Redemption and Reality

It came upon a midnight clear, from which this line haunts us each Christmas, was first published in the United States in 1849, so the author was rounding up considerably. If, because of calendar errors, Christ was actually born in 6BC, then the line became literally true 1994. This article is a revision of one I wrote then. One local church published it in its magazine, another rejected it as too controversial. The Internet provides an opportunity for me to air it again for the official Millennium. So what progress has there been since God entered the world to redeem it? I am no historian but I know that the history of the Church is not uniformly glorious. Taking child care as a simple example, it was not the Church which led us out of the oppressions of the 18th and 19th centuries but Doctor Spock. Children's organisations are all very correct now, but all engaged in practises they now abhor just a decade or two ago. And those who regard the Bible as uniformly authoritative and The Maker's Instructions should read Deuteronomy 21 Vs 18 to 21. None of this takes away the good things which have come out of Christianity and there are plenty of advocates of those. But something remains wrong with our understanding. Was the Holy Spirit asleep in the past not to have enlightened us earlier?

Easter sermons often speak of a victory of Good over Evil. While rejoicing at the relative peace of recent times or more accurately the will of the International Community to restore it when broken, it is still fair to say that such a victory is a long way off. I suggest that Christ's Victory is better understood as Forgiveness (that is Love) over Evil. Hence, to paraphrase Saint Paul, Jesus led the devils out by the nose, (Colossians 2:15). All their work of temptation had been undermined by Forgiveness . This being so, I am persuaded that unless Jesus returns before then, it will be just as appropriate for third millennium Christians to sing of Three Thousand years of wrong. Many more may call Him Lord by then but how steady will be their aim towards the narrow gate (Matt 7:13ff)? And how closely do we do what God requires? In fact, do we all understand what God requires? Jesus defined it in terms of two Commandments and what He required in terms of a third. All have Love as the active verb, not Being Good .

None of us succeed in loving God with every characteristic of our being and every moment of our lives and neither do we always love our neighbour as ourselves and sometimes not even as much as our treasured possessions. We cannot hope to enter the narrow gate without regularly confessing these most basic of failures. Paul is very stern about this (1Cor.11:26-32) and his exhortation appears in the Prayer Book Communion Service. I must confess that: in addition to those failures, I engage from time to time in other sins. That I am repulsed by yet further kinds of sin is of no credit to me, maybe not even to God. I am simply not tempted by them. I therefore reject the If Only, school of theology: If only everyone would become Christian, then everything would be all right. Unfortunately there is an assumption implied in that thought, which few seem to understand. Since I am neither preacher nor prophet, I simply suggest reflecting on the fact that both Margaret Thatcher and Arthur Scargill are Christians. Ah but they are not like me! I hear you say. Heaven forbid! Most Christians, in Britain at least, come from a constituency which is largely law abiding. Gains in any kind of evangelism are likely to be from that same constituency. Even if people from other constituencies were converted they would still be tempted to sin in the same way as they always had. Certainly there are exceptions and we have all heard testimony of those who have made spectacular changes from drink or drugs or whatever. Nevertheless most Christians have not.

Am I therefore discouraged? Certainly not as Saint Paul would say. Nor do I belittle the wonderful privilege of trying to be a disciple of Jesus, nor of encouraging others to join us. When we (and especially other people who are tempted in ways foreign to us!) fall short of perfect discipleship that is a pity, but we should not regret the possibility of Sin. Rather it seems like God's intention. For in creating us He did what no third millennium robot-maker will dare do. He gave us not only the ability, but the right to say NO to Him . Stand Up, says God to Job, You are a man. (Job 40:7) He goes on to put the man down, (compared to Himself) but in taking that trouble, credits Humankind with great value. The serpent said to Eve, You will be like gods (Gen. 3:4,5) and he was right, for we do know what is good and what is bad. She and poor old Adam (beguiled like many a husband since!) were punished for their disobedience. Their sin is not the source of our own disobedience, it is simply a parable of it, even though DNA research suggests that we (the human race) have a single female ancestor. Following the Bible Parable further we are, more accurately, daughters and sons not so much of Eve as Mrs Noah. All other genes were destroyed in the flood!. Jesus has been called A Second Adam, but His obedience was more like Noah than disobedient Adam. And the Human Race, as selected (Mr and Mrs Noah like) descendants of Adam and Eve, are more inclined towards good than we perhaps give credit for. Society would not work if it were not so and on the whole it does. The fight between good and evil continues, between and within people, much as it has since Noah, with goodness just having the edge. Many will not agree when I say: especially so in the last four decades. Instead they appear to crave for some better past time when we all knew our place and did as we were told. I dissent from that and see much of the liberalising legislation and the more general change of attitudes of those decades, yes beginning with the much maligned Sixties, as the work of the Spirit. He was not asleep before, just having a tough time. Authoritarianism, which had nothing whatever to do with real Christian values has been overthrown, thank God , and we have to live with the extra responsibility of freedom. Jesus said that He came to set us free. Beware of preaching which seeks to exchange one set of chains for another.

Returning to Noah: Certainly his obedience was the means by which He and his family were saved, but it was not the reason . Genesis 6;10 Noah had no faults and was the only good man of his time. As such he no doubt married a good wife, who naturally gets less than a mention, but it is reasonable to claim that we are descended from good people. If that be so and on top of that we are redeemed and many saved, and we claim that God loves us all anyway, do we still have so much wickedness and pain? That seems to me to be the most basic of missionary questions and it is the one that most thinking people outside the Church reached long ago. We inside the Church have run away from the plain answer, the devil. We have no room for him in the glossy brochure advertising we have learnt from the world. Jesus said : In this world you will have tribulation and He was right, collectively and individually. When we hear of a child murdered in this country by other children, or see pictures of those dying of hunger covered in flies in Africa, we begin to understand that. We believe, often from experience, that God will sustain us through any suffering, but, if we are honest, we secretly cross our fingers and say: Please not me Lord. Jesus continued But fear not, I have overcome the World (John 16 verse 33) What did He mean? Certainly not that he had changed it, or that we will only suffer if we sin. Suffering does not arise fairly and it is not clear to me where our sense of fairness comes from. Not from the Bible.

It certainly was not fair for Esau to be tricked out of his birthright so that Jacob could found Israel. Is God therefore unjust? Not at all says Paul (Romans 9:14). and goes on to explain that God does as He pleases irrespective of what we do or want and has mercy on whom He pleases and makes stubborn whom He chooses. Thank God we also have the Gospels!. They make clear that we are certainly not puppets. Jesus did not come in order to pull our strings, but to ask for our love. Jesus has overcome the world by being the means by which we are forgiven. Therefore let us rejoice in our responsibility and instead of preaching a Gospel which asks people to leap (or crawl) from one constituency to another, recognises innate goodness and challenge people to stand up and become disciples where they are, following our Lord wherever He leads. The Church should concentrate on being The Body of Christ offering ministry as He did, in a variety of ways. As well as the more obvious it must include some kind of deliverance from the devil. Having sat in the waiting area outside a Magistrates Court recently and heard the young men boasting about their violence, that need is only too evident. The Lord's prayer includes the petition Deliver us from evil and we need to give such prayer our full attention.

The Church's Ministry of course centres around offering the opportunity for worship, but we need to understand and accept that particular kinds of worship select particular kinds of people, so as well as Services of various kinds, including traditional ones for traditionally minded people, we need to offer individuals alternative ways of worship. I have found that friends who are not happy to come to a Service are happy to light a candle in a Cathedral. And I have never met anyone who said NO when I asked them if they would like me to pray for them. Nor do they mind looking in a church building. It ought, therefore, to be a place where someone entering is moved to say Wow as no doubt we shall all say, when we die and meet our Maker.

Redemption and Reality.

Beneath the angel strain hath rolled two thousand years of wrong