Well firstly I should probably mention that I haven't done one of these for a few months - but my justification is based on the fact that I got married only 3 and 1/2 weeks ago and that has taken a fair amount of my recent attention (which I think is a fair excuse!).
So there you go - I'm not sure that its a good habit to find oneself providing justification for such things ... but I also wanted an excuse to mention the fact that I'm married.
Did I mention I have a wife now? yes - I think I might have...
Ok so moving on!
Its a funny time of year as we head into the Christmas season. Christmas means so many different things to so many different people. Its a strange mix of the celebration of the birth of Christ, some ancient Greek and Roman pagan festivities, some sort of commercialised jolly old fat man who used to be a saint but whose clothes were rebranded by Coca Cola, and a general excuse for overindulgence in food, giving and receiving of presents (in my case, often the receiving of many mugs from various family members) followed by a bad case of rich food-itis the next day.
So what it is it all about really? I know its perhaps a bit of a cliche to write a 'reason for the season' kind of blog but hopefully it still holds some interest for you... it certainly does for me.
As someone who is endeavouring to follow Christ with my life, I guess its worth taking the time to think about why He came and what He came to do. So here's my little ramble on it:
I guess in order to think about celebrating the coming of Christ to the earth, its necessary to think about why it even happened in the first place.
The scriptures talk about a God who created a world with his words and creative power, and by the activity and motion of His Spirit. The ancient Hebrew people understood God's Spirit by the term 'ruach' which means spirit, breath or wind. They had an understanding that God's Spirit was not just an external force that existed outside of time and space, but is the very breath of God that gives life to everything He has created. In this way, God's Spirit is understood as the very life force of His creation. Without the continual extension of God's Spirit and creative intent into His creation it would cease to exist. Bear in mind that this is very different from saying that His Spirit is the same as His creation (that's an eastern kind of pantheism), but rather that His Spirit gives continual life to His creation.
As such, Gods will, purpose and intent flows into all of His creation by His Spirit at all times. At the beginning of the human story we find that God creates human beings in His own image and likeness. They are created as beings that would bear the image of God; a God of relationship, community and love. These human beings live filled with the Spirit and life-force of God flowing through them, and so we find God's will and purpose also flowing in and through them.
Sadly, these humans make a choice to set human beings on a different pathway. They decide to step outside of God's will and purpose - and in doing so they find themselves inadvertently separated from God's Spirit and from relationship with Him. Now at this point they do not die - despite a separation from God's intent and purpose...and Spirit... rather God in His continuing grace decides to continue to extend His life-force into His beautiful creation, but there is a fracture in relationship, and so also a fracture in the way things are supposed to be. We also find that the earth, which God placed under the authority of these humans, also fractures and is corrupted.
And so what we are left with is a continuing human story filled with brokenness. While the image of God still leaves its mark on us as humans, we find ourselves fractured and looking for meaning, looking for answers, looking for hope. We live in a world in which we desire something good but so often find reasons to destroy that which we hope for. It is not that there is nothing good in the world, but rather that goodness has now been corrupted. Many in the world find that instead of peace they experience war, instead of purpose they experience despair and emptiness, instead of whole relationships there are broken marriages and broken families.
Some view God as someone who stands in heaven with a bolt of lightning looking for who to strike down next, but the God of the scriptures is not that disconnected and disaffected. God is still intimately involved in his creation.
And so in the end, God did the most remarkable thing in all of human history. He was not content in being present by His Spirit, so He became present as a man. The Christmas story is a story of the God of all creation who recognises that his creation is suffering and broken. His creation is in need of restoration and hope. His creation needs to be reconciled to its creator.
So Jesus is born. And he does not come to condemn the world but to restore and reconnect. He comes to bring reconciliation, hope, peace, justice, forgiveness and love. For those who believe Christianity is a judgemental bigoted faith - I apologize for the message we have given you... in fact it is quite the contrary. It is about restoration and renewal. Jesus came to show us true and real life. And he died and rose again to defeat the power of the broken pathway that we have all found ourselves on. He does it by suffering with us and amongst us - even at our own hands... Yet his suffering was not in vain - rather in it we find a God who suffers for us so that the corruption of our very selves may be healed. We are invited into a new journey to be restored to the kind of people God always knew we could be.
So this Christmas... let us take the time to remember why it is that people are stopping all over the world to sing, to be together, to love each other and to provide for each other. And let us take the time to remember all of those who are not able to do so yet... those for whom the restoring power of Christ and His Spirit needs to come. And let us remember the part we have to play in bringing reconciliation to God's creation.
Merry Christmas.
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
Wednesday, August 13, 2008
What do you know?
Well this is the first of these blogs that I have done here. It is a slightly strange thing writing something like this and wondering if people end up reading it, and if they do, who are they and what do they think??
So if that is you... welcome!
I thought I could kick this whole thing off by actually talking a bit about knowledge and truth. So yeah - we're starting with the light stuff :-)
The scriptures say that "you shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free". But what is truth, and how do we know it? I have spent much of my Christian life trying to arrive at the knowledge of this kind of truth, and I think there have been moments in my life when I do seem to have particular clarity - and this clarity helps propel me into a place of freedom.
But as I have thought through my faith a lot more, I have begun to realise that my faith is actually.... 'faith'.... And the more I seek to know things, the more I realise that I don't actually really know too much at all. The more I seek to know about God, the more God's infiniteness seems to impose itself on my rather small human brain.
So how are we to know the truth? I think perhaps for me I had seen knowledge and truth from the wrong perspective. So there are a couple of thoughts I would like to propose here:
Firstly, we can often think that knowledge and truth are an endpoint. We think that what we are doing is trying to work our way through to figuring out the idea/truth/point of it all. We are trying to arrive at truth. But the more I have thought about things, the more I have walked with God and the more I have studied etc, the more I have realised that every piece of truth is a beginning, not an ending. We are not aiming to arrive at truth so that then we can simply believe it and move on. Every moment of truth provides us with a whole new set of questions.
In the bible, Jesus says that the most important thing is to Love God, and to Love your neighbour as you love yourself. Now we can take this as a great piece of truth and satisfy ourselves with that.... but that is actually not the point. It might be true... but it is not yet a walk of truth. It proposes a whole new set of questions... What is love? Who is God? Do I love myself and what does this mean? If not, why not? Who is my neighbour? And on and on it goes... Each of these questions leads us on a journey to take the true thing that the scriptures might say, and to actually allow it to resonate with our real, actual, everyday lives so that it can become truth in and through us.
Which actually requires intentionality from us. It requires us to actually care about what the scripture says, not just read it, believe it and move on because we've got our piece of truth.
Truth becomes a journey, not an endpoint. And it becomes a journey of relationship with God... as Christians we are not looking for ultimate knowledge about God but disconnected from God. We understand that our walk as a disciple is connected to actually coming to know more of who God is, and to be intimate with Him.
Which is perhaps why in the bible Jesus says "I am the way, the truth and the life". Jesus is truth. If we really want to know truth we do not find it in a bullet point, a doctrinal statement, or in our own revelation. We find it in walking with Jesus Christ.
This is real truth...
...truth that sets us free
...relationship
...journey
...Jesus Christ.
When we see truth simply as an endpoint, we can become arrogant about our realisation of truth. We can start to act like we have it all together and we look at others and tell them they should become like us. We can become the authority on situations and conditions. We see ourselves as the ones with the answers.
But in actual fact, our truth is in knowing and walking with Jesus Christ. And we are on a journey to know Him and to follow Him. A following that requires humility and servanthood. A following that requires us to leave behind comparisons and competitions, to leave behind posturing and ambition, to leave behind hypocritical attitudes, and to realise that our job is not to tell people how they should be like us, but to invite people into the journey of walking with Christ so that they too may know the truth - and it can set them free.
So if that is you... welcome!
I thought I could kick this whole thing off by actually talking a bit about knowledge and truth. So yeah - we're starting with the light stuff :-)
The scriptures say that "you shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free". But what is truth, and how do we know it? I have spent much of my Christian life trying to arrive at the knowledge of this kind of truth, and I think there have been moments in my life when I do seem to have particular clarity - and this clarity helps propel me into a place of freedom.
But as I have thought through my faith a lot more, I have begun to realise that my faith is actually.... 'faith'.... And the more I seek to know things, the more I realise that I don't actually really know too much at all. The more I seek to know about God, the more God's infiniteness seems to impose itself on my rather small human brain.
So how are we to know the truth? I think perhaps for me I had seen knowledge and truth from the wrong perspective. So there are a couple of thoughts I would like to propose here:
Firstly, we can often think that knowledge and truth are an endpoint. We think that what we are doing is trying to work our way through to figuring out the idea/truth/point of it all. We are trying to arrive at truth. But the more I have thought about things, the more I have walked with God and the more I have studied etc, the more I have realised that every piece of truth is a beginning, not an ending. We are not aiming to arrive at truth so that then we can simply believe it and move on. Every moment of truth provides us with a whole new set of questions.
In the bible, Jesus says that the most important thing is to Love God, and to Love your neighbour as you love yourself. Now we can take this as a great piece of truth and satisfy ourselves with that.... but that is actually not the point. It might be true... but it is not yet a walk of truth. It proposes a whole new set of questions... What is love? Who is God? Do I love myself and what does this mean? If not, why not? Who is my neighbour? And on and on it goes... Each of these questions leads us on a journey to take the true thing that the scriptures might say, and to actually allow it to resonate with our real, actual, everyday lives so that it can become truth in and through us.
Which actually requires intentionality from us. It requires us to actually care about what the scripture says, not just read it, believe it and move on because we've got our piece of truth.
Truth becomes a journey, not an endpoint. And it becomes a journey of relationship with God... as Christians we are not looking for ultimate knowledge about God but disconnected from God. We understand that our walk as a disciple is connected to actually coming to know more of who God is, and to be intimate with Him.
Which is perhaps why in the bible Jesus says "I am the way, the truth and the life". Jesus is truth. If we really want to know truth we do not find it in a bullet point, a doctrinal statement, or in our own revelation. We find it in walking with Jesus Christ.
This is real truth...
...truth that sets us free
...relationship
...journey
...Jesus Christ.
When we see truth simply as an endpoint, we can become arrogant about our realisation of truth. We can start to act like we have it all together and we look at others and tell them they should become like us. We can become the authority on situations and conditions. We see ourselves as the ones with the answers.
But in actual fact, our truth is in knowing and walking with Jesus Christ. And we are on a journey to know Him and to follow Him. A following that requires humility and servanthood. A following that requires us to leave behind comparisons and competitions, to leave behind posturing and ambition, to leave behind hypocritical attitudes, and to realise that our job is not to tell people how they should be like us, but to invite people into the journey of walking with Christ so that they too may know the truth - and it can set them free.
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