Category: Personal Perspectives

A random set of ‘nots’

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by Martin Scott
Posted in Personal Perspectives

What do I believe, well here is a set of random ‘I do not believe’. And on each point I could be wrong!

I do not believe God is outside of time. Contrary to what is often said… in my humble opinion not shaped by a Jewish approach to time. Time is not primarily a scientific measurement but a necessary element ‘attached’ to personality. God awaits the future! With great anticipation.

I do not believe in ‘everlasting punishment / burning in a lake filled with sulphur’. I propose that the imagery used is of the burning up of Sodom and Gomorrah, imagery of total destruction with the smoke of its torment rising up. The destruction was ‘eternal’ – not open to change. So I land on ‘eternal punishment’ not ‘eternal punishing’.

I do not believe in predestination in the sense that it is often used, i.e. predestined to salvation. Every redemptive result is in Christ. Jesus is the ‘eternal elect one’ – anyone who is in Jesus is therefore elect from all eternity. My destiny… if in Christ then his destiny is mine (predestined).

I do not believe in God punished Jesus on the cross. I certainly have more work to do in my understanding of the cross, but there is no appeasement taking place there. God does not need to the cross in order to be able to forgive; we need the cross in order to find the path to forgiveness, and I think we need to back away from simply projecting what human forgiveness looks like on to God. The cross brings freedom from the powers, and that includes sin and death as a power (maybe the two centrally and united powers?).

I do not believe that salvation is a ‘ticket to heaven’. It certainly means finding a home in God at a familial level and becoming another means by which that wonderful era of the new creation can manifest to a level here.

I do not believe that God is male. This should be obvious, sadly not at a practical level. If God is not male we need to rethink so much. And what if (and this I believe) Jesus post Ascension is no longer male… OK I know I was supposed to be writing on what I don’t believe and I am in danger of straying just a tad, so will stop this one there.

I do not believe in a 6 day creation with a resulting young earth. Wonderful myth. Powerful myth. Deeply profound myth. World-changing myth. I think we should read it as (my opinion) intended so that it comes to us powerfully.

I do not believe that God instructed wholesale destruction. OH my this one challenges me and my reading of Scripture.

I do not believe the future is fixed in the sense of a set of events. A God of power could indeed do that… but a God whose very being is love (and all other attributes defined by what love, true love means) will always work with all possibilities to the one goal that we know as the ‘restoration of all things’. Yes, I do not dot all the ‘i’s’ and cross all the ‘t’s’ when it comes to omnipotence and omniscience. For me takes a ‘bigger’ God to act as I suggest. A more knowing God!! And if I am to image this God at any level down goes control and up goes love… and patience without losing hope.

I do not believe that the opposite of ‘election’ (church / those in Christ) automatically means damnation for others.

I do not believe every prayer is answered as we would like. Too many other factors involved! I do not elevate suffering, but how we respond to the setbacks becomes a great help to undoing the slavery that resulted to our sin (the whole of creation is groaning… God works all things together for good with those who love God and flow in God’s purposes). We do not exalt suffering… but it is the path to glory.

I do not believe in a millennial rule on earth, all too symbolic for me in a wonderful book of ‘cartoons’ (nearest genre we have to apocalyptic literature). One day the restoration of all creation withe fullness of God’s three-in-one presence with us. A permanent home for us… and for God.

I do not believe all of this is to burn up and I hope that we don’t simply limp out of here rescued by God. The last part expresses a hope that we can see some evidence of ‘new creation’ realities manifest around us. [And added to the last point, I am not post-millennialist either… just focused on ‘on earth as in heaven’.]

I do not believe that all those ‘outside of Christ’ are therefore devoid of the Spirit. The Spirit manifests in many ways, we who have responded to Jesus at a personal level are to manifest the Spirit as ‘the Spirit of Jesus’.

I do not believe that everything outside of the Christian faith is meaningless, simply that in Jesus is the ‘fullness’.

I could go on. And I could be wrong. This is why I have not signed a ‘statement of faith’. The Christian faith has a core to it – how could it not as it is centred on a Person? Outside of the core the variations are enormous. And I am supposed to find Scripture ‘useful’ and instructive, and to guide me to the Centre.

I hope you enjoyed the cursory run through. Please resist sending me a statement of faith – I am not smart enough to critique or agree with it!

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Of this I am sure

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by Martin Scott
Posted in Personal Perspectives

I did say that these posts will be somewhat random, jumping from one area to another… I read today of a writer who described himself as ‘a post-classical-trinitarian-wondering-what-comes-next’… On a number of issues I am post-this-and-not-sure… That’s how it is and I think it is really healthy. (I think) there is one strong anchor point for me in my faith and it is the resurrection of Jesus.

I find the resurrection so incredible it just has to be for real. The central claim – that could have been repudiated – was that his body is no longer in the tomb. It was not that he is alive beyond death, for such a claim would not have meant very much particularly in that early Jewish context. Resurrection, a hope that was a predominant hope among Jews, was expected to happen in the future for the righteous (and the unrighteous?) and would mark that ‘the end’ had come. The claim that Jesus had been raised from the dead was very divisive in the early Jewish context. It was not so much a declaration of a new faith, but of a new era. I think this is why the term ‘this generation’ had such a strong temporal warning element to it in the early (Jewish) context of the book of Acts.

The challenge for us is we have not had a visitation from the Risen Christ (even a direct visitation from Jesus is it is from the Ascended Christ) and so our faith is based on those eye-witness reports. But I find the context so compelling. How on earth would the message of ‘Jesus and the resurrection” (Acts 17:18, ‘he was telling the good news about Jesus and the resurrection’) have gained any level of traction. People did not rise from the dead, certainly not after being crucified and buried! (Resurrection not being that of the order of Lazarus (resuscitation) but permanent and in Jesus’ case with both discontinuity and continuity of physicality.) People did not rise, but the message takes root and in one city after another in the Roman empire people came to believe. They did not add ‘Jesus’ in as another god into their pantheon but belief in Jesus nullifed belief in all other gods, and put the recipients of this new faith in conflict with the whole Imperial setting. If there was no substance behind the claim that ‘he is risen’ there would have been no response within the Jewish culture, forget the ‘ends of the earth’.

I believe in the resurrection, and it marks Jesus out not as a ‘son of God’ but as the son of God (each Caesar was declared the divine son of the previous Caesar who had been divinised – the claim for Jesus, made by Paul in the letter to the believers in the capital is very poignant).

Belief in the resurrection has implications. Time being one of them. A new era is here now. That calls for sight at a different level, for without sight at that level it is evident that there is no new era present. It calls for a place to work from as much as a place to work toward. What does the new era consist of? No more tears, no more death (and decay). We can fight the old disorder or work from the new. I read with great appreciation the comments Ann makes on some of the posts. She knows more about climate change and crisis than most people I know and she of all people could be hopeless. I am sure her hopes are challenged many times, but her approach (and I hope I am reflecting it accurately) is that we are where we are, in that sense the old world has passed there is a new one here now. In the new one how can we respond in a way that we don’t simply grieve what is gone but within this context work for the future, for the next and subsequent generations. The resurrection of Jesus has much to say about the environment for Jesus is the first born of all creation – no burning up… and in the same way that at the return of Jesus that which is physically present will be transformed, so with those alive and that which is alive.

Inbreakings, irruptions from heaven. Disruptions, outbreaks. All of that become possible, and both together. Heaven (as a symbol of the new era) can break in. But that has to mean that the old gives way to the new. I think there is too much prayer for ‘heaven to invade earth’ without the corresponding commitment for ‘earth’ (as symbolic of the way things are) to give way. The resurrection of Jesus is not a simple add on that enhances this life but also displaces / transforms all values that we have been taught are normal.

It is my anchor point. In the light of that how do I live, for beliefs can be less than what is considered ‘orthodox’ but it seems that actions and behaviour are so important.

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What a book

Not as clear as I would like

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by Martin Scott
Posted in Personal Perspectives

From as far back as I can remember I was taught (ordered) to read my Bible. Growing up with the King James version I learned by heart some key texts. I now realise that Scripture is not as inherently transparent as one would like to think, and I could well have done without the archaic language, another level of obscurity being added.

Not as clear as one would like. But why would I want it clear? Probably to satisfy my desire for certainty. So much that is unclear and a few verses that (ok quite a few) I wish were not in there. And the other side so much that is clear, clear in terms of behaviour and values. ‘Bless those who curse you… offences will come… love your enemy…’ Clear. Some things very clear and other aspects unclear. That should say a lot in itself. The ones I want clear are tied to what do I believe and the ones that are already clear relate to my attitudes and actions. ‘All Scripture is God-breathed’, we read, and ‘is… useful’. What a great word, ‘useful’. Useful to guide us in life, not to fill us with knowledge.

I like scholarship that gives us background that helps us make sense of what we read… and I do not like scholarship that comes up with something new that undermines what I wanted the text to mean. What a wonderfully annoying book.

I guess the bottom line is we are not a people of the book, after all in the NT era they did not have what we term the Bible, even what we call the OT was not a fixed set of books – Jesus probably read most of what we have… and a few others, such as the book of Enoch, which is a late piece of writing that the name Enoch was attached to to give it some weight! (And in our canon we have a reference to the book of Enoch, with the writer seeming to accept that it actually recorded what Enoch ‘the tenth from Adam’ said.)

I don’t think I am simply a product of the Enlightenment when I say that I am sure there is ‘truth’ in the sense of facts and factual statements, but I think also there is probably some room in God to be barking up the wrong tree theologically… the judgement will always be with regard to what I did not with regard to what I know. A freedom that has boundaries, a freedom to follow Christ. I might (where did the word might come from in this sentence?) think Calvinists are imposing a system on Scripture, but God does not divide the world between Calvinists and ‘the others’. The cross and cruciform living is where the divide comes: and I need to be on the right side of that divide.

I am deeply pragmatic. I accept the books I have – 66 of them – as the canon I read and work from. I don’t pause to think that it is inerrant, nor the only possible canon. That for some would paint me as inevitably going off track from the beginning. But what about my name’s sake: Martin Luther, he had serious doubts about Hebrews, James, Jude and Revelation? So I drop back to the pragmatic position. These books have stood the test of time and I have enough in there to work with!

I read a progression, not a linear progression, but nevertheless something unfolding with the revelation of God being ultimately in personal not written form. Jesus being the ‘word’ of God, the express image of the invisible God. Paul’s letters might appear earlier than the Gospels did in written form, but Paul’s Gospel has to be read from the Gospels, not vice versa.

Disputes are (for me) clear within Scripture, some naughty texts dropped in by later ‘editors’ as if they were part of an earlier belief… but all inviting me into the dialogue as to what I believe. I cannot choose to believe whatever I wish and disregard what I read in the texts, but I also have to interrogate certain texts in the light of others, and particularly in the light of what is revealed in and through Jesus.

Scripture seems to allow me to choose a track. Take kingship for example. It seems that Kinship is predominantly approved of (‘there was no king in the land…’) but also we read the very clear exposé that in choosing a king the vote was against God. David as ‘a person after my own heart’ was chosen to end kingship, and as that choice was not made, we read that on the cross above Jesus was nailed the term ‘king of the Jews’. That is how I read it. I could be wrong. But choice is what God seems to give. And my choice has to be guided not primarily by my intellect but by the same choice that was there from the beginning: ‘knowledge (of good and evil)’ or ‘life’. And that means I could (and in that sense probably often do) get it wrong. But what do we mean by ‘wrong’? That kinda ties with the most major way of getting something wrong is to dehumanise – the core of ‘sin’, which Paul affirms that we have all sinned and come short (not of standards as per law) of the glory of God.

I find the book difficult, obscure, clear, inviting, but would certainly be at quite a loss if it was taken from me, at a loss because I lose sight of Jesus all too easily, and even when I get frustrated with what I read there is a constant flow that pushes me to Jesus, the ultimate and final word.

Labels are challenging. I am a Christian but not like… I am an evangelical but not like… I am charismatic but distance myself from… I would find it hard to sign certain creedal statements as I would have to say ‘but what do you mean by that?’, but the central element that shapes me (or at least I like to claim it does) is the centrality of the life, death, resurrection of Jesus; that Jesus is unique, set apart from all other members of the human race; that Jesus was and is God incarnate who came to set us free from captivity; and secondly, that my beliefs are shaped by what I read. What I understand of what I read can evolve (and devolve) but it always has to align with what is central.

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Pondering on my core beliefs

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by Martin Scott
Posted in Personal Perspectives

It is many years ago I wrote a series of blogs on ‘Scotty still believes’ and thought I would have another go at writing about my convictions, that which shapes my perspectives and (I hope) impacts how I act, speak and behave. The practical outworking is the scary part for we all know (of) people who boldly proclaim how orthodox they are (what they believe) but their everyday ethical behaviour is a denial of that. In Jesus there was no separation of the two – he was the truth, the reality.

[Not simply to be provocative, but to keep pushing toward the boundaries let me suggest that this does not mean everything Jesus believed and said was ‘true’. He did not have the education that we have received, maybe he would have thought the earth was the centre of the universe, that there was a literal Adam and Eve, that Jonah was historical etc. Maybe not. I put that in here as ‘getting it right’ does not mean we are communicators of the truth; I am certainly wrong on some of my convictions – the number of historical and current Christians who would disagree with me on many points mean that I am in the minority, hence I would be foolish to think I have the truth! However, the bigger challenge is not what I believe, but who I am. Paul said ‘follow me’ and even he had to qualify it with ‘as I follow Christ’. Jesus as the truth is pointing far beyond his words.]

In lockdown I wrote four small books under the overall title of ‘explorations in theology’ (all four are available at: https://bozpublications.com . I started with ‘Humanising the Divine’ so let me explain why. Theology when written almost always starts with ‘God’. Then very soon comes the Christology part and the wrestling with the two natures of Jesus. I object to that approach for Jesus placed himself as the lens through which God is seen, a non-Jesus like God is not GOD. All centres in on Jesus… and not simply the ‘this is who God is’ but ‘this is humanity as intended / will be’. God and humanity – made by God for one another. God has a HIGH view of humanity not a low view… those passages that come back with ‘all your righteousness is as filthy rags’ and the like are critiques of vain attempts to reach to God. Forget it, God is among us, for in him we live and move and have our being. The passages that are along the lines of ‘I am but a worm… in sin I was born’ we can all identify with, but they are hardly theological statements! And why do we identify with them, because they speak eloquently of our ‘falling short… of the glory of God’. We have such a high calling that we all face moments of ‘and I am called to image God, to be like Jesus’. Sin stares us in the face – our sins that mark us out as not being who we are called to be / become and sin (singular) that power that too often successfully traps us and condemns us to being slaves of sin.

At some stage in theology comes a discussion on eternal destinies – inadequately summarised as ‘heaven and hell’. From the Scriptures it is not possible to determine what Jesus thought about those subjects, those references to ‘gnashing of teeth and outer darkness’ certainly have no immediate reference to things ‘eternal’. I respect those who hold to such beliefs but suggest that they are far from central in Scripture. ‘Salvation’ in its various shapes we find it are far more immediate, salvation from sins rather than from ‘hell’ being central. And I find I need salvation on a daily basis, with the great hope that one day I will truly be saved.

So I will slowly just write up over the coming days – as I ponder as to what Scotty believes and why – in a random way where I think some of my core convictions lie, and I am sure in the process I will receive some sight of where there is a gap between my professed beliefs and my practices. Always the OUCH part.

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Picking sides

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by Martin Scott
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O.J. Simpson passed away a couple of days away. Just shy of 30 years ago was the famous trial and not only did he become a household name for those who had not heard of him before but the trial either catalysed a new era or was defining of a new era – that of picking sides. He was innocent, he had been set up… or he was as guilty as heck and should not escape justice. The publicity of the trial meant that we all had information – or so we thought. Fast forward and that polarisation is even ever-more present. Many live within the silo (echo chamber) of their social media feed. We think we have so much information so can make an intelligent decision. We are ‘pro’ or ‘against’ based on our knowledge, or in reality on our lack of knowledge and our biased opinion.

In an age when ‘tolerance’ is valued highly we are strangely quick to have an opinion that is not open to being challenged, hence the increasing polarisation. It exists in politics, and is exasperated when faith is added into the mix – and we hold to ‘so and so’ is God’s candidate. In 2005 (just after Bush was elected for the second time) I was in the USA and in a number of settings said that the candidate who enters the White House in 2008 will NOT be the one that is being prayed for, prophesied about, will not be the one of the ‘Christian’ choice, but he needs to be embraced – for if not there would be a double blow in 2012. And the reason for this is to illustrate that ‘you are already deceived’. Not deceived over who is ‘God’s candidate’, and that they had picked the wrong one, but that candidates are relative, and for that reason one person votes one way and another differently.

Let’s face it… we are all mixed, or as Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn put it ‘the line of good and evil does not separate me from the other, rather it runs through me and the other’ (probably not an exact quote!). Allow me just for a moment to illustrate it with the US and politics – though the principle is clear everywhere. Trump is not God’s choice, but probably the choice of the majority of white, middle-class charismatic Christians. This says a lot about those making the vote – maybe it says good things about them.

Polarisation, flowing from our biases. We have it in the New Testament: ‘I am of Paul / Peter / Apollos / et al’. Who are these people, Paul retorts, they are servants and stop aligning with them for they only have purpose if they serve you and your destiny.

We have to learn to live with more uncertainty. I don’t know the answer, I have a perspective that seems to be ever more tenuous. Uncertainty over our own opinion and more secure in the anchor point of what was done on the cross to bring about a transformation of the world.

The disciples on seeing a man born blind quickly presented the options – who was to blame? The man himself, or was it something generational? Jesus cut right through that with a response into the situation and simply went for the solution, the way forward. No time for an opinion, time for action. The disciples looked back Jesus opened the future.

Picking sides, politically, theologically and personality-wise usually stems from our past. What could happen if we could shut down all of that and began to act and work toward a future different to the past. 2020 – a year of great sight surely indicated that we entered an epoch when global resets were within our grasp.

I dare say that forthcoming elections will indicate that we have not moved on very much… but they might just accelerate the end of an era.

Neither this man nor his parents sinned; so let God’s works be manifested in him.

(My translation… an important use of what is termed the ‘Imperatival hina clause’.) No… your analyses are totally inadequate, no time for discussion – we are carriers of God, so we look to the future. Let the present change, let the future come.

Now that is different. So many situations are simply ‘same old, same old’. Agents of change – begins here and now. Stop picking sides.

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Posse non or non posse

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by Martin Scott
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Nothing to do with cowboys and sherrifs with their gathered together posse, but a bit of Latin: posse non pecare or non posse pecare – mainly a question regarding the human life of Jesus: able not to sin or not able to sin. If Jesus was not able to sin then in what sense did he willingly submit to the divine purposes? Anyway quite a discussion back in the day and one that extended to the four states of humanity. Ah well!!

So what about me? By that I don’t mean something like ‘can I make sinless perfection?’ but what about the REAL me? 1 John can make a seemingly set of contrasting statements:

If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us (1 John 1:8).
My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin (2:1).
No one who abides in him sins (3:6).
Those who have been born of God do not sin because God’s seed abides in them (3:9).
We know that those who are born of God do not sin, but the one who was born of God protects them, and the evil one does not touch them (5:18).

So which is it? ‘I do not sin’ is my statement (the hypothetical ‘me’, just for clarification) and I am deceived; or I read this letter so that I may not sin and if (and only ‘if’) I sin I can at least get back on course. And of course claiming to be born of God it is self evident that I do not sin!!!

I am sure the writer is making a few points considerably deeper than I can grasp but I think at the heart of it is what (who) I can see. In the midst of the letter we read:

What we do know is this: when he is revealed, we will be like him, for we will see him as he is. (3:2).

‘See him as he is’. I am sure that when I claim ‘I know God’ it is in part true, and in part carries a little bit of self deception. Maybe that is why Paul corrects himself in Gal. 4:9:

Now, however, that you have come to know God, or rather to be known by God

Do I really ‘know’ God; do I truly see God as s/he is? And as Jesus is the revelation of God (see me, see the Father) if I see Jesus as he is then I can truly claim to know God, and if I truly see Jesus then I will be like him. In truth non posse pecare, not able to sin. Not because of some pre-ordained inner nature but because of being captivated and thus motivated by love. I think Jesus was posse non pecare (not to sin being a choice, otherwise he was not like us in every way) and also non posse pecare (not able to sin) as the choice was made. Love, eternal love, permeated his being, reflected through him to us so in that sense he was not able to sin – the love makes no room for sin.

Anyway, some of all this Latin can swing around speculative discussions but what remains is my sight of Jesus, not my trying harder will help me keep on course. We see in part… one day we will see him as he is.

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2020 – the year of sight

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by Martin Scott
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I do realise that today’s date is 16 February 2024 and I have not made a mistake in the title.

I was talking to someone recently who reflected that 2020 (perfect vision) was to be the year of sight and that perhaps we were only entering that this year. My response is 2020 was indeed the year of sight – maybe there is grace to re-enter the grace of sight this year.

Jesus spoke about ears and eyes:

The reason I speak to them in parables is that ‘seeing they do not perceive, and hearing they do not listen, nor do they understand’… But blessed are your eyes, for they see, and your ears, for they hear.

So we can have eyes (and ears) and yet not see (nor hear). Sight is a strange thing, what we see depends on what we are looking at, and two people can even look at the same thing and see something very different. Take those who are asking the hard questions that will take them to a deeper place of faith; they might be nervous and unsure about their journey but they are pursuing a future that they see can take them beyond where they are; to others who are observing the journey they see someone who is on a journey to ‘lose their faith’.

When reflecting back on 2020 and the severity of the lockdown, the controversy over vaccines, and the devastation brought about through COVID seldom has there been something that has affected life globally at that level. Surely it was there to be SEEN. But did we have eyes to see what was ‘blidingly obvious’ or did we see it as an incovenience and we had to get back to normal asap.

Gayle and I have just returned from an extended time in the UK, beyond what we anticipated. We arrived home on Tuesday after 2 days of driving. As we drove home we passed numerous vehicles on a 15 kilometer stretch all with the sign on them ‘Overcoming Obstacles’. Then we hit the farmer’s strike with tractors blocking the main highway. Detour through single track roads and dirt tracks and meeting trucks coming the other way. Not the fastest drive and highly inconvenient. Can you read the signs?

We get home Tuesday and Gayle has to get a visa for China, leaving next Friday, a week today. Visa? That took a day to fill in the forms, get all the documents ready followed by a 7:00am train and a journey to Madrid (round trip of some 8 hours today) and the Chinese embassy, to discover that the letter of invite was in English and not acceptable. Chinese office is 8 hours ahead, those who can send the invite in Chinese are out of the office… Overcoming obstacles. Just a few minutes ago all submitted successfully, for a return trip to be made next Tuesday – another 8 hours – overcoming obstacles. Two words: obstacles which we all hate!! and overcoming – a good promise there if we have ears to hear and eyes to see.

So I consider 2020 was the year of global sight, and sight that will frame the following 20 years.

Maybe we are in a year where we can see what was there to be seen in 2020… It is certainly going to be a pivotal year, and seemingly a year when obstacles will be many, and grace to overcome will be abundant, if we engage with the obstacles.

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Back to the future

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by Martin Scott
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A while back related to Gayle’s work we received a very significant prophetic word that it was a ‘back to the future’ sitatuation… this morning I had an article sent me from a very different perspective entitled back to the future. Marty McFly went from 1985 to 1955 with all that entailed – we all laughed back then when 30 years prior to his time the suggestion that the actor Ronald Reagan would be future president was extremely bizarre. The article looked at 2024 and travelling back 30 years to 1994 and perhaps the suggestion to Doc that Doc that “the casino guy with the gold-plated toilets who left his wife for the Wrestlemania girl” would get elected president would be as bizarre. Those were the humorous part of the article, the rest was much more profound and disturbing. Humour for sure, but..

1994 Nelson Mandela just elected as South Africa’s president; Yasser Arafat returns from Exile and begins the ‘peace process’; Ukraine gives up its Soviet based nuclear weapons with part of the deal between Russia and the West being that the Ukraine will not be invaded by either party… that and many other ironic observations were being made. The aritcle ended very poignantly with

What does 2054 Marty see during his visit to our world? What seeds are we planting, and can we possibly know what harvest they’ll bring?

[For us charismatics we might also add in 1994 and what became known as the ‘Toronto Blessing’… seeds sown then and 30 years later? Now what seeds are being sown for 1954?]

On the global (middle eastern) scene in 2054 we would travel back to 2024 to realise that so much came in 2024 to destabilise… we would read that there was not only conlfict in Gaza, but that was the year that the border to the occupied West Bank was closed shutting out the 150,000 Palestinian workers had been crossing into Israel regularly for jobs in agriculture and construction, causing something around 30% unemployment in the West Bank. Tied to the Middle East 2024 was the year when 15% of all global trade stopped using the Suez Canal thus adding to global costs enormously… who knows whether those events will help someone in 2054 make sense of their world?

Can we affect the future? The future is always rising from the seeds of today.

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Clothed?

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by Martin Scott
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I mentioned a few nights ago to someone that the demoniac who was delivered (Legion) was found to be

They came to Jesus and saw the man possessed by demons sitting there, clothed and in his right mind, the very man who had had the legion, and they became frightened.

Of course it is a literal statement but I consider that probably behind it is carrying a little more meaning, and that the two phrases ‘clothed’ and ‘in his right mind’ could well be connected. To be in our ‘right mind’ is a process for all of us toward ‘having the mind of Christ’ or at a more human, day to day, level to be thinking straight about ourselves and the world around us. Many years ago I had a woman at the end of a church session ask me to pray for her and her work. I asked her what work she was involved in and she replied that she was a fashion designer. (Of course this SOOOOO connected with me!!??) I replied that this was a wonderful line of work for a believer – OK I will give my reasoning a little later.

I am not convinced that we are to understand the early chapters of Genesis as giving us a literal report on what took place but we do encounter clothing in those chapters. First, of course, there was nothing hidden between them – indicating a radical openness and honesty, but once the abandonment of eating from the ‘tree(s) of life’ came in shame entered and a measure of hiddeness and the couple used something quite inadequate – fig leaves (not recommended!). The first ‘clothing’ was inadequate but indicates a level of personal shame – and I am thinking beyond the shame of the body. God comes and we read,

And the Lord God made garments of skins for the man and for his wife and clothed them.

God clothed them is an enormous statement. And it does tie with the ‘end’, when Paul looks beyond death to being clothed (resurrection body),

For in this tent we groan, longing to be further clothed with our heavenly dwelling, for surely when we have been clothed in it we will not be found naked. For while we are in this tent, we groan under our burden because we wish not to be unclothed but to be further clothed, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life. The one who has prepared us for this very thing is God, who has given us the Spirit as a down payment (2 Cor 5:2-5).

The resurrection body will be that final element on our journey. Never to be found ‘naked’ but totally transformed with no shame, guilt, sadness, tears… and no more death. God will do this.

The Spirit is given to us as a down payment, an ‘arrabon’ (modern Greek: an engagement ring); the Spirit comes to us as a result of the clothing that God gives to us, rather than the hurriedly put together clothing (fig leaves) that we tend to put together.

[And back to my prayer for the woman who was a fashion designer… You have a great job, think of the resurrection, we will be clothed in a way that we will be totally who we are. If you can think of the resurrection and design clothes that will complete people, you will have people wanting to wear your clothes, for they will ‘feel’ clean, whole, they will feel that they are themselves.]

So clothing… Let’s take it symbolically as I am still waiting for my conviction by the fashion police to be rescinded!! Clothing in the context of the Scriptures I am quoting is more than for modesty or protection, they are an outward expression of an inward perception. That is the connection between being in one’s right mind and being clothed. When my outword expression matches my inward perception I am ‘clothed’ at a level of integrity; when my inner percpetion lines up with external truth and my outward expression line up with that I will be ‘clothed and in my right mind’. It begins – assuming we have faith – with God clothing us, the removal of the fig leaves of self-protection, false humility (shame is intrinsically connected here), and goes on to that of self-perception. Perceiving ourselves increasingly through heaven’s eyes of grace… and one day that will be completed.

Perhaps… you will go way beyond me and connect your (literal) physical clothing with your interior self.

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