I hate to break it to you, but – we are all going to die.
Not of the coranavirus – well, not all of us, at any rate. Some will die of the coronavirus. Some will die of cancer. Some of us will die of old age, some will die young. Some of us will die peacefully in our sleep, some of us will die in tragic circumstances.
The point is, however it happens, 100% of us are going to die. Not one of us is going to escape. It’s the ultimate statistic, the great leveler – whether you’re rich or poor, a somebody or a nobody, death doesn’t care: it is coming for you.
Why do I say this? Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve been struck by how much of the response to the coronavirus seems to be dominated by panic. Of course we need to respond to a virus like this, but it does seem to me that some of the reaction at least has been over the top. I mean, come on, panic buying toilet roll – to the extent that you’d fight over it?
I wonder if the problem is that our society has put death so far out of mind that people just don’t think about death at all. In years gone by death would have been a much more ‘normal’ thing – e.g. many more children died in infacy, mothers died while giving birth, etc. I’m not saying it’s a good thing – just that in those days you had to face death pretty frequently. You had to deal with it. By contrast, in our society, death is relegated to an afterthought.
I hope that the coronavirus will be the wake-up call that we need as a society. We are not all immune from death. One day you, too, will die – and so will I.
The big question we need to ask of ourselves is not, “will I die of the coronavirus?” but – “am I ready to meet my maker when I die?”
Jesus spoke about this in the parable of the rich fool:
Someone in the crowd said to him, ‘Teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me.’
Jesus replied, ‘Man, who appointed me a judge or an arbiter between you?’ Then he said to them, ‘Watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; life does not consist in an abundance of possessions.’
And he told them this parable: ‘The ground of a certain rich man yielded an abundant harvest. He thought to himself, “What shall I do? I have no place to store my crops.”
‘Then he said, “This is what I’ll do. I will tear down my barns and build bigger ones, and there I will store my surplus grain. And I’ll say to myself, ‘You have plenty of grain laid up for many years. Take life easy; eat, drink and be merry.’”
‘But God said to him, “You fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you. Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself?”
‘This is how it will be with whoever stores up things for themselves but is not rich towards God.’
Luke 12:13-21
My advice: let the coronavirus be our teacher. I’ve just finished reading a book called Living Life Backwards – a study on the book of the Bible called Ecclesiastes. One of the big messages of that book is that death should be our teacher: the fact that we are all going to die should teach us how to live wisely, not wasting our time but making the most of it.
Teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom.
Psalm 90:12
My prayer is that the whole situation with the coronavirus will teach our society to value our lives more, to live wisely in these days, and especially to turn to Jesus Christ – who is the way, the truth, and the life. Everyone who lives and believes in him will not perish everlastingly but will have eternal life.
I’ve previously mentioned my new project, Understand the Bible. I have been working hard on this for the past few months, and I am pleased to announce that I’ve just launched the new Understand the Bible discipleship programme, which is available on the website.
“Discipleship” is a word which simply means, learning to be a disciple – a follower – of Jesus Christ. For a while now I’ve wanted to make the videos I’ve been creating more accessible. This is the first step. Next step: creating a mobile app. All in good time…
In the meantime, the discipleship programme is functional, and I’d appreciate it if you’d give it a go and let me know thoughts – good / bad / suggestions etc. Knock yourself out!
As you may have seen in the news last year, Jonathan Fletcher, former vicar of Emmanuel church, Wimbledon, has been caught up in a storm over abuse – without going into all the details, see e.g. this article. Then, in the news last week, I read that Steve Timmis, CEO of the Acts 29 network (a global church planting network), had been removed amid accusations of abuse.
A lot of ink has been spilt about Jonathan Fletcher, and I’m sure there will be lots more about Steve Timmis. I think there are serious questions that need to be asked about how two people in high positions in the church could get to where they are and be allowed to continue abuse without being stopped, how it could continue for so long, and so on. There are lots of uncomfortable questions and I think the evangelical world will have to do a lot of soul searching and hard wrestling.
There is one thing I’d like to say at this stage which is something which has been on my mind for a while – I started thinking about this on my previous post about conservative evangelical subculture, but I want to expand a bit on what I said there. I want to focus on conservative evangelical subculture because I think that is probably where these two incidents happened, although I think the issue affects all different subcultures in its own way.
Let’s start by focussing on the label “conservative evangelical”. An evangelical is simply a Christian who believes in the final authority of the Scriptures over anything else (see my post from a few years ago). A conservative evangelical is more specific – it involves holding on to a set of conservative theological beliefs, historically the distinctive one is over the role of women, i.e. whether women should be ordained / preach / exercise positions of leadership in the local church etc. (I believe open / conservative evangelical originally reflected taking an open / conservative stance on this issue, although both terms have since evolved).
Conservative evangelical is also more than a theological label: it has become something of a tribe. The problem is there aren’t many conservative evangelicals around, and so they (we, as I include myself) have tended to band together. The reality is that it revolves around certain churches, individuals, and organisations. There are certain names which we all know. For example, I’d say the Proclamation Trust (who run the EMA which I wrote about last time) is one of those organisations. (I don’t want to single them out – just as an example!) I think it’s fairly safe to say that Steve Timmis and Jonathan Fletcher would have fitted in conservative evangelical circles, I was aware of them both (although I knew very little about Fletcher before last year, I’d never heard him preach for example).
One of the problems with a tribe is defining who is in and who is out. I’ve noticed that, with conservative evangelicals, the particular standard applied is doctrinal orthodoxy: that is, whether someone believes a particular set of things, whether someone is “sound”.
If you sign up to those particular (unwritten, unspoken) beliefs, you’re in the club; if you don’t, you’re out. This has practical implications for how church is on the ground: at a previous church we attended, my wife used to have real difficulty. There was an unspoken assumption that people in the congregation were “sound”, that they believed certain things, and that everyone in the congregation was “one of us”. It wasn’t written down anywhere, it was just the culture. My wife often felt like she wasn’t “one of us”, even if it wasn’t actually intended or verbalised.
I think this is a dangerous place for a church to be in. Ultimately I think we should judge people by their love for the Lord and their love for Jesus, whether they have repented of their sins and turned to Christ. Every Christian will be at a different stage of maturity, people need a bit of space – especially to begin with – to grapple with the Bible, to come to understand for themselves that it is indeed God’s good word to us and trustworthy. You can’t expect everyone to become a Christian and immediately start believing all the ‘right’ things!
Now what relevance does this have to Jonathan Fletcher and Steve Timmis? I’d say one of the common characteristics of conservative evangelicals is a love for understanding. We love doctrine, we love the Bible, we want to see how it fits together, and we especially love sermons which show that. Understanding, however, is not the same as genuine love for the Lord. It is, sadly, possible to know a lot about the Bible and theology without actually knowing God, or at least, knowing him very well.
Which brings me to Jonathan Fletcher and Steve Timmis. I cannot comprehend the mindset of a genuine Christian leader, someone who walked with the Lord, doing the kind of things that they are accused of doing. The Bible is very clear about what Christian leadership should look like. For example:
…be shepherds of God’s flock that is under your care, watching over them – not because you must, but because you are willing, as God wants you to be; not pursuing dishonest gain, but eager to serve; not lording it over those entrusted to you, but being examples to the flock.
1 Peter 5:2-3
Jesus himself said:
‘You know that those who are regarded as rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them. Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be slave of all. For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.’
Mark 10:42-45
And we could go on. The point is that being a Christian is fundamentally about love and service – loving and serving God and others. Laying our lives down, as Jesus Christ laid his life down: he is our model. Christian leaders have an especial responsibility here: Christian leadership is servant-leadership at its heart. If you’ve missed that, you’ve missed the heart of Christian leadership.
Now I don’t know either Fletcher or Timmis, all I know is from the things I’ve read online. It seems to me, from the limited amount I do know, that Jonathan Fletcher and Steve Timmis did not embody servant-hearted leadership. Of course, I don’t know where their hearts are before the Lord, and I am not passing any judgement on their salvation. But it seems to me, from a position of limited knowledge, that their actions are not consistent with the understanding of servant leadership as embodied in Christ Jesus.
And I have to wonder: (1) how did people in positions of Christian leadership and responsibility seem to have so little grasp of the basics of what it means to be a Christian? They didn’t seem to demonstrate much Christian character and maturity; (2) how did they get away with it for so long?
I think the answer to those two questions is related and uncomfortable for conservative evangelicals. I wonder if tribalism plays a part: if the criteria for being “one of us” is reduced to holding a particular set of doctrinal convictions, then the more fundamental matter of actually loving the Lord becomes secondary. And, as I think we have seen, it is possible to hold a particular set of doctrinal convictions, even to preach a “sound” expository sermon, as a sort of intellectual exercise without a real spiritual maturity.
Were people prepared to overlook other issues with Fletcher and Timmis because they were “one of us”? Did people think, “they can’t be that bad, they’re sound“?
Over the past few days I’ve been re-reading Don Carson’s book “A Call to Spiritual Reformation”. (Carson is, of course, a household name to conservative evangelicals…) And these words jumped out at me:
Paul does not simply pray that we might know God better, but that God might give us the Spirit of wisdom and revelation to the end that we might know God better. There is a set means to the desired end. What is required is wisdom and revelation mediated by the Spirit. This is not simply a corpus of truth to be picked up by reading a book on systematic theology (though such reading may do us a great deal of good!). It is growth in wisdom – probably here referring to how to live in God’s universe so as to please him – and revelation.
This is important. We are called to believe right doctrine, absolutely. Conservative evangelicals are good at that. But we mustn’t stop at simply stating it, or even preaching it, as if it’s some sort of intellectual exercise. We have to put it into practice. When we say God is good, we can’t just say it – we have to believe it. We read what Psalm 19 says about the law of the Lord being “sweeter than honey” (Psalm 19:10) – but we should act as if that were the case as well. We should take delight in the law of the Lord, becoming more Christ-like, becoming more willing to serve others and to take up our cross and follow Jesus.
Of course, we are all sinners and no-one is righteous – no-one can obey the law of God perfectly. But Christian leaders in particular should exhibit a certain maturity, a certain level of understanding. It’s notable that the pastoral epistles focus a lot on character, as well as a believing in and teaching sound doctrine. In fact, the two things should go together – I think Paul and the other apostles would have absolutely rejected the idea that you could separate right living and right doctrine.
Personally speaking, I am immensely grateful for my theological training under the late Mike Ovey – a man who did embody the fact that knowledge and character should go together. He did practice what he preached, and he taught us as much by his example as he did by his words.
In conclusion: every culture will have its own problems and blind spots. But, every culture should at the same time, by the grace of God, be seeking to overcome its problems and blind spots. I am hoping that conservative evangelical culture will come to recognise its own blind spots and change. I am hoping that revelations of leaders like this will bring about godly sorrow which leads to repentance (2 Corinthians 7:10). Perhaps it’s time at least to have a conversation about these things.
Over the last year or two I’ve got into YouTube: it has gradually become a valuable resource where you can access high-quality content. One of the channels that I’m subscribed to is Douglas Carswell – he is formerly the MP for Clacton (who achieved notoriety by becoming UKIP’s first MP when he defected from the Conservatives). Since he retired from politics, he has started filming conversations with people on YouTube, discussing interesting ideas.
One of the videos I watched recently was his interview with Grace Blakeley:
I thought it was a good interview, and fascinating to watch them talking. Douglas Carswell was coming from a more ‘right-wing’ / free-market perspective, and Grace Blakeley from a more ‘left-wing’ / democratic socialist perspective.
What I was really struck by throughout the interview was how it kept on coming back to the basic human problem: people are selfish and greedy and can’t be trusted. It came across to me very clearly in the video how this was the fundamental issue of government – organising the country in the best way to try and mitigate against human failures.
One thing it made me reflect on was the way that the Christian faith does not fit into any particular political ‘box’. It transcends politics. This isn’t always the way that Christians talk about politics, and we’ll maybe get onto that in a moment.
The root problem is this: you cannot solve the problem of the human heart without Jesus. Jesus is the only ultimate solution to the problem of the human heart. People are selfish and greedy, people are corruptible, people treat others badly. Legislation won’t cure that problem, nor will the free market. Only Jesus will.
It seems that both the left and the right are trying to solve the problem in different ways by politics: the right-wing, free-market solution is to harness people’s selfishness to create wealth which will trickle down to the poorest. Whereas the left-wing, socialist solution is to regulate everything, redistribute wealth by the power of the government, and essentially force people to give money to those who are more deserving.
Neither of these approaches really solves the problem, however. I think this is what came across clearly in the programme: unless you can solve the problem of the human heart’s natural inclinations, people will find a way of wiggling out of their responsibilities. They will find a way of being selfish and greedy whatever the government says. There’s no way around it.
One of the folks from our church is from Liverpool, and he’s often talking about the fact that, in days gone by, in the north of England mill owners would put their wealth into community ventures – orphanages, hospitals, churches, etc. Why? Because having wealth came with social responsibility. And that view comes from within a Christian worldview where we all have a responsibility to love our neighbour. Wealth is not simply to be used selfishly but is a responsibility for us to steward wisely.
I think this is something of what David Cameron was getting at with the ‘big society’. At the end of the day, no political system will really work unless people from all over society actually love and care for each other, and use their positions to benefit others. It seems that these days there is a much more ‘personal’ view of wealth – if you are rich and wealthy, spending that money on the community is an optional extra (and an extra which few people seem to take advantage of).
Jesus is the only one who can transform us from being inward looking to outward looking. With him, we gradually become less selfish and greedy and start loving our neighbour as ourselves. The best thing the church can do to help in the country is actually preach the gospel. This doesn’t mean we shouldn’t seek political solutions to certain things – e.g. I am glad that slavery was banned, to take one example! And I think there are many positive things about the welfare state, e.g. the NHS.
But whatever the state provides, Christians need to acknowledge that it is the responsibility of all of us to care for the sick and the poor, to give to the needy, and to seek the good of others. We need personal transformation, not simply better laws.
Incidentally, all of this is why I feel uncomfortable with the way some Christians (notably bishops) talk about politics. I wrote about this before when Justin Welby called for taxes to be raised to help the poor. As I said then, it’s not wrong to be involved in politics – but the church has a unique position in proclaiming Jesus. If we focussed a bit more on proclaiming Jesus, perhaps the politics would take care of itself.
A few weeks ago I read a post over on the Think Theology blog called “When I grow up” by Andrew Wilson. I often enjoy his articles and this was no exception.
He quotes C.S. Lewis:
I think our present outlook might be like that of a small boy who, on being told that the sexual act was the highest bodily pleasure, should immediately ask whether you ate chocolates at the same time. On receiving the answer ‘No,’ he might regard the absence of chocolates as the chief characteristic of sexuality. In vain would you tell him that the reason why lovers in their raptures don’t bother about chocolates is that they have something better to think of. The boy knows chocolate: he does not know the positive thing that excludes it. We are in the same position. We know the sexual life; we do not know, except in glimpses, the other thing which, in Heaven, will leave no room for it.
The traditional understanding is that marriage will cease in the new creation, largely based on Jesus’ words in the synoptic gospels (which we’ll look at a bit later on in this post). At the risk of being heretical – or at least controversial – I want to question the traditional understanding. I’m a firm believer that if you don’t ask questions, you don’t learn – and I hope this might be an interesting exercise. This question is important because it raises a lot of interesting questions about the future and the new creation.
Part 1: How life was supposed to be
Recently in our church we preached through Genesis 1-3 on Sunday mornings. These chapters are absolutely foundational to the Bible and deserve to be studied in some depth. One thing which struck me this time was the way the Garden of Eden is described as a temple – i.e. the place where God dwelt with mankind. In fact, Gordon Wenham makes the suggestion in his commentary that the Garden of Eden, although small to start with, was supposed to expand to fill the whole earth as Adam and Eve fulfilled God’s purposes (filling the earth and subduing it – Genesis 1:27, 28). Of course, sex is a perfectly natural part of mankind’s role of “filling the earth” – procreation is of course one major reason why sex difference exists in the first place.
Without going into all the details (you can listen to my sermon if you want some more background), the point is that all of life was supposed to be lived in the presence of God, walking with him. There was no “sacred / secular” distinction – everything was sacred. Human beings were to do all the good things which God had created for them (of course including sex), enjoying everything as gifts from a good Creator and giving thanks to him.
It was a perfect world, human life as it was (and is) supposed to be. A world of love and peace, a world where humans were in harmony with God, creation, and each other. Of course, the Fall spoiled all that. But Jesus came to redeem us and bring about God’s new creation.
Part 2: God’s new creation
Then I saw ‘a new heaven and a new earth,’ for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea. I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, ‘Look! God’s dwelling-place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. “He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death” or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.’
Revelation 21:1-4 NIV
When Jesus rose again, he ‘kick started’ the new creation – he began the process by which God is bringing about his new world, his new kingdom. This passage in Revelation is a beautiful poetic picture of what that world will be like: it doesn’t give any details, but it says there will be a ‘new heavens and a new earth’ – a new creation. It will be a place where God dwells – just as he did with Adam and Eve. In other words ‘heaven’ will not be sitting on a harp with a cloud, some kind of ‘super spiritual’ existence, but it will be solid, real, embodied. This is a point which N.T. Wright makes forcefully in his enormous book The Resurrection of the Son of God. I came away from that book with a resolve never to simply speak of ‘going to heaven when we die’ but rather to speak of the Christian hope – as the creeds put it – of the “resurrection of the body”.
Both my daughters like Kevin DeYoung’s book “The Biggest Story”, which is a book for children explaining the whole story of the Bible, how it fits together. The subtitle of that book is his one-sentence summary of the whole Bible – “How the snake crusher brings us back to the garden”. I think this is a good summary: the serpent crusher – that is, Jesus – brings us back to the Garden of Eden. The Fall excluded us from the Garden, but through the death and resurrection of Christ we may enter in.
It’s interesting that some of the imagery in Revelation makes an explicit link with the Garden of Eden, e.g. the tree of life from Genesis 2 appears again in Revelation (22:2 – compare with 2:7, ‘To the one who is victorious, I will give the right to eat from the tree of life, which is in the paradise of God.’) So the future creation is explicitly linked with the Garden of Eden.
Now at this point, you might be wondering what the new creation will be like. Let’s think about that.
Part 3: What we know about the new creation
As we’ve already seen, we know that the new creation will be embodied. Our bodies are not simply meat bags to be discarded, but will be transformed to be immortal (1 Corinthians 15:42). Although the Bible doesn’t go into specifics about what the new creation will be like, I think we can gain a picture from what Jesus says about it as well as what he was like and what he did post-resurrection.
We know there will be eating and drinking. Jesus often describes the kingdom of God as a ‘banquet’ (e.g. the parable of the wedding banquet – Luke 14:15-24). At the Last Supper, Jesus says to his disciples: “I will not eat it (the Passover meal) again until it finds fulfilment in the kingdom of God.” And then he says: “I will not drink again from the fruit of the vine until the kingdom of God comes.” (Both quotes from Luke 22). In Acts 1:4 we are told “On one occasion, while he was eating with them“ – so Jesus did eat after the resurrection. In fact, according to John’s gospel one of the first things that Jesus does for his disciples after his resurrection is cook breakfast for them (John 21:12).
So, eating and drinking – more than that, feasting – will be part of the Kingdom of God.
We could also say that there will be relationships – the disciples all knew Jesus, talked with him – he wasn’t some kind of ghost.
And we know that, whatever else we can say about it, the resurrection life will be more glorious than anything we can even imagine at the moment:
What no eye has seen, what no ear has heard, and what no human mind has conceived’ – the things God has prepared for those who love him
1 Corinthians 2:9 NIV
Let’s pause a moment to consider. If we were only considering all these verses and themes – without thinking about Jesus’ comments about marriage – do you think sex would be more naturally included, or excluded? It seems to me that sex is (a) part of God’s good, unspoiled, creation in Genesis 1-2; (b) a natural part of the human body (it is one of the things our bodies are designed to do). I don’t think there is any indication from the limited amount here that the resurrection body will be so radically different that sex will no longer be possible / desirable etc.
Part 4: Obedience to God
One of the things I’ve been learning over the last few years is that God’s laws are best – in other words, we find life to the full (John 10:10) when we submit to Jesus and his ways. This is why David can say in Psalm 19: “The commands of the Lord are radiant, giving light to the eyes … they are sweeter than honey, than honey from the honeycomb.” He can say that because it is good to obey God. It is not simply morally right but actually best for us in every way.
God designed us to love him and love others. We are actually happiest when we are doing what we are created to do. Enjoying God is not simply about sitting in a room somewhere enjoying him quietly, but enjoying him by walking with him in his ways.
Sometimes I think people view ‘heaven’ as about enjoying God in some other way. You can see something of that in what C.S. Lewis said at the start – Heaven ‘will leave no room for [sex]’. But I’m not sure this is a Biblical way of looking at enjoying God, if we take the creation picture of Genesis 1-2 seriously.
Genesis 1-2 is about life to the full, life lived with God, in full enjoyment of all that God has created, giving thanks to him for everything. Sometimes Christians make out that God’s ways are ‘austerity ways’ – we have to reign back everything in order to obey God. There is a degree of truth in this, in that we have to take up our cross to follow Jesus – but this is about saying no to wrong desires, while at the same time saying yes to right ones.
Jesus calls all of us to give up everything for the sake of the kingdom, but what we receive back is a hundred times better (Matthew 19:29). I will deal later on with the objection about people who are single in this life. The point that I am trying to make here is that God doesn’t simply want us to ‘enjoy him’ in a sense which is divorced from our ordinary lives. I simply don’t think the Biblical picture is to enjoy God in some sort of disembodied spiritual way which is superior to the ‘creational’ ways that God gave to Adam and Eve.
Part 5: Jesus’ comments about marriage
Jesus deals with the question of marriage and the resurrection in the gospels – in fact, it is recorded in all three of the synoptic gospels (Matthew, Mark and Luke). This is often seen as the clincher, and it needs to be taken seriously.
All of the accounts in the gospels basically match up, so let’s look at Luke’s account from Luke 20.
27 Some of the Sadducees, who say there is no resurrection, came up and questioned Him: 28 “Teacher, Moses wrote for us that if a man’s brother has a wife, and dies childless, his brother should take the wife and produce offspring for his brother. 29 Now there were seven brothers. The first took a wife and died without children. 30 Also the second 31 and the third took her. In the same way, all seven died and left no children. 32 Finally, the woman died too. 33 In the resurrection, therefore, whose wife will the woman be? For all seven had married her.”
34 Jesus told them, “The sons of this age marry and are given in marriage. 35 But those who are counted worthy to take part in that age and in the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage. 36 For they cannot die anymore, because they are like angels and are sons of God, since they are sons of the resurrection. 37 Moses even indicated in the passage about the burning bush that the dead are raised, where he calls the Lord the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob. 38 He is not God of the dead but of the living, because all are living to Him.”
Luke 20:27-38, HCSB
I have highlighted the key verse – Jesus says at the resurrection people “neither marry nor are given in marriage”. Doesn’t that answer the question and settle the matter?
Let me make a few observations about this passage.
The point of the Sadducees asking the question was to logically debunk the idea of the resurrection – they are trying to trap Jesus. They do this by drawing on the Law, which required a man to marry his late brother’s widow if she was childless. In their (very contrived) scenario, a woman was married by seven men. They say: “at the resurrection, whose wife will the woman be?” – they are making the point, “how ridiculous, Jesus! The resurrection is a stupid idea!”
So the first important thing to observe about this question is that it is a question about the resurrection – not about marriage. Marriage is simply their way of exposing their problem with the resurrection.
As such, Jesus’ answer is primarily about the resurrection – not about marriage per se.
The second thing to note here is about death. The Sadducees seemed to assume that a marriage would last beyond death, and used that to ‘prove’ the resurrection was a silly idea. But marriage does not last beyond death, as w know from Romans 7:2 (“by law a married woman is bound to her husband as long as he is alive, but if her husband dies, she is released from the law that binds her to him.”)
And, more pertinent to the matter at hand, death is integral to the definition of marriage: “Till death us do part”. Marriage is a “life-long union of a man and a woman”. What would happen to marriage if death was taken out of the picture? Marriage can no longer exist without death – because it can no longer be ‘life-long’.
I think this is why Jesus moves directly from saying people in the resurrection will not marry to “they can no longer die” – they are logically connected. Marriage, in its current definition, needs death to exist. Then Jesus says “They are like the angels” – which I think is a confirmation of eternal life. At the resurrection we will be like the angels inasmuchas we will have a life which is not limited by death.
So, here’s the thing: Jesus says that marriage will not exist at the resurrection. I think what he is saying to the Sadducees is, “you haven’t considered what eternal life will be like.” He is not saying that sex will not exist, or any of the other things which go with it (children, for example). I don’t think he is making that point specifically – rather, just answering the Sadducees’ rather contrived point about marriage and the resurrection.
Part 6: What could the new creation be like?
I don’t like speculation, because there are many things we are simply not told in the Bible! But sometimes I think that people talk about the new creation in a wistful way, almost as if it will be less than what we have now. This is not the case, as I hope I’ve already shown.
But let’s consider the matter at hand in the context of life which is unending. Part of the problem is that none of us can really imagine what it would be like to live eternally, to watch a million years go by without having to worry about time running away!
I wonder if sex and relationships might still exist, even with children. At the moment a marriage is life-long, and that is about the length of time it takes to bear and raise a family. But what if a million years passes? Can we even imagine life extending that long? Could it ever be plausible, for example, in life which exists eternally, to raise a family with someone, have a long time with them, and then remain friends but part ways? Is marriage in its current format a temporary arrangement largely because we are short-lived?
Part of the majesty and glory and infinity of God is displayed through the relationships that we have with each other. There is so much diversity among people. I have a different relationship with everyone – C.S. Lewis made the point in friendship that each friend brings out something different in us. I think this is true, and I wonder if this is part of what the new creation will be like.
I don’t want to speculate too much here: God hasn’t given us much detail about the resurrection life for a reason. Still, I think it’s important to have some kind of vision.
Part 7: What about remaining celibate / single?
When I discussed this issue a few weeks ago, one of the points that someone made to me was about singleness: isn’t this over-emphasizing sex, while denying the fact that Paul says it is better to be single? I’d like to deal with that question, although with the caveat that I won’t be able to say everything you would want to say. (One of the problems with this whole area is that it touches on some very big issues to do with the Christian life!)
One of the most important things to understand about the Christian life is that it is a life of sacrifice. It’s not a life of ease – if Jesus wore a crown of thorns, why should we expect a bed of roses? This isn’t to say that we need to all practice self-flagellation, but rather that it should be the normal practice for Christians to give things up for Jesus. He says in Luke 14:33, “those of you who do not give up everything you have cannot be my disciples.” The path of following Jesus is the path of denying ourselves and taking up our cross (Mark 8:34).
Saying this – I think it’s important to remember that Christian self-denial is not simply denying ourselves for the sake of it. Here’s an exchange from a bit later in Luke’s gospel:
Peter said to him, ‘We have left all we had to follow you!’
‘Truly I tell you,’ Jesus said to them, ‘no one who has left home or wife or brothers or sisters or parents or children for the sake of the kingdom of God will fail to receive many times as much in this age, and in the age to come eternal life.’
Luke 18:38-20
Peter says that they have left everything to follow Jesus, and Jesus replies no-one who has left anything “for the sake of the kingdom of God”. This is the first important thing to note: self-denial is not self-denial for its own sake. Its supreme purpose is for the sake of the kingdom of God – to better love God, to better love others, to be able to bring others into his kingdom. Perhaps we give up the idea of a relationship we know is wrong out of obedience to Christ. Perhaps we stay single in order to preach the gospel – there are many throughout history who have remained celibate to devote themselves to the Lord’s service.
A single man or woman may be in a better position to preach the gospel – would Paul have been able to go on all his missionary journeys if he had a wife and family to look after? I was struck reading Billy Graham’s autobiography how there was a big tension between his ministry and his family. He spent months away from his family at times – it wasn’t easy for any of them. John Stott and Dick Lucas are just two names who remained single for their whole lives (as I write, Dick Lucas is still around – but I doubt he’ll be getting married any time soon!) – and yet think about how God used them to bless many others.
Jesus goes on to say no-one who gives up anything “will fail to receive many times as much in this age” – so the second thing to note is that there is a blessing received in obedience to God, whatever we may have to give up. God is generous, not measly. God is not a God of austerity! I think this is vitally important to grasp – sometimes we think that God calls us to deny ourselves just because he doesn’t want us to be happy. But the truth is that God’s ways, as we’ve already seen, are always better and always lead to more happiness in the long run.
C.S. Lewis said this in the introduction to his sermon The Weight of Glory:
The negative ideal of Unselfishness carries with it the suggestion not primarily of securing good things for others, but of going without them ourselves, as if our abstinence and not their happiness was the important point. I do not think this is the Christian virtue of Love. The New Testament has lots to say about self-denial, but not about self-denial as an end in itself. We are told to deny ourselves and to take up our crosses in order that we may follow Christ; and nearly every description of what we shall ultimately find if we do so contains an appeal to desire.
I think he’s right: self-denial is not an end in itself. It carries a purpose, a purpose which is actually more fulfilling. And, of course, everyone is called to practice it – those who are married and those who are single.
Finally, Jesus finishes “in the age to come eternal life” – there is eternal life to look forward to. No-one who misses out in this momentary lifetime will miss out on anything, because there is something so infinitely greater coming that it’s not even worth comparing with our lives now. I find it easier to believe that forsaking marriage now (for the sake of the kingdom of God) doesn’t mean that you’ve missed the only chance you’ll ever have.
And this goes back to the way that we see eternal life: if eternal life is something radically different to our lives now, then if we can’t do something in this life then we’ve missed the chance forever (even if eternal life is much better!) If, on the other hand, life now is a sort of ‘dress rehearsal’ for the way that things are going to be in eternity, then no-one is going to miss out on anything.
And – let’s be honest – those who do get married in the here-and-now also have something to look forward to. As a married man, and a father, I can say with certainty that marriage and fatherhood are not everything! Sin spoils everything – every marriage or parent/child relationship is marred by sin. There are moments I wish I wasn’t married or didn’t have children. I, too, don’t believe I have everything in this life – I am longing for the day when faith will be sight and sin will be no more. Can you imagine how wonderful it would be to have a relationship which wasn’t marred by sin?
It’s the same with everything good in this world: every relationship, every friendship, even our hobbies and pleasures – every good thing is marred by sin. Even as we enjoy them we experience the effects of the fall, and we long for the new creation!
Conclusion
I appreciate that this has been a long post and I’ve covered a lot of ground. Let me try to draw things together.
I don’t think that sex is ultimate – far from it! I do think it is a good gift of God, which he has given us to enjoy. From the evidence I see through the Bible, I don’t see any reason why our lives in the new creation should be so radically different that there is no place for sex. I believe Jesus’ comments in the gospels – the only place in the Bible where it is specifically mentioned – do not necessitate the understanding that sex will be absent in the new creation. I believe he was talking about the institution of marriage in its current, “till death us do part” form – a form which will pass away with death. And those who forsake marriage in this life for the sake of the kingdom do a good, holy and noble thing.
Could I be wrong about all this? Of course! I am not wishing to be dogmatic about anything here – simply to ask questions and probe into the mystery of the new creation.
The good news is that, for all who believe and trust in Jesus, there is eternal life to look forward to – whatever we believe about it now!
I’ve just spent three days at the EMA – Evangelical Ministry Assembly, organised by the Proclamation Trust. I very much enjoyed my time – it was wonderful and refreshing to be out of regular ministry for a few days, and to take some time to receive some encouraging Biblical input.
However – I did have one or two thoughts about the conference. I’ve been to Proc Trust conferences before (including the EMA, a few years ago back in 2015) but this was the first time that I’ve actually felt uncomfortable. I have struggled about whether to make my feelings known – it’s very difficult for criticism to come over in the right spirit on the internet, plus I know how hard the people who run the EMA work, and how much it is appreciated. In a sense, any criticism here is going to be unfair.
So why am I writing? On the final day of the conference, there was a panel discussion talking about the situation regarding Jonathan Fletcher (more on that later). One of the things to come out of that discussion was Johnny Juckes saying they needed to listen to various different voices to identify blind spots – which convinced me that it was right for me to write something.
Here, then, as concisely as I can, are three reasons why I felt uncomfortable.
1. Class
It has become something of a cliche that conservative evangelicalism has a problem with class – although, to be fair, this is a problem which is shared by a lot of the UK church. The particular problem with conservative evangelicals, however, is that the leadership seems (to me, as an ‘outsider’ in these kind of circles) to be predominantly public school / Oxbridge educated. It really struck me this week how many of the people up front probably fitted that description. Of course it’s not possible to tell whether someone has been to a public school, but two of the speakers did make reference to studying at Cambridge.
Maybe I’ve spent too long in Clacton, or maybe it’s because I’ve been thinking about this kind of issue due to Brexit (the divide it has exposed in society e.g. David Goodhart’s book The Road to Somewhere). There is a divide in society which is definitely there in politics – Goodhart does a good job at showing how politics has benefitted one particular class (which he calls the ‘anywheres’) at the expense of another. But it’s a shame when a Christian conference or organisation seems to display something of that same division.
One of the passages quoted approvingly at the conference (on the second day – I can’t remember quite in which context) was this:
Brothers and sisters, think of what you were when you were called. Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were influential; not many were of noble birth. But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. God chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things – and the things that are not – to nullify the things that are, so that no one may boast before him.
1 Corinthians 1:26-29
Paul here makes the point that most of the Corinthian believers were not wise, influential, or of noble birth by human standards when they came to Christ. In fact, Paul explicitly makes the point that God goes out of his way to choose the weak and lowly things of this world to shame the strong.
With this in mind – why is it that the EMA main stage seemed to be dominated by people who, superficially at least, could in the world’s eyes pass as wise, influential, and of noble birth?
This is not to say they shouldn’t have been there: I often think of the Countess of Huntingdon when I read those verses – she used to say she was saved by an ‘m’: Paul says not many, instead of not any! Clearly God has a purpose for people at all levels of society, privileged background or not. But it seems to me that there is something wrong when there is a majority from a more privileged background.
There were some things which (to my mind) were notable by their absence: people from the BAME community. People with regional accents. People who minister in small towns rather than university towns. People who minister in small ‘ordinary’ churches rather than big ones – more on that in a moment.
Now, let me be clear – I’m sure there is no intentional bias against anyone! But I think these things so often happen unintentionally because appointments are made, people are invited to speak, on the basis of relationships – and, often, the people you know are people who are similar to you with a similar background – i.e. known from Iwerne camps, or university missions, etc.
I’m not accusing the Proc Trust of doing anything wrong, per se, but maybe there are steps that could be taken to increase the diversity of those invited to lead.
2. Success
This ties in with the first point. Many of those invited to lead sessions were from large and ‘successful’ churches. I say successful in quotes because, of course, success in God’s eyes is different from success in the world’s eyes. A small church may be more successful in God’s eyes than a large church, so long as it is preaching the gospel faithfully.
I think this point came home to me when Vaughan Roberts was leading a session on preaching Hebrews. He was talking about the length of time that he takes to prepare a sermon – he said that he usually booked out Fridays, for example, but before that would spent a couple of 2-3 hour blocks of time working on it. By contrast, when I was a curate, I once took a day to prepare a sermon and my training incumbent at the time told me to enjoy that luxury while I could! He found it a real struggle to carve out sermon preparation time.
The truth is that many pastors are feeling the heat right now. From my own networks I know a lot of Anglican clergy are struggling under a heavy workload – I can think of one vicar in a nearby town who is a part-time chaplain, part-time minister of a parish with three churches. Additionally, the country is growing increasingly secular, and ministry can be a real slog with very little to show for it. Here in our parish we have seen little numerical growth – people have joined and come to Christ (praise God), but the number of people joining has largely been offset by the number who have died or moved away. Sometimes it feels like a matter of running full pelt just to stay where you are! I’m sure many ministers across the country feel like this.
So, what’s the problem? As in the first point I made, ultimately it comes down to diversity: what is being held up as a model? Is a church where the lead pastor has enough free time to spend many hours working on a sermon being held up as the ideal? Most of those given a platform in the EMA were from churches with large staff teams.
Where were the voices of ordinary pastors? Where were those who represented the majority of those in the audience? Do we want to send out the message that you’re only qualified to speak at a preacher’s conference if you have a ‘successful’ (in worldly terms) ministry?
Again – just to be clear – I don’t think this is at all intentional. Of course the Proc Trust want to invite people who are well-known, who are going to preach and speak well. And, of course, it is those who have ‘bigger’ ministries who can afford the time in the first place to prepare for a conference. And those who have ‘successful’ ministries shouldn’t be penalised for that reason! That would be just as big a mistake as choosing them for that reason.
However, I wonder if there is anything which could be done to make the conference better reflect the conviction that the key is Biblical faithfulness rather than popularity. (And, of course, this is a charge that could be levelled at many different Christian conferences – not just conservative evangelical ones!)
3. Theology
This is the area which I’ve been most hesitant to include. Nonetheless, I think it is important and linked to what has gone before. God has given us a whole church for a reason, and I think diversity is important in order to understand our own blind spots. This is why it’s important to listen to those in the church who are different from us. When that doesn’t happen, it can become a bit of a ‘bubble’ where we are unable to see flaws in our own thinking.
One of the ways I think evangelical churches (including, and perhaps especially, conservative evangelical churches) subtly distort the gospel is by portraying the Christian life like this: it’s all about avoiding sin.
It’s a bit like one of those car-racing video games – every time you see a pothole or an obstacle coming, you have to move so you don’t hit it. I think we often unconsciously visualise the Christian life in this way: we live our lives day-to-day, trying our hardest to avoid sinning, and asking God for forgiveness when we fail and the help not to sin again. I call this view ‘almost the gospel’ – it’s so close, and yet not quite there. You could probably live your whole Christian life with this view, and in fact I think many people do. I spent the majority of my Christian life up until 2-3 years ago with something like this view. It has become so deeply ingrained it’s simply the air we breathe: we don’t even notice we are doing it. Over the past few years I’ve gradually become aware of it, largely around what I’ve been thinking about with my other website Friend Zone.
And, interestingly, this is how it ties in with what happened with Jonathan Fletcher. On the final day of the conference, instead of the second session there was an announcement about what happened with Jonathan Fletcher (you can read the transcript online here). After that announcement, there was a panel discussion about safeguarding and how we should respond to these events.
One of the panel said in closing that we should be much more careful in the future – for example by a man not counselling a woman one-to-one. Leaving aside for a moment the fact that this would have had absolutely no bearing on the issues with Jonathan Fletcher (what happened with him was exclusively with other men), this sounds very much like the Billy Graham rule – which, strangely enough, had been mentioned from the front the day before by Hugh Palmer in his pen sketch of Billy Graham. I’ve written about the Billy Graham rule before, the summary being this: we are to love others, not to avoid them out of fear of sin.
There were a group of people in the New Testament who saw purity as a problem, and who saw the solution to that problem in putting up additional laws to ring-fence God’s laws. “We’ll make sure we never, ever cross God’s law by creating a new law which stops us even getting near breaking God’s law”. They were called the Pharisees, and you may recall Jesus didn’t have many kind words for them. Their fault was in thinking that you could create righteousness through observance of rules, when in fact all the additional rules created is a lack of love.
Love can only come from God, we need to look to him and the power of the Holy Spirit – not to human rules. The real irony is, rules actually lead to the kind of thing which happened with Jonathan Fletcher: if you divorce God’s rules from his goodness, you’ll never obey him joyfully. This is a lesson I particularly learned from Sinclair Ferguson’s book The Whole Christ. Jesus came to give us life to the full, and living life in his ways is the best kind of life it’s possible to live. How does David describe the Law of the Lord? “Sweeter than honey” (Psalm 19:10). David is not exaggerating. I have come to believe that what he says is absolutely true – the law of the Lord is sweeter than any of the filthy, polluting effects of sin – however attractive Satan may make it appear to us.
If we see God’s laws as morally righteous but not intrinsically good for us, then our obedience to them will only be half-hearted. Maybe we will even try to get as close to breaking them as possible without actually breaking them. We must come to obey from our hearts, knowing that God is supremely a good law-giver, with our best interests at heart. The Lord knows what is best, because he is the Lord, our maker: “I am the Lord your God, who teaches you what is best for you, who directs you in the way you should go” (Isaiah 48:17).
All this is not to say that human guidelines have no place – but rather that they should be just that, guidelines. Making a rule of anything beyond the rules God has actually given us is missing the point. This is exactly the point that Jesus is making in the Sermon on the Mount. God asks a deeper obedience of us than rules – adding extra rules to God’s rules will not increase our obedience!
And – ultimately – we should obey God from love, rather than from fear. One seminar at the conference was how to grow as a young preacher. I was left at the end of that session feeling a bit negative, thinking about my sin, idolatry, and all the things that can go wrong! Whereas my experience has been over the last five years that despite my hopeless inadequacy and sinfulness in every way, yet God has been immensely faithful. I have seen some wonderful answers to prayer in my own life and God working through me in ways I couldn’t imagine before. Yes, we need to be concerned for our own sin, but we need to have a greater picture of the God who is capable of transforming us and using us despite our failings.
Let me finish by quoting a couple of things from books I’ve read recently which I think are relevant. The first is from C.S. Lewis’ sermon The Weight of Glory, which I blogged about on Friend Zone recently:
If you asked twenty good men to-day what they thought the highest of the virtues, nineteen of them would reply, Unselfishness. But if you asked almost any of the great Christians of old he would have replied, Love. You see what has happened? A negative term has been substituted for a positive, and this is of more than philological importance. The negative ideal of Unselfishness carries with it the suggestion not primarily of securing good things for others, but of going without them ourselves, as if our abstinence and not their happiness was the important point. I do not think this is the Christian virtue of Love. The New Testament has lots to say about self-denial, but not about self-denial as an end in itself. We are told to deny ourselves and to take up our crosses in order that we may follow Christ; and nearly every description of what we shall ultimately find if we do so contains an appeal to desire.
Although Lewis preached this sermon in 1941, almost 80 years on I think it has continuing relevance for the church today. We in the early 21st century needs to hear these words: the Christian life is about love, as Lewis observed, not simply self-denial. Although I doubt that many Christians today would say that unselfishness was the highest virtue, I think we often live as if that were the case. Our lives betray our beliefs.
The second quote is from Francis Schaeffer, whose writings I have recently discovered to be a treasure-trove. This is from his book True Spirituality, which I blogged about on Friend Zone recently (again; I’m sorry for promoting things I’ve written! I’ve just been thinking about this issue a lot lately.)
The Christian’s call is to believe right doctrine; true doctrine: the doctrine of the Scripture. But it is not just a matter of stating right doctrine, though that is so important. Neither is it merely to be that which can be explained by natural talent, or character, or energy … Preaching the Gospel without the Holy Spirit is to miss the entire point of the command of Jesus Christ for our era… Whatever is not an exhibition that God exists misses the whole point of the Christian’s life now on this earth. According to the Bible, we are to be living a supernatural life now, in this present existence in a way we shall never be able to do again through all eternity. We are called upon to live a supernatural life now, by faith.
Again, I think Schaeffer could be speaking to the church today. The church is not supposed to be doing “that which can be explained by natural talent, or character, or energy” (does that hark back a little to what I said about success?) – but rather to be an exhibition of God’s existence. In other words, the church shouldn’t look just like the world in accomplishing things through its own strength. The church should be unlike the world in accomplishing things which it could only accomplish through God’s power working in us.
Of course, I don’t doubt that all those involved with the Proc Trust / EMA believe this. But we know as Christians that our beliefs don’t always match up with our actions. (And, to be fair – exactly the same criticism could be made of many churches and church traditions. This is absolutely not a problem confined to the conservative evangelical world.)
Although more could be said, I think I have gone on long enough. You can refer to the links I’ve put to my further thoughts on this matter! I will close with Paul’s words to the Corinthians, after he talks about pleading with God to take away his ‘thorn in the flesh’:
Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. But he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’ Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.
2 Corinthians 12:8-10
These verses have become very precious to me over the last few years. I pray that the Lord may teach me, a weak sinner, and all of those who belong to him in his church how to depend on him more deeply at all times, to know deeply that apart from Christ we can do nothing.
Jesus went through all the towns and villages, teaching in their synagogues, proclaiming the good news of the kingdom and healing every disease and illness. When he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. Then he said to his disciples, ‘The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field.’
Matthew 9:35-38
When I was younger, I used to think evangelism was something you did – you had to go out and, you know, preach the gospel. You had to tell people about Jesus, get it into conversations, go on missions, all that sort of thing. It was, if you like, an extra task that was added onto the to-do list of the Christian life (or, more accurately, the must-do-otherwise-you’ll-feel-guilty list). In short, I felt like evangelism was something extra that I had to get involved with – something which wasn’t simply part of natural rhythm of my Christian life.
So, for example, when I was talking with my colleagues or non-Christian friends, I used to think that I had to do an ‘evangelistic bit’: on occasion, try to mention something about Jesus. The ‘Jesus bit’ of the conversation, rather than the ‘everything else’ bit.
The problem is, all of this left me feeling deeply guilty – I’m not a naturally good person at working the conversation round to talking about Jesus. (I sometimes joke in sermons now that I’m the world’s worst evangelist and God took me out of a secular work situation in order to be more fruitful!) And, to be honest, it always felt… artificial. Talking about Jesus never felt natural or right.
I’ve come to believe that, although I wasn’t completely wrong about evangelism, I certainly believed some things which were very unhelpful if not downright wrong. I think other people might benefit from sharing what I believe now and how it’s different.
The purpose of our lives
The purpose of our lives can be summed up in the two Great Commandments, as given by Jesus in Matthew 22:36-40. They are, essentially: (1) Love God; (2) Love your neighbour. The sum total of what God wants us to do is – love. Of course, we need to understand what that means – that’s why God gave us the Law as well, and indeed the rest of the Bible – but that’s basically it.
Let’s think about loving others. What does that actually look like? Of course it means a few basic things e.g. no murder, stealing, adultery, false witness. But it means much more than that: it means taking an interest in their lives. It means listening to them, caring about their joys and sorrows, feeling the pain of things they are going through, having compassion on them. Jesus is our model, of course, I’ve always loved the description of him in the verses I started with: “When he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.”
I’ve found over the years that, as I’ve grown as a Christian, I’ve grown in my ability to understand and sympathise with others. Believe me, I’m still far from where I should be – and I don’t even know the half of it! But, by the grace of God, I am not what I once was. God is working, bit by bit, to produce Christlikeness in my character.
In addition to this, over the years I have seen God working in my own struggles and sufferings – I have learned more and more to trust in God and put my faith in him even in the midst of difficulty. I don’t just believe that God is my rock any more – I have experienced it and I can testify to how God has been there even in difficult times.
I hope that where I am going with this is becoming clear. Paul says in 2 Corinthians 1:4, God “comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God.” We comfort others with the comfort we ourselves have received from God. Paul here isn’t addressing Christian counselors, or pastors – but the whole church. This is something every Christian is called to do.
And this is how I see it working out in my own life. When I hear someone talking about the struggles they’re having in their lives, I think (or at least, I should think) (1) “wow, that’s awful” – compassion; (2) “It would help them so much to trust in Jesus” (if they don’t already). In fact, this is how it should work all the time: if someone is a Christian already, you can encourage them with the gospel. If someone isn’t, you can point them to Jesus.
In other words, my natural reaction now when I hear of someone suffering is to think “the thing they really need is Jesus.” This comes from both a greater love for others, as well as a deeper sense of my own need of God.
Evangelism = Love
And this is why I think the way I used to think about evangelism is wrong. Evangelism is not a different thing God requires us to do, something distinct from loving him and loving others. It is the extension of it – it belongs at the very core of what it means to be a Christian.
Too often I think people are put off from evangelism because they have a wrong view of it. They think it will mean being Billy Graham Mark 2, or crowbarring Jesus into every conversation, or something like that. But the truth is that every Christian can do it, because it’s at the heart of what every Christian is called to do.
I often say in sermons – we can’t all be Billy Grahams, and we are not all called to be. But each of us has friends or neighbours or family members who do not yet know Christ. I’m sure we could all think of at least 1-2 people who are not Christian. One thing we can all do is to pray: pray and ask God to lead them to him, pray that he would give us hearts of love for others, pray that God would give us opportunities to speak of him. It is through prayer that God changes our hearts, changes circumstances, and gives us the ability to do what we thought we couldn’t do.
When we think that evangelism is about doing an extra task, we’ll always feel guilty that we’ve never done good enough and it will always feel awkward. But when evangelism is about love, it may still feel awkward sometimes – but we will have a new power to accomplish it. It will become part of the rhythm of the Christian life, not an additional extra to be accomplished occasionally. When we have compassion on those who are hurting, out of love we will have no choice but to evangelise naturally.
Earlier on I read an interesting interview with Laura Bates, the founder of the Everyday Sexism website. (The interview itself is behind a paywall but you can register with the Times to get free access to a limited number of articles per month). The interview itself is pretty shocking:
What I do not recognise from the 1980s, however, is a subgenre of sexism that Bates encounters again and again when she visits schools to talk to teenagers. It makes no difference if the school is private or state, co-ed or single sex, in the south or the north; everywhere she goes, boys say the same things. “Rape is a compliment, really,” they tell her. “It’s not rape if she enjoys it.” “It’s normal for girls to cry during sex.” “A girl has to have sex with you if you’re her boyfriend.” Why does Bates even bother talking about consent and assault, they demand, “when everyone knows so many women lie about it”?
I have difficulty believing that boys talk about rape in such casual terms, but it’s not surprising given the access that teenagers now have to pornography. The article explains further:
What happens between 11 and 13, of course, is that most children get smartphones — and by the age of 12, a quarter will have seen online porn. “When parents think about their children seeing porn, quite often they’re thinking about kids seeing an online version of an FHM centrefold or a Playboy spread.” In fact, if you type “porn” or “sex” into Google, “you’re likely to be presented with videos that are specifically about hurting women, degrading women, abusing women, raping women — very young women, schoolgirls; women who are subject to extreme racial stereotypes; women who are categorised as busty Asian sluts or virgin teens. It’s not something that you go looking for. This kind of really misogynistic, extreme stuff is what boys are seeing at the top of the pile. Then we wonder why they’re confused and have these ideas about what sex looks like.”
I quite agree – and this is one of the things I talk about on Friend Zone. I think young boys (and girls too) often have negative or damaging views about sex, which come – in part – from watching pornography. These is plenty of evidence to demonstrate that many teenagers are learning about sex from the internet – and, of course, learning all the wrong things.
So far, so depressing. What interested me about all this is that Laura Bates didn’t really seem to have any solutions. Feminism isn’t really working, because (she says) the boys are being got to by ‘alt-right’ ideological extremism. (She mentions Milo Yiannopoulos, although I wonder whether someone like Jordan Peterson might qualify as well. If you haven’t seen it, you should definitely watch his interview with Cathy Newman which has managed to rack up 14 million views to date – with good reason).
I wonder if the problem isn’t a bit more basic. The problem is the basic message in our society of sexual liberation: people basically want the freedom to have sex with whoever they want, whenever they want – the only real value is consent. The problem is, sexual liberation and consent are in opposition: you can’t have full liberation so long as there is the barrier of consent.
My view is that consent is not, and will never be, enough to stop boys and men from taking advantage of women. You can’t say to young boys “the best thing about life is sex. You need to make sure you have the best sex life possible, because it’s the ultimate thing about life” – and then, in the same breath, tell them: “only… make sure it’s consensual”. It’s a nonsense! In the world of sexual ethics, where consent is the only value, then there are effectively no values.
The solution to the problem is not to try and hammer home the value of consent – you need to question the more fundamental message about sexual liberty.
It seems to me that there is a reason why God designed sex to be within the confines of marriage. As I have already quoted on this blog, talking about #MeToo:
Sex is like fire. In the fireplace it keeps us warm. Outside the fireplace it burns down the house.
Ray Ortlund
If our society stopped trying to promote the one value of consent and started trying to promote marriage instead, I think we would see this problem begin to fade away. Many young women think they must have sex in order for men to like them – they think if they insist on marriage, it will rule them out of the game. But the problem is – and I see this all the time – that young men use this to get what they want without any of the responsibility. It’s why so many mums are raising children on their own. Mark Regnerus talks about this in his book Cheap Sex. If women insisted on the traditional Judeo-Christian ethic of sex – that is, sex should happen only within marriage – then men would be forced to take responsibility, which seems to me to be what Laura Bates is aiming at.
As I was reading the interview, I felt my heart breaking: people have got no idea of which way is up any more. There is a huge problem in society, virtually everyone agrees on that – but no-one seems to be willing to admit that the solution might be dethroning the god of sexual liberation.
You cannot have your cake and eat it. How many more young people will have to be hurt before we realise that?
I’ve noticed that a lot of people where I live are into mediums. The local community centre runs a regular (or semi-regular) night with a medium coming in. Not long ago I saw a ‘psychic fair’ being advertised. I’ve seen friends on Facebook keen to have palm readings and other things – some of whom I wouldn’t have thought were into that kind of thing.
What I find surprising about all this is how most people seem to think that mediums do actually work, at least sometimes, and that there isn’t really any harm in using them.
The traditional Christian understanding is that mediums are not just harmful but expressly forbidden. Let me try to explain why.
Who’s in charge?
I think most people would say the spiritual world is real, but we don’t know much about it. A lot of people have a view that the recently departed ‘hang around’ in this world, for at least a period of time after death, and are able to communicate with the living through mediums. One of the biggest reasons for using a medium in the first place is to try and communicate with a loved one who is dearly missed (a perfectly understandable response to grief).
But the question I have is – who is in charge of these spirits? Do they have free reign to roam anywhere? Can you be sure it’s genuine, or could it even be a harmful and deceiving spirit? There are forces of evil as well as good. How do we know what we’re dealing with in the spiritual realm?
And is there anyone in charge of this whole mess? Is God there, is he in control, and does he have anything to say about it? This is where the Bible comes in.
What the Bible says
In the book of Deuteronomy, part of the Old Testament, God says this to his people:
Let no one be found among you who … is a medium or spiritist or who consults the dead. Anyone who does these things is detestable to the Lord … You must be blameless before the Lord your God.
Deuteronomy 18:10-13
Now I haven’t gone into all the context, but I think the message is pretty clear – and it’s a message which is repeated several times throughout the Bible. God’s people are forbidden from consulting mediums etc. But why? We find the answer to that in the New Testament.
Put on the full armour of God, so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.
Ephesians 6:11-12
Our struggle is not against flesh and blood – it is against ‘spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms’. What the apostle Paul is saying here is that we face a struggle every day against evil, but that’s not just because evil exists on a human level – it is because evil exists on a spiritual level. In other words, Satan and demons really do exist and they are in opposition to God and everything good.
When people turn to mediums and the like, they are opening themselves up to a world of pain. It says elsewhere that Jesus came “to destroy the devil’s work” (1 John 3:8) – not to encourage people into it!
Let me spell it out: if through a medium you speak to the spirit world, you will not be speaking to the spirit of someone recently departed. You will be speaking to evil, a spirit who intends you harm, a spirit who intends to keep you from the truth and keep you from God. In fact, I would say the best possible outcome with a medium is that they’re actually lying and using psychological tricks (like Derren Brown).
Nothing good will ever come from using a medium or spiritist.
What should we do instead?
Most people look to mediums for comfort and reassurance. I can sympathise with that. A few years ago my Mum died of cancer, and it was a very difficult time. I can understand the reaction that people have when losing someone close! But for me, in the case of my Mum, I am 100% certain that I know where she is.
The Bible says:
Brothers and sisters, we do not want you to be uninformed about those who sleep in death, so that you do not grieve like the rest of mankind, who have no hope. For we believe that Jesus died and rose again, and so we believe that God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in him. According to the Lord’s word, we tell you that we who are still alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will certainly not precede those who have fallen asleep.
1 Thessalonians 4:13-15
I know that Mum is with the Lord, the Lord she loved and served her whole life, and one day she will be raised to life in the new creation – along with all those who love and trust in Jesus. I don’t need to consult a medium, because I know where Mum is.
And that’s the thing: anyone who has died is now in the hands of God. They are not spirits floating around this earth until they move onto the next plane. They do not have liberty to speak to whoever they would like to speak to. They are with God. And if you want to be comforted in the face of death, you need to speak to the one who overcame death, to the one who holds our lives in his hands, to the only one who can grant eternal life.
I’m going to finish with some words of Jesus which we often speak on at funerals.
‘Do not let your hearts be troubled. You believe in God; believe also in me. My Father’s house has many rooms; if that were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am. You know the way to the place where I am going.’
Thomas said to him, ‘Lord, we don’t know where you are going, so how can we know the way?’
Jesus answered, ‘I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me
John 14:1-6
The answer to suffering and death is not mediums, but rather Jesus Christ. He alone is the way, the truth, and the life. He alone can forgive us of our sins (including using mediums), can bring us to God and assure us of our eternal destiny.
I’ve been thinking a lot recently about evangelism and the challenges that the church faces at the moment. We live in days when most people know next to nothing about the Christian faith, and next to nothing about godly living and morality. People don’t know the Ten Commandments, the Lord’s Prayer, people have no understanding of what sin is, what Jesus came to do … you could just go on and on.
I’ve come to this realisation through interacting with people in our parish – both people who’ve come into the church and people who are still outside. I hadn’t really appreciated before how far away many people are, and I’m not sure that our evangelism (and discipleship) is really prepared for it. For example, a few years ago we ran an Alpha course and a few of those who came joined the church and we started a new home group for them. I rather naively assumed that a Bible study in the way that we did every other Bible study would be what people needed, so we started working our way through Mark’s gospel – and I think it went a little over the heads of those who’d just come in. That’s not to say they didn’t need to hear Mark, I’m glad we did it, but rather that it may have been more beneficial to do some catechesis with them first, simply to teach some of the absolute basics. I just didn’t realise what their needs were.
Recently we ran a Christianity Explored course, and by the grace of God we had a few people come on it who want to continue learning afterwards. I’m meeting with them once a week to work our way through the Heidelberg Catechism. Before we started, I just went through the duties of church membership with them – and it struck me that it was maybe the first time they’d really seen laid out what being a Christian was supposed to look like (even in a short, summary form).
All of this has got me thinking. One of the most popular ways to do evangelism at the moment is to hold fairly low-commitment events and groups – e.g. toddler groups, messy church, etc. Things which people can come along to without committing to too much – with the idea that relationships will form, they’ll hear about Jesus, and want to come back to more. Messy Church is phenomenally popular at the moment – the Church of England seems to be pushing it at every opportunity. (I wrote about Messy Church a while back – part one and part two).
But here’s the thing: when are people hearing the message that Jesus requires us to make a commitment to him? Are our evangelistic efforts sending out the message (unintentionally) that you can be a Christian without making too much of a commitment?
And when people do come to faith – through an outreach course, or however it may be – when are they learning about the basics of Christian living, e.g. coming to church, giving, Bible reading, prayer, etc.?
I sometimes wonder if the church is so keen to emphasise the message of grace that we don’t ever tell people that they really should be doing certain things. Now obviously we don’t want people to get the message that being a Christian is only about coming to church – that if you come to church every week and pay your dues, then you’ll be right with God. But I wonder if we’ve gone too far the other way: we’ve started preaching what Bonhoeffer called cheap grace. I apologise for the extended quotation but it’s probably the best thing Bonhoeffer ever said:
Cheap grace means grace sold on the market like cheapjacks’ wares. The sacraments, the forgiveness of sin, and the consolations of religion are thrown away at cut prices. Grace is represented as the Church’s inexhaustible treasury, from which she showers blessings with generous hands, without asking questions or fixing limits. Grace without price; grace without cost! The essence of grace, we suppose, is that the account has been paid in advance; and, because it has been paid, everything can be had for nothing. Since the cost was infinite, the possibilities of using and spending it are infinite. What would grace be if it were not cheap?…
Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession, absolution without personal confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate.
Costly grace is the treasure hidden in the field; for the sake of it a man will go and sell all that he has. It is the pearl of great price to buy which the merchant will sell all his goods. It is the kingly rule of Christ, for whose sake a man will pluck out the eye which causes him to stumble; it is the call of Jesus Christ at which the disciple leaves his nets and follows him.
If people are not confronted with a genuine message of grace, grace which is like the pearl of great price for which a man will sell everything he has, then they are being given cheap grace. Cheap grace looks like grace, but it’s available at much less a cost – and so it’s much more attractive to people. “Come along to Messy Church once a month, hear a Bible story, and you’ll be OK with God.” It’s the kind of grace people like which doesn’t involve too much effort. It allows you to basically carry on living the same kind of life you’ve always lived with a bit of “spiritual stuff” thrown in. It allows you to ignore God most of the time except when you really need his help.
The real kicker is, cheap grace is not real grace. Real grace is costly, as Bonhoeffer said. Jesus was uncompromising about what it cost to be his disciple:
‘Anyone who loves their father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; anyone who loves their son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Whoever does not take up their cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Matthew 10:37-38
These are hard words for us to hear, but necessary. It struck me recently that Jesus never ‘sugar-coated’ the message or made it easier to bear for people – right from the beginning, he called his disciples to leave everything and follow him. His message sometimes was so tough that many people turned back and no longer followed him (John 6:66). Jesus was patient with people, he loved them at every stage (how often did Jesus call his disciples unbelieving and faithless? and yet he never gave up on them!) – but he never made the demands of discipleship easier for them.
So what does this mean for how we do evangelism and discipleship? I have one or two thoughts but I’d appreciate any comments or suggestions people have.
1. It’s not wrong to do low-commitment events / groups. Lest I be misunderstood, I’d like to make it clear that I think it’s a good thing to do low-commitment events / groups. They’re a great way of getting to know people and serving the local community, for one. And people who are seeking need to have low-commitment ways of finding out more about Jesus. I’m not asking we only do events where we ask people to make an instant commitment to Christ before we even let them in the door!
2. God uses our efforts, no matter how faltering they are. None of our evangelism or discipleship would be of any use unless God was at work. One of my key verses is Psalm 127:1: “Unless the Lord builds the house, the builders labour in vain.” Ultimately, our success does not depend on our own efforts but on God. We mustn’t use that as an excuse for poor efforts, but trust that God will use our efforts despite their flaws – while we are still trying to find ways to improve!
It’s easy to be critical – and I hope that I haven’t been unfairly critical here – but the fact is that the church has always got things wrong and always will. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t address things when we find them, but rather that God is bigger than our flaws!
3. We need to be challenging people at every stage. One of the biggest problems I see with things like Messy Church (and its equivalents) is that they don’t challenge people to move to the next stage. People can become very comfortable in their once-a-month service, quite happy, and feel absolutely no need to move forward. I think we need to be more active in helping people to see that Jesus requires a greater commitment.
One of the ways I think we can do that is by presenting real grace even at low-commitment services – in others words, preaching repentance for the forgiveness of sins. But I think we also need to be showing people what a life of trusting Jesus looks like – the commitment that he asks of us. One of the things which has struck me recently is that most people – around here at least – seem not to join the dots and understand that being a Christian actually means you need to live in some ways and not others. They’re never going to know, either, unless we tell them.
I was struck recently that even Christianity Explored – as great a course as it is – doesn’t really go into any detail about what the Christian life actually looks like. What does it mean to become a Christian – how does your life change? It doesn’t really spell it out – which is why it’s good to have other resources such as Chris Green’s little book From Now On.
I suppose a lot of it comes down to being more explicit and intentional about the cost of discipleship and what it means to follow Jesus. Do our evangelistic efforts reinforce the idea that you can be a low-commitment Christian, or do they challenge it? Perhaps the best thing we can do is think through our activities with the question, ‘when are people hearing the challenge to lay down their lives for him?’
I think we have far too much of the attitude: “If we tell people what following Jesus really means, they’ll run away scared. Let’s only give them a little bit now, so they don’t run away, and then tell them the full truth later.” Jesus didn’t have this attitude, and neither should we. We should be bold in proclaiming, along with our master, that following him is not something you can do comfortably without making any real adjustments to your life. We should be proclaiming, In the words of Isaac Watts – “Love so amazing, so divine, demands my soul, my life, my all.”
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