RAF

My third son wants to join the RAF.

Dilemma:

Perfect career for his personality, versus ethics of potentially having to kill people who may sincerely think they are defending themselves against the evil British.

Personally, I do believe it is OK for Christians to serve in the armed forces - as per the 39 articles - imagine what would have happened if we had not won the second world war! But I would be a useless soldier, trying to aginise my way through moral dilemmas in the heat of battle.

The Infinite Cross of Christ

This is a big, deep post, and I’m not sure how I will put it into words.

I suppose it starts in one of my previous posts, where I discuss my new vision on abortion. Please read the full post, but in summary I was saying that abortion is always an intolerable evil, but which still needs to be there. It’s always wrong, but is often the best way forwards. If you find you are walking on the forbidden lawn, you still have to walk on it to get back to the path. I referred also to the Israelite soldiers who went into Canaan and committed genocide under God’s command, and then offered sacrifices because they had incurred bloodguilt by breaking God’s law – even though he told them to do it..

So now I am developing those themes. Imagine an American abortion clinic. Outside are two massed demonstrations: one shouts and screams about the rights of the child, one screams and shouts about the rights of the mother. In the past I have always been very partisan: vocally anti abortion. I have even presented motions in meetings of my branch of ‘Unison’ (many years ago) to denounce the union’s extreme pro-choice policy. But now I see that we are created in god’s image, and both of those demonstrations is expressing the heart of God. God cares passionately for the baby he has created in the womb. He also cares passionately about the life of the mother. Both opposing demonstrations are expressing the heart of God.

So how do we proceed?

The difficulty is that we are mortal, limited, physical human beings. We don’t share God’s infinity. We cannot reconcile is trinity with his indivisible one-ness. We want one answer to each question. Our God is infinite. In him, parallel lines meet. Opposite truths are in balance. Free will and predestination co-exist. Three is one. Abortion is both the ultimate sin, and the ultimate right.

And yet, even within the infinity that is God, these opposites somehow jar. His love and his justice are not easy bedfellows.

Because of that, infinite problems require infinite solutions. In infinity, the normal rules of maths and physics cease to apply. And yet, infinity can still fit within the finite. If you go on a journey, you keep halving the distance remaining. You do it an infinite number of times. It should take forever, but in fact you reach your destination in a finite time, despite the infinite number of distance-halvings. And so: The infinite God shoe-horned himself into a finite man. The immortal one died.

So in the cross, parallel lines meet. It is the place where every irreconcilable opposite is reconciled. Love and justice embrace. Free will and predestination turn out to be Siamese twins. Abortion is the ultimate sin - permitted. The innocent is a convicted criminal, the convicted criminal is innocent.

The Cross of Christ is the narrow neck of the hour glass through which the whole universe falls. The Cross of Christ is the black hole through which we pass into the next universe. It is the singularity from which the universe emerges, and collapses into. It is the union of the infinite and finite. It is the union of God and man. Immortal and mortal…………………….


In fact, it’s really quite good!

Looking at it; is it two lines crossing on a flat plane, or is it four parallel lines meeting at the vanishing point on a far horizon?

It’s true – there IS a God!

This is demonstrated by my wife’s against-the-odds pregnancy. God told us to have a baby, we did what we needed to do and despite the doctor’s mockery and cynicism [and after a long slog and much doubt] the baby is now on its way.

But, as described in my previous posts, we want this baby to be a gateway to areas of service.

Now, in our church we are currently doing Rick Warren’s 40 Days of Community for lent. (By the way, see Kyle’s excellent discourse on lent here.) Part of the lesson is to make the most of every opportunity to speak to people, breaking out of our normal circle of friends. So when my dear wife was at the school gate waiting for our kids, she saw a couple to whom she was once introduced but has not spoken to since. So, obedient to the church’s teaching, she approached them and made polite conversation. This developed into a deeper conversation about children, which lead on to her telling the story of our near-miraculous conception. And as part of that, my young-looking wife admitted her true advanced years, and the woman gasped, and threw her arms around my wife.

It turns out that many years ago she had a sterilisation, of which she now repents, but being in her thirties though that it was now too late. Obviously I am skimming over the story here. But the upshot of it is that my wife’s obedience has resulted in her speaking God’s words into that couple’s life: that they too can (and should?) have another baby.

Doesn’t it scare the pants off you when God transforms from an abstract concept into a real being who DOES things?

Recanting recanting.

I was telling my son about Cranmer putting into the flames the hand that had signed a document recanting his protestant faith.

I was about to recant some of my previous post - it was too harsh, to critical, with not enough room for variety in the church. But then I read in the Church of England newspaper that some senior American theologian with support from her bishop has said she sees no reason why a muslim could not be a minister in the Epsicopal Church, and that the Jesus she has been following has been leading her into Islam. So does she not understand Islam, or does she not understand Christ? Or more likely, neither?

So I recant recanting. I believe what I believe, and if your core beliefs are congruent with mine we can have fellowship, and if you believe something else, then obviously fellowship can't exist becasue we were never fellows, regardless of labels that try to lump us together..

Am I a Christian?

Well, yes, but only in a co-incidental sort of way - it's not a label I pay too much attention to.

Let me explain.

I believe the stuff in my 'Bullets of truth' down at the bottom of my sidebar. I believe that God, incarnate in Jesus, took on himslef the punishment he had decreed for my rebellions agianst him, on the cross, and that this is revealed in the Scripture, together with an indicatio of how I should respond.

Having decided all this, I then take stock and look around, and find that this set of beliefs falls within a very broad set of religions collectively known as 'Christianity'. So i am a Christian.

But I also find that there are a lot of people, whose religion is fundamentally different to mine, or has only some peripheral overlap with mine, who are also called Christians, becasue the definition of 'Christianity' is so broad that almost anyone born coincidentally in Europe or America fits in.

And then, beacuase Jesus appealed for unity, i am expected to be united with this bunch of people who are really members of different religions, which just happen to have the same label attached.

And if I make noises that, well, I'm not actually the same as them, it sounds as if I am promoting schism. But i'm not - I never was anything to do with them, I just wonder how it is that the same labels came to be attached. I'm not asking for division, I'm aking for it to be recognised that I was never united to them. I'm not asking for divorce, i'm asking for annulment. There was never a valid marriage. Apart from a broad belief in Jesus - which even demons share - I'm nothing to do with them.

I have the beliefs I have stated. I have fellowship with those that share them or something reasonably similar (Although I recognise that often they will not express them in these terms). People that don't share them, are (frankly) a different religion. Please don't put me in the same basket.

The Body of Christ

Even after the resurrection, the body of Christ bears the wounds - the nail holes in the hands and feet, the thorn-scarred head, the whip-lashed back, and the spear-pierced side.

As Christians, we are the body of Christ.

Yet we still ask "Why do Christians suffer?"

Christian Calendar

I have always been brought up with a non-conformist view that much of the so called Christian calendar revolves around the Christianisation of pagan festivals. As Christianity expanded and pagans were converted, they needed a substitute for their pagan days, and something to celebrate when their still-pagan friends were having fun and revelry. I thought that the church took the pagan festivals and applied Christian meanings to them. My parents took a quasi- Jehovah’s Witness position that we really shouldn’t do these things at all, but I have moved away from it saying that the Kingdom of God is advancing and taking ground form the Kingdom of darkness, and I’m not going to let the Devil keep any of it, least of all the fun bits. However, this weekend, while reading the Church of England newspaper, my position has changed again. It was an article regarding the dating of Christmas, which pointed out that neither the winter solstice (21 Dec) nor the Roman Saturnalia (17 Dec) fall on December 25th. The article went on to say that the date of Christmas was derived very early, and was based on an idea prevalent at the time that the OT prophets died on their birthdays. Therefore, having evaluated the date of the crucifixion to be 25th of March, Jesus would also have been born on 25th of March. But since Jesus was a special case. It was his incarnation ie conception that was counted, rather than emergence form the womb. Thus, 9 months later, he was born on 25th December. Now I still think that the fundamental premise about the prophets dying on their birthdays is almost certainly flawed, but it is good to know that the date of Christmas was set based on theological thought rather than simply adopting a pagan festival.