A Parable

Long ago, some people went in search of a place to live, somewhere they would be happy and blessed.

One day, they came across a river. The flow of the river was strong, and it brought fresh, clean, pure water that was good to drink. The river teemed with fish that were good to eat. The land beside the river was fertile and productive. ‘This is a good place,’ their leader said, ‘Let’s live here where we will have everything we need.’

And everyone agreed.

Some went back to where they had come from to tell others what they had found, and how good it was. Many more came to join them by the river, where they too found happiness and blessing.

As the years passed, they discovered that the flow of the river varied with the seasons but always there was enough to eat and enough to drink. Sometimes the river flooded the fields and swept away things they had built. The people learned they did not really need the things they lost, and that the river, on shrinking back to its course, left the land more fertile and more productive.

The years rolled on, and the people grew tired of the disruption the river brought, preferring instead a settled, predictable way of life. ‘If only we could control the flow,’ one of them said.

‘We should build a dam,’ the leader said. ‘Then a lake will form that will regulate the flow; we’ll barely notice it at all in the lake. There will still be plenty of fish and plenty of water for our needs. The lake will be calm and peaceful, and we can sail on it and swim in it without fear of being caught up by the current.’

And everyone agreed.

The lake was beautiful, and reflected in its calm surface the trees and mountains surrounding it. The current hardly disturbed the lake-dwellers’ lives any more, even in spring when the river above the lake became swollen with the melted snows of winter. Everyone was content and at ease, and they built all manner of interesting things—which were no longer swept away as they used to be.

Other people lived downstream, beyond the dam. They were not happy. The flow was not as strong as before, and they could not irrigate their land properly. The fish were not as plentiful, and in the height of summer there was almost no water at all. They became disillusioned with life by the river and went to look elsewhere for what they needed. They had no time for the people above the dam, who guarded jealously what they had, making it difficult for outsiders to move into the spaces around the shore.

More years passed. The leaders entertained the lake-dwellers with exciting stories of long ago when the river ran strong and many more people lived gratefully along its banks. They all looked fondly over their lovely, familiar surroundings even as they listened. ‘It’s so restful here,’ one of them said, ‘I hope it never changes.’

And everyone agreed.

An Easter Reflection

Christ did not die so I would not have to;
he died to bring about my death.
Christ did not bear my judgement so I could avoid it;
he died to make it happen.
Christ did not die to make amends;
he died to make an end.

Christ rose again to bring a new me to birth;
a new me to live justly, not selfishly;
a new me to show God's mercy, not man's spite;
a new me in humble relationship with the living God, not in arrogant rebellion.

The old me ran with the crowd.
The new me walks hand-in-hand with Father.

If any man is in Christ - a new creation!

Has Harold Camping been Raptured?

A BBC News article reports that 'Harold Camping has not been sighted since his failed prediction.'  Perhaps he's the only one who's gone ...

One of his followers, one Robert Fitzpatrick, who spent over $140,000 advertising this farcical prediction is quoted as saying, 'I do not understand why... I do not understand why nothing has happened.'  Let me explain something.

• Matthew 24:36 (Jesus speaking, emphases mine, NIV) 'No-one knows about that day or hour, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.'
• If God the Father was unwilling to tell EVEN HIS SON when the end was coming, why on earth would he tell Harold Camping?

•  Acts 1:6-7 (emphases mine, NIV) '[The apostles] asked him, "Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Isreal?" He said to them: "It is not for you to know the times or dates the Father has set by his own authority."
• Harold Camping is not more important that the original apostles.  Even were he a modern-day apostle, which this debacle proves he is not, I doubt he would be higher up the pecking order than Peter.

It is time that people stopped believing in personalities, stopped listening to stuff that sounds exciting but is groundless, stopped jumping on spiritual band-waggons, stopped being 'blown here and there by every wind of teaching...'  (Ephesians 4:14, NIV).  Instead, follow Jesus, know the truth, persevere, grow up.

Not everything you hear from the pulpit is sound teaching.  How can you know what is sound if you have nothing to measure it by?  Read the Bible for yourself and get a broad understanding of it.  It is about down-to-earth living in relationship with our Heavenly Father who loves you better than you can understand, through all the trouble and strife your life may bring, as well as through the good stuff.  It is not (only) about Pie in the Sky.  As a start, you would do well to work through the E100 Bible Reading Challenge.  Read the Bible for yourself in a clear translation in your own, modern language.

I apologise that this article, which has been a bit of a rant, is less gracious than my usual style.  I also point out that my attitude does not necessarily reflect that of any other organisation I may have referred to here.

The World's First Disaster (Genesis 3)

If the first two chapters of Genesis give us an understanding of how all things came about, chapter three gives us an account of how it all went wrong. It also holds out the hope of all things being put right again.

The story here is very obviously allegorical, at least to my mind – I have yet to encounter a real serpent that can actually talk.

Picture it. Adam and Eve (as she was soon to be named) enjoy idyllic surroundings and the company of God. Everything, except one thing that God clearly warns them is dangerous, is available to them. They want for nothing. They are happy. Then along comes a character with a question for them, 'Did God really say...?'

This is a question that we all face in our lives, in one form or another. For those of us who believe, it may well be 'Did God really say...?', or, 'Is it really all that wrong to...?' Sometimes, because of the legalistic, Pharisaical mentality that can pervade churches, the question is not always an unreasonable one... For those of us who don't believe, it is perhaps a more direct, 'Why don't you...?'

Anyway, Eve fielded the question (actually a distortion of the truth) well, correcting the questioner with the known facts: we can eat from any tree but not this one because if we do we'll die. The serpent then questions the facts and lowers the bar by posing an alternative outcome: You won't die; you'll become like God. (It is interesting to note that Satan (represented in the story by the serpent) is depicted later in the Bible as aspiring to be like God, and here places exactly the same option before God's Pride and Joy.)

Now, Eve knows God. She thinks he is more than cool. Wouldn't it be great to be like him? Listen to the cogs whirring... I can be like God if I eat this. I can make my own mind up about what is right and wrong, just like he does. It doesn't kill him. Why would it kill me? Deceived, and self-convinced, she eats.

We don't really know how long it took for the fruit (not an apple) to have an effect. She obviously did not drop dead on the spot. You can hear the next line of reasoning. 'Hey, Adam. I just ate this fruit. It tastes great! And look! I didn't die. God got this one wrong! Try some.' And so he does.

The first effect of knowing the difference between good and evil is guilt: knowing you did wrong and you cannot undo it.

• Try to cover it up . . . God pitches up.
• Better still, hide . . . Doesn't work.

The next effect of knowing good from evil is looking for someone to blame.

• Adam blames Eve.
•  Eve blames the serpent. 
• Poor serpent . . . No-one to blame.

The next effect is consequences. Your choices, whoever you may blame, remain your choices (and no-one had a gun to their heads here) and the consequences, whether good or ill, are yours too. Except they are not limited to you. The serpent is cast down to the dust; Eve (and all women ever since) gets to go through painful labour (all that knowledge needs a big head to hold it) and a damaged relationship with her man; Adam (and all of us ever since) has to struggle to meet their needs. Not only that, the whole earth feels the impact. On top of that, they get to die. Not immediately, of course, but inevitably. How so?

I seems the serpent was right. God now says, 'The man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil.' This is obviously, to God's mind, dangerous knowledge for a finite, created being. So dangerous that it has to be limited. Cut them off from the source, the Tree of Life, to which they hitherto had free access.

The rest, as they say, is history. We have made choices that have evil consequences ever since and the world still pays the price. Yes, we have made some good ones too but somehow...

Why did God put the tree in the garden in the first place? He could have saved a lot of bother if he hadn't. Maybe there is a sense in which the garden itself is allegorical of God in all his fullness. God wanted, and still wants, his whole self to be known by man, without hiding anything. He gave fair warning: 'This bit of me is dangerous for you. Trust me, not your own ideas. Don't go your own way, don't choose to be independent of me.'

Given the allegorical nature of the story, can we believe in a literal Adam and Eve? Well, the writers of the rest of the Bible did, and actually it is not so far fetched. The cells in our bodies contain organelles known as mitochondria. These all and always derive from our mother alone. Investigation of the DNA in mitochondria has allowed scientists to look far back into female human history and they have established that we all derive from just three human women. Beyond those three, there is one, just one, ancestral mother. Eve truly became the 'mother of all the living'.

What about the hope I mentioned at the start? Adam and Eve tried to cover their nakedness by their own efforts but it was not enough. God himself provided clothes made of animal skins, speaking of atoning blood sacrifice. Messiah and his sacrifice are foretold in type, the offspring of the woman who would crush the serpent's head and whose heel the serpent would strike.

The final restoration of all things lies in the future. For now, through faith in Messiah, we can know God in part, in the knowledge that our wrong choices are atoned for. We can realign our lives with his will and be guided in our choices by his perfect knowledge of what is good and what is evil.

One day, unlimited access to the Tree of Life will be restored.

In the Beginning... (Genesis 1 & 2)

The interpretation of these chapters of the Bible evokes great controversy. Until relatively recently, western civilisation was content that the creation story was literally true, and that the earth, according to genealogies recorded in scripture, was about 6000 years old. These days, most people in the world have no interest in the subject. Scientists have an apparently contradictory view involving an ancient earth but most are not bent on disproving scripture. Some within the church are determined to challenge the scientific point of view at every opportunity, insisting scripture is literally true.

My difficulty in accepting a literal interpretation derives in part from being exposed, as a scientist, to extra-biblical evidence and in part from the text, taken literally, not actually making sense.

There is this little phrase that crops up repeatedly: 'And there was evening and there was morning...' I am sure the writer understood evening and morning in exactly the same way that we understand them. Evening is that time of day when the Sun goes down, morning when the Sun comes up. In the passage, there is no Sun at all until 'day' 4 so there can be no evening or morning before then. I do not believe that the phrase is intended to stipulate the passage of exactly 24 hours (which we measure by the Sun's position in the sky). I imagine God revealing events to the writer in phases and the writer interpreting them as 'days', the most natural unit of time known to him.

There is also a pattern in the Creation story itself that lends it an allegorical or poetical property:

Day 1	Light	Day 4	Sun, Moon and stars
Day 2	Separation of waters above and below the expanse called 'sky'	Day 5	Aquatic life (in the sea) birds (in the expanse between the waters)
Day 3	Separation of land from sea (introduction of plants)	Day 6	(Other) terrestrial animals and Mankind
Day 7	Rest

Note the correspondence between days 1 and 4, 2 and 5, and 3 and 6, with the second of the pair having an obvious relationship with the first. This does not in itself render a literal interpretation inadmissible but it does suggest a literary ploy in the mind of the writer.

Actually, light is not the only thing made on day one: 'In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth' precedes the making of light. However, the traditional view always seems to start with light.

A remarkable observation can be made: the sequence of events set forth in Genesis 1 fits very well (with three exceptions) to the scientific model of the formation of the Solar System. This should not be a surprise.

Phase 1: Out of nothing, space-time (the heavens) comes into being. The earth is in the midst of it all but is a formless, water-covered ball of spinning, accreted material cloaked in dense cloud. At some critical point in its growth, the Sun ignites and floods its surroundings with light and energy.

Phase 2: The atmosphere of earth, at the perfect distance from its star, is so influenced by the input of energy that the clouds lift away from its surface.

Phase 3: This new, active planet processes its material and as a result of volcanic and tectonic activity, dry land emerges. The first visible life on the new planet is plant life that, in the light and warmth from the Sun, quickly takes hold on the land.

Phase 4: The plants process the atmosphere, bringing about further transformation to the extent that the clouds break and the Sun, Moon and stars are visible from its surface for the first time.

Phase 5: Animate marine life-forms in huge variety come into being, and the sky is filled with birds similarly diverse in type.

Phase 6: terrestrial animals appear, taking on just as much diversity as their marine and avian antecedents. Finally, Man, conscious, self-aware, takes his allotted place.

And all under the command of Almighty God.

What are the exceptions I mentioned?

• The first is the aquatic and terrestrial bacteria that would have preceded plant life. These would have made no sense to the writer, and God saw no reason to inform him about them.
• The second exception is that the Sun and Moon seem to be between the clouds and the earth's surface. We have to take into account the knowledge available to the writer at the time he wrote, and the stylised way that people viewed things; consider Egyptian hieroglyphics showing both eyes on the same side of the human head, for instance.
• The third exception is bird life preceding other terrestrial animals. Maybe the writer was influenced by his poetical pattern. Maybe God really did make birds first and we haven't found the evidence for it yet...

There is a theory that the early part of the Bible is an amalgamation of two ancient texts, that Genesis 1 is the creation story from one and Genesis 2 the account from the other. On first reading, the chapters do appear different, with man being made before plants in chapter two. Closer reading (at least in the NIV) makes clear that it was shrubs and plants 'of the field' that had not yet appeared, partly because 'there was no man to work the ground'. It seems to be the writer's observation that agriculture, something probably very evident in his time, was not then in being. I have always seen chapter 2 as a particular focus on the creation of Mankind, a creature for whom God seems to have a special fondness, and how he took man from wherever he was (the text does not say where but it could as easily be Africa, which science suggests was the birth-place of humanity, as anywhere else) and placed him in the Garden of Eden and in special relationship with God.

Personally, I have no problem with the idea that man is a special creation. The fact that we have almost all of our DNA in common with the great apes and much in common with Mammalia in general could merely be God re-using a good idea that works well. And why not? We all have to live in the same biosphere.

Genesis is not a science text book. It is a text immersed in the culture that produced it, albeit inspired (not dictated) by God. What is important to me as a modern reader may not have been important to a writer in antiquity with different emphases to make. We also have to consider that writing and thought processes in the ancient world did not necessarily follow the same logic or methodologies of the modern world. Consequently, I do not see the Genesis account in contradiction with current scientific thought. That current scientific thought requires a very long time in comparison with the Genesis account is not a problem. Time may be a great deal to us. It is nothing to God.

Recently, Stephen Hawking stated that we can explain it all without the need for God. Science, whilst it works very well for many things, is not the final answer. At the beginning of the 20^th century, science was all sewn up with nothing left to discover. Then came Einstein, and quantum theory, the splitting of the atom... There are several versions of the Big Bang theory and alternatives that do not involve a big bang or a prime cause. There is more than one theory of evolution. So I am not expecting science to explain God away. Science merely gives me some insight into how God may have brought things about.

So, what did the writer of Genesis mean by what he wrote? He clearly did mean to give an account of how all things came into being and he did so in a way that was consistent with his knowledge and would have made sense to his then readers. He also wanted to state clearly that Almighty God is the source of all that is. The Author behind the writer wants all of us to know that he made the heavens, he made the Earth and all that is in it; nothing exists that derives from any other source than himself. We owe our very existence and nature to him, and, as far as he is concerned, we are special.

With that, I have no problem at all.

Grace

The Grace of God is amazing. I am amazed that I could spend so many years of my Christian life in ignorance of it and in trying to earn the favour I have already been given for free, amazed that I could wander so far from the path and still find a ready welcome on my return, amazed that, eventually, I have begun to realise that His grace and not my effort is the thing that holds me close to God.

So much of what I have learned of the Christian life was, in fact, nothing more than legalism. I have to say that no-one was actually trying to lead me into error; we were all of us sincerely trying to do the best we knew how. Even so, well-meaning people teach new converts rules instead of relationship, and we learn a pattern of behaviour rather than a walk. I ‘grew up’ (from the age of 17 onwards) with a list of things to avoid in order to not be ‘worldy’. I even learned a number of things that I should do in order to be ‘spiritual’. All these things I willingly took on board because of a genuine desire to please, to do right, and, less commendably, to be accepted in my new social circle. I learned to talk authoritatively about things of which I had no real experience, to stand up for things that needlessly erected impenetrable barriers between me and my friends and family.

I have wondered why God puts up with our legalism and our imposition of it on others – and I have done my fair share of that. I think the problem arises because, although we are tuned to the right station, the tuning is poor and interference from other sources confuses the message. Strangely enough, I think that it is precisely because God is gracious that he puts up with our lack of grace. He knew where I was at and where he wanted me but He could not uproot and transplant me too soon without damaging me.

When the time came, He got me moved to University in a whole new city. Lesson number one was that there is life in other denominations (even the Baptist one!) and nowhere near as many taboos! I was daft enough however, to go back after graduation because of some misshapen view of the will of God for my life. It took Him another seven years to move me out again.

Whilst I was always taught that God loves me (and on many occasions was fully aware and convinced of that fact), and that we are saved by grace, not works, I never really understood the enormity of the concept of grace (I think enormity is probably the right word). I found that a lot of the things I was supposed not to do were actually very attractive to me, and the things I was supposed to do did not fit in at all with the way I functioned. (For example, I am not good at rising at 5 o’clock on a Friday morning for a weekly leaders’ prayer meeting and then doing a full day’s work. Why is staying up late to pray less spiritual than getting up early?). Failure to comply brought guilt. Guilt led to separation – well, an assumed separation – not just from God but also from my fellow believers who appeared not to be afflicted with my inadequacies. Discovering that many of the taboos were not actually in the Bible only added to the confusion, and made me feel rebellious because I could see no good reason why I should not enjoy these things but could not admit openly that I did.

(I once read an article in a denominational magazine about the ‘Loophole Mentality.’ The thesis was that Christians who claim that they can do certain things because the Bible does not forbid them have a ‘how much can I get away with’ attitude. It was another way of categorising worldly-mindedness. I think this is pharisaical. Why invent rules that God has not put in place? All that leads to is misplaced guilt. I also think it is farcical because every group’s rules are different. Now, of course there are things best avoided, but what those things are for me depend largely on what my shortcomings are; my limitations should not become blanket restrictions for all. Conversely, I have a responsibility that my liberties do not become stumbling-blocks for you.)

Well, eventually God managed to teach me a lesson about faith, and got me moved to yet another city in the North. Once there, I left behind the narrow straights in which I had been trying to sail and moved into more open waters. It is true to say that many of the behavioural patterns I had learned continued to operate in my life. It is also true to say that many of the unwarranted constraints were off and I began to explore who I was and to make up for lost time. I regret to note that some of the new experiences were sinful ones, and I have been horrified at how low I could sink after so many years of apparent Christian living. Some of my most damaging episodes (to others) left me wondering if I could ever walk with God again. Yet I have been gobsmacked by God’s determination that I should be His. I found myself restored and useful once more – and entirely because of God’s grace. Unfortunately, I continued to be motivated by performance to earn acceptance. Some of us are very slow learners, and old habits die hard.

The biggest blow of all came when my mother’s illness and death from cancer led me into depression. For several years, I could not read the Bible, I wondered if there were really a God, and came close to giving up completely. It is only the grace of God that has kept me. Before this darkness closed in He warned me very clearly what I was to encounter, although I had no idea what the prophetic picture he placed in my mind meant for me at the time I saw it. I had also received a prophetic word that ‘God was going to shatter some of [my] evangelical faith.’ I think the prophet concerned had either misheard God or had been reluctant to give full voice to what he heard: my faith has undergone wholesale demolition. Forewarned truly is fore-armed, and these presages of what was to come became anchors for me in my darkest times.

My only expression of faith in my journey through the darkness has been to say, ‘God, you must hold on to me because I cannot hold on to you.’ If only we could see it, this is exactly how God’s grace operates anyway: we none of us gained entry to or remain in the kingdom of God by our own effort. I am not ‘saved’ because I follow anyone’s rules; I am ‘saved’ because it pleases God to save me. I am learning that I am in a covenant relationship with God; his incomprehensible grace is part of that covenant, and he has held on to me, and I grow in confidence that he will always hold on to me. I am learning (painfully) that God is in no hurry with me, and that when faith grows weak because progress seems so slow, hope looks forward to the day when I shall be a little more tangibly what God wants me to be. He who has begun a good work in me will complete it. I am finally beginning to learn what it means to be a new creation, and not just to talk about it: my present, never mind my future, does not have to be determined by my past. I do not have to walk about with the burden of past failure, or to measure up to anyone’s expectation of what I should be right now.

In my experience, sin has certainly abounded but Grace, I am delighted to say, abounds much more. He gives more Grace; and love, and mercy, and forgiveness, His Holy Spirit, acceptance, sonship, and all he asks of me is that I do justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with him. Who has any right to demand more?