truth

James’s Blog: Lines in the Sand.

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James’s Blog: Lines in the Sand.

We’re pretty good at drawing lines in the sand, but I wonder where God draws His. What’s God’s deal-breaker? Maybe it’s a good thing to not be able to provide a concrete answer to that question – after all, human beings have a tendency to take lines in the sand and turn then into a box and then to wish hell upon everyone who’s on the outside.

Take ‘Statements of Faith’ for example. These can be helpful things for organisations and churches. They can help individuals find a home where they can grow in some measure of security and comfort, without having to navigate tricky conversations every day. You know what you’re getting. They’re like stablisers; training wheels as we learn how to relate to and love others.

But they can also consist of nothing more than ornate lines in the sand, drawn by human hands; the stone cold truth about God, Jesus, the Holy Spirit, Sin, Humanity, the Bible, Heaven, Hell, Predestination, Women in Leadership, Baptism. Death by bullet points.

Those lines can become a box, or perhaps more acurately, a cage, where what you think about the person and work of Jesus Christ carries as much orthodoxy as what you think about the gifts of the Holy Spirit, and someone who thinks differently to you on whether or not women should be allowed to preach is as much ‘in error’ as someone who thinks that God is a cola-flavoured ice lolly.

(Sigh) I’m not against theological wrestling, by no means, but I remember one of my lecturers once saying that the goal of theology is not to provide answers but to categorise mysteries and I think there’s a lot of mileage in that. Certainly, it helps us deep thinkers with the old humility problem. No, what I’m against is drawing lines in the sand in places other than where God might have drawn them.

As I’ve pondered these mysteries, I have adapted my views and changed my positions over the years, and I have no doubt I will continue to refine my worldview as I continue to better understand the rhythmn of God’s heart. But here’s the thing: God has been with me and guided me and helped me and blessed me and used me all the way along my journey – regardless of my views on predestination or tongues or baptism. God has remained faithful while I’ve stumbled along, sometimes holding views that were quite damaging to myself and potentially others. So God must draw His line in the sand somewhere other than along the denominational or theological boundaries that have provided the framework of my faith for so long. Otherwise, at some point in my journey I would have been persona non grata to Him for some belief I held.

I think God does draw lines, and I think there is a point where God says, “You and I can no longer do business together”, but I think this has much more to do with Jesus than it does to do with all those other details that take up so much space on the page – after all, you know who you find in the details…

James’s Blog: Small Lies and Big Truth.

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James’s Blog: Small Lies and Big Truth.

Recently, I’ve found myself dwelling on mistakes that I’ve made in my relationships, and not in a healthy way. It’s like I’m being aggressively confronted with the 10% that I got wrong rather than the 90% that I got right. I’ve spent a lot of time out of my depth with people, but the truth is that I have very few drowned relationships to my name. These thoughts don’t seem to care. They just seem to want me to feel guilty about something, anything. It’s odd to find yourself thinking about somebody with whom you have a good relationship, somebody who you know you have helped and has expressed gratitude for the help that you have given them, and yet immediately be thinking of the little ways in which you feel like you failed them, or things you wish you had or hadn’t said or done.

These thought patterns often crop up when I’m praying for people, and have the fingerprints of accusation all over them, so these days I file them under ‘spiritual warfare’ and try to deal with them appropriately. How I go with that depends on how well tuned in I am to what is true.

We all make mistakes in the way that we relate to others, we might damage relationships and make less than perfect decisions at times, but that’s rarely the whole story. I want to remind myself, and you dear (and not-so-dear) readers, that our relationships are not usually as bad as we think they are, our mistakes not necessarily as damaging as we fear they might be, our failures not the giant blots on our record that we suspect they are, and that we have done more good than we know just by being a friend to someone. We can’t necessarily stop those accusing thoughts from coming, those regrets and should-haves, but we don’t have to give our failures too much credit, and we don’t have to give the enemy an easy victory.

James’s Blog: Like Us or Like Him?

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James’s Blog: Like Us or Like Him?

The heart of the gospel speaks, I believe, to all people, regardless of culture, creed or race. Because of this, we can make the mistake of thinking that the gospel belongs solely to us; to our culture, creed or race. If it speaks to us, then God meant it for us, right? And if He meant it for us, then you have to be like us to fully appreciate and understand the gospel, right? Then we find ourselves in a position where we assume that being a true follower of Jesus means fitting in with a particular culture – or as Steve Taylor puts it in I Want to be a Clone, ‘if you want to be one of His, got to act like one of us.’

This was perhaps at its most blatant in past missionary eras, where the line between ‘Christianizing’ and ‘Westernizing’ was blurred at best. In the 19th century, the London Missionary Society established a mission in Bechuanaland in Africa, and the Missionary Magazine reported on its progress in the following way:

‘The people are now dressed in British manufactures and make a very respectable appearance in the house of God. The children who formerly went naked and presented a most disgusting appearance are decently clothed…’

Of course, it’s easy to look down our noses at the missionary pioneers of the past, but we’re guilty of the same crime when we insist that there’s only one ‘proper’ way to do worship, one ‘proper’ way to preach, one ‘proper’ way to look and sound. We’re too quick at times to slap the label ‘Biblical’ on things that turn out to just be cultural traditions, and too slow to deny the implied criticism that traditions which differ from our own are therefore ‘Unbiblical’. Our cultural perspectives enable us to share something of the truth of God with others, but not everything of the truth.

In this blog’s first year, I posted a ‘poem‘ (I use that term loosely), suggesting that sometimes an author will write a book about what Jesus is really like and, what do you know, it turns out that Jesus is just like them.

There’s something in our humanity that seems determined to repeatedly recreate God in our own image, to want to turn Him into one us – whatever we are. The irony is, of course, that God has already turned Himself into one of us, through Christ. When we do it, we make God smaller. When He does it, He makes us bigger. We do it to bring God down to our level, to make Him easily digestible. He does it to bring us up to His level, to make us more than we are.

We can’t help but be shaped by our culture and history, but we can certainly try to make sure that it’s God who is shaping us more.

James’s Blog: Ugly Truth.

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James’s Blog: Ugly Truth.
I had an idea for a blog post, but just as I was about to start writing I got distracted by browsing through some old stuff that I’d written. I found this thing from 2007 which, while needing a bit of work, is probably better than what I was going to write… Read more

James’s Blog: The Miner.

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James’s Blog: The Miner.

High in the mountains was a gem mine, owned collectively by several villages in the region. The mine was worked by a single man who, twice a year, would travel from village to village, distributing the precious stones that he had worked from the earth.

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James’s Blog: A Conversation.

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James’s Blog: A Conversation.

“I haven’t seen you at the shelter recently.”

“Yeah, well, I guess I don’t see much point these days.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t think I believe it any more. To be honest, I don’t really see how you can believe it.”

“What do you mean? You’ve given up your faith?” Read more

James’s Blog: It’s True.

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James’s Blog: It’s True.

Dear Reader,

I’m writing to you because there’s something that I want to tell you. It’s something that I overheard once, and although it wasn’t originally meant for you, I thought I should pass it on, because it is meant for you really.

You are God’s favourite.

Knowing you, there are a few different ways you might react to this news, but all of them are saying the same thing: “I don’t believe it.”

You might find it hard to believe because you don’t think you should be God’s favourite. You’re not good enough. How can you be God’s favourite when you’re such a terrible person? Well, I wouldn’t go that far. I certainly don’t think you’re a terrible person, but you’re probably right that you don’t deserve to be God’s favourite, and yet you are.

You might be wondering, what about everyone else? Well, I’m not writing to everyone else, I’m writing to you, and I am telling you that you are His favourite.

Perhaps you’re rolling your eyes right now, because you think this is typical of the rubbish that I come up with. Maybe it even makes you angry, that I would dare to write such a thing. That doesn’t change anything. You’re still His favourite.

Maybe you’re worried about what might happen if you really believe it. Would you get too big for your boots? Would you start to look down on other people? Now, don’t be silly. Do you think God is happy when we settle for a lie because we’re scared of the consequences of believing the truth? If His biggest concern was us abusing or misunderstanding His words then He’d never say anything. No, the truth is that you’re His favourite, and He wants you to know that.

And surely that’s got to mean something, right? That’s got to change the way that you think about yourself, and the way that you think about God, because it’s true. It really is true. You are God’s favourite.

Yours faithfully,

James

James’s Blog: Exchanging the Truth of God for a Lie.

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James’s Blog: Exchanging the Truth of God for a Lie.

It always begins with a lie.

In the garden, the first of us chose to reject the truth, and chose to believe a lie.  It broke us, sold us into slavery.  Ever since the first, the Father of Lies has been keeping us in our chains by sidling up to us, and in a pleasant tone of voice asking what seems a most reasonable question – “Did God really say…?” Read more

James’s Blog: No Rest for the Righteous.

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James’s Blog: No Rest for the Righteous.

If there’s one thing I’ve learnt about spiritual warfare, it’s that Satan is no gentleman. He isn’t one to say, “Hey, James has had a really rough week. Let’s go easy on him for the moment.” Quite the opposite in fact. There may be times where the conflict is more overt, and I am more aware of it, but rarely do the guns actually stop.

As a preacher, I know that the build up to a sermon can be a time of conflict. The act of preparation, with the temptation to take shortcuts or play fast and loose with the truth, feels like a battle. When we’re working towards something specific, we can be conscious of the spiritual struggle, wrestling with motives and prayer, but it’s a mistake to think that after the event there’s a ceasefire. As soon as the seed has landed on the path is the best time for the birds to swoop. The moment the preacher sits down is as good a time as any to push him into pride or drag him into despair.

However, as relentless as the Enemy is, God is even more so. The truth doesn’t ever stop being true. There is not a moment where resisting the devil doesn’t cause him to flee from us. I don’t stop being a child of God because I’ve had a bad week. We are always vulnerable to attack but, equally, the Enemy is always vulnerable to the truth.

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