Didier Drogba, faith, God, and destiny.

A friend has started doing Five Minute Friday blogs – you write for five minutes to see what comes out. I haven’t posted here for a while so here’s my offering for the week.

GO

In the immediate aftermath of Chelsea’s victory over Bayern Munich in the Champions League final last week, iconic striker Didier Drogba said this to an ITV interviewer:

I believe a lot in destiny. I pray a lot. It was written a long time ago. God is wonderful. This team is amazing. I want to dedicate this Cup to all our managers and players before. It [the goal] changed the game mentally. I’m very happy. Life is fantastic.

You will remember that Chelsea did not win the cup by dominating or playing the best football. They were 3-1 down against Napoli at the end of the first leg of the quarter final. They then stifled Barcelona in the semis, defending heroically but never getting their own rhythm or pattern going. And in the final they were second best on possession, chances created and entertainment. But somehow more stoic defending, closing down, hassling, and a little bit of luck, took them through extra time to penalties where they won – Drogba scoring the winning goal.

Given that extraordinay turnaround since the 3-1 first leg defeat to Napoli, and overcoming two excellent teams in the semis and final, it is unsurprising that people started to say ‘your name is on the cup’ or ‘it must have been destiny’. There was a lot of dodgy theology in the aftermath to that match.

But Drogba’s quote, made in the midst of euphoria, does not stack up to the God that I believe in. I can forgive him, as he is a footballer not a theologian and he is expressing his thanks and praise to God for what is the pinnacle of his career. Nevertheless, the quote indicates that you pray, and God grants. That your future is already mapped out or ‘written in the stars’. That we do not have much to do with what happens – it is all preordained. He is not a God of destiny.

I don’t believe in a God like that. I believe in a God that is sovereign (in charge) and omnipotent (all-powerful) and omniscience (all-knowing) but does not push us down paths that we don’t want to go. Success and failure, health and suffering seem somewhat arbitrary. Look at Job. What I believe is that God guides us in particular directions, and knows what we are going to choose, but does not force in any particular way. A God who responds to prayer requests with ‘no’ and ‘wait’ as well as ‘yes’. He is a God that in the suffering, failure, despair can be just as present, if not more so, than at times of success. This God is more full of grace, as he doesn’t rely on a meritocracy and doesn’t need to be bribed with prayers before acting. He is present and available whatever the situation.

I’m happy for Drogba, although it has taken me a few weeks to get to this point as I’m really not a fan of Chelsea. And I hope that he can articulate faith in his God when things are going as badly as well as at times like this.

STOP. Oh dear, that took 13 minutes. Must try harder.

St. Augustine on enjoyment

“To enjoy a thing is to rest in satisfaction with it for its own sake”

That goes for people too.

Martin Luther King on nations coming back to God

I’ve just been reading Martin Luther King’s ‘The Measure of a Man’. In it, King mentions the story of the prodigal son, in which a son demands his inheritance from his fathers estate even though his father is still alive, leaves home, squanders the money and comes home begging for forgiveness. The father welcomes him home as a son who “was dead but is now alive” and before the son can even ask for forgiveness, he is embraces by his loving father. Martin Luther King responds to this story in applying it to the civil rights issues of his day:

This is the glory of our religion: that when man decides to rise up from his mistakes, from his sin, from his evil, there is a loving God saying, ‘Come home, I still love you’…

It seems that I can hear a voice saying to America: “You started out right. You wrote in your Declaration of Independence that ‘all men are created equal and endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights. Among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.’ But America, you strayed away from that sublime principle. You left the house of your great heritage and strayed away into a far country of segregation and discrimination. You have trampled over sixteen million of your brothers. You have deprived them of the basic goods of life You have taken away from them their self respect and their sense of dignity. You have treated them as if they were things rather than persons. Because of this a famine has broken out in your land. In the midst of all your material wealth, you are spiritually and morally poverty-stricken, unable to speak to the conscience of this world. America, in the famine situation, if you will come to yourself and rise up ad decide to come back home, I will take you in, for you are made for something high and something noble and something good.” (p19-20)

This applied very clearly to the civil rights movement of MLK’s day. I wonder how it applies to the western world today. Perhaps God sees the material wealth of the West and compares it to the poverty of the developing world and weeps for them. Perhaps he sees that the current global food crisis id driven by the western worlds desire for ever cheaper material goods and ever cheaper oil. Perhaps he sees what we are doing to His environment, again due to the desire for economic success. Perhaps there are many more… What would he have us do?

I don’t pretend to know the ins and outs of each of these situations or how they can be fixed, but I’m sure God grieves over them.

Douglas Coupland on the inner voice

A great quote from a novel I’m reading:

I’m sitting here and my inner voice won’t shut up. Do you ever get that? All you crave is silence, but instead you sit there and , against your wishes, nag yourself at full volume? Money! Loneliness! Failure! Sex! Body! Enemies! Regrets!

And everyone’s doing the same thing – friends, family, that lady at the gas station till, your favourite movie star – everyone’s skull is buzzing with me, me, me, me, me, and nobody knows how to shut it off. We’re a planet of selfish me-robots. I hate it. I try to turn it off.

From The Gum Thief by Douglas Coupland.

Do you ever feel like that?

Tom Wright on the balance of Christian life.

Tom Wright, in his short commentary, Luke for Everyone (p297-8), comments on the balance of Christian life, as an integration between scripture and sacrament, head and heart, belief and action.:

“Take Scripture away and the sacrament becomes a piece of magic. Take the sacrament away, and scripture becomes an intellectual or emotional exercise, detached from real life. Put them together, and you have the centre of Christian Living, as Luke understands it.”

The poor in the gospel of Luke (iii)

Having called his disciples, healed some people, and having taught (and been thrown out of) the synagogue, Jesus comes down from a mountain where he was praying to the plain, where a crowd had gathered to hear him teach. This is Lukes version of the Sermon on the Mount – I guess we could call it the Preach on the Plain or something like that.

He begins with Luke’s version of the Beatitudes:

Looking at his disciples, he said:

“Blessed are you who are poor,
for yours is the kingdom of God.
Blessed are you who hunger now,
for you will be satisfied. (Luke 6:20-21)

This differs a little from Matthew’s version in the Sermon on the Mount, where Jesus says: “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” (Matt 5:4) and “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.” (5:6). The differences reflect the emphasis for the poor shown in the gospel of Luke, but what else?

The beatitudes are not commands, but statements, and they come directly after Jesus has called the 12 disciples. Tom Wright (in Luke for Everyone) likens it to Jesus reminding his new team of followers of 4 or 5 things to remember as they start to follow him. They are reminders of what God’s kingdom looks like, which is upside down when compared to the kingdom of the world, then or now – reminders of who is to be valued – not just the people that current society values, but those who have no voice. It is similar, again, to what many of the OT prophets were saying.

Tom Wright says it well:

“Jesus is… fulfilling his promises at last, and this will mean good news for all the people who haven’t had any for a long time. The poor, the hungry, those who are hated, blessings on them! Not that there’s anything virtuous about being poor or hungry in itself. But when injustice is reigning, the world will have to be turned once more the right way up for God’s justice and kingdom to come to birth”

The poor are blessed because they stand to gain the most from God’s justice and kingdom coming, and they are most likely to look for it. By contrast, the rich, if they consider themselves rich and of no need “have already received their comfort” (6:24). It seems clear that Jesus is talking about the literal rich and poor not just the spiritual. God’s message is for everyone but the poor may be looking for satisfaction, fulfilment, and the kingdom of God more.

Church welcoming, closing the back door.

I’m reading just a section from Bob Jackson’s book, The Road to Growth. Here’s a couple of stories that he tells on the subject of church welcoming:

“The Bishop and his wife had been on holiday and were driving home from the airport on a Sunday morning in holiday clothes. As 10:30 approaches and they entered his diocese they decided on impulse to pull into a local church and join the service. They were given a hymnbook and sat on the next to the back pew. As they were saying their prayers at 10:29, heads bowed, the warden came up to them and said, ‘I’m sorry you can’t sit there, that’s Mrs Jones’ pew’. The bishop looked up startled and the warden said, ‘Oh my God! It’s the bishop!’. After the service, the bishop had a little chat with the warden, who ended up repeating, ‘We’ve got to change haven’t we, we’ve got to change!’

And a personal one from Bob:

“My wife and I left parish ministry for an itinerant on. We started going to a nearby church where a friend was the vicar. After five months said to my friend, ‘Okay, I’ve had a rest now, I’ll take a service for you if you like’. Soon I was leading a communion service. At the door at the end of the service many in the congregation thanked me ‘for visiting us today’. We had sat in a pew and worshiped with the congregation of a hundred people for five months and ha not been noticed. I only became visible when I preached… It was easy to attend a service at that church, but almost impossible to join the community. Little wonder that most o the people who tired attending did not stick. They were offered no relational glue.”

Bob talks about churches needing to be friendly and offer friendship. Many people stop going to church by accident, because they ave not been integrated into a community or offered real friendship, or simply they got out of the habit and no-one noticed. Jackson talks about opening the front door of the church in a welcoming friendship and in closing the back door ensureing people don’t simply drift away gradually.

Other points from this same chapter. (pp65ff).

• welcoming is important – but try to introduce yourself, saying something nonthreatening like “I don’t know you, I’m Bob’, rather than saying accusingly “Are you new?”
• Churches need relationship glue – people need friendship as well as friendliness. They need to be able to integrate into the community.
• Larger churches need smaller subgroups to pastorally care for each other and therefore notice when people are ill or not there.
• Congregations should notice newcomers and offer a friendly conversation, as well as point/help the newcomer to integrate into the community. Many people ‘belong’ to Christian community and see it in action before they believe.
• ‘Welcome cards’ only work if followed up quickly.

I’d be interested to hear people’s stories of the welcome they received at church, good or bad.

Truth, Evidence, Experience, and Faith.

Over on his blog, Rodibidably poses the question

“How certain are you that your version of the “truth” (truth of god, religion, the world, the universe, etc) is the correct one, and more importantly, how do you know what that “truth” is?”

He has a long discussion going on, this is my contribution to it.

So, how do we know if something is true? Is it possible to know, 100% for certain that anything is true? Let’s say we think something might be true, so we test it. This is what science does – it comes up with theories which might be true, and it tests them. So, for example, if I want to know if, say, all apples are red, I start picking apples. I keep doing this either until I’ve found an apple that isn’t red – disproving the theory, or until I’ve picked enough apples so I’m convinced that all apples are indeed red.

Does the testing prove the theories? No, but each subsequent test shows that it is working on at least one more occasion. As we test more and more times we can be confident that the same thing will happen. Eventually we spot a trend and are confident enough to assert, beyond reasonable doubt, that the theory is true. We have not proved it, but we have seen it enough to be sure enough that it is true, so we believe that it is.

Note that even in a scientific experiment, the very last stage of ‘proving’ the theory comes down to a matter of faith – faith that what we have seen shows that the theory is true.

This basic method which underlies science is sound and fairly reliable, but there is necessarily always some element of doubt, however small, in the theories themselves. Should another conflicting bit of data come along, it is tested, and a new hypothesis is formed which takes into account this new information, replacing the old theory. They can be replaced when a new, stronger theory comes along. So, talk of ‘knowledge’ or ‘fact’ is misguided.

Definitive knowledge can only be known by building logically on top of a firm foundation, so there could be total certainty about the outcomes. However, the only discipline which is subject to this methodology and is not open to doubt is mathematics, and maths to this degree of proof exists only in the abstract. Even Einstein admits that this is the case:

“As for as the propositions of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain; and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality” (Einstein, quoted in Leslie Newbigin’s book ‘The Gospel in a Pluralist Society’ p31)

Later, Newbigin says

“There is no knowing without believing, and believing is the way to knowing”

So, if we want to work out if we think something is true, we need to look at the evidence and ask ourselves, ‘is it reasonable to believe?’ and ‘Does it work?’

So, why do I think that Christianity is true?

First, it is pretty clear that there was a man called Jesus who lived in the middle east and claimed to do miracles. Non-Christian historians of the time such as Josephus, Tacitus and others attest that he existed and was put to death by Pontius Pilate. Josephus reports that his followers claimed that three days after his death, Jesus was alive again and appeared to them. There are places you can read about this in much more detail, – Wikipedia has a short entry here. These are non-Christian sources.

Christian sources, such as the accounts in the gospels are shown to be reliable. They were written soon after the events by people who were there at the time or by people who knew people who were. There are many fragments of manuscripts from early on – far more than with other documents of the same era (such as some of Caesars writings), so we can be fairly sure that what was written then was pretty much the same as what we have now. So it is reasonable to believe the Bible. (Again, there have been many, many books written on this subject. Any commentary on one of the gospels should detail the historicity of it).

As Josephus reports, the disciples claimed that they saw Jesus alive after he died (the Bible says Jesus appeared to 500 followers of Jesus after the resurrection). We have two choices. Either they are telling the truth or they are lying. If they were lying, they would know. However, almost all the 12 disciples died gruesome deaths at the hand of the Romans or others who were persecuting Christians. Surely, if they were lying, they would have said so? Who would give their life for something that they knew was not true?

Obviously, there is much more that I could say. There are many other claims of Christianity that can be investigated in a similar manner. But overall, the evidence points to something that is intellectually reasonable to believe.

Secondly, does it work? Does Christianity still play out as if it is true? Does what the Bible says play out as true? Well, why don’t you ask a Christian you know. I find it does – Jesus gives my life hope, purpose, and a rock solid foundation to build upon. I know many people, some who were former drug addicts who attest that it was only the power of God that helped them to quit, and if it wasn’t for the saving work of Jesus, they would, quite literally, be dead from their addiction. I know some Christians who have had powerful experiences of the Holy Spirit. Indeed, I have had some of those experiences myself that I can only attribute to God.

So, I have found that Christianity is intellectually reasonable to believe, and I have found that it works. We know what truth is through investigation and experience. The next step is to take that leap of faith and actually believe it. It will involve re-evaluating your life, but if God exists, it is worth it. Isn’t it??

(As for other religions, they can’t all be true because they are all quite different. I would recommend Michael Green’s excellent short book “But Don’t All Religions Lead To God” to highlight the differences.)

A new(?) interpretation of the sheep and the goats?

I’m in Matthew in my daily Bible reading. Today I got the part where Jesus told the parable of the sheep and the goats (matt 25:31-46), where all the nations are gathered around him, and he separates them into ‘sheep’ and ‘goats’. He says to the sheep:

“I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.”

They respond with surprise – ‘When did I do this?’. and Jesus replies:

‘I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.’

This has traditionally been interpreted to mean that Christians should do good work and look after the poor and sick etc. However, in the study notes I am reading, Don Carson, in ‘For the Love of God’ proposes an alternate interpretation (He doesn’t deny that Christians should look after the poor and sick – as this is well attested in other parts of the Bible – he just questions whether that is what this passage is saying).

Carson states that Jesus is identifying with ‘these brothers of mine’ – Jesus’ followers who were suffering, and argues that the sheep were commended not for helping those who were suffering, but for helping Christians were suffering. The goats were scolded likewise. He uses Saul/Paul’s conversion experience in Acts 9 to support it. Saul had been persecuting Christians, and Jesus appeared to him and said “Why do you persecute me” – implying that attacking or supporting Christians is the same as attacking or supporting Jesus himself.

In Carson’s own words:

“Real followers of Jesus will go out of their way to help other followers of Jesus, not least the weakest and most despised of them; others will have no special inclination along these lines. That is what separates sheep and goats”

This would certainly help explain the apparent surprise of the ‘sheep’ and the ‘goats’ in this passage. If Jesus was referring simply to general compassion it is hard to see why they’d be surprised. It also helps explain Paul’s very harsh words against anyone who persecutes Christians elsewhere and hinders the gospel from being spread. (see 1 Thess 2:14-16).

I’m not entirely sure what I think of this interpretation yet…

Thomas a Kempis on holiness

The whole point of Thomas a Kempis’ book The Imitation of Christ is about growing in discipleship; that is, becoming more holy and acting more like Christ. This should be the goal of any Christian who professes to follow Christ. (Thomas a Kempis was a monk who lived between 1380 and 1471). Chapter 18 is entitled ‘on the examples of the Holy Fathers’, where a Kempis recalls the life of the early Christians, particularly those known as the ‘Desert Fathers‘, and he urges a return to their way of life, and example of fasting and praying.

A Kempis goes on to say:

“Their examples still witness that they were indeed holy and perfect men, who fought valiantly, and trampled the world under their feet… Oh, the carelessness and coldness of the present time! Sloth and lukewarmness make life wearisome for us, and we soon lose our early fervour! May the longing to grow in grace not remain dormant in you, who have been privileged to witness so many examples of the holy life” (from chapter 18)

This is all very well, and reflects a (good) desire to grow in Christian maturity towards God. However, I can’t help thinking that a Kempis to a certain degree reflects his own time. In the same chapter he could be seen as laying some of the ground work that led to the reformer, Martin Luther’s dissatisfaction with himself as a monk, and his subsequent rediscovery of the power of God’s grace.

Earlier in the same chapter, a Kempis says, (talking again of the example of early Christians): “Grounded in true humility, they lived in simple obedience, they walked in charity and patience; and thus daily increased in the Spirit, and received great grace from God”

Is there here, a hint of the idea that God’s grace is some wort of reward for living in simple obedience. This is what Luther rallied against. He could never be good enough to merit God’s grace, no matter how hard he tried. There would always be aspects of himself that were undeserving. Surely it is the other way around. It is as a response to God’s grace that we attempt to grow in discipleship (that is, grow in the imitation of Christ).

Martin Luther put it a lot better than I can:

“As it is written: ‘The just person lives by faith’. I began to understand that in this verse the righteousness of God is that by which the righteous man lives by the gift of God, in other words by faith…. This immediately made me feel as if I had been born again and entered through open gates into paradise itself.” (Martin Luther, from his ‘Autobiographical fragment’ of 1545)

This makes the heart keener to live for God, and takes the pressure off.