High Praise

There are moments when Explosions in the Sky remind me of Mozart; Mozart if he was armed with a couple of chiming electric guitars, that is. That may sound like high praise. Indeed it is, but some of the sweeping melodies conjured up by the Texan quartet deserve it. Much of music, like ballroom dancing*, is about rise and fall, and there are few bands who do crescendo's better than Explosions in the Sky. The band name is most appropriate, because as you listen to them (preferably with big headphones and lots of volume) you begin to feel like you are caught up in some sort of cosmic drama, where all sorts of beauty is exploding all around you.

Of course, the proof is in the pudding. My challenge to you is to stop what you are doing, find yourself a nice big pair of headphones, turn the volume up on your computer, lie down on your bed or couch, press the play button below, close your eyes, and just listen for roughly 4 minutes 30 seconds (the song kind of peters out after that). See if you don't feel better afterward.




* "What do you know about ballroom dancing!?" I hear you ask. I have but three words for you, which are as much a confession as an answer - Strictly Come Dancing.

Deeply De-Christian

I was tagged by someone who Jamie Redknapp might call a top, top Irish theo-blogger -- Zoomtard -- on a blogging meme which posed the following task:

List 5 doctrines that are taught within the Christian church that you believe to be deeply de-Christian.

I most likely haven’t followed all of the rules, but here is my humble interpretation and response to the challenge:

1. The Holy Spirit is taught about mainly in silences, which is deeply de-Christian. As God’s empowering presence in our world he (or she, perhaps?) is ignored to our shame. Luke (author of roughly a quarter of our New Testament) had much to say about the Holy Spirit, the beloved disciple John had much to say about the Holy Spirit, Paul had much to say about the Holy Spirit, and that most ignored Christian teacher, Jesus, had much to say about the Holy Spirit. Why don’t we?

2. The idea of “once saved always saved”. Were it so, the NT surely wouldn’t have as much to say about persevering, enduring, and remaining faithful to the end as it so clearly does, nor would it talk of being cut off from the vine or being blotted out of the Book of Life.

3. The notion of a Platonic salvation, where the chief end of man is to be a disembodied soul floating on the clouds of eternal bliss. Christians should not be in the business of abandoning a sinking ship (and calling others to do likewise), but rather aiding, through the power of the Spirit, in the renewal of what was once called “very good” by someone who knew what he was talking about.

4. The doctrine that God accepts us as we are. Before you form a village posse intent on lynching me, consider this passage, quoted from the Book of Proverbs in the epistles of Peter and James - “God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble”. Did Jesus die for the proud? Absolutely. But the grace born out of that sacrifice flows to those who are humble enough to receive it. How humble? Humble enough to know we need it, I suggest. How often do our Sunday services bid us to humble ourselves before we worship God in song and in the proclamation of his word? Sometimes I think we’ve created for ourselves an unholy god who is far removed from the One experienced as being so majestic and awesome by our ancestors in the faith.

5. I think the word “faith” has been, for all intents and purposes, butchered. Do we really have any idea what it means anymore? Judging by the way it is predominantly taught, you could be forgiven for thinking it has to do with mere mental assent. “Faith in Jesus” becomes the equivalent of getting 100 per cent in a Christology 101 multiple choice exam. Or else it is talked about as being a once off decision, as opposed to a way of life. We are called not to think by faith, but to live by faith. Perhaps if we let that sink into our hearts we will begin to understand the interrelationship between faith and good deeds in fresh ways, because here is one place where I think the church’s doctrine has failed miserably.

Here’s the tricky part: tagging 5 people who will want to keep the ball rolling.

I’ll go for Paul Clarke, Ellisha King, Luke Johnson, Elaine Wilbur (whose post can be displayed here if she feels it’s too irrelevant for her own blog, which I think it just might be) and Dr Arden Autry (who doesn’t yet have a blog, but whose depth of insight demands that he should).

Killing In The Name Of - #3

Professor Richard Hays begins his argument with a story of a picture. The canvas is a window in a small Washington D.C. church. It is a stained-glass window, portraying the Good Shepherd, Jesus, who is carrying a lamb in his arms. At the foot of the window we read, “Testimonial to the boys of the parish who served in the Great War.”

This picture (and many others like it in churches throughout Europe and North America) tells its own story. It bears silent witness to the reality that the church has accepted war as something which is sometimes necessary for Christians to engage in. It may be a lamented reality, a “sad duty”, but its fittingness as occasional Christian practice has rarely been brought into question by the church, according to Hays at least.

The sentiment of the stained-glass window is that the “boys” who fought -- and who possibly died -- in the war are safe in the comforting arms of Jesus. However, Hays highlights the unintentional irony of this iconography in the form of a question: Is it appropriate for those who profess to be followers of the gentle Shepherd to take up lethal weapons against enemies? Broadly speaking, the question being dealt with is the following:

Is it ever God’s will for Christians to employ violence in defense of justice?

Christians can and have come up with a positive answer to this question, albeit with some positive answers being more thought-out and informed than others. Hays cites Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s decision to participate in the plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler as an example of one such informed answer, and also cites a less known story involving a less informed positive answer to balance the scales. This particular story was reported by a newspaper in 1986 as follows:

An Ozzy Osbourne concert has been cancelled after protests and threats against the singer’s life…in Tyler, Texas, where the controversial British rock star was to appear Saturday. Several groups, including religious leaders and the City Council of PTA’s, said Osbourne represented anti-Christian values… County Sheriff J.B. Smith told Osbourne’s security chief of anonymous threats against the singer, including the use of fire and dynamite.

As Hays muses, ‘When we hear threats to commit terrorist murder as a way of preventing a singer from representing “anti-Christian values”, we cannot help but wonder what “Christian” values are being defended’. Hays sees this mentality as an affliction derived from Cain - that affliction is the impulse to impose our will through violence.

The church has obeyed this impulse in obviously distorted and perverted ways. Pacifists and non-pacifists [?] will of course agree on that, and join together in condemnation of senseless murder - genocide, even (with the recent ethnic cleansing in the former Yugoslavia given as an example of such perversion). “But what are we to say about the Catholic military chaplain who administered mass to the Catholic bomber pilot who dropped the atomic bomb on Nagasaki in 1945?”, asks Hays. This incident is quite close to home for us in the West, which is perhaps one of the reasons condemnation of these actions has not been universally meted out. Yet after reading the following penitent words of Father George Zabelka, it is hard to see why that remains the case.

To fail to speak to the utter moral corruption of the mass destruction of civilians was to fail as a Christian and as a priest as I see it…I was there, and I’ll tell you that the operational moral atmosphere in the church in relation to mass bombing of enemy civilians was totally indifferent, silent, and corrupt at best -- at worst it was religiously supportive of these activities by blessing those who did them…Catholics dropped the A-bomb on top of the largest and first Catholic city in Japan. One would have thought that I, as a Catholic priest, would have spoken out against the atomic bombing of nuns. One would have thought that I would have suggested that as a minimal standard of Catholic morality, Catholics shouldn’t bomb Catholic children. I didn’t. I, like the Catholic pilot of the Nagasaki plane, “The Great Artiste,” was heir to a Christianity that had for seventeen hundred years engaged in revenge, murder, torture, the pursuit of power, and prerogative violence, all in the name of our Lord.

I walked though the ruins of Nagasaki right after the war and visited the place where once stood the Urakami Cathedral. I picked up a piece of censer from the rubble. When I look at it today I pray that God forgives us for how we have distorted Christ’s teaching and destroyed his world by the distortion of that teaching. I was the Catholic chaplain who was there when this grotesque process that began with Constantine reached its lowest point - so far.

Aside from being a poignant example of repentance, these words speak loud and clearly against the Cainic [?] impulse to impose our will through violence that has so plagued the church for centuries. For Hays, these words of Father Zabelka bring to mind the story of Jesus weeping over Jerusalem, because “the things that make for peace” were hidden from her eyes (Lk. 19:41-42).

Before getting into the key text in Matthew 5, Hays briefly touches on the “just war” tradition, which he says “was developed in Christian theology precisely as a check against the indiscriminate use of violence and, at the same time, as a way of articulating norms that would justify the participation of Christians in armed conflict under the authority of the state.” The question is, can the just war tradition be justified on the basis of New Testament teaching? Fr Zabelka’s answer is that the just war theory is “something that Christ never taught or even hinted at”. In turning next to the Sermon on the Mount, we will discover just what level of truth there is in that claim.

Killing In The Name Of - #2

Before we get stuck into some key biblical texts to do with violence or lack thereof, Professor Hays makes some important preliminary remarks on what he calls “The Pragmatic Task”, i.e. making specific judgments regarding ethical issues. This task is the fruit of Moral vision’s first three tasks: (1) surveying the moral visions of the NT writers, (2) examining their coherence, and (3) searching for a suitable way to interpret the texts. Each task builds up to (and is in fact meaningless without) some answers to Hays’s practical question, How shall the Christian community shape its life in obedience to the witness of the New Testament?

This is a question that is not often asked by our churches, or if it is asked, it is only asked in relation to certain issues we’re relatively comfortable in dealing with. This leads Hays to tangentially but accurately state that,

One reason that appeals to the authority of Scripture often seem unconvincing is that the church has been inconsistent in shaping its life according to Scripture. For example, some voices in the church have insisted stoutly on the normative authority of a few texts dealing with sexual morality while ignoring or finessing equally clear New Testament teachings on possessions and violence. In such circumstances, is it any wonder that the church’s witness is ineffectual? If the church is to have any credibility, any integrity, we must seek to be a Scripture-shaped community in all respects, not merely on selected issues of our own preference.

In dealing with the issue of pacifism, Hays does not claim to be speaking with utmost authority, and so if you disagree with him that doesn’t necessarily mean that you are wrong. What he offers are “discernments to the church in prayerful humility”. These are his own convictions (based on Scripture, of course), which are not put forth to excommunicate anyone but rather to persuade others of the biblical grounds for his ethical stance.

This may all sound a tad relative. That’s your ethic, this is my ethic, let’s agree to disagree. But the nature of the New Testament is such that it is easier to pin some things down than it is others. Hypothetically, if two Christians disagree on whether murder is right or wrong, then it is not simply a case of them having to agree to disagree. Analysis of the New Testament leaves one in no doubt that the person who is anti-murder is in the right, and so to be Scripture-shaped is to be un-murderous. The Christian who thinks murder isn’t so bad is in need of serious change, to put it mildly. “Repentance” might be the pertinent word. But what about, say, smoking? Some Christians will argue that believers shouldn’t smoke (your body is a temple, after all), and some will argue that it is perfectly acceptable behaviour (it is not what goes into a person that makes him unclean, but what comes out of him). Which side of that divide is Scripture-shaped? Or is it simply a matter of the individual’s conscience, as eating temple meat was in Paul’s day?

The point is that ethical issues are not as black and white as they are often painted out to be. On some things we can be sure; on others, we need to be open to dialogue, trusting that the Spirit of God will lead us into truth as we wrestle with ambiguous issues.

For Hays, pacifism is not akin to smoking, a matter of mere personal conscience perhaps. He nails his colours to the wall by saying “I will argue that the normative witness of the New Testament against armed violence is powerful, virtually univocal, and integrally related to the central moral vision of the New Testament texts”. He does not present a take-it-or-leave-it ethic; not on this particular issue. For Hays, the New Testament’s stance on violence (in all shapes and forms) is a whole lot closer to that for murder than it is for something at the opposite end of the seriousness spectrum, such as the aforementioned smoking. As we work our way through his argument, you may or may not end up seeing why.

Their Original Call

Near the harsh coastline of the Atlantic Ocean there was a small town called Ecclesville that had witnessed a seemingly endless string of lives lost at sea. From catastrophic shipwrecks to surfers being swept out to their watery graves by the unforgiving undercurrents, it was as if there was no hope for any poor soul who came into contact with this beautiful but deadly corner of the earth.

The residents of Ecclesville became so perturbed by the long list of tragedies that they decided the only right and wise thing to do was to form a Rescue Society. The Rescue Society would exist to save as many potential victims as it could, sailors, surfers, swimmers, and anyone else who would otherwise be swallowed up by the sea.

For years the Rescue Society performed its duties with admirable courage and conviction. Hundreds of lives were snatched from the jaws of death. Though the Rescue Society members risked -- and sometimes lost -- their own lives in the line of duty, they remained faithful to their original call to exist for the sake of others, and their selfless heroics became known throughout the surrounding regions.

As a new generation of members entered the doors of the Rescue Society, eager to better the last, they began to perfect their rescue operations. Rescue workshops were constantly being run, with trained teachers educating members on the latest techniques and advancements in rescue procedure. Small groups of Rescue Society members would meet throughout the week, discussing the workshop material and bouncing ideas off each other with a view to bettering themselves. The equipment being used also experienced constant updates, with many sales teams invited in to showcase the latest rescue harness or life-jacket or some other such device.

The Rescue Society had indeed progressed from its original conception. Its members were better trained, the rescue station could accommodate twice as many people, and the equipment being utilised was far more technologically advanced than that of the previous generation. The perfection of the Rescue Society was the focus of this ambitious generation, and every day they came closer and closer to achieving it. This filled them with a certain sense of pride and accomplishment.

One night, as every member of the society gathered in Ecclesville town hall to hear a top rescue consultant thrash out innovative ways to improve the Rescue Society’s performance, a massive passenger liner crashed into the perilous rocks just off the coastline and quickly sank. Hundreds of lives were lost. The Rescue Society was simply unable to act quickly enough. In existing for its own perfection, it had forgotten its original reason for existence - for the sake of others.


Stolen from Inspired by M. Robert Mulholland Jr (“Spiritual formation is the process of being conformed to the image of Christ for the sake of others”) and The Guardian, a truly appalling film.

Killing In The Name Of - #1

My first proper contact with the idea of pacifism came last year, when a friend of mine posed a hypothetical dilemma designed to force one to pick a side. The dilemma went something like this:

If an intruder burst into your home and was about to shoot your mother, would you use lethal violence in order to stop him? Or to attach a religious element to proceedings, would it be right or wrong for a Christian to resist the use of violence in this situation? In short, what would Jesus do? Christians should be utterly concerned about doing the right thing, so what is the right thing in this situation? Or, indeed, is there such a thing?

Well my friend -- a committed Christian whom I greatly respect -- had a very definite answer to what Jesus would do, or at least to what he would do as a 21st century follower of Jesus - he would stop the intruder from shooting his mother using any means necessary. He would employ violence in defense of justice, with “justice” in this case being his mother’s right to life. If for his mother to live an enemy -- a criminal -- had to die, then that was a price he was willing to pay.

Placing the dilemma in front of me, he looked for an ally. I mulled it over, but I could only offer a Switzerland-esque stance of neutrality. At that moment there existed an irresolvable tension between valuing the life of my mother and valuing the words of Scripture, particularly those found on the lips of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount about loving your enemy and turning the other cheek and so forth. I couldn’t commit to simply watching my mother be murdered, but I also couldn’t commit to killing in the name of justice - or at least my take on justice.

The matter of pacifism has lain dormant since then, awakened only by a chapter in The Moral vision of the New Testament which the deals with the issue head on. The question tackled is the following:

Is it ever God’s will for Christians to employ violence in defense of justice?

This series will present Richard Hays’s answer to that question, which is set forth as an answer rooted in the New Testament’s witness concerning Christian ethics. It may prove controversial, it may upset your theological and ethical applecart, but it’s an answer worth listening to, and perhaps -- perhaps -- an answer worth obeying. Let the reader decide.

Two Stuck Out

Five minutes before a youth workshop on reading the Bible began, I was asked to lead it, at least until the actual leader came along. He did so about 10 minutes into the discussion, but that was more than enough time for me to be encouraged by what I heard from my fellow Bible readers. I started out by getting everyone in the group to say their name and to tell us something they know about the Bible. All Most of the answers were good, but two stuck out, mainly because of my own thought process over the past few months. One person simply said that the Bible is about God - a more profound answer than perhaps he realised. Another said that what they know about the Bible is that it tells us God loves us - a more profound answer than perhaps any of us realise.

It's about God, and it tells us God loves us. If those are the only two things you keep in mind as you read the Bible, then you're not far from being exactly where you need to be.