Wow! It's been over 3 weeks since I last posted something here. I always find September and October to be the busiest time of the year. In this last week, I delivered 6 different talks to 7 different groups of people, which is a lot more than I usually do - and it took up up a lot my creative energy.
It was great to have the Lord Mayor of Oxford, Mary Clarkson, with us yesterday morning. She is a very gracious person - and also made me feel much happier about paying my council tax when she started doing my job for me! I have had it in mind for some time to let everyone in OCC know about 'Street Prayer', and she did it brilliantly and without any prompting.
'Street Prayer' is an initiative that began in Marston two years ago, and which is capturing the imagination of people across the city. On 'Big Breakfast Day' (Saturday 30 January 2010), more than 20 prayer breakfasts will be happening in streets across the city, bringing together people from different churches and those with no church background at all. Surveys typically show that two-thirds of Brits pray regularly, and this new movement has the potential to provide genuinely local and inclusive Christian community that many people will find attractive. You can get involved by going along to one happening near you, or you can go ahead and host one. (More information on the Street Prayer website: www.streetprayer.org.)
Unanswered questions
When I preached on Sunday 11th October, I asked people to text questions to me. I got six questions. Of these, I answered a couple at the end of my sermon, namely:
- Are there any demons in those that are saved?
- How do you convey this deadness to non-Christians? (i.e. the spiritual deadness that the Bible says we all share, until we are born again)
Another couple of questions were asked part-way through the sermon and probably answered by the end:
- Does it mean, when it says the law is abolished that its consequences or its hold over us is abolished? Paul and also Jesus implies the law itself still stands.
- Surely it does matter if we continue to deliberately sin as we are no longer abiding in the vine?
But there were two more questions that were left unanswered and I promised to comment on them here on this blog. So, here goes:
1. If God chooses what’s right and wrong, is it possible that he arbitrarily chose that murder and torture are ‘bad’ and loving your neighbour is ‘good’? Or is there something intrinsic in those things that make them good and bad – and if so is that outside of God’s ‘control’?
God does indeed choose what is right and wrong for us. Those decisions are not made according to divine whim, but based upon his character, revealed to Moses as “The LORD, the LORD, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness… yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished” (Ex 34:6-7), and revealed ultimately in Jesus.
So, I guess the question is: Could God change his character and come to place value on different things? The biblical answer to that is clear: “I am the Lord, I change not” (Mal 3:6) and again, ““Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above and comes down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness nor shadow of turning.” (James 1:17)
2. Re risk assessment: so was an element of uncertainty in the mind of God in His plan of rescue? Doesn’t he know all things?
There is a difference between having knowledge about things, and the ‘knowledge’ that is actually experiencing something. The Bible talks about both kinds of knowledge. (The King James Version of Gen 4:1 is a literal translation of the Hebrew when it says: “Adam knew Eve his wife and she conceived”!)
Whilst God has complete knowledge about everything, he has not experienced everything that could be experienced. God knows what I am going to pray before I pray it, but when I actually go ahead and pray, God experiences hearing my prayer and it is something new for him to enjoy. So, God's relationship with me is not just a game he plays, but a genuine source of joy (and pain!) for him.
Whilst God the Father foreknew what would happen to Jesus at the cross, he had never before experienced separation from his Son. Jesus knew he was going to the cross and knew it would hurt, but he had never been crucified before, so he did not ‘know’ from experience what it would feel like. There was never any risk that God’s plan of salvation through Jesus would fail, but there was a massive personal risk to God as he made himself vulnerable to new forms of suffering. He decided that risk to his own well-being was worth taking.