My Adventures with God - Winning Sue

Chapter 5

Winning Sue
It was ANZAC day 1972. (ANZAC day is 25th April and a public holiday in Australia) The senior youth fellowship was holding a picnic in the Blue Mountains. It was beautiful weather. There was a whole group of us, some were couples, some just part of the group.

Sue was there with John who was her boyfriend at that stage. As I recall I had again been doing a lot of talking to God about Sue. I think I had got to the stage of telling him that I was at the stage of giving up on her and trying to find a girlfriend elsewhere. All the previous year Sue and I had met in the second last carriage of the 7.30 train from Turramurra (I got on at Pymble, the next stop down the line) to go to university classes. We had always found things to talk about. We had met up for coffee once or twice during the day, and happily passed time together. I had been seeing much more of Sue than her boyfriend did! But he was still the boyfriend … I was just a university friend ... Now even that was gone because I had finished uni and was working so I only saw her at church – and then she was with John. So you can understand why I was complaining to God that I did not wish to continue like this.

So this particular picnic proceeded and we all sat in a big circle joking and generally enjoying being out together. “Lollygobble Bliss Bombs” were the latest confectionery craze. I can’t remember what they were even like, just that we were passing round packets and at one stage and that Sue who was looking particularly gorgeous was reading out the blurb on the packet to much communal laughter.

I was there on my own and driving my new car, a Toyota Corolla. As everyone was packing up Sue and John had some tiff and Sue asked if anyone could give her a lift home. I offered. When we pulled up outside her home I didn’t think about it – I wouldn’t have done it if I had stopped to think – I just leant over and kissed her. After that we were “going out”.

This time I was a bit smarter. I just worked out really nice places to take her and things to do! I suppose one would say it was a proper courtship. When I say “just” it actually took a bit of doing. That sort of planning did not come naturally or easily. I would spend the early part of the week thinking up somewhere to go and then 'phone up on Thursday night to formally ask her out.

In time Saturday night dates expanded to me picking Sue up from work early Saturday and Sunday afternoon. (at that time as well as studying medicine full time – and that is a very time consuming course – Sue was working eight hour shifts Saturday and Sunday as a nursing assistant, spending Saturday afternoon and evening with me, Sunday evening at church and the after church youth gathering, and then we would sit in the car outside her place until quite late. Sue slept through a few Monday morning lectures!

A year later we were engaged and November 1973 we were married. We have just celebrated our 40^th wedding anniversary, have four delightful children and really thank God for our wonderful marriage.

My Adventures with God : Back to Church

Back to Church

After a lapse of a couple of years I plucked up courage and went back to Turramurra Methodist church. This time it was social and peer contact that I was desperate for, so I went to the evening service where all the young people went.

The one thing I remember from the first service I attended: I noticed a girl. Yes it was the “across a crowded room” thing as in the song in old musical “South Pacific”. I though God said:“That’s the one you are going to marry”.

The second week I asked someone who she was. They said “Sue Wright”. Well it may be corny but I thought “Ah, my Miss Right”.

Well, being painfully shy it took several months for me to pluck up courage to ask her out on a date. But finally I did, she accepted, and we went out to dinner. As I recall it was the “early” sitting of the popular Pymble Eating House. We got on so well we talked through both sittings.

Before I go on let me say that now I know that if God gives a future goal or prediction one then prays “OK God, I’m in, what do you want me to do about it”. Sometimes of course he is going to make it happen and is just telling you the end so that you can hang in during the bumpy ride to get there. Other times he is letting you know what he would like you to accomplish by the normal methods yourself. I didn’t know that then. I didn’t know much about anything then – least of all, about women.

In my ignorance I simply told Sue that I was going to marry her. I couldn’t quite understand why she took it so badly! She had already agreed to go on a second date and being a person of her word she did, but she made it quite clear that it was to be the last date too!

Christmas holidays came and went. To my surprise when term started who should I see on the train but Sue. I was now in 4^th year engineering at Sydney University. Sue had been a first year at New South Wales University the year before but had just transferred to Sydney. It was a strange year. Sue was “going out” with a really nice boy from our church youth fellowship, John Derrin. Yet every day she was spending time with me on the train and having coffee with me at uni (I was on a cadet-ship and could afford to bribe her with free coffee). But you understand she wasn’t talking to me!

By the end of the year I was doing a lot of talking to God about it! Mostly along the lines that he had made a big mistake! I thought he kept saying that I would marry Sue; but from my viewpoint it did not look likely to happen. He also started saying I was going to be a minister.

By the start of next year (1972) I was working, it was fun, life was great, except no girlfriend and I was becoming convinced the “marry Sue” bit was a mistake

Meanwhile I had been helping out in the junior youth group at church, occasionally joining in the activities of the senior youth group – which were my peers, and studying for the local preacher’s exams.

The Methodist church was then (and still is) going through a “liberal” phase. The books I had to read for the local preacher’s exams were all by liberal theologians. These assured innocents like myself that, among other things, the “virgin birth” was a myth, Jesus was just a good man who taught wise things but didn’t mean to get himself killed, and certainly didn’t physically rise from the dead. His body was “still lying in some Palestinian grave” one author assured us. Prayer was “of course” just talking to your inner self. I did try to read what I could find of other theology books, but it seemed that the more letters the author had after their name (which I naively thought meant they really knew something) the more they doubted the Christianity I had been brought up to believe. Of course I know now that their doubt is their problem (possibly one should say “the sin that they have encouraged to control their lives instead of God”).

The other thing I noticed was this: in my younger days I had just read the Bible. Now I was being encouraged to read books about the bible. Soon it was a case of reading books instead of the bible. I thought I was learning more and more about Christianity when in fact I was being shepherded further and further away from it. It was the spiritual equivalent of someone leaving a lush well watered oasis and chasing a mirage further and further out into the parched sands of a desert.

One thing which helped me wake up to what was happening was being presented to the local preachers’ meeting of our circuit. These were crusty old saints who had no time for the liberal modernism of some of the ministers. One struck me to the quick, although he possibly never knew it. I don’t remember that he even said anything; I think he just looked at me. But in that look was … well something that shot me through. I think it was disdain, maybe pity, certainly it conveyed that I was, to him, a non-believer. It hurt, it was like a splinter under the skin that kept niggling at me. In the providence of God, it saved me.

To cut a long story short I did apply for the Methodist ministry. I was rejected, very kindly, on the psychological report that my diffident nature was better suited to dealing with machines than people. That was the second thing I had though God was saying to me that appeared to come to nothing. In a way that was a relief. I was “off the hook” so to speak and I could with a good conscience enjoy carving a career as an engineer, which was rather good fun.  

Morals Blog: MoreWorked Examples from Exodus

'No Murdering' explained ... in the rest of Exodus

Exodus 22: 2 “If a thief is caught breaking in at night and is struck a fatal blow, the defender is not guilty of bloodshed; 3 but if it happens after sunrise, the defender is guilty of bloodshed.

This is a really interesting example. I assume that, before the advent of electric light the essence of the event being at night or after sunrise is one of visibility. I don't think I am stretching things to say that in one case the defender had plausible grounds to fear for their safety or the safety of their family but in the other case the intruder was only trying to steal.

So on one hand this excuses killing in self defence where, to use modern idiom, a 'reasonable person' would have thought their own or family's life was in danger. And subsequent information showing that the defender's belief was in fact incorrect does not destroy this excuse.

On the other hand it makes the act of killing a thief merely to protect one's property “murder”.

At the time of writing this there was not so long ago a controversy in the U.S. on this topic. Roughly stated a man shot a teenager inside a gated community. His defence was that he challenged the youth whom he suspected of being there with intent to steal. He then thought his life was in danger from the youth and shot him dead. The teenager was unarmed and allegedly just taking a short-cut on his way home. The controversy was about the so called “right to stand your ground” and use lethal force rather than retreat in the face of threatened attack.

I don't want to join that controversy. But it illustrates that we do encounter modern situations where 'right' and 'wrong' need to be discerned. One can see that this example from Exodus could help us in this particular case.

Exodus 23:7 Have nothing to do with a false charge and do not put an innocent or honest person to death, for I will not acquit the guilty.

“judicial murder” is the modern term, and unfortunately history is replete with examples! Later in the Bible there is the classic case of Jezebel arranging for the false accusation, rigged trial and execution of Naboth in order to take possession of his vineyard. It is nice to see that God promises to avenge these abuses of justice.

So I draw two conclusions from these examples in Exodus:

1. God understands both the subtleties and also the harsh realities of the situations people face in this world. Sometimes killing a person is the 'right' thing to do. Sometimes it is an unfortunate accident. Sometimes it is an “accident” due to culpable negligence or criminal disregard for human life. Sometimes it is what we would term “first degree murder”.

2. Here following the Ten Commandments where there was the terse “No murdering!” there are worked examples to help us apply this. I think we will find in other parts of the Bible more information yet. I think that all in all we will continue to find that God is a great deal smarter than we give him credit for! Humans will over history face new moral horizons. A set of laws – as we have in most countries would be out of date in no time. Indeed parliaments spend their days modifying, updating and making new laws for just that reason. God has instead given us a way of understanding underlying principles so that we have the essentials to enable us to work at solving each new problem ourselves.

My Adventures with God 3. Life as a Lost Sheep

Life as a lost sheep

Yes even after all this I managed to wander away from faith in Christ, like the “lost sheep” which figure in both the Old Testament and Jesus' parables.

A year after baptism and confirmation I was living in Wesley College. It is a Methodist residential college for Sydney University. My parents were still overseas, and I was in first year engineering. I wasn't going to church; religion seemed to have just dribbled away. I seem to remember a lot of Sunday mornings spent at the city Leagues Club drinking and taking in the comedian of the week putting on the show with the jokes he couldn't use in the mixed audience that evening.

A year later again I was still at university but now sharing our old family home with my sister. Still no church. I didn't understand about “depression” in those days or perhaps I would have sought treatment. I just sat through most lectures half listening, half tossing up which would be the best way to kill myself. Weekend relaxation was sitting out in the garden with a half gallon flagon of sherry.

I was, as many students were, politically left wing, and a supporter of the anti- war movement. I marched in the Vietnam demonstrations. For those who remember Australia at that time, conscription came in and conscientious objectors were only recognized if they were total pacifists. Those like me who only objected to fighting in a particular war risked going to prison for two years. The allowable alternative, which I found acceptable was to go into the defence force reserves. They would only be called to fight if Australia were attacked and that I was happy to do. I chose the Naval Reserve. I was for a few years part of one of the engine room crews for the Reserve patrol boat HMAS Archer. It was small: 140 ton and 100ft long. It had very powerful V16 diesel engines, so it had a good turn of speed. The published figure I think was 24 knots. Not in the class of planing hulled boats, but in heavy seas they have to drop off the plane and crawl along. This sharp bowed, steel hulled craft could just punch through the waves. 

I will relate a story here about one incident on the patrol boat because it shaped my thinking in an important dispute I had later later with an Archbishop.

It happened like this. We had taken the patrol boat away for a two week exercise. By naval regulations we had to have a regular navy ERA (engine room artificer) in charge even though we had a reservist skipper. The skipper was a barrister in civil life, had a great deal of “presence” and was a Lieutenant Commander. The charge ERA was young, inexperienced, working class and only a Petty Officer.

We set out from Sydney. The skipper ordered a maximum speed. In the engine room we were regularly “dipping” the fuel tanks. I was at the bottom of the food chain but I heard one of our reservist ERA’s telling the young regular navy charge ERA that he must tell the skipper to slow down because we were going through too much fuel, but “Charge” couldn't front this barrister/ Lt. Commander.

I was on engine room watch keeping as we approached Mackay. We had drained the last drop out of the last fuel tank into the two little gravity tanks which fed the engines as we crossed the bar into the river. An engine failure then would have been disaster. We had made it, but only just. About midnight we tied up. Straight away we refueled all tanks. This completed the skipper immediately set sail. Now I didn't know these facts at the time, I read up on them later, but you NEVER draw off a ship’s tank that has just been re-filled. You give it at least 12 hours to settle. Otherwise the gunk that has been stirred up off the bottom of the tank during filling does nasty things to your engines. We had filled all five tanks. Then we sailed immediately out among coral reefs.

I went off watch and went to bed. I was woken up by a tap on the shoulder. What hit my awakening senses was the silence. There is never silence on a ship, always the reassuring hum of machinery. It was silent and it was dark. Our ERA who had tapped me on the shoulder said, “engine room, we’ve got trouble”

The story was that just as the ship was entering the Whitsunday Passage, with coral reefs on all sides one engine had failed. A clogged fuel filter was quickly discovered to be the cause and replaced. The Skipper to give him credit immediately changed course and headed for the open sea. By the time I woke we had lost both generators and both engines. We were “dead ship”, but at least safely out in the open sea.

In time we dismantled and cleaned the clogged components, got the generators and engines working, and after 36 hours drifting helpless we sailed under our own power but escorted by another patrol boat back into harbour.

The Skipper blamed the fuel company for giving us dirty fuel. They pumped it out and re filled our tanks. But I expect tests would have shown that the fuel supplied was not the problem. By the time we got back to Sydney the talk was that the charge ERA was being blamed.

Certainly under naval law he could have prevented it. On a naval vessel the captain is supreme. To refuse to obey his orders under (enemy) fire is a hanging offence. But in one thing the chief engineer can countermand the captain’s orders. If the captain orders a certain speed and the engineer calculates that that will risk running out of fuel he can say “sorry sir, we can’t afford the fuel we have to go slower” and he has the last word.

We nearly got into serious trouble because a young working class engineer could not exert his proper authority in the face of a formidable and socially elevated senior officer who was skipper of his ship. Hold that thought until we talk about the proper spheres of authority the Anglican Church gives to vicars of parishes Vs archbishops.

Back to the lost sheep story:-

So, I was now living on my own; depressed and desperately lonely.

They say “man’s extremity is God’s opportunity”. Well I do say “Thank you” to God that he took his opportunity.

With no one else to talk to for much of the time I started talking to God. I had a solid old car, and used to take long weekend drives out into the country. I would drive along talking to God as though he was just sitting in the passenger seat. With some trepidation I say that he started talking back. No, I don’t mean audibly – that is an auditory hallucination and yes I have talked to people with serious mental illnesses that have had those! No, I mean as a verbal communication inside your head. Oh yes I have also had to deal with people with mental illness who have had “voices” in their heads, and it was nothing like that! With mental illness the “voices” are dysfunctional. Many years after these events one youngster with a drug induced psychosis told me that voices in his head had told him to do things like sit in the middle of the road, and to try to hang himself. Another time one of my parishioners rang me from the psychiatric ward of the local hospital where he had been taken some weeks earlier by the police. He wanted to check with me because voices in his head were telling him to “kill the bad people”. (I raced up the hospital, told him that that voice was definitely not God, then persuaded his doctors in very definite terms that they needed to increase his medication!) No, when God started talking back to me, I do know it was not mental illness!

It was neither auditory hallucination nor dysfunctional “voices” of mental illness. I firmly believe it was God being very kind and giving me the thread I needed to hang on to to survive. It worked.

Some people who cared suggested that I should go back to church for the social contact. I resisted. True I had found (or rather been found by) God again, but church was a big step.

The breakthrough came when I went off on a road camping trip by myself – and came back two days later because I just couldn't take being alone any more …. That Sunday night I went back ... to Turramurra Methodist church.

Ratzach and Worked Examples

Are we ready to try applying all this? Let's have a go at the “No Murdering” Commandment

To state the obvious, the original Ten Commandments were not written in English. So our first task is to reduce translation error.

For a full discussion Google or Wikipedia will give you possibly more information than you want. The short-short version is as follows.

The Hebrew word used is רצח

(Ratzach ).There is no single English word which has precisely the same range of meaning. The King James Version of the Bible translated it as “Thou shalt not kill”. However “kill” includes a number of actions which Ratzach does not. This has led to miss-quotation of this command in discussion of killing by capital punishment and warfare, neither of which comes within the meaning of Ratzach. Modern translations translate Ratzach as “murder”. This is much nearer the mark, but is now slightly too restrictive. That is to say there are some things an ancient Hebrew would have called Ratzach which in modern English usage would not be called “murder”.

To avoid even more confusion I will follow the modern translations and use “murder”, but just keep at the back of our minds that it is a little broader – more like “culpable homicide” and that we will have to look throughout the Bible to find out what is and is not 'murder'.

Start with the “worked examples”

In one of my engineering subjects at university, for many different scenarios we our lecturer painstakingly went through the calculation method for each scenario with a worked example in class. When we came to the exam, there were all the problems we had already encountered in class, just with the numbers changed. Doing the rest was easy!

In the Bible right after the Ten Commandments are set out in Exodus 20, there are a large number of what look to me like worked examples illustrating the Commandments applied to different scenarios. I don't think it is meant to be an exhaustive list. That would not help us in the 21^st century. I don't think too many people are troubled by coveting their neighbours ox or ass, however coveting their car or boat might be a real temptation! So I think these worked examples illustrate the general principles of applying the Commandments using scenarios which may have been common at the time and still allow us to understand and apply the Commandments to situations that a 13^th century BC Hebrew couldn't have begun to imagine!

So what can we find in the way of worked examples for “No Murdering”?

Exodus 21: 12 “Anyone who strikes a person with a fatal blow is to be put to death. 13 However, if it is not done intentionally, but God lets it happen, they are to flee to a place I will designate. 14 But if anyone schemes and kills someone deliberately, that person is to be taken from my altar and put to death.

Things to notice: “schemes and kills someone deliberately” is a paradigm case of “murder”. Killing someone accidentally is in a different class. Capital punishment is commanded for murder. I am not claiming capital punishment is mandatory for murderers now, but one can definitely say it is not for bidden as “murder”.

Exodus 21: 20 “Anyone who beats their male or female slave with a rod must be punished if the slave dies as a direct result, 21 but they are not to be punished if the slave recovers after a day or two, since the slave is their property.

Things to notice: Even in a social milieux where a slave was the master's “property” killing them was a punishable offence – even if not attracting the death penalty. That has a modern parallel. “Its my body” is used to excuse abortion. If there is really a parallel between the sentiments “the slave is my property” in 13th century BC and “the foetus is my body” in the 21st century AD, then killing the foetus would still be an offence. Food for thought!

Exodus 21: 22 “If people are fighting and hit a pregnant woman and she gives birth prematurely[e] but there is no serious injury, the offender must be fined whatever the woman’s husband demands and the court allows. 23 But if there is serious injury, you are to take life for life, 24 eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, 25 burn for burn, wound for wound, bruise for bruise.

Things to note: This is used as a proof text by “right to life” advocates, however I think that may be an instance of trying to use the Bible for support rather than illumination. It seems to me to be singling out pregnant women for protection. Ordinarily if a bystander was injured or even accidentally killed during a melee it would (see v.12) not be “murder”. But if the bystander in question is a pregnant woman then the penalties are much more severe, with her death being punished as “murder”. I think in our time it is more relevant to considering war crimes, so called “collateral damage” and domestic violence than abortion.

Exodus 21: 28 “If a bull gores a man or woman to death, the bull is to be stoned to death, and its meat must not be eaten. But the owner of the bull will not be held responsible. 29 If, however, the bull has had the habit of goring and the owner has been warned but has not kept it penned up and it kills a man or woman, the bull is to be stoned and its owner also is to be put to death. 30 However, if payment is demanded, the owner may redeem his life by the payment of whatever is demanded. 31 This law also applies if the bull gores a son or daughter. 32 If the bull gores a male or female slave, the owner must pay thirty shekels[f] of silver to the master of the slave, and the bull is to be stoned to death.

Few points to note: In each of the above scenarios: the bull that kills a human is killed. The culpability of the owner is beautifully set out: Generally the owner not responsible. But the owner who had been warned the animal was especially dangerous and did not take sensible precautions was punished – possibly even by death. 

 In Australia at the moment there is debate over people keeping especially dangerous breeds of dog. Several people have been attacked in the street by 'Pit Bull Terriers” and some have been killed by these dogs. One can see a parallel with the case of the owner of the bull here. 

I have been watching a televised series “Air Crash Investigations” which examines real life airline crashes. In several instances the manufacturer or airline operator had been warned of a dangerous fault but had done nothing to remedy it. Then the fault had caused a crash in which many people were killed. This text might give some guidance on to what extent the managers who failed to act on the warnings are culpable.

NEXT POST … More worked examples from Exodus

Church Hunting - My Adventures with God Ch.2

                                         Church Hunting.

After failing baptism classes twice I got the message! I also had this sort of inner compulsion to take a serious look at other churches.

First up was the local Anglican church. A very pretty sandstone neo-gothic building just a few hundred yards from where I lived. The Adventist church I had attended was always full of peiople. I used to get there ten minutes early so that I could get a front seat. The Anglican church up the road was not like that. I did arrive ten minutes early and found no trouble getting a front seat, I was the only one there. Eventually maybe a dozen elderly people drifted in and sat right up the back.

The service was 'Morning Prayer” from the 1662 Prayer Book. Anglican readers may not see any problem with this. That, even a generation ago, was part of their problem! They did not see how foreign it was to anyone not brought up to it!

Certainly in the Adventist services we used books. One took one's own Bible and Hymn book, and there were spares for any who did not have their own. In the Anglican Church there were hymn books, so far so good, but there was also the Prayer Book. Definitely not, in modern parlance “user friendly”.

I did manage to find “Morning Prayer” - perhaps the page number was on the hymn board.

However the service is not contiguous in the Prayer Book. The collect for the day – is in a totally different part of the Prayer Book. Then there are the canticles. For instance after the first reading there is the heading TE DEUM LAUDAMUS … and the Te Deum canticle follows. After the Te Deum if you had time to read the minuscule print rubrics it says “or this canticle” and the Benedicite, Omnia Opera is printed. So old chums know that if the minister leads into the Te Deum then you read that and then flick over a couple of pages past the Benedicite. Or if he starts saying “All ye works of the Lord …” then you flick past the Te Deum to the Benedicite.

After the second reading the process is repeated with saying either the Benedictus or the Jubilate Deo.

Simple if you know it. Totally bewildering if this is your first time in an Anglican church! And if you are 15 years old: embarrassment unlimited!

But wait there's more! There was an incessant cycle of standing, sitting and kneeling. If you are brought up to that liturgy it is doubtless obvious when you should be doing what. If you are new to it, and worse right up the front where you have to continually turn around to see which of the three positions everyone else is adopting now it is 'embarrassment unlimited' squared!

At one point the minister came down and gave me a prayer book open at the right place. A kind thought, but it didn’t help!

Needless to say I did not go back !

However this inner push to search for a church was still there. I decided on a cunning plan. I would catch the train into the city and go to any of the large city churches where I could be safely anonymous. Oh, and I would sit right up the back!

I started doing this. Systematically I went round different denominations. St. Andrew’s (Anglican) cathedral, Central Methodist mission, Congregational, Presbyterian. I think I tried a more local Baptist church. They all seemed much the same. Well the trimmings were different, but underneath they seemed the same.

All this time I had a nagging inner push to try a particular local church. I held out resolutely against this intuition. I knew where the church was. it was at Turramurra (next station up the railway line) in the street that had the Masonic hall on the corner. I didn’t know what denomination it was, and I didn’t look. I just held out and kept going into the city where no-one knew me. This went on, I think, for about eighteen months.

Eventually I gave in to my nagging compulsion and went to this local church. It turned out to be a Methodist church. When I went in it was full. Oldies, parents, young children (the “youth” were absent only because they went to the evening service). I felt it at once: I was home.

From the surprised look on the minister’s face when I shook hands at the door after the service and said “I want to join your church” I may have been unusually forthright. After a pause he stammered that they would probably be having confirmation classes in the fall. A matron behind me was quicker and hurried to explain that I really should try the evening service since all the people my age went to it. In general, top marks to her, but in this case I wasn’t looking for young people, I was looking for a spiritual family. I had just found it.

I was baptised and confirmed in that church on 23^rd April 1967. I can fix that date because I have got out the certificate and had a look! I had just turned 18, and my sister Louise, who at that stage had chucked religion completely, came to the service. My parents and older brother were overseas (separately) stationed in Malaysia with the Air Force.

It may seem as though I was finally safely on the spiritual path. That is generally about the time young Christians get tripped up. If you have not read C. S. Lewis' quirky book about the trials of a new Christian “the Screwtape Letters” do read it!

Spiritual trials, pitfalls and disaster were just around the corner for me too.

Morals : Discussion on using the Bible cont.

Continuing my list of 7 things I believe are true and important qualifications when using the Bible as a moral compass.

4. God is super smart, so all the important things will be said so often in so many different ways so that even us dummies can get the message. There is some controversy over the second part of this. Probably academics express the topic as “the perspicuity of Scripture” Some will say one needs experts – say priests or TV evangelists or the Church hierarchy to explain what it really means. For an amusing exposé of this and other foibles of human religion I recommend Terry Pratchett's novel “small gods”. The other side of the academic argument takes the view that the Bible is written so that anyone can safely use it as a guide even though the greatest scholars can spend all their lives studying it and still not fully plumb its depths.

I say that the perspicuity of scripture follows from the character of God. If God wants humans to understand certain things, then given he possesses absolute intelligence and absolute knowledge, he will know how to get his message across!

Yes, before you accuse me of being simplistic: I do know about the 'deconstruction' school of thought. I just believe they are wrong!

Think about it: they even refute themselves. Deconstruction is largely derived from Jacques Derrida's 1967 work “Of Grammatology”. If I de-construct say his book and say that it has no intrinsic meaning and proceed to say that to me it means something else entirely, deconstructionists will doubtless get very annoyed, giving away that in practice they do believe that words have an intrinsic meaning.

The plain fact is that we use language to convey information. The whole point of being able to “speak XYZ language” is that we can understand what a speaker of that language is trying to convey and conversely speak in such a way that we can convey our meaning to our auditors or readers. Human society and cooperative endeavour would cease if that were not the case!

So I stick with this: words mean something, and mean more or less the same something to all people who use the dialect in question!

So I say:

a) it is just a given that God can get his message across to the average human using human language.

b) Given God's character of being beneficent and truthful he will do so – at least to the extent that people want to hear his message. For us modern English speakers, there are a number of reputable Bible translations in our language, so it follows that it is possible for us to safely use the Bible as a guide to the things God intended to convey by it.

5. God is a master of language, so he might use poetry, hyperbole, sarcasm and the whole range of linguistic tools that even ordinary humans use. Thus 'literal' interpretations are obstinate folly.

If I sound a bit harsh her it is because I have been driven to it by Christians who act as though God is not as smart as the average human being!

Even people of below the average intelligence manage to use figures of speech. It is part of language!

They may use hyperbole: “Everyone is catching the 'flu this winter”. They are not claiming that literally everyone is catching it. Their audience do not think for a moment that they are. Even if they do not know what the word hyperbole means, they still use it and understand it!

They may use sarcasm: “Well that was a clever thing to do” in response to someone doing something silly. Their hearers understand perfectly that they are actually saying that it was emphatically not a clever thing to do!

And so forth … the point is that God is smart enough to use figures of speech for added impact. Don't be crassly literal in reading the Bible!

Again humans don't always write in prose. Down through the ages poets have managed to use words to reach through to their hearers emotions. They have often brought about significant social change by so doing. It should then be no surprise that again God can do what humans can do with language. The Bible has bits that are poetry. Don't treat it as you would prose, you'll just miss the point.

Stories: yes even us humans – well admittedly the more talented ones! - use stories for didactic purposes. For a thousand years the epic poems of Homer sung by wandering bards around the Aegean fixed in the minds of each generation what it meant to be a Greek Citizen.

In recent history the effect of books, drama and films is too obvious for there to be any dissent from the proposition that stories can be a powerful tool. So don't be surprised that a lot of the bible is stories. Mostly it uses true stories, but Jesus made up brilliant yarns of which we only have the bare outlines in the “parables”.

But how do you interpret a story. Be it a parable, or a slice of historical narrative. I think myself that what we find in the Old Testament are very select scenes from history (edited by humans, yet under the providence of God, the selection God chose for us) which we are meant to learn from. we have to ask “what do we learn from this story?” not try to pull it apart to find proof texts.

What about the prophets? Was it them or God? Well the prophets frequently prefaced their words with “Thus says Yahovah” of course the false, cult prophets said the same. So we read of God denouncing the false prophets in terms like: “I did not speak to you”, “If you had really stood in my counsels you would have said XYZ instead” and frequently “you made it all up out of your imagination”. So the canonical prophets believed and claimed that the message they proclaimed was God's and not theirs and sooner or later their claim was recognised as being true. False prophets made similar claims but history proved them wrong!

Once again people (or more particularly Biblical scholars of a “liberal” persuasion) seem to think that God is not as smart as the average human! We use the saying “horses for courses” to indicate that one needs to pick the person suited to the needs of a particular task. What if God also knew this! At different times in history there were different situations each receiving a prophetic message tailored to that situation. What if God was smart enough to pick a prophet who was suited to that particular task. Then yes the message would be flavoured by things like the prophet's temperament, background, even family experiences. But far from making their message “human” these things merely fitted the prophet to respond all the better to God's leadings and deliver a message that was “from the heart” and simultaneously precisely what God wished to be conveyed.

For an example look at Hosea: His broken marriage and his continued love for his unfaithful wife enabled him to empathise with God's continued love for unfaithful Israel and then accurately proclaim God's appeal to Israel.

The point is this: we can rely on the prophets' messages as being from God. Discovering how it applies to our situation is the hard part and what we need to concentrate our efforts on.

6. Humans are at best fallible and at the worst lying, conniving, self deceiving, self-centred and nasty. So even the best people will sometimes misinterpret the Bible and the worst will use and abuse it to gain personal advantage. And there will be all stages in between.

No one is infallible. However in our everyday life that does not prevent us from relying on people.

We fly in aeroplanes, trusting the design and maintenance engineers and pilots (to name a few) for our safety. From time to time people in all these categories make mistakes that result in hundreds of people dying. We don't stop flying on that account but we do try to learn from these mistakes so that flying is safer in the future.

We should apply this model to using the Bible. Even good people will sometimes “get it wrong”. Jesus was continually pointing out how religious leaders in his day had misinterpreted the Bible. Our best response is not to throw the Bible away, but to learn from these and other human errors to interpret the Bible better.

Someone once said to me “True, figures can't lie: but liars can figure!” There are bad people in the world. Some of them twist the Bible to their own ends. Even Jeremiah back in the 7^th century B.C. voiced God's complaint: “How can you say, 'We understand his laws,' when your teachers have twisted them up to mean a thing I never said?” (Jeremiah 8:8 TLV translation). The danger is real. But again the wise course is not to give up on the Bible, but to observe due diligence.

7. Humans find being bad much easier and more attractive than being good, so our inner nature will be antagonistic to Bible teaching that tries to correct our faults.

The problem here is one of “intent”.

In some law cases, the intent of the accused person is important. Intent is a hard thing to prove or disprove, but in these cases the prosecuting and defence lawyers still try to do so. Often other words or actions by the person are examined for any evidence they might yield as to the persons inner disposition to the matter or person in question.

In understanding the Bible the intent of the reader or expositor is of great importance.

Because our human nature is frequently in opposition to godliness, even the best of us have a lurking desire to find in the Bible confirmation of what our human nature wants. This will make us blind to the Bible's condemnation of those things. The we assuage our conscience by seeing even stronger condemnation than really exists regarding other people's behaviour.

This human foible is one of the culprits in making the Bible seem unreliable to people who have seen or suffered from such hypocrisy. It's not the Bible: it's us! (that is at fault).

Yet again my solution is not to throw the Bible away. Rather when judging other people's interpretations of, or arguments from the Bible: examine their intent.

Even more importantly: we must check our own intent. If we go to the Bible for any reason other than to develop our relationship with God by learning who God is and how we ourselves can become more godly (and only second to that to instruct others) we have the wrong intent and that will lead us to misinterpret the Bible.

Morals: Rules of Evidence

Law courts (at least in the English tradition) have found it necessary to develop rules of procedure and of evidence over the generations to help ensure a 'fair trial'. So we should expect to need some rules for using the Bible to help ensure accuracy in developing morals from the Bible

Lets see if we can state some basics for understanding the Bible.

I want to start with seven propositions. I will then explain why I think they are both correct and necessary for sound interpretation of the Bible :

1. God, not “the church” or any other human system gave us the Bible.

2. God is beneficent, so the Bible is intended for our good not our harm.

3. God is transcendent, so there are lots of things we could not find out about God unless he revealed them to us and the Bible is his 'authorised' record of this self-revelation.

4. God is super smart, so all the important things will be said so often in so many different ways so that even us dummies can get the message.

5. God is a master of language, so he might use poetry, hyperbole, sarcasm and the whole range of linguistic tools that even ordinary humans use. Thus 'literal' interpretations are obstinate folly.

6. Humans are at best fallible and at the worst lying, conniving, self deceiving, self-centred and nasty. So even the best people will sometimes misinterpret the Bible and the worst will use and abuse it to gain personal advantage. And there will be all stages in between.

7. Humans find being bad much easier and more attractive than being good, so our inner nature will be antagonistic to Bible teaching that tries to correct our faults.

1. God, not “the church” or any other human system gave us the Bible. My fellow believers of a Catholic persuasion will disagree strongly, but hear me out. This doctrine may have sprung up as a reaction to the protestant reformation with its stress on the authority of the Bible, and its use of the Bible to pass judgement on certain practices of the Western Medieval Church. But the book of Hebrews begins:  “In the past God spoke to our ancestors through the prophets at many times and in various ways,  but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son” If the Bible records what God spoke, whether by prophets or by his Son, then it comes with his authority and his imprimatur. Whatever role “the Church” played in recognising real from counterfeit claimants for inclusion in the canon of Scripture and preserving and transmitting the scriptures it cannot alter or supplant the divine origin of the Bible.

This proposition is also a necessary one. If the Bible were the product of mere humans, even ones who claim to be “the church” then it could not command universal respect. It certainly could not claim to give us access to the ultimate standard of morals. It is only so far as the Bible is the gift of God to the human race that we can say it gives us access to the ultimate standard – God's own moral character.

2. God is beneficent, so the Bible is intended for our good not our harm. Jesus said  “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.” (John 10:10) The theme of God's beneficence and redemptive purposed for humankind are so prominent in the Bible that I don't think I need to present a case for it! But despite this biblical evidence, people indeed often religious people like the ancient Pharisees have made God out to be a kill-joy. Consequently people commonly think of the Bible as a book of burdensome rules. This is the opposite of the true position! Since God desires us to “have life and have it to the full”; his gift of the Bible to the human race is to help us have that life.

3. God is transcendent, so there are lots of things we could not find out about God unless he revealed them to us and the Bible is his 'authorised' record of this self-revelation. I hope it is self evident that there is a great deal about God that humans would have no way of knowing if God did not take the initiative and make himself known.

Is the Bible God's authorized record of him making his nature and purposes known to humans?

Look at it from the other end. If God cared enough about humans to want to relate to them, he would want them to know what he was like. Rather than “re-invent the wheel” so to speak by starting afresh with every generation and every individual, it would make a lot of sense to get something written down (once there was writing!) to serve all people generation after generation. So coming back to looking from our end, it would make sense to look for some writings that at least claim to be a record of God's revelation to mankind. The Bible does indeed make this claim repeatedly and consistently from beginning to end.

In this line of argument, the question is not “can one prove that the Bible is God's word”, but merely “is its claim to be God's self revelation better than any other body of literature that makes the same claim”. The Bible wins hands down!

More next post

My Adventures with God.: Ch.1

Why?

Why am I writing this? (Apart from: “It seemed like a good idea at the time”) .

I found at many stages of my Christian growth that hearing hearing other people’s experiences was a great help. True many of these were famous, but some were ordinary, nevertheless God had done something in their lives and reading or hearing about it helped my own relationship with God. I found the same thing in prayer groups and churches. Where people shared their experiences (well when they were honest about them) it was a stimulus to Christian growth.

I might be ordinary but God has done things in my life that I think are pretty special. I have had some adventures doing things for and with God that I think are tales worth telling and hearing and I've made some mistakes others could profit by hearing and avoiding. So here goes with the story of my adventures with God.

How It all began.

I can't think of any way to avoid starting at the beginning; it sets the scene for things that follow. But I will try to cover the mundane bits briefly.

A resume might include: David Lindsay Greentree born 4^th April 1949 to Isabel Florence Greentree (nee Cornwell) “home duties” and Ashton Edward Greentree “pharmacist” at the Sydney Adventist Hospital Wahroonga. Grew up in the Sydney suburb of Pymble attended Warrawee State Primary school and Asquith Boys High School.

A spiritual resume should add: Ashton and Isabel were second generation Seventh Day Adventists. Devout Christians but of a more ecumenical outlook than many in that denomination. Ashton served in the Air Force, then as a pharmacist at the Sydney Adventist Hospital but left this to return to the Air Force where he served until he retired. Ashton and Isabel were 'dis-fellowshipped' by the Adventists about the time Ashton returned to the Air Force. They then did not attend church but Ashton was very active in the Officers' Christian Union, and they retained a strong private faith.

How I failed baptism class … twice

How can anyone 'fail' baptism class? Well I'll tell you.

I was brought up on the 'King James' version of the Bible. Even for someone raised on it, the thee's, and thou's and generally archaic language makes it heavy reading. I was about twelve when a new translation into modern English appeared – at that stage only the New Testament but I got one and suddenly found that here was something I could read easily and understand. So I read it.

Although my parents had left the church, I got on my push-bike most Saturday mornings and went to church. Adventists are one of those denominations that do not believe in infant baptism so about the age of thirteen children are sent off to baptism classes. As a keen young believer I joined a class at about that age.

Adventists have some practices that they hold dear. Two of these are strict Sabbath observance – on Saturday not Sunday - and health food. The health food practice generally included vegetarian diet. My family and I suspect many others were not vegetarian in private, but most conformed in public. Adventists also took the Old Testament dietary laws seriously so pork was strictly forbidden. They also had strong views on the interpretation of the books of Daniel and The Revelation, but at that age I did not understand those so they do not feature in this story.

I had been reading the New Testament in modern English. I had seen how time and again Jesus was in conflict with the strict Sabbath-keeping of the religious people of his day. I also noticed that he was against their strict dietary laws, indeed in one speech he declared all foods ritually clean. I think these views must have become apparent in class. Perhaps I asked the wrong kind of questions.

The day for the class to be baptised in church I expected to be among them. Somehow I found myself culled from the group and sitting in church watching the baptism instead of being in it.

Not to be deterred I signed up again the next year for baptism classes. During these classes I got invited back to the Youth Pastor's for Sabbath lunch one time, and then to the Senior Pastor's. The big day for the group baptism arrived. Once again I expected to be in the group but instead found myself in the congregation just watching.

Now another strongly held doctrine of the Adventists was that they were one one true church. The Pope featured in far too many sermons for my liking as the Antichrist, but when I had questioned the senior pastor about Roman Catholics who believed in Christ He just answered with a quote from Revelation: “Come out of her my people”. I think from memory that they were not as hard on the protestant denominations – but they were still the “apostate Churches”. So where was there for a young teenager who believed fervently in Jesus but was rejected by the “true” church?

That was a problem! But my father had found fellowship with many sincere and devout Christians in the Air Force, and my brother was about to marry an Anglican girl, who seemed to me to be a Christian. Also about this time I was active in the Inter School Christian Fellowship and there was no doubting the faith of the students and teachers involved in it. So I went church hunting.

ANNOUNCING ....

A NEW SERIES

The blog series on spiritual advice for new Christians has finished, and has now re-edited and made available as an E-book on Amazon under the title "Colostrum : spirituals antibodies for new Christians".

I am now starting a new series for helping believers grow in their faith.

I found personal testimony of what God had done in people' s lives helped me. So now it is my turn to tell some of the things God has done in my life.

Coming soon: "My Adventures With God"

Ah, but just whose interpretation of the Bible do we believe?

(PS I have just returned from holidays. Although I said I would look at the Ten Commandments next, while I was away I worked out that there are a few more preliminaries I need to work through first!  So here goes...)

This is a serious problem. To re-phrase an old joke: “ask two Biblical scholars what a text means and you will have three opinions!” Matters get even worse with platform speakers and church leaders whose main claim to fame is having strong opinions. Even ordinary people generally have a pre-formed notion of what they would like the Bible to say. All these can and regularly do make the Bible out to say just about whatever they want!

Making the facts say anything we want is not confined to Bible study. For those who entered debating competitions at school you will remember that after the subject was given one often tossed a coin to decide which team would have to try to prove the statement true. The other team then had to prove the statement wrong. It is surprising how many convincing arguments you can invent in favour of a proposition even when you actually believe it is wrong.

All this has led many people to throw their hands up in despair and in effect say “It is simply impossible to be certain about anything”. Of recent decades it has seemed to me that churches have been swamped by clergy who at least in their preaching have said that there are no certainties, even about God. (Of course it is often these same people who have the greatest degree of certainty that their own group's views – from theology to politics – are right.)

On the other hand I have up to this point been making a case that God is our ultimate moral reference, and the Bible his official exposition of his character and purposes. So although I can see the problems I am not advocating that we should give up attempting to use the Bible.

To put it another way: on one hand I am against the idea that every moral problem can be answered and all argument settled by simply quoting a few Bible verses. On the other hand I am against the opposite notion that nothing can be settled from the Bible.

Let me give an example of a possible way forward by looking at how we humans have dealt with a similar conundrum.

Take the criminal law courts. Their role is to convict (and subsequently punish) the guilty and to acquit the innocent. Successfully carrying out this role is close to essential for their society to function. But courts face two problems in reaching a verdict. Getting at the “Truth”; and the effects of making a mistake.

The Truth is out there. Suppose Joe Blow is accused of killing Fred Nerks, either he did kill him or he did not. That is history, it happened how it happened. But this Truth is not generally accessible – the court can't go back in a time machine and watch everything that really happened. They have to weigh the evidence that the two opposing counsel have presented and make their decision.

The other problem the court faces is effects of making a mistake in what they think that truth is.

Punishing wrongdoers is, among other things, a practical necessary in order to maintain any human society, but the society will survive if occasionally wrongdoers escape. However punishing an innocent person is a thing evil in itself so it aught always to be avoided.

How do courts deal with these problems

If courts took the view: “the prosecutor says he did it, the defence says he didn't. We can't go back in time and see for ourselves so we can't decide” our criminal justice system would collapse, and society with it.

The social necessity for punishing wrongdoers is so pressing that we do not throw up our hands and say “It is simply impossible to be certain about anything”. We aim for the best 'certainty' that is in practical terms possible, and work with that. We formulate rules of such things as procedural fairness and of evidence because these have been found to reduce the incidence of wrong verdicts. We allow for the possibility of error by such things as allowing appeals and by giving the accused person “the benefit of the doubt”.

There are several points of similarity between the courts and moral philosophy where the courts point the way forward.

A justice system is essential to human society, so courts make ways to function despite all difficulties. Moral rules just are a fact in any human society. So we need to find ways to make good ones, despite all difficuties.

For moralists there is a truth out there: God's moral character is what it is and in relation to a moral question it does provide the standard by which to judge. But like the courts, deciding what that truth is in relation to a particular question may be hotly contested. We need to accept the idea of having to evaluate the evidence, possibly from several opposing or at least conflicting sources and make our best decision. Like the courts: we do may not have certainty, we just have “beyond reasonable doubt”.

In criminal justice, false positive results are more damaging than false negatives. This may apply t moralists. There is a famous dictum by one Judge Blackwell “I would rather acquit ten guilty murderers than hang one innocent person”. History has many tragic examples of religious zealots causing suffering by their rules. Biblical moralists need to consider that they may err, and make sure that if so, they err on the least deleterious side!

Courts have found it necessary to introduce rules as to how they operate. For instance gossip and rumours are frequently inaccurate, so there is a rule against hearsay evidence being admitted. One side of an argument often sounds right until the other side is heard: so accused persons have to be given a chance to answer the allegations against them. Biblical moralists will also need rules of interpretation to reduce the likelihood of making mistakes. I the next post I hope to say something about this.

1 Timothy 2 : Sept/22/2013

1 Timothy 2. Women in authority over men, flaunting one's wealth at church and God wanting everyone to be saved made this sermon quite exciting to prepare. I think I have produced a counter proof to the view that the prohibition on women teaching and having authority is a blanket rule for all time on earth.

Having been trained at Moore Theological college in Sydney, I have heard the 'proof text' 1 Timothy 2:11-15 expounded by theologians who did believe it was a blanket rule for all time in this creation. The lynch-pin of their argument was that Paul did not merely give a command, but drew it from the creation narrative in Genesis, which made it universal in its application. I think I have managed to prove that this thesis cannot be correct. That then leaves the field open for the other main position held by scholars who take the Bible as authoritative, namely that Paul was addressing a particular problem in the church in Ephesus, so the command is not universal.

Ten Commandments No "Use By" Date

 The Ten Commandments, as I said last time, are more of the nature of treaty obligations than law code. They are also of the form of treaty where the Great King has shown signal kindness to the prospective vassal and puts the treaty obligations more in the light of something the vassal should do in response to the kindness shown rather than fear of punishment. Having said this of course for vassal kings, performing their treaty obligations out of love was the “easy option”. If that did not work human overlords would not be slow to resort to force!

So this tells us something about God. It's very personal. God has a relationship with say ancient Israel as his chosen agent. He has a very personal relationship with the 'Kingdom of Heaven' inaugurated by Jesus. He has a personal relationship with the individual people who are members of it. The terms of the treaty (as I am describing the Ten Commandments) set out our obligations towards him, and how he requires us to act towards each other. So if a person wants to be in a 'treaty relationship' with God, they must subscribe to and obey the Ten Commandments. What if a society – even a 'multi-faith' one where not all members are in relationship with the real God – wants to enjoy the general benefits of God's overlord-ship. Going back to the vassal kingdom analogy, the prohibition against one king going to war against another and so forth meant that they all enjoyed peace and stability. Similarly for societies: if they adopt even just the treaty obligations of how people act towards each other, they will be better off.

My first conclusion is that even in a pluralistic society we should adopt the Commandments which deal with person-to-person interactions.

There is a second thing about the Commandments as treaty obligations rather than law code. Law codes are continually becoming outdated. As situations change old laws become obsolete, and new laws have to be drawn up. If the Bible presented us with a law code, it would have been obsolete millennia ago! (Coveting our neighbour's ox or ass is not much of a problem in the modern world … but coveting his or her car … that can be). But since the Commandments show the basis of a relationship with God and how people need to relate to each other for the common good, they are now timeless principles. Situations can change, technology can change, the world can change but the principles of this treaty obligation can still be carried out.

My second conclusion is that the Commandments have no 'use by' date. The flip-side of this is however that the principles have to be understood well enough that one can flesh them out into law code to meet these new situations and social conditions.

Next Post I will begin to work through how to understand the principle and then how to flesh it out, using the “No Murdering” Commandment and modern situations. That should be fun!

Philemon

Philemon 8/Sept?2013. A beautiful cameo. When the run-away slave of his old friend and convert Philemon meets Paul in prison and becomes a Christian How does Paul bring about a reconciliation. He persuades Onessimus to go back, but that is only one half of the relationship. Philemon is an important man, and the church meets at his house. Can Paul teach him the new Christian way to act and yet let him save face?

Hebrews 13

Hebrews 13 - Sept/1/2013. After the great picture drawn of faith, the letter ends (much like the other New Testament letters) with a call to live the sort of lives God approves of. But maybe that is the point: the proof of our faith is in how we live. And as a congregation of God's people, how we help and encourage each other to live for God is really important.

Advice About Churches

This part is not about heresies but about practical application of what I have covered so far to your local congregation and the group of congregations to which it is linked.

There are some churches that do have serious problems. If you go to one of those you will have to take care not become infected yourself!

Some will be infected with one of the heresies I have discussed. As long as you can keep yourself from absorbing that heresy God might want you to stay part of it because it is otherwise a good church for you to go to for the present: this side of heaven there is no such thing as a perfect church.

Others may in fact be harmful to an extent that you aught to leave.

A classic is the church that was at one time thriving, growing and effective for God. Then somewhere along the line they have taken the wrong road. In any one of a multitude of possible ways they have followed the dictates of sinful human nature instead of obeying Christ.

I have seen cases where people have let their church “brand” has become an idol: their motivation has changed from doing things because they are pleasing to God to doing things so that their church will survive or grow big or become famous.

Another dysfunctional church type is where the minister or “the leadership” (If people talk about “the leadership” of their church treat it as a danger signal!) become control freaks. Remember the quote “In essentials unity; in non-essentials liberty; in all things charity.” Well these churches allow no personal “liberty” and soon “charity” or Christian love is strictly reserved for those who slavishly obey “The Leadership”. Yes! There really are churches like that. They will seem friendly, welcoming, even kind and loving at first – but you will begin to see that this is conditional on your doing, thinking and believing everything you are told. Get out while you can! Your devotion and obedience belongs to God, not to any human – we humans, even the best intentioned of us, are all fallible sinners!

However, assuming the church you start to go to is a normal, ordinary but healthy church my advice is this:

First: be prepared to cut them a bit of slack!

This may sound strange but it is applying what the Bible calls “humility” which is a really important and really good attitude, and it is also being “kind” which is another action the Bible says we should always do.

The people in the church we go to will be “sinners” like us. They are also (mostly) God’s adopted sons and daughters like us. They will still have their annoying sides just as we do. Hopefully they are trying to let God change them day by day into someone that acts like Jesus just as we are.

So we need a tricky balance of being tolerant of things that we just happen to find annoying or that look a bit silly to us on one hand; and of helping each other to recognise and live up the behaviour God wants from his children on the other. It is a tricky balance, but at the start it is better to emphasise the “tolerance” bit.

I have pasted below an extract from C. S. Lewis’s book “Screwtape Letters” about what a new convert is likely to think when they first go to church. This is an “opposite sketch” supposedly written from the devil’s point of view – but Lewis is using this form to try to say some serious things:

  “MY DEAR WORMWOOD,

      I note with grave displeasure that your patient has become a Christian. Do not indulge the hope that you will escape the usual penalties; indeed, in your better moments, I trust you would hardly even wish to do so. In the meantime we must make the best of the situation. There is no need to despair; hundreds of these adult converts have been reclaimed after a I brief sojourn in the Enemy's camp and are now with us. All the habits of the patient, both mental and bodily, are still in our favour.

     One of our great allies at present is the Church itself. Do not misunderstand me. I do riot mean the Church as we see her spread but through all time and space and rooted in eternity, terrible as an army with banners. That, I confess, is a spectacle which makes I our boldest tempters uneasy. But fortunately it is quite invisible to these humans. All your patient sees is the half-finished, sham Gothic erection on the new building estate. When he goes inside, he sees the local grocer with rather in oily expression on his face bustling up to offer him one shiny little book containing a liturgy which neither of them understands, and one shabby little book containing corrupt texts of a number of religious lyrics, mostly bad, and in very small print. When he gets to his pew and looks round him he sees just that selection of his neighbours whom he has hitherto avoided. You want to lean pretty heavily on those neighbours. Make his mind flit to and fro between an expression like "the body of Christ" and the actual faces in the next pew. It matters very little, of course, what kind of people that next pew really contains. You may know one of them to be a great warrior on the Enemy's side. No matter. Your patient, thanks to Our Father below, is a fool. Provided that any of those neighbours sing out of tune, or have boots that squeak, or double chins, or odd clothes, the patient will quite easily believe that their religion must therefore be somehow ridiculous. At his present stage, you see, he has an idea of "Christians" in his mind which he supposes to be spiritual but which, in fact, is largely pictorial. His mind is full of togas and sandals and armour and bare legs and the mere fact that the other people in church wear modern clothes is a real—though of course an unconscious—difficulty to him. Never let it come to the surface; never let him ask what he expected them to look like. Keep everything hazy in his mind now, and you will have all eternity wherein to amuse yourself by producing in him the peculiar kind of clarity which Hell affords.

      Work hard, then, on the disappointment or anticlimax which is certainly coming to the patient during his first few weeks as a churchman. The Enemy allows this disappointment to occur on the threshold of every human endeavour. It occurs when the boy who has been enchanted in the nursery by Stories from the Odyssey buckles down to really learning Greek. It occurs when lovers have got married and begin the real task of learning to live together. In every department of life it marks the transition from dreaming aspiration to laborious doing. The Enemy takes this risk because He has a curious fantasy of making all these disgusting little human vermin into what He calls His "free" lovers and servants—"sons" is the word He uses, with His inveterate love of degrading the whole spiritual world by unnatural liaisons with the two-legged animals. Desiring their freedom, He therefore refuses to carry them, by their mere affections and habits, to any of the goals which He sets before them: He leaves them to "do it on their own". And there lies our opportunity. But also, remember, there lies our danger. If once they get through this initial dryness successfully, they become much less dependent on emotion and therefore much harder to tempt.

      I have been writing hitherto on the assumption that the people in the next pew afford no rational ground for disappointment. Of course if they do—if the patient knows that the woman with the absurd hat is a fanatical bridge-player or the man with squeaky boots a miser and an extortioner—then your task is so much the easier. All you then have to do is to keep out of his mind the question "If I, being what I am, can consider that I am in some sense a Christian, why should the different vices of those people in the next pew prove that their religion is mere hypocrisy and convention?" You may ask whether it is possible to keep such an obvious thought from occurring even to a human mind. It is, Wormwood, it is! Handle him properly and it simply won't come into his head. He has not been anything like long enough with the Enemy to have any real humility yet. What he says, even on his knees, about his own sinfulness is all parrot talk. At bottom, he still believes he has run up a very favourable credit-balance in the Enemy's ledger by allowing himself to be converted, and thinks that he is showing great humility and condescension in going to church with these "smug", commonplace neighbours at all. Keep him in that state of mind as long as you can.”

(from “Screwtape Letters”)

The Bible puts it this way in Colossians 3.12

¹² Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience.¹³ Bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. ¹⁴ And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity.

The other thing we need to extend to our fellow church members is the principal :

“In essentials unity; in non-essentials liberty; in all things charity”

So forget that you and they are on opposite sides in politics, or support different football teams. Look at Jesus disciples: one was a Zealot the other a Tax Collector. That is: one had been a resistance fighter trying to kill soldiers of the foreign army controlling their country; the other was an active supporter of this “enemy”. They would not have got far if they started talking politics to each other (unless of course each of them had left their previous politics behind once they met Jesus). But there they were both members of Jesus’ inner twelve.

Forget that they and you have different ideas on any of the many things devout Christians differ on, as the Bible says in Romans 14 which I quoted a bit from earlier:

 ¹ Accept those whose faith is weak, without quarreling over disputable matters. ² One person’s faith allows them to eat everything, but another person, whose faith is weak, eats only vegetables. ³ The one who eats everything must not treat with contempt the one who does not, and the one who does not eat everything must not judge the one who does, for God has accepted that person. ⁴ Who are you to judge someone else’s servant? To their own master they stand or fall. And they will stand, for the Lord is able to make them stand.

 ⁵ Some consider one day more sacred than another; others consider every day alike. Everyone should be fully convinced in their own mind. ⁶ Those who regard one day as special do so to the Lord. Those who eat meat do so to the Lord, for they give thanks to God; and those who abstain do so to the Lord and give thanks to God. ⁷ For we do not live to ourselves alone and we do not die to ourselves alone. ⁸ If we live, we live to the Lord; and if we die, we die to the Lord. So, whether we live or die, we belong to the Lord. ⁹ For this very reason, Christ died and returned to life so that he might be the Lord of both the dead and the living.

 ¹⁰ You, then, why do you judge your brother or sister? Or why do you treat your brother or sister with contempt? For we will all stand before God’s judgment seat.

Lastly remember that you are God's beloved "baby". Yes he wants to see you grow to maturity in Christ, but that will take the rest of your life. In the meantime so long as you desire to remain his child, you can count on him holding you safe in that relationship. As Paul says at the end of Romans 8: 

"I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from God's love. .... No power in the sky above or in the earth below - indeed nothing in all creation will ever be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord."

(final post in this series)