The Maverick Philosopher on human wretchedness

Over at the Maverick Philosopher‘s blog, there’s a great new post inspired by Blaise Pascal. It’s short, so I’ve reproduced it in its entireity, go here for the original.

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Blaise Pascal (1623-1662):

“Man’s greatness is so obvious that it can even be deduced from his wretchedness, for what is nature in animals is wretchedness in man, thus recognizing that, if his nature is today like that of the animals, he must have fallen from some better state which was once his own.” (Pensées, Penguin, p. 59, #117, tr. Krailsheimer)

“What is nature in animals is wretchedness in man.”  That is a profound insight brilliantly expressed, although I don’t think anyone lacking a religious sensibility could receive it as such.  The very notion of wretchedness is religious.  If it resonates within you, you have a religious nature.  If, and only if.

Man’s wretchedness is ‘structural’: man qua man is wretched. Wretched are not merely the sick, the unloved, and the destitute; all of us are wretched, even those of us who count as healthy and well off. Some of us are aware of this, our condition, the rest hide it from themselves by losing themselves in Pascalian divertissement, diversion. We are as if fallen from a higher state, our true and rightful state, into a lower one, and the sense of wretchedness is an indicator of our having fallen. Pascal writes that we “must have fallen from some better state.”  That is not obvious.  But the fact remains that we are in a dire state from which we need salvation, a salvation we are incapable of achieving by our own efforts, whether individual or collective.

How do we know that?  From thousands of years of collective experience.

Meditations on Mark 7

The essential element of Christianity is a personal relationship with Jesus. Last week I participated in a study of Mark 7, and was reminded just how personal Jesus’ interactions with people were during his ministry on Earth.

There are three major segments to Mark 7, and at first glance they don’t seem to have too much in common (at least, they didn’t to me). I strongly encourage you to read the whole chapter yourself (use BibleGateway if you don’t have a Bible handy), but I’ll give a brief overview of each section:

In the first section (verses 1-23), some Pharisees arrive to see Jesus and complain that his disciples aren’t doing the full ritual washing that would usually precede dinner, and Jesus responds by teaching them that holiness is more about what’s in your heart than what’s in your stomach. He also rebukes them for elevating the mechanics of ritual above the intent.

The second part (verses 24-30) takes place in Tyre, a predominantly Gentile town, where a Gentile woman comes to Jesus and begs him to heal her demon-possessed daughter. Jesus responds with what, at face value, seems like a pretty offensive remark, but the woman is undeterred and Jesus responds to her faith by healing her daughter.

Finally, we have the account of Jesus healing a deaf mute (verses 31-37). He takes the man away from the crowd, and heals him by touching his ears and tongue… with his spit.

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Clean hands and dirty hearts (Mark 7:1-23)

There are a few things to note about this passage. The first is that the Pharisees don’t seem to be concerned on hygiene grounds, this is all about performing the appropriate rituals for cleanliness. Jesus cuts right to the heart of the matter, criticising their concern with appearance before people over seeking to do God’s will. He quotes Isaiah 29:

“These people honor me with their lips,
    but their hearts are far from me.
Their worship is a farce,
    for they teach man-made ideas as commands from God.” (Mark 7:6-7, NLT)

He follows this with detailed teaching on holiness, specifically that our sinful nature is really about what is in our hearts: “evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, wickedness, deceit, lustful desires, envy, slander, pride, and foolishness”. And equally importantly, true holiness is in having a heart that is right with God, and not about whether we perform the “right” rituals, or use the “right” words in prayer.

Afterwards, when instructing his disciples in private, he gives the first indications here that he, the promised Messiah of the Jewish people, has actually come to redeem the whole world. His comments on the acceptability of food are a presage of Peter’s vision (Acts 10:9-22), in which concept of “clean” and “unclean” food is used to tell Peter to go and preach to Gospel to the Gentiles.

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Of Dogs and Children (Mark 7:24-30)

After the encounter with the Pharisees, Jesus heads off to Tyre, a coastal city in the predominantly Gentile province of Phoenicia. He’s probably gone there for a bit of a rest, as he’s specifically avoided attracting attention. But a woman comes to the house where he’s staying, and begs him to heal her daughter, who is possessed by evil spirits. This itself isn’t too unusual (in the context of Jesus ministry, anyway!); in Mark 5 he casts a number of demons out of a possessed man. Based on previous encounters, we might expect Jesus to immediately go out and heal the daughter, but instead he says to this woman, “First I should feed the children — my own family, the Jews. It isn’t right to take food from the children and throw it to the dogs” (Mark 7:27, NLT).

The implication seems to be that Jesus, as the Messiah, is the fulfillment of Jewish prophecy, and should primarily minister to the Jews. But the striking thing for me is that the woman is not offended. Instead, she turns his challenge straight back to him, and points out that dogs can eat the children’s leftovers. Jesus responds to her expression of faith by healing her daughter.

There are two things to note here: one is the suggestion in the metaphorical word-play that there is an excess of food: there is more than enough for both “children” and “dogs” to eat. But also, Jesus challenges the woman in a way that allows her to express her faith and humility. Although we may see the text as offensive, she didn’t think of it that way: Jesus spoke to her with personal knowledge of how she would understand what he said.

Also, following on from the teaching about clean and unclean foods, Jesus confirms that he has come as a saviour to all people, not just the Jews.

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Healing … with spit? (Mark 7:31-37)

The final part of the chapter is an account of healing which is superficially similar to many healing accounts, but subtly different in important ways. A deaf-mute man is brought to Jesus, and he leads the man away from the crowd and then heals him in private. (This is important, we’ll come back to it). Specifically, he touches the man’s ears, and then spits on his fingers and touches them to the man’s tongue.

Now in other cases, Jesus simply speaks to people whom he heals. “Take up your mat and walk.” (Mark 2:11) “Your faith has made you well.” (Mk. 5:34) But this time he’s a lot more hands-on, because the man is deaf! How would he understand what was happening if Jesus just spoke to him? The poor guy is probably already pretty confused, it’s not clear how much he understood about what was going on. So Jesus takes him away from the bustle and mess of the crowd, and makes it clear: “I’m doing something to your ears and your tongue”. So when the man was then able to hear and speak, he could also understand what had just happened. Jesus healed him in a way that was very personally tailored to his specific needs.

There’s another element at work in this story: Jesus leads the man away from the crowd to do all of this, and then uses spit in the healing process. Remember the teaching back in the first section? Well, this is basically the reverse. Under the same ritual laws that describe the appropriate hand-washing procedure, we also see that if a man spits on another man, he is unclean for the rest of the day. But here, the holiness that is the very essence of Jesus leads to blessing and holiness in the man who is healed. The crowd would probably not understand this distinction, but Jesus has deliberately done this away from the crowd. As with the Gentile woman, what could seem offensive is instead intended – and understood – to bring healing and blessing. Both the Gentile woman and the deaf-mute understand completely what Jesus is doing, and respond with faith and rejoicing to his personally-designed ministry.

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Jesus understands us and interacts with us at a deeply personal level. He knows the depths of our hearts, and desires an intimate relationship with each of us.

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Music for the soul

Music, and indeed any art form, involves striving to express that which is recognised but cannot be fully put into words, that which is unknowable and yet known more deeply than anything else. It is this striving for expression that produces great art, it is the acknowledgement – without complete understanding – of the intangible Other that drives creative work.

This is not unique to Christian cultures, it is a universal feature of art. We do not express artistically what we could simply describe succinctly and fully, in a sentence. The intangible natures of love, of the soul, of our deeply felt and yet deeply fractured relationship with God, these are the things which give flight to the mad impulses of the artist.

Of course, the passionate exploration of a question does not necessarily result in finding an answer. Rock music, for one, would scarcely exist without eschatological and spiritual angst (although a vapid and commercially-manufactured boy-band could probably get along just fine…). Whether expressed explicitly via a specific religious framework in such bands as U2 and Live (Christianity and Hinduism respectively), or raging against unresolved religious issues (Meatloaf, Guns ‘n Roses, The Rolling Stones, Nirvana), these are the yearnings that push musicians to greatness.

In Christianity, music is often an integral part of the act of worship. We acknowledge God’s glory and majesty, but are unable to express it in ordinary words – hence the Psalms, in which the poetic construction allows us to come closer to true expression of our feelings.

Attempting to deny this extraordinary wellspring of inspiration would be monstrous. The passionate yearning for the inexpressible Divine and the artistic expression of it is an essential part of what constitutes the human experience.

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Related posts:

Psalm 30

Improving Graces

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Revisiting the Law

Recently, I’ve been reading through the Old Testament. I haven’t read the latter books of the Pentateuch for a while, so it was an interesting experience. The Pentateuch makes up the first five books of the Bible: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy, and also comprises the Jewish Torah. This collection is also referred to as the Books of the Law, which is what Jesus is talking about when he mentions “the Law and the Prophets” (e.g. Matt. 5:17, Matt. 7:12).

Genesis and the first half of Exodus are largely composed of narrative, but from that point on there are indeed large chunks of detailed instruction from God which dominate the books of Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy. And when you hear people talking vaguely about “all those crazy rules and stuff in the Bible”, it’s generally the last three books of the Pentateuch that they have in mind. So as I worked my way through these books, I was expecting to find an endless list of obscure and arbitrary prohibitions.

In contrast, I was delighted at just how sensible all the laws are. But there are a few important things to bear in mind as you read them.

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The Laws of Moses were given to a people who had been slaves in a foreign land for 400 years, and were now being moulded into a new nation. The Law is not there to restrict the Israelites’ freedom, it is God’s gift to them to help them live in harmony and build a successful society. Also, as God’s chosen people, they need special instruction on how to worship God. So most of the laws are focussed on teaching the nation how to interact with each other and with God.

But even with that proviso, there are a few laws which seem a little odd. There are two more things that we need to understand about the function of the Law:

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Firstly, as God’s people, chosen to be set apart for Him, it was important that the Israelites did not become corrupted with the religious practices of other nations.

The principal concern in this regard was keeping them separate from the influences of Canaanite religion, which was rife in the country to which God was leading them. Canaanite religious practices centred around worship of Baal, the god of thunder and fertility, and the bringer of rain; and Asherah (also called Athirat), who was the mother – and also consort – of Baal. (Another of the regulars in the Canaanite pantheon was Anat, the virgin goddess of war and strife, who was both wife and sister of Baal). A large part of Canaanite religious practice involved trying to increase fertility by bringing together objects associated with Asherah and those which represented Baal, so that their “sympathetic magic” would simulate Baal having sex with Asherah and thus increase the harvest.

Kinky, I know. But the point of this whole deviant diversion is that the laws which seem most arbitrary to us are ones like “Don’t wear clothes made of wool and linen” (Deut. 22:11), or “Don’t boil a young goat in its mother’s milk” (Ex. 34:26). The modern response to those passages is, respectively, “Why not?”, or “Why on earth would anyone do that in the first place?”. In each case, the principle behind those sort of injunctions is all about avoiding the idolatrous Canaanite religious practices centred on Baal and Asherah.

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Secondly, the laws are not like a modern penal code; they are not meant to be exhaustive. Instead, they function paradigmatically, by giving examples of the kind of behaviour that God wants from His people.

This is why the Israelites are instructed, for instance, to “Build a parapet around the roof of your house” (Deut. 22:8). The custom among the Near Eastern civilisations was for guests to sleep on the roof of the house (which was flat), and the instruction here is to make sure that they may do so safely without worrying about falling off if they roll over in their sleep. It is a paradigmatic example of the kind of concern for others that God wants us to show. Instructions about leaving gleanings in the field (Lev. 19:9-10) are an example of offering welfare and charity to the poor and destitute, but they also illustrate a principle of charity that is equally relevant even if we are not farmers.

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For a more thorough treatment of reading the Law in context, I strongly recommend Chapter 9 of How To Read the Bible For All Its Worth, by Gordon Fee and Douglas Stuart.

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Related posts:

The power of narrative

Matters of interpretation

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These goats are awesome

I realise that yesterday’s post spent a long time dwelling on unpleasant aspects of the animal kingdom, but I don’t take a negative view of nature. On the contrary, I am continually astounded by the splendour of the natural world. As but one example of just how awesome Creation is, let me offer a set of pictures of goats.

This is the wall of Cingino Dam in the Italian Alps:

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Zooming in a little closer, we see several dark marks on the wall:

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Still closer, the dark marks resolve more clearly:

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Goats! Standing on a near-vertical wall!

I mean, these guys don’t even have fingers and they can climb better than us!

The goats (or more properly Alpine Ibex, Capra ibex) are wild and live in the nearby mountains. They scale the wall to lick salt off the rocks, and also to nibble on the lichen and moss that grows in cracks.

And they’re very cute.

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Improving graces

John Newton, the captain of a slave ship, became a Christian and a prominent Evangelical preacher. Reflecting on his own spiritual state and transforming power of God’s grace in his life, he wrote the following:

I am not what I ought to be — ah, how imperfect and deficient! I am not what I wish to be — I abhor what is evil, and I would cleave to what is good! I am not what I hope to be — soon, soon shall I put off mortality, and with mortality all sin and imperfection.

Yet, though I am not what I ought to be, nor what I wish to be, nor what I hope to be, I can truly say, I am not what I once was; a slave to sin and Satan; and I can heartily join with the apostle, and acknowledge, “By the grace of God I am what I am.”

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The profound honesty of his declaration is too beautiful to mar with commentary, so I won’t add anything of my own. I’ll simply end with Newton’s own response to God’s grace, which was to worship and glorify Him with these magnificent lines:

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Amazing grace! (how sweet the sound)
That sav’d a wretch like me!
I once was lost, but now am found,
Was blind, but now I see.

‘Twas grace that taught my heart to fear,
And grace my fears reliev’d;
How precious did that grace appear,
The hour I first believ’d!

Thro’ many dangers, toils and snares,
I have already come;
‘Tis grace has brought me safe thus far,
And grace will lead me home.

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Related posts:

Forgive us our sins

Serious, not fanatical

Modelled behaviour

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Our Father

Continuing to look at the Lord’s Prayer, I want to focus on the opening lines (Matt. 6:9). All passages are from the NLT.

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Our Father in heaven,
may your name be kept holy.

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The form of address is beautiful – at once acknowledging God as Lord of heaven and Earth, and yet also personal and loving. There is both an intimacy and a majesty to this address: Jesus calls God his father, and speaks to him boldly as a child is entitled to. At the same time, Jesus declares that God is holy, that He is awesome and worthy of worship and praise.

The Lord’s prayer starts by reaffirming that we have a relationship with God, and it is by the right of this relationship that we approach the Lord of all creation. We declare that God is holy, and affirm our commitment to Him. We show this commitment, as His children, by trying in turn to be holy.

Both parts, I think, must be seen in conjunction: We recognise that God is holy; we recognise also that we are His children. We respond to that by learning from our Father and striving to live in holiness. In Peter’s first letter he expands this theme:

So you must live as God’s obedient children. Don’t slip back into your old ways of living to satisfy your own desires. You didn’t know any better then. But now you must be holy in everything you do, just as God who chose you is holy.  For the Scriptures say, “You must be holy because I am holy.” (1 Pet 1:14-16)

There are other implications that are worth considering. If we all call God our father, we are all equally His children. We must love and honour also our sisters and brothers in Christ. Peter continues a few verses later:

You were cleansed from your sins when you obeyed the truth, so now you must show sincere love to each other as brothers and sisters. Love each other deeply with all your heart. (1 Pet 1:23)

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Related posts:

Asked and answered

Daily bread

Forgive us our sins

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Forgive us our sins

Following on from the post about daily bread, I want to look at another line in the Lord’s Prayer. Matthew 6:12 says this (all passages from the NLT):

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and forgive us our sins,
as we have forgiven those who sin against us.

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In Matthew 6: 14-15, following immediately from the Lord’s Prayer, Jesus warns us:

“If you forgive those who sin against you, your heavenly Father will forgive you. But if you refuse to forgive others, your Father will not forgive your sins.

This is not saying that God’s forgiveness is contingent on our forgiveness of others: rather to accept His forgiveness we must first acknowledge our own need for it, and that we hold that need for forgiveness in common with all people. God does not forgive us because we forgive others: He offers forgiveness to all of us. But accepting His forgiveness requires that acknowledgement. In the Gospel of Mark we see this message reinforced (Mark 11:25):

“But when you are praying, first forgive anyone you are holding a grudge against, so that your Father in heaven will forgive your sins, too.”

God’s forgiveness of us is not the reward for our forgiveness of each other, but to accept His forgiveness our hearts must be open to it.

Paul takes up this theme of “forgive because you were first forgiven” in his letter to the Ephesians, where he writes (Eph 4:32):

Instead, be kind to each other, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, just as God through Christ has forgiven you.

The emphasis is on the forgiveness that we should extend to others as a response to what Christ has already extended to us. Similarly, writing to the church in Colossae, Paul says (Col 3:13):

Make allowance for each other’s faults, and forgive anyone who offends you. Remember, the Lord forgave you, so you must forgive others.

Note how these passages turns our human perspective of justice on its head. We are not told to forgive others so that God will forgive us, we are rather told that God has already forgiven us. We have done nothing and can do nothing to deserve God’s forgiveness, but he offers it before we can even ask. Our response must be to forgive others – not because they deserve it, but because God has shown us greater mercy and forgiveness.

This is intensely humbling. In the midst of our feelings of anger and indignation at wrongs done to us, we are reminded that we have all equally fallen short of God’s standards. We are reminded of how far He was willing to go to forgive us and seek reconciliation, even though it meant sending His only son to his death.

Expanding on this theme, Jesus told a parable which is recorded a few chapters later in Matthew 18:21-35:

Then Peter came to him and asked, “Lord, how often should I forgive someone who sins against me? Seven times?”

“No, not seven times,” Jesus replied, “but seventy times seven!

“Therefore, the Kingdom of Heaven can be compared to a king who decided to bring his accounts up to date with servants who had borrowed money from him. In the process, one of his debtors was brought in who owed him millions of dollars. He couldn’t pay, so his master ordered that he be sold—along with his wife, his children, and everything he owned—to pay the debt.

“But the man fell down before his master and begged him, ‘Please, be patient with me, and I will pay it all.’ Then his master was filled with pity for him, and he released him and forgave his debt.

“But when the man left the king, he went to a fellow servant who owed him a few thousand dollars. He grabbed him by the throat and demanded instant payment.

“His fellow servant fell down before him and begged for a little more time. ‘Be patient with me, and I will pay it,’ he pleaded. But his creditor wouldn’t wait. He had the man arrested and put in prison until the debt could be paid in full.

“When some of the other servants saw this, they were very upset. They went to the king and told him everything that had happened.  Then the king called in the man he had forgiven and said, ‘You evil servant! I forgave you that tremendous debt because you pleaded with me. Shouldn’t you have mercy on your fellow servant, just as I had mercy on you?’ Then the angry king sent the man to prison to be tortured until he had paid his entire debt.

“That’s what my heavenly Father will do to you if you refuse to forgive your brothers and sisters from your heart.”

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Related posts:

Daily bread

Serious, not fanatical

Why the suffering?

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Psalm 30

I’m loving this psalm at the moment. I came across it last Sunday while flipping through the Psalms in church, and it is simply spectacular.

It seems to me that one reason that the Psalms are so powerful is that they give us a glimpse of the emotions experienced by God’s people under the Old Covenant. Often we can read the histories and the prophets as a dry (although powerful) story without really understanding what it felt like to the humans involved. What did Moses think about as he lay under the stars in the wilderness? How did Abraham rejoice when Isaac was born? This emotional element is not often explicit in the histories, but in the Psalms the fullness of human experience is exposed.

David’s use of imagery in Psalm 30 is profound and inspiring, and his joy is visceral and infectious as he lays bare his passionate heart for God. The version below is from the New Living Translation:

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¹ I will exalt you, Lord, for you rescued me.
You refused to let my enemies triumph over me.
² O Lord my God, I cried to you for help,
and you restored my health.
³ You brought me up from the grave, O Lord.
You kept me from falling into the pit of death.

⁴ Sing to the Lord, all you godly ones!
Praise his holy name.
⁵ For his anger lasts only a moment,
but his favor lasts a lifetime!
Weeping may last through the night,
but joy comes with the morning.

⁶ When I was prosperous, I said,
“Nothing can stop me now!”
⁷ Your favor, O Lord, made me as secure as a mountain.
Then you turned away from me, and I was shattered.

⁸ I cried out to you, O Lord.
I begged the Lord for mercy, saying,
⁹ “What will you gain if I die,
if I sink into the grave?
Can my dust praise you?
Can it tell of your faithfulness?
¹⁰ Hear me, Lord, and have mercy on me.
Help me, O Lord.”

¹¹ You have turned my mourning into joyful dancing.
You have taken away my clothes of mourning and clothed me with joy,
¹² that I might sing praises to you and not be silent.
O Lord my God, I will give you thanks forever!

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Daily bread

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Recently I attended a session where we looked into the Lord’s Prayer in greater depth. We broke into groups and each looked at only one or two lines, reflected on those lines, and then shared our reflections with the others. We looked at the fifth line, quoted here from Matthew 6:11 :-

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Give us today our daily bread

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It’s a straightforward enough line, but it carries extraordinary depth. Firstly, it is an acknowledgment that our provisions and sustenance comes from God: we don’t actually make our own bread. We don’t even make the money to buy bread by ourselves. As the line from the traditional order of service puts it, “All things come from Thee, and of Thine own have we given Thee.” Every breath and every talent we have are gifts from God.

There were two other verses which were suggested in connection with this one. The first is from Proverbs 30:8-9 :-

Keep falsehood and lies far from me;
give me neither poverty nor riches,
but give me only my daily bread.

Otherwise, I may have too much and disown you
and say, ‘Who is the LORD ?’
Or I may become poor and steal,
and so dishonor the name of my God.

I love the emphasis on sufficiency here. Provide for my needs, but not for all my earthly desires. Give me the right amount so that I can remain focussed on you – neither too much, that I become enslaved to prosperity, nor too little, that I am too concerned with my own hunger and material provisions. In either extreme, our hearts will be drawn away from God and into improper living. Yes, God is aware of our material needs as inhabitants of this physical realm, but the wisdom of the writer is in asking that he not be distracted by the physical realm so much that he ignores the spiritual.

The second passage then shifts our perspective again. This one is from John 6:32-35 :-

Jesus said to them, “I tell you the truth, it is not Moses who has given you the bread from heaven, but it is my Father who gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is he who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.”

“Sir,” they said, “from now on give us this bread.”

Then Jesus declared, “I am the bread of life. He who comes to me will never go hungry, and he who believes in me will never be thirsty.

Not only is Jesus reinforcing the message that all blessings and provisioning comes from God, he is also explaining that true fulfillment can never be found in satisfying only the needs of our bodies. Infinitely greater is the fulfillment of a relationship with Jesus, and true satisfaction will only be found there. As Augustine wrote in his Confessions, “Thou hast formed us for Thyself, and our hearts are restless till they find rest in Thee.”

We have both body and soul – we are neither angels nor animals. Our bodies need care and nourishment, and so do our souls – but our souls are eternal, and we need to be careful that we give them the bread they need.

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Related posts:

Asked and answered

Why the suffering?

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Why the suffering?

So, last night we were discussing Jesus’ death and our need for an atoning sacrifice, and I heard the question: “Why couldn’t God have forgiven our sins without Jesus dying?” I attempted to answer it first from a theological perspective: God cannot be capricious or inconsistent. He cannot tolerate sin, and sin carries a penalty of death. To forgive it out of hand would be to ignore the needs of justice, and to act whimsically, which is inconsistent with His character.

So far so good.

But looking at it from a human perspective, I think there is perhaps another layer to the line: “For our sake he was crucified and died.” Because from a theological perspective, surely the only requirement was that Jesus died? But he didn’t just die. He was subjected to the most excruciating, torturous death possible, a practice so horrific that even the famously depraved Roman Empire eventually outlawed it as excessively cruel. I guess the central question here is:

Why did Jesus have to suffer?

In the human mind, suffering is often perceived as even worse than death. Death is ultimate, but from this side of the veil we don’t ever actually experience it. Sure, we experience the pain and loss of a loved one dying, but that’s as close as we come. The worst thing that we personally experience is physical suffering. And I think perhaps the suffering of Jesus on the cross was not for the sake of the Law, or for God, but for us.

We need to understand that this forgiveness that we are offered is a really big deal.

We need to understand how much it cost God to offer us this reconciliation to Him.

We need to see how much God loves us.

All in agreement…

Yesterday we were playing drums and generally getting lost in rhythm and worship, and we started using a wooden whistle from the Rio Carnival – the sort that would normally be blown, in the words of one participant, by “a bronzed bikini-clad Brazillian beach babe”. And we were discussing the focus of our developing tribe, finding common ground and starting points of reference – foci on which we agreed and would like to build. In the discussion was a strong emphasis on the openness to inclusion (where appropriate, d’accord) of cultural elements and practices which may not necessarily fall within the accepted pantheon (if you’ll excuse the pun) of Christian traditional activities.

Of course, a Brazillian carnival would not necessarily be the precise cultural exercise that would would try to include. But at its core, it is a celebration and festival involving dance, music and good food and drink, which are surely elements of any culture. Indeed, are these not elements which are central to our humanity?

“That whistle is an instrument of the Devil!” thunders the preacher, pounding his fist on a large bible with a black leather cover. Sweat glistens on his brow, his face is red and contorted with passion. “It is made for a grotesque festival of lust and godlessness, a feast of destruction and sin!” he cries.

But Satan has no instruments of his own. All things are created by and ordained by God. And all people, of all cutures and nations, are in with God if they want to be. “the Scriptures looked forward to this time when God would declare the Gentiles to be righteous because of their faith. God proclaimed this good news to Abraham long ago when he said, ‘All nations will be blessed through you’.” (Gal 3:8)

Thus it is not the whistle, or the food, or the person which is inherently wicked and perverse, but the practice and use to which it is put. And so why could we not put the same instruments to a different purpose? If the very body of Mary Magdalene, for instance, which had been entirely dedicated towards ungodly purposes, could be redeemed and made acceptable to God, is it so hard to believe that we could use a carnival whistle in worship? I mean, Christmas is pretty much a pagan festival, but the church certainly tries its hardest to extract something Christian from it…

Of course, there are certain caveats to this, as further mentioned in Galatians, where Paul exhorts us to be pure in our intent. “If pleasing people were my goal, I would not be Christ’s servant.” (Gal 1:10) But with that in mind, it’s all potentially useful for the sacred. Paul himself was an example of an instrument of wickedness reworked to divine purpose, which he points out later in that letter. Much of his text expresses concern for those who have come to know God, and yet still fall back into ways of ritual and law, where they should be exploring new freedom and joy in their faith, unbounded by petty restrictions of culture and tradition. He goes so far as to call the Galatians “foolish” and “bewitched”, in their habit of returning to routine and legalistic forms of worship, rather than following the spirit of their faith.

Anyway, enough with the heavy stuff. The point is, if you want to do your thang in worship by dancing naked in the desert while banging a drum, you go do that – just don’t try to impress anyone with it. Oh, and take some suncream.

All in agreement?

A Christian Response to Halloween

So, recently we’ve been involved with a process of conscious and deliberate willingness to seek the Divine in every aspect of life, and see God as truly present in all things. This was the starting point for an experiment in a Halloween Liturgy, an exploration of death, ancestors and limnal times from a Christian perspective.

The event was fairly unstructured, and in the true spirit of an exploration, we were all very willing to relax and see where the conversations took us. In fact, even what structure had been planned showed a strong resistance to our original ideas. Nic had taken a large pumpkin and carved it with a cross instead of a traditional jack o-lantern face, intending it as a strong icon of faith. But time, moisture and heat had prevailed over this lofty aim, and by the time we were all gathered the icon had decayed into a soggy and mis-shapen mess, with truly astounding levels of mold and putrescence inside. From a philosophical perspective, it became even more fitting for the evening as a sobering reminder of mortality and the fleeting transience of existence.

Halloween is an intriguing concept. As with most holidays, it is a curious amalgam of various traditions from various cultures, all fairly randomly squashed into an arbitrarily convenient date. But the two guiding principles are remembering the dead, and thanksgiving for the harvest festival.

The festivals of All Souls and All Saints which immediately follow Halloween in the traditional Church calendar are specific remembrances for those who have died, and of our hope of eternal life. These concepts are not terribly far removed from veneration of ancestors, of honouring family and community who have passed on, but who worked to build the society and families that we enjoy. Their labours and lives have benefitted us immeasurably, and it is fitting that we should honour them for this. In a Christian context, we say that God works through us. If we accept that our talents are blessings and gifts from God, then it is His work through others which we honour and praise. We do not honour the apostle Paul for his humanity, we honour the way in which he allowed God to work through his life. We honour a willingness to give himself mightily to the service of God.

It was peculiar in an African context to celebrate a harvest festival in October/November, as it is spring here. But, in keeping with the amalgamated nature of these things, it is a convenient spot on the calendar, so we’ll work with what we’ve got. Our celebration of the harvest took the form of a Eucharist consisting of apple cider and popcorn, which took me on a curious inward reflection on whether we were not in fact making a mockery of the sacrament. My conclusion was that it was in fact no less appropriate to thank God for his bounty and grace with these harvest offerings as it would have been with the more traditional wine and bread. For again, it is not the works of Man which brought forth the fruits of the Earth, but the grace and blessings of God. All things come from Thee, and of Thine own do we give unto Thee – and the body and blood of Jesus is as present in any other aspect of the world as it is in the standard Lord’s Supper fare. Our aim with any Eucharist is to have communion with our fellows and give thanks together for the blessings and grace of God in our lives.

With that in mind, a blessed limnal season to you all.