The Bible and Me Part VII - The Supernatural

[I've struggled for a long time with my relationship with the Bible. It has been a rich source of insight and spiritual nourishment to me, but also at times, a source of deep doubt and confusion. My intention in this series is to share a little of how that relationship has developed over time. If you're a Christian and you're trying to work out your own approach to the Bible then it won't give you all the answers, but it may give you some questions and insights that could help you along the way. If you're not a believer, but you're interested in the Christian faith - or in Christians in particular - then it may give you a little insight into how some of us tick!]

[The Bible and Me Part I - Beginning to Question]
[The Bible and Me Part II - Creation]
[The Bible and Me Part III - Inerrancy]
[The Bible and Me Part IV - Scripture vs Tradition]
[The Bible and Me Part V - Job]
[The Bible and Me Part VI - The Difficult Bits]

So far in this series, I've taken what many hard-line evangelicals might see as a rather "liberal" approach to the Biblical text. I've pointed out that some parts of it - e.g. the creation narratives and the book of Job - don't appear to me to be intended as literal historical accounts. I've also suggested that even some of the parts that are written in a more "factual" style, may not be entirely and perfectly historically accurate.

For many who take such an analytical approach to the Bible, it often seems that the next logical progression is to doubt anything in it that smacks of the supernatural. In the modern western world we have little time for alleged phenomena that seem to defy scientific analysis and explanation. If it can't be explained scientifically then it can't really have happened - or at least, not quite the way it was recorded to have happened anyway.

In my view though, if you're going to try and strip out all the miracles from the Bible just because you find them hard to believe, then you might as well just go the whole hog and strip God out as well! Apart from the very existence of an omnipotent deity, the miraculous is right at the heart of the Christian faith, which includes two essential truths that are impossible to believe if you're not willing to believe in the supernatural:

1. That in some mystical way that no theologian ever seems to have completely got their head round, Jesus was "the Son of God" - i.e. He was God and came from God at one and the same time - He wasn't just an ordinary man.


2. That on the third day after He was crucified, Jesus miraculously rose again from the grave!

These truths are what make the Christian faith unique, and are at the heart of the power that it has to change people's lives and to turn this world upside down. These truths tell us:

1. That God is interested in us and our world.


2. That God is humble: He was happy to be treated as one of us, with no special airs or graces. In fact, more than that, He was willing to be mocked, ridiculed, persecuted and - ultimately - even tortured and executed by those He created.


3. That God cares - deeply and intensely - about His creation, hence His willingness to go through all of that in order to make a way for us to be reconciled to Him.


4. That death is not the final word. Jesus did something crazy - stupid even - He met violence and power with ... love and self-sacrifice! He taught His followers to love your neighbour and turn the other cheek and set the ultimate example in doing so Himself, and the result was ... death and defeat!! D'oh!!! But no! Just when they thought it was all over, on the third day Jesus appeared to His followers, risen from the dead, and a rag-tag bunch of defeated and disillusioned disciples were transformed into the most powerful evangelistic movement the world has ever seen: one which thrived under intense persecution as it followed Jesus' example, spread throughout the world, and 2,000 years later - in various forms (some more compromised than others!) - is still going strong today!

To deny the Resurrection or the Deity of Christ is to rip out the very heart of the Christian faith and to destroy the reason for the hope that we profess, and yet you can't believe in either of these things without also believing in the miraculous.

Apart from this, the miraculous was at the very heart of Jesus' life and ministry on earth. His miracles were often referred to as "signs", which is what they were; of who he was and what he had come to do. The miracles indicated that God and His kingdom - which Jesus, the "Messiah" had come to inaugurate - were breaking into the world in a real and tangible way; that God had literally come to dwell among His people. Some of the miracles were about healing and setting people free from physical and spiritual bondage. Others were about God's abundant and miraculous provision. Still others - seen only by Jesus' closest followers to whom He was ready to fully reveal Himself - spoke directly of His power and His Lordship, even over nature itself.

The myriad miracles in the gospels make up such a large, central and inseparable part of the accounts, that it isn't possible to strip them all out without emptying the gospels of most of their content, or radically altering the character, and massively reducing the potency of the Jesus who we Christians profess.

The miracles say that God is involved, God can be involved, and He's able to be involved in your life in a real and tangible way. And if you're willing to lift your eyes just a little higher - above what you think is possible and what you are able to explain, then you might just be surprised to discover that the God of miracles can still show Himself to you today...!

[The Bible and Me Part VIII - Noah and the Flood]

Reconciled

In my previous post, I discussed how - at least according to the Biblical creation story - human beings have become estranged from their creator God. I argued that, whether or not this story is taken literally, its lessons remain valid.

Having discussed the problem I now want to introduce what I (and Christians everywhere) believe is the solution - specifically, the person, Jesus of Nazareth.

Many different religions have come up with different ways to address what is perceived to be the gulf between us and God, or us and perfection, or us and some kind of happiness/fulfilment, either now or in the life to come. There is much wisdom in many of these traditions, but Christianity - as far as I'm aware - is the only faith to claim that God has done something very specific from his side to solve this problem. According to the Christian faith, God isn't just sitting there waiting for us to work it all out - in fact he's very aware that although we may have caused this problem, it isn't one we are capable of solving all by ourselves.

So God - as Jesus - came and visited His creation. A ridiculous claim? Well, maybe, but one that I and many millions of other believers have become convinced is the truth. By coming here he showed and taught his followers and the rest of us how to live. And just by being who He was - challenging hypocrisy, standing up for justice, upsetting the status quo - he provoked his enemies into showing everyone how not to live as well! His presence brought out the best - and the worst - in human nature, as goodness always does when it refuses to back down. Driven by insecurity and jealous rage, his enemies crucified him as a common criminal, though He was innocent of any crime.

But what kind of God allows His enemies to do something like that? A weak God? An impotent God? Someone who isn't really any kind of God at all? Those enemies though, were not just a select group of angry people. In some ways they actually represented the whole human race. They reacted to Jesus the same way all of us often react to God. We are selfish, suspicious, protective of our own interests. We all like to be in control and react angrily at times when that control is threatened or taken away. All of us are capable of crucifying God in our hearts, and many of us do, every day!

So why not destroy us all? - something God is well able to do! But God wanted to do things a different way. His heart is full of love towards us, in spite of the hostility He often finds, and He wanted reconciliation, not war. So instead, He took the beatings and the mocking and the agonising death and the shame. He let humanity - let all of us - do their worst. Given a free reign, man had to kill God. It was the only logical outcome, right from our first rejection of Him when we ate from that tree (see previous post), but God wasn't going to leave it there!

Because of course you can't kill God - not in the end - and there was no way man was going to win. That wasn't the point though. God didn't want to "win" - and refused to fight on those terms. God just wanted to make it clear that in the end He couldn't lose. And one more much more important thing: God wanted to make it clear that He really does love us, no matter what we do! According to Luke's gospel, Jesus' actually prayed on the cross for His persecutors to be forgiven. Then after He died and rose from the dead - according to the Biblical accounts - He didn't come back with holy vengeance to wreak havoc on his enemies. Instead He slipped quietly away. And left His followers with a message of peace and reconciliation for anyone who would listen - that anyone who trusted in Him, could be forgiven for their sins and the relationship with God could be healed.

You might think it would've all fizzled out after that, but no. 2,000 years later, that message is still going strong and has completely changed the shape of this world. There are also many distorted forms of it around and it has been used and abused by those with vested interests, just as many of the powerful guardians of Jewish religion did in Jesus' day.

Its impact has not been lost though, and the central message of reconciliation is just as powerful now as it was then. Believe in Jesus - trust in Him, trust that He loves you, trust that He wants the best for you, be willing to learn to live life His way - and you too can be forgiven and reconciled with the creator God, the God who loves you and wants to be your father again!

The Hunger Games

The weekend before last (OK, so I'm getting a bit behind with my posts!) I went to see The Hunger Games.

For those who haven't seen it and are not familiar with the plot, the film is set in a post-apocalyptic future in a nation called PanEm, in the geographical area that was once North America. PanEm consists of 12 impoverished districts, which are ruled by a totalitarian government based in the wealthy and technologically advanced Capitol. As punishment for a previous rebellion, each year the districts must send 2 children each, from between the ages of 12-18 to compete in a televised fight to the death called, "The Hunger Games", from which only one contestant is allowed to emerge alive.

The film follows a girl called Katniss in particular, and also a guy called Peeta, as they are selected, trained for, and then compete in the games. None of the competitors want to be there, but they must learn to survive, and be willing and able to kill their fellow competitors if they want to make it back home alive to their families and friends.

During the preparation period, before they enter the arena, Peeta confides to Katniss, "I don't want them to change me in there. Turn me into some kind of monster that I'm not." This is the main dilemma faced by Peeta and Katniss (and many of the other contestants). They have been placed in a situation which has completely different rules from the ones that - in their hearts - they know they should be following, and indeed want to follow, and yet if they don't follow the rules of the game they are almost certain to lose everything. How will they respond?

I won't spoil the film for you if you haven't already seen it - and if you have, then you won't need my explanation - but it struck me that to some extent this is a dilemma shared by all of us. We live in a world that seems to be governed by many Rules that in our heart of hearts we would perhaps rather not have to follow. I'm not referring so much now though to rules made by governments, I'm thinking instead about the Rules that seem to emerge by themselves and which we come to accept as simply, "the way things are". Rules like, "it's a dog eat dog world", or, "you have to look out for number one", or even perhaps, "charity begins at home". It would be nice we might think, to look out for other people, to put their needs first and give to anyone who has need, but the world just doesn't work like that. We have to put our own needs first or we will lose out, and sometimes even our survival must take precedence over everything else.

Just over 2,000 years ago, another player entered the "arena" that is our world and chose to do things very differently. He challenged injustice, spent himself on behalf of others and didn't respond with violence even when others tried to kill him. The result? - he was tortured and then executed - just as you might expect, in accordance with the Rules in the previous paragraph. If that had been the end of the story, it would have simply confirmed our suspicion that no-one can get away with breaking the Rules for very long! Fortunately for us though, this wasn't the end, because for some reason, when this particular player chose not to play by the Rules, something very special happened ... he broke The Game!

The Bible teaches us that the world was never meant to work according to these Rules, rather, these are the Rules that came into play when people decided they wanted to run the world their way and could do so without any help from God. When God himself (in the person of Jesus) entered The Game and disobeyed its Rules, The Game broke, because it didn't have any power over the one who had created the world in the first place. It cost God dearly to do that - he paid the price demanded by The Game - but The Game couldn't keep him down. On the third day, he rose again bodily from the grave, appeared to his disciples, and returned to Heaven from whence he came. After this, he clothed his followers in Rule-breaking power and they went on to sacrifice themselves tirelessly and unselfishly to spread the message of his triumph, releasing everyone who believed their message to live their lives free from the Rules of The Game.

Faith and Fairy Stories

Christmas is a time for fairy tales.

There's that one about the jolly old fat man in a red suit, who travels around the world at the dead of night in a flying reindeer-pulled sleigh and climbs down chimneys undetected to leave us with free stuff.

Then there's that other one ... the one about a very unusual baby, born 2,000 years ago in Bethlehem, to a couple who had never slept together and yet - so the story goes - had not been unfaithful either. This birth was accompanied by strange signs in the heavens and the baby had strange visitors who would otherwise not even have known he was there. The God of the Universe had decided to visit His creation, and this was how He chose to make His entrance...

Nowadays, both stories are generally treated with considerable scepticism. Most people over the age of about 3 or 4 know the fat man story is just a fantasy - told by parents, purely for the purpose of injecting some extra magic into the festive season. As far as Jesus is concerned though, no serious historian would doubt that he existed, but whether some of the stories we have about the details of his life should be trusted or taken at all seriously, seems a lot more debatable.

The Bible contains 4 different accounts, by 4 different authors, which tell the story of a man who was more than just a man. This man performed incredible miracles - he healed lepers and blind people, he walked on water, he even raised people from the dead. And then - the greatest miracle of all - after being tortured and killed by the Roman oppressors, he rose from the grave on the third day and appeared to more than 500 of his disciples, before ascending bodily into heaven!

For a good chunk of the last 2,000 years, the truth of this story has been more-or-less taken for granted by the majority of people in the western world, but nowadays we are more sceptical. Miracles like that don't really happen. People don't walk on water and they certainly don't come back from the dead, so how can any account like that be taken seriously? The alternative? - his followers must have fabricated, or at least significantly exaggerated these stories after his death.

But if this is the case, his followers must have known that the stories they were spreading were a lie. They saw Jesus crucified (this event is recorded elsewhere, not just in the Bible), and knew that he was dead and buried. At the time at least, their hopes and dreams must have died with him on that cross. They really had believed - as had many other people - that Jesus was the Messiah - the prophesied deliverer that most Jews had been pinning their hopes on for hundreds of years. To see him naked and dead on a Roman cross must have shattered everything they had lived for. Where did they get the energy and resolve to carry on? And not just to carry on, but to found a worldwide movement that spread and flourished in the face of intense persecution, including severe torture and loss of life for those who had started the story in the first place.

Did the disciples really make it all up? The driving force which enabled the new movement to survive in the face of such incredible opposition was its adherents' belief that one day they too would rise from the dead, just as Jesus had done. Either that happened or it didn't - either the disciples' hopes died with Jesus, or something incredible happened to turn everything around - you can't just "exaggerate" a story like that!

I wonder which "fairy story" you believe...?

Being a Christian - What do I get out of it?

Someone asked me this morning (see the comments on this post) what I get out of being a Christian (to be more precise, the question was what do I get out of God, but this is how I've interpreted it).

The answer is, I get all sorts of things, but I thought I'd try and cover a few here. I realise not all my readers will share my beliefs but to me these things are very real and so for now I will dispense with saying things like, "I think", or, "in my opinion".

This is how it seems to me and this is my experience:

First of all, the best and most important thing I get out of this is God Himself! God created and sustains the whole Universe and yet is interested in, and has time for me! Not only does He have time for me though, He loves me passionately! This is not something I always find it easy to get my head round, but I get powerful glimpses sometimes and - in a good way - it shakes me to the core!
My relationship with God is central to a lot of what I am and what I do with my life. I know lots of people - Christian and not - who can be very loving sometimes, but I don't know anyone who displays the passionate self-giving love I see in Jesus. This love inspires and motivates me - gives me something to aim for - but also encourages, supports and forgives me when I fail.

Prayer and worship - which from the outside perhaps look to some people like meaningless rituals, designed perhaps to try to win God's approval? - to me are usually a delight. I don't pray or worship to get God's approval, I do these things because I have His approval (unwarranted as that might be) and because it's a delight to spend time with Him. Prayer is a mystery I don't have room to try and explore properly here, but it changes things, and it's a 2-way thing. It involves listening to God and working with Him, because our input matters to Him and He wants to involve us in His purposes.

Worship too, is a 2-way thing. It isn't just telling God how wonderful He is - it's a reaching out to God who sweeps you up in His embrace, lifts your spirits heaven-ward and raises your perspective above and beyond the day to day joys and struggles of life.

Beyond these immediate benefits, being a Christian also gives me hope for the future. I believe in a God who is good and who will one day straighten everything out. He has allowed evil and suffering to exist in His world, but only for a time - these things are temporary and are not destined to have the last word. There will be a day when evil has had its chance, done its worst, been fully shown up for what it really is, and is defeated once and for all. Being a Christian means being part of defeating evil now - not through superior might or aggression though, but the way Jesus did it - through self-giving sacrificial love. Being a Christian gives me hope that it's worth working for a better world - even if the fruits aren't immediately visible, even if my efforts seem futile - because Jesus' resurrection is a foretaste of the future, a sign that good will triumph and that one day I will be a part of it!

Being a Christian also gives me a sense of perspective. It does give a sense of meaning to my life, and it's the only central meaning that really makes sense to me in the end which is love. I'm pretty selfish sometimes and find love difficult, but I've encountered in God someone who really is truly loving and gives me hope that I can learn to be the same. Love, in my view makes sense of everything. If people are loved then they are valuable - intrinsically, for who they are, and life has meaning. Without love, it's ultimately just a competition to survive - and perhaps to get the most possible pleasure out of your short, pointless existence. Love means we're all worth the same - because it's about who we are and not about what we can contribute. If I don't think you're worthy of love then I'm in trouble, because there's nothing intrinsically different about us. We all have our faults, strengths and weaknesses. So in my mind, love is the ideal, but true, unselfish love is not something to which humans naturally aspire. It is at the very heart and nature of God though - or if it isn't, then I think we are all ultimately lost anyway...

Resurrection

The Easter story, as most people know, centers around the death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth - also known as the Messiah or "Christ".

This story is absolutely central to the Christian faith - to the extent that the apostle Paul famously wrote in 1 Corinthians 15:14 that, "if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith"!  Every now and again, another liberal-minded theologian seems to come out of the woodwork to suggest that Jesus' resurrection was not a literal, bodily resurrection, or was meant to be some kind of metaphor, but this is very clearly not what the early disciples and writers of scripture had in mind.

The resurrection - if true - is a mind-boggling event.  Everyone knows that people don't rise from the dead. We know it now, in the 21st century, but everyone knew it just as well back then.  When people die, they stay dead - especially if they've been crucified for several hours, skewered and then sealed up in a tomb!  What they don't do is get up, break the seal, roll the stone away and go for a walk.  It doesn't happen.  It doesn't require modern science or an enlightened 21st century mindset to work this out!  But nevertheless, according to the early disciples, this is exactly what Jesus did do and this remains the foundation stone of what has gone on to be the world's largest religion.  So either it was or has become an extremely convincing fraud, or it is - probably - the most monumentally groundbreaking event the world has ever known!

There have been many arguments - understandably - for and against the resurrection, and I'm not going to try and get into them all now (as if I knew them all anyway!), but to me the most convincing objective evidence seems to be the disciples themselves:

The 12 apostles all lived and travelled with Jesus for a period of more or less 3 years.  They had come to believe that he was the Messiah - the one who had come to save and deliver God's people from oppression.  What they thought this meant at this point is not exactly clear.  To begin with they presumably expected Jesus to lead the Jews to victory against the Romans but as time went on and they listened to Jesus' teaching it should have slowly become clear to them that his Kingdom was not going to work like that.  Whatever they expected though, all their hopes and dreams were invested in this man - who then went and got himself crucified!  They should have been devastated - indeed, according to the gospel accounts they were, at least to begin with - but then things changed rather dramatically.  Instead of just going back to their old lives, finding another saviour to follow, or perhaps even just trying to preserve his legacy - the disciples started preaching that Jesus had been raised from the dead!

Unless they truly believed it, this was a barefaced lie of enormous proportions!  Who was going to believe such nonsense - and what drove them to preach about it so powerfully?  Not only did they preach it though, with vigour and conviction, they were also able to convince thousands of others that it was true.  The New Testament book of Acts explains this unlikely set of events with reference to the Holy Spirit - the Spirit of God himself who empowered the early disciples to preach this message with such power that many seemed to find it irresistible, and to confirm its truth with all kinds of miraculous signs and wonders.  This is not an unreasonable explanation given how explosively the message seemed to spread in the face of all the odds and massive persecution and resistance.

Not only did the disciples devote their lives to preaching this message however, they were also willing to give up their lives for it - and many of them did so, dying gruesome and/or painful deaths as a result of anti-Christian persecution.

Could all of this really have happened off the back of a deluded fantasy, imagined or invented by a bunch of disillusioned followers of a dead Messiah?  Or is it just possible that what they say happened really did happen - that Jesus really was something special, and that he really did rise from the dead?  If it's true, then the rest of what they said is certainly worth listening to, and the rest of the world may turn out to be a very different place as a result!

Scrooge

Last night, Emma and I went to see A Christmas Carol at the West Yorkshire Playhouse in Leeds.

Like most people I was very familiar with the plot, having seen several different renditions of it over the years, so I wasn't hugely excited about seeing another one, but I have to say it was brilliantly done and I found it very enjoyable!

It's a classic redemption story.  Selfish, miserly, miserable Scrooge has no time for anyone or anything except his money and it seems the only thing that can shake him out of it is a good haunting!  Scrooge is visited first by the ghost of his late partner, Jacob Marley, who comes to warn him of pending doom if he doesn't change his ways.  He is then visited by 3 other spirits - the ghosts of Christmases Past, Present and Future - who show him the current and final consequences of his behaviour.  These experiences shake Scrooge to the core and by the end of them he is a changed man who becomes joyfully generous toward all his fellows and fully appreciates the value of love and compassion over cold hard selfish greed.

This story reminded me first of the New Testament story of Zacchaeus.  Zacchaeus was a tax collector, which in first century Judea made him a very unpopular person.  Not only did he collect taxes on behalf of the hated Roman occupiers, but it was common for tax collectors to charge more than was really owed so they could keep a little extra for themselves.

Zacchaeus is curious to see this man Jesus who everyone is talking about, but he's too short to see what's going on - so he climbs a tree!  Jesus stops below the tree, identifies Zacchaeus by name and invites himself into his house!  Zacchaeus is delighted to have such a prestigious guest, but the crowd are not impressed - "He has gone to be the guest of a sinner"!  Zacchaeus however, seems to have had a major change of heart over the whole incident - "Look, Lord! Here and now I give half of my possessions to the poor, and if I have cheated anybody out of anything, I will pay back four times the amount." Jesus' response: "Today salvation has come to this house".

The biggest difference between the 2 stories above is that Zacchaeus is changed by kindness rather than fear (although in Scrooge's case it could well be argued that the fear was actually a kindness to him).  Jesus doesn't seem averse to using the fear approach as well though when necessary - as this story shows, which seems very reminiscent of the fate of poor Jacob Marley:

There was a rich man who was dressed in purple and fine linen and lived in luxury every day. At his gate was laid a beggar named Lazarus, covered with sores and longing to eat what fell from the rich man’s table. Even the dogs came and licked his sores.

The time came when the beggar died and the angels carried him to Abraham’s side. The rich man also died and was buried. In Hades, where he was in torment, he looked up and saw Abraham far away, with Lazarus by his side. So he called to him, ‘Father Abraham, have pity on me and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue, because I am in agony in this fire.’

But Abraham replied, ‘Son, remember that in your lifetime you received your good things, while Lazarus received bad things, but now he is comforted here and you are in agony. And besides all this, between us and you a great chasm has been set in place, so that those who want to go from here to you cannot, nor can anyone cross over from there to us.’

He answered, ‘Then I beg you, father, send Lazarus to my family, for I have five brothers. Let him warn them, so that they will not also come to this place of torment.’

Abraham replied, ‘They have Moses and the Prophets; let them listen to them.’

‘No, father Abraham,’ he said, ‘but if someone from the dead goes to them, they will repent.’

He said to him, ‘If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, they will not be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.’

Parable told by Jesus - see Luke 16:19-31

Havoc and Healing

Bad stuff happens.

Sometimes life just seems to go screwy, for all sorts of reasons, or seemingly for no reason at all.

In the Bible, chaos and evil are closely linked. In the first Genesis creation account, God brings order out of chaos. The forces of evil on the other hand, seem continually intent on undoing this process.

Sometimes, precious things that we've spent days, weeks, months, years, a lifetime, lovingly and carefully building and nurturing can come crashing down - be reduced to chaos - in what seems like no time at all.

The gospel on the other hand - the Christian message of hope through Jesus - is all about healing. It's about undoing the chaos - reversing the damage. But what's the point if every time you try to bring healing or to build something good it dies or is destroyed - doesn't chaos always win in the end?

Not according to the gospel - in the end chaos is defeated, death gives way to resurrection. Resurrection isn't just about bringing the old thing back to life though - it's a whole new kind of life. It's a life that's endured suffering and been through death and out the other side - a life that has conquered evil and can hence no longer be touched by it!

This is what Jesus demonstrated through His life, death and resurrection and this is the life that works now in those who put their faith in him. One day this life will emerge fully triumphant in us, just as it did in Him, "if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory" - Romans 8 verse 17