What makes the Gospel good?

Gospel: good news. But what makes the gospel good? I mean, if the gospel is that we are sinners and God is angry with us, and we have to live our lives a certain way or we are being disobedient, then I have to say that at first glance that doesn’t sound very good at all. What makes it good?

Even if we add that Jesus died for us, is that really good? I’m not sure I want someone else’s blood on my head, that puts me in remarkable debt doesn’t it?

I suppose if what I am seeking is independence, then this gospel is nothing but bad news to me isn’t it? If I want to be entirely my own man, and make all my own choices, and bear the consequences of them all, then this gospel will smell like death to me. If on the other hand, independence is not my ultimate test of good, but instead I value relationship, then the gospel appears to me transformed.

If I’m not afraid of being in relationship, and arranging my life to bring joy to another, then the reality that I am a sinner remains terrible, but the news that someone has died to heal that is wonderful. Further, if my life isn’t all about me, then ordering my life for someone else’s joy is no longer a hateful thing, but a delightful thing.

The question then of whether the gospel is good, really turns upon your initial orientation: if your orientation is self-centred, then the gospel opposes you. If your orientation is other-centred, then the gospel is not only good, it is life itself.

Before we find fault with God's plans, it sometimes helps to see our own hearts. 

The Long wait for God

Sometimes waiting can be long and slow and hard and lonely. Here's a little piece by a writer I know, that I think captured something of the essence of the long wait for God.

Es Stewart: Drought

I hope it's a blessing to you,

dh

Seeking Someone who can Truly See

So many of the problems we have in our world are due to people valuing things wrongly. I mean, if people valued love of others over power for themselves, just think of the difference that would make? Or if people valued relationships over possessions, how different would our world look?

But I’m conscious as I say that, that this problem is too intractable to be solved by simply re-educating people. Because most of these problems are to do with value, and value is not a logical thing. I can’t logically prove that a long marriage is more fun than a one night stand. I can think it, and I can teach it, but I can’t logically prove it.

Similarly I can’t prove that it’s better to give than to receive, or that losing your life for Jesus is actually the necessary step in finding it. I can’t prove any of these things. To grasp these things, a person actually has to have their eyes opened.

When it comes to questions of value, the only way there can be any true measure of it is if there is someone absolute, who sees truly what is valuable. For the average person who can conceive of none above themselves to make that decision, all that is left is opinion. Yet there is someone who is absolute and sees true, and that person is Jesus. If we would know what is truly valuable in this world, we must listen to Jesus.

We refuse to be enemies.

There’s a block of stone on a Palestinian Road, facing an Israeli settlement that has carved upon it these words: “We refuse to be enemies”. I don’t know who wrote it, and ultimately it doesn’t really matter I suppose. What matters is that someone, somewhere is willing to take that stand.

And it really is a stand. When we are attacked, when we are afraid, when we feel abused, or manipulated, or used, our instinctive reaction is to cast the protagonist in the role of enemy. This allows us several emotional luxuries, like feeling ourselves to be in ‘the right‘ and hence somehow superior, or feeling justified in our aggression or anger or hatred towards them. But do any of these emotional luxuries actually achieve anything other than soothing our delicate egos and further estranging an already strained relationship?

When Jesus came into the midst of Israel, and told his listeners, that despite the fact that they were being ruled by the Romans; despite the fact that basically every religious order around them was opposed to them; despite years of oppression and hardship, they were to love their enemies, he called them away from any emotional luxury and towards a very costly and very active love.

I don’t think Jesus‘ call is any less radical or necessary today.

In a world where people burn Korans to make a point, where they dance in the streets for joy that someone has been assasinated, where they scream “death to the infidel” at the skies, where they burn churches and retaliate in kind, Jesus’ call to love our enemies has never been more needed, nor more difficult.

To love ones enemies in an international politico-religious climate such as ours requires far more than just moments of good will, it requires more than cheap political rhetoric about multiculturalism or tolerance. It actually requires something akin to stubborn dogged resistance on the part of individuals in all their relationships and their language. To love those who differ from ourselves, particularly when their self-understanding is that they are our enemies, requires a flat refusal to allow oneself to even accept the possibility that we may be enemies. To love ones enemies, at its heart involves the refusal to be enemies.

We refuse to be enemies.

For the different ethnic groups which make up our society, our neighbourhoods, our streets: we refuse to be enemies.

For the different religious groups who are all learning to either fear each other or pretend we’re all alike, we need to realise that we are different, and yet, still, we refuse to be enemies.

Jesus told us to love our enemies. That doesn’t mean agree with everything they do. It doesn’t mean pretend we are all somehow alike. What it does mean is that however we may differ, we won’t let that difference make us enemies.

If Jesus is in any way your Lord, then today, resolve, to refuse to be enemies.

Living with Motor Neurone Disease under God

I read a strangely moving post today by a bloke named Roderick Mallan. He's a Christian who's suffering from Motor Neurone Disease, and this post showed both something of his struggle, and something of his faith. (Bugger is the name of his wheelchair)

Bugger!
Bugger is bogged, yet again!  

We have been bogged too deep and a little too often.  Mud, wet grass, or just an inch of silt over the footpath, and we are marooned.   B1 was bogged in the red sands of the Gibson Desert. B3 was once so clogged with clay that my Favourite Wife had to help me dismantle her and pry the earth out with a bread knife! 

B3 in a bad, bad bog!

Oddly enough, rescue almost always arrives in a light truck, and most often it will be a builder who drives past moments after I get stuck, sees the dilemma, and responds with warm, can-do Aussie practicality.  I love it!  But this time it’s complicated.  I’m not out in public where help is near at hand.  I am home; alone, in my back yard, hanging out the washing!

Beside the path to our Hills Hoist is a herb garden; a tangle of provender permanently sodden from the attention of a spring further up hill.  A brief lapse of concentration and three of my six wheels are in the mire; down and out!  At an alarming tilt, I’m feeling slightly panicked in the hot afternoon sun.  From where will rescue come this time, and – more urgently – when?   Barely two minutes have passed and the rattle of a diesel engine is coming up our street.  It’s too early from my Favourite Wife, and it sounds bigger than our van.  Then there voices at the front of our house.  The bog-site is right round the back, and I can’t raise my voice.  Perhaps I could whistle? I’m good at that!  Still no effect.  But whistling through my voice amplifier, now that’s a noise!   Enough noise to summon not one but two postmen, each looking for my signature.  One had come in the truck with a parcel, the second in a postie bike with registered mail, both at exactly the same time.  More than enough man power to un-bog Bugger.  What are the chances?  Who could have orchestrated that? 

So ended the painful week I chronicled in last Sunday’s post; but as if that were not enough reassurance, the same week had begun with another signal event.  My Favourite Wife was given a few unexpected days off work precisely when Little One was in respite care – booked months in advance.  Our life is pretty intense these days, and out of the blue we felt the quite alpine slopes beckon!  I rang the Ski Resort we occasionally visit, soon realising that a gift from friends which I had opened earlier in the morning was the exact amount quoted by our friendly manager for a couple of nights off-season luxury.  The exact amount!  What are the chances?  Who could have orchestrated that? 

These two days, Monday and Friday, bracketed last week like hands cupped around treasure.  When such ‘coincidences’ happen I can’t help but feel secure.  And yet … … it often puzzles me that Providence seems available in inverse proportion to the scale of the problem.  Put more simply: the smaller the crisis, the more likely the miracle.  Many people carry the heavy burden of significant, unanswered prayer in their hearts, while in the details of their everyday lives the touches of heaven are abundant.  I doubt that it is simply a lack of faith.   Why, when my deepest prayer is to get out of my wheelchair, does God answer only by pulling me out of the mud?  This is a vexing question; but in Bugger’s dis-bogging I see the hint of an answer. 

While I peer onward down the path of life, the Almighty savours the moments of each and every day.  I hunger for lifetime security, but he simply seeks a seat at my table tonight.  I strain to arrive, but He loiters on the road.  I look for my destiny, He shows me a detour.    It’s enigmatic!  We finite mortals toy incessantly with our long range goals and ten year plans, while the Master of Infinity dabbles in the instant. 

Why?  Because it is the journey itself that He values most.  I want control, he wants companionship.  I want the weather forecast, He just dances in the rain.  The architect who said, “God is in the detail” * may not have seen it as a spiritual principle; but in the detail of our days a calm and careful eye may see the confident hand of Eternity. 

Rejoice!

_________________________________________________

* Attributed to a number of different individuals, most notably to German-born architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (1886-1969) by The New York Times in Mies’ 1969 obituary, however it is generally accepted to not have originated with him (Wikipaedia).

You can read more of Rod's blog at http://roderickmallen.wordpress.com 

thoughts to think,

doug.

Jesus, healing and demons

Perhaps this isn't something you come across in your theological tradition, it isn't much of an issue in mine. Yet I've had enough conversations with people and seen enough damage done to people by careless handling of this sort of issue to feel it warrants a comment.

It may be extreme, but some people in some places sometimes make the dangerous assertion that either: most illness is caused by the supernatural, or that Jesus' mission on earth was primarily a healing one. Neither is true.

I was reflecting on Luke 4.38-44 this morning and couldn't help noticing several actions of Jesus pertinent to this issue.

As to whether the spiritual realm or demons are often or largely responsible for illness, may I draw your attention to verses 39-41 of chapter 4. In verse 39 Jesus rebukes Simon's mother's fever, not a demon, but the fever itself and it is healed. This by itself may be ambiguous, but then in verses 40 and 41 Jesus is healing people, and of those people, demons only came out of many. The implication being that there were lots of sick people, and only a portion of that group had trouble with demons and the supernatural. Illness may be caused by demonic activity, but it would be a mistake to look for demonic causes first.

The second contention I have at times heard is that Jesus came primarily to heal. While there is no doubt that Jesus did a lot of healing in his ministry, that was not the central focus of his ministry, and that can be seen in verse 43. Jesus is healing, he's surrounded by a crowd of people clamoring for healing, he hasn't healed them all, but he turns from them, he refuses their calls for him to stay because "I must preach the good news of the Kingdom of God to the other towns as well; for I was sent for this purpose." The good news of the Kingdom includes healing, but Jesus' ministry is not focussed on healing primarily, rather healing is an adjunct, a support to his ministry of preaching.

If we are to reflect Jesus, then perhaps our priorities should reflect his?

Much illness is quite simply that, illness, with no demonic complications. And that illness, while very important, is not the primary issue, the good news of the Kingdom of God is, less popular though it was in Jesus day, and less popular though it is now.

Fascinating how little pull the longings of a large audience had on Jesus, are we also so liberated?

Happy reflecting,

doug.

Gospel: Message or Man?

Why is it so hard sometimes to be clear about exactly what the ‘gospel’ is? On the one hand we talk about it being the good news of our salvation (Rom1.16), on another Paul can talk about it as something that has been proclaimed to ‘every creature under heaven’ (Col1.23), but how can they be the same thing? One is a propositional statement - Good news; the other seems to be understood by such creatures as small fish and spiders, how can they be the same thing? Or is the gospel something really much bigger, that we sometimes pick aspects of to focus on, but that always far transcends them all?

As the ‘Word of God’ is both the man Jesus Christ, and the testimony about him, is it not possible, nay, likely, that the Gospel is both the incredible blessing for the world that the man Jesus is, and also the testimony about what he has done?

If we are people who believe this Gospel, let’s at least be clear about what it is that we believe. Are we people who know something? Or are we people who know someone? And being clear, let’s be people who are filled with an inexpressible delight that shapes and changes everything it touches.

d