No longer here

As of Feb 2022 I stopped using this platform.

I've transferred all the past material and will write new stuff on Matt's Opus.

--Matt.

I reject the idea that this was a harmless prank, and hope you do to

Facebook's infinite scroll led me last night to a video of a woman being unclothed in public by her boyfriend. But it was all very funny and just a harmless prank … wasn't it? The scene is a beach and the boyfriend provides helpful commentary as he films his girlfriend on his phone. He has swapped her new bikini for one that dissolves on contact with water. She doesn't know it, but after he encourages her to go for a swim she soon finds out … as do the other people swimming around her, and the 25 million or more people who have watched the video.

Now I can imagine that in a respectful romantic relationship, dissolving swimwear could be quite fun. In private, even if one party were tricked into wearing that swimming costume, it may be playfully intimate and nourishing for both players. Could become a cherished shared memory in that relationship.

But what is depicted in this video is something quite different.

Not only has the boyfriend tricked the woman into wearing the swim suit and cajoled her into the water, he has done so in public with the explicit aim of embarrassing her. There may be some women who love such attention. It is even possible that she was an accomplice rather than the victim of his prank. The whole thing could have been staged. But that is not how the video is presented.

If we take the video at face value, then she gave no consent. No consent to being unclothed in public. No consent for the scene being recorded. One wonders whether she gave any consent for the video being broadcast publicly.

I can imagine the boyfriend defending himself "But she was OK with it. She smiled at the end. She knows I am a bit of a prankster. Just a bit of fun." I'd like to know whether they have the sort of relationship in which she could honestly say "I did not like that" without risking his anger or dismissive rejection. Where is her voice in this video? Deliberately muted. What she thinks is unimportant. Just as long as she is gorgeous and smiles for the camera.

Does the boyfriend have any idea of the abusiveness of this "prank"? Does he realise that every time the video is watched the woman's embarrassment is repeated? Does he realise that this video will now be stored in thousands of voyeurs' private collections for them to show their friends and wank over for ever? If the couple break up, will he re-issue a revenge porn edition with more abusive voiceover? How many other people will edit new versions of the video with more lewd narratives? How many other "boyfriends" will be inspired to repeat the abuse against their own partners, under the delusion that this is just normal? How many times will that woman be approached on the street by people who have seen the video and ask if she'll strip off for them too?

Like millions of others, I too watched it … or most of it anyway. I am a male who has been taught to desire that particular body type and I hoped, with the naivety that comes from sexual desire, that it would be rewarding to watch. But I am also a researcher in the field of human trafficking. In that sad social space, men often coerce and abuse women for their own enjoyment and financial gain.

The boyfriend filming this bikini prank would most likely to be horrified to be compared to sex traffickers, but the underlying assumption is the same -- that women are objects for his pleasure and personal gain. I'm not sure if he earns any money from this video, but he certainly gains status among others who make that same assumption. On "blokey" websites he is lauded as a clever dude, able to trick gorgeous girls to get naked at will.

This video exemplifies one of the deep problems with today's masculinity: the assumption that women exist for our amusement.

The issue is not, however, simply gender-based. I would not be surprised if the person who produced this video would just as easily distribute recordings of embarrassing pranks with male victims. Coercing others for amusement may well be a common mode of operating for him, reflecting a posture of disrespect. I don't know him, and can't make any informed judgement about this particular case. But I can see a common pattern of unkindness in our world, one that takes advantage of current communication technologies to spread unkindness to larger audiences than were ever possible before. At its core this is a refusal to view each person we meet with dignity, and a rejection of the Golden Rule about treating others as we would have them treat us.

Is dying for your friends the greatest love?

(Image from a Weslyan church group study)

In John 15:13, Jesus claims that there is no greater love than to lay down one's life for friends.

I disagree.

What's more, I think that Jesus' own actions show that his claim was wrong. His actions show an even greater love ... because Jesus laid down his life for not only his friends, but for the whole world. Seems to me that Jesus voluntarily sacrificed himself not only for those close to him, but even for those who consider themselves enemies of God. Dying for your enemies is surely a greater (or deeper?) form of love than doing so just for your friends!

As Paul commented in Romans 5:8, "God demonstrates his own love for us in this: while we were still sinners, Christ died for us". Love is not primarily shown through what God does for friends but what God does for enemies.

So John 15:13 is wrong!

But wait! For those committed to Biblical inerrancy there is another option. What if Jesus demonstrates a God who has no enemies? That aligns with the implications of Matthew 5:43-48, from which we learn that God loves even those who might consider themselves God's enemies. Even if a person thinks that way, God treats them as friends ... and Jesus willingly dies for all of God's friends. In which case we could read John 15:13 this way: "Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. And by the way, from God's point of view you are all friends."

Embracing Chaos

Chaos and Order: a visual puzzle in stained glass

I read yet another Christian thought-for-the-day piece this morning that celebrated God's ability to bring order out of chaos. Made me wonder why chaos gets such a bad rap.

There is a popular strand of thought that sees order as good and chaos as evil. In religious circles that thought is extended to position God as the lord of order and the arch-enemy Satan as the presumptuous lord over chaos. But surely that's not the Biblical view?

God is Lord of all – Lord of both order and chaos.

Certainly, God created the structure of the universe out of the formless void (Genesis 1). God provides physical  boundaries so that the sea stays in its place (Jeremiah 5:22). Gravity so that the stars stay in their place (Psalm 8:3). Psychological boundaries to guide our personal growth – like the Law, which acts as a kind of tutor (Galatians 3:24).

But God also created the Flood (Genesis 6-8), deliberately caused confusion (e.g. Genesis 11:7) and watches over a world dominated by entropy (Romans 8:20-21). God can calm the storm (Psalm 107:29) just as Jesus did (Matthew 8, Mark 4, Luke 8), but God created the storm in the first place (Psalm 107:25)! Jesus raised several people from death, but God had allowed them to die, and they all presumably died again later on.

I think it is time we stopped trying to escape from chaos. Let's stop thinking that when things go a bit crazy and out of (our) control that God is absent – or even worse, that God must be angry with us. God can be found in the good, the bad, the happy, the sad, the order and the chaos, because God is always and everywhere present.

God is as wild as fire and as uncontrollable as the wind. God cannot be contained or explained by any systematic, ordered, analysis but will always be mysterious and never fully known. My wife is mysterious and never fully known, and I take that to be a good thing! Why would we expect otherwise of God?

Do you wish we could escape the chaos of suffering and unknowing, and find a world of order and certainty? Why would we expect that to be either possible or helpful?

Of course we could not survive without a level of ordered predictability. But meaning and creativity and growth are found in the disruptions of life. Better to embrace those chaotic disruptions than try to escape them.

It's ok not to know. It's ok to experience confusion, uncertainty, pain. It's ok to not be in control. In fact my bet is that we will find God in the chaos.

May you have order and safety when you need it.

And may you have chaos and risk … when you need it.

Life fully experienced: John's greatest sign

Many commentators have noted that in the Gospel of John, Jesus' miracles are called "signs" rather than "miracles". They aren't just done as magic tricks to impress people. John records them along with lots of other things Jesus said and did so that we "may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name" (20:31). I think a lot of people emphasise the first reason more than the second. I mean, they think the miracles are to prove that Jesus is the Son of God. But they forget or downplay the second reason -- that the miracles somehow help people to experience life.

Two of the biggest miracles in the book written by John are at the very beginning and near the end. At the beginning, John says that "the Word became flesh" (1:14). That is the hugest sign possible that God loves us. God became human because God wanted to be with us. Amazing! How is that possible? It's a complete miracle, not part of what happens within the laws of nature.

Halfway through the book, Jesus says the reason he came was so that we could have life in all its fullness (10:10). Life to the max! That's what God wants for us. That is, God came here to be with us to show how we can experience what it really means to live.

Then, near the end, Jesus breathes on the disciples and says "Receive the Holy Spirit" (20:22). This is a reminder that the on-going life of God -- the very breath (pneuma in Greek means both spirit and breath) of God -- is what gives us life. It is the breath of God in our lungs that makes us alive! That's also an amazing miracle. It is a sign that God is on our side: God is for us, not against us.

Isn't that an amazing flow of ideas from beginning (God takes on human life), to middle (Jesus says the reason he came was for us to have life), to end (Jesus breathes God's life into us)?

The impotence of the Church in Arthur Miller's "The Crucible"

Over the weekend I attended the opening night of Arthur Miller's play The Crucible at The Young Peoples Theatre Newcastle. The direction, by a very young Nick Thoroughgood, emphasised fear and aloneness. But the aspect of the play that struck me anew was the way religion was co-opted by an agenda of power and subsequently made impotent.

Do you recall the general plot? Set amidst the Salem Witch Trials of 1692, the play follows a group of young girls who claim divine/demonic knowledge in their accusation that many people in their rural village are in league with Satan. The fate of one man, John Proctor, unfolds … from his affair with one of the young girls, through the struggles of forgiveness with his wife, his attempt to disclose the girls' pretence in court and a moral dilemma that leads to his hanging.

The play begins in the house of the local preacher, the Rev. Samuel Parris, a man cautious of his own reputation, who hopes to avoid the scandal of being associated with witchcraft. He calls for help from another cleric, the Rev. John Hale, who is acknowledged as an expert in such matters. Between them they promote the church's authority to uncover and prosecute "the other" -- in this case the vile offenders who, apparently, have sold their soul to the devil.

As has been widely noted, the play has wider application than simply being a historic comment on seventeenth century Puritan superstition. That the message is universal is made clear by the Nick Thoroughgood's decision to re-dress the actors in pure black and white for Acts 3 and 4. In the cultural context of 1953, when it was published, the play challenged the extreme pressure in the USA to denounce Communists, but it does not matter whether the accusation is witchcraft or Communism, nor whether the accusation is true or false. What is really on trial beyond the fourth wall is the process of "othering" -- the human propensity to accuse and exclude; the futility of fear-driven victimisation.

At the beginning of this victimisation is religion. Religion spreads a cloak of morality over the fear and suspicion. Religion gives permission to exclude, and adds divine authority to the denunciation of the "other". Neither Parris nor Hale initially accused anyone of witchcraft. Parris was motivated by pride and the protection of his own social standing. Hale wished to be led by the evidence towards the truth. But both were coerced by social pressure, mislead by pride, and beguiled by the taste of power. Neither was immune to the growing hysteria, but instead fanned its flames and were swept along by its ineluctable fury.

In Act 4, both Parris and Hale show the compassion and mercy that is more true to their calling. They realise the girls' pretence. They understand the emptiness of admissions made under the threat of death. They plea for leniency. But it is too late. The fire has burnt beyond their control. Having served their own demonic purpose, Parris and Hale are side-lined and impotent. Having ignited fear and judgement, religion has ceased to be authoritative or even relevant.

Is this not a pattern we have all seen repeated? Isn’t this what has happened within Islam -- where terrorists claim religious motivation regardless of how strongly Islamic leaders denounce them? Isn't it what is happening in Australia as religious voices accuse and damn homosexuals? Isn't it clear from the conservative Christian support of Donald Trump and his obvious contempt of their support?

Religion is often co-opted by causes that are deeply irreligious … but religion allows itself to be so used.

The Christian church has been side-lined in the Western world and hopelessly compromised, as it has been by every regime and culture since Constantine. It is too late to reclaim any respect. The church is compromised by sex abuse scandals, paternalism, patriarchy and violence. But that is not the root. As The Crucible demonstrates, the essence of the church's inability to sway public sentiment away from hysteria towards justice and mercy is that, having been instrumental in starting the fire, she is no longer needed. Once the flames of fear, judgement and damnation have been ignited, the "powers and principalities" -- whether political or spiritual -- can fuel them independently, with or without religious endorsement.

The only way out is to never buy into the devilish deal in the first place. If we deliberately and explicitly recant our allegiance to every source of power, to every social movement, to every nation and culture, then we might have the integrity to be heard. The role to which the church is called is to subvert every "power and principality". Like Christ, who didn't think that the power of heaven was something to be grasped, the church is called to forsake all power. Rather than seek power only to become impotent, the way of the gospel is to join the powerless from beginning to end.

If the Reverends Parris and Hale had followed that example -- if they had stood with the girls instead of condemning their youthful follies, and if they had stood with those accused of witchcraft instead of pandering to the later accusations of those same girls -- then two things would have happened differently. The fire of hysteria and fear would not have enough oxygen to take hold. And if the crunch time still came about when justice was on the brink of failure, then the voice of true religion, of compassion, would have retained the credibility to be heard.

May we yet learn to forsake power and to stand in solidarity with the accused.

Undermining the patriarchy

Three of the Gospels (Matthew, Mark and Luke) record Jesus' witty phrase that it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for the rich to enter the kingdom of God. In each case the listeners are amazed but Jesus refuses to water it down. One can surmise that the hearers assumed that the rich and powerful always get priority. But are they amazed that Jesus turns the priorities upside down? Or amazed that he would speak so subversively in public?

Who knows?

But whatever the reason, Peter recognises the great reversal implied by Jesus and says to him "We have left everything to follow you!"

Now the next bit is a fascinating example of the importance of what is not said. Jesus' reply to Peter is recounted in most detail by Mark, who writes:

‘Truly I tell you,’ Jesus replied, ‘no one who has left home or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields for me and the gospel will fail to receive a hundred times as much in this present age: homes, brothers, sisters, mothers, children and fields – along with persecutions – and in the age to come eternal life. (Mark 10:29-30)

The core message here is that throwing your lot in with Jesus will disrupt the normal family alliances, but will replace them with a new community in which there is abundant safety and resources, and above all, company. Oh, and hardships.

But Gerhard Lohfink highlights something I have never seen before. Of all the things you might leave behind there is one missing from the list of things you might gain. There are no fathers in the new community! The patriarchy is left behind!

It is a subtle reminder of the Jesus' earlier observation about rich people: don’t assume that if you are rich, powerful and male then there will be a seat of honour for you in God's kingdom. You might not get in at all. If you do get in there will be no place for your male, controlling, dominating, privileged status.

Of course, I'm not like that … well, not much :(

At the risk of watering this point down, but in order to be thorough, there is something else to add about fathers. The omission of fathers from the new community of course does not mean that fathers are excluded, just that they will need to leave their fatherhood at the door. Jesus says that more explicitly elsewhere: "Do not call anyone on earth 'father', for you have one Father, and he is in heaven" (Matthew 23:9). That must never be assumed to mean that there is one dominate alpha male father in heaven and as a consequence no-one else should dare compete for the role of "father". As I have written elsewhere, Jesus has a very different idea of how the title "father" should be applied to God.

(This post is inspired by Gerhard Lohfink's observation in Jesus of Nazareth, p. 237.)

Grace to your enemies

I've been reading Gerhard Lohfink's book Jesus of Nazareth: what he wanted, who he was and although I don’t find his depiction of Jesus very stimulating, there are certainly some gems of insight here and there.

A section considering Jesus' command to love our enemies is one such gem. He comments on this speech by Jesus, as recorded by Luke:

If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners love those who love them. And if you do good to those who are good to you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners do that. And if you lend to those from whom you expect repayment, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, expecting to be repaid in full. But love your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without expecting to get anything back. Then your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High, because he is kind to the ungrateful and wicked. (Luke 6:32-35, NIV)

… and starts by saying that the translation of "credit" is not very helpful. Other English versions use reward, thanks, praise, benefit and blessing, which perhaps are no better. But the Greek word, charis, has the primary meaning of loveliness, agreeableness … even charm or beauty. The majority of times charis is used in the New Testament it is translated as grace.

I'm nowhere near a level of understanding of Greek to question what the majority of translators have done in Luke 6. Nevertheless, with Lohfink, I like the idea of inserting grace into these verses. It appears in four places – three times in the positive, and once as the negative acharistous. What that reveals is something more like this:

If you love only within tribal or family boundaries, where is the grace in that? If you only do good to people who do good to you, where is the grace in that? If you only loan money when you're sure you'll get it back, where is the grace in that? But if you love and do good and lend to anyone – even your enemies – wow, that is a beautiful thing! That kind of charming, lovely grace is reward in itself. Those acts would show who your God really is! The God I know is kind even to those with no grace!

God is not angry, says Clement of Rome

While reading the First Epistle of Clement to the Corinthians, I paused over something he wrote about peace.

This letter, written about 96 CE, is one of the very earliest documents we have (other than New Testament texts) from the young Christian movement. Clement was bishop of Rome and was writing to encourage the church in Corinth, especially about an internal dispute on which they had asked Clement's advice.

Early in the letter, Clement writes "Let us cleave, therefore, to those who cultivate peace with godliness, and not to those who hypocritically profess to desire it" (chapter 15) and then gives examples of the type of humility we should imitate. Jesus of course is one of his prime exemplars.

Then, in chapter 19, he writes: 

The humility therefore and the submissiveness of so many and so great men, who have thus obtained a good report, hath through obedience made better not only us but also the generations which were before us, even them that received His oracles in fear and truth. Seeing then that we have been partakers of many great and glorious doings, let us hasten to return unto the goal of peace which hath been handed down to us from the beginning, and let us look steadfastly unto the Father and Maker of the whole world, and cleave unto His splendid and excellent gifts of peace and benefits. Let us behold Him in our mind, and let us look with the eyes of our soul unto His long-suffering will. Let us note how free from anger He is towards all His creatures.

Putting aside the gendered language, what stands out to me from this passage is the firm belief that God is not angry. Another translator declares God free from wrath rather than anger.

This is the witness of an early bishop, whose understanding of God is derived from what the apostles learnt directly from Jesus – that God's disposition towards the world is not driven by wrath or revenge. If that is the case, then there is no need for God's wrath towards the world to be redirected against Jesus.

This is not a denial that Jesus "bore our sins": Clement explicitly applies that thought from Isaiah 53 to Jesus. But Clement did not think that the reason Jesus died was to assuage the anger of God. Why? Because when you reflect on the examples of people who have been faithful to God – such as Jesus, David, Job – their humility points to a God who is without anger.

Grace and its opposite

A few years ago I stopped using the word "deserve". The concept no longer has much value to me. Sure, there are some cases where perhaps an athlete running way out in front of a race is hit by a water bottle thrown by someone in the audience just seconds before the finish line. They stumble and end up coming 5^th – we might say quite truly that they deserved to win.

But it wouldn't be so true to say that some kind but very poor person deserved to win the lottery. Or that a school student deserved to get a better grade because they had tried so hard. Or that someone deserved to be raped because they dressed provocatively. Or that someone deserved HIV/AIDS because they were a promiscuous homosexual.

No one deserves AIDS. No one deserves to win the lottery. No one deserves heaven. No one deserves hell.^*

This is not the desert I mean!!!

Grace is the opposite of desert.^**

Grace does not say "I'll be nice to you even though you don’t deserve it". Grace denies any sense of what someone deserves, and surprises people with blessings anyway.

When we ran The Omega Course, one of the videos we discussed was a snippet from Marcus Borg about the key themes in the Bible.^*** He suggested that there are three meta-narratives (he calls them "macro-stories") of salvation:

• The story of bondage and slavery, the solution to which is liberation. The central example is Israel's exodus from Egypt, but it also includes the slavery many feel through addictions, victimisation, and poverty.
• The story of exile, the solution to which is a journey of return to home. The Hebrew exile in Babylon is a central prototype, but there is sense of alienation most humans feel and which is reflected in the early Biblical story about being expelled from Eden.
• The story of sin and impurity, the solution to which is forgiveness and cleansing.

People may feel the weight of each of these to differing extents and at different points in their lives. But in my experience of churches within Australia, the USA and South Africa – even ignoring the preaching of guilt and damnation – the preaching of grace is limited to the third of those story-lines. The remedy of all three aspects of the human condition, however, depend on grace.  Salvation, whether by liberation, a return home, or forgiveness, always springs from grace.

As long as we are stuck in the mire of what people deserve, we cannot fully appreciate the grace of God. The Biblical God seeks to restore all things (Acts 3:21), wishes that all would be saved (1 Timothy 2:4), sends sunshine and rain on both the righteous and the unrighteous (Matthew 5:45), and has no favourites (Acts 10:34, Romans 2:11). This is a God whose grace extends to all, regardless of any reward or punishment they may seem to deserve. A God who releases the oppressed (Luke 4:18), who creates a home for us (John 14:1-4, Hebrews 11:16), and who forgives even those who would prefer that God was dead (Luke 23:34).

Grace is not a stand-alone concept but exists within an ecology that includes love, mercy and forgiveness. Grace is not blind to evil nor does it condone the harm we do to ourselves, each other and our world, but continually undermines evil by enabling a better alternative. Nevertheless, grace is not irresistible: if people could not refuse grace it would not be grace but another form of oppression. That is part of the reason – though only part of it – why we continue in bondage, exile and sin.

"From [Jesus'] fullness we have all received, grace upon grace" (John 1:16). It is this grace that says "there is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female" (Galatians 3:28). There is no "us and them". There is no deserving nor undeserving. God's grace is extended to all irrespective of any category.

May we show the same grace as God, blind to any labels, blind to any cultural or religious notion of what people deserve.

---

* This scepticism about what people "deserve" is a third of the reason I no longer believe in the value of retribution, the other two-thirds being that I'm trying to model my life on One who eschewed retribution, and it doesn't achieve the effect people hope for anyway.
** I wish I could make a clever word-play here … something about a meal starting with grace and ending with dessert, but of course "getting just dessert" is something completely different than "getting your just deserts"!
*** The video came from the Living the Questions series, but the same can be found in Borg's The Heart of Christianity, p. 175 in the edition I have.

Joy, according to C. S. Lewis and Miroslav Volf

We don’t use the word "joy" a lot these days. The Google Ngram below shows that the words "joy" and "happiness" occur with about the same frequency, but if you add "happy" and "happiness" together, then they occur about 3 times as often as "joy". They can mean the same thing, but I think of happiness as a passing emotion that depends on external circumstances, whereas joy reflects a deeper sense of contentment, wonder and satisfaction that doesn’t depend on circumstances.



An author who influenced me a lot in younger days was C.S. Lewis, whose auto-biography was called "Surprised by Joy". Late in life he married a woman called Joy Davidman, but that happened after he published the auto-biography, so the book wasn't about being surprised by her. In fact the book is about the intense longing we feel for something supremely good, for a state of all-right-ness that the Hebrews called Shalom. Joy is a longing for the source of that goodness, a longing that can hardly be put into words. It is never found by looking for it, but found by surprise when seeking something else. Joy is like finding out that the thing you most wished were true actually is true.

I heard Prof. Miroslav Volf speak in Sydney last year, a theologian whose core topic for many years has been identifying the good life. People often say they want a good life, but what do they really mean?

He said it is very sad that religion often seems to imply that doing what is good and doing what is fun are mutually exclusive -- that if you do one you can't be doing the other. (It reminded me of what it seems like with food. The really yummy food is often not good for you and the food that's good for you can taste awful.) But Volf says that is a stupid idea. He said that we all wish for both pleasure and meaning and the good life has them both. We want to enjoy what we do. We want to do things that contribute to some greater purpose.

The best line of the lecture … I think I will remember it for a long time … was that joy is the unity of meaning and pleasure.

May we all find that true and deep joy. Don't settle for the fool's gold of surface-level happiness but seek all that is true, noble, right, pure, lovely and admirable; and in doing so may you often stumble into joy.

God is not in control - hallelujah!

In a recent conversation a friend spoke about the need to trust that God is in control. I've heard it before, and often in the context of a reassurance that even if your situation looks bleak, it is supposed to be comforting to know that God is in control.

I don't believe it.

The God I see described in the Bible gives up control rather than always bringing about what God desires. God suffers as much as we do in the brokenness of life. God allows all sorts of personal calamities, disasters that affect millions of people, and horrendous evils like genocide. It would be blasphemous to say God is in control of such things.

Certainly, God often brings good out of suffering. But that's not always in a way that can be seen and might not be in a person's lifetime. Sometimes I think God may use the suffering of one for the good of others, as happened with Jesus.

To say that God is sovereign, or God is Lord of all, does not have to imply that God always gets what God wants. God probably could have created a universe where God was in control, but chose not to.

For instance,  God "wants all people to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth" (1 Timothy 2:4, and 2 Peter 3:9 claims pretty much the same thing). That either means that God's will is done and all people are saved (which I do think is a possibility), or some people are not saved and God's will is thwarted.

I also think of Philippians 2:5-8 which points out that Jesus, being equal with God, chose to be a servant, i.e. one with no say in what happens. If we truly believe that Jesus was the exact image of God, then we also believe that *God* chooses to be a servant, forsaking power and giving up control. That's God's character. God doesn't always prevent or clean up the mess. God allows things to unfold in directions that are contrary to what God would wish.

Sometimes God does something surprising and turns situations around in ways we can only marvel at. But I do not expect that God has something good just around the corner for me and that since God is in control it is sure to happen.

So quotes like this ...

... don't inspire or comfort me. I am more comforted by the image of Romans 8:18-39. Creation is broken; it groans in agony (22). We too groan within that brokenness (23). And God is not controlling things remotely but sitting in the dust with us, also groaning (26). It is true that what God does is always directed towards that liberation from the bondage of decay for us and for the whole creation (20, 21, 28), but there is a lot God chooses not to do, and the decay continues. God wants good things and sometimes we can work together with God as part of the process of bringing good things to reality, but the control over whether those good things come to pass is a complex interplay of divine and human choices and their consequences.

The good news is not that God promises some escape from the brokenness but that God joins us in the brokenness. Not that God is in control, constraining the outcome, but that God has taken the risky step of forsaking control so that we can be truly free.

This is at the core of the Jesus' message: God stands in solidarity with us in the brokenness.

The surprise of being known

A recent article by Charles M. Stang (*) notes that "Thomas's acclamation [in John 20:28] is the only place in the New Testament where Jesus is called 'God'."

I think that's pretty remarkable. Elsewhere Jesus is called Son of God, image of God, and other similar epithets, but only here is he plainly "God".

More remarkably, the declaration by Thomas is not an abstract philosophical idea but a personal commitment, for the full exclamation was "My Lord and my God!"

What caused the famous doubter to make such a bold avowal? Stang suggests that it was not because the doubts about whether Jesus was alive were removed when Thomas touched him. In fact Thomas probably did not touch Jesus! Jesus invited him to but the declaration "My Lord and my God!" comes immediately after the invitation, with nothing at all to imply that he touched Jesus first.

It strikes me that the Gospel writer has created a clever parallel between this scene at the end of the Gospel and one at the beginning – with Nathanael back at the end of chapter 1.

Nathanael is sitting under a fig tree when Philip says to him "Come and meet Jesus of Nazareth. We think he might be the promised one." to which Nathanael responds derisively "Not likely if he comes from Nazareth!" But he came to Jesus anyway and Jesus surprises him by already knowing what he was doing under the fig tree. More than that, Jesus affirms Nathanael's guileless heart.

In response to this surprise of being known, Nathanael blurts out “Rabbi, you are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!”

The parallels with the Thomas scene are numerous. Thomas is also told about Jesus by other disciples and he responds derisively. But when he meets Jesus, he finds that his thoughts are already known to Jesus. And in the surprise of being known he blurts out "My Lord and my God!" To end both scenes, Jesus is recorded as commenting on the basis for belief.

At the beginning and the end of the Gospel, John records people making life-changing allegiances to Jesus because they are surprised and overjoyed to realise that they are already known by Jesus. The significant thing about this kind of faith is not how it is influenced by what you know or how much you doubt. What is significant is that faith – or faithfulness – is based on a certain kind of relationship. In neither Nathanael's nor Thomas's case does Jesus reprove them for doubt, and I am sure both continued to hold doubts. So it's not that they made some declaration of faith because their doubts went away. Rather, they both made declarations of allegiance because in being known by Jesus they recognised the compassion of God.

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* Stang, Charles M. 2016. “Doubt, Our Modern Crown of Thorns.” Studies in Church History 52.

The wild man at the heart of Roger Waters' "The Wall"

During last week a friend and I watched The Wall at the wonderful Avoca Beach Picture Theatre, not quite knowing what we were going to see. Was it going to be a remake of the original movie or a documentary reflecting on the album that was first released 37 years ago? It turns out to be an edited version of Roger Waters' 2010-2013 concert tour, with concert footage interspersed with Waters' pilgrimage to war memorials where his father and grandfather died.

37 years! Makes me feel old, because I remember buying that album at the time. Now, when I listen to a lot of the music I loved back then, it sounds pretentious and musically lame, but The Wall is one of a handful of albums that continue to be inspiring: the music is still catchy and complex, the lyrics profound, and the artistic vision monumental.

Pink Floyd was always known for the extravagance of their light shows, and Waters raises that in this concert to amazing heights. I mean "raises" literally -- the stage crew gradually build a brick wall at the front of the stage during the concert, so that by half-way through the musicians are completely obscured by a 10m wall and continue to perform behind it.

The wall has always been the central metaphor of the whole project, and Waters has worked that metaphor to the limit through multiple re-interpretations over three decades. We build personal walls to protect ourselves, but they end up isolating and imprisoning us. As he emphasised in the Berlin concert in 1990, the wall can also isolate and imprison nations.

I've always been a great fan of Talking Heads' Stop Making Sense, Laurie Anderson's Home of the Brave, and even pretty impressed with Michael Jackson's posthumous This Is It. But from a creative point of view, The Wall has a scope and attention to detail that surpasses them all. The staggering visual effects complement the storyline of the music and amplify the audacious vision that is both a commentary on war and fear, and a semi-biographical reflection on modern masculinity.

It is that last point that stood out to me as I watched the movie. The lasting value of the whole project is likely to be not the creativity, or the music, or the visual effects but the insightful portrayal of the modern western male psyche. Waters has captured the angst I feel, and I think many of my male peers feel. The ambiguity of whether walls protect or imprison. The shame of expressing emotions. The demoralising outcome of modern education. The distrust of government. The misguided aspiration for rock-star status. The disappointment that life has not delivered what we hoped for. The depressing thought they we are no more than a single brick in a huge impersonal wall.

In another review of this movie, Leslie Felperin accuses Waters of misogyny. I think Felperin is wrong about that, mistaking an honest portrayal of the male experience for a denial of the female experience. The movie is almost devoid of females. All the musicians are male. Waters' travelling companions are male apart from a brief scene with someone I presume is his daughter.

The story in the lyrics reveals a youth who had difficulty separating from a perhaps over-protective mother. The original movie (from memory) had more to say about how that psychological rut was transferred to his wife. That's coupled with an absent father. The commentary in this movie explicitly notes that war caused not only Roger Waters to grow up without a father, but that the same thing was true of his father.

Waters is a man castrated, but consciously on the journey to discover what it means to be a true man.

Along that journey he notes -- and discards -- false ideals of the masculine. Waters' repeated use of faux-Nazi characters and symbols satirically presents the emptiness of the supposedly masculine will to power. Woven throughout the piece is a criticism of the tendency to judge those who are different and the way that is ultimately expressed in the stupidity of waging war against the Other. When it comes to male attitudes to women, he notes the pathetic expression of lust for a "dirty woman", and couples that with a fear of being eaten by a vagina.

One of the best outcomes of feminism is that it has forced men to think about the meaning of masculinity. Waters hasn't resolved that here, but he clearly rejects some possibilities, and I think points towards two more helpful possibilities. In "Nobody Home" he sings "I've got wild staring eyes \ and I've got a strong urge to fly \ but I got nowhere to fly to." What I think Waters is attempting here, or at least pointing towards, is to reclaim the wild man archetype. The problem is, how does one get there from here? We feel trapped behind the wall we have conspired with society to build around our male identity. But let's at least affirm the will to break free.

The second direction Waters points to is the demolition of the wall. Sometimes it can be a conscious deconstruction; other times it is forced upon us as a shameful punishment "to be exposed before your peers." But in the end, as is clear from "Outside the Wall", we need each other.

Optical Illusions and the Deception of Desire

I know those two lines are the
same length but the knowing
makes no dent in the illusion
of their difference.

In the Müller-Lyer illusion two lines of equal length are made to look unequal. One explanation of the trick is that our minds interpret the lines as the corners of buildings: the one on the left as an inside corner and the other as an outside corner. Under that interpretation, the one on the left must be further in the distance to us than the one on the right and our perceptual system adjusts it to appear bigger. I’ve read that when those lines are shown to people from the New Guinean highlands – tribes who have never lived inside rectangular houses – they judge them to be the same length as invariably as we judge them to be different. The illusion is culturally dependant. 

What interests me most, however, is that, like most visual illusions, knowing the truth makes no difference to our perception. We can move one line onto the top of the other, or measure both with a ruler to prove that they are the same, and yet when we look again at the two, one still looks longer than the other. What’s more, neither a psychologist who understood how the illusion works nor a neuro-surgeon who tracked down the exact set of neurons that make the visual mistake would be immune to the deception. A complete knowledge of the illusion does nothing to dissolve the illusion. The one still looks longer than the other. 

Desire

Desire often acts in the same way. 

Some of our desires spring from natural appetites and needs: a desire for warmth when we are cold, a desire for food when we are hungry. But the objects of our desires are usually selected for external and cultural reasons. We learn what to desire by imitating the desires of other people. We learn what food tastes good from our parents and friends. We learn what hair-style looks good by watching how our peers respond to each other. We learn what car is cool from marketing campaigns. We learn what jobs are valuable by observing how others value them.

As a result some, perhaps most, desires are illusions. There is nothing inherently “better” about most hair styles (despite what Paul says in 1 Corinthians 11:14!). The car most suited to your needs probably bears little resemblance to the car you are encouraged to buy. The hair and the car are desirable because we see what we might look like if we had that hair or that car through the eyes of imagined others.

We do not always succumb to the illusion. There are conscious and unconscious reasons why we might rebel against our desires, or deny ourselves the pleasure promised by the desire, or for any range of practical reasons not pursue the desire.

And yet, like the Müller-Lyer illusion, the desires themselves are immune to our conscious knowledge. We continue to desire something even when we know that the basis for the desire is flawed.

Let’s follow one example in a little more depth. We are bombarded by images of what a desirable human body looks like. Knowing how the psychological mechanism of desire operates does not change my perception that a particular cultural image of physical beauty would bring more satisfaction in a partner than alternatives. At one level that is ridiculous, for the glamorous ideal of beauty changes with time and culture.

The word “glamorous” originated from a Scottish word meaning a magical enchantment. To say that someone is glamorous is to acknowledge that their appeal is an illusion. There is a glamour over our desires, a veil so powerful that even knowing it is there does not dispel its effect.

At another level the beauty assumption is totally contrary to my experience. Good relationships do not depend on it. Why should they? Neither does good sex depend on it. On the contrary, from my limited experience, the most enjoyable sex does not depend on physical beauty but on mutual enthusiasm. But in this instance, another aspect of desire comes to the fore: from whence comes “mutual enthusiasm” if not from both people desiring each other and desiring each other’s desire?

At some other, less conscious level, however, the illusion remains. I want a girlfriend whom others would affirm as desirable and I perceive this girl or that girl in the light of that desire. I’m attracted to a house in a particular suburb not only because I am consciously aware that it will establish my social status but because I genuinely like the house and the suburb. Liking this girl or that house is totally unaffected by my conscious knowledge of the dynamics of desire.

Necker Cube

Ambiguity

In another class of optical illusions, our perception can jump between competing interpretations of an image. A simple example is the Necker Cube on the left. Which face of the cube is in front and which face is behind? You can flip between the two by focusing on either of the inner corners.

A more dramatic example is the train in this animated image, which can be made to move in either direction merely by imagining it to do so.

Such images are ambiguous and what we see depends on what we choose to see.

A similar ambiguity inhabits desire. I noted above that just as the mis-direction of an optical illusion is impossible to dispel, so too the mis-direction of desire. I think it is also true that just as there may be multiple ambiguous interpretations of an optical illusion, so too we often experience multiple ambiguous desires. Sometimes what we desire depends on what we choose to focus on.

Desires are sometimes layered. I desire that house, perhaps because of a deeper desire to impress my colleagues at work, and that may be just an example of an even deeper desire to belong.

Desires sometimes compete. The way we manage personal finances may arise out of a desire to enjoy material possessions now, a desire to save for a secure future, and a desire to use what we have to bless others: desires that ultimately might be mutually-exclusive.

Desires sometimes remain unconscious. We act in order to attain something, but we are unaware of either what we seek or why we seek it.

Add to the mix a type of self-deception that, relying on the ambiguity of our desires, allows us to believe one interpretation, or act as though we believe it, only by discounting or even disavowing the others.

As a consequence of those layered, competing and unconscious dynamics of desires, there is rarely a clean correlation between how we act and what we desire. Nevertheless, and this is perhaps the point of what I am writing, whether and how we act on our desires can be subjected to conscious choice.

We may not be immune to the deception of desire, but we can occasionally see through the veil and decide to not be enslaved by the desire. It is possible to undermine our self-deception and to behave beyond the illusion.

Maybe this helps to untangle an apparent contradiction in a saying of Jesus. Two of his biographers record Jesus as saying “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves” (Luke 9:23, Matthew 16:24) and yet they also note that in the next breath Jesus asks “What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, and yet lose or forfeit their very self?” Which is it? Are we commanded to deny ourselves, to give up what is most dear to us? Or are we advised that it serves no good whatsoever to give up ourselves?

One suspects that Jesus has seen through the deception of desire. He knows that gaining everything we desire would not bring the wholeness we seek. On the contrary, coerced by our desires, we lose our very selves. But by questioning our desires, perhaps we can dispel the glamour enough to decide beyond desire. Perhaps by understanding the illusion we can regain our true selves.

Everything is holy now

Although life has been hard going the last few years – well actually, because life has been hard going the last few years – I'm no longer so black and white in the way I see many things. I used to think the alternative to black and white was an unattractive gradient of grey. But as my friend Annabella has suggested, there is another outlook: to see the world in full colour! Even hurt and brokenness is richly textured and infused with God.

Peter Mayer's Holy Now (nice live version) captures that transformation well.

Identity: Volf, Žižek and Rollins

While reading Miroslav Volf's commentary* on 1 Peter I was struck by his thoughts on how the church establishes its identity in the world.

By describing Christians as aliens and strangers in the world, Peter establishes a clear difference between the church and the culture that surrounds it. Volf asserts that, to Peter at least, "It is Christian identity that creates difference from the social environment, not the other way around."

That dynamic is not what normally happens. More commonly, individuals and groups form their identity through the negative process of rejecting the beliefs and practices of others. We define ourselves as "not them". But rejecting the other in order to define ourselves is an oppositional stance that almost inevitably produces resentment and conflict. It makes us insecure and defensive even at the same moment as we are acting superior and aggressive. "We have to push others away from ourselves and keep them at a distance, and we have to close ourselves off from others to keep ourselves pure of their taint."

Peter's alternative is to establish his community's identity through copying from God (1:15-17) and Jesus (2:21-24). He encourages the community to be self-controlled; to be holy; to love deeply from the heart; rid themselves of malice, deceit, hypocrisy, envy and slander; to recognise themselves as a people belonging to God; submit to authorities and to each other; live in harmony with each other; speak to others with gentleness and respect; rejoice in suffering; etc. None of Peter's exhortations directly question or criticise those outside the community.

Peter surely knows that his advice will set the community apart as something different. He even expects it will result in alienation and persecution. Knowing that, he nevertheless wants to be part of a community that does not repay evil with evil but with a blessing. "But how can people give up violence in the midst of a life-threatening conflict if their identity is wrapped up in rejecting the beliefs and practices of their enemies? Only those who refuse to be defined by their enemies can bless them."

This dovetails perfectly with Žižek's recent comments on the insecurity of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS). Whereas a true fundamentalist shows an "absence of resentment and envy, the deep indifference towards the nonbelievers’ way of life",  the terrorist pseudo-fundamentalists lack true conviction and secretly consider themselves inferior. They have already internalised the judgement of the surrounding culture and measure themselves by that judgement. By defining their identity in contra-distinction to "the West" they have done the opposite of what Peter calls the Christian community to do.

Volf's interpretation also connects with Peter Rollins' claim that the Christian community is a place to eschew all identity (Chapter 5 of The Idolatry of God ). On the surface, the two views may seem contradictory. Volf is proposing a specific formulation of Christian and church identity, whereas Rollins argues that Paul, especially in Galatians 3:28, intends to subvert all religious, political and biological identities. For Rollins that radical subversion is a continual process that must even subvert any "Christian" identity.

But Rollins is big on paradox and can also write that "One's concrete identity continues to exist, but it is now held differently." His point is not that we no longer have any identity but that we hold our identities lightly, and that is very similar to Volf's "soft difference". I don’t want to imply that they share the same view: Volf's involves a degree of personal assurance (people who are "secure in their God") that Rollins' considers idolatrous. But they both wish for forms of personal and communal identity that do not fear the Other, and that consequently have no need to subordinate, blame or impose on others.

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* Volf, Miroslav. 1994. ‘Soft Difference: Theological Reflections on the Relation Between Church and Culture in 1 Peter’. Ex Auditu 10: 15–30.

What God has torn let no one stitch together

At a Peter Rollins event last night, one participant spoke of how he has lost Jesus and wondered if he was hiding behind some curtain. Someone else countered that the curtain has been torn - I assume referring to (Matthew 27:51.

Peter didn’t pick up that theme, although I know it is at the centre of his upcoming book, The Divine Magician: The Disappearance of Religion and the Discovery of Faith. What was revealed behind the curtain in the Temple when it was torn from top to bottom? We'll wait and see how Peter answers that when the book arrives, but I'm sure the answer is going to be along the lines of "Nothing". There was nothing there, and the core outcome of the crucifixion was to reveal the emptiness that often hides behind the curtain of religion.

The curtain in the Temple marked a holy place into which none but the High Priest was allowed. By tearing the curtain, God declared that there was no such space, nowhere that needed to be hidden, and no-one who needed to be kept away.

The thought came to me that too much of institutional church history looks like an attempt to stitch the rent curtain back together again. Have we been guilty of hiding God behind facades of belief? What curtains (or even brick walls!) do we erect that create some false "holy place" to which we deny others access?

Oceans is a dangerous song

(Originally posted at Men of Strength on 1 March 2014.)

At church this morning we sang Oceans again. Yikes! that is a scarey song!

“Spirit lead me where my trust is without borders
… Take me deeper than my feet could ever wander …”

I advise you to think carefully before  you voice that request to God. The place of infinite trust is not likely to be a comfortable place. In fact it is guaranteed to be seriously uncomfortable. Within the borders of my comfort zone I rarely need to trust God. Sometimes I can convince myself that I am trusting God, when actually I know that even if the water is over my head I am a pretty good swimmer. But the real place of unbounded trust may involve betrayal, loneliness, poverty, weakness, sickness, loss, failure. You may drown.

That song always reminds me of what has become known as the Wesley Covenant Prayer, which shares the same dangerous idea of consciously giving God permission to do whatever God wants with us.

Only the naïve or brave can say that prayer or sing Oceans.

Released from retribution

An unstated assumption that underlies a lot of my culture's thinking is that evil deserves to be punished. As of today, I no longer believe it.

That change of heart comes from a long line of influences.

• I read Butler's Erewhon way back about 1985. It's a humourous saga in the same genre as Gulliver's Travels, in which a lost traveller finds a land where physical sickness is punished but criminals are given medical attention.
• I started a post-grad degree on the topic of forgiveness in mid 1990's and read Murphy and Hampton's wonderful book Forgiveness and Mercy. In that book and other readings at the time I learnt a lot about the retributive principle behind most modern law but also that there are other approaches to justice, including approaches that focus on restoration rather than punishment.
• I've read plenty of Gandhi and Tutu and other apologists for non-violence. Come to think of it, I've read the Gospels for years!!! I've never been keen on the idea that people "deserve" anything, neither entitled to blessing nor deserving of punishment: the Bible makes plain that we live under grace rather than getting what we deserve.
• More recently I have given away the belief that God is angry and vengeful, needing to inflict wrath on someone, if not on us then on Jesus. Reading Rob Bell and Rene Girard have helped along that path. Still reading Darrin Belousek's Atonement, Justice, and Peace to understand Jesus' death from a non-retributive point of view.

So why have I continued to believe, however implicitly, that the proper response, the just response, to wrong-doing is to punish the wrong-doer? The assumption has been so deeply ingrained that I have not been able to question it. It is woven into our legal system, into our understanding of God, into our approach to parenting, international relations, the "war on terror", asylum seekers, slave traffickers.

But it is foreign to the attitude shown by Jesus, and foreign to the image Jesus presents of God.

This fell into place for me when Belousek's book commented on these words of Jesus:

But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. (Matthew 5:44-45, NIV)

How does Jesus respond when betrayed by friends, unjustly treated in a legal system, and treated violently to the point of death? Does he show any signs of revenge? Any sign that the people harming him should fear punishment? Of course not! He says "Father forgive them"!

[I've gotta include an aside here to point out that Jesus was in the habit of forgiving people prior to dying as well. He did not need to die in order to be able to forgive people. Consequently, those who believe that Jesus is the visible image of the invisible God should have no problem understanding that God can forgive without Jesus having to die!]

Jesus tells his followers that the appropriate response to evil is love rather than retribution. But what Belousek showed me for the first time was the reason Jesus gives. Why should followers of Jesus not seek revenge? "That you may be children of your Father in heaven." That is, because God does not seek revenge and neither should God's children! God sends sun and rain equally on all people, not just those who deserve it. When we see someone metaphorically striking God on the cheek, we should never expect or hope that God will smite them, nor that God will swing to hit the "sinner" and clobber Jesus instead. Those who strike God on the cheek can expect God to turn the other cheek.

Perhaps I have found it hard to give up the idea that without retribution, people who commit horrible acts will just "get away with it". To eschew retribution can seem too soft and too tolerant of evils that really should be opposed. That misses the point. Certainly one alternative to retribution is to just accept any behaviour and not judge anything to be "evil". But that's certainly not the alternative Jesus promotes. His life stands in clear opposition to evil, and his death displays the power of love over evil. We can take the horror of real evil seriously and seek with all our heart, mind and strength to prevent, expose, and oppose evil, and to heal its consequences, without needing revenge or retributive punishment.

As I walked the streets of Wahroonga in the rain thinking that through, there was a moment of clarity and peace. Released from the need to support the retributive mind-set, I can all the more earnestly seek the well-being of even the most horrible people.

To my friends who figured this out a long time ago, sorry I have been so slow getting to this position. To my friends who still don't see it, come on guys! Catch up!