Sunday 15 November 2009

Recurring fault lines

If anyone does read this sorry for the typos, and this was written late at night. I may refresh it later.

I was sitting in a pub joking with a friend of mine around a year ago about recurrent themes in our lives. I was joking with him about some patterns in his life, and he was joking about patterns in mine. He asked me, if I had been banned yet from preaching at my current church. Not yet, I stated honestly.

Well, that conversation was about a year ago, and I was banned again from preaching and being a house group leader in my current church about six months ago. Of course I should not really publish this, because though this is not really created to be read it is out there (I could make it private but I do not in case God can use it.)

In the Importance of Being Earnest, Jack is told by Lady Bracknell "To lose one parent may be regarded as a misfortune to lose both seems like carelessness" I kind of feel to be banned once may be considered a misfortune, but twice seems like carelessness.

There are various explanations for this, one is the idea that there is no smoke without a fire. I told my current church leader my previous church experience, he almost certainly also got it on the grapevine, and well there is no smoke without a fire.

Secondly, I do believe it is right to challenge that which is wrong, the phrase that "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing." (attributed probably incorrectly to Edmund Burke) calls us to act. While the New Testament presents God as a God of grace and love, Jesus fell out with the religious leaders of his day and ended up getting crucified. He was quite merciless in his criticism of them. Admittedly it is John the Baptist, not Jesus, who refers to the Pharisees as a brood of vipers in Matt 3v7. However Jesus calls them this in Matt 12, and in Matt 23, indeed in Matt 23 Jesus says of the Pharisees and Teachers of the Law.

33"You snakes! You brood of vipers! How will you escape being condemned to hell?

and also pronounces woes on them and calls them hypocrites.

You could say from this, and I mean it with no disrespect, that we all have repeating patterns in our lives, even Jesus.

Joseph got thrown in a hole by his brothers and then into slavery, because of his multicoloured dream coat, and their jealousy of his success. But good old Joseph, works himself up, and again becomes Potiphar's favourite slave. But Joseph, ever the golden boy, behaves himself. However, Potiphar's wife does not, and he runs away from her, and leaves his cloak.

Just as in the first story the coat was part of the lie, look at his blooded coat, he must have been eaten by wild animals (no you sold him to slaves), so now the cloak starts another lie. He tried to force himself on me (you wish).

So great one Joseph goes straight to jail.

There is a pattern.

We see David and his issues with women, that are never resolved (when he was old despite the fact that he had many wives they had to find a young virgin to keep him warm). Saying that the way that David got on with his wives that is hardly surprising, Michal he stole from a happy marriage and he never loved, Bathsheba, he murdered her husband, etc... Hardly a recipe for wedded bliss.

Jacob lived with trickery in the family, tricking his brother out of his birthright, getting tricked into marrying Leah rather than Rachel, tricks over the sheep, and tricked over Joseph (see above).

Moses never made it to the promised land, he always tried to do things his way rather than learning to trust in God.

Bonnie Tyler wrote in the song Holding out for a Hero,

Where have all the good men gone
And where are all the gods?
Where's the street-wise Hercules
To fight the rising odds?
Isn't there a white knight upon a fiery steed?
Late at night I toss and turn and dream of what I need

We live in a flawed world with flawed people in it. We live in a world where there is only one perfect hero, and he did not come as a white knight upon a fiery steed.

One of my returning themes is the feeling of being cheated, that my Sunday School heroes all turned out to be so flawed. Particularly David the giant killer who turned out to be a lady killer.

We want heroes. One of the biggest issues that we face today is that need for heroes in the church. The problem is we do not have heroes on this earth who we can follow unquestioningly instead we have fallen people. There is only one who is perfect, Jesus.

It seems to me that there are basically two main options of how we can respond to this. The first is that we can just pretend that human beings are all okay really, that are leaders are heroes and close our eyes to their weaknesses. The problem with this is that meanwhile since they are not perfect they make a mess, some more than others. Very often this becomes unsustainable until we hit a sudden point of realisation of what has been true all along, and not only that we have given them a license and therefore opportunity to sin, and where there is an opportunity you will find sin.

The other choice is that we can actually face up to the fact that we are not perfect and try to develop a theology that can live with it. A theology that does not pretend, but does forgive. That seems to me to be the only valid option if we are to walk truly with God and man.

At the heart of this we need to acknowledge that we are not perfect either, that we have recurring fault lines.

Now with the help of the Holy Spirit we can pray that we will learn to overcome them. However, some of these run deep into our character. With Joseph some of his problems were about a lot more than his spirit, but involved his dress sense and the fact that he was physically attractive. That does not mean that he did not have faults, he was perhaps a little vain and conceited, but to note that this was mixed in together with the whole of who he was. Such things are not just going to change over night, and I do not believe that God wants to destroy our character (and just make us perfect) but instead God wants to change us.

Therefore how do we move on, in a world of recurrent fault lines.

Firstly, we acknowledge that we are all human and all flawed. That includes admitting our own faults.

This is not about a passive acceptance, but being real.

Jesus died on the cross for our sins, surely we can forgive those who sin against us - even if they are Christian leaders.

So why did Jesus call the Pharisees a brood of vipers?

Part of the problem is that God does not call us to passive niceness. We do not just say, well that Adolf Hitler, appears to be doing some not very nice stuff, but heh I forgive him. No, sometimes we have to stand up and be counted, both in the world and in the church.

There was an article this week about a boy who raped again. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/8354762.stm One of the reasons the judge gave in not giving the boy a firmer sentence was that the Christian family of the victim had forgiven him. The BBC article comments that the views of the victim's family should not influence the sentence.

It is right to forgive, it is right to show mercy in who we treat people, but we should as the article states have a view for the victim, and to extend that to others who may be victims. I uphold the Christian perspective (there are other Christian perspectives) that prison is not there is to punish people for sin, but to prevent sin, ultimately God is judge and punishment belongs to Him. Prison works as a deterrent so people will not commit crimes, and locks up people who otherwise would commit crimes. Forgiveness therefore is not the issue (there does become an issue of forgiveness when obviously someone is no longer a threat and there is no deterrent value in holding them in prison and yet they have in the past done something awful, however that is a different issue).

Forgiveness does not mean passivity. Forgiveness though does mean love.

So back to the topic, how does that impact on how we should behave towards one another, particularly those who have hurt us?

I think the first thing to note is that God does care for the victims (which is why he opposed the Pharisees) what is interesting though is that nowhere does God oppose the Romans, who arguably were far worse. I believe there is a simple reason for this. The Romans were outside of God's people.

Therefore there is a simple rule, to those outside of the Kingdom we bring God's light. Since they do not know God's law, and do not acknowledge God as the lawgiver and saviour then there is no point about pointing out their poor behaviour. They may be being true to what they believe. They may need warning of the consequence and certainly need to be told that there is a saviour. Again that does not mean that we do not stand for the victims, it is just more complex. A pragmatic approach is necessary for those outside the Kingdom, if we can do good by calling them to good lives then there is a case for doing so. However, if like the 1st Century Romans who did not acknowledge God then, it was hardly going to do any good. Jesus of course made the ultimate point about the injustices of the Roman system. His death on the cross demonstrated the ultimate injustice of the Roman justice system.

However for those within the Kingdom, who bear the name, a certain amount is expected, and those who claim to represent God as His leaders have a particular responsibility.

However, that does not remove our responsibility to forgive and to love. Holding both the call to forgiveness and the call to repentance together is difficult, but more than anything we need the humility to remember that just as the Pharisees and fault lines so do we, and we need God's mercy as well.

It would be great to be able to end with some great conclusion that solves the problems, however that is not possible, we live in a world of recurring fault lines in ourselves as well as others and will do for as long as we live on this earth.

Therefore we are called to forgive and love, even as we struggle and protest.

However, one thing we can do and must do is pray both for ourselves that we will have the love and forgiveness and also for others. Prayer is not an opt out, but an opt in, it is not pray and do nothing, but pray and bring God's love to a hurting world, both in loving the hurt and standing up against those who hurt in a loving redemptive way.

No comments: