All Things Seen & Unseen

We've been watching a DVD series, South Riding 1 , and it's got the usual Christian character who is held up for ridicule. He is judged harshly because he is a hypocrite. The character is a married, Methodist lay preacher -always fertile soil for Christophobia- who is committing adultery with a seductive, decepti ve Delilah. He is conscience stricken about what he is doing but she can always bend him to her wishes.

Just recently, I've again come across the writings of Dr J. I. Packer, now in his 80s, who has been a pastor and academic.  He was once a great hero of mine when I was an orthodox Calvinist d e cades ago. He was an Anglican but recently left the Canadian church because of its well-publicised slide into li beralism . Interestingly, although he classed himself as an evangelical he had a great l ove for The Book of Common Prayer ( BCP: 1662). (B eing an evangelical Anglican and having a love for the BCP seems rare to day. ) Packer was brought up on the BCP and I can understand his strong affection for its r h ythms and its implicit piety. (I was not nurture d in it but first e ncountered Anglicanism through An Australian Prayer Book (AAPA: 1978) .) Packer has made a study of the 1662 BCP and found that a sin-grace-faith pattern exists throughout its services.  To check this out f urther, I would like to go back to the second Prayer Book (1552) of Edward VI's reign ...

T he Buddhist religion begins with d octrines known as the Four Noble Truths * . The first noble truth is that human existence is unsatisfactoriness ( dukk ha ), that is, ' things are not as they should be '. (Even the happi est of times will end and hence, they too are unsati sfactory.) And life is that way because we crave and cling to what are the impermanent things and ideas of this life. One author suggests that dukkha is derived from the image of riding in a horse- drawn vehicle where an ungreased axle on one side of the buggy is c ausing occupants to become nauseous through its la ck of pr oper movement. No wonder humans feel uneasy and even despair at times as they ride in the buggy of normal life !

I believe that Christians should take the opportunities they receive in their daily lives to speak the good news of God to others they meet.  I n this post I will be trying to lay out one way of understanding what lies behind such witness.  I t's common to represent initiation into the Christian walk as the beginning of a relationship with God . And there's nothing wrong with this conception as long as we keep in mind some important differences between human relationsh ips and relationships with God. 1. God I s N ot A P erson It 's common to hear f o lk say that God is a person. In the evangelical world it's almost a fundamental doctrine and taken for granted.  H owever, although God relates to us in a personal way for we are persons, his being--to use C. S. Lewis' gra phic term--is 'sup er - personal'. What Lewis meant by this language is that God transcends or is beyond what we describe as a person.

In the gospel of John in particular we meet that phrase often: believe in Jesus (e.g., Jn 3.16) However, the problem with the translation 'in' is that it can so easily be misunderstood to mean believing certain things about Jesus and that's all.  Of course, it is critical that we do believe things about Jesus Christ because they are foundational to believing in Him. If we don't believe that Jesus is the Son of God (Jn 20.31) then our belief in Him will be defective. If we don't believe that He has settled the unrighteousness of world's sin (Jn 1.29) by bearing it away from us then we will scarcely know why Jesus' coming as the Man is even important for our lives. Nevertheless, on knowing these things, it is still possible to remain outside God's salvation. To believe in Jesus = to believe into Him implying commitment, trust in Him; just as I am trusting the chair I am sitting on will hold me up. Hence, believing in Jesus means to rely on him ...

Proverbs 4.23 is a key text for reminding us about the centrality of our spiritual hearts. The spiritual heart can be understood as the 'inner person'. Proverbs says, 'Keep your heart with all diligence for out of it flows the issues of life'. Although variously translated the importance of the heart remains clear in all of them. In one of Jesus' sayings, he taught that a person is not defiled by what he eats. What is defiling is what comes out of his mouth from his heart (Mark 7.20). Such things as, 'evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders, thefts, covetousness, wickedness, deceit, lasciviousness, an evil eye, blasphemy, pride, foolishness' and 'All these evil things come from within, and defile the man' (vv21-23).