Some quotes from "Christian Leaders of the 18th Century by J.C. Ryle.
No-one can be a good preacher to the people who is not willing to preach in a manner that seems childish and vulgar to some.
(Attributed to Martin Luther)
You must speak from the heart if you wish to speak to the heart.
There's a well known story that seems to have seeped deep into the modern British consciousness, about a group of men trying to understand what an elephant is like by touch alone (they are either blindfolded or blind, depending on the variant of the story). So one man has the trunk, and he declares that the elephant is like a snake. Another has the tail, and he declares the elephant is like a rope. Another has a leg, and he says the elephant is like a tree. Yet another the side, and he says the elephant is like a wall. And so on...
And that is very much like people trying to find out what God is like. We can tell something about him/her through the world she/he has made, but we also observe that other people can come to very different conclusions about God, because they look from different perspectives. But we are also fallible and some of our conclusions are wrong, just we can't tell which ones. In more mathematical language, we see that our position is essentially symmetrical to someone else's, except that we disagree on what God is like, which means that we should not be too certain about what we believe. So we look on people who are certain as being highly suspect.
But Christmas changes all of that, or it should do. Because the message we proclaim at Christmas is that the symmetry is broken. It isn't just different people coming up with different ideas about what God is like because they are coming from different places and looking at different bits of the evidence. It isn't just different groups of people each claiming that God has given them a different book. At Christmas, God himself came into the world in the person of Jesus, and showed us what he was like. So in a world of so much uncertainty, we can really know him. That's something worth getting excited about!
Happy Christmas!
I was looking for Christmas cards for family in a well-known high street shop the other day. They had some really beautiful cards. But all the best cards were in boxes of 10 identical cards for £4.99 or £6.99, which just seems totally bizarre to me.
People buy the nicest Christmas cards for the people they are closest to. And the people they are closest to often know the other people they are closest to and spend time in their houses. So I don't want the same design of Christmas card for my parents (for example) as for my sisters. I want to show that individual thought has gone into it.
Had these cards been selling at £1.50 each, I'd probably have bought quite a few. If they'd been in boxes of 10 mixed cards, I'd have been delighted. But when the smallest quantity buyable was a box of 10, and they were all identical, I'm not going to do it, and it wasn't surprising that there were so many of these boxes of nice Christmas cards still on the shelves a few days before Christmas.
This isn't a Christmas post - that will come later in the week. This is a quote from Rod Liddle in the Spectator, dated 20/27th December 2008...
In the north of England a boy was not allowed to attend his school's Christmas party because his parents had insisted, ever since he joined the school, that he should not be required to attend lessons in Religious Education. The school presumably thought that they were being scrupulous in abiding by the wishes of the parents - but apparently not. The boy's mum, a Ms Dawn Riddell, was incandescent at the 'cruelty' inflicted upon her poor son. Christmas parties, she said, have got 'absolutely nothing to do with Jesus'. I think that's one of my favourite quotes of this year or any year. And that's where we are now, too.
This poem - Love by George Herbert is a favourite of a fair few people I know. It's well worth some thought...
LOVE bade me welcome; yet my soul drew back,
Guilty of dust and sin.
But quick-eyed Love, observing me grow slack
From my first entrance in,
Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning
If I lack'd anything.'A guest,' I answer'd, 'worthy to be here:'
Love said, 'You shall be he.'
'I, the unkind, ungrateful? Ah, my dear,
I cannot look on Thee.'
Love took my hand and smiling did reply,
'Who made the eyes but I?''Truth, Lord; but I have marr'd them: let my shame
Go where it doth deserve.'
'And know you not,' says Love, 'Who bore the blame?'
'My dear, then I will serve.'
'You must sit down,' says Love, 'and taste my meat.'
So I did sit and eat.
Overview of my stuff about Hell.
This is part of a spate of posts I'm writing on the topic of Hell. I might put some kind of structure in later. I'm not writing these because I like to talk about Hell - I don't. I'm writing them because there's a lot of confusion about Hell..
There's a growing movement in some evangelical bits of the church towards annihilationism - the idea that Hell is actually a state of non-existence - that people who aren't saved by Jesus eventually just cease to exist rather than the traditional idea that they suffer consciously in hell forever. (As I've posted recently, I think it's a better expression of the full teaching of Scripture to talk about some form of ruin than about people as they are now being tormented.)
There's quite a lot that could be said about annihilationism. As I've already mentioned, I don't go along with it because I think the case for eternal ruined existence is better. But even for those who do go along with annihilationism, if they take the Bible as authoritative, there are still some qualifications that need to be put on their belief from what the Bible teaches clearly.
As long as I can discover no connection between the Gospel and the problems of my life, then it has nothing to say to me and I am not interested. And that is precisely why the Gospel must be preached afresh and told anew in every generation, since every generation has its own unique questions. This is why the Gospel must constantly be forwarded to a new address, because the recipient is repeatedly changing his place of residence... In short, if the basic questions of life have shifted, then I must redirect the message of the Gospel. Otherwise I am answering questions that have never been asked. And, upon hearing such answers, my opposite number will just shake his head and say 'that's no concern of mine. It has nothing to do with me.
Thielecke, How Modern Should Theology Be?
Overview of my stuff about Hell.
I've finished my essay on hell now. It turned out that one of the key questions was what people were like in hell. Here are some quotes on that which I found helpful.
To enter hell is to be banished from humanity. What is cast (or casts itself) into hell is not a man: it is ‘remains’.
C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain
When human beings give their heartfelt allegiance and worship to that which is not God, they progressively cease to reflect the image of God... it is possible for human beings to so continue down this road.. that after death they become at last, by their own effective choice, beings that once were human but now are not, creatures that have ceased to bear the divine image at all... they pass simultaneously not only beyond hope but also beyond pity.
Tom Wright, Surprised by Hope
Sometimes people ask me: "In heaven how can I be happy, knowing that my fellow human-beings - maybe the people I love best - are in hell?" And the answer is simple. No human being will be in hell. The creatures in hell are not human beings any longer... The person you knew and loved will not be in hell. That person had so many lovable qualities - the remnants of the image of God - but now, the image of God has been obliterated... You could not love the creature in hell if you tried - God cannot love that creature - there is nothing there to love.
Stephen Rees
Whenever you see, in an official lectionary, the command to omit two or three verses, you can normally be sure that they contain words of judgment. Unless, of course, they are about sex.
Tom Wright, Surprised by Hope, p.190
I should confess a slight personal interest in this rant - my sister and aunt both married Americans. At college, two students have already been forced to leave the country (one of them came back), another one got refused entry, one staff member nearly got refused entry and another student currently has 7 days left to appeal or leave.
British immigration law is stupid.
The Biblical perspective on it is that Jesus was a refugee in Egypt for a bit, thereby massively dignifying the status of refugees, and meaning we should treat them well. In addition, in the Old Testament, Israel's law stresses the importance of treating foreigners who come to live in the land well, as long as they don't do stuff like inciting people to worship false gods or anything.
In fact, that seems like a good model. What's happened in Britain of course is that we've got scared of immigrants as a result of international terrorism and so on, and so have massively tightened up the law, without massively tightening up on enforcement. So now any terrorists wanting to come and live in the UK have to do it illegally rather than legally, which I'm sure will put most of them off because terrorists are good, law-abiding folk.
Although I've heard people annoyed or scared about immigrants from countries such as Pakistan (some of which is fear of terrorism, some of which is racism) and Poland (but they're citizens of an EU country, we can't really keep them out), I haven't heard anyone annoyed or scared about immigrants from countries where the culture and population are essentially descended from Brits.
You don't see scare stories on the news about Australian or American immigrants, whatever their ethnic background. You don't find people being all worried about the Canadians or New Zealanders who just moved in next door.
But the British government, in their infinite wisdom, seem to have managed to make life difficult for the very large number of immigrants from former colonies, who no-one is worried about. And that is the main substance of this rant, because it looks like incompetence rather than partially justified fear.
I don't know exactly what the forms ask or how the system works, but it seems to me sensible on a purely human level, without even bothering to do theological reflection on it, to partially filter applicants according to the country they are from. Do nationals from their country have any history of causing social problems in the UK or similar countries? If no, I don't see the problem with granting them indefinite leave to remain. Under the current system, Barack Obama might find difficulty in getting permission to work in the UK long term. I don't see any reason whatsoever why that should be the case.
And nor am I saying that people with Pakistani nationality, for example, should all be kept out, just that if we're worried about terrorism, maybe we should stop putting so much effort keeping out people who aren't going to be a problem, start genuinely welcoming immigrants who need out help and spending all the extra time concentrating on discerning which of the people from potentially problematic countries will cause trouble, and keeping them out.
Proposal: give automatic leave to remain indefinitely to all citizens of stable friendly countries with sufficiently similar cultures, and welcome genuine refugees.
