Does Church Stifle Spiritual Growth? (2)

In the last post we linked to an article written a few years ago by John Wilks called ‘A Spiritual Evangelical Church?’ (EVANGEL, 26.3, AUTUMN 2008). To the question whether church life can actually become an obstacle to spiritual growth his answer is YES, it often can. And the evidence says that many people struggling with or walking away from church are mature, committed believers. Their church experience is one of feeling stifled or constricted. This post surveys his argument and his proposals.

Wilks engages with the research of two authors in the 1980s and late 1990s.

Alan Jamieson: A Churchless Faith

The first is Alan Jamieson, A Churchless Faith: faith journeys beyond the churches (2000). Based on interviews with over 150 people from evangelical, Pentecostal and Charismatic churches (EPC churches) mostly in their 30s and 40s, this New Zealand pastor developed several categories to describe their journeys.

1. Displaced Followers

About 18% of leavers. Left due to frustration and negativity towards a particular local church and/or its leadership. Not a rejection of faith per se, these remain committed believers. Only about a quarter return to church life somewhere else, most work out their faith apart from a church community but linked in with wider resources of relationships, teaching, books etc.

2. Reflective Exiles

These leavers exit around questions and issues primarily concerning foundations of Christianity itself. It may be questions concerning the love and justice of God, or perhaps these days we can imagine it being around Christian teaching on sex and gender. Regardless of the precise reason, few of such leavers return to church, but few leave Christian faith altogether.

Jamieson talks of these are ‘counter-dependent’ – they find faith expression outside EPC communities. This can be a destabilising process of deconstruction since their faith has been integral to self-identity. They are in unknown new territory with all the uncertainty that brings.

3. Transitional Explorers

This group can be seen as having moved on from Reflective Exiles towards a place of integration – through deconstruction towards reconstruction. This typically has involved a lot of indepth questioning and debate and/or a personal following of intuition of what feels most right. Most remain believers, a small number become agnostic.

4. Integrated Wayfinders

Jamieson came up with this description to try to capture a sense of completion – a new place of integration. Further on from the previous group to a point of finding a clear way forward – a new expression of faith that works. Their leaving of the church is symptomatic of an exploration where they have found more freedom and depth, often with others, outside the confines of church.

The point to note of these 4 groups is that very few are rejecting Christian faith. They leave church because they feel it has become an obstacle to spiritual growth.

James Fowler: Stages of Faith

The second author Wilks discusses is James Fowler and his examination of stages of faith (Stages of Faith: The Psychology of Human Development and the Quest for Meaning (1981). These go from birth to death so Wilks just talks of stages 2-5. Fowler’s work is dated now and has been critiqued but is still useful.

The key idea here is of a linear progression, linked with age and experience, with later stages associated with older believers.

Stage 2: The Literalist

This is what Fowler calls a straight-forward, even simplistic faith (he puts 20% of adults here). Characterised by a belief in literal interpretations, this faith is largely unexamined.

Stage 3: The Loyalist

Most church members are at this stage. Fowler describes it as an uncritical acceptance of the values and beliefs of the church. Questions like ‘Why do we do this?’ tend not to be asked. A strong sense of belonging, identity and purpose are all connected with church life.

Stage 4: The Critic

This stage sees a shift towards questioning beliefs and practice. Answers that just appeal to tradition (this is the way we do things) or authority (accept what you have been told) do not satisfy. Critics want to work things out for themselves. Values and beliefs are reassessed, uncertainty about cherished positions can bring turmoil but also new discovery and growth.

Stage 5: The Seer

Fowler sees this as a place of peace and resolution – the believer has reached a place of integration – even if that means accepting ambiguity and a lack of easy black and white answers. (I don’t like the term ‘seer’ – it carries too many gnostic associations of arrival at a higher spiritual level). What Fowler is trying to capture is a sense of being beyond the turmoil and disruption of the critic.

Wilks’ Analysis

Wilks sees the two separate pieces of research mapping on to one another with leavers overlapping primarily with stages 4 and 5.

He outlines a few implications:

• There tends to be a linear progression of faith development

• There tends to be a gradual order of progress that comes with experience and reflection – people do not jump from the first to the last stage

• Moving from one stage to another is far from easy – it often involves much angst. It is only when remaining within a stage becomes impossible that someone will transition. But such a shift may well mean leaving behind previous certainties and embracing new uncertainties.

• Wilks argues that the research suggests that faith development cannot be reduced down to learning more information. Of course it includes this, but it also embraces feelings – around meaning, purpose, questioning, and working out things for oneself.

• Neither Fowler or Jamieson are arguing that one stage of faith is superior to another. This is not some gnostic ladder of ascent to a higher plane of faith. Movement through the stages is not inevitable.

• Very few people leave churches due to loss of faith. For Jamieson it was 1%. 81% left because they felt unable to develop spiritually within an EPC church.

Implications for Evangelical / Pentecostal / Charismatic Churches

Wilks is honest in saying there is a temptation to avoid the realities of this discussion within evangelically minded churches. It is difficult, he says, to ask these questions. He says he tried writing the article doing this but couldn’t do it. Obviously what he concludes is not necessarily true of every church, they are general trends. What follows is a summary of three questions and his answers.

QUESTION 1: “Is Evangelicalism a movement which caters for people in a small number of these stages? [His answer ‘Yes it is’]

Jamieson concluded that EPC churches shaped worship, teaching and role models around Stage 3 (loyalists) to encourage and reinforce belief but leaving little space for exploration, questioning and doubt. Wilks agrees with this. It does not tend to welcome self-criticism. Those who ask critical questions can often be seen as disloyal, divisive and ‘un-sound’ and are therefore not listened to or are dismissed. (My comment – this can be true within a local church or a broader denomination. Religious institutions can be incredibly effective at silencing or marginalising dissenters).

If this is often (not always) the case then Wilks concludes that it’s not surprising people feel increasingly marginalised and eventually leave when they enter Stage 4.

QUESTION 2: Is it possible to make a faith journey and remain an Evangelical at all stages of the process? [His answer ‘Only just – but it is not easy]

Fear of questioning is understandable. It may be seen as undermining the leadership, or leading others astray. This can include questions about science and the Genesis creation accounts for example. Or same-sex marriage, or sex before marriage, or the role of women in leadership or penal substitutionary atonement or the exclusiveness of Christian salvation, or the trustworthiness of the Bible, or the historical reliability of the resurrection or the deity of Jesus etc etc

And sure the New Testament does reveal a need to teach truth and reject both doctrinal error and un-Christian behaviour.

But here’s the paradox.

The more questions are either shut down to ‘protect’ the church and its leadership, or are never seriously addressed in the preaching and teaching, the more likely it is those in Stage 4 on will be unwillingly squeezed out.

Jamieson’s work shows that they don’t want to go. They aren’t leaving because they don’t believe any more. They are leaving because who they are – what they think and feel, what is important to their faith and life – has no place in their church community.

So Wilks argues church leadership needs to respond with

“‘Bring it on’ … bring your questions, doubts, uncertainties and let us debate them vigorously and robustly, with respect and rigorous deliberation. Let us reject all half explanations and simplifications, let us look at the difficulties with all their complexity and confusion”

QUESTION 3: Is there something about Evangelicalism that means it deliberately prevents people from attempting to make a faith journey?” [His answer ‘There shouldn’t be, but I think there is.’]

Linked to that last quote, Wilks argues that there is nothing inherent within evangelical faith that means its members can or should remain in Stages 2 or 3. Quite the opposite should be true. There should be nothing to fear from questioning.

But it’s one thing saying this and another facing up to Jamieson’s findings. Wilks challenges leaders to respond, not by avoiding the issue or seeing people who question as problems, but rather actively to encourage believers to “investigate this for yourself.”

“We need not reject our stage 4 disciples and eject them from our churches …. none of us should need to reject the desire to question and investigate.”

“Are we willing to change our perception of stage 4 as a crisis of faith most likely to lead to a loss of faith to one where we view it as a positive period from which we can expect growth?”

My Comments

Recall that Jamieson did his research c. 2000. Wilks wrote in 2008. Today every Christian with access to the internet has access to information and teaching on pretty well anything you can think of. Leaving aside the fact that it’s hard to sift the wheat from vast amounts of chaff, this has two consequences.

One is that long gone are the days when it was actually quite difficult for someone to do even basic biblical and theological research for themselves. Only leaders/clergy were trained and were generally recognised as experts. Now at a few clicks there are excellent teaching, preaching and written biblical and theological resources are available.

Trying to close down questions locally reminds me of a lovely wedding our family watched on Zoom the other day. Due to the pandemic It was outside and the bride ‘entered’ the ‘aisle’ via double doors, built into a frame in the middle of a field. It was a nice image of a church wedding but with no building in site. You’ll get my point – what works as an image in an outdoor wedding won’t work with questions in modern church life. Shutting the doors in the middle of a field means that people will just walk around them.

In other words, not giving space for critics to be listened to, respected and heard, and for their questions to be addressed means that they will most likely continue seeking answers somewhere else. Wilks puts it this way:

“Let us face honestly and seriously the consequences of ignoring this problem. There is a leakage of people through the back doors of Evangelical churches. They are not peripheral people, people who were not converted properly or who have lost their faith. To the contrary, they are often key people, people who put years of hard work into making the church happen and work, and who feel that their spiritual needs simply are not being met. As they move from a stage faith to one in stage 4, where they are now questioning and evaluating everything, they discover that they are no longer welcome in the typical Evangelical church. After gradually sliding out of their areas of responsibility they slip away.”

Another is that, for good or ill, authority has been radically decentered. I say for ‘for ill’ because I happen to believe that authority matters. Church tradition and doctrine has historical and theological weight and should be respected. Theological and biblical expertise matters. Church is not an individualist ‘free for all’ where every half-baked Bible interpretation has equal merit.

But it is ‘for good’ in that faith should never be ‘second hand’ – just accepted unquestioningly on someone else’s authority. Such faith has thin foundations, especially in a secular, pluralist, post-Christendom culture like ours. It is not good enough today – if it ever was – for leaders or denominations just to appeal to authority in the face of critical questioning. It is, in effect, saying ‘the church is not the place for you’. Leadership that has confidence in God and his Word trusts him, it welcomes questions, especially from experienced committed believers who want to grow and develop in their faith and worship of God.

Thoughts on the Vaccine, Gratitude and Ingratitude

[This post also appears on the Jesus Creed blog at Christianity Today]

2021 looks like a pretty dark year ahead Pandemic wise. It sure is beginning that way.

Just for the record….  In Ireland record levels of new cases of Covid-19 continue to rise. Only people with symptoms are being tested, not close contacts due to limitations in testing capacity. Testing centres are working expanded hours at full capacity. ICUs expect the peak in the next few weeks to be higher than back in March/April 2020. The new variant may increase the surge and perhaps the current Level 5 lockdown will not be enough to stop cases rising.

The vaccines are coming, but it is going to be a long road back to anything like ‘normal’ – and I suspect a longer road than we’re hoping.

And if you live in Northern Ireland, most of Britain, Europe or the USA, it is worse still.

So what’s the point in recapping this tale of woe that we are all too familiar with? Well, I want to think a little about gratitude.

GRATITUDE

‘Thankfulness’ or ‘appreciation’ are probably the closest words to gratitude.

I’m not thinking about ‘counting our blessings’ – although that can be a very good thing to do.

Nor I am thinking of all the ‘good’ spin-offs from the Pandemic – like time with family, time to read, enjoy nature, learn a new skill and the like. Seems to me those spin-offs are mostly for the privileged who have kept jobs, have financial security and have a nice home & garden and such like and haven’t been too effected at all, except having holiday plans disrupted and having to work from home.

I’m thinking of a more specific sort of gratitude – gratitude for science.

Now science is a pretty broad term. To be specific I mean by it the discipline of scientific enquiry that has the knowledge, self-critical rigour, professionalism, expertise and sheer determination and hard work to research, devise, create, test, mass produce and distribute a vaccine in a matter of months.

I am only dimly aware of what that has meant in practice. I’m also aware that there big questions within science about the desperate rush to vaccination – dubious claims, wasted money, duplication of research and entire areas of science being ‘Covidised’.

So this isn’t a naive paean to saintly scientists. But from hearing and reading the stories, ‘science’ here means real people working 90 hour weeks for months to do something unprecedented in the history of medical research. And that work has global beneficial implications.

It’s a story that I hope will be told and celebrated because it makes a post-Pandemic world imaginable.

I’m also grateful for the doctors, nurses and volunteers working hard to get that vaccine out to the general population. I’m grateful for the institutional and political structures that makes all of this possible.

But that remarkable achievement has got pretty lost in all the in-fighting, arguments, politics and differences of opinion about the right strategy for the roll-out of the vaccines.

We hear about little else except administrative failures in get started early enough (eg The Netherlands), decisions to delay the second jab so as to give more people the first jab (UK), the failure to vaccinate health-care workers fast enough, arguments over who should be eligible for vaccination, scepticism over the efficacy of vaccines, anger at the anti-vaxxers, the failure of capacity to deliver vaccines to the right places, suspicion over deals done by governments with the drug companies  … and very legitimate concerns about the inequality of access to the vaccine between rich and poor countries globally.

In all the noise, there is precious little gratitude about.

Which leads me to ingratitude.

INGRATITUDE

The Pandemic has only highlighted the fact that ingratitude is an intrinsic characteristic of modern life in the West.

In the secular disenchantment of the West, all we have left is ourselves. And when life goes wrong there has to be someone to blame. And there is a lot of blame about.

Since this is a theology blog, let’s think about ingratitude as a spiritual issue. Why? Well because it goes to the heart of character and virtue.

And I’ll go as far to say that ingratitude is antithetical to Christian faith.

• Ingratitude flows from a sense of entitlement – I have a right to what I am due.
• Ingratitude is a symptom of judgmentalism – I am not getting good enough service. Others don’t live up to my standards.
• Ingratitude is a form of selfishness – I am obsessed about my own rights, my own needs, my own opinions to a degree that I don’t appreciate or even see the work and good intentions of others.
• Ingratitude is a close cousin of cynicism – I choose to focus on and complain about ‘the bad’: the perceived failures of others.

Entitlement, judgmentalism, selfishness and cynicism aren’t a very attractive quartet of anti-virtues are they?

I don’t know about you but I confess that I can all too easily lapse into a ‘glass half-empty’ pessimism that sees only what is wrong and not what is right and good. So I need regular reminders to practice the virtue of gratitude!

THE PRACTICE OF GRATITUDE

Gratitude affirms that there is goodness in the world and actively appreciates its presence.

Gratitude is hopeful. It sees evidence that the world can be a better place.

Gratitude is thankful: it recognises that I am a recipient of undeserved benefits and goods. Being loved by others is the greatest gift of all.

Gratitude is other-orientated: it recognises others and the good they do. It affirms and encourages others. It deepens relationship.

Gratitude fosters community and acknowledges that ‘I’ only flourish in relationship with others (which brings us back to the vaccine as a fantastic corporate scientific enterprise that benefits all of us)

This is why gratitude is a profoundly Christian virtue.

For, fundamentally, a Christian is simply someone who has received an undeserved gift.

Every Christian – regardless of money, intelligence, possessions, achievements, social standing, gender, or skin colour – are recipients of God’s grace in Jesus Christ. And that grace leads to being adopted, forgiven, restored, empowered, and reconciled to God and to one another to be people of hope in the world.

That’s a lot to be thankful for.

So for 2021, why not set about practicing the virtue of gratitude?

– Look for good in the world and in others

– Focus on reasons for hope

– List things to be thankful for

– Encourage others, say thanks

– Appreciate that your life only flourishes in relationship with others

Musings on beauty, Barth, buildings and blessed hope

Had a wonderful hike up Slieve Donard over the bank holiday weekend. Can’t say it was easy (getting on you know) – after rather a lot of huffing and puffing there were fantastic views to enjoy – including the best golf course in the world (last photo).

When have you last heard a sermon on beauty? Or read something on the relationship of beauty and theology? There were a lot of people on pilgrimage up Donard – all doings something physically demanding in order to experience beauty. There is something compelling about beauty – humans are drawn to it and go to literally great lengths to see a beautiful place.

Within the evangelical Christian tradition in which I grew up, live and work, beauty has tended to be neglected. There are probably a few reasons for this. Four come to mind, and these are simply musings, feel free to add your own reasons.

And if it is the case that beauty is marginalised within our lives, our theology, our churches – what might be some ways to recover an appreciation and experience of beauty? Beauty can be found in many places, not just a mountain top experience. Where do you find, and take time to appreciate and perhaps create, God-given beauty?

1) The Revealed Word versus Natural Theology

Christianity is a religion of the Book. Christians believe God has revealed himself in his written Word which therefore has authority above any other source of revelation.

No-one was a fiercer opponent of any form of natural theology (the idea that God can be in some way known outside his self-revelation in Jesus Christ the Word of God) than Karl Barth. His great ‘NO!’ to natural theology insisted that there could be no such thing as ‘theology from below’. Its fatal weakness is to open the door for human hubris to reinvent God in our own image.

Barth was in the midst of a fight against classic liberalism and its utter failure to speak out against the rise of national socialism. I am no Barth scholar but he may have softened his views towards the end of his life. But the point is Barth was essentially right. No natural theology can ‘reach God’. Without revelation we end up turning ‘God made beauty’ into ‘beauty is God’.

The Christian gospel is essentially mysterious, surprising, scandalous and apocalyptic. It can only be revealed by God in his Word and through his Spirit, never discovered in and through human reason – whether through the physical creation or beauty of mathematics (I’m told maths is beautiful and wondrous but have to take others’ word for it!) or whatever other forms of natural theology.

2) Suspicion of beauty: musings on church architecture

But, I wonder, has the flip side of the supreme authority of the revealed Word been an overly suspicious attitude to beauty within much post-Reformation Protestantism?

As if beauty is, at best, a secondary distraction and, at worst, a pathway to idolatry and worship of the created world rather than its creator?

Take the Reformed Tradition of which I am also a part (Presbyterian). The theology of the Word is reflected in the architecture of its churches. The early Presbyterian churches in Ireland were stark ‘meeting houses’ – and most churches today remain plain and simple. The pulpit and the Word is what matters. There is, I think it fair to say, deliberately not much a tradition of the beautiful in the design of Irish Presbyterian churches.

Or take another strand within evangelicalism – that of culturally adaptable communities who deliberately eschew ‘churchy’ buildings, imagery and symbolism in favour of modern pragmatic facilities which, with the best will in the world, are hardly ever beautiful.  Beauty, within such pragmatic utilitarian theology, is simply not ‘useful’ and therefore effectively unimportant.

As I’ve gone on as a Christian I find I desire and appreciate beauty more than I used to. Beauty has the power to draw us into the presence of God beyond the world which we can control and manipulate. Dismissing beauty, or seeing it as an optional ‘add on’ to what really matters, seems to me to deny something essential about God, the creator of beauty. And, as a result, such spaces fail to inspire or draw our hearts towards him in wonder and praise. Rather, they can merely echo the narrative of our pragmatic, utilitarian and relentlessly ‘this worldly’ capitalist culture.

3) Dualism

A third reason for the marginalisation of beauty is the legacy of the Enlightenment. As Descartes’ dictum, ‘I think therefore I am’, unfolded historically, the elevation of reason promoted a type of dualism between the ‘higher’ mind (reason) and the created order. This sort of Cartesian dichotomy impacted Christian theology in spirituality that neglected the physical world – including the body and the affections.

To be fair, such dualism has a much longer legacy than the Enlightenment – one of Augustine’s negative legacies is still felt in his neo-platonic linking together of sex and sin for example.

Regardless of how exactly these influences developed, my point is that Christianity has a long and an ongoing struggle with dualism. Deliberate focus on and integration of beauty within Christian theology and practice can act to overcome such dualism. God has created us with minds, hearts and bodies and calls us to worship him holistically using all our God-given senses.

4) Sin and the Fall

A fourth possible reason for Christian ambivalence towards beauty is the doctrine of the fall. This world is broken. Sin, death and injustice stalk creation, which itself, Paul tells us, groans for liberation from its bondage to decay (Rom 8:21). Wrongly understood, the brokenness of creation can lead to an anti-worldly theology of escapism – where there is little of value to be redeemed here. Our main task is to ‘get the hell out of here’ and not get too entangled with temporary marginal distractions like pleasure, beauty and the joys offered by the material world.

Towards a Christian integration of Word and Beauty

God is an artist.

The fact that we live in a wondrously beautiful world tells us that beauty is a creation of God. All beauty derives from him. The universal human desire for beauty points us to how we are created with a sense of wonder to appreciate, enjoy and create beauty. The Psalms are full of this link between appreciating the beauty of creation and the worship of God.

The heavens declare the glory of God;
the skies proclaim the work of his hands.

Day after day they pour forth speech;
night after night they reveal knowledge.

They have no speech, they use no words;
no sound is heard from them.
Yet their voice goes out into all the earth,
their words to the ends of the world.
In the heavens God has pitched a tent for the sun.
It is like a bridegroom coming out of his chamber,
like a champion rejoicing to run his course.

It rises at one end of the heavens
and makes its circuit to the other;
nothing is deprived of its warmth.

Psalm 19:1-6

Yet the next verse of the Psalm continues

The law of the  Lord is perfect,
refreshing the soul.
The statutes of the Lord are trustworthy,
making wise the simple.

The beautiful world is never detached from the beautiful Word.

As someone who ‘deals with’ the Bible every day, the more I study it the more I am struck by its beauty. It is a magnificent work of art as well as God’s inspired Word. Each book is a remarkable literary work in its own right. Overall, at heart it is a story that overflows with images, symbols and themes that draws readers into a magnificent drama of divine goodness, beauty and love versus all that would corrupt and destroy.

In the New Testament we are even told that it is in and through Jesus Christ that ‘all things were made’ (John 1:3; Col. 1:16). It is this beautiful creation that is in the process of being redeemed by its triune creator.

The new creation will be a place of unimaginable beauty (Rev 21-22). What is the image of the new Jerusalem but a vision of perfect beauty in which God dwells with his people? The future outcome of this drama is a restored creation in which love, beauty, worship and goodness flourish in all their all fullness.

All this means, I suggest, is that Christians should be people above all others who love and appreciate beauty.  A Christian theology of beauty integrates Word and world, creator and created with hope. Beauty points us to God himself in thankfulness and praise.

Not saying you have to climb a mountain to experience beauty! But why not take time out to search out, experience, create, appreciate and share beauty wherever you are.

Thus endeth the sermon

Comments, as ever, welcome.

 

Desiring more of God (2) Musings on the Spirit, humility and pride in an age of social media

In the last post we talked about the restorationist impulse that arises from a theological belief that the description of the first Christian’s experience of the Spirit in the NT is, by and large, a ‘norm’ that believers in all ages should long to see in their own lives and churches.

I say ‘by and large’ because some experiences are historically unique – Pentecost and the sending of the Spirit by the risen Christ and the missionary advance of the gospel in Acts for example.

That ‘norm’ includes the following:

• being united to Christ by the Spirit
• being given ‘life’ by the life-giver himself (regeneration)
• a new status as a child of God (adoption by the Spirit by which we can call God abba Father)
• empowering to live a life pleasing to God.
• For Paul that ‘norm’ for Paul means living kata pneuma (according to the Spirit) rather than kata sarxa (according to the old age of the flesh that is passing away – see Romans 8:5

Those who live according to the flesh have their minds set on what the flesh desires; but those who live in accordance with the Spirit have their minds set on what the Spirit desires.

• It means ‘walking’ or ‘keeping in step’ with the Spirit and life rather than the powerless realm of the flesh and death (Gal 5).

In other words, the NT norm is thoroughly eschatological.

I’d go as far as to say that Christianity cannot be understood unless as an eschatological faith. The new age of the Spirit has dawned with the coming, death and resurrection of the Messiah, King of Israel and Lord of all. A Christian is someone who belongs, by God’s generous grace through faith in Christ, to the new age of the Spirit. He or she is a citizen of the kingdom of God here in the nitty gritty world of family, work, friendships and whatever else makes up your life.

That new life takes concrete shape in a person bearing the hallmarks of the Spirit of God: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. We may say, in other words, that a Christian is to be shaped by the Spirit into a person of virtue. Their character is, through the work of the Spirit, to reflect that of their Lord.

While many Christians stop at this individual ethical transformation through the Spirit, there is no hint in the NT that the presence of the Spirit is not also associated with charismata – spiritual gifts.

The term ‘spiritual gifts’ is actually quite unhelpful. It implies that there are ‘higher’ more ‘spiritual’ gifts (perhaps healing, prophecy, tongues etc) and then other more ‘ordinary’ and less ‘spiritual’ gifts (administration, hospitality, leadership).  Yet all ‘charismata‘ means is ‘gifts of the Spirit’ – they are all ‘spiritual’.  They are NOT just natural abilities, they are visible and tangible evidence of the empowering presence of God who gives good gifts to the people of God so that they may serve others within the body of Christ.

So, to come back to the question in the title of this post – what is our ‘role’ in experiencing more of God’s Spirit?

Well, at one level, the answer is none at all. A gift is a gift. The recipient does not ‘earn’ a gift, it is only received by faith. This is true of the initial reception of the Spirit – it is God’s gracious gift of life, inseparable from repentance and faith in Christ. All believers are given the Spirit to ‘drink’, all are baptised in the Spirit – it is a generous gift of God.

For we were all baptized in one Spirit so as to form one body—whether Jews or Gentiles, slave or free—and we were all given the one Spirit to drink (1 Cor. 12:13).

This is ALSO true of the gifts of the Spirit – the Spirit gives to whomsoever he wills. Again, a gift is a gift, it can only be received in faith with thanks and used well.

But, at another level, there IS a role for the Christian to grow and develop in his or her experience of the Spirit. Paul’s numerous ethical commands only make sense of the believer has real moral agency. We are not to quench the Spirit or treat prophecies with contempt (1 Thes 5:19-20). We are actively to walk and keep in step with the Spirit (Gal 5) – which implies that we can choose not to walk where the Spirit leads – to go our own way and act in ways opposed to the Spirit.

To walk on the path of the Spirit requires profoundly Christian way of looking at the self. By that I mean an awareness of the self’s desperate need for forgiveness and spiritual transformation.

What would you put top of the list?

For me, one word comes to mind:

HUMILITY

For it is only from a place of realistic humility and that there can develop a subsequent desire for God’s Spirit to renew, cleanse and empower.

That desire will lead to a prayer like that of David – acutely aware of the depths of his own sin

Have mercy on me, O God,
    according to your unfailing love;
according to your great compassion
    blot out my transgressions.
² Wash away all my iniquity
    and cleanse me from my sin.

³ For I know my transgressions,
    and my sin is always before me.
⁴ Against you, you only, have I sinned
    and done what is evil in your sight;
so you are right in your verdict
    and justified when you judge.

…

¹⁰ Create in me a pure heart, O God,
    and renew a steadfast spirit within me.
¹¹ Do not cast me from your presence
    or take your Holy Spirit from me.
¹² Restore to me the joy of your salvation
    and grant me a willing spirit, to sustain me.

Psalm 51

And a similar theme is taken up by Peter in the NT:

All of you, clothe yourselves with humility toward one another, because,

“God opposes the proud
    but shows favor to the humble.” ^{(Proverbs 3:34)}

⁶ Humble yourselves, therefore, under God’s mighty hand, that he may lift you up in due time. ⁷ Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you.

As Peter says, the opposite of humility is pride.

It’s always been the case in every culture, but I think it is here that the Christian faith becomes profoundly, and perhaps increasingly, paradoxical in an age of technological know how, qualifications and expertise. A world where money, power, status, connections, networking, business plans, personality tests and the necessity of an impressive CV dominate the job market.

A culture increasingly shaped by the narcissistic world of social media.

Now, I am not against social media – this blog is a form of it. I’ve learnt lots from other blogs and enjoy processing thoughts in writing – it helps me think for one.

But it also inevitably presents opportunity to present a certain ‘face’ to the world. There is also a certain arrogance, is there not, about anyone writing for an audience? There is an assumption that ‘I’ have something to say that I think is worth listening to.

But we live in an age, unheralded in human history, where the individual has the ability to project him or herself, in an unmediated fashion, to much of the rest of the world. The subject matter on Facebook, Twitter and other platforms is overwhelmingly ME.

In the Greek myth, Narcissus falls in love with his own reflection and dies alone since he could not obtain the object of his love (so much for sologamy!). The Nymph Echo, looking on here, is heartbroken as his rejection.

Narcissism has been defined as

Excessive interest in or admiration of oneself and one’s physical appearance.

And in psychological terms as

Extreme selfishness, with a grandiose view of one’s own talents and a craving for admiration.

Where admiration of the self and a craving for the admiration of others dominates,  the call of the gospel to decenter the self, follow Jesus as Lord, honestly ‘own’ (repent of) the self’s failings and deep brokenness, and walk a life of humility in the Spirit will seem to be utter ‘foolishness to the world.

If you accept the broad outline of what I am describing, what are the implications for evangelism, for discipleship and for teaching about spiritual growth and transformation in the church?

Comments, as ever, welcome.

 

Desiring more of God (1) are you a restorationist?

In IBI, we had a good discussion today in a class I’m teaching on different views of baptism in the Holy Spirit. The framework for the course is this:

The Spirit and the Christian Life

1. Introduction: the neglected Spirit?
2. The promise of the Spirit: The Spirit in the Old Testament
3. The Person of the Spirit
4. Jesus, the Kingdom of God and the Spirit 
5. The Spirit and Mission
6. The Eschatological Spirit
7. The Spirit and the new covenant community (Baptism in the Spirit 1 Cor 12:12-27)
8. The Spirit and the Christian life 1: beginnings
9. The Spirit and the Christian life 2: the Spirit versus the Flesh
10. The Spirit and the Christian life 3: Fruit
11. The Gifts of the Spirit
12. The Holy Spirit and modern church life: issues; challenges; hopes; conclusions

We were at no.7 today. We aim to make links to ‘head, heart and hands’ in reading, lectures and discussion. A couple of key question that cropped up today – and will again I am sure – are along these lines:

What experience of the Spirit should Christians ‘expect’ or ‘seek’ as possible / normal?

 What is our ‘role’ in seeking more of the Spirit?

I’ll take the first question as the focus for this post and come to the second one in the next post.

What would be your answer to the first question? What are the signs of the presence of the Spirit in a church? How would you describe the out working of the Spirit’s presence in your church experience? Is there a desire for more of God or is the Spirit rarely talked about or taught about?

How the first question has been answered historically has been critical in multiple spiritual reform movements within Christianity – whether Montanism in the 2nd Century AD or Charles Wesley’s doctrine of perfection or Pentecostalism’s search for NT restorationism, or Keswick ‘Higher Life’ theology or varieties of Charismatic renewal and so on.

And, of course, Reformed theology has its own answer to that question as to what a spiritually mature and healthy church looks like. It tends not to be radical or subversive to a long-established post-Reformation status quo – indeed it tends to be extremely cautious about such questions because they can be destabilising and divisive. It also tends to develop reasons for why it is unrealistic or undesirable to desire or wish to imitate the charismatic experience of the first Christians.

Those that answer question 1 with a sense of dissatisfaction in the current status quo will begin to pray, search and long for some form of spiritual renewal. They will want to see reform of current attitudes and practices that seem spiritually anaemic and lifeless. (I’m not saying such desires are not present in more established Reformed communities).

This is a restorationist impulse – a desire to have more of God’s Spirit. It’s typically born from a desire to recapture something of the life of the Spirit within the NT Church as described particularly by Luke (in Acts especially) and by Paul.

While at times an unholy mess, for example, the Corinthian church still exudes a vibrant presence of the Spirit. This is not just about the presence of charismata such as tongues and prophecy but by Paul’s pervasive assumption that the church will know and experience the visible tangible empowering presence of God among his (often sinful and divided) people.

Nor is a restorationist impulse limited to just desiring particular gifts of the Spirit. It is much more a search for an experience of and an empowering by the Spirit for all of life.

In this sense I am a restorationist – because it seems clear that it is this sort of experience that Paul (and Luke and John) take to be the Christian ‘norm’. And it is not clear (to me) that this ‘norm’ should not be expected or hoped for or prayed for today.

We might summarise the role of the Spirit in the NT along these (brief) lines: In the NT it is the one Spirit received by any believer at conversion who:

• Empowers for mission
• Grants wisdom and reveals God’s will
• Reveals the cross and leads to conversion
• Who communicates the power and presence of God
• Who leads people to new life of sonship and faith
• Who gives gifts as he wills

Or as Max Turner puts in his terrific book The Holy Spirit and Spiritual Gifts the Christian life in the NT is characterised by an encounter with the dynamic and transforming presence of God himself.

I love his phrase that the Christian life is ‘essentially charismatic in nature’. How often do you hear that in your church?

“We conclude that for each of our three major witnesses, [Luke, Paul and John] the gift of the Spirit to believers affords the whole experiential dimension of the Christian life, which is essentially charismatic in nature. The gift is granted in the complex of conversion-initiation. The prototypical activities of the “Spirit of Prophecy” which believers receive – revelation, wisdom and understanding, and invasive speech – together enable the dynamic and transforming presence of God in and through the community. These charismata operate at individual and corporate levels, enabling a life-giving, joyful, understanding of (and ability to apply) the gospel, impelling and enabling different services to others in the church, and driving and empowering the mission to proclaim the good news.” 

Comments, as ever, welcome.

 

 

 

 

What is the place of joy and laughter in the Christian life?

You might read this question and think several things:

You might think, ‘But joy is not equivalent to humour and laughter’.

And of course you’d be right. Joy, in a New Testament sense is a hopeful rejoicing in light of the gospel, whatever particular circumstances we find ourselves in (Philippians 4:4). There is joy even, or particularly, in the midst of suffering and persecution. But I’d like to maintain that it all nigh but impossible to be joyful and for that joy not to find expression in humour and laughter, in some form of visible delight at life and in others.

You might think this is a rather silly and trivial question for this normally deeply serious and intellectual blog (!)

I’d like to suggest that it is perhaps one of the most serious and important theological questions we can think about.

You might think that this is a naïve question that could make those who struggle with depression and other mental health issues feel even worse for rarely ever feeling joyful.

Yes, that is a possibility, but I’m not suggesting a law or required behaviour. Joy and laughter cannot and should not be forced.

So here are some admittedly superficial musings on joy and the Christian life. They take two forms.

One is ‘ON SERIOUSNESS’  – where life is just too grave, earnest and significant to be distracted from what is truly important (this post)

One is ‘ON JOY’ – for joy to be a visible, tangible and frequent characteristic of a mature Christian faith (next post)

Feel welcome to add your own comments for either side.

ON SERIOUSNESS

Humour and joy are not exactly what come to mind listening to the news each day. The world is a very serious place. Here’s a particularly cheery vision of the future to brighten your day.

Is it therefore a sign of triviality to find joy and laughter in the midst of what can seem overwhelming darkness? A type of naïve superficiality indicative of a moral and intellectual failure to engage with the realities of the world? A retreat into self-absorbed self-delusion where we fool ourselves that the world is not as bad as it seems while amusing ourselves to death? (to paraphrase the late Neil Postman)

There are many Christians who say ‘Yes’ to these last three questions. They may not have worked out a formal ‘theology of non-joy’ but their theology is visible in their lives and faces and worship. (Like the old joke about Presbyterians being people of deep deep joy – so deep it never surfaces).

Such Christians are resolutely serious – there is, after all, much ministry to be done which has eternal consequences. There is much pain and suffering to try to alleviate – and to endure. There is much sin and injustice to confront. All this doesn’t leave much room for the self-indulgent superficiality of laughter.

After all, the Bible is not exactly a joke book. Indeed, from Genesis 1-11 onwards, much of its power and relevance comes from its stark unsentimental realism about the world and human nature. The history of Israel is true to our world of violence, power-politics, human pride, injustice and forced displacement. The wisdom literature of the OT faces the darkness and ambivalence of our human experience head on.

Jesus is the ‘man of sorrows’ and apocalyptic prophet of the kingdom of God – not a slick, easy on the ear, joke a minute preacher. The climax of the biblical narrative leads to a crucified Messiah. Darkness and evil are confronted at the cross. One day in the future all will be judged by a perfect and righteous God. Christian mission has therefore eternal consequences.

I can think of many sober and serious Christians I’ve known. Mostly I can think of their rather grim faces. (There is an Ulster saying about someone having a face like a Lurgan Spade. It was used to cut peat in the bog and was long and thin).

And I freely admit to belonging to this tribe at times – of sometimes despairing of hope when looking at the state of the world and man’s inhumanity to man – let alone my own sins and failures. It seems to me that without Christian hope, the only logical attitude to life would be nihilism. Atheist optimism seems to me to be whistling in the dark.

And there certainly is a type of ‘Christian’ joy that is a sign of triviality and self-indulgence. Where life is focused around ‘me’ and what makes me happy. Where I am in my own little bubble and either unable or unwilling to step outside it to listen to and help others. Where I am joyful if I have all I want and miserable if I don’t. Where God is there to meet all my needs and faith is little more than a resource to help me live a more fulfilled and happy life.

This is a pseudo-faith that finds happiness in a lack of engagement with a holy God, a lack of worship, a lack of repentance,  a lack of lament, a lack of mission, a lack of self-sacrifice and a lack of service.

In contrast, authentic Christian faith is genuinely a serious business.

Comments, as ever, welcome.

 

You are what you love 3 (or how to develop your love life): Jesufied worship?

In chapter 3 of Jamie Smith’s creative and thought-provoking book is called ‘The Spirit meets you where you are: historic worship for a postmodern age’.

The argument so far: we are what we love; our hearts need constant recalibrating and redirecting; we live in a culture of competing loves or ‘secular liturgies’; we need to train our hearts to keep them rightly directed at a certain telos – the kingdom of God. We can do this by counter-liturgies, embodied communal practices.

In the words of the boss ‘Everyone’s got a hungry heart’. The question is what our hearts are hungry for. The Bible is full of this sort of imagery. Take Is 55:1-2

Ho, everyone who thirsts,
    come to the waters;
and you that have no money,
    come, buy and eat!
Come, buy wine and milk
    without money and without price.
² Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread,
    and your labor for that which does not satisfy?
Listen carefully to me, and eat what is good,
    and delight yourselves in rich food.

Jesus uses similar language in the Beatitudes

“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness”.

And in John 6:35

“I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.“

But we can’t, says Smith, necessarily think our ways to new appetites. What we currently desire has been acquired over time and has been habituated by routines and customs.

Changing desires takes practice. Counterformative practice. (61) Smith tells the story of his slow intellectual assent to the need to eat and exercise more healthily. But it was only with discipline, with others, with enforced new practices, that slowly his desires changed.

Old habits die hard. Change means submitting ourselves to practices that confront and change our most engrained habits.

Our sanctification – the process of becoming holy and Christlike – is more like a Weight Watchers program than listening to a book on tape (65)

Leaving aside the question of who on earth listens to a book on tape any more (!) Smith shifts to give some practical suggestions for spiritual change of appetites. And I really like the focus here because he links to the Spirit of God. He calls this ‘Habituations of the Spirit’.  Liturgical practices that the Spirit can use to retrain our loves. But Smith want to emphasise this is no lone process but happens best within the worship of the church.

He anticipates objections here. Liturgy is a bad word for many Protestants.  Worship is seen as little more than singing. But the response says Smith is to be properly liturgical. The point of liturgy is to create a space for the Spirit to meet with his people. Worship is about God, his activity and our response.

Liturgy gives form to our response to God’s love and grace. In classic Reformed language, Smith argues that even our response is made possible by God’s Spirit.

He’s critical of much contemporary evangelical worship which reduces participants to passive spectators, where humans are the only actors. This is worship as expressivism – we express ourselves and we are at the centre making worship happen. This sort of worship also usually happens in a context that is designed to make us feel comfortable and at home. So the church looks like a mall or a coffee shop.

But, says Smith, this misses how these forms are not somehow neutral – they are embedded in secular liturgies of consumption, desire for more, with me at the centre. And such human expressivism cannot grasp what liturgy is about – it seems to be insincere pre-planned and tantamount to earning God’s favour. The problem here says Smith is that they cannot see how they have put ‘us’ at the heart of worship rather than God.

He calls a lot of modern worship services little more that “Jesufied versions of secular liturgies.” The focus on experience reinforces the gospel of consumerism and makes Jesus one more commodity. Amen to that.

Traditional liturgical practices are not just old, they are rooted in a different understanding of worship. God is at the centre, we encounter him. It is top down rather than bottom up. Smith calls this the gymnasium where God retrains our hearts (77)

What he is saying here is that the form or worship matters. This is not about ‘style’ – this is not a discussion about ‘traditional’ versus ‘contemporary’ worship. Smith’s point is that historic liturgical worship, forged over centuries, has a depth, biblical shape and content that helps to form its participants. It connects us to the church catholic and reinforces oneness and unity.

This can all be summed up as expressivist ‘showing’ versus humble ‘submitting’.

He concludes

“The liturgy of Christian worship is the litany of love we pray over and over again, given to us by the Spirit precisely in order to cultivate the love he sheds abroad in our hearts.” (81)

I wonder what you make of this?

Where are you in terms of worship as primarily human expression ‘up’ to God, or humble submission around God’s revelation of himself ‘down’ to us?

Does the idea of a ‘Jesufied’ secular liturgy ring true to you about a lot of Christian worship services?

Is this an age thing? I am more and more with Smith. At times I imagine that I could happily be an Anglican. The older I get the more and more I love and appreciate the consistency, depth and richness of historic liturgy. And the more and more I find it difficult to cope with the unpredictable evangelical lottery of contemporary worship songs and services.

Having said all that, I’m not convinced as yet that even well practiced liturgy has the capacity to reform us in the way that Smith seems to be suggesting. There are a lot of dead churches who have been practicing a lot of good liturgy for a long time …

Comments welcome. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Transforming post-Catholic Ireland

Over at her blog Gladys Ganiel has a summary of a book launch event ‘author meets critics’ (of which Gladys had invited me to be one) in TCD about her recent book, Transforming post-Catholic Ireland: religious practice in late modernity (OUP).

My sense from reading Gladys is that she is arguing that present religious practice in post-Catholic Ireland is an improvement on the past. Three big arguments of the book are that:

• Increased diversity in the religious market gives increased space for personal transformation; space is created on the margins where people can work for religious, social and political transformation.
• The prevalence of extra institutional religion counters hard secularisation theories: it exists as an intermediate space between pure individualism detached from church all together and institutional religious expression. Extra-institutional religion is not totally free-floating, it happens in relationship and community, often with a concern for social justice.
• Gladys argues extra institutional religion has potential to contribute to reconciliation more than other traditional institutional Christian churches.

Stories of individuals told in the book ring true to the diverse, blurred and sometimes contradictory religious landscape of contemporary Ireland. They brought to mind some very recent conversations with friends

• someone who while still involved locally in a church that he gives thanks for, describes himself as an ‘exile’ within the institutional church. It is an alien place; he is a ‘stranger’ in the midst.
• two recent separate conversations with friends who both struggle with the irrelevance gap between church and their high pressure, competitive and intense worlds of work. Spirituality, for both, is found ‘extra-institutionally’
• a friend brought up in a conservative Protestant denomination, with little or no natural contact with Catholicism, Irish culture or identity – now finding a richness and depth within Catholic spirituality and enjoying a silent retreat in a Jesuit centre near Dublin
• friends who have journeyed away from the Catholic Church, drawn to a more personal, warm, inclusive and less sacramental expression of Christianity within an evangelical community church

How would you describe your relationship with institutional Christianity I wonder? Or, to put it another way, where most do you find authenticity, spiritual refreshment, spiritual growth and learning? Where most do you find space for building relationships across boundaries and opportunities to work for justice?

However you read Gladys’ book, the trends and stories within it pose questions to historic denominations in particular – and whose membership is in relatively rapid decline.

One response may be to decry ‘extra-institutional’ spirituality as a sign of an individualism shaped by consumerism – religious shopping for the I-generation. A spirituality that all too comfortably side-steps the demands of Christian discipleship – accountability, community, costly mission, a willingness to be rejected and marginalised?

But such a response locates the ‘problem’ externally – with those pesky individualists who don’t go along with the status quo. It ignores their passion for serving others, for social justice and a pursuit of community.

The better response to a book like this (for churches) is to look within; to listen; to reflect on practice that, in Christendom, meant that churches became what Gladys calls religious ‘public utilities’ dispensing services to all while relegating personal faith and authentic living of the Christian life to the background.

I think there are fruits of such self-examination, listening and reflection on practice within some churches in Ireland. Perhaps you know and have experience of some. Places where there is space for diversity; personal transformation; community; a passion for social justice.

And it’s here that I find sociological categories too general and abstract. For behind such descriptions of behaviour lie beliefs that motivate and shape that behaviour. That’s why contemporary debates about the nature of the gospel and how it plays out within the Christian life are so important ….

Sociological analysis can helpfully describe and interpret trends, but as a Christian I want to argue that spiritual renewal and authenticity comes from a nexus of things like grace, the good news of the risen Lord Jesus Christ, the empowering and transforming work of the Spirit, repentance, faith, humility, love, self-sacrifice,  care for the powerless and oppressed and so on.

In other words, is the search for authentic spirituality within extra-institutional spaces really a quest and longing for ‘the church to be the church’?

The value of (self) doubt (3) : Leadership, Paul, Control and Manipulation

Some final musings on how strongly held beliefs can become destructive narratives of power and control and how self-doubt is not only healthy but intrinsic to Christian spirituality.

This post will focus on Paul and leadership.

A while back I had dinner with someone who said he’d virtually given up reading Paul. He still loved and read the Bible but he’d gone off the apostle. The main reason, I think, was years and years of experience of evangelical obsession with Paul – in preaching, teaching, atonement theory, models of mission etc etc to the neglect and exclusion of Jesus (!) and the gospels, of OT wisdom, and of other voices in general within Scripture.

I guess it’s like tiring eventually of listening to the same singer all the time – I mean sometimes I even have to take a break from St Bob on car journeys between Dublin and Belfast and listen to someone else – just for a while.

Paul can be seen as beyond criticism alright, especially within Protestant evangelicalism. After all, isn’t Paul the man who is the ‘worst of sinners’ (1 Tim 1:15); who lived a life of selfless sacrifice for the gospel; who called his flocks to imitate his example? Who is a model of pastoral leadership, exponent of justification by faith and theologian par excellence?

And, along these lines, in the last post I mentioned the pre-conversion Paul as a ‘no-doubter’ who wished to eradicate the heretical early Jesus movement but was transformed by his experience of God’s grace.

For these reasons Paul tends to put up on a pedestal of perfection, as virtually free of human weakness or frailty or less than 100% pure motives.

So it can be a bit of surprise when someone says they’ve had enough of Paul. Or a bit threatening when you start to read other takes on Paul that are, shall we say, less than adulatory.

Far from being someone who modelled a benevolent leadership style of service and loving persuasion, Paul, some argue, was manipulative, controlling and power-hungry.

I’m riffing here from a fascinating article I came across by Marion Carson, who taught (wonderfully well) with us at IBI for a while, in Themelios 30.3 ‘For Now We Live: a study of Paul’s Pastoral Leadership in 1 Thessalonians’.

Critics (such as Elisabeth Castelli, Stephen Moore and Graham Shaw) take a Foucaultian position on Paul. Look underneath the surface and what you find is a grab for power; a desire to control others via a narrative of subtle manipulation.

So, in 1 Thessalonians, underneath the surface story of Paul’s love and concern for the church; his encouragement to persevere under pressure and affliction just as he himself had done, and just as the Lord Jesus had done so that they might endure suffering and go forward in perseverance and hope, the critics see an alternative reality.

Paul’s converts are to imitate (mimesis) him; they can never be his equal. They should do as he does. This, the critics allege, is a power-play that squashes difference, makes recipients passive and benefits the one in power who tells others how to behave. Moreover, this is all God’s will so they have little or no space to question this hierarchical power structure.

This is fascinating and significant stuff. It gets to the heart of ‘What actually is genuinely Christian leadership?’

Is leadership and a passionate committment to gospel truth inevitably going to trump both other’s views and their good?

Marion argues that while power relationships in the ancient world were hierarchical within a highly stratified social context, what you actually get with Paul is a subversive view of power and leadership.

Most times when Paul talks about imitating him it is a call to suffer and to support himself through hard work. He rejoices when others also become sources of imitation. His desire is Christ-likeness not Paul likeness.

And as Marion comments, a key test of other-focused leadership is trust and transparency. He does not micro-manage or control. His instructions are consistently to care for the weak and poor – the very people an oppressive leader will see as a waste of time and resources. He encourages the Thessalonians to gain the respect of outsiders and integrate within Graeco-Roman culture. This is not the strategy of someone obsessed with tight control or secrecy.

I like to think of it this way: is Christian leadership impervious or porous?

Hard like flint, controlling others and dismissing them contemptuously if they do not follow? (thinking John Mitchel here).

Or porous like pumice stone, willing to absorb difference of opinion and work for other’s good?

All this is not to say that Paul is somehow above strategies and politics – he spend considerable energy defending the divine authority of his calling and mission.

Any leader has to be politically astute, wise, at times effusive in praise and at times warning of disaster. He / she has to have a good sense of people – but this is different from being impervious to other’s thoughts and feelings and oppressive in forcing on them his own agendas.

For, as Marion concludes, good leadership is about mutuality – the leader can only lead with the consent and support of those he /she is leading. Each one needs the other.

Comments, as ever, welcome

Flesh versus Spirit 2

Returning to the ‘two natures’ discussion a couple of posts back and zoning in on Galatians:

A problem here has been the translation of sarx (flesh) as ‘sinful nature’ (e.g., in the NIV, although more nuanced in more recent editions). This is a loaded translation which distorts the text.

Flesh versus Spirit needs to be understood eschatologically rather than individually as some sort of internal war between two natures.

Paul has some very negative things to say about the ‘world’. Take Galatians 1:4 and his description of how Jesus’ death for our sins rescues us from ‘this present evil age’.

Things associated with pre-Christian identity are being a slave under the ‘basic principles of the world’. The whole world is a prisoner of sin (3:22). The Law (Torah) cannot release people from this slavery. The theme of curse in Galatians is significant: those who rely on the law are under a curse for the law could never justify (3:10-11).

George Grey Barnard, ”The struggle of two natures in man” (1892)

Those in Christ, who have been justified by faith, belong to a new age; they are ‘new creations’ who belong to God’s redemptive purposes for this fallen world. They are set free (5:1) in Christ.

This new creation has invaded the present evil age (Gal 6:14-16). Since the coming of Christ and the Spirit, believers are living in the overlap of the ages. The world in its present form is ‘passing away’ (1 Cor 7:31)

Those in Christ are dead to the old age (flesh); it is crucified. The Christian life is therefore all about a community of faith who are drawn by God’s grace, into his redemptive purposes for the world.

The problem in Galatians was their utter foolishness to go back to something that enslaves and cannot give life. The flesh equals the old age that has decisively been defeated at the cross and resurrection. Its days are numbered. To go there is to go back under the curse.

Paul, their concerned father, has strong words for those who would lead the Galatians astray (1:8-9 – under God’s curse and wishes for a bit of painful self-mutilation with a knife in 5:12).

In contrast, Christians now belong to the new age of the Spirit. The Spirit brings life, grace, justification, freedom, transformation and hope. This is part of the promised blessing to Abraham (Gal 3:14) – for both Jew and for Gentile.

Those who walk by the Spirit will demonstrate practically and ethically what God’s good purposes for humanity looks like. They will live lives that are attractive and loving – full of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness and self-control.

Individual Christian lives and communities are to be visible, beautiful and joyful witnesses to the new age of the Spirit; a foretaste in the present age of the ultimate age to come. “The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love” (Gal 5:6)

It is only the power of the Spirit who can change lives; who can bring someone new life; who can overcome the powerful ‘passions’ or ‘desires’ of the (age of) the flesh.

So, rather than end up with a sort of schizophrenic Christian identity of two internal warring ‘natures’ in each individual Christian, the flesh versus Spirit conflict is much bigger than the sphere of the individual.

The real challenge of Galatians is a calling to live by the grace and new identity that has already been given to believers through faith in Christ and the vivifying gift of the Spirit.

For Paul’s warning to the Galatians is not just theoretical – they were in danger of going back under the flesh and turning their back on the gospel. And, at the same time, were denying the radical boundary-breaking implications of justification by faith alone for anyone – Jew or Gentile / male or female / slave or free (3:28).

Do you think that many Christians see themselves as living their lives within a larger cosmic conflict of flesh versus Spirit? If not, why not? Has the church lost touch with Paul’s thoroughly eschatological perspective on the Christian life?

If the Christian life is all about life in the Spirit from beginning to end: walking by the Spirit; sowing to the Spirit; keeping in step with the Spirit; what does this actually look like in practice? In your experience and understanding, how does it work? How do you sow to the Spirit and not to the flesh? Where does the community of the Spirit (the church) come in?