The picture that you see is of a bollard that was hit by a reversing vehicle. It is located at a supermarket, an articulated lorry delivering fresh food was just about to reverse into its delivery bay when a smaller truck, belonging to a laundry, entered the car park and noticing that the other vehicle’s reversing lights were on concentrated avoiding the other vehicle’s route the driver omitted to notice the bollard behind him. In trying to avoid one danger he ran into another resulting in a loud bang. Just like a golfer who hit a ball into a bunker on the right-hand side of the fairway last time he played a hole, over compensates and lands in a bunker on the left instead.
Equally, in Christian circles we can react against one danger by falling into a trap on the other side. For instance, many unbelievers will come up with an argument that Jesus was just a man; so in order to counter that we stress the divine nature of Jesus. The danger then becomes that we play down His humanity when He lived on earth, then it becomes questionable as to whether Jesus was capable of being the “suffering servant” who “bore our iniquities.” We need balance. In fact throughout the history of the Church one of Satan’s favourite strategies is to spread a spurious claim about Christians or the Church. In the early centuries it was claimed that communion services were orgies because they were often referred as “love feasts.” The problem with these claims is that in trying to correct them we are in danger of over correcting them and fall into some other trap like that van driver. The problem is that in spending time and effort countering false accusations we are not proclaiming the truth of the gospel itself. The fact is that Paul was misunderstood when he preached the gospel of grace when his critics claimed he was teaching that it was OK to sin so that God’s grace could abound. It has been argued that the Gospel has not been preached right if there is no possibility of somebody making that mistake. We have to be careful that we do not compromise the truth just because somebody might misunderstand it.
David Rose, 2019.
Have you ever noticed that when demons encountered Jesus in the Gospels they actually spoke the truth. Considering that the devil is the father of all lies, there must be a reason for this. Equally, in the book of Job when the devil is summoned into the presence of God, he does not lie. There is obviously something governing this that is not directly referred to in the text. However, I think there is a clue in the wording of the Lord’s prayer where is says “Your will be done on earth as it is in Heaven.” Therefore when Satan was called into God’s presence to discuss Job he was unable to overrule the will of God and therefore had no option but to speak the truth. Equally, when Jesus walked this earth he often said that the kingdom of God (or Heaven) was near. Though humans were not usually aware of this, when demonic forces came into contact with Him the same rule applied, so they had to state that Jesus was “God’s Holy One,” or “the Son of God,” they were unable to deceive people by telling lies about Jesus in his presence. The last thing they wanted to do was to proclaim Jesus as the Messiah, but they could not help themselves when they came into contact with Him. True, Jesus silenced them, but I believe this was more because he was concerned about the crowd’s reaction to their acclamation rather than he was concerned about the demons going on to spout untruths. Jesus knew that the Jews were waiting for a messiah that would fight and overthrow the Roman empire, and on several occasions He had to take steps to avoid being hijacked as a figurehead for a Jewish revolt. Of course once he had moved on they would have been free to lie again if they had not been cast out. Sadly, though, spiritually blind humans who encountered Jesus were not always as obedient as these demons. Such as the time in the synagogue in Nazareth when the people rioted and tried to throw Jesus over a cliff.
When we read 2 Timothy chapter 3 verse 16:- “All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness,” it seems self-evident to everyone who comes from a churched background. We have heard it said, no doubt, that, of course, when Paul wrote this the Scripture he referred to was just the Old Testament. We should ask ourselves the question:- “Who in Paul’s day would dispute that?” The answer is the Sadducees, who believed that only the Pentateuch or the Torah, as the first five books of the Bible are known, were truly inspired. Paul as a Pharisee had been taught that all of the Old Testament was inspired. The problem was that when Pharisees debated with Sadducees they had to include some quotes from the Torah in order to win their arguments, but in doing that it gave the impression that the Torah was always trumps. But Jesus quoted most from the book of Isaiah (admittedly there is a lot of it to quote from), not from the Pentateuch. However, as the Gentile proportion of believers increased these arguments paled into insignificance. But today there has been a growth in the number of Jewish believers in Jesus, if they have come from a secular background to Christ they do not seem to have much of a problem accepting the New Testament as the inspired Word of God. Others that have been brought up in the “Torah is trumps” mentality seem to have more of a difficulty. They have an affinity to the Judaisers in the early church even if they deny it. Especially, with regards to Paul being the Apostle to the Gentiles, most first century Jews believed that God made Hell for the Gentiles so there was no point in evangelising them, and their modern counterparts ascribe everything to do with Gentile Christianity as being pagan. When other Christians refer to the fact that Christ fulfilled the Law they take as Jesus obeying the Law and living a perfect life as an example of how to live. The idea that in doing so that the New Covenant replaced the Old Covenant is anathema to them because it undermines their distinctive Jewishness. The problem the church has today with this kind of argument is that is so afraid of being accused of antisemitism, that it is does not know how to counter it effectively. Either it goes down the replacement theology route which risks denying the Jewish origins of Christianity, or it becomes too sympathetic and uncritical to anything Jewish and that includes the state of Israel. Just because “God blesses those who bless Israel,” does not mean that we should be blind to its faults.
Christianity has never existed in a vacuum but always in the context of social and cultural values. At times in the past Christianity has been able to influence popular culture but in more recent years the boot has been on the other foot. There have been times when Christians have loudly protested at times such as when Harry Potter novels became very popular, though that only surfaced in America when the large sum of money that J. K. Rowling was earning from the novels that patriotic Americans were objecting as much to the funds crossing the Atlantic as to the dangers of the occult which they were officially protesting about. At other times when popular culture attacks Christian values it is met with apathy, possibly because of the previous failures to turn the tide of secular thinking. In fact there are so many attacks from all directions that many Christians are often unaware of the more subtle ones.
Last week I bought a jigsaw that had a picture of the Mona Lisa on it. As I have been doing it I have been thinking of the similarities between solving jigsaw puzzles and theology. When you first start a jigsaw you are faced with a large number of pieces, most of which do not make a lot of sense as to where they fit in. Likewise when we become Christians we look at the Bible and it is easy to get confused with the different parts, trying to make sense of it all. One of the great dangers when you work at solving a puzzle is that you try and force a piece into the wrong place. At first, when it is only attached on one side, it might seem right but as you progress it begins to look wrong. If only because you cannot find any of the other pieces that fit in around it. However, just because the pieces do not fit in the way we want it to, does not mean that some of the pieces are missing. In fact you may have noticed that I have deliberately chosen a picture of the puzzle as a work in progress. This is because our theological understanding is a work in progress. I have even found out that some of the pieces shown in the picture were in the wrong positions. Too many Christians are making their theology fit their world view, instead of letting their world view be formed by their theology, i.e., Bible based and God centred. I have to admit that some of my theological opinions have changed over the years, though I am not talking about core doctrines here. The problem if we persist in the analogy of trying to force pieces in the wrong place we reject some of the pieces we have and look elsewhere for ones we hope will fit. That leads to many errors and false teachings. So beware.
cairngormmusings 