri Upanishad puts it are going in larger numbers to Buddhist monasteries and Hindu ashrams -- places of quiet serenity, simple life-style, meditation, brief talks and questions. More young people are reading the Hindu Bhagavad Gita, the Chinese I Ching, or do Yoga, transcendental meditation or Zen courses.

Let's ask the hard questions in order: Was Ghandi a Christian? No, as we saw in the movie, Ghandi, although he admired Jesus, he lived and died a Hindu. But E. Stanley Jones said of him: 'He taught me more of the spirit of Christ than anyone in East or West.'

A harder question: Is Ghandi in heaven? Christians offer three broad answers: (1) Conservative Christians have their doubts. The principle of Karma (cause and effect - paying off your own guilt) is poles apart from grace (God's free forgiveness, which you don't deserve). Augustine's theology inspired western Christians to believe that those outside the church are dammed. A more refined view might be Karl Barth's 'Religion is unbelief', or Hendrik Kraemer's conviction that non-Christian religions were not means of salvation in any sense.

However, others would argue, what kind of God would organize for most of his human creatures to burn in hell forever - many of them because, by accident of birth, or the disobedience of the Christian minority to evangelize, they had never heard the gospel? Is he not the Father of Jesus, who prayed for those who crucified him? Does he not want all to be saved and come to know the truth (1 Timothy 2:3,4)?

(2) More liberal Christians would answer: 'Be tolerant. There's value in all religions. They all lead ultimately to God. Of course Ghandi is with him!' The problem with this view is its failure to take seriously the question of truth. If the original Christians were 'liberal' there would have been no mission, no univeral Church.

(3) Is there a way between these two extremes? Yes, the more cautious say 'Only God knows: our eternal destiny is in his hands alone'. With evangelicals like Howard Guinness (The Seekers) or JND Anderson (Christianity and Comparative Religion) they ask: Does God 'accept' only people within the 'covenant community' - whether Jewish (in the OT) or Christian (in the NT)? No: what about Melchisedek, Rahab, and Cornelius? Certainly Jesus Christ is unique, and Divine: he alone was God in human form. We are not to take everyone's views, mix them up, and get an identikit picture of God. Jesus is the only way to God. But that may not mean that only Christians are saved (see Romans 2:11-16).

Roman Catholics, at the Second Vatican Council, moved from extra ecclesiam nulla alus (outside the Church, no salvation) to 'The Catholic Church rejects nothing of what is true and holy in other religions.' Devotees of non-Christian religions may be 'implicit believers' or, in Karl Rahner's phrase, 'anonymous Christians'. Hans Kung says these religions may provide ordinary, whereas the Christian Gospel provides extraordinary means of salvation.

Don Richardson (Eternity in Their Hearts), says God has revealed himself to more people than we might imagine. The one invisible God is resident in many folk religions. Christianity doesn't replace this revelation, he says, but completes it. Pachacuti, King of the Incas, led a religious reform in the 1400s encouraging his people to worship Viracocha, the Creator, rather than Inti, the sungod. His hymns to Viracocha sound like the Hebrew Psalms. When missionaries came to the Santals in India in the 1800s, they found a tradition about Thakur Jiu, 'the Genuine God'. Many became Christians. The Chinese had Shang Ti, the Lord of heaven. The Karens of Burma believed in Y'wa, the true God.

Non-Christian religions are a testimony to people's search for God. They may be far from the God of Jesus, but God is not far from any one of them. God cares for all his human creatures with a love we who are biassed in favour of those who are like us can't imagine. His rain falls on the just and the unjust...

All religions have good and evil elements. As novelist Mary McCarthy observed: religion makes good people good and bad people bad. Christians have burnt heretics, Jews robbed Palestinians of lands and homes, some Hindus still burn widows (sati), tribal witchdoctors put curses on people, Moslems wage religious wars. (An eminent Egyptian scholar said privately to Hendrik Kraemer: 'I no longer believe in Islam but, if anyone were to attack the prophet publicly, I would kill him!'). Never forget that Jesus was rejected and sent to his death by people who belonged to a highly moral and spiritual religion. But, you say, well, Christianity has sanctioned evil, but in essence it is good. True: people from other religions say the same of their faiths too.

Christianity, said Karl Barth, stands as much under the judgment of the Gospel as other religions. Roman Catholicism will be judged for the Inquisition; and the Protestant John Calvin for standing by as Geneva burned the 'heretic' Servetus...

Will everyone be saved? George Macdonald says all answers to such a question are deceptive. Two things are certain: all who are saved are saved through Jesus Christ. And a merciful God can handle the judgment of his loved creatures without our help! Jesus said everyone's going to be surprised at the last judgment. We should aim to be secure in our own faith, and be open-minded about matters that are God's prerogative.

So why evangelize? To get them into heaven? Yes, but there are better motives: the glory of God, obedience to Christ, and sincere love for others. Although Christ is not known everywhere, he is everywhere. We are called to make him known, not to make him present.

Some don'ts and do's in evangelism: Don't major on the faults in other religions: the faults in your own are bad enough. Don't argue: you may win the argument but lose the person: today the world is a conference table not a lecture hall, so learn to listen as well as you talk. Above all, be compassionate: Jesus preached judgment on Jerusalem when it rejected him, but he also wept for the city. Share your faith, as a beggar sharing bread with another beggar. Ask 'what are my friend's felt needs?', and start there. (An African proverb says 'Hungry people have no ears!'). Invite overseas students home: perhaps your family could 'adopt' one. (Most in the Book of Acts were converted while away from home). Teach English to some one. Encourage your church to translate the service into another language, or host an ethnic church.

And, beyond all that, remember Jesus' approach to Nicodemas. This cultured man wanted to talk about the contrasts between Jesus' teaching and that of Judaism. The conversation started courteously enough, but very soon Jesus said to him 'You must be born again!'

That is still the essence of the good news - even for the very religious.

.....

Good teaching is found everywhere. In every religion there is something good, but good teaching alone cannot give life. Life is only to be had throught he giver of life, not through the pages of books.

Sadhu Sundar Singh, Alys Goodwin, Sadhu Sundar Singh in Switzerland, Madras: Christian Literature Society, 1989, p. 49

Where is the truth in other faiths? There are three bad ways to solve this problem. One is to lump all religions together and dismiss them all. As G.K. Chesterton once observed, to stop believing in God does not mean that people will believe in nothing. They may substitute a nationalistic for a religious faith, and be more fanatical than before. Another is to affirm that each religion is part of a whole. 'There is only one religion, though there are a hundred versions of it.' (George Bernard Shaw). The third is to be absolutist: only people like me have the truth! Amos (9:7-9) thundered against the exclusivism that believed God only cares for people 'like us'. 'People of Israel, I think as much of the people of Sudan as I do of you...'

Rowland Croucher, from an unpublished sermon, 'Do Other Religions Also Lead to God?'

God comes to us in Jesus who is the way. We are like people who have fallen into a pit and in that fall have been injured. Our legs and our arms are broken. For anyone to lower a ladder into the pit and say, 'This is the only way out, climb it,' only adds to our desperation. But if the ladder is lowered not for us to climb out, but for one to climb down and lift our broken body into his arms, carrying us upwards and to safety -- that is good news indeed!

Henk Booy, quoted by A.M. Watts, 'Christian Claims in a Pluralist Society'

The neutral observer... looks at the plurality of religions from the outside: for him or her the existence of more than one true religion is self-evident... The committed believer looks... from the inside...: what is the true religion for me? ...I confess openly that my standpoint is that of a Christian. I am convinced that Christianity is the true religion. I cannot prove it -- faith can never be demon- trated -- but I can offer good reasons, which convince me... We come to a third and ultimate perspective...: there is a vertical dimension, that of the Absolute. As Christians we do not believe in Christianity but in God. Christianity, as a complex of dogmatic teachings, liturgical rites and codes of behaviour, does not escape the ambivalence of our human, historical condition. As Karl Barth used to say, religion is always a shaky and relative thing: not religion as such, but the absolute Being to which it is directed is the true absolute. This is the primordial and ultimate reality which we call God, which the Arabs call Allah, which Jews and Indians decline to name, but worship none the less. In relation to this ultimate and absolute reality of God, even the true religion is relative... Even Christianity is in via: ours is a Church on pilgrimage, on the way, which has not yet arrived at the goal of seeing God face to face. To admit this is neither liberalism nor relativism nor syncretism; it is faith, pure and simple.

Hans Kung, 'Ecumenism and truth:the wider dialogue'

In the past we have sometimes been guilty of adopting towards adherents of other faiths attitudes of ignorance, arrogance, disrespect and even hostility. We repent of this. We never-theless are determined to bear a positive and uncompromising witness to the uniqueness of our Lord, in his life, death and resurrection, in all aspects of our evangelistic work including interfaith dialogue.

The Manila Manifesto

Krister Stendahl is fond of saying that no interfaith conversation is genuinely ecumenical unless the quality of mutual sharing and receptivity is such that each party makes him- or herself vulnerable to conversion to the other's truth.

Leonard Swidler, 'Interreligious and Interideological Dialogue'

The other religions are not to be understood and measured by their proximity to or remoteness from Christianity. They are not beginnings which are completed in the Gospel... To fit them into this model is to lose any possibility of understanding them. Moreover, what do the concepts of 'near' and 'far' mean in relation to the crucified and risen Jesus? Is the devout Pharisee nearer or further than the semi-pagan prostitute? Is the passionate Marxist nearer or further than the Hindu mystic? ...Is the Gospel the culmination of religion or is it the end of religion?

Lesslie Newbigin, The Finality of Christ

It has become customary to classify views on the relation of Christianity to the world religions as either pluralist, exclusivist, or inclusivist... [My] position is exclusivist in the sense that it affirms the unique truth of the revelation in Jesus Christ, but it is not exclusivist in the sense of denying the possibility of the salvation of the non-Christian. It is inclusivist in the sense that it refuses to limit the saving grace of God to the members of the Christian church, but it rejects the inclusivism which regards the non-Christian religions as vehicles of salvation. It is pluralist in the sense of acknowledging the gracious work of God in the lives of all human beings, but it rejects a pluralism which denies the uniqueness and decisiveness of what God has done in Jesus Christ.

Lesslie Newbigin, The Gospel in a Pluralist Society

People are saved by faith even though the informational level varies... Paul had a great deal more insight into the way of salvation than Abraham did... but Abraham was not less saved than Paul was... This does not make the pagan who responds to God, as Jethro did, a Christian. We should not call him even an 'anonymous' Christian. It would be reasonable to consider him a pre-Christian perhaps. The main thing is that such a person, though for the moment lacking Christ through no fault of his own, and thus I suppose 'lost', is not going to be damned, because he cried out to the merciful God in the only way he could and was heard.

Clark Pinnock, 'Can the Unevangelized be saved?'

A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic - on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg - or else he would be the devil of hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon; or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronising nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.

C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

A world of nice people, content in their own niceness, looking no further, turned away from God, would be just as desperately in need of salvation as a miserable world - and might even be more difficult to save.

C S Lewis, in Charles Colson, Against the Night, London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1990, pp.139.

.....

Lord God, Creator of the universe, who has revealed your loving nature and purposes for our lives in Jesus, help us to love you, to obey you, to honour you, to adore you. We have not loved you as we ought, and we are sorry. We have not obeyed Jesus' command to take the good news to everyone, and we are sorry. We have not honoured you by honouring others; rather we have felt superior to them, and we are sorry. We have not adored you, but rather our mental caricature of who you are - a god created in our image - and we are sorry.

Help us to abandon any religion that is immature, destructive or unloving. Help us to see you as the Father of all, to whom all are dear, and whose patience and long-suffering are everlasting. May we regard the truth we have received in Jesus as a precious resource to be given away, not hoarded. Remind us constantly that there is much, much more that we do not yet know, and to be very humble when in dialogue with others whose lives have followed the beat of a different drummer.

In the name of Christ, your Son, Amen.

.....

A Benediction: And now may the Spirit of Jesus, the One who hugged the demoniac, touched the leper, accepted the worship of a prostitute, and who honoured Samaritans, infect our thoughts and attitudes, so that the God who is not far from any one of us, will touch the lives of others we meet this day, for the honour of his name. Amen.

.....

Henk Booy, quoted by A.M. Watts, 'Christian Claims in a Pluralist Society', Christian Century, March 1, 1989, p.223.

Rowland Croucher, 'Do Other Religions Also Lead to God?', a sermon preached in various churches and campuses.

Hans Kung, 'Ecumenism and truth: the wider dialogue', The Tablet, 28 January 1989, pp. 92-93.

C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, New York: Macmillan, 1960/1978, p. 56.

The Manila Manifesto, Lausanne II Conference of Evangelicals in Manila, 1989.

Lesslie Newbigin, The Finality of Christ, London, 1969, p.43f.

Lesslie Newbigin, The Gospel in a Pluralist Society, Grand Rapids Michigan: William B. Eerdmans, 1989, p.182-3.

Clark Pinnock, 'Can the Unevangelized be saved?', The Canadian Baptist, November 1981, p.9.

Leonard Swidler, 'Interreligious and Interideological Dialogue', in Swidler, L. (ed.), Towards a Universal Theology of Religion, Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1988, p.38.

.....

Further reading: Ajith Fernando, The Christian's Attitude toward World Religions, Wheaton, Illinois: Tyndale, 1987; Ian Gillman, Many Faiths One Nation: A Guide to the Major Faiths and Denominations in Australia, Sydney: Collins, 1988; David Johnson, A Reasoned Look at Asian Religions, Minneapolis: Bethany House Publishers, 1985; Josh McDowell & Don Stewart, Concise Guide to Today's Religions, Amersham-on-the-Hill, Bucks: Scripture Press, 1983; Vinay Samuel & Chris Sugden (eds), Sharing Jesus in the Two Thirds World, Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 1983.

THE SHAPING OF THINGS TO COME

2004-07-19T05:05:00.000-07:00

I’ve just read two excellent books about the contemporary church. One of them was Eddie Gibbs’ Church Next.’ Eddie has radically revised the church growth paradigm (‘church on steroids’ as someone has described that movement).

The other: ‘The Shape of Things to Come: Innovation and Mission for the 21st Century Church’, by Michael Frost and Alan Hirsch (Hendrickson 2003.)

Michael and Alan's book is the more missiological of the two: a ground-breaking analysis of the malaise of the contemporary church in the West. Churches are in decline, and they know why: for 1700 years we have operated in terms of the wrong paradigm.

Here are the sections and chapter-headings (which give you a bit of a feel for the key concepts) :

Part One "The Shape We're In"
• 1. Evolution or Revolution?
• 2. The Missional Church
Part Two "Incarnational Ecclesiology"
• 3. The Incarnational Approach
• 4. The Shape of the Missional Church
• 5. The Contextualized Church
• 6. Whispering to the Soul
Part Three "Messianic Spirituality"
• 7. The God of Israel and the Renewal of Christianity
• 8. Action as Sacrament
• 9. The Medium Really is the Message
Part Four "Apostolic Leadership"
• 10. The Genius of APEPT
• 11. Imagination and the Leadership Task
• 12. Organizing the Revolution

Post-Constantian Christendom is spiritually bankrupt. The church today is failing to evangelize effectively in its context, and is failing too in transforming contemporary culture. The 'post-Christendom' church will have to define itself again as a missionary movement, rather than institutionally, if it's to experience new life and growth. Mission has to be the church's priority: 'What is God calling us to do and be in our current cultural context'? 'Foundational changes have to be made within the church's very DNA - which means addressing core issues like ecclesiology, spirituality, and leadership.'

The three mistakes made by the 'Christendom' model church: 1. It has tried to be attractional (it must now become incarnational). 2. Its thinking has been predominantly dualistic (it must embrace a messianic spirituality - as Jesus did, engaging with culture). 3. The dominant model of leadership has been hierarchical (in a missional church it should be apostolic).

This book has credibility partly because it's written by two guys actually doing mission, rather than theorizing about it. Mike teaches missiology and practises mission in Sydney and elsewhere; Alan in Melbourne. Both are brilliant communicators, clear thinkers and are committed 'evangelicals'.

It opens with an analysis of why BurningMan festivals are so popular. BurningMan is not just a bad day in Black Rock (to quote the movie title). 'It's a cry from an emerging postmodern generation for a community of belonging, spirituality, sensuality, empowerment, and liberation.' (Most of these buzzwords are not popular in respectable churches :-)

Alan and Mike’s book is an easy read - and should be near the top of the list for seminary students, practising pastors and church leaders. But it’s central message creates unease: instead of expecting outsiders to come to us, the church ought to go where the unchurched hang out. (Now why didn't we think of that :-)? Mainstream churches won't renew themselves by doing 'more of the same'.

So I basically agree with the whole thesis. In this review, however, let me offer what I hope are some constructive caveats or reservations:

1. Pastors in parishes are in a ‘double-bind’. They are shepherds of the flock and they feel their survival depends on keeping the flock together, and happy. Their reaction to ‘emerging church’ concepts might be: ‘It’s OK for these guys: their livelihood doesn’t depend solely on a parish; their income derives from other sources. If I’m not caring for the saints – even massaging egos – they’ll leave.’ Which has happened in a few parishes I know where the pastor tried to motivate the troops to ‘do battle on the front-line’ in terms of emerging church concepts.

2. Mike and Alan are tough on larger/regional churches, which have grown because they cater to the needs of Baby Boomers. But, yes, these churches also probably won't survive another generation unless they spawn alternative congregations. In any case larger churches aren’t really into frontline mission much either: research indicates that they grow largely through 'transfers' from other churches: probably only 3-5% of converts are rank 'outsiders'. See e.g.
http://www.pastornet.net.au/jmm/articles/8483.htm .

3. I have a problem with Alan’s/Mike’s use of the word ‘minister’ in the singular to refer to the pastor. If we want all Christians to believe they’re ministers, our terminology will have to catch up with our theology at this point!

4. The book also lacks a strategy for reaching children and families. Many young missional congregations probably have a larger proportion of adult singles participating - many of whom, as one young leader put it, are 'jaded young adult Christians in the final stages of deconstructing their faith'.

5. Mike and Alan could have given us more clues about motivation and influence. The great missional movements in the past (led by Francis, Luther, Wesley etc.) were not simply exercises in cognitive restructuring, but involved strong mentoring by charismatic leaders. And how/why has the Korean church remained so vital/missional after five generations?

6. An interesting discussion starter could be ‘Isn’t institutionalization inevitable when humans try to do things together?’ Certainly, as sociologist Robert Merton used to say, institutions are inherently degenerative: the evil in institutions is greater than the sum of the evil of the individuals within them. But religious and political movements have never really succeeded in ‘perpetuating the revolution’ have they? Homeostasis always settles in within the first couple of generations.

7. I have a primary concern for mission among the people Bishop Spong calls ‘exiled believers’ – the 50%-plus (according to Barna’s research) of committed Christians not regularly ‘attending church.’ This book doesn’t help much with reaching this group, except to encourage their mobilization to reach out to others. But they’re a negative (selfish? ‘the church hasn’t met my needs’) group: and generally don’t have much positive motivation to do mission anyway.

8. But my main reservation with the thesis of this book has to do with the church’s four essential relational activities - worship (towards God), formation (self), koinonia (Christian others), and mission (relating to those outside the faith/church). Any renewal paradigm ought to major on integrating all four of these at once. Making effective mission the key indicator of the health of a church (as this book does, in my view) is unbalanced. Is there any place for Nehemiah’s choir in the emerging church? Or for a theology of place? What happens to seminaries (which have often been ‘academies’ in the past)? What about programs of spiritual formation? (Exhorting ‘barren wombs to be fruitful is fruitless’). How does the classroom complement field-based instruction?

Now, again, all this is not to say that 'emerging church' missional ideas are not very relevant. They're 'spot on' to use an Australian expression. Following Jesus is primarily about living in the real world. The call to plant new imaginative communities, and to creatively rethink what the church is for – doing in our world what Jesus did in his - is urgent.

And contemporary opportunities or 'shop windows' for the Christian gospel are legion. There are 60 pub churches in Australia. Just two which crossed my desk today: 'Gospel on the Lawn' featuring popular musicians and vocalists; Council for Adult Education Book Groups (they have 60 of these in Melbourne alone, and will teach you how to start one).

At the end of the book there's a useful glossary of specialized terms (bounded set, centred set, extractional etc.) and a very good bibliography of books about mission.

Another reviewer offered this: ‘Ivan Illich was once asked what is the most revolutionary way to change society. Is it violent revolution or is it gradual reform? He gave a careful answer. “Neither. If you want to change society, then you must tell an alternative story.”’

This book does that admirably. Buy it, read it, discuss it with your group. Then ask: ‘How do I practise all this in my world?’

For more on the emerging church, visit http://www.emergingchurch.org/

Shalom!

Rowland Croucher