Category: Faith and Belief

The term ’Christian Nationalism’ has had a bit of air time lately. It’s a confusing term. It’s like saying a ‘religious pagan’. It is one or the other, it can’t be both.

I’ll start with a story – a bible story. There was a time when Jesus’ friend Lazarus was very sick, and his sisters sent for the great healer for help. The help didn’t come right away, so Lazarus died before Jesus got there. Everyone upset of course. Except Jesus.

“Let’s go see him”, he said. The sisters weren’t so sure.

“He will be stinking by now”, they said. They went to the tomb. Jesus called out to Lazarus, “Get out of there!” and out he comes, shuffling along as best he could – all wrapped up like a mummy.

Can you imagine it. I mean healing is one thing, but bringing someone out of the grave, days after the funeral folk have all gone home, that’s something else. People were amazed. Jesus demonstrating he was who he said he was – the sent one.

Not everyone was impressed though. The religious rulers certainly weren’t, alarmed more like it. They called a meeting to work out how they could stop him. They said, “if we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him”.

Let’s pause right there. “Everyone will believe in him”. They must have had reason to think that this was a real possibility, otherwise no need for alarm. I call this a ‘turning point’ in history – it could have gone either way, meaning things could have been very different. Now, we will never know if their prediction ‘everyone will believe in him’ would have turned out that way, but it is worth thinking about.

So they called a meeting and decided to stop him, to have him killed no less, and in a way that looked like it was in the ‘national interest’. A nationalist approach, because their reasoning was, as they stated: “If everyone believed in him the Romans will come and take away our place and our nation”. Clearly choosing nationalism over Christianity. The way of death over the way of life.

Jesus wasn’t a nationalist. He challenged such thinking with statements like this:

I predict that people will come from east and west, and north and south to sit with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob at a great banquet in the realm of heaven. Those who think the realm of God belongs to them will be thrown out into the dark where they will cry tears of bitter regret.    

The Gospel of Q (Q64)

This is from source material the gospel writers quoted, although they must have been a bit uncomfortable about it because they toned it down somewhat. Nationalistic thinking suggests God’s realm belongs to us and not them.

Jesus was born to a Jewish mother and raised in that culture, but he was actually from another realm. My favourite historian, Alan Kreider coined the term ‘resident alien’ and it is very fitting. Jesus grew up and worked in Nazareth, probably travelled with his uncle to the tin mines in Cornwall and business in other places – a resident and a traveler. However, his allegiance wasn’t to any country; it was to the realm of his father.

A father who had watched his children go wild, who had established a branch of the family that was supposed to do what he wanted but didn’t, until, finally, the sent one appeared. Not a law, not a commandment, not a prophet, but a son; part of himself. To live and teach what living as the father intended actually looks like. And bring a new understanding of who God is: a father; and who we are: his children made in his image. A father who has no favourites, and children who get along with each other.

Even though the religious people didn’t embrace this idea, thousands of ordinary people did. Particularly the Samaritans who didn’t share the Jewish passion for nationalism, and loved the idea of God being the father of all people, not just one race. It was the opposite of nationalism, it was a new identity and sense of belonging to humanity rather than a tribe. But the most powerful aspect of the idea was getting along with each other as family, rather than creating borders and barriers.

It was a new idea, and it included a radical vision. Actually a prophecy from centuries ago, that people will get along with each other, that swords will be made into plough shares, spears made into pruning hooks, and there will be no more war. As I said, a radical vision.

Not unlike Eisenhower, that tired old warhorse proposing a better direction for his country, reminding people in 1953 that for the price of one bomber you could have two fully equipped hospitals; and for the price of one destroyer you could build 8,000 homes. Sadly, people chose to bomb and destroy instead of heal the sick and house the homeless. His vision was for a better way – a Christ-type vision. He had seen the worst of war and suffering as supreme commander in WW2, but nationalistic pride made the vision look naïve and simplistic. It didn’t fit the culture of individualism, and avoidance of what they called ‘socialism’. Sadly, Christianity was compromised by patriotism and a culture of individual prosperity, and made to look like it was always that way.

Nationalism is subtle. So subtle we are hardly aware of it. Somehow it is in our DNA to think tribally; to orient our thinking into those like us, and those not like us. Nationalism is actually a corrupted sense of identity – seeing ourselves as a unique group rather than part of the human whole. The central message of the gospel is to change our mind about who we are, and to see ourselves as we really are. Related to each other in the best sense of the word, not strangers and foreigners.

I was hardly aware of dangers of nationalism, until I read a book titled ‘Farewell to Mars’ (Brian Zahnd, 2014). It affected me deeply, curiously enough, a passage from Huckleberry Finn took me back to my boyhood and took my breath away. I challenge anyone to read the book and remain unchanged in their thinking. It was written by a man who saw three-quarters of his congregation walk out of his church when he talked about the difference between belief in Jesus and the way of Jesus. One allows for nationalistic thinking and warfare, the other doesn’t.

The apostle Paul was hardly aware of it. He was raised and educated in the worst kind of nationalistic thinking – that unholy mix of religion and politics – and although he experienced a miraculous conversion and change of mind, he still revealed that Jewish ‘chosen by God’ specialness. Intellectually, he embraced the Jesus message, penning such seminal texts such as ‘all one in Christ Jesus … no Jew or Gentile, male or female, slave or free …’ and so on, but his cultural background betrayed him.

There was a time when the Jewish Christians were in dire straits – poor and starving. Paul took up a collection from people in Corinth, Galatia, and Macedonia and took it to the folk in Jerusalem. A wonderful act of charity, except he said they were – one translation has it – ‘duty bound’ to give generously, because the Jews had shared God’s blessing of salvation with them. Paul’s notion of Jewish specialness was still in place. Nationalistic thinking does that.

Which brings me to the Middle East today. Perhaps the worst example of Christian Nationalism on display. Good people deceived into thinking God has special, chosen or favoured people. Christians who have lost, or perhaps they never had it, the notion of God’s realm belonging to all people not just some.

And this deception not only builds on nationalism for one’s own country, it extends it to another – Israel. I had no idea how strong it was until being associated with men of the ‘bible belt’ in the US. In the words of one writer ‘five million Jews have successfully enlisted the support of fifty million Americans to their cause”.

I am not prepared to state the deception was orchestrated, but the link between Lord Balfour, the Rothschilds, Oxford University, J N Darby and a little known political shyster who, although demonstrably unqualified, wrote a bible commentary that went on to rival the King James Bible in sacred status – it makes me wonder. The Schofield Study Bible was the standard text in seminaries and its central end-times theology of Jesus returning to God’s chosen people in their sacred homeland became an article of faith. But more than that, the book promoted the idea that nations that bless Israel will be blessed, and those who don’t will be cursed. This single book was able to take a promise to Abraham regarding his family and extend it to a nation thousands of centuries later.

Curiously this deception doesn’t come from the most devout Jews, it comes from activists using religion to push a nationalist political agenda. Many Jews, especially those of the diaspora, believe that the establishment of Israel by displacing the people already there was a huge mistake. Albert Einstein for example, a Jew and no intellectual light-weight, said: “I would much rather see reasonable agreement with the Arabs on the basis of people living together in peace rather than the creation of a Jewish state”. Christian-type thinking, and certainly not nationalistic.

The idea of Jesus returning to a particular people – ‘The Jews’ – is fraught with difficulties. Apart from the logical difficulty of modifying the universal nature of Jesus’ mission and message for a single group, the real difficulty arises when one attempts to define who exactly are the Jews.

Will it include the people from the Northern kingdom who split from the Southern kingdom?
The Samaritans, descendants of Abraham but hated by the Jews?
The many refugees from Eastern Europe who became ‘jew-like’ as they joined the masses on their way to the new homeland after the war?
The Sephardic Jews with their different worship practices?
Israelis whose god is clearly not the god of their fathers?
Those strict Orthodox Jews fanatically keeping the law in other countries?

My guess is that Jesus hasn’t read Schofield’s Bible so he won’t have to sort out who is chosen and who isn’t from this diverse mix of religion, culture, and ethnicity. That event when it happens, is probably beyond our imagination, but I am sure it won’t focus on a single location or a single people. The last time he was with the Jews, he wept over their ignoring ‘the things which make for peace’ and being caught up in the things which make for war. And the people and their ‘city of peace’ being destroyed in the process.

“Are you anti-Jewish and pro-Arab?” Neither. I prefer we didn’t use this tribal language. It promotes divisions, and disallows calm discussion on how both can best get along without trying to destroy each other.

“So, what are you proposing, apart from this childish pacifist prattle?”

Yeah, it does sound a bit like that.

I guess what I am proposing is awareness. Being aware that our culture influences us more than we realise, and that the general direction of it will run counter to the grain of God and what Jesus lived and taught. And that with awareness comes choice. We can choose to accept the prevailing narratives, or choose to orient ourselves differently. More ‘other-centred’ than ‘self-centred’; more family than tribal.

And, if a single miracle by Jesus could have the learned people who saw it saying “the whole world will believe on him”, perhaps another miracle or two will do it.

But in the meantime, I will just live as though what Jesus said about who God is; who we are, and how to get along was true … and possible.

Also available on YouTube: https://youtu.be/LAuGnL09Txc

 

People often ask me “Which translation do you prefer?” I say “It depends”. A handy answer, for in addition to allowing some nuance, it gives me time to think.

It depends on where I am. If in my chair beside the fire, my preference is for the Lost Gospel of ‘Q’. The earliest known record of the sayings of Jesus, regarded as the source material for much of Matthew and Luke’s gospel. Material without any Pauline influence. I love the simplicity. Take the Lord’s Prayer for example: Father may your name be honoured, may your reign begin (Q34). And I love the directness; Those who think the realm of God belongs to them will be thrown out into the dark (Q64).

If I am not beside the fire, my phone is the way I read another translation, The Mirror Bible. I like its simplicity too, and also the extensive translation commentary and extended notes.

Take my recent meditations. The first of Paul’s letters written some thirty years after the followers of Jesus began to come together in someone’s home and encourage each other in their love for their teacher and what he said. Very little is recorded about them, but what is becoming clearer is how wide the network of house churches spread over much of Palestine, North Africa and Syria.

They needed encouragement, for they were living very counter-cultural lives. The term ’resident aliens’ is very fitting. They tried to appear similar to other residents to avoid the notice of any authority – church or governmental; yet their way of life must have appeared as though they were from another planet. Take the women’s concern for the widows and orphans, their care for the sick and suffering, the incredible healing they did by exorcisms, and the taking in of, to use that callous term ‘unwanted babies’. Coined by men, meaning unwanted by them. I bet the mothers didn’t think so.

Talking of the men, although a minority in number, their influence was significant. And if the record is accurate, they focused on the important matters of the fledgling church. Like circumcision. Paul states: Our Greek companion, Titus, survived the circumcision scrutiny and wasn’t forced to go for the cut. Some disguised Jewish ‘brothers’ secretly sneaked in on us to spy out whether he was circumcised or not (Galatians 2:3-4). Paul and his companions were determined to break down the barriers between Jew and Gentile, while other men were just as determined to keep the distinctions in place and disallow fellowship to those who had not been cut.

I mean, seriously. Two glaring gender differences arise from this fiasco described in the letter. Firstly, consider the travel in disguise; the scheming necessary to examine the Greek’s private part in no small detail; and the effort used by the other men to ensure the poorly disguised didn’t see what they wanted to see. Sure were focusing on important matters. For the men.

Secondly, one could say that the women had no skin in the game. Consider for a moment what the women were doing while the men were focusing on what men like to focus on. The women were attending to distressed and grieving widows. For in that society, the loss of a husband destined the widow to a very uncertain future, and taking on their care was no small undertaking. Similarly, the orphans. Those traumatised and abandoned children would need more than a little attention, as any parent would well know. That is in addition to the children already in their care needing the attention of these caring souls. For the sick, we think of doctors and hospitals; not so then. The already well-occupied women attended to those wounded, diseased or mentally disturbed. Just as well miracles happened, because their case-load was surely full enough without the demon-possessed in the mix.

In spite of this full case-load, we have the record of women taking Jesus at his word and showing such other-centered, self-giving love in that they would frequent the places the teenage slave girls, having been impregnated by their owners or raped by a Jewish man whose mind hadn’t risen above the anatomical cut, were often seen loitering in the hope a Jesus-follower would appear. Abandoning their child was distressing enough; leaving it to die in the communal pit was heart-rending. A grief eased somewhat by the assurance from a caring woman that her infant would be raised in a community where love is the guiding principle.

All this to point out the gender differences between the concerns and focus of the men who wrote the bible, and the concerns and focus of the women who got the Jesus movement well and truly on its way before the bible appeared.

Perhaps this is why I have been accused of having a ‘cavalier attitude toward the bible’. Mea culpa. My thinking on the above gender difference comes from material not in the bible, because the bible was written by men who I would regard as having a cavalier attitude toward women. An attitude they didn’t get from Jesus’ life and teaching. For, if we take my preferred translation: May your name be honoured and those who think the realm of God belongs to them; the game-playing over circumcision neither honours God nor frees them from being thrown out into the dark.

The women and girls, on the other hand, indefatigable in their efforts to love others, and with a life-orientation reflecting a fidelity to what Jesus taught, honours God their father. More than that, their lives declare convincingly that the realm of God belongs to all people. Cut or uncut; they were too focused on what really matters to care either way.

They didn’t fuss over which translation – perhaps we shouldn’t either.

I don’t know much about playing cards – I grew up thinking it was sinful. At church the other day a friend said “Well you play your cards close to your chest – I watched one of your videos; you’re a universalist”. He was not happy – clearly I had let the team down badly. Looks like I give church a miss for a while.

Seems like that’s not the only team I have let down. Another person accused me of having a ‘low view of sin’. I had to ask what it meant. “You speak as though sin doesn’t matter, and it does; it separates us from God”. I thanked her, but I think she would have preferred an argument. I am over arguments; or trying to convince people.

Discussion yes, but arguments no. I have never been so settled in my theology, my view of life, and overall contentment. It is as though all the big nagging questions have resolved into a beautiful coherent whole. That’s as good as it gets, so I don’t need to have everyone agree with me.

At least I have the Pope on my side. For it seems he let the team down too. Talking to a group of young people last week he said we are all children of God, that God is for everyone, and that ultimately all roads lead to him. Oh brother, the outrage! I hope the young people agree with him, even if the Christians don’t.

I should point out, I make a distinction between Christians and followers of Jesus, for I have come to believe they are not necessarily the same thing. Followers of Jesus started the movement, they believed in him, and took what he said to heart, then got on with living how he told them to. I don’t know if they had a high view or low view of sin but we can be sure they would have agreed with the Pope.

Something else happened last week, and the response from the Christians disturbed me. Thousands of pagers blew up; thousands of horrific injuries and several killed. In that intergenerational conflict, the Christians clearly side with the Israelis because, as they see it, God is on their side and want the Jews to win using any means possible. They have long discarded that quaint but naïve notion of loving enemies, and picking sides in that complex situation is easy for them. They called it ‘masterstroke’ for justice. And, having dismissed the Pope’s statement about ‘we are all children of God’ as old man drivel, they found a smug sense of satisfaction in the killings.

It could be old man drivel, but it’s probably inevitable that believing in the ultimate restoration of all things and a low view of sin go together. Strange bedfellows; troublesome offspring. At least for most Christians. And I think it is their high view of sin that leads them to think this way. They can spot sinners a mile off and feel free to pass judgement thinking God has favourites. This allows them to be outraged at the Pope, and gleeful about the carnage. Doesn’t that strike you as strange?

Perhaps their high view of sin needs examination. Sin is understood as ‘missing the mark’ but I think it is helpful to go a bit deeper. Sin is to believe a lie about yourself. The Greek word for sin is ‘hamartia’, from ha, negative or without, and ‘meros’, portion or form, thus to be something other than who you were meant to be. An inauthentic, disorienting and distorted identity. So, to repent, meaning to change our mind about who we are to a child made in the image of the creator, frees us from this error and opens up a new horizon of possibilities. It may look like a ‘low view of sin’, mainly because sin has been made into something far more pervasive and powerful, than it actually is. So powerful it makes Jesus’ sacrifice, resurrection and triumph over sin and death seem inadequate.

Sin being viewed as something we are born into, and something that defines each of us as sinners, it is therefore something we need ‘saving’ from. Hence the idea of salvation, from the Greek word ‘soteria’ meaning deliverance from harm made possible by the expressed belief in Jesus. If one doesn’t do this, according to this high view of sin, one suffers the punishment of hell, which actually is worse than death because one suffers forever. So much sin the fires never go out. Sounds extreme but there you go.

However, the word ‘soteria’ also means ‘deliverance from sickness or disease, so if one takes the deeper notion of sin being a distortion of identity, that needs healing not punishment. The early church understood this. The story of Jesus and his triumph over sin and death meant they were delivered from an error in thinking and assured of an afterlife. Their new identity as followers of Jesus freed them to live better lives; ones characterized by their getting along with others, even people who didn’t like them.

What started out as the greatest force for good in people’s lives was changed under Constantine and church leaders keen to curry his favour. The church leaders’ capacity to define who was and who wasn’t a sinner was not questioned and life became a constant battle of good versus evil, the church against sinners, leading to the followers of Jesus being persecuted and massacred – by Christians. They cast sin to play a leading role in the grand drama of life. A role that has hijacked the narrative that Jesus proclaimed and promoted, to one better suited to the Roman Empire to begin with, and empires of various stripes ever since.

My thinking on this topic has been influenced by exploring the early church beyond the biblical narrative. One thing I have had some difficulty coming to terms with is the way Paul is viewed by others at the time, both him as a person with little respect for those who didn’t share his views, and his writings that were seen to pay little regard for what Jesus actually said. Many critics propose that Paul laid the groundwork for the eventual rise of the Christian church and the demise of the Jesus followers. Simple life belief and practice was slowly overshadowed by complex (for the illiterate people of the time anyway) ideas of sin, atonement, salvation, and judgment. Ideas that led to the notion that sin makes God angry and turn away from us, that we are all sinners, born that way, so we have to deal with it the best way we can. Mostly, as it turns out, by grasping lengthy theories rather than embracing the notion we are all God’s children and that everything will be made right in the end. A notion that enables ordinary people to live like family rather than tribes.

I have seen what it looks like when people live like tribes instead of family, and it is not pretty. In my various mis-guided missionary-type wanderings I have spent time in the highlands of Papua New Guinea, regarded as the most extensively evangelized country on the planet, and yet still lawless, corrupt and virtually ungovernable. Similarly, I have been in indigenous communities that have had a mission presence going back a century or more, now characterized by violence, abuse and despair.

It seems to me that when nurses, teachers, police and missionaries have to live in razor-wire compounds to serve in each of these communities, it is a pretty clear sign the central tenet of Jesus’ teaching of getting along with each other has never taken hold. And I would suggest had they been presented with a gospel that changed how they saw themselves and the way they treated each other, things could have been different.

There you have it. I have shown my hand. No ace up my sleeve, for this isn’t about winning or losing. I don’t know much about playing cards, but I do know my preference is for hearts over clubs. I think the Pope would go for that too.

In trying to defend the claim that men can use the bible as a justification to treat women badly, I was accused of ‘cherry-picking’ verses from the bible to suit my own theories. Mea culpa. To do otherwise is foolishness. The accusation was followed with the usual question: “What gives you the right to pick and choose what parts of the bible you want to believe?” I say the right of intellectual inquiry, and then add, the record of what Jesus did and said about God is the most accurate portrayal of him. Any text that contradicts this portrayal becomes suspect, clearly not inspired, and likely to misrepresent God. Much of the Old Testament does this. It portrays God as gods were always portrayed at that time. To be sure, it was one god, not one among many, but presented as a god-like figure nonetheless; needing to be kept pleased or bad things will happen. Hence the prevalence of the word ‘mercy’.  

Keeping the gods from becoming angry required sacrifice. And, of course with the sacrifice idea there must be a priestly class to administer it, an intermediary between the worshippers and their object of worship. It appears that by the time Jesus arrived, the priestly class had so corrupted the sacrifice idea, they had lost sight of the beggars ‘at the gate’ going hungry while cart-loads of meat were available. He was not happy, and there isn’t any evidence his father was either. Nor is there much evidence the whole sacrifice order was God’s idea to begin with. Lots of scripture to suggest he took no pleasure in it, rather he accommodated it as the patient father of wayward children tends to do. Likely the idea of sacrifice originated from the God-as-Deity idea so prevalent in the OT and the model that Jesus changed with “Our Father…” All done away with under the new covenant of grace.

While the slaughter of animals was done away with, the priestly class needed something to help them maintain their intermediary role, and they found it in the bible. It gave them authority, if not from God, at least from what they claimed was ‘his word’. They had willing collaborators in the translators to ensure ‘the word’ was saying what they wanted it to say, and later introduced the notion of ‘inerrancy’, meaning it had no errors and thus could not be challenged.

But challenged it was. The Eastern Orthodox church, for example do not have the Western church’s high view of the ‘sacred’ texts. They view the Old Testament as a library of Hebrew writings; poetry, history, hymns, prophecies, all vital in their capacity to point to God’s work in the earth, but certainly not error-free. For the orthodox, difficult passages that so demean women or are overly triumphalist (slaughter of the enemies) are readily dismissed as the writings of a group of scribes attaching God’s name to their own ideas. Often these scribes have an ulterior motive, one that suits either themselves as individual men, or their nation to have it represented as one with God on their side. 

In my view, groups of scribes could have wanted to copy their neighbours in this sacrifice idea (anything to make the gods happy) and wrote it as ‘law’. The people even dragged the god of Moloch through the wilderness for 40 years, suggesting some attachment to their neighbour’s gods.

Not convinced? Try examining the topic of rape in scripture. It puzzled me to read that in Jesus’ day, Jewish men were able to choose young women and have their way with them with impunity. Perhaps not surprising, given women had no more rights than infants, foreigners and handicapped people. The law on adultery gave women some protection, but the law on rape is inconclusive and confusing to say the least. I rely on perhaps the best scholar on gender and Hebrew law, Harold Washington who concludes: (on Deuteronomy 20-22) “The laws do not interdict sexual violence, rather they stipulate the terms under which a man may commit rape”. I ask you: “God-breathed?” Consistent with Jesus’ approach to women?

We Christians should not be defined as ‘people of the book’ such as Mormons, Muslims and Jews. For sure Jesus had high regard for the ancient texts, but it is interesting to note that his regard was for the words of the ‘living oracles’ not necessarily what is recorded. There must have been good reason for the Word to become a living person pitching his tent alongside ours. And good reason for the slaughter of animals as appeasement to cease forever after the ‘once and for all’ sacrifice.   

Yes, we have to cherry-pick. To do otherwise is to assume all verses are of equal value, all ‘God-breathed’, sacred, and inerrant. Good luck with that idea. The euphemism ‘difficult passages’ doesn’t explain how out of character such actions are for a loving God. To reconcile much of the misogyny, the nationalistic triumphalism, the downright harshness on non-Jewish people with what we see in Jesus is not just difficult, it is impossible. Cherry-pickers know this and don’t even try. They are for higher ideals, not the low-hanging fruit of ‘but the bible says …’

Cherry-pickers become good fruit inspectors. They know, for example, that dreadful things have happened because the book said they could; war, crusades, inquisitions, slavery and more, in other words bad fruit. Rotten to the core, and fruit that must be discarded. They know what good fruit looks like, evidence of changed lives demonstrating the values of self-giving, other-centred love in their interaction with everyone, including people who don’t like them and are not like them. They live in a glorious freedom because they are not bound by a book; they have gone beyond that to another writer: the author and finisher of their faith.

Cherries anyone?

See video: Did God really say that?