Month: July 2026

Reflections on the news?

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by Martin Scott
Posted in Justice

It has been a long time since I have posted something here but I still remember how to get my fingers to put letters on a screen. Gayle and I are away in Galicia – Celtic lands in the north west of Spain with a coastline that is stunning and could be found in one of the Celtic lands of the UK.

Away from the heat of Oliva (at least there is some sea air there) or the altitude and heat of Madrid, and for now away from the wild fires of Spain and France. And away to reflect, seek to align for whatever is coming up, to read (I am just finishing ‘Christ in the Rubble: Faith, the Bible, and the Genocide in Gaza’ – I will at some point come back to this book).

(Wild fires in Spain – we are top left currently… got to get to the East Coast above Alicante. It can be done but which route?)

The news… the world…

We often comment that there are a billion (or more) worlds. The old request that we walk in someone else’s shoes and then we can talk with them. Or in the words of the 13th Century Sufi mystic and poet

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I will meet you there.

There are rights and wrongs, but Rumi is calling us to move beyond the egocentric position that fuels scapegoating, and calling for us to ‘meet’ at that place of listening.

I usually dip into a couple of news-sites each day but if I think by doing so I have caught up on the news I would be very much mistaken. The ‘news’ as Malcolm Muggeridge said is ‘not the news but an extraction of the news’. The news in Gaza is different to the news about Gaza… and the absence of the any news concerning Gaza on the majority of the front pages of news-sites is something different again. Today the wild fires in Spain and France dominate the sites I read. Important and interesting for me; we have to consider what route we take to get home. Inconvenient, an adventure, maybe will add a few hours to our journey; but today we eat, we sleep, we keep dry and… Gaza means nothing. The person I see outside the supermarket with his (true or otherwise – probably true) sign that he would like help to feed his family of four and would I consider buying some eggs or pasta for him. I have not walked in his shoes. His world is not mine.

Those fleeing the wild fires, losing everything – another world. Those who ignore the science because it has economic ramifications – another world.

Where is God in the (literal or otherwise) rubble of the multiple worlds we live in? Where is the devil (however understood) in those multiple worlds? Where am I complicit in those worlds? All three questions are relevant.

‘What about this person?’ – said Peter to Jesus after the three-fold questioning dialogue. Paraphrasing Jesus, he said ‘nothing to do with you’.

What am I / Gayle to do in this next phase? OOOOFFFF – that is a question.

Whatever it is it needs to contribute to the future and to help one of the billions of worlds out there to move to a better place – even if it is the smallest of those billions of worlds. ‘You did it to me; you visited me… you gave a cup of cold water in my name…’

Interlude – all the pressures of (privileged) life suddenly breaks in:

I am sitting here and notice the front right tyre of our van is not looking good. I look again 10 minutes later – no we have a puncture! And we are on soft camping ground so no way can we put a jack under the van… and the tyre is sinking and deflating into the mud. And then the rain – did I say RAIN? So disastrous – just don’t use that description to the billions today living on or below the poverty line (and when I used the word ‘disastrous’ did I mention we ate a roast chicken last night? And a definite irrelevant aside – we can cook a whole chicken on a few coconut husk charcoals on the COBB – if I were an agent the number of people who come over to say – what is that? – to whom I could sell one would make me wonderfully well off in pocket).

(End of interlude – written after the ‘disastrous’ above event.)

A Jesus lens on the one big world we all live within… now this site is ‘Perspectives’ and there certainly is a ‘field’ beyond my perspectives but…

There are some big issues that are being highlighted:

  • Feminism – simply the push for women and men to stand together on the same level field. (I put at the top of this post that in spite of not writing for some time that I still know how to put my fingers to the keyboard. Back in the day anyone using a keyboard was female serving the demands of those who were male (typists / secretaries); along comes technology and suddenly the fingers are male; cook in the kitchen; but Michelin stars on offer and the gender changes… the deciding factors – visibility and money. This was central to our push over 4 months in Sicily.
  • And currently there is such a push to keep patriarchy and misogyny alive. Test the armed forces for their level of testosterone? Really? Those are the attempts at a falling Imperial (Western) system to stay alive.
  • War. Some time back Gayle had (another) dream where she dialogued with a world leader. This great peacemaker(!!!) said that there would only be one more war that he had to initiate and then peace would come. Gayle said to him (yes, as per normal a ‘him’) if you go to war it will only lead to another one. The dream… and the reality is the one more has led to another one already and neither are over.
  • Palestinians – offered on the altar as the atonement for the anti-Semitism of the West. (Gayle had a dream some years back of the Palestinian situation (prior to Gaza) and a response to it… eventually it led to the possibility of a new economic system. Sadly in the dream those wedded to Zionism could not go there.) Anti-Zionism is NOT anti-Semitic.
  • There are many ‘isms’ that are being challenged. Scripture does not primarily address the oppressed to take over and sort out the oppressors, but it does address the oppressors. Maybe I am one of those… even if not, I am one of the privileged so Scripture does address me, and it comes with a metanoia (think again) command / invitation.
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Do not ‘carry’ the Lord’s name ’emptily’

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by Martin Scott
Posted in Theology

The third commandment telling Israel not to bear the name of the Lord in vain is pretty profound. As indicated in the title of this blog I want to carry it a long way further than using the name of the Lord in a swearing context, and certainly beyond those who call out OMG.

To bear the name of the Lord is parallel to that of the high priest who bore (carried) the names of the tribe on his clothing – he carried them, he represented them before God; hence the core of this commandment is to represent God. Jesus faithfully ‘carried’ God’s name (character)

I made your name known to them, and I will make it known, so that the love with which you have loved me may be in them and I in them (Jn. 17:26).

Even AI is smarter than to reduce this commandment to swearing. Here is a summary that AI comes up with:

  • Hypocrisy & Misrepresentation: Claiming to be a follower of the Lord, but acting in ways that directly contradict His teachings.
  • False Prophecy: Saying “God told me” when He did not, or claiming divine authority for one’s own desires.
  • Covenant Breaking: Making vows or promises to God but failing to follow through.
  • Superstition or Magic: Using God’s name lightly as a charm or to cast spells.
  • Careless Speech: Using God’s name in a thoughtless, casual manner.

Too much of that takes place and my slight following of what is getting shaken at the moment is to do with where the name of the Lord has been carried emptily / hypocritically / in vain. I was somewhat impacted this morning when reading about Babylon (representative of all Imperial structures) in Isaiah. The spirit of Babylon is that of self preservation of the structure at all costs – hence people will be sacrificed

I am, and there is no one besides me; I shall not sit as a widow or know the loss of children… I am, and there is no one besides me. (Is.47:8, 10).

That is the voice of Babylon – we will survive or ever and at all costs. This is why I have advocated that something akin to a corporate exorcism is needed probably once a year, even to structures that have served well. The snake on the pole was the means of healing, and then became something that had to be destroyed. If we do not do this what served become what we serve, and back we go to deny that first commandment.

The part that impacted me this morning was the sudden demise of Babylon. Took years to become ‘eternal’ in spirit and attitude, but in a short space of time the demise comes,

But evil shall come upon you, which you cannot charm away; disaster shall fall upon you, which you will not be able to ward off, and ruin shall come on you suddenly, of which you know nothing (Is. 47:11).

We all know that sadly there are those who genuinely are put off God because of us lot (and some who use that as an excuse). We carry the name of the Lord… but how do we carry it?

One further aspect struck me this morning. We know that Jesus became of no reputation, and did so as he was ‘in the form of God’ – he was like God. The humility of God. Ever been spoken against? Be slow to defend. Yes, we have a responsibility to do what we can so that we do not (actively or passively) leave a falsehood, but it cannot be from the motivation of self-defence, of preserving any reputation. To do so would be to take the name of the Lord in vain.

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Evolving theology

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by Martin Scott
Posted in Theology

I have the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. I know I do cos I can make every Scripture back me up. Really?

I have always believed in God starting out because I was told so, then experientialy, but over the years I have become an ‘atheist’ concerning a certain presentation of ‘God’, aligning myself with those who say ‘I cannot believe in a God who…’ In other words my faith in who God is has evolved – with Scripture, experience and observation needing to line up in what I consider a more coherent way.

Proof texting – taking a text in one place and lining it up with a text elsewhere (and often from two different authors writing into two different contexts) – is popular in many circles. I do not mind when someone is writing a theology and then quoting verses that illustrate what they have written, but at times other blatant texts that would disagree with what has been written are ignored (I , of course, never would do such a thing).

I consider that there is an evolution of understanding we can find within Scripture – hence at the two important areas of ‘who is God?’ and ‘who is humanity?’ we have to have a Jesus-lens. He alone, in visible human form was God, and alone was ‘truly’ human (like us fully human; unlike us truly human).

On other issues there will always be room for the ‘agnostic’ to find space. I believe in a personal devil and demons, or maybe I should write I think I believe in that direction – but am really open to it being a different reality. One could suggest that the world of the New Testament was somehow naive, but we do read in Matthew a clear distinction with those who were demonised from those who suffered from seizures (Matt. 4:24). Maybe they knew better than us – where everything is demonic or nothing is demonic! (My colleague, Johnny Barr, who some thought saw demons behind every bush, worked with a psychiatrist – both recognising their distinctive giftings.)

An evolution. The serpent in the garden seems to be equated to the devil (Rev. 12:9), but in Genesis we see traces of the serpent as wisdom which was a common persepctive in the ancient world, so much so that Jesus instructed the disciples to be as ‘wise’ as serpents. The snake on the pole to be looked at also pulls on that tradition of wisdom and healing.

We read that God is attributed as the one who ‘incited David’ to count the people,

Again the anger of the Lord was kindled against Israel, and he incited David against them, saying, “Go, count the people of Israel and Judah.” (2 Sam. 24:1)

Oh no says the later writers / editors as by then they all knew that God was not the God who tempts. They attribute the temptation elsewhere:

Satan stood up against Israel and incited David to count the people of Israel. 2 So David said to Joab and the commanders of the army, “Go, number Israel, from Beer-sheba to Dan, and bring me a report, so that I may know their number.” (2 Chron. 21:1,2).

Early writers had Satan in heaven as the accuser (e.g. Job) and as part of the counsel of the sons of God. That might well be a description of ‘reality’ and maybe it changed with the devil falling from heaven when the disciples went out proclaiming the kingdom of God (or maybe when there was warfare in heaven between Michael and his angels and the devil and his angels). Maybe reality or the story-telling way of seeking to explain the reality that we all experience.

The devil led Jesus… and yet, we are told, God cannot look on sin! (In this situation I think it is the latter assertion that needs to be critiqued with a God-incarnate manifestly eating with sinners!). Scripture must challenge our beliefs as much as it shapes our beliefs.

In it all we can be tempted to put a finger into a text and then make all the others fit what we read in one place… or maybe we let them free stand and allow for an evolution of understanding.

I think the latter. Loose ends. And seeking to bring my practice into line with the practice of Scripture. If demons and the devil do not exist as personal entities we witness that Jesus responded in a way that suggests they do. I am allowed to be agnostic in belief but not so in practice.

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