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Negativity

At the launch of a new book by Australian political commentator, Paul Kelly, Triumph and Demise, Tony Abbott, Prime Minister of Australia, commented:

“Paul suggests that the relentless negativity of our contemporary conversation, the culture of entitlement that he thinks has sprung up over the last decade or so, means that good government has become difficult, perhaps impossible…”

Reporting the launch in The Australian last month, Rosie Lewis noted, ‘Mr Abbott said his government’s challenge was to “lift ourselves” so that the nation could see the political system at its best.’

It is not my purpose here to discuss the merits or otherwise of Paul Kelly’s remarks, nor the Prime Minister’s response. What I do want to focus on is Kelly’s phrase, ‘the relentless negativity of our contemporary conversation…’ For what may or may not be true of the Australian political scene, is certainly true of the ‘contemporary conversation’ about religion, especially about Christianity, where there is a ‘relentless negativity’.

We see it in the media and on the street. An important part in communicating God’s good news is to be aware of the negativity and to take on the challenge to “lift ourselves”, to use Tony Abbott’s words, so that people everywhere can see Christianity at its best.

Let’s encourage one another to practise Paul the Apostle’s words:

Conduct yourselves wisely toward outsiders, making the most of the time. Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how you ought to answer everyone (Colossians 4:5-6).

Paul’s advice to the Colossians has two parts – life-style and speech. We are all obliged to act wisely and graciously towards people we live and work with. So, if you hold a position of responsibility, ensure that no one can accuse you of unfairness, exploitation or harshness.

Blaise Pascal in his Pensées, wrote, ‘Men despise religion. They hate it and are afraid it may be true. The cure for this is first to show that religion is not contrary to reason, but worthy of reverence and respect. Next make it attractive, make good men wish it were true, and then show them that it is.’

Furthermore, we are all obliged to answer questions people have about matters of faith. We are to cultivate conversations that are kind and gracious, yet seasoned with salt. ‘Salt’ implies sparkling and interesting conversations that can open up opportunities to discuss the gospel.

Questions. Paul anticipates we will encounter people who have genuine questions about the faith. In our day, the questions may relate to differences between Christianity and, say, Islam. It’s helpful to show others the clear differences between Mohammed and Jesus. The former led an army of 10,000 against Mecca; and in 637, after two years of raids in the countryside, his followers laid a siege against Jerusalem, starving its population into surrender.

Jesus spoke of his kingdom being not of this world (John 18:36). He neither took up the sword of battle nor called for an army. Rather, he allowed the power of Rome to put him to death. Yet, through it he won the greatest victory of all, for through it he conquered once and for all the power of sin and death. His resurrection from the dead guarantees it.

In this age of negativity, let’s heed Jesus’ words,

“Let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven” (Matthew 5:16).

Justice

Michael Connelly in his 2013 book, The Gods of Guilt writes these words into one of his characters:

Everybody has a jury, the voices they carry inside… Those I have loved and those I have hurt. Those who bless me and those who haunt me.

Commenting on why he wrote Lord of the Flies, William Golding responded:

“I believed then, that man was sick–not exceptional man, but average man. I believed that the condition of man was to be a morally diseased creation and that the best job I could do at the time was to trace the connection between his diseased nature and the international mess he gets himself into.”

As every playwright knows, no one is perfect. Everyone has a character flaw.

The greatest problem on earth. All of us, even the best of us, are a strange mixture of good and evil. One way or another, in varying ways and varying degrees, we contribute to the world’s problems. Is there any hope?

The greatest news is that there is hope. And the most surprising thing is that the rescue comes from outside, from the one who created us.  Paul concluded his speech to the Athenian academia by saying,

‘In the past God overlooked such ignorance, but now God commands all people everywhere to repent. For he has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed. He has given proof of this to all people by raising him from the dead’ (Acts 17:30-31).

Human ignorance. Paul concludes by returning to his opening words – human ignorance. In setting up an altar to ‘The Unknown God’, the Athenians recognized that they actually might not know God. ‘Well,’ says Paul, ‘you might claim ignorance, but the reality is God has never left himself without witness.’ As Paul says in Romans 1, God has revealed himself through the natural order, but men and women have always tried to suppress that knowledge. ‘Well,’ Paul says to the Athenians, ‘God in his mercy is willing to overlook your past ignorance, but ‘now he commands people everywhere to repent.’

Justice. It is a matter of deep offense to God that we try to live without him, to say that this life is all there is, to think that there is no such thing as truth. Throughout history God has been revealing himself and now ‘he has set a day when he will judge the world with justice’. We may laugh at this, but if we think about it, judgment gives value and dignity to who we are and what we do. If people steal and hate, terrorize and murder and there is no final justice, life is meaningless.

The Judge. So we ask, ‘Can God find it in his heart to do anything to save us from the judgment we deserve?’ The answer lies in the person of the judge whom God has appointed. It will be God’s day, but the judge will be one of us – a man whose name we know: Jesus Christ.

If I had to make a choice and choose a judge for myself, he is the one I would choose! From God’s side, he is the Son of God equal to God, to be honored as God. But he is also the one who entered the world as a man; who dwelt among us full of grace and truth. He lived, he spoke and he acted in a way that was different from anyone else. He loved the outcast and brought joy and hope to people from all walks of life. The Gospel narratives tell us that this man died for us.  His resurrection from the dead demonstrates that what he said was true and that his promise of forgiveness, restoration and new life, is real.

What should we to do? We need to prepare now for the day when justice will be done. We need to prepare to stand before the all-powerful, whose pure holiness is frightening to see. So how do we prepare? By repenting; that’s what God commands. Do I need to repent of all my sins and totally change my life? Yes, this is how we need to start. Our biggest sin is to trust any other god than God.

Will it mean a change? Yes! But what we are doing is finding God at last. We will be giving Jesus that central place in our lives that he deserves. It will mean discovering that this is what we were made for and that at last we have become what we were intended to be.

Is God In Control When Everything Seems Out of Control?

With the rise of militant Islam we may be tempted to wonder if there is a one true God and, if there is, we wonder whether he is still in control. Why does he allow the atrocities against his people that are occurring in Iraq at the hands of ISIS?

It is not my purpose today to address the question of suffering (I touched on that theme on Wednesdays, July 16, 23 and 30). Rather I want to continue to explore the gospel presentation of Paul the Apostle to the Athenian intelligentsia at the Areopagus (Acts 17:22ff).

From the starting point that behind the universe God exists (see last week’s ‘Word’), Paul develops the idea that God is also the ruler and sustainer of the nations.

From one ancestor he (Godmade all nations to inhabit the whole earth, and he allotted the times of their existence and the boundaries of the places where they would live, so that they would search for God and perhaps grope for him and find him—though indeed he is not far from each one of us. For ‘In him we live and move and have our being’…” (Acts 17:26ff).

Paul is saying that history and the rise and fall of nations are ultimately in God’s hands. His words echo those of Isaiah who, having prophesied God’s judgment of Israel, also spoke of the deliverance of his people from captivity (Isaiah 40 – 45). Isaiah said that God would raise up Cyrus, an insignificant prince to crush the great Babylonian empire. In turn Cyrus would free God’s people from captivity and allow them to return to Jerusalem.

Isaiah was saying (as indeed we find throughout the Scriptures) that God continues his work in the world, constantly using human decisions to work out his own greater purposes for men and women. It is because of this that Paul could write in Romans 8:28: And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good,…

There is always a purpose to God’s plan. He wants us to come to our senses and turn back to him – as did the prodigal son in Jesus’ parable. Tough times can be God’s wake-up call for us. It’s easy to blame him when things go wrong, but that is absurd for we are the problem. It’s easy to say that God is distant or uncaring. ‘Not so,’ says Paul to the Athenians: ‘God is near you – nearer than you think. And, quoting from a 6th century BC Greek poet, he points out, In him we live and move and have our being. He continues by quoting either Aratus or another poet, Cleanthus: For we too are his offspring.

In quoting from non-biblical writers Paul lays out an important principle for us: to reach a cynical audience with the things of God, look for ideas or words in the culture that illustrate a gospel truth – not all human utterance is wrong (after all, we are still image-bearers of God, albeit distorted ones).

To return to Paul’s point: he is saying that all men and women are God’s creatures. All of us not only receive our life from him, but our very existence is dependent on him. ‘Your poets agree that we are God’s offspring,’ he continued. ‘How ridiculous it is, therefore, to reduce God to something less than we are – gold or silver or stone.’

‘What’s more, when you create an idol, you are in fact trying to reverse the roles of yourself and God. You want to make yourself God’s creator, not God your creator.’

We have this assurance: despite the suffering and evil in the world around us, God is still in control, working out his greater purpose. We have every reason, therefore, to ask him to restrain wickedness and vice and direct our leaders to exercise their responsibilities wisely and justly for the benefit of all.

And, like Paul, let’s constantly look for points of connection with the culture so that we can more effectively reach the minds and hearts of people around us with God’s good news.

Dreaming

The Castle is a classic Australian film, much lauded because of its understated handling of a blue-collar suburban household. One of the lines that catches our attention is, “Tell ‘im e’s dreamin’” – in response to a quoted price for a supposed bargain.

I was thinking about this recently in the course of a conversation about the existence of the universe and whether it has all originated simply by chance. My mind also turned to the words of Paul the Apostle to the intelligentsia in Athens (that we read about in Acts 17:22ff).

“The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by hands. And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything, because he himself gives all men life and breath and everything else,” Paul said (Acts 17:24-25).

The view that we live in a world that has been created by one God who is Lord of all was a very different world-view from the Epicureans with their belief in chance and the pursuit of pleasure. It was very different from the pantheism of the Stoics and their stiff upper-lip approach to life. It is a very different world-view from the Hindus, the Buddhists and scientific atheists of today who all reject the notion of a creator God.

Yet it is a world-view that many highly intelligent and capable scientists today would support. For example, Charles Townes who won the Nobel prize for his discovery of the laser has stated: “In my view the question of origin seems always left unanswered if we explore from a scientific view alone. Thus, I believe there is a need for some religious or metaphysical explanation. I believe in the concept of God and in His existence” (quoted by H. F. Schaefer III, ‘The Big Bang, Stephen Hawking and God’).

The universe in which we live did not come into existence by random chance. There is a creator God and logically he can never go away. All this is a rather frightening thought, for it reverses what we want to think about God. We would rather have a God who did our will and who turned up only when we wanted him.

The Athenians thought that they were independent, free spirits, able to make their own decisions without reference to any God. Nothing much has changed has it! Paul won’t have any of it: God is the one who continues to sustain the life that he has created. It’s absurd to think that he needs to be sustained by us. And yet we want to domesticate God, reduce him to the level of a household pet. We build grand church buildings and put him in there. We don’t let him loose on the street let alone in our lives. ‘No,’ says Paul, ‘we depend on God, not he on us.’

Our capacity to deceive ourselves is endless. We tell ourselves that what we think must be true, but, think about it, wanting a win in the lottery never created a win. To say that there is no creator God is a sign that we have lost touch with reality and inhabit a dream world of our own. Perhaps it’s time we started to spread the line in a different context: Tell ‘im e’s dreamin’.