Reflection for Remembrance Day 2014

Micah 4: 1-8
Matthew 5: 43-48

It surely can’t have escaped anybody’s attention that this year marks the hundredth anniversary of the beginning of the First World War.  There have been special programmes on television this year, both documentaries and dramas and special events held not just in this country but all over the world.

When I think of the First World War three things come to mind.  The first is the television comedy, Blackadder Goes Forth.  I’m specifically thinking of the end of the final episode when Blackadder and his companions are about to leave the trenches and “go over the top” and charge the German lines (you can watch it here:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vH3-Gt7mgyM).  After nearly six episodes of comedy things turn serious.  Baldrick turns to Blackadder and admits that he is afraid.  The others, including Blackadder voice their own fear.  Then the whistle blows and they climb the ladders and charge the German lines.  In slow motion they are all killed and then the scene fades and is replaced by a Flanders field full of poppies.  Brave people are not those who feel no fear, they are those who are afraid but go ahead and do it anyway.

The second thing that comes to mind is the visit I made to Belgium with school when I was fifteen, because we were studying World War One.  I remember we went to two of the WW1 cemeteries.  It was a very sobering experience, even as a teenager, to stand among rows and rows of identical white headstones, each one of them representing a soldier who had been brave enough to give his life for something he believed in.  Even as a teenager I was stunned into a subdued silence!

The third thing that comes to mind is that the First World War was once called “the war to end all wars”.  Sadly, as all the other wars of the 20th and 21st centuries attest, it was no such thing.  The sad truth is that human beings continue to fight and kill each other over land, or ideology or religious belief.  Sometimes that fighting is in a just cause to oppose a great evil like the Nazis to defend the weak and innocent, evil it can be argued it would be a greater evil not to oppose.  At other times that fighting is motivated by selfishness, greed and hatred.

My study of the Lectionary readings for Remembrance Sunday tells me that war is contrary to the will of God, it is far from God’s best for us and God’s desire is for peace on earth.

In the reading from the book of Micah that desire of God for peace on earth is abundantly clear.  Inspired by God Micah prophesies a time when “they shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning hooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore.”  In that future paradise war will be truly a thing of the past because we will live in harmony with each other and with all creation.  There will be nothing to fight about because we will all have enough and we will all know the truth about God.  This is the utopia promised at the end of the book of Revelation when “the home of God is among mortals.  God will dwell with them; they will be his peoples and God himself will be with them; he will wipe every tear from their eyes.  Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more.”

Our passage from Matthew’s gospel gives us guidance as to God’s will for us until the time we will spend eternity in paradise, in the very presence of the living God.  It comes from the Sermon on the Mount.  Jesus has already said, “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.”  Now Jesus says “You have heard it said, ‘You shall love your neighbour and hate your enemy.’  But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.”

It is easy to hate your enemy when they are faceless, when they are not really thought of as human beings, but as the enemy.  But if we start to see our enemies as human beings, human beings with the same passions, drives as vulnerabilities as ourselves it is not so easy to hate them.  If we start to actively pray for them we start to see them as God sees them and our attitude changes.  It is very hard to fight people who are like us in so many ways; it is very hard to kill somebody you have prayed for.

During Christmas 1914 there was an unofficial and totally unplanned truce along the Western Front.  British and German soldiers began to exchange seasonal greetings and songs between their trenches; on occasion, the tension was reduced to the point that individuals would walk across to talk to their opposite numbers bearing gifts.  On Christmas Eve and Christmas Day many soldiers from both sides independently ventured into no man’s land, where they mingled, exchanging food and souvenirs. As well as joint burial ceremonies, several meetings ended in carol-singing. It is widely believed, though doubted by some, that troops from both sides were also friendly enough to play games of football with one another.

It’s hard to kill somebody you have played games with, exchanged gifts with and sung carols with.  When the truce end officers on both sides had to force the soldiers to resume the fighting.

Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.

If you love your enemy you cannot fight against them and you cannot kill them.  1 Corinthians chapter 13 tells us, “Love is patient, love is kind.  It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.  It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.  Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.  It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.  Love never fails.”  To love your enemy is to be at peace with them.

War is a sometimes necessary evil; it is sometimes necessary to defend either yourself, your family or your country against an aggressor with evil intent.  Until God renews our earth when Jesus returns it is sometimes necessary to defend the innocent and defenceless by opposing evil with force.  But it must always be a last resort, when all other options have failed!

In times of conflict we should, even as we honour the bravery of those giving their lives for a cause they believe in, pray for peace, God’s ideal for the world!

I’ll finish with a couple of verses from a modern hymn:

We pray for peace,
but not the easy peace
built on complacency
and not the truth of God.  We pray for real peace,
the peace God’s love alone can seal.

We pray for peace,
and, for the sake of peace,
look to the risen Christ,
who gives the grace we need
to serve the cause of peace
and make our own self-sacrifice.

It's Not In The Bible!

Last Sunday morning I was preaching on the opening verses of Mathhew 23: 1-12.  I'm not going to reproduce the full sermon here, you'll probably be glad to know, but I am going to expand on one of the thoughts I had on Sunday morning.

I was talking about Pharisaical attitudes in the church today, about things that are expected of Christians in the average church that, as far as I can see, have no basis in scripture.

The first is that old chestnut, dress standards.  I am aware of the general principal of modesty of dress, of not dressing to inflame the desires of others and generally agree with it: but some churches go too far.  Usually nothing is ever said out loud, but a message is nevertheless communicated in more subtle ways.  There is, for example, nothing at all in the Bible about men wearing a suit, shirt and tie in church, yet men who don't like wearing them are forced to conform every Sunday.  If they don't they are looked down upon, even in 2014.  I remember the fuss that was caused the first time I went to a very middle class church in jeans, open neck shirt and a leather jacket.  I think they almost refused me entry!  Women in churches have the same pressure put on them to look smart and 'respectable'.

You know what, as long as we are't dressed provocatively, with the intention of inflaming the desires of others, I don't think God really cares what we wear: he's more interested in our hearts than our attire!

It's the same with behaviours, behaviours that are traditional rather then mandated by the Bible.  The whole standing up to sing hymns thing (or for the Holy Communion Great Prayer of Thanksgiving, or, in some churches, the gospel reading) is just tradition; yet the looks you get if you decide to stay seated in some churches, even if you cannot stand without great difficulty, would kill.

And don't get me started on the whole pew thing or organ thing!  Where in the Bible does it say Christians must sit on pews or only sing their hymns to the accompaniment of an organ?  You know what, it doesn't!

These are just a few examples of church expectations that have nothing to do with the Bible and everything to do with human tradition.  We must all think carefully about our attitude towards these and other traditions: we shouldn't want those traditions getting on the way of those who still need to know Jesus as their Lord and Saviour.  As soon as they do do they need to go,

Conservative Evangelical and Proud!

It's funny, but after a few years of my theology moving in a more liberal/progressive direction I have found myself in recent months moving back to what many would consider a more conservative evangelical theology.

I don"t think I could ever, in my whole life, have been described as a fundamentalist;  but for most of my teenage years, twenties and thirties I was avowedly a conservative evangelical, fed on a steady diet of books by inspired Christians like David Watson, Derek Prince, AW Tozer, RT Krndall, Michael Green and John Stott.  The Bible was the inspired word of God, it's authors inspired and guided by the Holy Spirit as they wrote, the message of God filtered through individual human personalities bit still the message of God.

It also seemed to me that the churches that were growing, that were successful, were the ones that preached this conservation evangelical faith, that took God at his word and had faith that it is true!

Then came a season of questioning, of some doubt.  I started local preacher training and was advised to read authors from a wider theological spectrum.  I was told that this reading would challenge my faith but the, ultimately, I would emerge with a more "mature faith."  This wider reading continued, of course, throughout my time of training as a Student Minister.  In retrospect I was fortunate, though, that some of our tutors were evangelicals themselves.

Since leaving college and starting my service in Circuit as first a Probstionet Presbyter and now as an ordained Presbytet in full connexion I have been wrestling with my theology, with where I stood on understanding the scriptures, what I believed about healings and miracles and the existence of the devil, what I thought about universal salvation.

I have read and read and read.  I have prayed and prayed.  I have asked God to lead me to where he wants me to be, theologically.  I've read books by progressives like Brian McLaren, books by liberals like John Robinson, John Shelby Spong, John Dominic Crossan and Marcus Borg.  Equally I re-read some of my books by older conservative evangelical authors and also devoured Billy Graham's autobiography and other conservative evangelical books that were new to me.

Who was right?  The conservative evangelicals?  The liberals and/or the progressives?  How could I make a choice?  All argued very persuasively and all said their position was the correct one.  The liberals and progressives sometimes mocked and ridiculed conservative evangelical theology, which disturbed me and which I felt was a deeply unloving and unchristian thing to do.  Equally I was uncomfortable by suggestion from the evangelical camp that those who disagreed with them we in league with Satan or being tricked by him.

Just a few days ago, on Facebook, I described myself as a progressive evangelical.  I would no longer do so.

At heart, deep down inside, I am convinced of the conservative evangelical position on most theological issues.  This will come as a surprise to come of my friends and maybe they will not like it, but it's where I feel God had led me.

That doesn't mean blind faith and it doesn't mean that I am ignoring everything I was taught.  It does not mean that when studying the Bible I will ignore the type of literature a particular book contains.  T does not mean that I will ignore historical context and textual context.

But it does mean that, for me, I have decided to trust God, to trust in his power and knowledge above that of human beings.  I believe the Bible to be much more than a record of human thoughts about  God.  It is divinely inspired!  I am convinced that Jesus was truly Human and divine ( and not just a human being who was really close to God as some Liberals suggest).  I am convinced that Jesus died for my sins in my place and that he physically rose from the dead.  I believe that he did all the healings and miracles attributed to him, exactly as they are recounted in the gospels and that such miracle can and do happen today.  I believe that there is a devil and demons who are absolutely opposed to God: and that they are already defeated foes, beaten by Christ's death on the cross!

I think that the church has gone too far in trying to be "relevant" and softening or even distorting Christianoty instead of being a counter-cultural voice for change.

I will be joining Methodist Evangelicals Together and linking in with the New Wine networks.

After several years I know what my theological convictions are.  I' mm ot saying I have all the answers or that I have all the answers, because those who have that attitude ate almost certainly wrong.

I am saying that I've come full circle, back to the point where I can comfortably and without concern confess to being a conservative evangelical Christian!

A Dream of Biblical Truth!

For several months now I have been wrestling with my understanding of the Bible as God's word.  What does it mean to say that the Bible is the word of God?  Is it the case that it is 100% accurate in all aspects?  What about the 6 day creation in Genesis?  What about Adam and Eve?  What about Noah and the flood?

The reading had been doing had been taking my thought processes down what could be called a more and more Liberal Christian line.  I'd read Karen Armstrong's "The Bible: A Biography", John Shelby Spongs' "Rescuing the Bible from Fudementalism: A Bishop Rethinks the Meaning of Scripture" and, most recently, Peter Enns "The Bible a Tells Me So".  I'd also read books on Biblical archaeology.  Reading all these books led me to the conclusion that the Bible, whilst still unique and Holy Spirit inspired, was really a collection of human responses to their experiences of God.

The trouble with this view of the Bible, as I thankfully very quickly realised, is that it really does mean we can pick and choose which bits we want to accept and which bits we don't like very much and can safely leave to one side.  It gives us a pick n mix Bible that we can interpret as we like, because it is all about human experiences of God and who is to say that our personal understanding isn't as valid as somebody else's?

I was troubled and wondered if I was on a slippery slope that could eventually compromise or even destroy my Christian Faith!  This came to a head after a FaceBook posting where I expressed concern at the criticism levelled at me by a congregation member after I referred to the "myth of Noah's Ark" and suggested that whilst there may have been a flood it certainly wasn't world wide.  Most of my Christian friends said there was nothing wrong with what I'd said, but one friend, a Methodist Local Preacher who I greatly respect gently challenged me.

My friend suggested that I was indeed wrong!  He wrote that when he'd gone through his conversion experience God had convinced him that the early chapters of Genesis are not myth, but actually a true account of the origins of the earth and that there really was a worldwide flood.  This is a man whose intelligence and integrity I respect, whose preaching ministry is used by God and whose understanding of science is probably better than mine.

Was I wrong?  Was I being deceived?  Was I more interested in pleasing people and conforming to the beliefs of secular society than in pleasing God and faithfully teaching his word?  I remembered reading in Billy Graham's autobiography that he had faced a similar dilemma; to believe absolutely in the truth of the Bible or to compromise with the latest scientific theories.  Billy chose to believe in the Bible as the word if God!

Which way should I go?  More than anything I wanted to be faithful to God, not worrying about what others thought or says to me, focussed only on serving my Creator, Redeemer and Sustainer!  I prayed to God and asked that he would make things clear to me.

That night I had a dream.  Frustratingly I can't remember the exact details of the dream, but through it God made it abundantly clear to me that the liberal and progressive Christian understandings of the Bible are indeed a slippery slope and that I should hold onto the truth that the Bible is indeed God's Holy Spirit inspired words to humankind.

Subsequent to that dream, which was only a few nights ago, I have done some more research into scientific theories like the Big Bang and naturalistic evolution and discovered that they are not based on firm facts and objective observation, but are, in fact, quite speculative and not particularly good science.  A very helpful book in this endeavour has been "After Eden: a Understanding Creation, the Curse and the Cross" by Henry Morris III.

I have not, I emphasise, abandoned the rules of Bibilical interpretation I was taught during my Local Preacher training and my time as a Student Minister, but I have returned to the classic evangelical understanding of scripture as the word of God.  Like Billy Graham I have decided that if there is conflict between scientists opinion and God's word then I will choose God's word!

The Confidence to Talk About God!

I sat down with my copy of The Methodist Recorder this afternoon and read with interest the report from the recent meeting of the Methodist Church Council.

One thing that particularly caught my eye was a statement attributed to our General Sectetary, Martyn Atkins, who is reported to have "asked council members for their views on how the Church and individual Methodists might recover their confidence in speaking about God."

This set me thinking, thinking about why Methodists seem to be reluctant to share the Good News of Jesus Christ.  Can it be that at least some are reluctant because their faith is so watered down that they are no longer convinced that they have any good news worth sharing?

Some Christians, particularly those of liberal and progressive persuasion, have cast doubt on the traditional evangelical understanding of Christ.  They no longer seem to believe that Jesus died on the cross in our place, taking the consequences of our sin in his own person.  They no longer seem to believe in the need for confession and repentance of sin and of the need to confess Jesus Christ as their Saviour and Lord.

These same liberals and progressives even seem to believe that all religions, or indeed even no religion, provide equally valid paths to God.  If any religion will do; if any faith path, no matter how bizarre, leads to God then why tell anybody about the Christian faith?  What is the point?  We're all going to heaven anyway - at least that is what they believe.  What do they think Jesus meant when he said, "I am the way, the truth and the life.  No-one comes to the Father except through me"?

If we are, as Christians, to recover our confidence in speaking about God then we must first recover our faith in the Christian message that has been preached since the earliest days of the Church; that through Christ's death and resurrection we can find forgiveness and eternal life if we confess and repent of our sins and accept him as our Lord and Saviour.  We must recover our confidence in the Bible as the uniquely inspired word of God.  We must reject compromise with contemporary societal values that are clearly in conflict with Scripture (and I confess that there are some things that are not clear) and hold to the eternal truths and values of the Christian religion.  Only then do we stand any chance of being confident to talk to others about God, because we will have something worth talking about!

Responses to Jesus - A Sermon for an Epiphany Covenant Service

I want you to imagine a stable in Bethlehem 2000 years ago.  By firelight a mother holds a newborn baby.  Three ornately dressed men approach the stable quietly and reverently.  As they enter the woman turns round.

 “Who are you?” she screeches.

“We are three wise men.”
"What?"
"We are three wise men!"

“Well what are you doing creeping around a cow shed at two o clock in the morning?  That doesn’t sound very wise to me.”

This scene is, of course, from Monty Python's Life of Brian, a film that is not at all blasphemous since it very clearly points out very early on that Brian is not Jesus.  This scene from that film contains all the elements that Christians associate with Epiphany; a star over a Bethlehem stable, a mother within cradling her baby and three kings bearing gifts.  These are familiar from countless nativity plays, and yet if you really read and look into the text a rather different picture emerges.

For a start off, there is no suggestion in Matthew’s gospel that Jesus was born in a stable.  Indeed, we are told that the visitors from the East “went into the house.”

Next, whatever they were, these visitors from the East were not kings.  The Good News Bible calls them “men who studied the stars”.  Other translations call them Wise Men, Scholars, Magi or Astrologers.  In fact, I couldn’t find a single translation that calls them kings. And we don’t know how many of them there were.  Matthew’s gospel tells us there were three gifts; it doesn’t tell us how many men brought the gifts.

Some people will say that none of this matters, that what is truly important is the message of the scripture, and they are absolutely right in one sense, and wrong in another.  The author of Matthew’s gospel wrote these verses for a purpose and all the elements are included for a purpose.  He was a Jew writing to a Jewish Christian community and we need to bear that in mind as we study this text.  He was a Jew, writing to a Jewish Christian community about how several different people responded to the birth of Jesus and his message was not only relevant for them, it is relevant for us too and has much to say to us as we think about the Covenant promise we will make later in this service.

This morning we’re going to look briefly at three different responses to Jesus from our gospel narrative, and hopefully think more deeply about our own response to Jesus.

First let’s take a look a King Herod’s response.

Now it has to be said that Herod was not a very nice chap.  In fact his name is ranked with other infamous despots throughout history, evil men like Genghis Khan, Vlad The Impaler, Adolph Hitler, Joseph Stalin and Saddam Hussein.  Herod was King of the Jews but he wasn’t even a Jew, he was of Idumean extraction and had been given the throne of Judea by the Romans.  He was, in effect, a puppet king.  To try and claim some legitimacy in the eyes of his people he’d married a Jew, the sister of the High Priest; but he was hated by the Jews and for good reason.  Herod was a multiple murderer, responsible for many deaths.  He had his beloved wife Mariamme killed, along with her mother and younger brother, the High Priest.  He also put to death Mariamme’s Grandfather, the High Priest Hyrcanus.  Three of his own sons were executed at his command because he feared they might try to take the throne from him.  He also planned the murder of a crowd of Jewish dignitaries imprisoned in the hippodrome of Jericho to coincide with his own death and thus ensure widespread mourning following his own funeral.  Fortunately this order was not carried out.

Yet Herod is not remembered by history for any of these evil deeds, he is remembered because of the way he responded to Jesus.  According to Matthew, when he heard from the wise men that the King of The Jews had been born his decision was immediate; a rival claimant to his throne could not be tolerated.  It did not matter to Herod that this ruler was the longed for Messiah, the Son of God; all Herod could see was that he had a rival claimant to his throne and he knew how to deal with rivals; he killed them.  Herod could not see beyond his own personal greed and lust for power, he could not see that wonderful act of God had taken place; all he could see was a personal threat and so he had innocent babies murdered in order to eliminate a threat to his authority.

Matthew includes this account of the slaughter of the baby boys in Bethlehem to make a theological point.  One of the concerns of the author of Matthews gospel in to portray Jesus as the new Moses.  The original Jewish Christian readers of this gospel would have immediately thought of Pharaoh’s slaughter of Jewish male infants when Moses was born and drawn the conclusion that Jesus was at least as great as Moses, because of the violent opposition to his birth.

Before we leap to condemn Herod for his attitude to Jesus we should consider that there is a little bit of Herod in all of us, a part of us that wants to put our own needs and desires first, a part of us that’s wants to control our own destiny free from God’s rule.  There is part of us that will resent the Covenant promise we will be making because we don’t want to surrender everything we have and are to God, despite all that God has done for us.

Now we’ll take a look at the response to Jesus of the Chief Priests and teachers of the Law. 

It is easy to overlook them as they are barely mentioned in our passage, but they are there.  Herod asks them where the Christ is to be born and they basically reply Bethlehem.  That is it, their only appearance in the passage and yet it tells us volumes about their attitude to God and his Messiah.

The original Jewish Christian readers of Matthew’s gospel would have understood exactly who they were and why Matthew mentioned them.  These chief priests and scribes knew their scriptures, they were able to tell Herod straight away that the Messiah would be born in Bethlehem.  But did they go to Bethlehem to see the Messiah?  Did they lift a sandal to go in the right direction?  No!  They knew a Messiah would be born in Bethlehem and that if the Wise Men were right this birth had taken place, but they did nothing at all about it.  This is a danger facing religious scholars in every age, they can get so wrapped up in their studies that the studies become all and they forget that what they are studying is real.  The chief priests and scribes had great knowledge of the scriptures, but that knowledge proved to be utterly useless so far as their own salvation was concerned.

You find this unfortunate attitude amongst religious scholars today; university theology professors and theological tutors who are so obsessed with the origins and authorship of various books of the Bible, of their date of composition and so forth that they forget to consider the message the scriptures actually contain.

It is very easy for some people to become obsessed with reading books about Jesus, with watching TV programmes about Jesus, with debating with others about Jesus and to forget the actual basics of spending time with God in prayer, of reading the scriptures devotionally, of worshipping in church and of living the Christian life.  It’s a trap it is easy to fall into.

As we prepare to make our Covenant promise we must remember that whilst it is good to find out as much as we can about Jesus it is far more important to put our efforts into our relationship with him.  Christianity is first and foremost about relationship; the relationship between ourselves and God made possible by Jesus of Nazareth.

The third response to consider this morning is that of the wise men themselves.  Their response stands in sharp contrast to that of Herod and that of the chief priests and scribes.  Their response was the correct response.  The response of the wise men was to seek Jesus out and worship him.

The Wise Men were gentiles.  They were not Jews.  The first people to visit Jesus and worship him in Matthew’s gospel were not Jews.  This is important because it reminds both Matthew’s original readers and us here today that Jesus came as Saviour of the whole world, tying the beginning of this gospel with the end of it when Jesus says “go and make disciples of all nations.”

The wise men were serious about seeking Jesus.  The Bible doesn’t tell us how long their search took; it may have been days, weeks or even months.  We do not know how far they travelled, though some scholars have suggested they came from Mesopotamia, which we know as Iraq.  We do not know how far they travelled or for how long but the wise men undertook their journey determined to find Jesus and not to stop travelling until they did.

How far are we willing to go to meet Jesus today?  We may not have to undertake a physical journey, but we do need to spend time seeking Jesus if we really want to meet him and know him.  We need to spend time reading the word of God in the Bible if we want to meet and know Jesus, we need to spend time talking with God as we pray in Jesus’ name if we want to meet and know him and we need to help others to meet Jesus by showing them his love in the way we live our lives.  The wise men were deadly serious about finding Jesus.  How serious are we about knowing him?

The three gifts of the Wise Men show how much they understood about Jesus. .  By presenting Jesus with gold they were acknowledging that he was a king.  Jesus was King of the Jews by birthright because he was of the line of David, but he was also the heavenly king of kings whose reign would never end.  By presenting him with incense they were acknowledging that Jesus was a priest.  Jesus is our great High Priest who fulfilled that role by bringing man and God together by his glorious self sacrifice.  Myrrh was used for embalming the dead.  The gift of myrrh was an acknowledgement that Jesus would die on the cross, a foretelling of his ultimate fate.

Like the wise men we have the advantage of knowing who Jesus was, what he came to do and his ultimate fate.  We know from the gospels and other books of the New Testament that Jesus was and in not only a king, but the Kings of Kings who was raised from the dead and is seated at God’s right hand in heaven, the King who will return to this earth in glory to rule forever.  We know that Jesus was our great High Priest who spent three years teaching us what God is really like and what our Heavenly Father wants from his children, to love and worship him forever.  We know that Jesus died on the cross for our sins so that we might be forgiven.  We know much more than the wise men knew, yet their response was to worship Jesus.  What is our response?

Today we are holding our covenant service.  Covenant is another word for agreement.  The agreement we make with God during the covenant service is a profound and far reaching one.  We promise to give ourselves fully and completely to God, to allow him complete control over every aspect of our lives both now and in the future.  We promise to give God everything, to hold nothing back.  That is the response we should make to Jesus.  He gave everything for us.  He came from the glory and majesty of heaven into the form of a helpless baby.  The God who had limitless power endured the limitations of a human being.  He suffered rejection, torture and one of the most horrible forms of execution ever devised by man for us; all because he loves us.  He gave everything for us.  What can we do in response but worship him and give him everything we have and everything we are?

A Balanced Christian Diet!

Apologies to those of you who have clicked through to this blog post thinking it will give you nutritional information.  That’s not what this is about.  The balanced diet I refer to is a balanced diet of Christian reading.  Allow me to explain.

Up until going to university the only Christian book I’d ever read was the Bible, the RSV as a matter of fact.  I’d been vaguely aware that there was Christian literature available, but wasn’t all that interested since my faith at that stage was of a very loose and notional variety.

It was after coming to a deeper understanding of the Christian faith and making a personal commitment to Christ that I became aware of all the Christian books I’d been missing out on, partly because I was given ‘The Cross & the Switchblade” as a gift shortly after I made the commitment.  This book had me hooked from the first page and had a profound and lasting influence upon my life and faith.

I soon found the local Christian bookshop and devoured works by Christian authors like David Watson, Michael Green, AW Tozer, Billy Graham and several more whose names escape me.  As the years passed and I married and our daughter came along I continued with the reading I have always loved.  I read authors like Joyce Meyer, RT Kendall, Martyn Lloyd-Jones and many more.  They all had one thing in common: they were all fundamentalist or evangelical Christian authors and their writings confirm and strengthen what I now realise was an evangelical faith that bordered on fundamentalist.  It didn’t matter to me though, at the time, as I was pretty intolerant, saw the world in black and white and thought that anybody who didn’t agree with my faith stance was themselves lacking in faith.  I’m ashamed to admit it, but it is true.

It was following God’s call to become a Methodist Local Preacher that led to a change of mind.  I started on the ‘Faith & Worship Course” and very early on requested a meeting with my Circuit Superintendent.  It seemed to me that the course was far too liberal, questioning things that I didn’t feel needed to be questioned and challenging what I believed were essentials of the Christian faith, such as the inerrancy of scripture.

My very wise Superintendent asked me about what I’d read by way of Christian literature and commentaries over the years and gently suggested that maybe I should read books by authors whose theological viewpoints I might now agree with.  Because I trusted my Superintendent I did as he suggested.

Over the next few years, as I finished my Local Preacher training, candidating for ministry and undergoing pre-ordination training, I read very widely.  I read classics like John Robinson’s “Honest to God”.  I devoured the writings of Karen Armstrong and John Shelby Spong.  I discovered the works of John Dominic Crossan and Marcus Borg and read essays by other members of the Jesus Seminar.  I have found the works of Borg, and also Brian McLaren particularly helpful.  That is not to say I haven’t continued to enjoy works by evangelical authors too, particularly the works of NT Wright.

I haven’t suddenly become a liberal, or a progressive or post-modern or any other label you might wish to come up with.  I have had my faith challenged, on one occasion almost to the point of destruction; but undertaking and maintaining a balanced diet of Christian reading has, for the most part, been of enormous benefit to me both as a Christian disciple and Methodist Probationer Presbyter.  My understanding of scripture has increased greatly and my preaching enriched as a result and my faith is actually deeper and stronger.

If you only ever read books from one Christian theological stand then, at the start of this New Year,  I urge you to deepen and broaden your reading.  It may challenge you, it may surprise you and it may unnerve you but, ultimately, it will be worth it.