Good News!

So I've just recently come to a deeper understanding of the gospel after reading Farewell to Mars by Brian Zahnd, and after reading Mark 1:1-14 at church this morning. 
We all had questions and comments about it, and the one that struck me was in verse 15, Jesus says "The time is fulfilled, and the Kingdom of God has come near. Repent, and the believe in the good news." (btw, the bolding is mine in all the bible quotes in this post - I think that's the done thing to say it, even though it seems obvious).
Why did I bold those bits? Well, 1.) Note the present tense; and 2.) Jesus was bringing good news.

This might not strike you as odd, after all Christians are always banging on about the good news. But what do we usually say the good news is? Well, it's that Jesus died and rose again for our sins. But the thing that struck me today is that Jesus is already talking about the good news and saying that Kingdom is already here at the start of His ministry.

Think about that. He hadn't actually done any of that stuff yet. He hadn't even really started preaching. He hadn't done any miracles, let alone dying and rising.

So what's the good news?

Obviously, Jesus death and resurrection is a huge part of the good news. But there must be more! Otherwise Jesus couldn't have been preaching it yet. And I think a clue is in this passage from Luke:

And he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up. And as was his custom, he went to the synagogue on the Sabbath day, and he stood up to read. ¹⁷ And the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written,

¹⁸ “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
    because he has anointed me
    to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives
    and recovering of sight to the blind,
    to set at liberty those who are oppressed,
¹⁹ to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor.”

²⁰ And he rolled up the scroll and gave it back to the attendant and sat down. And the eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. ²¹ And he began to say to them, “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”

Jesus later admitted (rather obliquely, it's true) to being the Messiah of God. The Emmanuel - the God-With-Us.
So perhaps THAT was His good news from the start. The Messiah is here - God is finally right here with you, and I'm instituting my reign among you. The Kingdom of God is at hand.

What does that mean? That's where the Isaiah passage comes in. The Kingdom of God means liberty for those who are oppressed, sight for the blind (or full inclusion into the community, which is really what it's about, I suspect), the favour of the Lord, the releif of the poor. Mary's song upon her conception Jesus fleshes this out more as well - the hungry receive food, the naked are clothed, and wicked despots are deposed.

In other words, the Kingdom of God is here now and it's AWESOME. This is a Kingdom totally opposite to the world's power structures. It's a kingdom of peace, justice, inclusion, love and righteousness.

If this really is the good news, then the death and resurrection of Jesus is kind of the logical extension. Since Jesus, rather than joining with the world's power structures, opposed them, His death is not a huge surprise. In His death, he did two remarkable things (most likely more, but these are what I'm thinking about today):
1.) He defied the world's power structures, hierarchies and social constructs that lead to suffering (i.e. sin); and
2.) He joined with us fully in our humanity by experiencing the fullness of a human life.

When He rose again, He was vindicated as the Messiah, and He also:
1.) Defeated the world's structures and overcame them with his more powerful way of self-sacrifical love; and
2.) Brought us into His divinity so that we might share in the mutually loving relationship between the members of the Godhead (indwelling).

And then He left the church on earth to be His body. That means that God's Kingdom is still here because it's working through His church, via the Holy Spirit. We are God's temple (we also talked about how the temple in Revelation is actually the church, and it's a revelation about the spiritual reality of what is happening right now on earth). Since God's Kingdom is here now, when we preach the good news, we are telling people that God's justice, righteousness, peace, inclusion is available right now. Further more, this is now the new reality.

Terrible structures that keep minority groups down are now vestiges of a past that must crumble. I heard on the radio that 40 percent of disabled people in Australia live in poverty. The systems that cause this and other systemic oppression (like racism or sexism) are not a part of God's Kingdom. Since God's Kingdom is here now, they cannot last forever. The King has come and He will put them to rest.

Dictatorships, murder, war and systemic oppression are an outdated mode of living and governing. God's Kingdom is here now. The King has come, and His way will prevail.

Good News, everyone!

Promises

This evening I was sitting in my car in the parking lot listening to this amazing song by Jon Hopkins. It was raining and I looked at the water droplets on my windscreen. Then I looked at the street lamp. Then I let my mind focus on the rain drops, while my eyes remained focused on the lamp. That's when I noticed something amazing.

Each rain drop had been transformed into a jewel, a circle of blue fractals, surrounded by a tiny, perfect rainbow and a halo of gold. The rainbows made me think of God's promise to Noah in Genesis. Each drop was like a tiny promise that He would never abandon the world. That the future would, somehow and against all odds, be a good one.

Whenever I let the focus of my eyes drift back toward the rain drops, they became ordinary, dull. I could look at them without really seeing them. When I looked at the light beyond, I could see them in all their glorious beauty.

And then my metaphor-loving brain kicked into action. I thought, what if the light is like God, and the rain drops are people? When I let my focus rest on God, I can see the people around me for what they really are - glorious reflections of the light that pervades and illuminates all of humanity, all of the cosmos. Each person becomes a prism for God's glory; their goodness, their truth, their love suddenly come into clear view. Maybe I normally don't notice these things, not because they aren't there, but because I'm not seeing people in their proper context - as beautiful creations of a wonder God.

When I focus on God's golden light echoing through the universe, each person becomes a rainbow, a promise from God. Billions of promises that the future can, somehow and against all odds, be a good one.

The Problem with Puritanism (and why sin matters, but not how they thought it did)

The problem with legalism and puritanism is not that it takes sin too seriously, but that it takes sin too lightly. (I mean by sin, behaviours and attitudes that destroy lives when they come to full fruition, or as my great friend Jess describes it, simply dysfunction).

Legalism spreads out broad, gets greedy, condemns more and more activities as sinful - first premarital sex, then all sex (it has to be done, but it's much better if you don't if you can help it), then dancing because it leads to sex, too much facial hair, too much jewellery, listening to the wrong music...
The problem is that, though it is so broad and all encompassing, it never goes deeper than surface level.

As a recovering self-righteous prig, I know all too well the dangers of only thinking about the surface level. It's a focus on the symptoms, not the cause.

We need to think about sin more seriously. To do that, we need to stop focussing on the outside. Not that many things are really sinful in and of themselves. You don't need to regulate everything you do, or force yourself to give up everything fun.

No, to take sin more seriously, we have to go deeper. We have to go right to the deepest part of our hearts, our minds. When we are selfish, when we are afraid, when we hate, when we get angry and don't resolve it, but let it fester there, when have desires and try to bury them, where they grow in the dark and secret places. Those are the real sins. Those are the attitudes that become the actions, like murder, lying, cheating on our partner, stealing, gossiping...

Jesus said it in his sermon on the mount. He said things like 

You have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not murder; and whoever murders will be liable to judgment.’ But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment; whoever insults his brother will be liable to the council; and whoever says, ‘You fool!’ will be liable to the hell of fire.

The secret attitudes of our hearts can destroy us, even if we never act on them. Hatred, bitterness and resentment can eat you up inside, stopping you enjoying life. Fear (as I know too well) can hamstring you, prevent you from doing the things that really matter and forcing you to focus on yourself instead of reaching out in love to other people. That's the tragedy of sin. That is hell on earth.

Can any of us really get rid of those things, deep in our heart? I don't think we can, totally. I can't, and people much older and wiser than me say the same. But I think once we have become aware of this and admitted that we are helpless, that's when we can begin to heal. That's when Jesus can enter in and start His work in our broken lives and souls. And that's when we can begin to experience true freedom. Not just freedom from the legalistic system of outer rules and regulations, but freedom from the tyranny of our own darkness.

Light drives out darkness.
Love drives out fear.
Truth drives out deception.
Those with ears, let us hear.

(Image by Daina Kahu at http://www.dainakahu.com)

Adulthood

Recently I have been reading a book called "The God Who is There" by  Francis Shaeffer. It talks about some of the philosophical trends that have happened in the last century that have to do with denial of absolute truth in the like. In it, he mentions two French philosophers who talked about self actualisation (I forget who they were). Basically, to self actualise, you just have to do an action. You have to make a choice - so helping a lady cross the street would be no more or less valid than beating her up and stealing her bag.

Simultaneously I have been coming across a lot of material (blogs, sermons, and, who knew, a complete recording available for free online of C.S. Lewis's "Mere Christianity" - gold) which have been talking about adulthood or maturity in the faith and the journey onward to salvation.

The theme of a lot of it has been something clearly biblical, yet which I think many mainstream theologians have either overlooked or downplayed. I have heard it a lot from those who would be considered "heterodox" - like Greg Boyd (highly recommend looking him up) and Rob Bell. It is the idea that the New Creation that will happen when Jesus returns is a certain type of place. In this life we are trying to practise and exercise our wills so that our characters will transform more and more into the type of character that can exist in a place like that.

This is a really cool way of thinking about life here, and it also gives me a context in which to understand the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox idea of "work's" role in salvation - this character transformation happens only through our exercises of will and the actions big and small that we carry out each and every day. So even though we are justified through grace alone, our "salvation" in the sense of becoming completely free from sin and surrendered to God, does happen through works.

So why have I called this post adulthood. Well, it occurred to me that the real and true way of "self actualisation" is, paradoxically, to give the self more and more over to the will of God. In the words of John the Baptist "I must decrease, He must increase."

God is calling me, and all of us, to adulthood. To self actualisation by submitting our will more and more to Him. To growing up into the character that will be made completely ours in the new creation - and thankfully by His grace, we can do this without feeling we have to prove ourselves or justify ourselves. Little by little, we can practise, and change, and grow.

Mike Licona

OK so this guy Mike Licona has written a book about the resurrection, I haven't read it yet but it sounds great (edit: I read it. It's great. But it is a little heavy going). It is called The Resurrection of Jesus. I have been reading around the issue, because he apparently has been getting heaps of flac from some evangelicals. Here is an article about it for you to read. If you don't want to read it, the upshot is that this guy Licona is basically being called on to recant by a couple of other Christians because although he has written a 700 page tome about the evidence for the resurrection of Jesus Christ, he suggested that the part in Matthew where a bunch of other dead people rise and appear in Jerusalem may not be true. They say he is denying inerrancy by saying this.

Here are my ranty thoughts on this controversy that I posted on another blog in the comments section. It is pretty ranty, but hopefully it makes some sort of sense, because to me, if the presence of some error or myth in the bible, still doesn't detract from the good evidence of Jesus' resurrection, then that is some pretty damn good evidence we've got.

It seems like Licona is saying that *even though* there is a possibility that the gospels contain myth, *even though* they are written in the style of greco-roman biographies, and so it is hard to tell where fact ends and myth starts, the available evidence *still* points very strongly to the fact that Jesus lived, died, and rose again! How ridiculously compelling is that? That is so incredibly heartening to me.

What is more convincing, someone saying to you, “There were angels at the tomb, many rose when Jesus did, and the resurrection of Jesus is true. I know all this things because the bible says them.”
OR, someone saying “I’ve looked at the evidence for these three things. The first two seem like they *may* have elements of mythology and may not have really happened. But from what I can see, the third one pretty much definitely happened.”

That’s incredible! That kind of biblical scholarship should have people jumping up and down in excitement: though they may deny the presence of angels, though they may deny many biblical events, *even skeptics* cannot deny the strong probability that Jesus *actually* rose from the dead.
I just can’t stop ranting about how incredible that is. I can’t believe any Christian would tear someone down for saying that. If that isn’t a compelling argument for Christianity, nothing is. It’s certainly better than saying “the bible is inerrant so everything in it is true. How do we know it’s inerrant? Oh, because it says in there that it’s inerrant. Since it’s inerrant, we must believe what it says about itself being inerrant.”

The Parable of the Geraniums

I was out watering my garden this morning and I found a flower on one of my geranium plants.

This is interesting because I originally had two geranium plants, one of them I planted in pretty shallow soil and the other one in deep soil. The first geranium plant bore lots of flowers after about two days. I was overjoyed, but puzzled as to why the other geranium didn't have any. The flowers lasted for another couple of days and then died. This geranium has slowly been dying ever since. Now there are a few green leaves on it but most of them are brown and its stalk is all withered.

The second geranium just sat there for weeks. Its leaves were still green so I knew it was alive but it didn't seem to be thriving. Its leaves were sort of slightly curled up and it was... well... just sitting there.

But today, at least a month later, probably more like two months, it finally has a single flower, and still looks happy and green.

This reminded me in a really concrete way of Jesus' similar parable. And it made me realise the point of that comparison - it's not actually a good thing to do lots of good stuff and look like you're doing really well straight away. If you bury yourself deep in the soil of God's love and His word, then the fruit will come.
But you have to be patient. It won't come straight away, and you might only get one change at a time.

I find this so comforting because it makes me realise how true Jesus saying was "my yoke is easy and my burden is light." I mean seriously - ALL we have to do is revel in God's love? We don't actually have to work changes in those impossible areas ourselves?
I also find it comforting because it shows me that sometimes there might be times in our lives where we feel like we are not bearing much fruit. But that doesn't mean we're "backsliding". A church I used to attend used to tell us that if you aren't moving forward in God, then you're backsliding. You can't just stand still. And I understand what they mean but at the same time that idea can cause lots of anxiety if it's taken wrongly (or presented wrongly).
Sometimes you might feel like you are at a standstill. But if we rest deep in God's love we will never stop bearing fruit.