Helpful thoughts to prepare us for Communion

I have been trying for a long while to track down these words of the old Congregation service for the Lord's Supper. We used to use them when I was a girl and I found them such a helpful introduction to the Communion Service. While I would never want to lose the spontaneity of our non-conformist services I think perhaps we miss out by a wholesale rejection of liturgy, and some of these old pieces of liturgy form a marvellous focus for our thoughts and hearts as we meet together as believers. I especially like the final paragraph:-

"You that do truly and earnestly repent of your sins and are in love and charity with your neighbour, and intend to lead a new life, following the commandments of God and walking henceforth in his holy ways ...draw near with reverence, faith and thanksgiving, and take the Supper of the Lord to your comfort..."

"We do not presume to come to this your table trusting in our own righteousness but in your manifold and great mercies. We are not worthy so much as to gather up the crumbs from your table"

"We come to this sacred table, not because we must but because we may. We come, not to testify to our righteousness but that we sincerely love our Lord Jesus Christ and desire to be his true disciple. We come, not because we are strong but because we are weak. We come not because we have any claim on heaven's rewards but because in our frailty and sin we stand in constant need of heaven's mercy and help."

[See 'Devotional Services for Public Worship' by John Hunter, 1880]

Harvey Weinstein - the symptom not the disease

The Harvey Weinstein saga seems to contain strong echoes of the case of Jimmy Savile and the BBC in that his behaviour appears to have been an open secret, people who had the power to act did nothing and the seriousness of his behaviours was dismissed as being just the norm at the time. Weinstein has been sacked from his own company and the BAFTAs; no doubt the Oscars will soon follow suit and the police look set to investigate. This is, hopefully, the end of Harvey Weinstein’s reign of terror and no doubt Hollywood will breathe a collective sigh of relief and get back to business as usual.

However, the film world is deluding itself if it thinks that with Weinstein gone, this thing is now over. Harvey Weinstein is only one symptom of the disease which riddles Hollywood from top to bottom – and not just Hollywood but infects everyone who runs after the Hollywood culture. Hollywood is a place without any values whatsoever when it comes to relations between men and women. Absolutely anything goes. In such a moral vacuum it becomes a case of the survival of the strongest and men like Weinstein have sat at the top of the food chain using sex as weapon to ensure that they stay there.

In Hollywood - judging not only by the films which come out of it but by the lives of its stars - infidelity, insincerity and indecency are not only treated with total moral indifference but are actually glorified. Hollywood has for generations been  constantly pushing back push back standards of what is and is not acceptable in terms of behaviour and dress.  Now it is throwing up its hands in horror at the consequences which all of this has had for many women in the industry. But we cannot have our cake and eat it; if we refuse to live with the rules and standards which protect society from this sort of thing, we should not be surprised ourselves to find ourselves in a dog-eat-dog environment where the weakest come off worst.

We will not accept that standards of sexual behaviour given by God were actually given for our own good. Because we want freedom. Well, freedom is what we will get - the kind of freedom that you get in anarchy, which is generally the freedom to be slaughtered by someone stronger than you who wants what you have got.

Hollywood is a long way away over in the US and yet it is also here in our living rooms, on our screens and in our newspapers and magazines.   It impinges on us every day of our lives but we do have a choice in how we engage with it. Every time we watch a Hollywood film, buy a celebrity magazine or read an online interview with a film star we providing a little more sustenance to this serpent at the heart of our Western culture. Perhaps we all need to think more carefully about where our money goes and what we might be unwittingly supporting. And we all need to stop praising and emulating the celebrity world that has given birth to such unpleasant offspring as Harvey Weinstein.

Veganism and Christianity: worldviews on a collision course

Veganism is in the news at the moment as folk are encouraged to go vegan for the New Year. Once apparently the preserve of a few off-beat, left wing, hippy types, increasing numbers of mainstream figures are now declaring support for veganism. Unlike vegetarianism which encompasses a wide range of motivations, veganism is underpinned by a set of quite strict values which make it a world-view rather than mere set of dietary choices, but it could be argued that veganism is pseudo-religious in character. 

It is easy to disregard veganism as just a rather extreme lifestyle choice but in fact these principles that make up veganism are in aggressive opposition to foundational Christian doctrines. They are also increasingly seeping into mainstream thought via the media, especially in areas like conservation and agriculture.

These principles include the following:

• Humans have no special status. Veganism explicitly places the same value on animal life as human life. Human beings are just another animal. Some vegans even go so far as to compare society's use of animals for food to the Holocaust, and human ownership of animals to pre-Abolition slavery. (Ironically, however, vegans actually place humans on a different level from other animals, as other animals feel no compunction in killing and eating one another, and by expecting humans to behave in ways completely counter to natural selection, a theory which has done so much to shape veganism.)
• Rejection of the so-called 'commodification' of animals, so vegans will not, for example, keep animals captive or use for milk production, clothing, riding/ploughing, keeping pets or taking any medicines that might have been tested on animals.
• Veganism asserts that meat eating is immoral and veganism is therefore a moral obligation. One prominent exponent of this position is the philosopher Peter Singer, who at the same time advocates full term abortion and even infanticide at the choice of mothers.

Christianity, on the other hand asserts that:

• Human beings are distinct from the rest of creation because they possesses a soul and are created in the image of God.
• God gave mankind special status as steward of his creation: Man may have abused this role at times but God still regards him as the pinnacle of his creation and as the steward of the rest of creation.
• God gave all living creatures to human beings for them to use including as food and for sacrificial purposes. 
• The killing of other life for food and sacrifices can be viewed as a shocking necessity meant to bring home to human beings the seriousness of their sin. God determined to provide the animals to act as these substitutes and symbols 'before the foundation of the earth'. They were provided to point forward to the final true sacrifice, that of his son Jesus Christ who offered himself 'for the sin of the whole world'.
• To say that it is wrong to kill animals therefore a) denies God the right to utilise things he created as he chooses, b) challenges the rightness of God in giving them to people for that purpose and c) therefore attacks substitutionary atonement for sin which is the heart of the gospel.

Veganism is the combined result of pursuing Darwinism to its logical conclusion and attempts to provide an ethical framework for life which specifically excludes any reference to any being outside the physical world. Veganism and humanism therefore go hand in hand. Most Western vegans have explicitly rejected belief in God although some follow atheistic forms of Buddhism. Some proponents of veganism, like Peter Singer, are among the most obnoxious and vociferous critics of Christianity.It can be seen from this that veganism is not a neutral lifestyle choice but an ideology which is on a collision course with Christianity.

We can see from this that, although it is quite possible for a Christian to adopt a non-meat eating lifestyle, it is not possible to be both a vegan and a Christian. More importantly, we can also see that below a relatively innocuous surface lie a set of ideas which are distinctly anti-Christian, which  are increasingly seeping into mainstream thinking  and which Christians need to understand - both in order to engage with them in contemporary culture and to guard our own hearts against erosion in confidence in God's providences and principles.

Your life - steward or owner?

I’m in the process of reading a book on Bioethics which I’ve been asked to review for a Christian magazine.*  I thought I would just share one striking point he makes, and some of its corollaries.

The Bible describes a God who is always giving generously and sets forth human life as a precious  gift from God, of which we are stewards. The modern world, however, has rejected this concept of ‘stewardship’ in favour of ‘ownership’. Hence, we hear cries of ‘it’s my life, my body, I’ll do as I please with it’. Women, therefore, should be able to do as they choose with what is growing in their body, even to the point of full-term abortion. People should be able to choose when to end their lives. People can cut or harm their bodies in different ways. For Christians, however, the principle is ‘You are not your own, you were bought at a price.’ (1 Corinthians 6:19-20)

This writer suggests that the ‘ownership’ concept is dangerous for a number of reasons.

·         It encourages people to live lives of unrestraint and self-determination

·         It encourages a quest for absolute autonomy, with potential for cruel indifference to others especially the vulnerable

·         It engenders an insistence on ‘my rights’, again to the detriment of others

We are already seeing the out-working of this attitude in many areas of life, not just in decisions about the beginning and end of life. ‘Stewardship’ on the other hand

·         encourages people to be circumspect

·         encourages people to be mindful of the wishes of the Owner

·         encourages people to be careful with what God has entrusted to them

·         thinks about a fulfilment of duty and care to others

·         never returns a gift early or prematurely terminates stewardship

The author acknowledges that, in a post-Fall world, this stewardship can be hard and painful at times. But the giving, blessing God who bestows this gift of human life in the first place will also give grace to sustain us in the those difficulties. Abortion and euthanasia both imply that either that God’s judgment is defective and that we know better than he does when enough is enough, or that God does not exist altogether. So, by taking decisions about the beginning or end of life into our own hands, we not only abrogate a responsibility that does not belong to us but we also make God out to be either inept or uncaring.

One phrase which stood out for me was the author’s description of the ownership mentality as ‘predatory’ -  grabbing what is ‘mine’ at the expense of others – and there is a distinctly Darwinian ‘survival of the fittest’  tone to modern bioethics.  This is unsurprising, though tragic, in a post-Christian culture. But many Christians are in danger of unthinkingly swallowing this ideology too. We need to be very careful that this thinking with its outward veneer of ‘compassion’ and ‘dignity’ does not seep into our mindset and erode our faith and trust in God, our confidence in his  sovereignty and benevolence or allow it inflate our impressions of our own flawed judgment.

--

* Bioethical Issues by Dr John Ling, Day One Publications, 2014

Is God on an ego trip? God's glory and our good.

'I am the LORD, that is my name. I will not give my glory to another...' Isaiah 42:8

When the Bible says that God does all things for his glory and commands us to glorify him,  doesn't that make God egotistical? How can God forbid pride and self-glorification in us, while at the same time being so consumed with seeking his own honour? How can that glory-seeking fit with a God being good and loving? These questions really troubled me as a young person. I once asked one of our church deacons about it in a question and answer session.Unhelpfully, I was just told it was sinful even to think such thoughts or ask such questions,, so I never spoke about it again. But just trying to suppress these sorts of questions doesn't help. I knew it was undermining my relationship with God. I wanted to love God, but struggled to love a God who seemed both egotistical and hypocritical. I didn't want to think of God that way, and I wanted someone to explain things to me so I could love and respect God wholeheartedly.
Thank God that his deals with our intellectual struggles more graciously than our fellow Christians often do! Patiently God led me through these difficulties to a point where I could reconcile God's glory with his goodness. As I am sure I am not the only person to have been troubled by these questions I thought I would share my thoughts here.
First, we need to think what is the essence of the character which God is commanding us to glorify? God's most fundamental characteristic, I would suggest, is goodness;He is the very embodiment or personification of goodness. He has other traits, like being powerful, all-knowing, etc but those traits are, I believe, subservient to this one central characteristic. What does that 'goodness' mean in more detail, however? It means a sacrificial, self-giving love for others, showing mercy, forgiving, being gentle, treating one's enemies with undeserved love and kindness, going after the prodigal - all the characteristics of God's essence revealed to us in human person of Jesus, the 'exact representation' of God's nature. (Col 1:15)
On the other hand, what of us when we are proud and self-glorifying? We are seeking attention for gifts that we did not bestow on ourselves, on behaviours that are at best flawed and sinful, we want to build ourselves up in people's opinions by denigrating others, and get things we want at other people's expense. In truth there is very little in us truly worthy of honour, yet we crave glory for our shabby little selves.
My first point is, then, that God's character is wholly deserving of glory whilst we, essentially, are trying to appropriate something we do not deserve and therefore God condemns this. But this still did not fully quell my fears. God's constant commands to glorify him still seemed egotistical. Then I realised that, by commanding us to glorify him and proclaim his glory, God was in a sense asking us to glorify goodness and spread the appreciation of goodness abroad. He knows that our highest good and greatest benefit are to be found in having the highest appreciation of goodness and living it out in our lives - I.e. we will be most blessed when we are emulating that sacrificial love, forgiveness, mercy, gentleness etc which I mentioned earlier. By commanding us to glorify him, God is therefore commanding us to be blessed! But the trouble is that the Fall left us with permanently twisted thinking that refuses to believe that our greatest good can be found in a life of self-forgetful service, and Satan continues to insinuate that God only cares about his own interest as he has been ever since his fateful conversation with Adam and Eve. However, experience shows that self-gratification yields a bitter harvest but the most self-less, God-centred people are the happiest too.
Our self-glorification is a destructive thing that tramples others down while it builds us up. God's glory is something organic that grows, builds up and blesses those who enter into it. There is room in it for everyone to be blessed. It causes goodness and joy to spring up wherever it goes. God guards his glory jealously, not because he is an ego maniac, but because his will not suffer goodness, his essential quality, to be devalued and, by implication, thst wickedness be honoured. He knows that he is unique and that there is no other source for goodness and blessing to be found. He knows that if he is devalued in our eyes we will go after fakes - empty shams. That will only harm and hurt us and therefore he commands us to keep himself and the qualities that make up his being at the centre of our mind and and hearts. In the Old Testament God taking away his glory from his people (as in the book of Ezekiel) was his ultimate sanction to try to bring his wayward people back and blessing is restored when the Glory moves back into the temple.
God's insistence on his glory and jealous protection of this is the flip side of his unrelenting love for us and his jealous commitment to our blessing. It represents his passion for spreading goodness to all corners of the earth and defeating wickedness wherever it lurks. That is certainly a God I feel able to praise with my whole heart!

Ten reasons why I never wash...

To highlight the illogicality of some of the reasons people give for rejecting the Christian gospel, someone wrote the following thought-provoking lines that some friends of ours have displayed on the wall of their bathroom:

'Ten reasons why I never wash'

• I was made to wash as a child
• People who wash are hypocrites - they reckon they are cleaner than other people
• There are so many different kinds of soap I could never decide which one was right.
• I used to wash but it got boring so I stopped
• I still wash on special occasions like Christmas and  Easter
• None of my friends wash
• I'm still young. When I'm older and have got a bit dirtier I might start washing.
• I really don't have time.
• The bathroom's never warm enough
• People who make soap are only after your money

Exams and the Sabbath

Last week an expert on Womans Hour was asked how parents could help teens cope with the psychological pressures of study and exams. Her top recommendation was always having at least one day a week free of any study or exam work, and instead just being together and doing enjoyable things. She said this helps the brain process what teenagers have taken in the rest of the week, so it is actually beneficial academically as well as being good for wider well-being.

She talked about this as if it was a new idea of which the benefits were only now being appreciated but the Bible teaches that this has been part of God's guidance to mankind since the dawn of time. The command to keep one day in seven holy, by resting from work, demonstrates perhaps more vividly than any other command how the service of God and the wellbeing of human beings are inextricably intertwinned. It is the Evil One who insinuates that God's commands are burdensome, and designed to serve some divine self-interest at the expense of our own.

The command to observe the Sabbath is not only contained in the rules and regulation of Leviticus but is so foundational to a life of holiness that it stands alongside the most fundamental moral principles in the Decalogue or Ten Commandments. We should therefore take extreme caution before discarding the observation of the Sabbath along with aspects of the ceremonial law as some people are wont to do. As Jesus said, the Sabbath was made for man and for his spiritual, physical and mental good. I can testify that this principle has proved good in personal experience, right through from my earliest exams at school to high-pressure postgraduate medical qualifications.

'Test me in this' says the LORD Almighty 'and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that there will not be room enough to store it' Mal 3:10