Forget secularism.
Forget Islamic extremists.
Forget lefty liberals.
Forget communism, consumerism and confidence tricksters.
The biggest threat to Christianity today is from within.
The biggest threat to Christianity is Christians.
Discuss:
This is weird. I sat the theological worldview quiz again, half expecting to get a quite different result to when I did it before. I still came out as an Evangelical Holiness/Wesleyan (!!!)
Frankly I’ve never thought of myself in that way, but if I move down the list a bit, I wholeheartedly embrace being called a Neo-Orthodox Reformed Evangelical Fundamentalist Emergent. Woot!!
Evangelical Holiness/Wesleyan – 82%
Neo orthodox – 75%
Emergent/Postmodern – 68%
Fundamentalist – 64%
Reformed Evangelical – 64%
Classical Liberal – 43%
Roman Catholic – 32%
Charismatic/Pentecostal – 29%
Modern Liberal – 7%
I took this little quiz to see where I’d come out on the Tehological Worldview scale. I’ve obviously been listening to a lot of Jonathan Martin‘s sermons…
Evangelical Holiness/Wesleyan
Emergent/Postmodern
Fundamentalist
Neo orthodox
Reformed Evangelical
Charismatic/Pentecostal
Classical Liberal
Roman Catholic
Modern Liberal
What’s your theological worldview?
created with QuizFarm.com
My wife is a hidden poet. She writes, and some of it deserves a wider audience. I thought you might like to read this one. It spoke to me and I think it might speak to you too…
Silence is interrupted by the sound of the rain falling
Yet, O Lord I hear you calling.You called me from the depths of darkness
Called me back to you.“Hush now, my child. Hear the rain!
Now I’ve opened your ears
Like raindrops falling from the leaves
The sadness in your heart will catch the sun
Making colours of the rainbow.
Remember my promise.
In this, learn your tears are turned to glorious colours
For the world to see.
Now I have opened your eyes.When the wind blows
The leaves are scattered.
Man gathers those leaves
Yet they are dead
But the seeds in the fruit will grow
And manifest themselves in your heart.My fruitful child,
Now I have opened your heart.Listen to the birds’ song
They sing always; pleasing to your ears.Look what I have done for you.
I have given you a voice.
Sing my praises
As heaven rejoices with you.
Speak my Name on your lips.
I am the Truth.My child, you are my daughter.
I see your heart.
(How beautiful you have become!)
When you walk with me
You shine, you love, you see
And your heart sings!Look what I have done for you!
With my hand in yours
You are no longer in the wrong direction.
You’re coming closer to me.
Walk with me forever
And you shall live.
See my face,
Your Father xxx”
“The true children of God are those who let God’s Spirit lead them…” Romans 8 v14
Naomi MacKinnon
Ahhhhhh…. it’s good to be blogging again! More meaty blogs will be forthcoming!
I know this is probably a dire cliche, but it was new to me when I heard it…
“You can safely assume that you’ve created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.” – Anne Lamott
Having read Rob V’s post about misunderstandings, I was reminded of something that happened to me before Naomi and I got married.
She’d been having a bad week, or a bad day or whatever and things were getting on top of her. I decided to text her a reference for an encouraging passage of scripture to look up. Maybe that would give her a boost.
I texted her the words “Look up Jeremiah 33:3. Hope this helps you” and retired to bed feeling like Mr Spiritual Encouragement, imagining Naomi lying there reading the words…
‘Call to me and I will answer you and tell you great and unsearchable things you do not know.’
Next day I said to her, so did you look it up? She glances at me with barely concealed hatred. “Yeah, but how’s THAT supposed to help?”
“What do you mean, how? Have you read it? Jeremiah 33:3?”
“Jeremiah 33:3??”
“Yeah…”
“Oh, I looked up Jeremiah 3:3”
I grab a Bible and then understand why she was looking at me as if she might be about to kill me. The ‘encouraging’ verse she looked up read…
“Therefore the showers have been withheld,
and no spring rains have fallen.
Yet you have the brazen look of a prostitute;
you refuse to blush with shame.”
I’ve been pondering this for about a week now, and to be honest, a week isn’t nearly long enough to assemble and express my thoughts on this topic. It’s a doozy.
Here’s the deal. I was listening to a sermon by Pastor Mark Driscoll recently; part of a superb series about Jesus where he discusses some common questions about Jesus. Great series. Loved it. Something he talked about really made me think hard about what I believe myself. In fact not so much what I believe, but how I believe it. The ‘it’ in question is the ascension of Jesus and his exaltation. Basically, where Jesus is now and what he’s like.
Now, let me get this clear. I do not have a problem with either of these things. I believe what the Bible says about them. I am not having a crisis of faith or anything. It’s more a problem with the way that I perceive things. I tend to need a good analogy or metaphor or some sort of image in mind in order to wrap my brain around a difficult concept. Now, as far as the incarnation goes, I really like the picture I shared on here a few weeks back where I talked about C.S. Lewis and Shakespeare. I just don’t have that picture for the Ascension and especially not of the Exaltation and I think I have a deficient picture of the risen Jesus in my mind as a result.
I understand that Jesus was raised to life in a physical body which he still inhabits, although he is positionally in heaven. I understand that that body is glorified and not subject to the rules of nature which mine are subject to. As far as I can, I understand that heaven is itself a dimensional reality, not a place you will physically get to if you head upwards and keep on going. The things I find hard to grasp are; what Jesus is physically like now and secondly, why did he have to sort of levitate when he went to Heaven? Was it some sort of theatrical symbolic gesture for the disciples who perceived heaven as being ‘up there’?
Evidently, C.S. Lewis thought about this too. He says…
“Perhaps mere instantaneous vanishing would make us more comfortable, A sudden break between the perceptible and the imperceptible would worry us less than any kind of joint. But if the spectators say they saw first a short vertical movement and then a vague luminosity (that is what ‘cloud’ presumably means here as it certainly does in the account of the Transfiguration) and then nothing – have we any reason to object?”
Perhaps Ruth Etchells got it right when she prayed…
“My Lord Jesus Christ, I do not really begin to understand the mystery of your Ascension, or how to picture it. Only I know that there had to be a time when your physical presence must be withdrawn, for the wider world to encounter your love. And I know that my tender and suffering Lord, and even my victoriously risen and observable Lord, must become the awful and glorious Lord, King beyond time and space, ruling over all the worlds that are and are to be. And I understand that at your Ascension you went through the door between time and eternity… Fill me too with awe and praise as you take up your kingly rule: renew within me the wonder of Ascension Day discipleship. Amen.”
And then, of course you have Jesus in his risen state. I can’t even come close to that. Even John struggled to convey it in Revelation. I doubt that any of us this side of eternity will do any better than he did, so I suppose I’ll have to make do with swords coming out of mouths and thrones and robes dipped in blood for now till I get there and see for myself. I’d just really love an analogy I can get to grips with.
For now, I loop back to Lewis for the only analogy that I can think of that works for me to hang these concepts on; that of Aslan the lion in his resurrected form: more glorious, more regal, more truly real than he ever was before he rose.
I’ll make do with that for now and will try not to be perplexed by the floating incident until I’m better able to deal with it. Whatever happened deeply affected those who saw it and they conveyed it in the best way they could. What makes me think my analogies would be clearer and easier to understand than what was written in the gospels?
Wow. That was a long one…
This from the BBC website:
AILING CASTRO SAYS “I FEEL GOOD”
Um, so did James Brown….
I took a flight to Edinburgh recently. I realised that I love to fly. In fact, I can hardly grasp that some people have a mortal terror of flying. It seems incomprehensible to me. We, by nature, are land bound. Our entire perception of the world is bound up in the fact that we are creatures of the land. Sky is above, land is below our feet. That’s the way it is. Then you get on a plane and are whisked at crazy speeds thousands of feet in the air. And then, if you are anything like me, you grin like a loon for the duration of the flight, to the point where the cabin crew are starting to look at you in a funny way.
On this particular flight I was struck by what amazing things clouds are. I studied geography at university. I know all about the water cycle and water vapour and condensation and all that stuff. But something childlike wells up in you when you finally break through the cloud layer and are sitting in beaming sunshine on a carpet of white fluffiness which appears for all the world to be as solid as the seat you are sitting on. I was blown away by the fact that these clouds were all different- each one with its own little wisps and things. And I was utterly taken with the little dark inky splodge each one made on the ground far below me.
As we came in to land we flew over the motorway and I began wondering what was going on in the life of the person who was driving that little white car that just hung a left onto the side road. Where were they going, and why? Did they enjoy their job? Do they have a dog? How were all the family doing? And all the time I was conscious that this person was almost certainly totally unaware of the fact that I was looking at them. I kind of felt guilty then and started looking up at the clouds again so as not to intrude.
There’s something about that whole thing of being in the air. We’re just not really meant to be there, and going there gives me that little thrill of doing something that I really shouldn’t be doing.
I had a conversation with a friend recently about the fact that we are among the few creatures that inhabit this earth that are able to stay for any sustained period of time in the air, the water, or on land. Penguins can’t do it. Great in water, fairly comical on land, but throw one off the side of a building and you just end up with a very short, very wide penguin. Bats: amazing flyers, hopeless walkers and tremendously inept swimmers. Even Australian bats. Chickens have the worst deal. They are pretty much laughable wherever they try to go. And yet we have managed to get ourselves to hang around in these zones for quite some time. All very clever. Kudos to the human race for technological advances. We’ve done a lot of cool stuff, from the wheel right up to the 17” Apple Macbook Pro (if you’re a PC user, trust me, these things are the business). But I still can’t make clouds. No idea where to start. I mean, I can make a small cloud when I boil the kettle, but not one of those huge fluffy things. Incredible. Mountains? Can’t even imagine what I would do. Grass? Pebbles? Glaciers? I’m at a loss. So when I look at these things and see how amazing they are I cannot but join in with David…
“The heavens tell of the glory of God.
The skies display his marvellous craftsmanship.
Day after day they continue to speak;
Night after night they make him known.
They speak without a sound or a word;
There is no speech or language where their voice is not heard;
Their message has gone out to all the Earth
And their words to all the world.”
Psalm 19: 1-4
Iain's Isle 