Month: September 2024

My background is rooted in Jesus needing to be my ‘personal Saviour’, but over the years I have come to believe that we have obliterated the bigger picture by insisting on this aspect being central and the entirety of the offer of hope. Scripture is full of encounters with God at a personal level, and the author who shaped so much of the NT (Saul / Paul) testifies to the shift in his understanding that took place through a personal encounter where the person spoke to him audibly in his own language. He expected that there would be something similar for others who became part of that early Jesus-movement. In one of his dense passages he says how can they believe unless they have personally heard Jesus (Ro. 10:14 translating it as per the convention that the verb to hear takes the ‘genitive’ case when it is personal – hence not to hear ‘about’ but to ‘hear Jesus’).

Personal encounters. Ever so present in Scripture. Questions such as ‘was Paul saved before his encounter on the road to Damascus?’ are at one level not for us to answer, but the NT is clear that the ‘salvation’ that comes through the cross was first for Jews and it was to a Jewish audience that the words ‘there is salvation in no other name’ were addressed. I think part of the confusion arises as ‘salvation’ has been reduced to ‘safe as I have my free pass to heaven’.

Salvation is essentially about a corporate experience resulting in a purpose.

We see that in the Israel story. A people chosen so that the whole of humanity can be redeemed, with redemption carrying the weight of delivered from slavery. This is why at the heart of ekklesia is that of movement – a movement carrying the conviction that it is part of something wider but with the desire / mandate to see the wider context changed through embracing the values, beliefs and practices of the movement. MLK’s ‘I have a dream’ is such a summary statement of the heart of a movement. Or in some of the most challenging words in Revelation after all John saw we read that he saw a new heaven and a new earth.

Personal encounters are present, but the wider context must not be lost. Paul’s message was not understood as a private call to acknowledge Jesus as Saviour and then to express it in a privatised religious setting; it was understood as a universal claim that the crucified Jew was none other than Lord and Saviour and thus a challenge to all other rival powers, and very specifically to the one whose empire promised peace, security and prosperity.

Into that comes the personal encounter of being delivered from the powers of this age to being transferred into the realm of Jesus’ rule over all hostile powers.

The marginalisation of all other powers… imagine if that marginalisation became ever more visible and real… the kingdoms (realms of rule) of this world would indeed ‘become’ the kingdom of our Lord and God. A world shaped by those rulers becoming a world shaped by the cross. That is transformation.

The western world is cracking; the hegemony is being weakened; the façades are no longer able to hide what is being exposed – for those who have eyes to see. There is of course a strong ‘we have to get back’ to where we were – whether expressed politically (MAGA and the like) or through a historical lens of how Christian faith has shaped the West… but there is always another path that beckons, one that says you have not been this way before, a vision shaped by the future… another ‘I have a dream’ scenario.

Yes the challenges are enormous, but I do not believe that to ‘offer the ticket to a better destination’ at a personal level is either sufficient for the moment nor in line with a NT vision. My paradigm has shifted; deeply grateful for every personal encounter that says the Gospel is not simply about a set of beliefs of values; but also grateful that we have hope for this life and this world.

Who is ‘God’? I am Trinitarian – the ‘Father’ is God; the ‘Son’ is God; the ‘Spirit’ is God… but the Father is not the Son and is not the Spirit; the Son is not the Father and is not the Spirit; the Spirit is not the Father and is not the Son. (And very open to an open discussion on what on earth do we mean by the three ‘titles’ of Father, Son and Spirit… they are titles not the final defining description.) I take great encouragement that although I could never write a book on Trinitarian theology (ecomomic, ontological, or social trinitarianism!!!) I am convinced that I have nailed something very central – God has to be defined in ‘Jesus’ terms. Any belief in God that contradicts that has to be severely put in the dock and interrogated. Maybe does not make me very smart but gives me an anchor. I might have my own way of approaching the seemingly endless spilling of blood (animals and all those enemies of God – should I write god at this point?) that seem to pop up too often in the OT, and on some of them have no clarity of resolving the tensions, but I have to subject them all to a Jesus lens. Jesus is my God does not mean I am Unitarian, but there is no ‘god’ manifestation that can conflict with the revelation in Jesus. Mr Barth was always too ‘orthodox’ for me (read for orthodox – too reformed) but he certainly hit it on the head when he insisted that Jesus is the word of God, and the Bible is secondarily the word of God as it witnesses to the revelation of God that was in Jesus. The Bible without Jesus does not reveal God, but the Bible read with a Jesus-lens enables us to see who God is.

I am deeply influenced by the Anabaptist tradition that came through in the Reformation period (and for those who have read some of the history do not read Anabaptist as Munster). The priority of the Gospels does not mean that the letters etc., are any lesser Scripture, but where we read a conflict between (say) Paul and the Gospels it simply means we have misunderstood what Paul is saying – he is not the founder of ‘Christianity’ in the sense of something new, but is building on what Jesus released as the one in whom the entire OT story had come into focus.

Jesus as the one who is the image of the invisible God, the one who embodies God (the fullness of God was pleased to dwell there) does make for some difficult reading of some passages. Jesus never addressed the Scriptural assessment of the Flood (almost certainly not universal but local with very widespread results) but I suspect he would have given us a different lens to look at it. Sacrifices? Well we even read that ‘God does not desire sacrifices’ in the pages of the Hebrew Bible… maybe it is an allowance, for after all the text ‘when you sacrifice’ could indicate that the cultural expectation is that they are going to do this anyway so the question is how can the understanding me modified.

The Jesus lens gives me permission, or I think even stronger, demands that I question some of what I read. It pushes me to read it as an unfolding story, rather than as eternal revelation that determines everything for ever. In that sense (and please understand that I mean in that sense) we will have to go beyond Scripture while living within the biblical story.

I have more questions today than before, but my understanding of ‘God’ cannot contradict what I see in Jesus.

And my final comment on Jesus is that I am pretty sure that I would not be totally comfortable around Jesus, so I have to resist making Jesus into my image (and acknowledge I am not too successful in that!).

What a relief though that Jesus is the lens. Imagine only having the OT Scriptures, or the Quran or some other ‘holy’ book. God would be for me (if I was religious enough) and definitely against my enemies – sometimes that seems to be where many Christians land. My challenge is that Jesus is ‘against’ me as he is so for me… and for my enemies, and that if I truly follow where the journey takes me I will need my ‘enemies’ also to help shape me. Jesus, the image of God, and therefore the human as intended – the one and only truly human one.

Paradigms – the lenses that we wear to view the world, see people, read Scripture – are so important and shape our lives enormously. Often we are given lenses to wear (from our traditions, family, and sometimes our experiences) that determine our sight, and the longer we wear them the stronger becomes our reality. It is compounded when we have a conviction that the Scriptures themselves have given us the lenses, thus leading to an inability to read Scripture differently. Once we are encouraged or provoked to change the lenses, or at least question the prescription, different worlds open up – one of those of course can be that of losing any sense of faith that there is a ‘god’, but more often one of questions that mean we have to move from old convictions though not knowing what any new convictions might consist of. A ‘I can’t go back, but have no idea how to go forward’ kind of experience – disturbing, unsettling but open to a growth in our faith.

I often think (wrongly) that I have not changed at all, but I do realise I have. In the same way that I think I am still around 26 years old – until I look in the mirror, or exert myself too much! Years ago I had a call with an invitation to be part of a cross-generational gathering and the one inviting me said ‘and we will be the older generation’. That was a good wake up call for me as we need to act our age. No longer running with individuality on steroids, but being a resource to those who are running so that they can run with a spiritual energy that I did not have at their age. All goes to say I have changed, and probably enormously. I know less now than I did a while back, though my knowledge then was very narrow – truth was contained in the ‘four spiritual laws’ (or something similar)!

So over the next few days I will try and reflect – not my strong point – on where paradigms have changed for me, and what I think that has resulted in. Beliefs and practice go hand in hand, or at least should. So many Pauline letters follow the pattern of ‘God, Jesus, the Spirit, the gospel etc’ and then a word such as ‘therefore’… therefore here are the implications of the beliefs for ethics and lifestyle.