Christmas with Uncle Nick

If I were to describe Christmas as a person, then the nearest fit would be that badly behaved but loveable uncle who turns up once a year to entertain and offend in equal measure.

Not that I have an actual uncle like that, but that’s how I would describe my relationship with Christmas; complicated. For convenience, let’s call him Uncle Nick.

As a believer, I enjoy meeting Uncle Nick; we’ve got the same DNA and we share the same history, going back some 2,000 years. We share a common ancestry. He’s family. He’s also a prize idiot with some very strange opinions, and he’s not afraid to tell us about them. There are times when I wish he would simply shut up and stop being so embarrassing. But, just as he provokes me to the point of simultaneously hugging him and smashing his face in, he disappears for yet another year.

I could easily focus on the bad side of Uncle Nick. It's impossible to ignore. He’s crass. He’s the walking embodiment of kitsch. He's a glutton and a drunkard. He’s shamelessly commercial; using the idea of giving as an excuse to get everybody buying his latest products. He usually nods his acknowledgments towards the holy cradle, though his schizophrenic idea of religion vacillates between humanistic therapeutic moralism and fairy stories. Most irritating of all, he seems to do his utmost to remove the Christ from Christmas.

For example, successive re-writes of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol have progressively expunged references to the accepted Victorian custom of actually worshipping the child in the crib as God incarnate. It’s deemed less offensive nowadays to worship a generic, faceless God who can, and does, fit into whatever religion anyone cares to invent, though Dickens and his Victorian readers might have been severely offended at our post-modern interpretation of his allegory. They would have known, better than us perhaps, that our image of God is not what Luke and the first Christians described in the story of the nativity.

Another thing about Uncle Nick is that he’s infuriatingly promiscuous. He belongs to everyone and everything. Of course, the supermarket chains love him; we get reminded here that “Christmas is Woolworths”. He allows himself to be seduced by every merchant who wants to sell something. One media empire, though, is getting ahead of itself by wanting to rename it “Foxmas”. I get offended by the replacement of Christ with a product in any context, even in a tongue-in-cheek marketing campaign. We’ve been pushing God out of the frame and sitting ourselves in His place ever since the beginning, with consistently disastrous consequences.

Last week, I provoked quite a reaction by suggesting on one on-line forum that a joint Christmas Service with Mormons might not be such a bad idea. Uncle Nick belongs to them too, it seems. The problem here is that he’s pretending that there are no differences between Christianity and Mormonism, when there are, and they are important to both factions. Uncle Nick doesn’t care whom he parties with.

And this is where I confess to a secret admiration of my rogue uncle. He has perfected the art of fitting in. He’s fluid. He simply adopts the shape of whatever situation he finds himself in. That’s what happens when you give yourself to the world (and Christ himself set the precedent on this issue). However, despite his glaring flaws, Uncle Nick still carries the DNA of the story of the Christ-child. Somewhere in there, beneath the Santa outfit and the clutter and mush of sleigh-bells, pixies, yule-logs, tinsel, bad TV and unrelenting advertising, there is still the wonder and mystery of the God who became a baby to live among us.

That’s why Uncle Nick sings. He sings gratuitously, and he sings in everyone’s voice. There are times when he sings with excruciating ineptitude, and others when he’ll make angels weep. Most of his repertoire should be permanently consigned in the garbage-heap of elevator music. Very few of his songs should be allowed in Church, but some deserve to be there, perhaps all year round. When he sings these songs, which he still does, I am willing to overlook his manifold and manifest transgressions, and I thank God he is in my family and I love him for it.

It will be another 364 days before I meet Uncle Nick again. I'm both dreading it, and counting the days. Life would be so much simpler without him but, then, it would be infinitely poorer.

Hark! The herald angels sing
Glory to the new-born King
Peace on earth and mercy mild
God and sinners reconciled
Joyful all ye nations rise
Join the triumph of the skies
With the angelic host proclaim
Christ is born in Bethlehem

Hark! The herald angels sing
Glory to the new-born King

Christ, by highest heaven adored
Christ, the everlasting Lord
Late in time, behold him come
Offspring of a virgin’s womb
Veiled in flesh the Godhead see
Hail the incarnate deity
Pleased as man with man to dwell
Jesus our emmanuel

Hark! The herald angels sing
Glory to the new-born King

Hail the heaven-born Prince of Peace
Hail the sun of righteousness
Light and life to all he brings
Risen with healing in his wings
Mild, he lays his glory by
Born that man no more may die
Born to raise the sons of earth
Born to give them second birth

Hark! The herald angels sing
Glory to the new-born King

Christmas Eve

I was unable to post anything last week because my evenings have been taken up in preparing the music for tonight's Christmas Eve service at our church (St Stephen's Coorparoo).

Here's a quote I found this week, that I really like...

No powerful person dares to approach the manger, and this even includes King Herod. For this is where thrones shake, the mighty fall, the prominent perish, because God is with the lowly. Here the rich come to nothing, because God is with the poor and hungry, but the rich and satisfied he sends away empty. Before Mary, the maid, before the manger of Christ, before God in lowliness, the powerful come to naught; they have no right, no hope; they are judged.

'God Is in the Manger: Reflections on Advent and Christmas.' By Dietrich Bonhoeffer

As posted on http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2010/decemberweb-only/60-11.0.html

Happy Christmas to you all.

Signs and symbols

We had the privilege of seeing U2 on Thursday evening. We had “standing” seats, which meant we were on our feet for hours. The pain was well worth it.

It was one of two concerts in Brisbane as part of U2’s 360 degrees tour of Australia and New Zealand. The stage rig was immense, and filled half a football pitch. Within the rig a large circular screen was hung, rather like a gigantic upside-down lamp shade, for the visuals, which included live footage of the band and a collage of other signs an symbols.

I loved it, but I took special interest in the religious imagery. U2’s iconic song “Sunday, Bloody Sunday”, which was originally written against the backdrop of sectarian violence in Northern Ireland, was now performed against a backdrop of gun-toting, burka-wearing Jihadis. Bono, U2’s charismatic lead singer, conveyed messages of support for Aung San Suu Kyi, whilst a couple of dozen young men and women placed illuminations bearing the candle and barbed wire logo of Amnesty International around the ring of the stage. Desmond Tutu’s beaming face appeared on screen with a brief message of hope. The message was clear – this was Rock’n’Roll with a conscience, with an overt spirituality, politically aware.

Something struck me during this audio-visual extravaganza; the saturation of visual imagery. I’m not objecting to it per se, but I couldn’t help striking the contrast.

The world of visual imagery is something that I’m kind of tuned into, but kind of not. For me, the imagery makes no sense unless it comes with some sort of narrative. I’m the kind of person who will go through an art gallery and read all the plaques next to each painting to see who painted it, what was their context, and what they saw that compelled them to try and capture it in their creations. In other words, the symbol means nothing to me without the back-story.

Incidentally, this is where many of the New-Agers and Gnostics lose the plot. They argue that the meaning is in the symbols themselves, rather than the back-story. For example, they will get into all kinds of silliness about Christmas and Easter, as if the festivals themselves held more meaning than the Christian back-story that they are now used to convey. No, the “true” meaning of the Christian celebration of Christmas and Easter is not found in the pagan festivals that might have preceded them; it’s actually found in the stories of the Nativity and the Passion that have been passed down to us in the Bible.

Which brings me to the contrast I found with the U2 concert. The U2 concert was expertly filled with visual imagery, but the Christian Gospel is concerned with an audible imagery (I’m struggling to think of an English word that conveys this idea). The Gospel is not so much something that is “seen”, it’s something that is “heard”. It’s message is conveyed to us through story (predominantly), or teaching, or saying, or singing. For believers in the ancient near-east, where only 5% of the population could read and you had to find a specialized scribe to get anything written down, the Word of God was a constant voice.

Without radio or TV, the people would fill their lives with talking and singing, which is something they still do in places where the radio and TV have not yet penetrated to the saturation that we experience in the industrialized west. So, Paul enjoins the first Christians;

Do not get drunk on wine, which leads to debauchery. Instead, be filled with the Spirit, speaking to one another with psalms, hymns, and songs from the Spirit. Sing and make music from your heart to the Lord, always giving thanks to God the Father for everything, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.

(Ephesians 5:18-20). I don’t think Paul is telling the believers to sing where they normally wouldn’t. Rather, he is telling them to change their repertoire to a Christ-centered Gospel. If Paul were writing today, he’d be saying something like “Change your football-chants to hymns of praise to God”.

Another aspect that should not be overlooked is that Paul, and the other NT authors, do something more than urge the believers to take up this new audio-imagery; they provide the reasons for doing so in their analysis of the Christian Gospel. These songs come with a deep and satisfying theology. The audio-imagery comes with an extensive audio back-story.

One place where the contrast between audio and visual imagery is pronounced is the Book of Revelation. Consider the following;

I turned around to see the voice that was speaking to me. And when I turned I saw seven golden lampstands, and among the lampstands was someone like a son of man…’Write, therefore, what you have seen, what is now and what will take place later. The mystery of the seven stars that you saw in my right hand and of the seven golden lampstands is this: The seven stars are the angels of the seven churches, and the seven lampstands are the seven churches.'

(Revelation 1:12-13 and 1:19-20).

If I were a film-maker I’d have tremendous difficulty filming this scene, and that’s perhaps why Revelations has never been presented on screen. The problem is in how you arrange the furniture. At first, the “son of man” appears to be walking among the lampstands; then he appears to be holding them in his hand. Clearly, John is not trying to convey a visual image here – it just cannot be imagined. What he is trying to do, I believe, is to convey a story (an audible image). The Lord of the Church walks among the lampstands, as the LORD God did in the garden in Genesis 3:8; the Church is His creation and His domain. He also holds the lampstands in his hand, meaning that the Church is His special possession and it is upheld and protected by Him.

I loved the imagery and spectacle of the U2 concert. However, for it to have meaning, I need more of the back-story. The visual imagery is fine for an evening of entertainment, but I need more of the audible imagery and symbolism for life in the “real world”, and this is why we cannot model our Church services on a U2 concert. There has to be an explanation, but, thankfully, that is exactly what the Church has been doing, more or less faithfully, for 2,000 years. Maintaining this audible tradition, in my view, will sustain the Church for the next 2,000 years, and beyond.

A Holy Gospel

No sooner had I finished last week’s blog that I thought of another line to my eclectic credo. Here it is:

I believe in an open Gospel
I believe in a total Gospel
I believe in a holy Gospel

“Holy” is one of those words that you think you know, but when you sit down to write a definition of it, you suddenly realize you don’t. This is the point at which most people will run to their dictionaries. As I am concerned with a Holy Christian Gospel, I’m going to run to my Bible, in particular God’s command to his people to…

Be holy, because I am holy

This phrase occurs several times in the Bible. In Leviticus 11:44, it’s in the context of a command about what animals the Israelites may or may not eat, followed by a repetition in Leviticus 11:45, which puts it in the context of Israel’s redemptive history and provides the rationale to the command. In Leviticus 19:2 it’s a prologue to a variation on the Ten Commandments (see also Exodus 20:1-17). The New Testament sums it up in 1 Peter 1:15-16

...But just as he who called you is holy, so be holy in all you do; for it is written: “Be holy, because I am holy.”

Peter, I believe, has the verses from Leviticus clearly in view, and he’s looking at them in the context of the history of redemption. The story line goes like this;

• Israel (which is representative of humanity in general) is captive in a foreign land (Egypt) that treats it very, very badly.

• Israel wants to escape, but can’t, so it appeals to God to save it

• God intervenes decisively and miraculously rescues them

• God brings his redeemed people into his land (kingdom) and sets out the ground-rules for their relationship with him so that they can continue to live there

• One of these ground-rules is that for them to be his people, he should be their God (Exodus 6:7, etc), and he doesn’t want them chasing after other Gods or saviours. He sums this up by commanding them to “be holy”

Peter draws these threads together by preaching to the New Testament Church

But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.

(1 Peter 2:9).

Being “holy” means being “God’s special possession”. A “holy” person belongs exclusively to God, having been redeemed by him and living a life that’s compatible with the laws of the New Kingdom.

The reason scriptures give for the command is interesting; we are to be “holy” because God is “holy”. If I can say so without being irreverent, just as we (the church) are God’s exclusive possession, so he has committed himself to us in an exclusive relationship – he has made himself our “special” possession.

The metaphor that should spring to mind here is of the marriage relationship between husband and wife, where both parties commit to a total, exclusive, intimate and enduring relationship. It’s an appropriate metaphor because it is used a number of times throughout scripture, including the story of the unfaithful wife (and faithful husband) in the opening chapters of Hosea (Hosea 1-3). See also the imagery of the wedding feast of the Lamb in Revelations (Rev 21:2, 22:17 etc).

These metaphors describe the nature of the relationship between God and his people, but the impulse behind it is intriguing. The scriptures say it’s because God is holy. In other words, it is his nature to commit to his people in a total, exclusive, intimate and enduring relationship. God wants to be with us, which profoundly challenges our tendency to try to live independently from him.

Incidentally, the church has traditionally contended for the elevation of marriage between a man and a woman, though the campaign for same-sex marriage is currently challenging its stance. One of the reasons is that the church has held up marriage as a picture of God’s relationship with his church, I remember the phrase from the Anglican Marriage service which spoke of the marriage being like “…the mystical union between Christ and his church”. Defending marriage isn’t just about regulating people’s relationships or sexuality, it’s about holding up what it means to live out God’s holiness. To put it theologically, marriage is an incarnation of the word of God because it “lives out” his “holy” nature in the “real” world.

“Holy” is a God-thing. It’s got God involved in a special, intimate and enduring way. I believe in a “Holy” Gospel because it takes us to God; God is it’s ultimate destination.

There are other “gospels”. The “gospel” of Judaism takes us to the law and the extended Jewish family. The “gospel” of Islam takes us to its law and its prophet, and so does the “gospel” of Mormonism, which also takes us to the Mormon family. The “gospel” of Gnosticism takes us within ourselves. The social “gospel” takes us to secular legislation. The “gospel” of Wicca takes us to the “natural” world. The “gospel” of post-modernism takes us to the shopping mall.

My point is, God can be found in all these “gospels”, though some obscure him more than others, and many aspects of them are positively misleading. However, they are not “holy” gospels if they stop short of God. If their ultimate destination is the book, or the prophet, or the community, or the knowledge, or the legislation, or the product, then they are not “holy” gospels because they do not bring us to the One in whom all these things exist and have their being (see Colossians 1:16 and Colossians 1:23). This is what the Christian Gospel does, and that is why I believe it.

The flip-side is that a “holy” Gospel brings God into all these things. Last week I blogged about a “total” Gospel and what I hoped to convey was that the Christian Gospel touches all aspects of life. As Peter puts it, “be holy in all you do” (1 Peter 1:15). One cannot believe the Christian Gospel and not involve God (the Father, Son and Holy Spirit) in every aspect of one’s life.

A Total Gospel

Last week I blogged that I was a proponent of an open Gospel. At the time I didn’t intend to extent the theme, but this week I’ve been thinking further about it, especially as a background response to my exchanges between an on-line character called LDS_anarchist on his blog and mine.

So, I’ll add another line to my “credo”;

I believe in an open Gospel.
I also believe in a total Gospel.

It was in my teens that I first heard that if I put my faith in Jesus Christ, he would save me. So I did.

As I got older (I’d like to say “matured”, but I’d be presuming), I began to wonder about what it meant to be “saved”. Looking back, I have been spared from major trauma in my personal life, but not all my Christian friends have been so fortunate. One of our closer friends died of cancer a couple of years ago, leaving a wife and two teenage kids. Many people with no Christian faith have been equally as fortunate as us. While I think it’s true that Christians are generally better at staying out of trouble than their unbelieving neighbors, it should be obvious that calling oneself a Christian does not immunize one against the trials of life and death.

I also found fairly quickly, that when the Bible talks of salvation it is a salvation from the disaster that’s about to come. The Israelites were saved from the imminent judgment on Egypt (by the blood of the Lamb, Exodus 12:12-13), the Prophets tried to save the Jews by warning them of the coming judgment around the 6th Century BC, and in the New Testament, we see the storm clouds gathering again in the lead-up to the destruction of the Temple in AD70 (see Acts 2:40). The picture that emerges for me is being saved from the coming wrath of God.

However, if this is all that the Christian Gospel has to offer, then it’s nothing more than an insurance policy against some future disaster. It’s not a total Gospel in the sense that it does not cover the whole of life.

The partial Gospel has other variations. For some (increasingly few, I believe) it’s something you “do” on Sunday, or at births, weddings and funerals (hatches, matches and dispatches, as they say in the trade). Church, for some, is nothing more than the "club" they subscribe to, and it is kept securely in the confines of the Sunday morning routine. For others, it affects one’s internal thought-life or perspective, but there is little connection to the “outside” world. The latter is a form of pietism and it’s prevalent amongst Pentecostals and Charismatics. I’m a post-charismatic myself (not an ex-charismatic), but I worry that such pietism retreats into an internal experience to such an extent that it has nothing meaningful to say to the world. The other extreme is to interpret the gospel purely in terms of a socio-political agenda, which ignores the moral and spiritual dimensions of the Christian Gospel. All of these are partial Gospels and if there was one word that summed up what they lack, it is integrity.

That lack of integrity grates against such passages as John 10:10b

I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.

Or Colossians 1:19-20

For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.

“All things”, “the fullness of life” – these phrases point to a fully integrated total Gospel.

Increasingly, I have been drawn to the writings of John (his Gospel, the three letters and Revelation). It's because he is concerned with a total Gospel – a Gospel that’s more than just an insurance policy against some future eventuality. It is something that encompasses my whole life; and not just my whole life, but the entire cosmos and my place in it. Put coarsely, John sees God as the origin, meaning and ultimate goal of life, as he writes Jesus' declaration in Revelation 22:13

I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End.

This changes everything. When we see our lives, and every aspect of our lives played out within him, it changes everything. This is the start of the Total Gospel.

But where does it lead and what does it save us from? Put coarsely again, it saves us to God and it saves us from Hell. The difference is that we’re not just saved to God from Hell in the next life, we’re saved now (see Luke 19:9).

If we’re saved now, today, what does that salvation look like? There are, I believe, at least two dimensions to this that are equally important – we are reconciled to God and we are reconciled to each other. The acknowledgment of who Jesus is, and the worship of him is what unites “every tribe and nation” in John’s vision in Revelation 5. We are saved into community, and this is a message that the Evangelical Church, in particular, must rediscover if it is to embrace the Total Gospel of the New Testament. The Kingdom becomes apparent when we live out the values and characteristics of our King (see John 13:35). You could even say that it is the Church’s mandate to live out, or incarnate the Word of God (John 1:14 and Colossians 3:16).

There is a third dimension to it that is alluded to in Revelation 5. The reconciliation of Christ does not simply extend to God and humanity, it extends to the entire cosmos. It’s a restoration of the created order in which God, humanity and the “land” interact; the order that our sin broke apart (see Genesis 1-3).

So, the Total Gospel not only saves me from ultimate disaster. Nor does it just give me a mystical internal experience or the basis for a political agenda. It saves me to God, it saves me to my fellow human beings and it saves me to the cosmos. It gives me something of value to say to the world.

Now, that’s a Gospel worth preaching!

An Open Gospel

I am a proponent of an open Gospel.

I mean “open” in the sense of “open house”; where a real estate agent opens up a house for sale so that interested people can come in and look around. They will poke their noses into the cupboards, check various certificates (termite protection is a big issue here), wander around and generally scrutinize the place. Some will be genuine buyers, others will be just curious. The point of the exercise is to allow the buyer the chance to inspect the property before proceeding further and the real estate agent gets to know the neighbors for potential future business.

By contrast, “closed” refers to the situation where you can see the outside of the house, but you can’t look in; or at least, not until you’re fully signed up or initiated.

My theology for an “open” Gospel is derived from my reading of the Bible. It starts with an act of divine disclosure – God creates the Cosmos so that He can be known by it. Without a creation, God remains alone and there is nothing to which He can be known. He declares His creation “good” (Genesis 1:4 etc) because it fits His purpose and it reflects who He is. He creates humankind in His image, male and female (Genesis 1:27) so that they can recognize Him. Of all God’s creatures, we are the ones with the special privilege of being able to comprehend God; see the comparison with the Angels in Psalm 8:4-6, in which the author of the Letter to the Hebrews sees special significance in Hebrews 2:5-9.

Jesus is God’s ultimate act of self-expression, so much so that John calls him the “word made flesh” (John 1:14). When Christians think of God, they rightly think of Jesus – he is The God, come to make Himself known to us. Perhaps the most confronting image from this story is that of a crucified God, stripped naked and impaled, spread-eagled on a cross for all the world to see. This is God, bearing our sin. This is what our sin does to God. And yet, God triumphs, even over death.

Moving into the church age, we see that the Christian church has always striven to get the word out. Initially by word of mouth and handwritten scripts, then by the printed press and now by the internet. Christians want to make the Gospel of Christ known, and the more they can broadcast it, the better. The Bible is replete with admonitions to do this, not least of which are the concluding words of Jesus in Matthew’s Gospel;

Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”

(Matthew 28:18-20).

Did you get the “teaching” part?

God wants to be made known. He wants us to see Him as He fully is. Put it another way; He wants to be scrutinized by us, all of us and not just a select few. It’s “open house”, and we get to set the agenda.

So, I get pretty worked up when I detect the introduction of “secrets” to the Christian Gospel. To me, this cuts right against the whole tenor of God’s self-revelation to us. To put it bluntly, it’s blasphemy of the highest order.

However, these “secrets” do crop up, and they do so in the Christian community. That’s because the people who promote the idea of “secrets” are thinking more like Gnostics than Christians.

Gnosticism has made something of a come-back in recent years, and because western culture has been inculcated with Gnosticism-lite, it’s quite difficult to diagnose.

One of my theological hobbies is to develop diagnostics for heresies and here’s one for Gnosticism – if I find myself thinking that I am justified by my knowledge, then I’m thinking like a Gnostic, not a Christian. Why? Because I am justified by Christ, and Christ alone and He is not me nor is He any part of me. In fact, if I find myself thinking that I am justified by my anything, I am not thinking like a Christian.

Gnostics, as their name suggests, put a great deal of emphasis on knowledge. That’s appealing to an educated and knowledge-based culture like ours, but it’s no accident that the most active proponents (e.g. Elaine Pagels) are those who pride themselves on their knowledge. I’m not saying that knowledge and education are bad, rather that they are not the end-goal of human existence – that’s God’s prerogative.

Further Gnostics pride themselves on their ownership of a “secret” knowledge – a knowledge that is only available to their initiates. They operate a “closed” house.

A prime example is Mormonism. Joseph Smith, it’s founder, joined the Freemasons on 15 March 1842, setting up a Masonic lodge in Nauvoo (http://www.irr.org/mit/masonry.html). In his early career, Smith promulgated a message that retained some Christian imagery, and this is the Mormonism that is familiar to most everyday Mormons. However, Smith progressively moved to a more secretive form of Gnosticism, introducing an elaborate system of temples, rites and initiations. The difference between the two has been described by Mormons as the "Preparatory Gospel" and the "Full Gospel", but by Mormon critics as the "Bait and switch" (see here for a discussion). Remarkably, both sides acknowledge that there is a difference.

These Mormon Temple rites remain secret today, and Mormons are forbidden to discuss them or what they were taught in them.

However, the keeping of secrets is a hard business in the days of the internet, and any enquirer can quickly search for what they want to find. To cut a long story short, the theology that emerges from these secrets is that Mormonism is actually a polytheistic religion, in which men become Gods by acquiring multiple wives and subscribing to the Church. Brigham Young, Joseph Smith’s direct successor, said “The only men who become Gods, even the Sons of God, are those who enter into polygamy" Journal of Discourses 11:269, 1866. Ask the next Mormon missionary who comes knocking on your door, though you're unlikely to get a knowledgeable answer.

Remember my diagnostic above about “I am justified by my [fill in the blank here]”? Joseph Smith, Brigham Young and the Mormon prophets after them want to tell you that you are justified by your polygamy.

In discussing this with Mormons, the most common response I get is the “milk before meat” thing. It’s a misappropriation of what Paul is saying in 1 Corinthians 3:2, where he’s actually saying “I’m going to take you back to basics because you seem to think that the Gospel of Christ gives you a license to sin”.

However, the Gnostic isn’t interested in allowing the text to speak for itself because he already has a “special knowledge” that tells him what he wants to know. Why does he have this “special knowledge”? Because he has been initiated into the brotherhood, of course.

I once asked a Mormon Bishop what he thought the main intent of Christ’s mission was. He replied that it was to give us the ordinances and principals of the Gospel. His answer indicated that it was all about transferring a special knowledge to his followers. When I replied that we don’t read much about that sort of thing in the Bible, he retorted that that’s because it had been changed by the Catholics. I feel that he considers himself to have this “special knowledge” because of his connection to the “one true Church”, and it’s not his fault the Bible doesn’t agree with him.

There are a couple of themes in the Bible that might seem to support the Gnostic view, but I think they can be dispelled as giving support to it. I’ll address a couple briefly.

The first is that Jesus spoke in Parables. The dialog in Matthew 13:10-11 addresses this directly;

The disciples came to him and asked, “Why do you speak to the people in parables?” He replied, “Because the knowledge of the secrets of the kingdom of heaven has been given to you, but not to them.

Jesus goes on to quote Psalm 78:2. This is one of those instances where it’s worth going back to the scripture quoted to get a fuller picture. Here’s the opening stanzas of the Psalm…

My people, hear my teaching;
listen to the words of my mouth.
I will open my mouth with a parable;
I will utter hidden things, things from of old—
things we have heard and known,
things our ancestors have told us.
We will not hide them from their descendants;
we will tell the next generation
the praiseworthy deeds of the LORD,
his power, and the wonders he has done.

(Psalm 78:1-4).

In other words, the Psalmist is proclaiming an “open” Gospel, using such phrases as “we will not hide”. If there is a “secret” knowledge here, it is only so because the people have forgotten it and needed to be reminded - a situation that the Psalmist seeks to correct.

So, is Jesus misquoting the Psalm? I believe he is doing what the Psalmist is doing, by opening the eyes of the people to what they can already see. The Parables are a superlative vehicle for this message, because Jesus takes everyday scenarios and uses them to point out the obvious. It remains a “secret” to his opponents because they are incapable of “getting” it. Jesus’ opponents don’t see the Kingdom of God described in the parables because they see it in the building of their Temple and the “principals and ordinances” of their law. Thus the parables divide between those who are Jesus’ followers and those who are not.

Another verse I needed to reconsider this week (because it was brought up in a post at blog.mrm.org, click here and do a search on "white stone") was Revelation 2:17b

I will also give that person a white stone with a new name written on it, known only to the one who receives it.

My reply was that it is not appropriate to interpret the apocalyptic language of Revelations too literally, however it is appropriate to understand the meaning from the imagery provided. The “white stone” signifies a permanent monument or marker post, like the Ebenezer in 1 Samuel 7:12. The “new name” denotes a change in ownership, like the change in name that God gave to Abram and Sarai (Abraham and Sarah, Genesis 17:5 and Genesis 17:15).

The fact that the new name is known only to the person who receives it is a little more problematic, because it appears to imply some kind of secret initiation. However, I think that John is saying that the only people who can be sure of this change of ownership are the people themselves, perhaps at an individual level. In other words, the fact that God’s people now belong to God is a fact that the world cannot comprehend or “know”.

In my experience, I’m often greeted with blank stares when I tell people that I don’t belong to myself – I belong to God, doubly so because He created me and He redeemed me

You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your bodies.

(1 Corinthians 6:19-20).

That’s a confronting message to give to the next person who protests at Christianity’s interference with his or her life, saying “it’s my life, I’ll do with it as I please”. They might even challenge the Christian with “it’s your life, why do you allow yourself to be dominated by God”. They cannot see the white stone with the new name written on it. God owns us.

There may be secrets in the world. The revelation of God, whom He is and what He is like, is not one of them. If it is a secret, then it’s a secret that’s meant to be exposed.

Letter to Kevin Rudd MP and Mr Rudd's reply

As the polls were counted, it became clear that the 2010 Australian Federal elections would result in a hung parliament. In order to form a majority, the two major parties (Labor and Liberal) would have to recruit the required number of independents and minor parties, the Greens included.

On the Saturday night after the voting booths were closed, I watched the reaction of Bob Brown, leader of the Greens, on TV as he retained his seat. I also saw our MP, Kevin Rudd (who had until recently been Prime Minister) retain his seat with a convincing margin. Faced with the prospect of Mr. Rudd’s Labor Party negotiating with the Greens, I wrote to Mr. Rudd on 22 August 2010. On 26 October 2010, I received a reply from Mr. Rudd’s office. My letter and Mr. Rudd’s replies are reproduced below, though I have removed postal addresses, email addresses and phone numbers out of courtesy.

Letter to Kevin Rudd, 22 August 2010.

Kevin Rudd, MP

Dear Sir,

Congratulations on your re-election in my constituency of Griffith.

In watching the results come in these last 24 hours, it seems that whoever forms our next government will have to enter into some sort of deal with the minor parties, including the Greens. I would like to take this opportunity to let you know my reaction this prospect but, as I hope to explain, my concerns remain whether this particular circumstance eventuates or not.

The Greens, I think, have a valid message in the sphere of climate and environment. I am a professional civil engineer, specializing in flooding and drainage and my particular concerns in this area are to do with planning for climate change, particularly its potential impacts on increased flood risks to coastal infrastructure. Like the Greens, I am concerned to preserve and best manage our natural heritage because, whichever way you look at it, our well-being is sustained by our natural environment. Last night Bob Brown said that as a general rule, what’s good for our grandchildren is good for us, and I agree.

However, Bob Brown also promised to continue to campaign for same-sex marriage, and this is where we part ways. In part, my reason for writing to you is because I feel that I, and those who share my convictions, appear to be increasingly silenced and demonized as homophobic. I wonder how long I have remaining to raise my concerns and objections to same-sex marriage without being stigmatized, and that should be a concern to those of you who support parliamentary democracy.

My reluctance towards same-sex marriage does not, I sincerely hope, arise from a desire to deny happiness and a sense of fulfillment to same-sex couples. Further, I refuse to discuss sex and sexuality in any context that regards persons with differing sexual orientations as anything less than human beings. This leaves me at a disadvantage, however, because the pioneers of same-sex marriage can project an image of themselves striding confidently into the 21st Century with a revolutionary vision of great value, leaving me with the circumspective and undeniably boring sound-byte of “no it’s not”.

I could appeal to the thousands of years of human wisdom relating to family and home that the pioneers of same-sex marriage look set to jettison, but that’s unlikely to appeal to them. Instead, I ask that we look forward to the potential consequences and what effect, as Bob Brown suggests, this will have on our grand children.

These consequences, I suggest, relate to the deconstruction of marriage as a coherent social entity and it’s reconstruction as a contract between private individuals. The question I ask is, if we allow this to play out to its ultimate conclusion, what will we be left with? I suggest that we will be left with something that’s virtually indistinguishable from current de-facto and living-together relationships and, if this is case, what’s the point of legislating for it? To me, it’s rather like buying the lease for a coal-mine and building wind-farms on the land instead of mining it. It’s a dog in the manger.

What business is it of mine to object? I fully respect a couple’s prerogative to exclude my intrusion into its private life and to tell me that it’s none of my business. However, by bringing that relationship under the auspices of marriage, that couple necessarily brings its relationship into the public sphere, and in doing so, it implicitly seeks my approval, my validation and my affirmation of its relationship. In the case of same-sex couples, this is something I feel I would be unable to give. If I were put in a position in which I were forced to either express my endorsement of the relationship or shut up, then I would have to question my rights.

The Greens have successfully positioned themselves as the intelligent, progressive choice. The pioneers of same-sex marriage have successfully generated a sense of inevitability about their cause. Their positioning has given them the advantage of being able to dismiss people like me as unintelligent, regressive and resistant to moving forward. They may be right but, to borrow a phrase from the gay rights movement, this is who I am and why can’t they simply accept it? It seems to me that there is a clash of rights. If we cannot have a win-win situation, then we need to think carefully about whose rights we decide to deny.

There are other important and solemn issues to consider in government, of course. However, the advocacy of same-sex marriage is one way to lose my vote.

Yours faithfully,
Martin Jacobs

Letter to Martin Jacobs, 26 October 2010.

Dear Mr Jacobs

Thank you for contacting Kevin with your policy suggestions. I note your specific reference to same-sex marriage policies.

Kevin appreciates you taking the time to share your feedback.

Community views are of critical importance to the Government when forming its policies and your views will be taken into account in relation to this process.

If there are any other federal government matters with which Kevin may be of assistance to you, please do not hesitate to contact his Electorate Office on [phone number and email provided]

Yours sincerely

Amy Cooper, Constituent Officer

The Honourable Kevin Rudd MP
Federal Member for Griffith