Phill Sacre

Category: Christian

Anything I write about the Christian faith.

  • Messy Church (2): Some follow-up thoughts

    My previous post on Messy Church generated a fair bit of interest and comment (on Facebook – unfortunately comments here remain closed). I thought it would be good to try and close out the matter with some clarifying comments.
    So, here goes:

    1. A lot of good stuff happens at Messy Church.

    I didn’t make this clear in my previous post, but I appreciate that a lot of work goes into Messy Church all over the country and God is using it. Someone on Facebook, for example, commented about interest in the Alpha course as a result of MC. If people are coming to MC and then going on courses like Christianity Explored or Alpha, that’s great.
    My point in the post was not to try and tear down all the good work people are doing! However, I do think we need to ask serious and hard questions of everything that we do – not to tear down, but to see whether we can do it better. We must always be prepared to ask the hard questions of ourselves – and I include myself as the chief of sinners in that regard!
    So, given all that, I still think there is a fundamental confusion with Messy Church.

    2. What is Church?

    Church, according to the New Testament, is comprised of Christians. No exceptions. I’d love to do a full study on this but we don’t have time for it here! – maybe one or two verses will do. In 1 Corinthians 1:2, Paul writes: “To the church of God in Corinth, to those sanctified in Christ Jesus and called to be his holy people, together with all those everywhere who call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ – their Lord and ours”. So the ‘church of God’ is equated with those who are sanctified and called to be God’s holy people, all those who call on the name of the Lord Jesus. Christians, in a nutshell.
    And Ephesians 5:23 talks about the Christ being “the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Saviour.” Christ is, of course, not the Saviour of those who do not believe in him. So I think it’s pretty clear just from these two references that in the New Testament, the church is always comprised of believers.
    This is not to say that the church will never have non-believers in it – Paul suggests that such a thing will happen in 1 Corinthians 14:24-25 (“if an unbeliever or an enquirer comes in…”). And, of course, the church in its visible manifestation on earth will always be a mixed bag – comprised of believers and non-believers: we don’t know who they are, but not everyone who is a member of the visible church is a member of the invisible church (to put it as they did at the reformation).
    Being a good Anglican, I always like to look at how the 39 articles puts it! –

    XIX. OF THE CHURCH

    THE visible Church of Christ is a congregation of faithful men, in the which the pure Word of God is preached, and the Sacraments be duly ministered according to Christ’s ordinance in all those things that of necessity are requisite to the same.

    So what makes a church, according to the 39 Articles, is (1) a gathering of ‘faithful men’ – i.e. Christians; (2) the preaching of the Word of God; (3) the sacraments (communion and baptism).

    Given all this, I don’t think I could define Messy Church as church in either the general Biblical or specific Anglican sense. So…

    3. How would you categorise Messy Church?

    In my previous post I’d say that Messy Church was a good evangelistic opportunity, but not church. I still think that: I’d be much happier if Messy Church was not seen as church in itself, but as an opportunity to bring people to the good news about Jesus. I don’t think there is such a thing as ‘church for nonbelievers’ – there is only church, comprised of believers, and anything else is designed to bring people to the church.
    And this, I think, leads us to one of the fundamental questions which I think caused disagreement:

    4. What is the good news?

    In the discussion I think some people had a different understanding of the good news to me. In the gospels, Jesus summarises the good news as repentance and faith: turning away from sin and turning to God in faith. You can see this in Jesus’ first recorded words in Mark’s gospel, Mark 1:15 “The kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe the good news!” (Compare with what Jesus says will be proclaimed to all nations in Luke 24:47).
    Why is the gospel such good news? One of the most well-known verses in the Bible is John 3:16. However, the verses which follow it are a little less well known:

    For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son.
    … (36) Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life, but whoever rejects the Son will not see life, for God’s wrath remains on them.

    The gospel is good news because it is a rescue. It is a rescue from sin, a rescue from the just judgement of a holy God, a rescue from hell (a subject, by the way, being something which Jesus talks quite a lot about e.g. Luke 12:5, “fear him who, after your body has been killed, has authority to throw you into hell. Yes, I tell you, fear him”). 1 Thessalonians 1:10 talks about Jesus as the one “who rescues us from the coming wrath”.

    The book of Revelation talks about the future return of Christ – a day which will not be a pleasant one for those who do not know him:

    Then the kings of the earth, the princes, the generals, the rich, the mighty, and everyone else, both slave and free, hid in caves and among the rocks of the mountains. They called to the mountains and the rocks, ‘Fall on us and hide us from the face of him who sits on the throne and from the wrath of the Lamb! For the great day of their wrath has come, and who can withstand it?’

    And in Revelation 19, we see the well-known description of Jesus as the “King of Kings and Lord of Lords” – coming just after the less well-known verse 15: “He treads the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God Almighty.”

    Why am I spending all this time labouring this point? Because I think we need to be crystal clear on what the gospel actually is. If we are confused about the gospel, we will be confused about many other things. If we’re confused about the gospel, we might end up thinking that the gospel is simply ‘being nice’. It is right and proper (and a command of the Lord) to love our neighbour – but that is not the gospel.

    The gospel is about salvation. Jude 23 says, “save others by snatching them from the fire” – and I think that’s quite a good description of what the church is about. The fire of divine judgement draws near, the church must be prophetic in warning others but boldy proclaiming the good news that God has given us a means of rescue. The Lord “is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance” (2 Peter 3:9).

    5. A final challenge

    So, my final word when thinking about Messy Church is this: a challenge. At what point in Messy Church do people hear the gospel as I’ve just defined it? At what point are people confronted with the challenge to repent of their sins and put their faith in Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour?
    I think it’s something which is worth asking for everything a church does – how does this particular activity help people towards the gospel? If, for example, you want that to happen over conversations – you could consider doing an evangelism training course for your team. But our goal must always be to hold out the hope of salvation, and we must ask hard questions and think through everything we do with that in mind.

  • Thinking about Messy Church…

    I’ve been thinking a little bit about church planting recently – more on that some other time. Anyway, in my conversations about it, the idea of Messy Church has come up more than once. If you’ve not been to Messy Church and don’t know what it’s about, there’s plenty of information on the official website. A couple of people have suggested to me that Messy Church might be a good way to start a new church in a fresh location (and one of them was a Bishop, so he ought to know what he’s talking about). Apart from all that, I’ve just finished reading a book on church growth (by Bob Jackson) which says that the numbers of people at Messy Church over the last few years has grown massively – if I recall correctly, nearly half a million people per year now attend Messy Church.

    In short, the Church of England (as well as other denominations) are really waving the banner for Messy Church at the moment – some see it to be the future of the church. It is, as people have described it to me, “church for people who don’t do church.”

    Back in January, I had an interesting conversation with one of my fellow curates about some of the challenges of Messy Church: there are some serious issues which I think really need to be thought through if the church is going to continue to promote Messy Church as the solution to the problem of getting families involved. As we will see, I hope, Messy Church may solve one or two problems but creates a number of others which I’m not sure can be adequately answered.

    I think one of the fundamental questions is this: is Messy Church supposed to be church ‘in itself’? The answer to that question is, apparently, yes. The official website says Messy Church is not:

    … a way of getting people to come to church on Sunday – There are examples of people starting in Messy Church and deciding to join Sunday church as well but these are the exception rather than the rule. If people wanted to go to established church, they would be going by now. [My emphasis] Messy Church is interdependent with established church, but will usually operate as a separate congregation or church.

    Messy Church is, as I said before, church for people who don’t do church. The idea is that it’s reaching a set of people who wouldn’t come on a Sunday morning. It’s church for them – not half church, or church with the hope of them coming to join ‘proper’ church, but proper church in itself.

    I just find this whole thing somewhat confused and, well, messy. One has to ask, why do people not come to church on a Sunday morning? I would venture to suggest it’s not because they simply don’t have the time – you make time for what is important to you. As I highlighted in the quote from the MC website above, if people wanted to go they would be going by now. I’d suggest instead that it’s because they’re not Christian. In the past, the traditional way of reaching people who don’t come to church is to hold evangelistic events or otherwise share the gospel with them, to help them understand the gospel, make a commitment to Christ and join the church family. The point is, people who don’t already come to church are being encouraged to consider the claims of Christ and then join an existing church family.

    This is what I don’t get about Messy Church: I think Messy Church would be a fantastic evangelistic tool. I just struggle to see it as a church.

    Another question I have about Messy Church which cuts deeply to the heart of the matter: does Messy Church actually introduce people to Jesus? Here’s the thing. The Messy Church philosophy seems to assume that people would just love to come to church if only they could find a time and a place which suited them. People don’t come on a Sunday morning because they’re busy or it’s inconvenient – hold it on a Saturday afternoon, people will love it. People would just jump at the chance to get to know Jesus, given a convenient time and format.

    However, this is not how the gospels portray Jesus. Jesus is always a deeply divisive figure. At the end of John chapter 6, some of Jesus’ disciples said: “This is a hard teaching. Who can accept it?” (v60), and then: “From this time many of his disciples turned back and no longer followed him.” (v66) In other words, people who had the real, living, breathing Jesus in front of them couldn’t accept his teaching and turned back! It wasn’t a problem of finding a convenient time – it was that his teaching was unacceptable to them. In the very next chapter, just a few verses on, Jesus says: “The world cannot hate you, but it hates me because I testify that its works are evil.” (John 7:7) So Jesus says that the world actually hates him – because he testifies that what it does is evil. 

    As I said, Jesus is a deeply divisive figure: Jesus is not someone whose teaching is inoffensive and all about ‘love your neighbour’ – he testifies about us that we are sinful, that our sin is offensive to a holy God, and that we need to repent of our sin and come to him for forgiveness and seek to live our lives with him as Lord. This is a message which the world finds deeply offensive! Paul says in 1 Corinthians 1:18-25 that the message of the cross is “foolishness to those who are perishing” – the Christian message looks bizarre and ridiculous to the world which is blind to God.

    And this is the heart of the matter with Messy Church: what worries me with Messy Church (as a separate congregation) is that people come along because kids enjoy the crafts, the Bible story, the meal – it’s a fun thing to do together as a family. But by its nature it never really gets to the heart of the matter: to actually testifying that our deeds are evil and that God commands all of us to repent and believe in the gospel. I think a lot of people have a craving for some kind of spirituality in their lives – perfectly natural, as Augustine said ‘O Lord, you have made us for yourself and our hearts are restless above all things until they find their rest in you.’ However, I think Messy Church – rather than helping people – might actually hinder: it helps to fill the void in the ‘God-shaped hole’ in someone’s life without ever encouraging them to do what God requires. In other words, Messy Church could actually hinder the gospel.

    This Sunday I am preaching on Matthew 7:13-14, where Jesus talks about two roads – the broad road which leads to destruction, and the narrow road which leads to life. If we do not warn people about the broad road which leads to destruction, then we are not showing them love. To love someone means to warn them of the danger they are in, in this case – the danger we are all in if we do not repent and believe in the gospel. If people are never warned at Messy Church about the broad road which leads to destruction, and are never encouraged to seek the narrow way of repentance and faith in Christ, then that is not the gospel and that is most definitely not introducing people to Jesus.

    So, to conclude, I have a real problem with Messy Church as church in itself. I think it would work well as an evangelistic tool, provided that the gospel was presented clearly. But I have big problems with the way it is presented by many in the church as the solution to our problem of getting families involved – it may be creating more problems.

  • Hymnology: By Faith we see the hand of God


    February here at St Mark’s is ‘all-request’ month. People have the opportunity to request a favourite hymn or a song, and we’ll sing them  at services throughout the month.
    My request for the month was “By Faith” by Townend and Getty. This is a song which is particularly inspired by the famous chapter 11 of Hebrews, about the ‘heroes of faith’. I chose it because I’ve been thinking a lot about the future recently, and what it means to step out by faith: so often it seems that God leads us down a road where we can’t see everything – we can maybe only see the first step or two. But we are called to take a step out in faith, and trust God that he will lead and guide us.
    I thought it would be worthwhile thinking a little bit about “walking by faith and not by sight” in the book of Hebrews. Hebrews was a book which, as far as we can tell, was written to a group of Jewish believers who were in danger of giving up their faith in Christ and going back to the Jewish religion. The reason? They didn’t want to walk by faith – the Jewish religion had the temple and sacrifices and so on – things you could physically see, touch, smell etc.
    What the writer to the Hebrews does is demonstrate that what Christians have ‘by faith’ is not only the true heir to what we call the Old Testament – the Hebrew Scriptures – but is actually more real than what we can see currently with our eyes.
    In particular, he demonstrates that Christ and what has been accomplished through him is the reality, in a way which the Temple, sacrificial system and the Law could never be:

    For Christ did not enter a sanctuary made with human hands that was only a copy of the true one; he entered heaven itself, now to appear for us in God’s presence. Nor did he enter heaven to offer himself again and again, the way the high priest enters the Most Holy Place every year with blood that is not his own. (9:24-25)
    The law is only a shadow of the good things that are coming – not the realities themselves. For this reason it can never, by the same sacrifices repeated endlessly year after year, make perfect those who draw near to worship. (10:1)

    The earthly tabernacle and temple were not the reality: they were only “a copy” or a “shadow” of what was to come – i.e. Christ. They were only physical reminders to the people of the redemption that God was going to fully accomplish in Christ.
    But Christ has come, the reality has come – and obtained “eternal redemption” with his own blood, rather than the blood of bulls and goats. He has not entered into a copy of the true sanctuary, but he has entered into heaven itself and appears for us in God’s presence. That’s an amazing thought!
    So we come to chapter 11, where we see this ‘hall of fame’ of those characters from the Old Testament who the writer mentions. He demonstrates that all these characters, far from living lives oriented around what they could see, actually lived lives of faith – trusting patiently in what they could not yet see. Here’s what the writer says about them:

    All these people were still living by faith when they died. They did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance, admitting that they were foreigners and strangers on earth. People who say such things show that they are looking for a country of their own. If they had been thinking of the country they had left, they would have had opportunity to return. Instead, they were longing for a better country – a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them.

    All of these characters the writer mentions were looking for something beyond what they could see with their eyes. They were “longing for a better country – a heavenly one”. Their hope for the unseen future controlled what they did in the seen present. They were able to endure hardship and do mighty deeds because they knew that there was more to the world than simply what their eyes could see.
    This is really significant for us today: I think it’s so tempting – for me at least – to simply look round at a place and see nothing but the physical. To see nothing but bricks and mortar, and people going about their days with no concern for the eternal. But God calls us to look beyond, to look to the future, to look to the heavenly city which he has prepared for all those who love him. This must control our days, not simply our immediate concerns but God’s concerns. We walk by faith and not by sight.

    This is part of my “Hymnology” blog series

  • Transgender and the new reality

      Now it is such a bizarrely improbable coincidence that anything so mindbogglingly useful could have evolved purely by chance that some thinkers have chosen it to see it as a final and clinching proof of the non-existence of God.
    The argument goes something like this: “I refuse to prove that I exist,” says God, “for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing.”
    “But,” says Man, “the Babel fish is a dead giveaway isn’t it? It could not have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and therefore, by your own arguments, you don’t. QED.“
    “Oh dear,” says God, “I hadn’t thought of that,” and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic.
    “Oh, that was easy,” says Man, and for an encore goes on to prove that black is white and gets killed on the next zebra crossing.
    — Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

    This is one of my favourite bits from The Hitchhiker’s Guide. It nails for me the absurdity of some logical reasoning: you can apply as much logic as you like, but unless it aligns with reality then it’s worthless. I love the idea of mankind proving that black is white – and thus getting run over on the next zebra crossing. As if such a thing could happen…

    Which neatly brings me to the thorny issue of reality and our minds. Some diseases, such as dementia or schizophrenia, can cause a person to suffer delusions – to believe things which are not actually true – that is, what their minds believe does not match up with reality. At the same time, other conditions include believing that one’s birth sex is different – that one was ‘born in the wrong body’, so to speak. Reality does not match up with one’s internal state. This is known as Gender Dysphoria. The current action of the NHS in such a case is to cautiously move forward with things like hormone therapy, and even surgery to permanently transition. (Since 2004, the government also allow sex on a birth certificate to be changed, as happened with Rachel Mann, for example).

    In these cases, the transition – although it may be permanent – is only really a ‘patch-up’ job. Scientifically speaking, it is currently impossible (and perhaps will be forever impossible) to transition from being a man to a woman or vice versa. Every cell in the human body declares that we are male or female. A blood test on a man who has transitioned to a woman, for example, will still yield the result of a man. Someone who begins hormone treatment will need to be on that treatment indefinitely – i.e. for the rest of their lives. Treatment, such as it is, cannot alter reality.

    Why do I say all this? Why am I stepping out into this delicate and precarious minefield? Consider the case of Germaine Greer: she recently made comments – in her usual, ahem, ‘robust’ way – that chopping off your penis did not make you a woman. Her comments were branded ‘grossly offensive’ and ‘misogynistic’, and a group of people petitioned to prevent her scheduled lecture at Cardiff University from taking place. Greer has subsequently been demonised by activists, calling her – no prizes for guessing – a “bigot”.

    But now the government has got in on the act. The Women and Equalities Committee has just published the results of a transgender inquiry, which states that trans people are being failed by the NHS and many other parts of society. As Melanie Phillips writes, the results of this inquiry will actually have the biggest effect on children:

    Trans and gender issues, says the committee, should be taught in schools as part of personal, social and health education.

    We can all predict what will happen. Gender fluidity will be actively promoted as just another lifestyle choice. Under the commendable guise of stopping the minute number of transgender children being bullied, the rest of the class will be bullied into accepting the prescribed orthodoxy — that gender is mutable, and any differentiation in value between behaviour or attitudes is bigoted and prohibited.

    This comes in a week where teenagers in a school in Brighton were given a (government-sponsored) survey with 23 options for gender, including terms like ‘Gender fluid’, ‘Genderqueer’, ‘Tri-gender’, ‘In the middle of boy and girl’ and so on. It’s truly staggering.

    What worries me about all this is that, under pressure from certain vocal activist groups, an alternative vision of reality is being foisted upon some of the most vulnerable people in our society – children and teenagers. Scientists have known for some time about ‘neuroplasticity’ – the way the brain can rewire itself. This is none more so than in the brains of teenagers, for example pornography can have a much bigger effect on a adolescent brain than it can an adult:

    Between the ages of 12 and 20, the human brain undergoes a period of great neuroplasticity. The brain is in a malleable phase during which billions of new synaptic connections are made. This leaves us vulnerable to the influence of our surroundings and leads our brains to be “wired” around the experiences and information that we receive during that time period.

    Anyone who’s ever been through puberty will be able to testify – growing up as a teenager is a difficult time of life. It’s confusing, lots of changes are happening, and you are in real need of guidance. It seems to me that presenting teenagers with a list of 23 gender options will actually exacerbate the issue, rather than helping. Teaching children and young people that there are a plurality of gender options will make what is a confusing and difficult time even more confusing and difficult.

    There have been a number of cases recently where very young children have been diagnosed with gender dysphoria (on charity claims up to about 80 children per year) – and the response is sometimes to administer powerful puberty-blocking drugs. I simply cannot believe this is the right response to these circumstances.

    There’s a phrase from the Bible which has passed into our English language: “they sow the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind” (Hosea 8:7). It worries me that this is what’s happening with our society today: I think we are sowing seeds in young lives which we’re not going to see the fruit of for a generation – but one day we will reap the whirlwind. 

    Gender Dysphoria is undoubtedly a real phenomenon and I feel deepest sympathy for anyone who suffers with it. But I think our government is very wrong in its solution. I would encourage anyone who has GD to find a way to feel comfortable in their own body, however hard that might be: to engage in transitioning from one sex to the other might seem to be the solution, but in reality it often does not deliver what it promises.

    From the Melanie Phillips article I quoted above:

    In fact, gender fluidity itself creates victims. Professor Paul McHugh is the former chief psychiatrist at Johns Hopkins hospital in the US. In the 1960s this pioneered sex-reassignment surgery — but subsequently abandoned it because of the problems it left in its wake. Most young boys and girls who seek sex reassignment, McHugh has written, have psychosocial issues and presume that such treatment will resolve them. ‘The grim fact is that most of these youngsters do not find therapists willing to assess and guide them in ways that permit them to work out their conflicts and correct their assumptions. Rather, they and their families find only “gender counsellors” who encourage them in their sexual misassumptions.’

    In fact, there is a whole website devoted to the issues around sex change regret and examples of people who have made the transition ‘back again’, so to speak.

    In conclusion, it seems that the government has bought into a particular agenda and understanding of gender – one which is controversial at best. But, worse than this, the new gender orthodoxy is not open to questioning – as the case of Germaine Greer demonstrates. And it troubles me that our society, once again, is sleepwalking into the whirlwind of its own creation as our children are raised in a world where desires can override reality itself.

    Further reading

    I’ve linked to a few pieces in the post above, but here are a few other articles which I’ve found helpful:

    Note on comments: I have decided to disable comments for this post. If you would like to reply to me, I welcome feedback via other channels. I might publish and engage with feedback if it is constructive and respectful.

  • Hymnology: And can it be – ‘My chains fell off…’

    Last weekend I travelled down to High Leigh for a residential weekend with my fellow curates in the Chelmsford Diocese. On Friday evening we sang ‘And can it be’, one of my favourite hymns and one of Charles Wesley’s finest (in my opinion). The hymn tells the story of salvation from a first person perspective – it’s written in a very personal style.

    Like In Christ alone you could spend hours dissecting every verse of the song, but let’s focus on one for now:

    Long my imprisoned spirit lay,
    Fast bound in sin and nature’s night;
    Thine eye diffused a quickening ray—
    I woke, the dungeon flamed with light;
    My chains fell off, my heart was free,
    I rose, went forth, and followed Thee.

    Long my imprisoned spirit lay

    What do those first two lines mean – “Long my imprisoned spirit lay / Fast bound in sin and nature’s night”? The answer that the Bible gives us that we are held captive by sin. This is what Paul is at pains to demonstrate in his letter to the Romans, throughout the first part of the letter. As he says in Romans 3:23, “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God”. But it’s even more than that: some people say that sin is simply a bad example – we sin because we see other people sin. In other words, there is nothing intrinsically sinful about us – we can choose to do good or evil, and sometimes we choose what is wrong, but basically human beings start out from a neutral perspective.

    But the Bible goes further in describing our fallen condition: we don’t start out from a neutral place. There is something inherently sinful about our very nature. This is what Paul says a bit further on in the letter, Romans 6:16-18:

    Don’t you know that when you offer yourselves to someone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one you obey – whether you are slaves to sin, which leads to death, or to obedience, which leads to righteousness? But thanks be to God that, though you used to be slaves to sin, you have come to obey from your heart the pattern of teaching that has now claimed your allegiance. You have been set free from sin and have become slaves to righteousness.

    We don’t start out from neutral: we are either slaves to sin, or slaves to righteousness. There is no middle ground. Paul is not the only one to use this language – Jesus says in John 8:34, “Very truly I tell you, everyone who sins is a slave to sin.” John says, “If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us” (1 John 1:8). The point is, we are all held captive by sin: there is no way out by ourselves. All of us are, by nature, “fast bound” in sin.

    Thine eye diffused a quick’ning ray

    And that’s why we need God to step in, as the next line of the hymn goes: “Thine eye diffused a quick’ning ray”. Quickening is a word we don’t use very much these days, but in this sense it means “to give or restore life to”. Although we couldn’t escape slavery to sin by ourselves, nonetheless God stepped in to our situation and made us alive. Paul puts it like this:

    As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. 

    All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our flesh and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature deserving of wrath. But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions – it is by grace you have been saved. 

    Ephesians 2:1-5

    Paul describes the state of slavery to sin here as being ‘dead’. Those who are without Christ are “dead in transgressions and sins”. I’m not a doctor, but I do know that one thing dead bodies do not do is come back to life again by themselves! A dead body cannot raise itself. As with our physical bodies, so we who are spiritually dead cannot raise ourselves: but God “who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions“. Salvation is not of our own doing, but from God. He is the one who looks upon our helpless state, and makes us alive – even when we were still dead.

    We didn’t make the first move towards God. Because of our sin, we would never make the first move to God – we are so sinful that we would never have chosen Him. Paul is clear that the one who makes the first move is not us, but God: “For he chose us in [Christ] before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love he predestined us for adoption to sonship through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will.” John puts it like this: “This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins” (1 John 4:10).

    Without God making the first move towards us, without him sending that “quick’ning ray”, we are dead in our transgressions and sins. But God, who is rich in mercy, makes the first move towards us, he brings us from death to life by his sovereign choice and power.

    As I am an Anglican, I think it’s always helpful to look to the 39 Articles to see how Cranmer and our reformation forebears put it. This is what Article X “Of free-will” says:

    THE condition of Man after the fall of Adam is such, that he cannot turn and prepare himself, by his own natural strength and good works, to faith, and calling upon God: Wherefore we have no power to do good works pleasant and acceptable to God, without the grace of God by Christ preventing us, that we may have a good will, and working with us, when we have that good will.

    This is standard reformation theology, following Augustine. It is impossible to please God without faith (Hebrews 11:6).

    My chains fell off

    And so we come to the end of the verse: “My chains fell off, my heart was free / I rose, went forth, and followed Thee”. This describes the response to God, once He has made that first move and stepped in. To continue the quote from Jesus I mentioned earlier, “if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed” (John 8:36). Once God has set us free, we take up our cross and follow Christ – putting to death our flesh with its passions and desires, and seeking to love God and love our neighbour as we walk in step with the Spirit.

    Christians have been set free from slavery to sin. That does not mean that Christians do not sin, of course – but that the curse has been lifted. It is no longer our master. Jesus is our master, and his righteousness. And one day we know that the work which God has begun in us will be completed – we will be completely free from sin! This is a great promise for those who are struggling.

    May God himself, the God of peace, sanctify you through and through. May your whole spirit, soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. The one who calls you is faithful, and he will do it. 1 Thessalonians 5:23-24

    A brief note on free will and predestination…

    I appreciate that I haven’t really touched on the thorny subject of predestination in this post. My aim is to return to it in a future post, as it’s a huge topic of which this is only a small part.

    However, I think it’s worth reflecting on the words of the 39 Articles here, and with this I will close. Article XVII, Of predestination and election:

    As the godly consideration of Predestination, and our Election in Christ, is full of sweet, pleasant, and unspeakable comfort to godly persons, and such as feel in themselves the working of the Spirit of Christ, mortifying the works of the flesh, and their earthly members, and drawing up their mind to high and heavenly things, as well because it doth greatly establish and confirm their faith of eternal Salvation to be enjoyed through Christ, as because it doth fervently kindle their love towards God … we must receive God’s promises in such wise, as they be generally set forth to us in holy Scripture: and, in our doings, that Will of God is to be followed, which we have expressly declared unto us in the Word of God.

    This is part of my “Hymnology” blog series.

  • Hymnology: In Christ Alone and the wrath of God

    As I said in my introductory post, I’m starting up a new blog series about hymns and their theology (which I’ve called ‘hymnology’. Great name, right?). I thought it would be appropriate to kick off the series by thinking about one of the most well-loved modern hymns, ‘In Christ Alone’ by Stuart Townend and Keith Getty.

    This is a hymn which has attracted some controversy over the line in the second verse: “Till on that cross as Jesus died / The wrath of God was satisfied”. A couple of years ago, that line kept the hymn out of the Presbyterian Church hymnal. Some places avoid the question altogether by leaving out that verse when singing it (I’ve included one such version at the bottom of this post). It seems to have become increasingly popular for the church to question the idea of God’s wrath being satisfied on the cross – for a good articulation of the problems some people have, see Ian Paul’s post from a couple of years ago (although note the length of the comment discussion!)

    So I thought it might be worth spending a little while thinking about that one line. I can’t go into all the ins and outs of the debate now, but I want to outline what it is that I believe and how it flows from the Bible.

    Recently in church, I was preaching on a passage which talks about the judgement and wrath of God (John the Baptist’s speech in Luke 3, which begins in v7 with: “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath?”). The wrath of God is seen consistently in the New Testament as something which is coming on those who do not believe in Jesus. This is clear from a number of places, for example John 3:36 says, “Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life, but whoever rejects the Son will not see life, for God’s wrath remains on them.” 1 Thessalonians 1:10 talks about Christ “rescuing” believers from the coming wrath. And, at the second coming of Christ, he will return to “judge the world with justice” (Acts 17:31). This event is described in Revelation 19, when Christ will “[tread] the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God Almighty.”

    To my mind, the natural question to ask then is: what provokes the wrath of God? Why would God be wrathful against us? The short answer to that is a little word: ‘sin’. This is what 2 Chronicles 19:10 says.

    In every case that comes before you from your people who live in the cities – whether bloodshed or other concerns of the law, commands, decrees or regulations – you are to warn them not to sin against the Lord; otherwise his wrath will come on you and your people.

    Sin is disobedience, sin is hostility towards God, sin is wanting to cast God down from his throne and place ourselves there. Jesus defined the most important commandments as to love God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength, and to love our neighbours as ourselves. When we don’t do that – which is all the time – we are essentially rejecting the good way that God has made us and thus rejecting Him.

    Consequently,  Sin creates a rift between us and God: “But your iniquities have separated you from your God; your sins have hidden his face from you, so that he will not hear” (Isaiah 59:2). God is perfectly righteous and just, and God cannot and will not let sin go unpunished. Every one of us is under the righteous and just condemnation of God, for “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23).

    The confession from the communion service in the Book of Common Prayer puts it well. (I appreciate that the language is old fashioned, but I happen to be a bit of a fan of the Book of Common Prayer so no apologies from me.) It begins:

    ALMIGHTY God, Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, Maker of all things, Judge of all men: We acknowledge and bewail our manifold sins and wickedness, Which we from time to time most grievously have committed, By thought, word, and deed, Against thy Divine Majesty, Provoking most justly thy wrath and indignation against us.

    Sin, as John Stott put it, is not a regrettable lapse from conventional standards: its essence is hostility towards God. All of us by nature are “deserving of wrath” (Ephesians 2:3). That’s pretty bleak news, isn’t it?

    But – the good news is that Christ Jesus rescues those who believe in Him from the coming wrath. How does that work?

    One of the clearest pictures of Christ’s work actually comes from the  Old Testament, the picture of the servant of God given in the book of Isaiah. There are four ‘servant songs’ in Isaiah, which culminate in the fourth song – the breathtaking chapter 53. There we read:

    Surely he took up our pain
        and bore our suffering,
    yet we considered him punished by God,
        stricken by him, and afflicted.
    But he was pierced for our transgressions,
        he was crushed for our iniquities;
    the punishment that brought us peace was on him,
        and by his wounds we are healed.
    We all, like sheep, have gone astray,
        each of us has turned to our own way;
    and the Lord has laid on him
        the iniquity of us all.

    This is a picture of Christ and what he accomplished on the cross. He was “pierced for our transgressions … the punishment that brought us peace was on him … the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.” On the cross, every single sin was laid on Christ. He was, in a very real sense, punished in our place. He endured the wrath of God, the wrath that you and I deserve, so that all those who believe in Him may not have to endure it.

    Peter in the New Testament picks up on this very passage in 1 Peter 2, and then in 3:18 he says: “For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God.” Jesus – the one who was sinless and righteous – suffered for sins.

    The apostle Paul writes in Colossians 2:

    When you were dead in your sins … God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins, having cancelled the charge of our legal indebtedness, which stood against us and condemned us; he has taken it away, nailing it to the cross. (v13-14)

    Isn’t that amazing? The sin which separates us from God, the sin which makes is guilty before him, is nailed to the cross. When Jesus died, he died the death that we deserve. He endured the wrath which by rights should be ours. But, gloriously, as our substitute we can have his perfect and righteous life, and through his resurrection we can share in his eternal life.

    The theologian Jim Packer puts it like this in his chapter on wrath from Knowing God:

    Between us sinners and the thunderclouds of divine wrath stands the cross of the Lord Jesus. If we are Christ’s, through faith, then we are justified through His cross, and the wrath will never touch us, neither here nor hereafter. Jesus ‘delivers us from the wrath to come’ (1 Thess 1:10, RSV)

    When we sing ‘In Christ Alone’, we can sing it with true confidence that the wrath of God has been satisfied and is wonderfully no longer a concern for the believer. Those who believe in Christ have been justified, saved, rescued, and brought into friendship with God. As David says in Psalm 103, “he does not treat us as our sins deserve / or repay us according to our iniquities.”

    Praise God that the wrath of God was satisfied on the cross.

    A little extra…

    I really like this version of In Christ Alone musically, and I like the little bridge they added – but sadly they do leave out the verse with the controversial lines. I can commend singing this arrangement in church if you reinstate the missing verse!

  • New blog project: Hymnology

    I feel like I’ve been neglecting this blog a little of late. Part of it has been the fact that the last term was quite busy (for some reason I always find the Autumn term the busiest one of the year), but part of it is that I haven’t really felt compelled to write about anything in particular. Over the past few years I’ve written about marriage quite a bit, I’ve written about atheism and secularism, I’ve written about a number of things – but, quite frankly, I think those subjects have been done to death and I’m not sure it really helps to be blogging about them.

    I was thinking the other day about maybe following up my post about I the Lord of sea and sky with another hymn, when it struck me: so often we sing hymns which have profound and deep theological roots, but we simply gloss over them. I think many people sing hymns without really understanding what they mean.

    I am a firm believer in singing hymns with both good tunes and good words – heart and head working together, so to speak. I think this is what Paul meant when he wrote Colossians 3:16:

    Let the message of Christ dwell among you richly as you teach and admonish one another with all wisdom through psalms, hymns, and songs from the Spirit, singing to God with gratitude in your hearts.

    And it struck me that it might be helpful for the word of Christ to dwell “richly” in us to blog occasionally about a particular hymn or song and expand on the theology of the song. I’ve found it very helpful in the past when the preacher has connected the sermon with a song that we were about to sing – for example, I always remember a sermon Mike Neville preached at Fordham on the book of Romans referring to the end of “And can it be”. I often think of it when we sing that verse. (I think it’s also helpful sometimes to pick out dodgy theology, as I did in ‘I, the Lord of sea and sky’ – we need to know what to watch out for!)

    I’ve picked the name ‘Hymnology‘, simply because it means something like “the study of hymns” – and that’s what I want to do here. In order to sing hymns and songs better, it’s good to think more deeply about them. I’m excited about this little project, I hope it’s beneficial to you too.

  • Confused by 'I, the Lord of sea and sky'

    Hymnal

    Just the other day, someone was saying to me how much they love the song “I, the Lord of sea and sky” – it’s one of their all-time favourite hymns. I remember once visiting a church to have a look around, and they were holding a “hymn request” month – people could write their favourite hymns on a bit of paper. This particular hymn came up a lot. On various things I’ve been on with the Church of England with my fellow curates, this song has been requested. It seems to be one everyone’s list of favourite hymns – it’s just one of those hymns with a great tune that makes you want to pump your first in the air and shout “YEAH!” at the end of it.

    So – it is with a sense of trepidation that I dare to say: I’m really not sure about it. I’ve had a gut feeling about the hymn for a while now, but I haven’t really thought through why it is that I don’t like it until recently. Hopefully putting it into words will help crystallize my thinking.

    I think the essence of the problem, for me, is being uncomfortable with the way the song uses “my people”. In the Bible, the phrase “my people” is used by God to refer to the Israelites. So, for example, Exodus 7:4, “I will take you as my own people, and I will be your God.” Or Leviticus 26:12, “I will walk among you and be your God, and you will be my people.” Or 2 Chronicles 7:14 “if my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land.”

    Now, I believe that the New Testament requires us to see that the promises God made to Israel in the Old Testament are fulfilled in Christ (see Rob Dalrymple’s book which I reviewed recently, ‘These Brothers of Mine’). Consequently, Old Testament references to “my people” are ultimately fulfilled in the Kingdom of God – his people, the Church, the “Israel of God” (Galatians 6:16).

    So, let’s go back to the song. Does the song use the phrase “my people” in that way, i.e. referring to those within the Kingdom of God? I don’t think so. The whole first verse seems to be talking about people who are currently outside the Kingdom: “All who dwell in dark and sin / My hand will save.” And I think this is where I get confused with the song. (As an aside – not to mention the fact that “All who dwell … my hand will save” seems universalist, although I think this is probably not intended).

    The song’s imagery is largely drawn from within the people of Israel. Isaiah was called as a prophet to Israel. Samuel was called to be a judge of Israel. The song references the call of both of these men. The second verse says “I have born my people’s pain” – a reference to Isaiah 53:4, which – again – is talking about God bearing the sin of Israel, ultimately of those who trust in Jesus.

    The chorus finishes with the line, “I will hold Your people in my heart”. By the time I’ve sung the rest of the song, I’m just not sure who the “Your people” actually are, or what I’m supposed to be doing for them!
    Am I being a needless pedant over this? Perhaps. It is certainly true that those in the Kingdom of God were chosen “before the foundation of the world” (Eph. 1:4) – and as such ‘my people’ in a sense includes not just those who have trusted in Jesus, but all those who will trust in Jesus. God says to Paul in Acts 18:10, “I am with you, and no one is going to attack and harm you, because I have many people in this city.” But then, we don’t know who they are. That’s the point of the Parable of the Sower – we spread the word, and there are a variety of different responses. And we don’t call those who have yet to trust in Jesus “my people”. Saul, for example, while he was breathing out murderous threats against God’s people was certainly not a member of the Kingdom of God!

    At the end of the day, I feel like the song is trying to make the (excellent) point that God is the one who saves us, that he plans to work in particular people’s lives, that he acts first, steps in and brings light to our darkness, and that he calls and uses us in his mission. That much is all worthy of singing about.

    But I feel like the song is also a little confusing, and a little vague – I can well imagine two people from very different theological backgrounds singing the song and meaning different things by the words. Perhaps that’s why it’s so popular in the Church of England, and other Christian groups: it’s not specific enough for any one group to disagree with!

    All in all, I’m not going to start a campaign to stop us singing it, but I think it’s worthwhile thinking through what we are singing – especially our most popular hymns. Even if I am being a needless pedant…

  • Bigotry and legalism in our culture

    Three years ago, I lamented the use of the word “bigot” especially in the context of same-sex marriage. In the last week or so, I’ve read a couple of other things which have really said what I wanted to say much better.

    Firstly, Brendan O’Neill writes about “The New Bigots” as he considers the treatment of  Germaine Greer after making her comments about transgender women. O’Neill is someone who I would probably disagree with fundamentally on a number of issues, but he is always well worth reading and this is no exception: I think it’s very insightful. Who are the real bigots – people who hold opinions like Germaine Greer, or those who try to silence those opinions?

    Secondly, the webcomic Adam4d posted up a cartoon about intolerance, which makes a very similar point. Having a different opinion is not intolerance.

    As I was reading these two pieces, it made me reflect on the nature of our society today: why is it that those with dissenting opinions – particularly on matters such as marriage – are often accused of being ‘bigoted’?

    Let’s just take a detour into a little thought experiment for a second. Imagine a racist, let’s call him Racist Tim (I don’t know why I chose the name Tim, apologies to all the Tims out there.) Racist Tim is a member of a certain far-right political party and often expresses his support for them in conversations with his friends. Most of his conversation is focussed on the evils of immigration and the dangers of Islam.

    Now, Racist Tim has views which are not acceptable in society at the moment (racism). What do you think would help him to change his views? (1) his friends all telling him that he’s stupid; (2) everyone on Facebook and social media telling him that racism is stupid; (3) him having a change of heart and realising that racism is wrong?

    Now I appreciate that those three options are not mutually exclusive, but the one which really matters – the one which will really make a difference – is (3), isn’t it? At the end of the day, however much Racist Tim’s friends or the internet tells him that his views are stupid and wrong, it isn’t going to make much of a difference unless he can realise for himself that he’s wrong. Now, it is a possibility that (1) and (2) will help towards (3) – but what I think is more likely to happen is that the more Racist Tim gets abused for his racist views, the more strongly he will hold them. I’d say what is much more effective in that situation is to engage with kindness and compassion and to show Racist Tim why his views are wrong and help him to see that for himself: he won’t realise if he’s just abused, he might just realise if people engage him with gentleness.

    Why do I say all of this, and what relevance does it have to intolerance? The point is, at the moment our society basically engages in (1) and (2):  telling people who hold unacceptable opinions that they are wrong, that they are ‘bigots’, that they need to change their minds. But the problem is, I don’t think this will actually change anyone’s mind.

    But from a Christian perspective, I also believe there is something even more fundamental going on: the issue of the human heart. As someone once said, “The heart of the human problem is the problem of the human heart.” Jesus said in Mark 7:20-23,

    What comes out of a person is what defiles them. For it is from within, out of a person’s heart, that evil thoughts come – sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance and folly. All these evils come from inside and defile a person.

    In context, the disciples (and the Pharisees) thought that ceremonial uncleanness – what made them ‘unclean’ and separated from God – came from outside. But Jesus says, no – uncleanness comes from within. We have a heart problem, one which is inside, rather than one which is merely external.

    We human beings, by nature, love to make all our problems external. We believe that if we just follow a set of rules, we’ll be OK. We love to believe that we can set a list of rules for ourselves, and all we need to do is simply keep them. Then, once we’ve followed our list of rules, will we be good and righteous. “Don’t be racist: tick. Don’t be homophobic: tick. Give to charity from time to time: tick.” If you get ticks in enough boxes, you’re a good person. This is known as legalism – that the route to being a good and righteous person is by keeping the law.

    From this perspective, it’s not surprising that our society is intolerant, is it? Our society is profoundly legalistic. If you ‘break the law’ (i.e. express the wrong / unacceptable opinion), you’re not a good person. Instead, you need to say the right words, spout the right ideas, keep in line with societal orthodoxy… or at least appear to do these things. Because, truth be told, the fruit of legalism is hypocrisy: people who appear to be keeping the law on the outside, but internally are just the same. Let’s go back to our example of Racist Tim. Let’s suppose that he recognised that expressing his racist opinions drew him lots of abuse, so he stopped. Let’s say that he learned to say the right words so that he could sound enlightened and most definitely not racist. Do you think his heart would have changed too? Or would he just simply be a hypocrite, saying ‘inclusive’ things on the outside while quietly feeding his racism on the inside? He could spend the rest of his life saying the ‘right’ things (or at least, avoiding saying the ‘wrong’ things) while inside still believing his racist thoughts without anyone knowing.

    And this is where the Christian message speaks into our society: all of us have a heart problem. All of us have things inside of us we know are wrong which can’t be fixed by giving ourselves a set of rules. But God promises to give us new hearts. He promises to change us from the inside out. This is what God said through the prophet Ezekiel:

    I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws. (Ezekiel 36:26-27)

    Christianity, unlike every other major religion, doesn’t say “do this”: it points to the Saviour, Jesus Christ, and says “done”. It doesn’t say, “if you try really, really hard – you’ll be OK.” It says, “You can’t do it on your own. Trust in Jesus, who has done it for you – and God will renew you and give you a new heart that wants to obey Him.”

    At the end of the day, I don’t think Christians should be surprised at our society’s current obsession with the word ‘bigotry’: our society is simply doing what human beings do best – legalism. But the only real solution to intolerance is not more laws, is not more accusations of bigotry, but a new heart.  That’s the only thing which will make any difference in the end.

  • Thinking about Halloween

    Source: Flickr

    What is the big deal with Halloween? Why is it that some people – most of them Christian – get so upset by it?

    I’ve been thinking about it a bit over the past few days. At church last week, someone made a comment about it from the front, and that generated a certain amount of discussion on Facebook. Halloween is one of those things which different people have very different opinions about, and I wouldn’t like to prescribe any particular opinion as “the” Christian opinion.

    However, I will admit to being quite uncomfortable with Halloween, and – given that it’s a subject I’ve never blogged on before – I’d like to take a moment to share my thoughts on it. So, what’s the big deal with Halloween? Why does it make me uncomfortable?

    Firstly, a personal anecdote. A couple of weeks ago, we went into a store in Clacton to buy a two-year-old a birthday present. It was a general, family-friendly store, and I was carrying Lydia (my two-year-old daughter). As we walked in, the very first thing we passed as we entered the shop was a display with some gruesome Halloween costumes. I’m sure you’ve all seen the kind of thing – masks and costumes made up to look as horrible as possible – Zombies, the undead, creepy things – all that kind of stuff. And as I was carrying Lydia past it, I did wonder whether it was really an appropriate display for a two-year-old to be looking at (fortunately she didn’t notice). I don’t think I’m a prude by any manner of means, but I do think some things are not appropriate for children and many Halloween costumes really push the limits of what is acceptable. Even if those costumes were designed for older children, you can’t prevent younger children from seeing them (e.g. older siblings, at school etc.) For the last few weeks we’ve been taking Lydia along to a toddler group at a nursery, and over half-term at that nursery they’ve been running a Halloween-themed club. Apparently every activity is Halloween themed. This is far from uncommon – in fact it seems to be the new norm. Even the youngest children are exposed to it.

    Secondly, I have a problem with what Halloween actually is. Most people defend Halloween as being “just a bit of fun” – I hear this time and again when talking about Halloween. But the thing is, “just a bit of fun” is not a reason to do something. There are a lot of things which are “just a bit of fun” which might actually be harmful – such as ‘banter‘. The point is, to my mind a festival like Halloween needs to say something positive to justify its existence rather than simply carrying on because it’s not bad enough to stop doing. With a festival such as Christmas or Easter, it’s obvious what those times are supposed to be celebrating: there is, if you like, a positive message. But with Halloween – what? Scary stuff is good? Let’s all have a big laugh at witches, ogres, monsters, etc? However you want to cut it, I think Halloween simply does not say anything positive, which causes me to question its existence.

    Thirdly, following on from that – doesn’t Halloween actually work against pretty much everything that we teach kids for the rest of the year? We want to teach children good values, we want to teach them about goodness and love, that good overcomes evil, to be polite to others, not to participate in things which are wrong, etc. It seems to me that Halloween, as it is today, turns all that on its head. Trick or treat, for example: when else would we tell kids it’s OK to knock on a complete stranger’s door and ask them for a treat… or else? (And yes, I know that’s not how most parents do trick or treat, but still.) Some kids go to Halloween parties made up with big scars etc – isn’t that simply disrespectful to those who bear wounds and injuries, or with physical deformities? Is it right to be teaching kids that physical deformity and scars are “scary” and should be mocked and ridiculed? Those are just a couple of examples, there are more.

    Fourthly, and as a Christian I think this is the most important thing for me, I believe that evil does actually exist. And actually, I wonder whether this may be the heart of the matter. 1 Peter 5:8-9 says, “Be alert and of sober mind. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour.” The Bible is clear that the Devil and evil do actually exist, not just in a philosophical sense. There are many testimonies of those who have experienced evil in a fairly personal way – Nicky Cruz’s books spring to mind (especially ‘Devil on the Run’, where he talks about his parents who were occult healers). Someone at my old church grew up in a missionary family in Africa, and had more than a few stories to tell. Christians are warned explicitly against consulting with mediums and the like (e.g. Lev. 19:31; Deut. 18:9-13). Paul says in Ephesians 6:12, “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.” Given all of this – why would we even want to have anything to do with evil, regardless of how light-hearted it supposedly is?

    Christians, by contrast, are exhorted: “whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable – if anything is excellent or praiseworthy – think about such things” (Phil. 4:8). We are to set our minds on the things of God, good things, things which are pure and help us to grow in holiness. I can’t see that Halloween helps us in that goal.

    A few years ago people used to wear “WWJD” bracelets – What Would Jesus Do? Although I think it’s not always helpful to think of things in those terms (Jesus was the Son of God, after all, he could do things we couldn’t or shouldn’t do) – but I do think it might be a helpful question to ask in this situation. Would Jesus dress up as a burn victim for Halloween? Can you imagine him laughing as he painted on fake scars? You know, I just don’t think I can. That’s not to say I think Jesus would have avoided going to Halloween parties – he hung around with sinners all the time – but I don’t think he would have “celebrated” Halloween.

    Finally – I appreciate that this is not an issue which Christians completely agree on (if you want a different perspective, have a read of this from the Good Book Company). And, as I hinted at in that last paragraph, I wouldn’t advise Christians to avoid Halloween parties. That’s not to say I would advise going to Halloween parties – I’d just say, use your own godly common sense and wisdom. But I just wanted to share why Halloween, as a festival, makes me uncomfortable, and why I think it’s worth at least pausing for thought before diving in.