εὐαγγέλιον

Sometimes I hear critiques and I know they're wrong but I can't quite tell myself why. I'm a bit ashamed to say it, but this has happened with the Gospel. I've heard people accuse 'my type' of being in love with words and ideas - and say that's why we place so much emphasis on reading and understanding the Bible. An educated, middle class, Western preoccupation. I've heard others talk about how important it is to live the Gospel, and have come away with the impression that there's a legitimate choice that can be made between living it or preaching it.

So it was with gladness that I came across a recent article by my old favourite Don Carson, entitled "What is the Gospel? - Revisited".1 The article begins with a boring looking section on the biblical use of the Greek words for "gospel/good news/preaching the gospel". It is kind of boring, but taking the time to work through it is really very instructive.

The second half of the article sees Carson drawing some conclusions. His principle conclusion is that the "gospel" is "the good news about God's redeeming work in Christ".2 Carson notes that there are different foci to this gospel message:

The narrower focus draws you to Jesus - his incarnation, his death and resurrection, his session and reign - as that from which all the elements of what God is doing are drawn. The broader focus sketches in the mighty dimensions of what Christ has secured. But this means that if one preaches the gospel in the broader sense without also emphasizing the gospel in the more focused sense of what God has done to bring about such sweeping transformation, one actually sacrifices the gospel.3

Because this is what gospel means, "it is to be announced: that's what one does with news".4 And this isn't because Christians love ideas or because "ideas themselves reconcile us to God, but because the ideas are about Christ, and he reconciles us to God".5 "So when one hears the frequently repeated slogan, 'Preach the gospel - use words if necessary,' one has to say, as gently but as firmly as one can, that this is smug nonsense."6 ;) Now Carson is, of course, well aware of the importance that the Bible places on right living, but notes that this is the outcome of the gospel, the "stipulation that God requires", not the good news itself.7


1 DA Carson, "What is the Gospel? - Revisited" in S Storms & J Taylor (eds), For the Fame of God's Name: Essays in Honor of John Piper (Wheaton: Crossway, 2010), 147-70.
2 Ibid, 157. (italics his)
3 Ibid, 162.
4 Ibid, 158.
5 Ibid, 169.
6 Ibid, 158. Carson also notes in passing that 1 Peter 3:1 is "not an exception. That passage says that husbands who do not believe the word may be won over by the Christian conduct of their wives. That presupposes that the words have been uttered". (footnote 12)
7 Ibid, 159, 161.

Fresh like fatlaces and dukey ropes

Here are some cool ideas for mixing up Bible studies:

1. Summarise the main points of the passage
2. Put the passage into your own words
3. Do an interview or role-play based on the passage
4. Draw a for anything that makes sense; a ? for anything that doesn't make sense; a ➙ for any challenges
   
5. Draw the passage

H/T Jenny

Knowledge and discretion

As I was reading Proverbs this morning it occurred to me that this sort of teaching would be so helpful for teenagers. A big part of those years is learning to live as an adult in the world. Anyone who's been doing this for a while knows that there are clearcut rights and wrongs that we can pass on to teenagers - but there is also a lot of nuance and complexity. Proverbs does a really good job of exploring this stuff (the classic example being, "Don't answer a fool according to his foolishness, or you'll be like him yourself" which is followed by "Answer a fool according to his foolishness, or he'll become wise in his own eyes. 26:4-5 HCSB). I also think Proverbs' emphasis on living wisely or foolishly is tremendously helpful, especially because it shows that these life choices really matter. It's not only dumb to be a fool, it says volumes about what you think of God and leads you to places you don't want to go.

How about these for starters:

As shameful conduct is pleasure for a fool,
so wisdom is for a man of understanding.

What the wicked dreads will come to him,
but what the righteous desires will be given to him.
(10:23-24)

Don't lose heart

It's easy to get discouraged when friends refuse invites to church. But we should remember that we don't know what's going on in their life. A refusal might have nothing to do with us or our religion - they may simply be having a crappy week. So rather than wallowing in despair, we should just ask them again another time.


H/T Nick

You may not want to read this post

** Bible nerd alert **

I'm eager not to forgot what I learned at Bible college, so in my morning 'devotions' this year I've been reading the books of the Bible that we covered, and glancing through my lecture notes as I do. I've been alternating between Ancient Greek and Hebrew subjects so as not to get too rusty at either. It's been great.

This week I went a bit off track and started reading through Proverbs. When I say 'reading' it's with heavy dependence on the Accordance Bible software (which a friend very kindly bought for me). Anyway, I heartily recommend Proverbs. Because each verse is self-contained it's not daunting; rather, it's a joy. I love Hebrew. I'm really very hopeless at it, but I still love it. It's so different from English, which is a beautiful thing in itself; plus it means that, even with very basic skills, you can notice all sorts of things that aren't easily translated.

The word "cover" (כסה pronounced "kha-sa") keeps cropping up in the early verses of chapter ten. Unlike English, this isn't bad form or the sign of a limited vocabularly - in Hebrew, repetition of words is a deliberate and significant literary device altering the reader to echoed ideas. Use of different words where you would expect to find the same is also highly significant.

So far I've observed that "cover" is used to refer to something negative - eg "The mouth of the righteous is a fountain of life, but violence overwhelms the mouth of the wicked" (10:11). The word translated "overwhelms" is literally the Hebrew word "covers". It's hard to work out if it is the violence that is 'covering' the mouth, or if it is the mouth that is 'covering/concealing' violence (as in the HCSB translation)...

Either way, when you get to the next verse the positive use of the word "cover" is striking. The NIV has, "Hatred stirs up dissension, but love covers over all wrongs", but a more literal translation would be something like, "Hatred uncovers dissension, but love covers over all wrongs". So I think the idea is that hatred unveils and brings to pass a whole heap of ugliness (rather like Pandora's Box), whereas love - rather than just being neutral - actively covers over these same wrongs. Word order is another significant feature of Hebrew, so the fact that "all wrongs" is found at the beginning of the second half of the sentence in the Hebrew draws the reader's attention to the extent and efficacy of this 'covering' - it's all wrongs that love covers over.

Anyway just thought you should know.

Too long we've been apart

I've been reading through the website of the church I'll be part of in Santiago, and I noticed a nice expression. I don't know exactly how the word should be translated in English, but the literal translation reads: "Each Sunday at 11 Ñuñoa church reunites to praise God as a people...". They don't meet, they reunite - how lovely and apropos is that!

Living on an island

A fascinating Radio National panel discussion. Here's some samples to whet your appetite:

I've embraced the whole Hobart thing where here you can have a big house with a garden and a trampoline and a cricket pitch and a vegie patch and look at the mountain and look at the sea and go sailing at the weekend.
. . .
History impinges upon your consciousness here in a way that it doesn't so much in Melbourne or Sydney.
. . .
I find in Hobart I'll sit in a coffee shop and I'll start talking to someone I'm having coffee with but then I'll look behind my shoulder to see who might else be in the coffee shop and to see who might be listening. Now I never do that anywhere else, but in Hobart you're always just watching who's around-
. . .
[W]hat I do notice is that strangers are friendlier to one another. I find it very difficult now when I go to Melbourne or Sydney. I'm walking down Pitt St or Collins St and I nod and say hello to people and they immediately cross to the other side of the road thinking "Who is this loony?", but you get into the habit of it.
. . .
It's the first thing I look at every morning. I get up, I go outside for the newspaper and I look up at the mountain: "What's the mountain doing this morning?" . . . . The mountain is always there and you're always looking at it, and it sort of becomes your guide to what the day is doing.


H/T Kate

Flee from all this

In his helpful, biblically grounded, but densely written book, Tim Chester provides some useful illustrations of what fleeing from evil desires looks like in real life:

Colin always wanted to be in control. So at work he stopped monitoring tasks he'd delegated. At first he worried about them, but he refused to let himself check up on people. He put his electronic personal organizer in a drawer and went back to a paper diary. At home he threw away his lists. He decided not to plan his Saturdays but take them as they came.

Emma found refuge in shopping. She cut out window-shopping and browsing online. She went shopping only when she needed something and always used a shopping list. She hit the TV mute button during the commercials, canceled her shopping catalogs, and stopped buying glossy magazines.1

May we be people who know our weaknesses and have the heart, insight and discipline to create boundaries for ourselves. May we respect what we each must do and encourage one another in it.


1 T Chester, You Can Change (Wheaton: Crossway, 2010), 137.

Aesthetic

I think I may have been born one hundred years too late. I've loved art deco for a long while...


but only just realised my love for synthetism...



Not so keen on the androgynous fashion though.

Destination ✓

Read all about it over on my other, custom-made blog.

Choice

Here I go again, quoting Noel Pearson. I must love him almost as much as The Australian. His latest piece was an examination of the notion of 'choice'. Pearson is all about allowing Aboriginal people the freedom to make choices: "Choice is a power. It is a power for development and progress, starting with individuals and their families and adding up to social change because social change is ultimately the sum of a whole lot of individual and family changes . . . . It is the individual right to self-determination, the means of personal empowerment, means to what psychologists sometimes call self-actualisation: having control over one's life."

Yet this is not all:

The flip side of freedom of choice is an aspect I had not fully appreciated until we reflected upon it: choice is also a discipline . . . . That is why allowing people to make their own real choices is more effective than any other approach to individual and social change. When individuals take ownership the change will be sustainable and real. Because choice, properly understood, includes responsibility and discipline.

The problem with the traditional welfare paradigm is that libertarian welfarism proposed that people should have the right and freedom to make their own choices but not wear the consequences. Here is the social support, there are no conditions attached to it, you are free to do with it as you wish, and if you and your children come to grief we will make sure there is another safety net to tackle that fallout as well.

True choice would mean individuals are indeed free to choose, but the choice must be real. It must imply responsibility as well as right, freedom and discipline.

from N Pearson, "Liberal Thinkers are Right About Power of Choice to Help Close the Gap" in The Weekend Australian (May 28-29, 2011)

Sacrifices

I went to Melbourne last weekend (with my trusty Advocate, Kate) to attend a SIM training day and final interview. We got a lift back to where we were staying with a guy who's going to Africa for a couple of months. He was saying he wasn't sure he could ever go for any longer because of the sacrifices he would have to make. Now I'm so accustomed to this path that I don't usually think in terms of sacrifices, but he got me thinking...

I reckon there are three sacrifices that you make in being a missionary - career, money and people. I gave up the first two five and a half years ago when I began my church apprenticeship. It didn't seem like that big a deal. I was looking for a new line of work anyway and, as it turned out, I loved doing 'ministry'. And I was never someone who was about the money. But I am about the aesthetic and the lifestyle, and oftentimes that stuff needs money. I just can't buy nice homewares or paintings or a car. I have to live like a student when most people my age were done with that years ago.

Now if you've been following this blog awhile, you will know that this was a major problem for me a couple of years back. So it was interesting to find myself in the bright city lights again, thinking about sacrifice. And it's been interesting to see how I have coped with a suddenly reduced income (I need to do more fundraising!) on my return.

The seduction and the anxiety are still there, but it's a timid, reedy voice compared to what once was. I could actually go into shops in Melbourne and think "Gosh it would be nice to have that" but not in a covetous sort of way. And even while I was thinking it, I felt this steady confidence that that stuff's not what life's about, that it's a pretty illusion. I knew that relationship with God, with people and righteousness of character is where true class and beauty lies. Praise God - his burden is light.

Ten Canoes

Here's a little talk I gave before Block Cinema's screening of Ten Canoes:

Ten Canoes is a postmodern film, in that the main narrator speaks from the present, telling a story about his distant ancestors, and, as he speaks, the camera switches to be in their world – which shot in black-and-white – and we hear them speaking. But not always: sometimes we find ourselves watching their story while the present day narrator's voice continues.

The story that is told about these ancestors is about a time when the older brother told a story to his younger brother about an episode in the life of their ancestors, back not too far from the beginning of the world. Now this doesn't sound too postmodern so far, but, interestingly, the main narrator also narrates this second story – and it is shot in colour, giving the impression that this far, far distant time is somehow more real than time that is more near.

My guess is that this is because Aboriginal culture is grounded in the past. The film speaks about the “same law now as then” and the very fact that the contemporary narrator is teaching us viewers by telling us a story set in the past, and that in this story, the older brother teaches the younger by telling him a story set in the past, shows the authority of the past for guiding life in the future.

There is wisdom to this and we Westerners can learn much from it, for we too easily dismiss our past and our ancestors. We even think we are superior to the recent past – to our grandparents – and only rarely do we turn to them for wisdom and advice. And yet, as the film portrays the more distant story (the one shot in colour) we see that, rather than being unusually wise, even perhaps semi-divine people (as I think the Aboriginal ancestors are often portrayed, by both Aboriginal people and by respectful whitefellas), they are ordinary people, not so very different to us. They joke around, fart and worry about their appearance. The women are jealous and nasty to each other, a man's opinion isn't believed by his friends and husbands and wives get crabby with each other and escape out of the home for some time to themselves. When planning what to do next, they imagine idealised, comic scenes. They speak of someone being at the waterhole like we would speak of someone being outside Myer and they can recognise who carved a spearhead like we can recognise someone's handwriting.

So what is the wisdom that these ordinary, ancient ancestors have to offer the people who come after them? Well there are all sorts of things, but one thing the film picks up on is the law. This law contains the way that the community of people is to live. The film doesn't pretend that this law solves everyone's problems or makes everyone perfect, but it does keep a certain order to society. So when someone is murdered the murderer must receive 'payback'.

This reminded me a lot of the history of the Jewish people, the spiritual ancestors of Christians. They also had a law that they had to obey, a good law that kept a certain order to society. But, as with Aboriginal culture, it didn't solve everyone's problems or provide an answer for the ongoing ugliness of people's motives and cruelty. That came later with Jesus. But that's a story for another time. For now, let's sit back and enjoy Ten Canoes.