The Christian Vision

 A little while ago, during a talk in our congregation, the speaker made the comment:

"The Christian vision is not anti joy; it is not anti material; it is anti idolatry".

I thought this was a great way of setting out not 'Christianity', not 'Christian faith/teaching/belief, etc' but a phrase with more contemporary accessibility: the 'Christian vision".

This makes it accessible, IMO and a less alien invitation to discussion.

The Christian vision in its grand scheme is the resolution of mankind's/humanities existential dislocation; our alienation from self, each other and the final platform of basic reality: the Creator who is and who speaks.

Lack of this resolution has significant indication in the grasping for 'identity' that seems to obsesses the less connected in society; but the internally referenced 'identity' is the most fragile means of address there is.

After all if the locus of the real, the true, is merely oneself, how fragile! 

Overflowing Faith

I attended a session of this seminar series (of three episodes) at a friend's church facility (the congregations ekklesiarium!).

It presents and coaches in an approach to everyday gospelling. Not conversations about "Jesus saves, so repent" which we hope is the end game; but starting from where your friend or acquaintance is and steering a conversation in a gospel direction.

Excellent series.

My friend's church is about 200-300 people. 6 people turned up!

Now admittedly, those who were there were retired or self-employed and could spare the time mid week (or in my case, self-employed, 'make' the time).

Is the church really committed to evangelism? And this is an evangelical church!!

So, let's talk about single elderly, elderly in distress (e.g. spouse/partner terminally ill), single parents, overwhelmed unemployed.

Outreach/support to such people perfect for the retired folk to get involved with: Christians who care.

But zilch!

What is it, then, to be evangelical, when no one seems interested in the evangel! 

Macbeth on life (via Shakespeare)

...without Christ:

Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
 

When a sceptic challenges a biblical account.

One such decided to challenge the flood account.

My thoughts on the matter.

When a skeptic challenges the flood in terms of 'cruelty', the first question to them has to be: "who's worldview are you using here? Yours or mine?"

The answer is always interesting.

If theirs, then inquire what theirs is: most likely some version of materialism/naturalism, or, rarely, some form of pagan 'impersonal god' In either case, what's wrong with the flood? The usual critique of value agnostic worldviews arises.

How do they establish any value judgement that is not merely their personal preference with no relevance to anyone else, and no meaningful grounding.

If 'yours'; that is they think they have spotted a flaw in the Christian/biblical worldview, then ask them to get it right; to fully acknowledge the world view; of particular importance here is that death by flood would be speedy, and babies, before they had done right or wrong would be guarded against perdition (you have to leave Calvin outside the house for this).

Most detractors fail to understand how seriously we take the futurity of all mankind: either reconciled and in God's family, or purposely estranged from God, rejecting him.

Apart from that the narrator of the video sets out some helpful observations. 

And remember for any challenge of biblical accounts; check their underlying framework or worldview, then ask for their defence of that before getting on to their supposed critique

"Why is it an issue for you?" is an easy starting point for the probe. 

I'm re-reading again! Keyes: Beyond Identity.

The book this time is Dick Keyes' Beyond Identity, from 1984!

It has both aged and remains current. The specifics have moved on, the underlying structures of society and people's impulses remain constant.

He writes:

Before the fall, man saw himself as under God, bearing God's image and deriving his sense of identity and coherence from God. But now he identifies himself with creation instead of its Creator. His whole orientation is downward towards what is less than himself, rather than upward toward what is greater. This change of orientation has many psychological results.

In general we have moved from a Covenental 'religion' or understanding of the world, of what is independently real (Clauser) to a mimetic framing (Westphal) which seeks to merge man into the creation.

Many people follow this paganization of humanity in general and the self in particular wherein one has to conjure one's own 'identity' bereft of an external reference. Futile, of course, as personhood is absorbed into the creation rather than expanded into the 'imageness' of the Creator.

Thus, where we are culturally. 

Islamic challenge the third

How can Yeshua bear the sins of another...a verse in the Quran says no one can bear the sins of another!

First you need to expose the duplicity of this claim.

It partly quotes the Quran but misses an important point: it applies only to the 'burdened soul'. Yeshua was sinless: Surah 19:19.

Compare this to Mohammad, of whom the Quran writes: "...ask for forgiveness for your sins" at Surah 40:55, 47:19 

Surah Fatir (35:18): States that no burdened soul can carry the load of another, even if a close relative asks for help.

 

On the face of it, Yeshua as an 'unburdened' one can carry the sins of another.

 

But the claim also misunderstands the work of the cross, and what is the atoning element: the element that 'covers' sin.

 

It also ignores two patterns given by the prophets:

 

Abraham being asked to sacrifice his son, Isaac (Genesis 22:9-13), the child of promise. In this case God provided the sacrifice in a lamb. This foreshadowed the sacrificial lamb in the law given to Moses.

 

Much later, David; Yahweh's chosen king, after great sin saw the child born of that sin: an innocent child, die: as punishment (2 Samuel 12). This foreshadowed the great son of David: Yeshua, the sinless one, dying as a result of the sin of others. The child, on what we can derive from the NT, would likely have been taken to paradise.

 

Just as in the Levitical law, the life is in the blood and that life spilt takes those who believe into the presence of God. The sin is 'covered' by Yeshua's unburdenedness. Or in NT terms, his sinlessness.

 

Thus the crucifixion did two things: by it Messiah suffered the death that is the wages of sin: other people's and the groaning creation A&E brought down, and in his resurrection he showed his triumph over death announcing the way to life everlasting for those who would join him. 

 

But it  needs to be borne in mind that one needs to be 'in Christ' to enjoy his grace: to be 'born from above' in repentance of sin and faith in Yeshua. It is entry into a family, no mere assent to a proposition to gain a trip to some celestial party where Yahweh is absent...which is what the Quran seems to hold out for its version of 'paradise' as some sort of cosmic bordello. 

Who are you and who am I?

Christians, even today, often attempt to present the gospel on the basis of 'you are a sinner' or 'God own you but you are disobedient to him' and similar lines, perhaps stimulated by a misreading of Galatians 3:24, where the law as the guardian in anticipation of Christ is misread/translated as the teacher/tutor/guardian to 'lead us to' Christ.

No. With Christ, the law as any route to salvation, even contra-positively, plays no role. 

So talking to our contemporaries:

Lets not start with the word 'sin' and 'sinner' because these are either meaningless terms to our contemporaries, or conjures up an obdurate legalism that has nothing to do with the proclamation of the gospel.

Still, we do need to drive a point, but, in language that makes sense to our peers.

So, let's expand 'sin' in terms of the biblical words: the Bible Project has a helpful piece on this.

Missing the mark! Much more descriptive.

I like the phrase "failure to be who we really are". Something that might make sense to people outside the
Christian community. A phrase more likely to open a conversation than close it down.

Your interlocutor might then ask: so who are we really? How could you/we know?
Whence 'failure' and how do you define or understand it? 

A few conversational gambits might be up your sleeve.

In response to someone's horror at some horror: social, natural, criminal, etc

"Sadly part of the horror show of a dislocated humanity"  

Far better than the conversation stopper of 'that's sin for you'

The follow on concept snippets that might be ready for use could be:

'Sin' is the word Christians use for our dislocation from who we really are and the resulting loss of value coherence. 

Reprieve has to come from outside humanity, and even outside this world, because we can only keep doing what we keep doing! And it has in the self-existent creator joining us in Jesus of Nazareth/Yeshua the Nazarene.

If they dismiss this as being 'religious' you might point out that a religious belief is a belief about what is independently real. So everyone lives in terms of a 'religious' belief, articulated, examined, or not. (Clouser, The Myth of Religious Neutrality) 

What other 'disrupting' but positive comments might you make to open the way to a 'gospel' conversation (even if a mere snippet)?

In many cases this opening might be appropriate (or not inappropriate):

In a world conceived in (purely) materialist terms there is neither diagnosis nor treatment for the  human (dilemma/condition) -- only must wide-eyed despair at humanities history of failure, terror and cruelty in spite of its inexplicable (nobility/dignity/potential); yet in that conception the only real onclusion is the futility of death.

Back to the 'failure to be who we really are'

"Which is?" the interlocutor might ask.

People in harmony with their creator.

This idea jars against a materialistic conception of both who we are and life having any real purpose.

That itself is a symptom of the disconnect that we live in: denial that personhood is the most basic structure of reality.

And we are made to be connected to that basic structure, which, of course, is personal and relational. 

This can then go many ways...

 

Creator...personal, but not merely personal, 'love' expressed within the personal triple being...Genesis
creation description...we made for community with the creator (Gen 3:8a) then severed from creator by rejection of the way he is ...love ...repaired by him entering our humanity to rebuild the connection by renewal of us.

The idea of reality being basically delineated in terms of life in person strikes the materialist, particularly
the modern Western one, as strange if not alien.

Time for reorientation, and the implication is that our personalness is derivative of and compatible
with what absolutely is; it is not derivative of incompatible random material events by which no value is real. 

 A book: Beyond Identity by Dick Keyes of the L'Abri Fellowship.