In the diocesan newspaper there was a list of recent church worthies, both clergy-people and not, who had received a gong from the government. The equivalent to my mind of a primary school merit award or a boy-scout achievement medal.
Matthew 6:2-16 sprang to mind.
Why would one bother?
What is the point?
I would be humiliated by such a bauble.
Actually I did get a badge from the government once.
As a kid I was in a radio club. The government sent me the club badge. That's good enough for me!
Why not just one gospel?
The critical issue for any account of an event is evidence. The more witnesses the better. And better still if they have differing perspectives, that way you can be more sure that it is not a put-up job.
When police collect witness statements it gets very suspicious if they are the same, because everyone has a naturally different perspective. Same perspective points to collusion or fraud and raises the suspicion of just one witness giving a self-serving, and distorted report. This would probably be, in reality, an event in private and could be a complete fabrication
Such suspicion attaches to the Quran which was both 'revealed' in private and with circumstantial convenience, and the Book of Mormon, read by Joe Smith alone through magical glasses of gold tablets, which he did not and so probably could not produce!
Still, a sucker is born every minute...both these 'authors' had predilections for multiple wives and violence, that would also attract the suckers!
Now think about the witnesses of a traffic accident where a number of reports are prepared by those who saw the event or attended the scene for the police to use.
The vehicle removal operative would have a report that was about vehicles and their condition, their place on the road and what had to be done to remove them.
The ambulance crew would talk about the conditions of the injured, perhaps how they were extricated from the cars, what immediate medical aid was given and the hospital(s) to which they were transported.
The on-lookers would give very different views depending on their location when the accident happened, their familiarity with cars and their degree of shock. If they knew the injured or not would also be a factor.
The police report from the GD police would provide one perspective, the technical report in evidence from Accident Investigation another.
All reports would differ, but al about the same accident with differing perspectives and purposes.
So the Gospels.
Mark gives a short action-filled account for the average Jewish disciple, let's say.
Luke is interested in fine detail for an educated Greek readership.
Matthew concentrates on the theology and John writes with a more philosophical or spiritual interest for the more sophisticated Jew or Greek, perhaps.
Some different emphases are given by the writers for their different readers. Variously emphasizing this and sometimes that.
Differences don't mean contradiction, they mean different perspectives with different emphases.
Francis Schaeffer claims that Sartre asserted (words to the effect) that without an infinite reference point man has no true meaning.
Now, I've not found that specific remark, or anything that directly echoes it in what I've read of Sartre...and life is too short to wade through Being and Nothingness without a PhD at the end, but I have read allusions to that in Existentialism is a Humanism and Nausea.
The idea is also consistent with what I recall of what Jaspers had to say in Philosophy of Existence. One only finds definition in some ultimate act of definition...and that is undefined. And, I would say undefinable when the self-experience is the locus of definition. It is a definition based on nothing which has a grounded basis. It floats arbitrarily unattached and truly undefined. So it has no 'meaning' (whatever that word now means) to even the one seeking definitive meaning.
So, lets clarify the conundrum to "without an infinite reference point there is no real self-knowledge."
We can only know ourselves in relation to others, in interpersonal relationships. There are no possible relationships in the non-personal world and any fake or imagined relations ships are in fact mute.
But if true significance ("meaning") comes only through relationships then there must always be a 'reference' relationship, let's say its one's parents. But this is not final. This reference relationship also needs a 'reference' relationship.
In a cosmos that is finally material, the final 'significance' has to be founded or grounded in some mute material thing or process. But it is inter-personally and therefore finally meaningless. It does not communicate, it reflects or responds to nothing of who one is and the only quality of the "relationship" is blank indifference. A nullity.
Yet we still have an inner quest for significance and live and relate as though this is a real thing.
An infinite regress explains nothing as it never ends in a final ground. It vanishes into the indefinably remote and unconnected other which results in the same abject indifference that the material cosmos characterizes.
True self-knowledge, significance or referentially secure "meaning" must remain the product of relationship. To be true and truly significant there must be a viable relational ground in which it terminates and gives a resolution or definition. A self-existent ground, an independent ontology.
Thus we need the Creator God who is person who sustains and anchors all relationship through being the ground and source of personhood and the final 'relater'.
Now the flip-side for the one who denies a Creator-God, who demands we applaud their faux independence and nonchalant self-applauding bravery.
The atheist's dilemma.
We all seek meaning, and often has it in life yet there can be no real axiological pay-off in a material cosmos, Whence the drive for, often achievement of 'meaning' or true significance? Each relies on an implicit teleology which is denied by the meaningless (literally) atheistic conception of termination.
Yet atheists typically act as though their teleological impulse is real while denying a real basis for the 'meaning' quest. So, what is it? The existentialist's self-defining grand act? But to what point? It all ends in dust and in the end no-one cares!
There is really no point, so an atheists has to explain to him/her-self why they even go to the doctor when feeling ill. That too is finally dust and a pointless way-post on the way to a pointless end.
Some provisional thoughts.
As our senior minister this morning said:
"Death was broken when Yeshua the Nazarene rose from the grave, alive."
He showed through his mission that he was God, others recognized him as God, God showed him as God, and he finally claimed he was Daniel 7's "Son of Man".
Then he proved it by rising from the dead to open the coming of the New Creation. By this bringing the final resolution of the "human condition" and mankind's basic dilemma of seeking grounding and its value in an immaterial and mute cosmos in which we are otherwise the aliens.
This is a common enough situation. You conduct (facilitate, serve, convene) a small group in your congregation (youth or not), and a newbie shows up.
A real newbie, someone new to the group's larger context (the Sunday congregation), someone not even Christian, perhaps.
How to help them fit in?
Perhaps this:
Ask one of the established members if they would be hospitable to the new-comer. Of course this eventuality had been discussed early on, so no surprise to the member.
Just be hospitable. Introduce self, and sit with them.
Let them know they can quietly ask you anything. "I'll give a quick answer if I can, or I'll ask the group as though its my question." You explain.
Then the convenor will ask a couple of questions through the meeting with people in pairs/trios to discuss then offer their view. Here the new-comer can get a little more involved and acclimatized, even be the speaker of the concluded response. The person's steward might suggest this.
Perhaps the person acting as their steward could offer to attend a forthcoming Alpha group with them, or your church's intro afternoon in a couple of week's time at a friend's home.
Is your church up to the game, or does it rely on words, not actions?
This is discipling at work. Not for the new-comer, for the steward.
Stand on a street corner or in a square grab a microphone and blast the by-passers with passages from the Bible. Or worse, just verses isolated from context. And keep doing it, telling people stuff they have no idea of the meaning.
That's the Harangue. Even if you have colleagues handing out leaflets (please don't call them 'tracts'. No one knows what that means), engaging in conversation and offering to pray the sinners prayer, I doubt you are following in Paul's footsteps. Certainly our Lord told us not to pray showily in public (Matthew 6:5).
Paul slipped in to the culture of time and place and made sense to the hearers (Acts 17). The Harangue does not.
I saw a video of a quasi Harangue at a Muslim street fair for Ramadan (the Islamic knock-off of Lent). There was a bit of engagement, I was gratified to see. But no evidence of the real work. And maybe that was not shown at all.
This is working through the crowd either with or not a satchel of leaflets and Bible books, engaging people in conversation, perhaps assisted by provocative T-shirt slogans: "Is Issa Allah?" or "Is Allah 3?"
In an effort to Muslims the starting point has to be the keen religiosity of many,
Perhaps our common ground where the Quran calls as "people of the book" on which we should stand (The Quran instructs the "People of the Gospel" to follow the teachings therein: Surah 5:47). or that we are the worst of people!
Then we could raise that the Quran shows that Isa is God Surah 3:49, Surah 5:110 , or that Allah is three in one Surah 9:31.
These could be T-shirt slogans or handout leaflets,
We might also have copies in relevant languages (Arabic) of John and Luke's gospels along with extracts of stories the Quran jumbles from the Torah.
We might even have QR codes for Bible downloads. Is there a book called The Book for Muslims? We might have the Prophesies of Moses (extracts from Torah) or those of Issa to give.
Handouts on Issa and the Quran and Musa (Moses) and the Quran or Quran and Injil could be very helpful to straighten out Islam's errors.
The crass understanding of Christian faith is that it is about these places, or states (usually 'places') 'heaven' and 'hell'. Hell conjuring a Dante's Inferno picture by Botticelli,or Dore.
Thus, the non-Christian asks a confused question about 'going to hell' and asking if that's where the Christian thinks she or he is going, as though it is some sort of unpleasant destination.
Firstly, we must ask what the person thinks is meant by 'hell' as they might understand Christian's to hold it.
Next we need to be able to layout that there are only two final places we move to post our demise. One is in eternal fellowship with our Creator and Redeemer, Yeshua the Nazarene, or...eternal not-fellowship with him, into a state of rejection of him.
The binary is a state of relationship (of love) and not a relationship (of rejection -- theirs of Christ) .
It's about the relationship, and as Yeshua tells us in John 14:6
Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me.
It is about being with the Father. If you reject him in this life, being with him eternally would be a misery. And because God made us like him, with significant choice power, the choice is ours and God will not over-ride it. Particularly in that we are made to know him yet we are so wont to refuse by our own pride.
Repudiating that position is what it is to seek Christ.
And, note the end state is not some ethereal cloud concert, it is the creation renewed where we are partners with God in his New Creation where sin (un-god-ness) is no more.
