The following is a link to a GREAT article on church shopping, and the creeping consumer culture in our churches.

iChurch: All we like lost sheep

WHO CREATED GOD?

This is a great question from our "Question Box" at the Good Shepherd. The following appeared in the bulletin...

" The quick answer is: No one. According to the Bible, God is the great “I AM” who was, and is, and is to come. He has no beginning, and no ending. To put this answer in perspective, one could also ask when heaven will end.

This is a great question as it raises the difficulty in understanding God from our human perspective. From the human perspective: everything that has a beginning must have been created somehow. This is the main premise behind the intelligent design theory that is so popular and controversial at the moment. However, God is so great and glorious, He defies human understanding. One commenter said, “It is like trying to explain the Internet to an ant”. The Christian is called put their trust in Jesus’ claims and teachings, and who He revealed God to be. "


For those wishing to read more on this subject (I don't necessarily agree with all the viewpoints expressed in these articles, but they are worth reading)...

Who Created God at www.christiananswers.net
Who Created God at rationalchristianity.net

There is also the books by Lee Strobel availible to borrow at the Church.

With the polarization of our Church, in lock step with the polarization of worldly politics, I was really challenged by Henry Nouwen's commentary on alertness in solitude from his book "Reaching out". It is a challenge to resist the temptation of responding to the world by; (a) completely disengaging or (b) polarizing ourselves into lines of 'for' and/or 'against' (read: liberal/conservative). Instead, responding from a place of living the gospel of love over and against the fear, negativity and paranoia of the world. I suppose this is a call to liberals to stand more on the truth of Jesus, and for conservatives to leave the drawn lines more porous.

"...In our solitude, our history no longer can remain a random collection of disconnected incidents and accidents but has to become a constant call for the change of heart and mind. There we can break through the fatalistic chain of cause and effect and listen with our inner senses to the deeper meaning of the actualities of everyday life. There the world no longer is diabolic, dividing us into 'fors' and 'againsts' but becomes symbolic, asking us to unite and reunite the outer with the inner events. There the killing of a president, the success of a moonshot, the destruction of cities by cruel bombing and the disintegration of a government by the lust for power, as well as the disappointments and pains...all become urgent invitations to a response; that is, a personal engagement."

In the end, the politics won't matter, how we engaged the world (case by case) with the message of Jesus will.

Theo-blogs ‘Cut and Précis’ of NT Wright’s “How Can the Bible Be Authoritative?”

The following is lifted from a section of NT Wright’s “How can the Bible be Authoritative?” and edited for length. I include it here because it is one of the most brilliant explanations of biblical authority I have ever read. The lecture itself is a great piece of scholarly work, and really should be read in its entirety. Click Here to do so.

"... The Bible and Biblical Authority

The Authority of a Story

I suggest that stories in general, and certainly the biblical story, have a shape and a goal that must be observed and to which appropriate response must be made.

Suppose there exists a Shakespeare play whose fifth act had been lost. The first four acts provide, let us suppose, such a wealth of characterization, such a crescendo of excitement within the plot, that it is generally agreed that the play ought to be staged. Nevertheless, it is felt inappropriate actually to write a fifth act once and for all: it would freeze the play into one form, and commit Shakespeare as it were to being prospectively responsible for work not in fact his own. Better, it might be felt, to give the key parts to highly trained, sensitive and experienced Shakespearian actors, who would immerse themselves in the first four acts, and in the language and culture of Shakespeare and his time, and who would then be told to work out a fifth act for themselves.

Consider the result. The first four acts, existing as they did, would be the undoubted ‘authority’ for the task in hand. That is, anyone could properly object to the new improvisation on the grounds that this or that character was now behaving inconsistently, or that this or that sub-plot or theme, adumbrated earlier, had not reached its proper resolution. This ‘authority’ of the first four acts would not consist in an implicit command that the actors should repeat the earlier pans of the play over and over again. It would consist in the fact of an as yet unfinished drama, which contained its own impetus, its own forward movement, which demanded to be concluded in the proper manner but which required of the actors a responsible entering in to the story as it stood, in order first to understand how the threads could appropriately be drawn together, and then to put that understanding into effect by speaking and acting with both innovation and consistency.

This model could and perhaps should be adapted further; it offers in fact quite a range of possibilities. Among the detailed moves available within this model, which I shall explore and pursue elsewhere, is the possibility of seeing the five acts as follows: (1) Creation; (2) Fall; (3) Israel; (4) Jesus. The New Testament would then form the first scene in the fifth act, giving hints as well (Rom 8; 1 Car 15; parts of the Apocalypse) of how the play is supposed to end. The church would then live under the ‘authority’ of the extant story, being required to offer something between an improvisation and an actual performance of the final act. Appeal could always be made to the inconsistency of what was being offered with a major theme or characterization in the earlier material.

The effect of this authority

The Bible, then, is designed to function through human beings, through the church, through people who, living still by the Spirit, have their life molded by this Spirit-inspired book. By this means we are enabled to move from the bare story-line that speaks of Jesus in Palestine 2,000 years ago, into an agenda for the church. And that agenda is the same confrontation with the world that Jesus had with Israel a confrontation involving judgment and mercy. It is not done with the authority that we reach for so easily, an authority which will manipulate, or crush, or control, or merely give information about the world. But, rather, it is to be done with an authority with which the church can authentically speak God’s words of judgment and mercy to the world. Authority in the church, then, means the church’s authority, with scripture in its hand and heart, to speak and act for God in his world. That, in fact, is (I believe) one of the reasons why God has given us so much story, so much narrative in scripture. Story authority, as Jesus knew only too well, is the authority that really works. Throw a rule book at people’s head, or offer them a list of doctrines, and they can duck or avoid it, or simply disagree and go away. Tell them a story, though, and you invite them to come into a different world; you invite them to share a world-view or better still a ‘God-view’.

HOW CAN THE BIBLE FUNCTION AS AUTHORITATIVE?

The Basis: Fundamentals and Overtones

History and Hermeneutics

How can we handle this extraordinary treasure, responsibly? First, we have to let the Bible be the Bible in all its historical oddness and otherness. We have not done that. We have allowed ourselves to say—I’ve heard myself say it,—‘What Paul is really getting at here is . . . What Jesus was really meaning in this passage . . .’—and then, what has happened is a translation of something which is beautiful, and fragile, and unique, into something which is commonplace and boring. I am reminded of that amazing line in Schaffer’s play Amadeus where Salieri sees on stage Mozart’s Figaro, and he says, ‘He has taken ordinary people—chambermaids and servants and barbers—and he has made them gods and heroes.’ And then Salieri remembers his own operas and he says, ‘I have taken gods and heroes—and I have made them ordinary.’ God forgive us that we have taken the Bible and have made it ordinary…”

Taken from: The Laing Lecture 1989, and the Griffith Thomas Lecture 1989. Originally published in Vox Evangelica, 1991, 21, 7–32.

Singles in the Church

I've been focussing on reaching out to the singles in our parish this week, and I've had some revelations, especially from the writing of Susan Nikaido. The most important being our church's (Christian, Anglican and local) mindset that is reflective of our culture which exalts romance, in contrast to scripture. The Bible honours marriage, but it gives an equal place to the single life. The best thing Paul says about marriage (1 Cor. 7) is, "If you do marry, you have not sinned." In fact in many places, it seems the Bible even exalts the single life over married life.

However Christian singles often hear the message "You're nobody till somebody loves you". We tell our children "when you get married", instead of "if you get married". We tell single adults "You're such a nice person, I don't understand why you're not married." These statements and attitudes (for which I am the chief sinner) do very little in encouraging Christian faith and forbearance in our singles. I think we should be taking great pains to promote how courageous and counter-cultural it is to maintain a holy, Christian, single life, rather than our cultural assumptions which make gods of romance and sex. This has definite implications for our ministry, preaching and action in a lost post-modern world.

Religion really like an Elephant?

I was reading Timothy Keller's 'Preaching and Pluralism', and came accross an interesting point. There is a popular analogy of 'the elephant' that I have always had a logical problem with. Keller put a voice to my thoughts.

The analogy is of the blind men trying to describe an elephant. One feels the tail and reports that an elephant is thin and flexible. Another feels a leg and claims the animal is thick as a tree. Another touches its side and reports that the elephant is like a wall. This, to the pluralist notion, represents how the various religions only understand part of God while no one can truly see the whole picture. To claim full knowledge of God is arrogance.

HOWEVER, the only way this parable makes any sense is if you've seen the whole elephant. Therefore, the minute you say, 'All religions only see part of the truth,' you are claiming the very knowledge you say no one else has. And you are demonstrating the same spiritual arrogance you accuse Christians of.

Interesting fodder for discussion, and maybe a sermon.

Jesus is Big Business!!

Jesus is big business. Peruse the shelves of any ‘religion’ section in your local Coles or Chapters and you’ll see what I mean. North America is knee deep in ‘pop’ hysteria around the historical Jesus, and your section of tabloid-style scholarship testifies to the money there is to be made. The good news, however, is that there is a standard pattern to poor Jesus-scholarship. So, if you are thinking there's something wrong with the book you are reading, and want to discern if your impression is correct... from the pages of Luke Timothy Johnson’s The Real Jesus, here are the 5 top clues to discern if you are reading a book of junk-Jesus-scholarship…

Your first clue, the author uses the standard marketing ploy to gain respectability, contrasting him or herself overtly against the traditional church. By setting themselves against the institution, many authors have made up for their complete lack of education or substance. Those without credible degrees offer themselves as a breath of fresh air from the stuffy and suppressed work of church-washed scholars. Those defrocked as priests or let go by a credible Universities market themselves as 'classic examples' of the church’s inability to handle real truth. By far, the most popular posture is that if the whistle-blowing insider. That is, the heroic insider, bishop or otherwise, who is letting us see behind the curtain at what is really going on. Unfortunately for serious readers, in today’s media these are real qualifications.

Your second clue, the author exploits a small, popularly unknown tidbit or angle on the study of Jesus abandoned by serious scholars. Most argue that the ‘truth’ about Jesus can only be found in a historical reading of the gospels using their tidbit. A simple reading of any scholarly work from the last 100 years can supply anyone with enough obscure points, long since abandoned by real scholars, for a lifetime of popular books. My favourite is various treatments of ‘midrash’, a style of reading that can’t be proved ever existed. Other examples are hidden biblical codes or mythical imagery linked to other ancient religions.

Your third clue; the author employs ancient outside sources hand picked to best fit their argument. Cast off texts and teachings waiting for exploitation as outside sources abound. The materials of Nag Hammundi and the Dead Sea Scrolls are the most popularly exploited writings, and are implicitly accepted thanks to years of conspiracy weaving by the media. Does the book you are reading have its own conspiracy around Nag Hammundi or the Dead Sea Scrolls? What other obscure ancient texts are used?

Your fourth clue, the book is as provocative as possible. For a book to become a best seller, the new ‘true’ reading of the gospels must deny all surface meanings. Making a splash in the media is very important in marketing to our culture. The headline “New scholar asserts traditional reading of the gospels” hardly inspires a popular frenzy. Barbara Thiering became a best-selling author by asserting that Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene. Even though she gave no evidence to support this, and asserted that is wasn’t the crux of her argument, it sure made for great press and higher sales.

Your fifth clue, the book implies heavily, and as much as possible, how disastrous this new finding is for the church. The final point in uncovering poor scholarship is when a book asserts how Christianity to completely abandon its traditional teaching for authors own new religious belief. The most popular trend is for authors to supplant the teaching of Jesus with a Unitarian gospel created from some handpicked teachings from Eastern spirituality.

If your book fits this pattern, keep in mind that what you are reading is, in fact, another form of literalism based on the author’s best guess. Think on the fact that most conclusions in these books are at obvious odds with other books of the same type, although it is funny that the only thing they all agree on is that the church is wrong. The historical-critical method, as it is called, does give us new insight into the person of Jesus. However, it does not give us license to create new pictures of Jesus that are, in fact, a reflection of our own socio-political preconceptions. This is the worst aspect of any literalism. To keep via media we all cherish, it is important for Anglican’s to balance the low-level scholarship offered by Coles and Chapters, with faith-building authors like Johnson or N.T. Wright. If you are interested on more information with regards to the misguided quest for the historical Jesus and the truth of the Gospels, see Luke Timothy Johnson’s renowned work The Real Jesus or his follow-up Living Jesus, both from Harper Collins.

Sharing The Faith by discussing Tom Harpur's "The Pagan Christ"

Recently I have been accosted at several functions such as the remembrance-day services, senior’s dinners and receptions by some very eager people. Armed with what they felt were iron-clad arguments from recent books such as The Pagan Christ or The DaVinci Code, they want to know why the church has not radically changed it’s beliefs in the light of such compelling scholarship. One would think that in a church where most priests and church leaders are well educated, they would be open to, and changed by, fact and reason. Personally, I have found these to be great opportunities to debunk common misconceptions about the church and to share the message of Jesus with these curious and conscientious seekers. To explain why such books have failed to compel the church, and to start a discussion about Jesus, I share something like the following.

When I recently borrowed The Pagan Christ I expected it to be a stimulating read. However, as many others have discovered, it turned out to be what has, sadly, become the standard assertion of shaky speculations sensationalized and sold as undisputable reality. Harper makes a great many leaps such as that Jesus never existed, and that his story is nothing more than a ‘myth’ brought in from Egyptian pagan belief. How do we recognize this as 'shaky'? Basically, Harper makes the same mistakes that have earned many a university student a ‘D’ on term papers. That is, glossing over of facts and the use of simply outdated sources.

First, and foremost, Harper does nothing to address the fact that if Egyptian myth had such a heavy impact on Israel in the first century, there would be evidence on burial sites. In other words, if the people of that time took their belief in life-after-death from the Egyptians, there would be a great many graves containing Egyptian symbols or hieroglyphs. As scholar N.T. Wright points out, there are no such graves in existence.

In addition, the logic of Harpur’s major assertions is both full of holes and extremely outdated. As W. Ward Gasque, the co-founder of Regent College and a historian of early Christianity, comments (www.canadianchristianity.com), other than quotes from books published in the 17 and 1800’s, and heavy doses of a sensationalist American journalist, Harpur leans on the work of Alvin Boyd Kuhn another author from the 1800’s. Harpur says of Kuhn that he was “A religious scholar and thinker”, who was a “towering polymath whom history has yet to recognize fully in all his brilliance.” Why hasn’t he been noticed? Harpur goes on, “He is simply stepped too often and much too hard on too many powerful toes, particularly those of the vested religious institutions”. However, his assertion notwithstanding, Egyptology is a secular subject; the ‘evil religious institution’ has about as much power over it as it does the outcome of the World Series. Simply put, Harpur ‘blows smoke’ because he is unable to find any immanent works that take Kuhn seriously other then a few unexceptional writers from the 1800’s.

The truth about Kuhn? A high school teacher from the 1800’s who earned a PhD from Columbia University by writing a dissertation on Theosophy (not Egyptology), he had difficulty finding a publisher for his works and most of them were self-published. His only link with an institution of higher learning was a short stint as the secretary to the president of a small college. In fact, in a recent poll by Gasque of 20 leading world Egyptologists, only one of the ten experts who responded ever heard of Kuhn, or of the other two of Harpur’s main sources Higgins or Massey. All the responding scholars were unanimous in dismissing the suggested Egyptian etymologies (were the words came from) for ‘Jesus’ and ‘Christ’. As well the main arguments for Iusa, the virgin birth of Horus, or that he was a fisher of men, the dating of the religion of Osirus, the dating of the earliest writings from Egypt, and the redefinition of ‘incarnation’ are all rejected by the contemporary Egyptologists.

To say the least, it takes much more than a book of this pedigree to take the Church into radical heresy. The Pagan Christ along with most of the other “Christian” books published and mass-marketed through Chapters and Idigo are simply peddling pop-culture syncretism; the kind that makes for a great Hollywood-type conspiracy, but a very poor foundation for Christian faith. This is why the church is neither impressed, nor intimidated by them. They do serve, however, as very good starting points to a deep discussion about our Lord a Saviour Jesus Christ with those curious enough pay for and read a book about Him. An opportunity every believer should relish and prepare for! For further reading on dealing with these and similar questions regarding contemporary pop-scholarship, I highly recommend Luke Timothy Johnson’s The Real Jesus, or anything by NT Wright, the Bishop of Durham. The better educated we become, the better prepared we will be to meet seeking people where they are with the message of salvation.