Is 'heaven or hell' a coin toss?

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. 

The problem is not women pastors. It's pastors, period!

A modern (well, post second century) concept that comes to us from paganism (the priest), via Rome (the priest), through the reformation (Luther, Calvin and that whole merry tribe) where priest was transmogrified into the mythical idea of 'pastor' is the problem.

 This obliterated the polity Paul sets out in his letters and substitutes a governance system that neuters the church as an effective disciple-making family.

The point of departure for considering areas of service (ministry, deaconing) in the congregation (what ekklesia really means) is Galatians 3:28. Here there is no differentiation of persons by sex, status or ethnicity. None. Zip. Nada. Gone! Woman can speak in the congregation (1 Cor 11:5). Just don't be disruptive and rude (sigaō 'hold one's peace'), Also woman are not to import pagan teachings of the genetic primacy of women to denigrate men (after all we know that man was created first then woman drawn from him) or to inhibit procreation. Such as the pagan earth worshippers of Ephesus perhaps taught.

And bear in mind, telling women pagans to desist from over-bearing authority over men, does not thereby imply that men are the ones to do 'over-bearing authority to others.*

What the church is is a community of agape (1 Cor 13) meeting in congregation for teaching, prayer, etc, in edification...that all grow to maturity and become teachers (Heb 5:12). No hint of a "pastor" in 1 Cor 11-14. Rather we all contribute to one another.

Paul tells Timothy about the elders who look after the congregation for order and wisdom, and talks about men because they will be in a culture where prestige is the enemy of godliness -- just like today -- and older women (presbytis -- the feminine form of presbyter) to help younger women. And note this is not an exclusive area of service.

The main point is serving through supported shepherding (protecting), teaching and guiding of the congregation: a group, not a one-man command.

And if a congregation wants to hire a person or people skilled in the scriptures and learned, as a coach more than anything else, go right ahead, but they operate under the auspices of the elders. Not the reverse.

See Tom Wadsworth videos for more on the early church congregational practices.

*This brings up the unscriptual idea of "headship" which is over-read into the creation-generative statements about woman being created from Adam. Paul's foundational teaching about marriage is that each partner is there for the other. 1 Corinthians 7:4 

Raphael and the Philosophers

Francis Schaeffer referred to Raphael's painting "The School of Athens" in the detail of the gestures of Plato and Aristotle. Detail below.

 The Split Between Nature and Grace

 Schaeffer highlights the separation between the "universal" (represented by Plato pointing up) and the "particular" (represented by Aristotle pointing down). This split represents a failure to keep God as the creator of both, leading to an increasing separation between humanity and the Divine.

A friend put it to me that this was possibly not the references being made, rather, Plato is pointing up to "the good" and Aristotle is gesturing to the world as it is, founded on the "unmoved mover".

Together they are depicting a world in its base reality as impersonal, One that makes of personhood and thus man a final nullity.

The rest of philosophy seeks to deal with this nullity...culminating in Nagel's "The View from Nowhere" p. 225:

One of the difficulties is that the appropriate form of a subjective attitude toward my own future is expectation, but in this case there is nothing to expect.  How can I expect nothing as such? It seems that the best I can do is to expect its complement, a finite but indeterminate amount of something—or a determinate amount, if I am under definite sentence of death. Now a good deal could be said about the consequences of the finiteness of my future, but that is relatively banal and something most of us automatically allow for, particularly after reaching the age of forty. I am concerned with the adequate recognition of my eventual annihilation itself. There will be a last day, a last hour, a last minute of consciousness, and that will be it. Off the edge.

But the view of life and its base ontology from the Creation in Genesis 1, re-pictured by Paul in Romans 8:18ff: is Love, and the 'mission' of the Creator is to bring us into that realm of his Love through Christ.

 

This makes life and love meaningful because its reality is basic, unlike Plato and Aristotle in their bleak finally impersonal static base reality which admits no love, no passion and no fellowship.

 

Prayer Three Ways

The main speaker at our congregation today gave us a three-fold approach to prayer.

1. Protect 'sit at his feet' time: ensure slow time with our Lord.

2. Make small honest "daily bread" prayers.

3. Make shamelessly audacious prayers.

The last comes from, I think perhaps, missing the contrast between the reluctant friend at Luke 11:5 and the generous father in Luke 11:9.

Nevertheless a valuable practice, even if you make no other prayers in the day is a morning prayer pattern and an evening prayer pattern, By "pattern" I mean a short set of topics or themes that can very in content but stimulate a quick but meaningful moment.

Morning 

“Father in heaven, open my heart to your indwelling Spirit, fill me with trust in you and may I be a peacemaker in all my relationships."

Evening

"Father in heaven, thank you for rest at day's end. Forgive my sins of this day and bless those I've met either for good or not with peace and an inclination to Christ. [Then name those people] Forgive my impatience and selfishness and grow in me kindness and  wisdom."

A short 'elevator' prayer suggested by a friend is Psalm 19:14:

Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, my rock and my redeemer.

What about science?

One of the common objections to Christian faith is its asserted conflict with science.

Now, this is just about the initial challenge by the 'science-believer' "S" to the Christian"C"

S -- science disproves/is in massive contradiction of the Bible.

C -- really? How so?

S -- well take evolution..

C --  I suppose you are referring to the disparity between the Neo-Darwinian Synthesis and the Genesis account of creation...have you read the creation account?  I mean from Genesis 1 to 3?

S -- [could answer no or yes, but either way this could follow]

C -- I can see you don't believe it, but I should tell you what I don't believe:

The Neo-Darwinian Synthesis as an account of the origin of the biosphere as we know it. Nor the so-called "Big-Bang" theory, the Multiverse theory, the heliocentric planetary system, that the earth is a sphere or in the circulation of blood and the human brain.

S -- Wow you are really a fundamentalist. Why should I listen to you?

C -- Do you believe in those things?

S -- Yes of course!

C -- How quaint. Belief is not a scientific act. It is at best a religious act.

This is what I think about the factual credibility of these views.

The NDE has a very low confidence. It has demonstrated the operation of none of its assertions.

The BB theory has low to moderate confidence. The red shift does indicate expansion from our frame of reference but its regression to a singularity is speculative at best.

The heliocentric planet system explains phenomena with a very high level of confidence. My level of confidence in the observational data is very high for the globular form of the Earth, circulation of the blood and the existence of the human brain.

And you want to know why? Because we can see that the orderly rationally causal universe and our ability to prepositionally interrogate it is secured in the biblical creation account and demonstrated in experience.

Building for Community

A true community of Christians meets for the Pauline functions of edification in love, growth to Christian maturity and for teaching/learning (1 Corinthians 11-14).

Few buildings erected by congregations facilitate this.

Here's a plan of one that does.

 

Rutter's Clare Benediction

We sang this at Lenten Evensong:

May the Lord show his mercy upon you;
may the light of his presence be your guide:
May he guard you and uphold you;
may his spirit be ever by your side.

When you sleep may his angels watch over you;
when you wake may he fill you with his grace:
May you love him and serve him all your days
Then in heaven may you see his face.

With this variation, perhaps for my funeral

May the Lord show his mercy upon us;
may the light of his presence be our guide:
May he guard and uphold us;
may his indwelling Spirit be ever with us.

When we sleep may his angels watch over us;
when we wake may he fill us with his grace:
May we love him and serve him all our days.

Then in the resurrection of the body,
and life everlasting be always with him
and all the saints in his new creation.