Year: 2024

A very big paradigm shift

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by Martin Scott
Posted in Theology

Maybe one of the biggest paradigm changes to consider would be as I try to describe below…

In our evangelical world there are some paradigms that are shifting such as a very helpful and necessary move away from this world is dispensable and salvation is a ticket to heaven with some kind of eternal celestial spiritual life at death / parousia to that of thinking of the fulfilment of the Genesis story being that of a ‘new heaven and new earth’, the restoration of creation. The former view is very Hellenistic (influenced by Greek philosophy) and lends itself to language such as ‘saving souls’, or ‘soul winning’.

If we push the shift even further to where the ekklesia, those in Christ through a conscious response to the Jesus of history, are more to be the redeeming community rather than the redeemed community where might that take us? Or to make that clearer rather than the task of the ‘church’ to be that of ‘saving souls’ but to work in the direction of the redemption / rebirth of the world. If that be the only emphasis we could well lose the wonderful aspect of how it is within community that we find healing for our ‘souls’, but without the shift of emphasis that I propose I think we will continue to move far away from the call of Abraham – the father of faith for us all – and thus the call for the nations of the earth to be blessed.

I consider that there is a major shift taking place and where the soil will settle after this shaking of all things is hard to see with all the current dust and debris. We cannot simply carry on as is and if we take the disciples’ prayer seriously then our eyes have to shift to the here and now so that it moves toward the there and then.

I am deeply grateful for the path I have come along. Yesterday a person brought me an article I wrote some 35+ years ago. I cringe when I read it – how to shape Christian community. Ever so clear but filled with a world view of opposition to the world with a drive of our task being to get ‘them’ in ‘here’! I am grateful for the path but the landscape changes as one travels. What one saw then is not what one sees later on the path, and the future will open new horizons and the future will give us sight beyond belief.

Ekklesia is being taught to embrace the world and be embedded in the world; we are being encouraged to stop trying (emphasis on trying) to save souls and be a witness (so what is different in my household to next door?) so that people see / hear Jesus and can respond. As they do the redeeming community can recognise and support their creational context and gifting.

A mess partly results. But maybe if my Hebrew was better (existed at all!) we might then consider something akin to the opening words of Scripture – when God (the redeeming community) began to create (participate in the work of the values of heaven being expressed on the earth) the whole thing was chaotic, without any real shape or content.

The above is not a theoretical paradigm shift but one that is being forced upon us (in the Western world). Christendom is over and I meet many people who quote to me how intellectuals are expressing how the Western world has been shaped by Judeo-Christian values and then hold forth hope for a return to that context. (I think I might adjust the viewpoint to ‘some Judeo-Christian values’ while ignoring others.) Regardless the challenge of faith is to be shaped by the future not by the past, and the next couple of decades will be the context for the transference of those of faith into the ‘field’ which is the world so that wheat and weeds can grow together for harvest.

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Forgive! Hey, slow down

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by Martin Scott
Posted in Theology

You got to forgive… so often so true as holding on to a grievance is not smart, and as is said bitterness is to drink of the poison one wants someone else to be drinking. But been thinking a bit lately – always dangerous I know!

I have been looking at the three big words that are used to describe the catch-all word ‘sin’ and the one I have focused on is ‘trespass’. Crossing boundaries, overstepping a line – that kind of meaning. Immediately after Matthew’s account of the disciples’ prayer he records Jesus as saying,

For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you, but if you do not forgive others, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses (Matt.6;14,15).

How do we trespass? There are the obvious ways – crossing a boundary that we should not… the ‘original’ sin is described by Paul in Rom. 8 as a trespass (paraptoma). Our ancestors crossed a boundary, ‘do not eat from the one forbidden tree’ – a critique of global history in that prohibition. We cross boundaries every time we seek to control / manipulate someone else, and there are many warnings in Scripture about moving boundary markers.

And the non-obvious ways, when we are being ever so good and our ‘kindness’ and ‘love’, so wanting the best for someone (cos we really know what is the best for them) we simply go too far. Paul said live at peace (and being a Jew he is thinking ‘shalom’) with all as far as is possible – sometimes the other party draws a line, with a ‘so far but no further’. To go beyond the line they draw – maybe that is a trespass?

I came back the other day to say to Gayle that I am challenged about a situation I am praying into, in that maybe I should stop praying about it and simply trust God that s/he is right in there and does not need any prayers that simply help settle any anxieties I have. Maybe to be prayerful I need to pray less about it. So easy to cross boundaries without realising it.

Forgive us our trespasses. Forgiveness. I like one of the uses of the word ‘forgive’. It was used in ancient Greek of the release of a boat to its journey. How about applying that to situations. Untie the situation / person and release them (thank God that s/he travels with them – after all s/he left the ‘garden’ with our ancestors). We can hold on too tight, not always to a wrong done to us, but to the ‘I am so important and vital and know what is best’ scenario.

Living a godly life seems not to be so much about being good as being made well.

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Is theology useful?

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by Simon Swift
Posted in Theology

Simon Swift (UK) is someone I met on Zoom and, like so many of us, in seeking to engage with the who and what of our context has explored what a biblically-informed faith and beliefs might look like. I look forward to reading them as they will be practical as well as provocative. Enjoy this first one!

So often one is given the impression that you must have an understanding of God packaged in a set of rules and facts. These facts defining the type of christian you are. Often labelled by this or that theology. This can constrain our ability to develop an understanding of God within the world we live in. Surely theology should be a tool to help us in our discovery of who God is and the on going story of humanity in God’s creation. In other words theology should be a useful guide.

Theology shapes what type of believer you are. It is often defined by the type of church you grew up in or was most exposed to when you became a believer. Yet a lot of Christians are unaware of where their beliefs come from and how they are born out of theological debate and argument. There are many different church movements and denominations promoting their own theologies as the truth, one wonders which one is right. We should not let theology be a form of christian identification and exclusion.

But what if theology was not meant to be defined in such a tribal way. Instead simply an attempt to be helpful in understanding God and our relationship with him. That these theologies are best understood as forming out of a context of those developing their knowledge of God and faith. A theology based on the Bible, understood through the lens of our circumstances and experience. This will mean that different generations will have a different take on how they interpret what they meet in the scriptures. Even our own experience, language and world view will mean we to have to do the work of developing a theology for our generation. For example, what the gospels meant for black slaves in the historical Americas compared with today’s inner city populations in the UK will be different. How do we in different circumstances and ages relate to God the Father or what does Jesus’ Death on the cross means for those living in the 21st century?

In the west the corporate economic system has struggled to deal with a changing world. The imperial powers have evolved out of industrial revolution to a digital technology driven system. The pressures have lead to the rise of populist politics, culture wars, and the power of social media. In the UK the speed of fake news transmitted around the world led to riots on the streets. Fortunately, what looked like an attempt to destabilise the newly elected government failed and came to nothing, but it has left a scar and the divisions in our society have been exposed. In these turbulent times what has Jesus’ journey to the cross have to say to us?

We do not have fake news, but the Good News. However, if we want to speak into our times and the people of our nations with this good news. We have to learn to interpret Jesus’ teaching, and what the passion of Christ is and able to do, in a way that modern people, whether boomers, x, y, or z generation can understand and see as meaningful to their circumstances. In short what does being set free mean in the modern world of consumerism and digital technology?

Sure you can answer that with a discussion about going to heaven or hell. But does it have any meaning to the people of today? To be honest, it doesn’t mean much to me. I’m a heaven down to earth kind of guy. I’d want to see heaven come down to earth in the here and now. When we meet Jesus for the first time we are helped by the holy spirit and find it a wonderful experience, but then comes the settling down as we go to church and are invited to read the Bible. That can be difficult without help and the cultural gap between us and the ancients is massive. Here theology can come to the rescue. But if the theology is old itself, we can find it difficult to align our own world view and be able to make it meaningful. I’m not saying theologies from older times are wrong, no, they where probably right, but for then. I just question whether they make sense now and do they answer the questions of today. Here is where scholars and academics can be a great benefit in helping us to understand the background to the development of the different theologies.

In many of the stories that fill the Bible we encounter people who often have to go on a journey, discovering who God is. Abraham is a good example. Looking for a fertility god he encounters the creator god. But it takes him a long time to learn this, to be able to comprehend the magnitude of the promise he is given. When we read his and other stories from the Jewish scriptures, do we get it, do we see the Father God of creation, of his son Jesus or do we just see an archetypal god of wrath and judgement?

In the gospels, as we follow the stories of the disciples, we see the change in their understanding. In particular Peter, his perception of Jesus and his relationship with him changes, their relationship strained and almost broken. Yet it was always about a living relationship that created a meaningful faith for Peter and a deep friendship between both of them.

Is theology of any use? I think so. Just as Jesus taught his disciples, taking them on a journey of discovering faith. So too we journey in our faith, we too have to grow in our relationship with the trinity and have our worldview impacted by the gospels. The theologies we have can help us in that journey. But for us to grow we must understand our theologies are never complete. That some of our understanding will be wrong. We must be able to hold such theories lightly, letting go of them if needs be. There is such a thing as bad theology. We must temper our knowledge with love, gaining wisdom to avoid theologies that bring hate and division.

We do need theology, allowing it to inform us, giving us a good foundation to build our faith on. However, we must remember our lived out relationship with God, the Son and Holy Spirit within creation and expressed in our lives will teach us: there is always more than we know and the adventure of life is to find out.

Our theologies should be capable of equipping us to speak in our modern language, into our world, to our times, bringing the freedom of the Gospels and the kingdom of heaven down to earth. Just one word of warning, the Gospels are not conservative; they are radical. Jesus has a habit of upsetting the apple cart. If we want to speak into our world, are we ready for that, those of you living in the western world?

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In and ‘out’ (Paradigm)

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by Martin Scott
Posted in Theology

Everybody is out except for those who are ‘one of us’ – sinner’s prayer and all that goes with it… (sub-title: change of status and heart not changed!!! OK sub-title is a little cheeky but it is my take on the absolute separation of justification and sanctification). Really? Everyone out except?

[W]e have our hope set on the living God, who is the Savior of all people, especially of those who believe (1 Tim. 4:10).

The Saviour of ALL? The usual way of responding to this is to say Jesus is potentially the Saviour of all people and the actual Saviour of those who believe, but does that do justice to the language? Let’s see how that works with a few other texts:

When you come, bring the cloak that I left with Carpus at Troas, also the books, and above all (especially) the parchments (1 Tim. 4:13).

[L]et us work for the good of all and especially for those of the family of faith (Gal. 6:10).

In all three occasions the same word is used (μάλιστα: malista). Bring the parchments and as many books as possible; do good to those of faith, but don’t stop there and do good also to everyone else; Saviour of all? There is a distinction between those ‘of the household of faith’ and others, but is the distinction so strong that there is a clear ‘in’ and ‘out’?

So a paradigm shift that does not leave me in the camp of ‘all are condemned except…’ nor in the ‘all are saved’ camp, is to suggest a shift from ‘all are lost except those who have received Jesus’ to ‘all are saved except for those who have rejected Jesus’. Or to put the paradigm into two affirmative statements:

  • All who receive Jesus are ‘saved’.
  • All who reject Jesus are ‘lost’.

Two affirmative statements that do not a) cleanly divide humanity – what about those who have not received nor rejected Jesus? and b) leave any judgement in the hands of God. We could push it further with if to receive Jesus one needs to hear Jesus (Ro. 10:14 ‘whom they have not heard’) what is the situation when someone has simply heard facts about Jesus – and maybe not accurate ones – and then asked to receive that Jesus… have they ‘rejected’ the Jesus of my presentation, but not necessarily rejected the One who truly is Jesus? Evangelising can be easy (and very off-putting to many) but witnessing is so much more challenging – witnessing demands that my life tells a story of the hope that is within me, it touches my life-style, bank account, friendships… the whole of life.

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Condemn them all – or encourage one and all (Paradigm)

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by Martin Scott
Posted in Theology

The term ‘total depravity’ might not mean ‘totally depraved’ but rather every aspect of humanity is affected, though when Scriptures such as ‘all your righteousness is as filthy rags’ are quoted to defend this belief we might as well use the term totally depraved, as it effectively means all are write offs.

Within Judaism – ancient and modern – there was no acceptance that all humans who entered the world were born in a state of sin, neither was there a widespread belief that ‘good works’ were the basis for salvation. An overemphasis on ‘original sin’ and a belief that faith in Jesus (grace) was set in opposition to a Jewish view of obedience to the law (good works) as being the path to salvation has twisted the good news that is in Jesus.

Sin… BIG word. It is very simplistic to give a one word definition to what is meant by that word, and we would need to add such words as ‘transgression’ and ‘iniquity’ as well… so having said it would be simplistic let me fall straight into that trap!! At the heart of sin is a failure to be the person / people God intended. Or succinctly it is a failure to be human.

The Bible does not easily lend itself to being categorised and we all know what it is like to have everything sorted and then discover whole passages that spill out of our category that we have created! Accumulating verses (and yes I am aware Paul does that at times!) can fail us and we miss the overall thrust. In context so many condemnatory texts are critiquing the sin of religion, so all your (religiously defined) righteousness does not cut it (Is. 64:6). The Law is summed up in our response to God and our response to humanity, for the gap between humanity and God is on the one hand infinite and on the other hand so small. Humanity is never and never will become God, but was intended to be in the image of God, and for those who are willing to focus on the face of Jesus the transformation is taking place. The miracle of the incarnation, the HUMAN embodying DEITY, is so world changing. I see no necessity to believe in a literal Adam and Eve, but the incarnation means that the IMAGE of God has been among us, has been on this planet. God tabernacled among us, the seed planted then in one location among one people as the sign that there will be a tabernacling among us – all people and universally – at that coming time. God can be seen! And potentially seen in the eyes of those who are human. If we see them as ‘human’, not as objects, we are beginning to see God. How we treat our neighbour (and who is our neighbour continues to be a question that demands we answer it with an ever increasing circle) was always at the heart of the law, and was at the heart of the life of Jesus and the size of his circle was the inevitable reason why he had to be stopped. His life sacrificed for the preservation of the building that drew a small circle.

I consider it is not for us to make decisions as to who is in (the few like us!!) and who is out (the rest!) – that is for the merciful God to work out. It is not for us to privately (or publicly) condemn all that is done that is for the benefit of others, but it is for us to encourage every action and attitude that brings humanity into view, every response that sees the ‘other’ person / group as worthy of our engagement and interchange.

Paradigm shifts – not from wishing everyone could find faith in God – but away from condemnation to finding personal repentance to increase the circle of those who are my neighbour.

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Up? No! Change direction – down (Paradigm)

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by Martin Scott
Posted in Theology

Going to heaven when I die… well probably that is what occurs but even on that I am not 100% sure; those who die in Christ are in Christ and their resurrection is sure – that seems to be the central focus, so maybe life after death followed by embodied life (resurrection) at the parousia… or maybe some sort of ‘soul sleep’. There is not a set of lights clearly pointing to one or the other, cos the focus is elsewhere.

And then the latest news on the (secret) rapture is it has been cancelled due to the lack of any biblical text suggesting this view! Again the direction in this belief is up and to a better life, it presents the hope as an escape from here – not the biblical hope. Jesus prayed that God would not take his disciples ‘out of here’, and I don’t see where that prayer has changed!

Of course rapture (and the bigger ‘dispensationalist’) teaching is recent – 1830ish and any attempt to push it earlier has not been successful. And to push it back into the NT? Goes completely against, not simply the text, but the Hebraic view that shows us that all redemptive movement is from heaven to earth. Creation and its renewal is to follow the freedom of those who are in Christ. The restoration does not end with people singing happy songs but with the trees of the fields clapping their hands for through the resurrection Jesus is the firstborn of all creation, thus God has set ‘as a plan for the fullness of time, to gather up all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth.’

Freedom for all creation, fulfilment of what began in Genesis finds a wonderful fulfilment in Revelation when God makes all things new (not makes all new things) so that John saw a new heaven and a new earth, not the burning up of a bad old world.

Movement, from heaven to earth, hence ‘let your kingdom come’ and not ‘let us depart to your kingdom’. It is here (location) and will be in fullness then (time) but in our time and location we pray and act for their to be inbreakings of that kingdom, signs that the age to come is not simply to be experienced in the sweet bye and bye and in some distant future.

We might also suggest a movement from ‘in’ to ‘out’. We have had a movement of ‘bring them in’ so that they with us can go ‘up’. Once we live with ‘the movement is to be from heaven to earth’ there is a growing desire that we are placed ‘out’ and among not involved in dropping the draw bridge, rushing out, bringing some in and then making sure the walls are not subsequently breached.

The Gospel is good news. The ultimate message of hope for this world, not the final message of judgement on this world. If it truly connects with us we can hear the words the angels proclaimed:

Glory to God in the highest heaven,
and on earth peace among those whom he favors!

Not glory to Caesar and all such rulers, great and small, but to the God whose habitation is in the highest heaven, and whose presence, peace, shalom, well being is among those who are favoured on earth… Carriers of shalom will change environments… from heaven to earth.

Footnote… the language and imagery of ‘caught up to meet the Lord in the air’ (the central ‘rapture’ Scripture) is drawn from the world of that day and has nothing to do with ‘going somewhere’! It uses the same language as in Acts 28:15,

The brothers and sisters from there, when they heard of us, came as far as the Forum of Appius and Three Taverns to meet us. On seeing them, Paul thanked God and took courage.

They came to meet Paul in order to accompany him back into Rome… the imagery of 1 Thessalonians is drawn from the arrival (parousia) of the emperor to the city, when those dignitaries who welcomed him would go out of the city to ‘meet him on the way to the city’ and enter the city with him as those who represent the emperor. Whether Paul thinks there is a literal going up or not is incidental… the whole movement is down. There is no disappearance to heaven, and it all happens in the blink of an eye so I doubt he even thinks of any physical movement, certainly no one in Thessalonica would think – yippee the rapture and we get to go to the celestial sing along while it all goes wrong down here!

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Personal or corporate (paradigm)?

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by Martin Scott
Posted in Theology

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.

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Jesus is my God (paradigm)

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by Martin Scott
Posted in Theology

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.

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Paradigms

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by Martin Scott
Posted in Theology

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.

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Keep the Gospel pure

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by Martin Scott
Posted in Biblical Observations

Paul comes across as somewhat arrogant (I don’t think that is the reality) in Galatians with his ‘I got this revelation from no-one, but it came direct from heaven’, then does say he eventually went up to Jerusalem to make sure he was not ‘running in vain’. There he met those who had status(!) and one could certainly perceive that there were significant differences between them (maybe James in particular) and himself in their understanding of the Gospel, or at least in terms of the application of the Gospel. One was a ‘no law involved here’ and the other ‘obedience to the law’. It must have resulted in some interesting debates and discussions – maybe making the Old Perspective / New Perspective / Beyond the old and new perspectives look a little tamer than what was present in those earlier years of developing an understanding of the core elements of the Good News!

They asked only one thing, that we remember the poor, which was actually what I was eager to do (Gal. 2:10).

ONLY ONE THING… of all the things that could have been said… hence there is something so core here in keeping the Gospel pure. Referring back to the second dream I had on AI and my ‘opportunity’ (read ‘nightmare’!) of the debate at Oxford University on opposing the supposition that the new, and improved, humanity will be through following the path to singularity (basically chips implanted to increase the access to knowledge and wisdom into some key people). As I meditate on the dream I knew my defence had to be that the new humanity is only modelled in Jesus who was incarnated in Galilee of the Gentiles, the new humanity has to exhibit greater humility and be incarnated among the ‘poor’, disenfranchised and marginalised.

Defining the ‘poor’ is not so easy – even the two versions of the Beatitudes have ‘poor’ or ‘poor in spirit’, but there is a constant contrast between the ‘rich’ and the ‘poor’ in Scripture. The difference between 10C prophets and the 8C prophets (BC/BCE) is marked – the rebuke to the rich (‘cows of Bashan’!!) comes through so strongly. And archaeology tells us the contrast in housing over those 200 years is very marked – signifying the increase of the divide between the wealthy and those who were on the margins; in Israel leading to the critique of those who were ‘at ease in Zion’.

The true fast, the essence of the Torah at the social level was to care for the homeless, the widow and orphan. I had a challenging Zoom call this morning with a good friend and we were ruminating on the above issue of ‘do not forget the poor’. Carl responded with there has been a shift in so many evangelicals, from being a blessing to the poor to being those who unconditionally support and bless Israel. The supply of weapons has so far accounted for the killing of 3% of the Christian population of Gaza… sobering, and if ever there was a manifestation of the poor Gaza is one such place.

Refusing to give unconditional support for the right of Israel is not to be anti-Semitic (and I have some Jewish blood in me according to my DNA test!) but is to ask what would a biblical prophet say at this time to the nation of Israel!

Hold on to your hat… these posts are perspectives. Part of the great unravelling that I see is the result of the shift (if ever we were centred there, so maybe not a shift involved at all) from ‘remember the poor’ to ‘those who bless Israel will be blessed’ – with a very narrow meaning applied to what blessing Israel entails.

In what we see unravel in many situations we will also be able to ‘follow the money’. Money does not mean blessing – Jesus hit that one on the head, provoking the disciples in the dialogue that we read in Matthew 19

“Truly I tell you, it will be hard for a rich person to enter the kingdom of heaven. Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.” When the disciples heard this, they were greatly astounded and said, “Then who can be saved?” But Jesus looked at them and said, “For mortals it is impossible, but for God all things are possible.”

Contrary to popular teaching there is NO evidence for a small gate in Jerusalem at the time called the ‘eye of the needle’ gate. So Jesus is using a pretty strong illustration in what he says. The disciples respond from the perspective of – if the rich (those blessed by God) are not saved there is no hope for anyone else! Two world views… Jesus did not forget the poor.

Ah well, a perspective I am ruminating over!

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Perspectives