On making hell on earth

Recently, I was challenged again about why I speak so frequently of ecological degradation when people are going to heaven or hell. On reflection, I could have given a number of answers.

I could have said that Christ is Lord of all of life and so all of life is worth talking about. I could have pointed out that it would not be odd to find a doctor spending a lot of their time talking about health, or a lawyer spending a lot of their time talking about legal matters, so why find it odd to hear an ecological ethicist talking frequently about ecological ethics? I could have said that the dichotomy between evangelism and loving our neighbours is ultimately a false one that misunderstands the gospel as a cerebral message requiring assent and assumes a zero-sum game in a context where things are far more complementary. I could have illustrated the previous point from my own experience, where after having spent many years employed as an evangelist and evangelism trainer for at least part of my job, I find myself today having more gospel conversations flowing naturally from my activities related to ecological ethics than I think I've ever had before. I could have pointed to the numerous places in Scripture where verbal witness and practical love are assumed to go hand in hand.

But instead, I went with this:

In the final judgement, God will destroy the destroyers of the earth. Those who knowingly and wilfully persist in harming their neighbour are living in ongoing rebellion against their Creator, whom they disrespect by participating in de-creation. Those who steal from future generations and cause little ones to stumble are denying the gospel of grace and the power of the resurrection. Those who seek to uphold the power of the powerful in their oppressive ways face a God who will humble them. Those who cause suffering through their own foolishness should expect no reward for it. Those who are found to have burned all their oil when the master returns will be cast out. Those who fail to adorn the gospel in lives of kindness place barriers in the path of future evangelists. Those who pretend they are not dust, co-creatures with all life that received God's original blessing deny their humanity. Those who dissolve the bonds of life re-crucify the one in whom all things hold together.

I believe in life before death.

And in the resurrection of the body.

Therefore, matter matters.

Lest we forget

Far-called, our navies melt away;
On dune and headland sinks the fire:
Lo, all our pomp of yesterday
Is one with Nineveh and Tyre!
Judge of the Nations, spare us yet,
Lest we forget - lest we forget!

- Rudyard Kipling, Recessional, 1897.

Lest we forget the ephemerality of empire and the dangerous temptation to national self-aggrandisement. Lest we forget the divine judgement upon human folly and pomp.

And lest we forget the hope of mercy, despite our manifold failures. Spare us yet.

An excellent (and brief) theology of climate change

"Reading the Bible in the context of climate change gives a vision of hope in God’s faithfulness to creation, a call to practise love and justice to our human and other than-human neighbours, and a warning of God’s judgement of those who fail to do so. In this context, closing our ears to the voices of those most vulnerable to climate change would be nothing less than giving up our claim to be disciples of Christ."

- "Hope in God's future: Christian discipleship in the context of climate change".

This 2009 report from the Joint Public Issues Team of the UK Methodist, Baptist and United Reformed Churches is probably the best brief theological treatment of climate change I have seen. I particularly appreciate its insightful discussion of hope in §2.2, as well as its handling of neighbour love in §2.4-5.

Regarding the former, the report affirms that God's faithfulness is greater than humanity's brokenness. Ultimately, there is nothing we can do to thwart God's redeeming purposes for his creatures. The wording in the report is carefully chosen, as I discovered when I pressed one of the authors in conversation. While the panel agreed that human failure has the capacity to cause us and the other creatures on our planet very serious and lasting harm, there was disagreement over this harm extended as far as the possibility of total self-destruction. Either way, when relating human responsibility and destructive capacity to divine promises of faithfulness, if the result is something other than a grace-filled sending into service of God and neighbour, then we're doing it wrong. Any theology that results in either frenetic desperation or apathetic passivity is thereby seriously deficient.

Regarding neighbourly love, the report very helpfully (though not uncontroversially) uses the category of neighbour to include a number of groups containing many members we have not met (and most likely never will prior to the resurrection). First, it includes our brothers and sisters in distant lands (Africa and Pacific island nations are highlighted), who are already being negatively affected by changing climates and sea levels, and for whom the future seems to hold the threat of far worse. Second, we are also neighbours to future generations, the young and as yet unborn. These begin with but extend well beyond our own children. In this context, our children are the symbol and most immediate instantiation of our obligations to the future, but our horizon must be lifted beyond one or two generations since our actions today will have major consequences for centuries and even millennia to come. Third, the report welcomes the community of creation as our neighbours and so implies that the sphere of our moral life extends beyond the human. Section §2.5 has a very useful summary of scriptural teaching concerning other creatures and whether we are comfortable with the application of the term "neighbour" or not, the underlying claim of their bearing moral significance ought to be entirely uncontroversial.

With these considerations in mind, the more one learns about the science of climate change, the more the commands to love our neighbour and seek justice invite us to see our present behaviour (personally and socially) as a gross violation of the responsibility to care for those in whom our Father delights.

The document emphasises the necessity of repentance in response to climate change. This is undoubtedly correct, yet let us remember that our climate predicament is not rooted in only greed and apathy, but also in a tragic failure of vision. In embracing an economy based on the combustion of fossil fuels, we exhibited a form of ignorance. We can debate the relative innocence of this ignorance in the early days of the Industrial Revolution, but it has been increasingly clear for at least five decades that our failure of foresight is culpable. Carbon-intensive energy production has shaped our habits, assumptions and aspirations in just a few short years to the point where living without them has become unthinkable. But unless we learn to think anew then they will make our planet unliveable.

Let me end with another sobering quote worth pondering.

"In encountering biblical warnings about the consequences of failing to love and deal justly with those in need, it is hard to escape the conclusion that in continuing to emit carbon at rates that threaten our neighbours, present and future, human and other than human, we are bringing God’s judgement upon us. Even here we should not despair: that God judges rather than abandons us is a sign of God’s grace and continuing love for us. But in our encounter with God’s word in the context of climate change we should be clear that, while we have grounds for hope in the future God will bring if we act in accordance with God’s love for all creation, we also have grounds for fear of God’s judgement if we continue to fail to respond to the urgent needs of our neighbour."

Two horizons of hope: justice vs economic growth II

Guest series by Matheson Russell

This is the second in a three-part series offering theological reflections on some issues raised by the Occupy movement. The first can be found here and the third here.

The one essential and foundational task of government, according to the biblical texts discussed in the previous post, is the execution of justice and the promotion of righteousness. Contingency planning is expected; but, surprisingly perhaps, economic prosperity and even military success are not centrally expected of kings or governments. Such happy outcomes are typically attributed to divine providence and not to human skill or virtue; material prosperity and military victory are characteristically interpreted as the sign of God’s blessing or favour, but — importantly — they are never considered the automatic consequence of good government.

Nowhere is this priority of justice and righteousness over riches and security more forcefully and starkly proclaimed than by Jesus himself in the Sermon on the Mount:

Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?

And why do you worry about clothes? See how the flowers of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith? So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.

We can draw a straight line from the message of Jesus to the message of Martin Luther King. Both share a deeply-held conviction—let’s call it a faith—that the highest social good, the thing to be pursued above all else, is justice and righteousness; that in this lies true riches and security; that walking down this path is what demonstrates a genuine faith in God.

All of the great civilizations have esteemed justice and elevated it as an ideal, and contemporary Western nations are certainly no exception. But what is so profoundly challenging about the biblical texts for us today is how relentlessly they maintain the view that life without justice is barely tolerable, barely human, and that justice and righteousness are to be prized above all as the most fundamental social goods.

I’m not sure that we hold quite the same view today. But, again, why is that?
Dr Matheson Russell is lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Auckland.

Two horizons of hope: justice vs economic growth I

Guest series by Matheson Russell

This is the first in a three-part series offering theological reflections on some issues raised by the Occupy movement. The second can be found here and the third here.

Martin Luther King’s famous “I have a dream” speech begins, oddly enough, with a banking metaphor. From the steps of the Lincoln Memorial that day in 1963 King thundered:

In a sense we’ve come to our nation’s capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the “unalienable Rights” of “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note, insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked “insufficient funds.”

But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. And so, we’ve come to cash this check, a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice.

Perhaps the Occupy Wall Street protesters could have used that.

In any case, I’m struck by the way King’s rhetoric has dated. It still moves me deeply, but I just cannot imagine a public figure today getting away with such bold and unqualified demands. We have come to expect a measure of realism, a curbed enthusiasm, a toned-down rhetoric from our political leaders. To our contemporary ears King’s words sound somewhat naïve, and his idealism might even evoke in us a hint of wariness.

Am I right? Why do you think that is? Can it be put down merely to changes in rhetorical style? What should we make of King’s demands for justice?

King returns in his speech to the theme of justice in the famous line: “we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until ‘justice rolls down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream’.”

The quotation comes from the biblical prophet Amos. And, as Oliver O’Donovan explains, the prophet’s poetic metaphors express the longing for there to begin “a flood of judicial activity” in a society in which judicial activity has dried up: “Courts are to be held every day ‘in the gate’, appellants are to be heard quickly and without the need for bribes, verdicts are to be clear-sighted and decisive, and enforced” (The Ways of Judgment, 6).

This petition for renewed judicial activity is not unique to Amos. In fact, it’s a desire that is expressed repeatedly throughout the Old Testament. The moral imagination of Israel is marked by this posture of deep yearning for proper judicial oversight. The poor, the vulnerable and the exploited should have their cases heard; and those who have wronged them should be publicly exposed and held responsible for their misdeeds. Similarly, in the Hebrew scriptures the qualities most venerated in kings and rulers are not military prowess, rhetorical skill or political cunning but the readiness to execute justice and the determination to see that peace and righteousness are established and maintained. The Old Testament people of God were clearly convinced that nothing could be a greater blessing to a nation than to have a just and wise ruler, and nothing worse than to be subject to a corrupt or foolish ruler who has no concern for justice.

This guiding conviction is picked up again in the New Testament. In continuity with the message of the ancient prophets, both John the Baptist and Jesus come preaching against the rulers of Israel whose failings were precisely failures to exercise their authority with the appropriate justice and mercy; rather than teaching and applying the law of God without hypocrisy and without favour, they were exploiting and neglecting the people under their care and serving their own interests.

By contrast, Jesus is studiously portrayed in the gospels as one who demonstrates all the qualities of a just king or ruler and who will at last fulfill the oracle of Isaiah 9:

He will reign on David’s throne
    and over his kingdom,
establishing and upholding it
    with justice and righteousness
    from that time on and forever.

Throughout the Bible, then, it is axiomatic that the primary purpose of government is to establish and to uphold justice; and that without institutions of justice a society simply cannot enjoy peace and lasting happiness. Whether they are politically naïve or not, King’s focus on justice places him squarely in the biblical tradition.
Dr Matheson Russell is lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Auckland.

The end is nigh? Apocalyptic thought and our present distress

Apparently, the apocalypse has already come and gone. Did you miss it?

The relation of apocalyptic thought to our present and likely future distress is an interesting and complex question, not easily answered in a few sentences. I've recently been reading a book edited by Stefan Skrimshire titled Future Ethics: Climate Change and Apocalyptic Imagination, which I mentioned back here. As is usual in an edited collection of essays, quality and relevance vary considerably, but the theme is an important one. How do our images of "the end" shape our understanding (or misunderstanding, as the case may be) of climate change?

For some activists, the pace and scale of anthropogenic climate change on our current trajectory represents an existential threat to the present order of the biosphere, including the human order of a globalised industrial civilisation of almost seven billion and rising. The language of apocalyptic is borrowed in order to try to gain some traction with policy-makers and the public. It matters not whether this borrowing represents a reflexive reliance on a thread of thought with its roots in religious discourse or the deliberate appropriation of concepts and tropes that still inhabit our imagination and so which will resonate widely. The goal is to induce an emancipatory shock, a recognition of our situation as extreme, a justification for emergency measures that disrupt the usual flow of commercial, political and social life with a radical reordering.

Some Christians, noting the borrowing of apocalyptic language by activists, are inclined to ignore the whole thing as another human attempt to claim control of even how the world is going to end. Instead, affirming that the end is in God's hands alone, they argue that any claims of humanity bringing about the end by our own efforts (even inadvertently) must be treated with extreme suspicion.

Personally, while it is difficult to get a good grip on the magnitude of the threat represented by climate change without recourse to some very strong language, I think that it is best to remain agnostic about the relationship between our preset distress and threats and the divine promises relating to ultimate realities. It may be that there is some link, but there is no particular reason in my opinion to think so. Even if our actions lead to the downfall of our way of life and the utter transformation of our society into something so different that in hindsight it is appropriate to speak of industrial civilisation having experienced a self-induced collapse, this need not be the end of the world. To use a line that is growing increasingly common, the end of the world as we know it is not necessarily the end of the world.

And where this cuts the mustard for me is that sometimes apocalyptic thought can become a lazy way out of ethical deliberation. Apocalyptic becomes lazy where it is in the service of a fatalism that assumes our destiny is doomed by the greater power of nature (whether acting blindly, under its own authority as a personified (and angry) mother earth, or as the instrument of God's inexorable judgement) or which conversely rejects the possibility of social self-destruction in principle. In each case, the future is seen as closed and human actions as ultimately irrelevant, in which case, let us eat and drink for tomorrow we die. It can also be lazy where it is used to create panic and a desperate acceptance of whatever medicine is closest to hand. This is a kind of non-emancipatory shock that stuns the hearer into passive acceptance of the salvific social, economic and/or political solution that swiftly follows the apocalyptic account.

Denying knowledge of the relationship between our time and time's telos keeps open the space for neighbourly care. It does this not by rendering apocalyptic inscrutably distant ("since we can't know when the end will come, then let us ignore the coming of the end altogether"), but constantly relevant. In Christian apocalyptic, the hidden meaning of history is revealed to be the stage of divine action, not in competition with human action, but as the previously unknown judge and liberator of human action. Since the day of divine judgement approaches like a thief in the night, unbidden and unobserved, the wise servant knows that her actions are made more weighty, not less. Instead of paralysing fear or enervating schadenfreude, she is liberated to conduct her faithful service in reverent hope of divine vindication. By such acts, she is not heroically securing the future; saving the world (or the present world order) is not her motive or modus operandi. Instead, she trusts that because the hour of her vindication approaches, she has time to prepare, to reflect with prudence on her ability to be a blessing in the limited time she has received. Waiting patiently, she need not dread the outcome of history, but is free to love her neighbour as an instantiation of her wholehearted love for the master with what strength and wisdom she has received. It may be that the immediate future holds suffering, even vast suffering, but not yet the end of all things. In which case, her actions undertaken in hope are not in vain; they are secured by the promise of the resurrection, and thus they are freed from the impossible burden of having to deliver her own life or the continued existence of her society.

And so, there is a sense in which the apocalypse has indeed already come, in the sense that apocalypse means "revelation", an unveiling of what was hidden. After Christ's coming, Christian believers now see the world and its future in a new light. No longer do the dark shadows of anticipated difficulties leave us blindly stumbling along in denial, distraction, desperation or despair. Once relieved of the responsibility to pursue survival above all else, we see the future as a stage on which faithful words and deeds may witness to the redemption of history through the cross and resurrection, and to the coming renewal of all things.

Approaching the Cross II: Draining the cup

A three part sermon on Matthew's account of Gethsemane (Matthew 26.36.46).

I. The gathering storm
II. Draining the cup
III. Stay awake!

-----

Why is Jesus sorrowful and troubled? Why does he say his soul is "overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death"? Extreme emotion is not alien to Jesus. He was no calm Stoic walking through life unaffected and unengaged. The Gospels record his anger, grief, delight, compassion, weariness, joy, sorrow and here, deep anguish. He shows us that being human doesn’t mean seeking to minimise or escape from our emotional life. But why is he so sad on this night? Is he scared of pain? Crucifixion was a horrendous procedure, designed to maximise the suffering of the victim, and made worse by the fact that Jesus had already predicted the desertion of his closest friends, even Peter, who had sworn to die for him. Being abandoned by his companions to a gruesome, extended death – is this what makes him so sad? It would be understandable if so, though certainly many others have faced death with more courage. Socrates drank his hemlock calmly, and many of the early Christian martyrs were said to been smiling or singing. Is Jesus weaker than they, to tremble at what he knows is coming?

A clue to what might be going on can be found in the combination of terms that appear in this passage that hint that we are dealing with more than just the impending death of an innocent man. When Jesus speaks to his father of “the cup” that he must drink, at one level this is a simple metaphor for having to face the particular experience he is about to undergo, but this language was also a common Jewish image found in Isaiah 51 and elsewhere depicting God’s anger as a cup of bitter wine that must be drained to its dregs. When we find this image in close proximity to talk of "the hour" having arrived and Jesus instructing his disciples to "stay awake" and pray in order to not come into the "time of trial", then this cluster of references all fit within a Jewish apocalyptic framework that pictures God’s decisive judgement upon human sin and wickedness, a powerful divine interruption into the normal course of events to bring evil to account. This night in this garden praying with friends was not like other nights. Not just because Jesus anticipates his own death just hours later, but also because he is anticipating that in the events about to unfold, nothing less is at stake than God’s definitive evaluation upon wayward humanity.

The cross of Jesus is not simply another tragic example of miscarried justice involving an oppressed minority, or of imperial brutality against perceived threats, or of religious violence against heretics. In short, his death doesn’t simply carry some of the various human meanings we attribute to such deaths. It has meaning for God. The meal of bread and wine spoke of a renewed covenant, of God acting again with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm to redeem those enslaved. But here, in the garden, the meaning of Jesus’ death is that it will be the point at which the world is judged and found wanting, where God’s own sorrow and anger at human pride and corruption is concentrated and expressed, where God says a resolute "no" to human violence and folly.

Jesus’ grief and anguish is because he himself will hear that "no", will suffer that judgement, will experience God’s rejection. This is the horrendous prospect of Gethsemane. This is why the man of sorrows is sorrowful. This is the bitter cup that Jesus would prefer not to taste. And yet, in obedience to his Father, he is willing to finish the last drop. "Not as I will, but as you will." In these words, Jesus fights and wins the battle to be obedient. He refuses the paths of violence self-assertion and self-justification as well as of retreat and hiding. And he entrusts himself to his Father.

Dogville: Grace as a test?

My wife and I saw Lars von Trier's Dogville recently. Our opinions of the controversial Danish director had been diametrically opposed. I loved both Dancer in the Dark and Breaking the Waves. Jess had heard their plots and refused to see them because they sounded awful. So convincing her to watch Dogville was a bit of a coup, helped by a friendly neighbour who dropped in the DVD without our requesting it and my pointing out that it would be rude to return it unwatched.

We loved it. The minimalist set creatively captured the panopticon experience of small town life. The acting was strong. But the most interesting thing was that Dogville is a very insightful picture of what so many people (including more Christians than we might realise) think the Christian message says. Without mentioning God (the town has no church and the mission house perpetually lacks a preacher), the film is deeply theological. Life is a test: will we accept Grace into our lives freely and discover a gift we didn't seek and didn't deserve? Or will we try to pay for Grace, or worse, constrain and even coerce Grace? And if we fail the test, then comes merciless judgement... but I don't want to give away the ending.

Highly recommended. Distressing scenes, but then you already knew that because it's Lars von Trier.

Is God to blame for floods?

Many readers will be aware of the recent serious floods in much of Queensland, which have claimed dozens of lives, devastated tens of thousands of homes and caused billions of dollars worth of damage to crops, buildings and infrastructure across an area the size of Germany and France combined. Victoria is currently experiencing its worst flooding on record, which is causing more damage than the 2009 Black Saturday bushfires. Disastrous flooding has also struck Brazil, the Philippines, South Africa and Sri Lanka. In each case, scores or hundreds have been killed, tens or hundreds of thousands have been displaced and millions or billions of dollars worth of damage have been sustained. And of course, there are still millions of displaced Pakistanis after flood waters covered more than one fifth of the country in July and are yet to fully recede.*
*The relative level of news coverage concerning these various events is itself a phenomenon worthy of a little reflection.

The suffering from these events lasts much longer than the headlines and the victims in each case can be supported through reputable charities and aid organisations (for example here).

Yet amidst seeking to provide practical help to these situations, such ruinous events open a range of questions for Christians. How are we to understand such events? Are these floods acts of God? Punishments of some kind? Senseless and random natural disasters? After-effects of the fall? Premonitions of some impending apocalypse?

This discussion will focus on the flooding in Queensland, especially Brisbane, which is where I've read the most analysis, yet I suspect that similar stories could be told about most or all of the other locations.

The causation of floods is a complex matter. Obviously, rainfall patterns are important. Many locations in the affected area of Queensland received record-breaking falls. Indeed, these floods come after the wettest year on record globally and in Queensland, and the third wettest on record for Australia as a whole. It was also equal hottest globally, which is relevant because warmer air holds more moister, and warmer oceans evaporate faster. Indeed, surface water temperatures off the Queensland coast are also the warmest on record. This is all directly related to one of the strongest La Niña patterns on record, but it is also consistent with predicted shifts in the climate system. Attributing extreme weather to climate change is complex, and it is simplistic to say "see, here is climate change", but it is also fair to say that no weather is simply "natural" anymore (more discussion here and here and here).

Yet rainfall alone doesn't determine water volume or speed. Land use changes play a big role in shaping how much run-off contributes to rising rivers - and how quickly. Deforestation generally makes floods worse by removing natural barriers that soak up some moisture and slow down the rest. Urbanisation takes this a step further by replacing absorbent soil with largely impermeable concrete. Although Australia is sparsely populated, the area around Brisbane is the main population centre in Queensland and has seen the most significant land use changes.

Previous erosion (itself linked to deforestation and land use management) has also changed the nature of the river bed through sedimentation. Thus, in significant respects, the Brisbane River is not the same river as in previous floods. This process is ongoing. A number of commentators noted that the images of the floods were striking not only for the destructive power of the torrents, but for the bright red hue of the flow - carrying off yet more valuable and scarce topsoil, Australia's future food.

Human activity has shaped watercourses in more direct and intentional ways too, of course. Dams, such as the massive Wivenhoe, built after the "Big Wet" of the 1974 floods, are intended to reduce the occurrence of minor floods, but as we have seen, can't be guaranteed to prevent the largest ones.

Not just the construction of dams, but their operation is also a factor. The extent to which Wivenhoe could have been managed better to minimise flooding is still disputed and is the subject of commission of inquiry called by Premier Bligh.

Perhaps an even more significant human factor concerns town planning and the location of buildings relative to floodplains. If I build a sandcastle below the high-tide mark, do I experience a natural disaster twice a day when the tide comes in? If I build a house in the bed of an seasonal stream, do I suffer from an act of God each year when my house is inundated? And what if I situate my business on a flood plain? It it worth noting that Brisbane Council has been trying to buy back the most vulnerable land for the last five years but prior to the floods had met with little enthusiasm from owners. I'm sure many are now kicking themselves for this now. To add insult to injury, the resale value of the flooded properties is likely to take a hit, and some may become basically uninsurable, as some Britons have found after the floods of recent years here.

Given the wide variety of ways that human decisions and behaviours have influenced the conditions of possibility for these floods, it seems strange to consider them merely natural disasters. Indeed, there is a sense in which no disasters are purely natural. This is especially true of weather-related disasters in a world where human hands are on the global thermostat.

But can they be considered acts of God? Human agency doesn't necessarily compete with divine agency. That is, human actions are affirmed at times in holy scripture also to be acts of God. So the fact that human decisions contributed to a given disaster doesn't mean God was absent. Yet at the same time, I don't think that divine sovereignty - the good news that God is king - requires or enables us to ascribe all events to the hand and plan of God either. God is not "the secret architect of evil".

Nonetheless, God often (though not always) lets us experience the consequences of our actions. There is no divine promise of universal protection from all harm.

Floods (and most other "natural" disasters) are complex phenomena involving the interactions of a wide variety of human factors with patterns in other aspects of the created order. As with much of the messiness of history, their theological significance is not able to be simply read off from the events. Simplistic attempts to ascribe blame upon God, nature or particular humans represents a short-circuiting of the invitation to deeper observation, reflection and planning that such phenomena represent.

This is particularly true in our current age of growing understanding of the hydrological cycle. Oversimplified accounts that simply shrug the shoulders and notches such disasters up as "one of those things" distract people from the fact that threats like this are not random or unpredictable. Flooding in Queensland is far from unprecedented. Warnings of more intense precipitation events have long been predicted by climatologists. The Australia Bureau of Meteorology had warned some months ago of this La Niña being particularly strong. Brisbane Council had been warning low-lying residents of flood danger for years.

The evaluation of future threats is neither tea-leaf reading nor an exact science. But wisdom does not fear or dismiss our best attempts to understand causes and fashion responses to such dangers that are commensurate with the scale and likelihood of the threat. Theological reflections offer us no reason to leave our head in the sand, though plenty of reasons to not build our houses upon it.
PS Amidst all the human suffering and loss, spare a thought too for the damage that the floods are likely to cause to the already stressed and threatened Great Barrier Reef.

Two kinds of democracy

There are at least two broad kinds of democracy. A more direct democracy (as seen for example in Switzerland) assumes that the populace themselves are making the decisions and that the entire voting population will have both the requisite knowledge base and wisdom to make effective political judgements. However, a more representative democracy (as exemplified in the historic Westminster tradition) doesn’t conceive of the elected representatives as merely mirroring the opinions of the general population (as though each piece of legislation is to be decided by opinion poll), but as having been selected by their peers and entrusted to make wise political judgements on our behalf, even where these might be unpopular (at least in the short term).

Each system has dangers and drawbacks. The former (Swiss style) is perhaps overly optimistic about the wisdom of the collective population and their time, ability and interest to focus on highly complex policy matters. The latter (Westminster model) is perhaps overly optimistic about the integrity of elected representatives in making wise decisions for the common good without undue influence from corporate lobbyists. I think that the current dominant model in the English-speaking democracies with which I’m familiar is probably the worst of both worlds: populist in tone and yet largely beholden to corporate lobby interests in outcome.

How green is God? A reply to Lionel Windsor

Is my God greener than Lionel's?
I've just come across a talk written by Lionel Windsor, whom I know and respect from my MTC days. It was published at some stage in the last 12 months by AFES's SALT Magazine under the title, "Is God green?". It can be found in five parts: #1, #2a, #2b, #3a, #3b. Having recently written a similar kind of piece for the same publication, it was interesting to note how much overlap our pieces had. His was longer, more conversational and an easier read but I'd say we agree on about 90% of the theological and ethical content.

We agree on the goodness of creation distinct from human usefulness, on the depth of human sinfulness and its effects on ecological health,* on the distinction between treating symptoms and treating the underlying disease, on the centrality of Christ and his death and resurrection for any theological discussion of treating this disease, on the universal (not merely human) scope of Christ's redemptive action, on the church as the first fruits of a redeemed humanity, on the anticipatory nature of Christian discipleship, on the impossibility of our actions "saving the world", on the significance of eschatology and God's future judgement and renewal in ecological ethics, on the aptness of yearning and active waiting, on the endurance of love and the passing away of the present form of the world,** on the cruciality of gospel proclamation and probably on much else as well.
*I think his analysis of the links between ecological destruction and human sin could be extended into social structures that give our greed, pride, apathy and so on extra momentum, and make some of these issues "built in" to the way we collectively and habitually do things.
**I would phrase certain sections of his talk quite differently and also emphasize the continuity of the resurrected body with the corpse - that it is this body that is resurrected and transformed, not some replacement for it - and so also expect a measure of continuity between the renewed creation and the old. Though since Lionel is happy to speak of creation being perfected and makes reference to Paul's seed analogy in 1 Corinthians 15, I don't think we're really too far apart here.

Our differences (such as I can discern from a single article and I apologise if I've misread him) seem to revolve around two issues. First: the relationship of ecological catastrophe to divine judgement. Lionel says,

"[T]he judgement day will not come before God is ready. So if you think that the human race will wipe itself off the face of the map through environmental disasters, then that is actually an arrogant attitude. Final judgement is God's job. Right now, God is keeping the world until he is ready to judge. We can’t wipe ourselves out because God will not let that happen until he is ready to judge us!"

He seems to imply that divine judgement is limited purely to the final judgement, whereas I think that the unveiling of God's wrath against human folly is already evident today in our being handed over to the consequences of our own greed and stupidity as discussed in Romans 1. Thus, ecological catastrophe can already be understood as manifestation of God's judgement in allowing us to experience the destructive effects of our search for invulnerability. We taste our own medicine and find that it is poison; we have to lie in the bed we have made. So, Lionel's contrasting of ecological catastrophes with divine judgement in order to avoid misunderstanding of eschatological judgement masks their present connection. I suspect, however, he may well be entirely happy with this nuance.*
*UPDATE Lionel has clarified that he was here only referring to final judgement and quite rightly pointed out that he discusses my concern in part 2a. My apologies for not re-checking my point.

But there is a further claim being made here, even about the day of eschatological judgement, namely, that human actions will have no part in bringing it about (even inadvertently). To my mind, the fact that the timing of the day of judgement is in the hands of God and so is hidden from human knowledge (two common scriptural themes) doesn't necessarily mean that God might not use human instruments in bringing about an end to human history. God's actions are frequently mediated by imminent agents and the images used of ultimate judgement are, I take it, largely metaphorical, such that its actual shape is not known in advance, only its inevitability and decisiveness (amongst other things). But Lionel seems to see final judgement as God's exclusive prerogative without any human instrumentality (apart from Christ the judge, of course).

And this means that Lionel is confident that, try as we might, we can't wipe ourselves out. I am not so sure. Certainly, we can so damage the living systems on which we thoroughly rely that our civilisation and way of life falls apart (whether quickly or slowly). Indeed, we can do this through the speedier nuclear option as well as the slightly delayed ecological route. Can we entirely "wipe ourselves out", presumably meaning the extinction of the human race as a whole? At a practical level, I don't see that it beyond our present power and theologically I see no promises that this cannot happen. This doesn't mean we thereby escape judgement, or that all hope is lost, because even if we entirely destroy ourselves, God can raise the dead. Suicide is no way out, either individually or collectively. The closest I think we see to a scriptural expectation of humanity's continued existence until final judgement is Paul's comment in 1 Corinthians 15 that "we shall not all sleep, though we shall all be changed" (a comment also applicable to babies, by the way). However, even this is not decisive as I think Paul's point is that death is not a necessary route to the kind of transformation of which he speaks. That Paul does not mention the possibility of the self-destruction of the entire human race may have more to do with a pre-industrial imagination not yet shaped by the staggering increase in human agency that has come in the modern era than with a divine promise of the imperishability of our species.

But the point is a minor one, and I don't place much weight on it. It is enough that we certainly have the power to wound ourselves grievously, to decimate the possibility of life on earth and shatter or erode the conditions under which our society is possible. And while these may not have ultimate significance, their penultimate import is weighty indeed.

The second, and I suspect more important, difference concerns the relation of the good to the best, or of deeds of love with words of love. Lionel paints a moving picture of composting out of love for neighbour, or even lobbying the G8 for the same reason. But then he places such activity in direct competition with "speaking the word of the Lord to others", and implies that doing one means the inability to do the other. They are competitors to my limited time and energy:

"But what is the greatest labour in the Lord? Compost heaps take time. Lobbying G8 leaders takes even more time. And we don’t have an unlimited time here on earth. Sure, these are good ideas, but how do I decide what is the most urgent thing? The primary, the greatest labour in the Lord? Isn't it to speak the word of the Lord to others? Isn't it to share Jesus with your friends and family?"

But I say, why either/or? Why not both-and? The good need not be the enemy of the best. The promotion of the gospel is not a zero sum game between words and deeds. Both are necessary; neither is sufficient. There is no conflict between loving God and his word of life for all and loving my neighbour in a dying world.

And so, despite much in common, I suspect that Lionel and I end up with somewhat different estimations of the place of ecological responsibility in Christian discipleship. My subheading was of course tongue in cheek, as though it were a matter of competition. But the differences between us are nonetheless of (penultimate) importance, since Christians have too often been too quick to sidestep the gospel invitation to love our ecological neighbours, or to relegate such matters to mere optional extras.

With these points mentioned, I warmly recommend you read his piece as a cogent introduction to an evangelical ecological theology.

Destroying the destroyers of the earth

The internet is a funny thing. Over on Andrew Katay's blog, I've just e-run into an old school friend of my brother, Mark Stephens, and it turns out he has just finished a PhD on the cosmological continuity/discontinuity of the book of Revelation (i.e. how new is the "new heavens and new earth" of Revelation 21.1?), titled Destroying the Destroyers of the Earth: The Meaning and Function of New Creation in the book of Revelation. A book will be coming out next year with Mohr Siebeck, "so nobody will buy it, for fear of going broke", Mark says. Having had a brief look at the main arguments, I think it would be a real shame if nobody does buy it, since it looks great.

Of particular interest to me (amongst many other things, such as close readings of Romans 8 and 2 Peter 3) was the discussion of the verse from which the thesis gained its title: Revelation 11.18. The destruction of the destroyers of the earth becomes one of the major themes in the second half of Revelation. The imperial powers behind the rich symbolism of dragon, beast and Babylon are unmasked as demonic in nature, a system of oppression and accumulation that devours all it touches. And so despite their claims of bringing peace and prosperity (or national security and economic growth, if you like), the book unveils the whole system's true destructiveness, not simply of human society, but the land itself.
I have previously briefly outlined my take on the "new heavens and new earth".

Too late? A genuine possibility

We are now faced with the fact, my friends, that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. In this unfolding conundrum of life and history, there is such a thing as being too late. Procrastination is still the thief of time. Life often leaves us standing bare, naked, and dejected with a lost opportunity. The tide in the affairs of men does not remain at flood -- it ebbs. We may cry out desperately for time to pause in her passage, but time is adamant to every plea and rushes on. Over the bleached bones and jumbled residues of numerous civilizations are written the pathetic words, "Too late." There is an invisible book of life that faithfully records our vigilance or our neglect. Omar Khayyam is right: "The moving finger writes, and having writ moves on."

A quote from the debate at the Copenhagen conference yesterday? A speech from a prominent NGO outside? No, it is an extract from this 1967 speech by Dr Martin Luther King, Jr. and concerned the Vietnam War. The man had a gift with words.

But the sentiment he expressed then about the challenges of his day still apply today to ours. Procrastination still kills. There is no guarantee that our civilisation will escape the fate of those dug up by archeologists. And there is no guarantee that our actions and inactions might not be material contributing causes to that result. As my fifth-grade teacher used to say "It is possible to avoid the consequences of our actions, but not to avoid the consequences of avoiding the consequences". In other words, we shall reap what we are currently sowing.

What of grace? Of forgiveness and the love of God? They are indeed a comfort, removing anxiety over past mistakes and giving us hope to act without full knowledge (to "sin boldly", in the famous exhortation of the older Martin Luther). But they are never an excuse. They give us freedom from guilt and fear, freedom to act, but never freedom from responsibility or the "freedom" to do as we please without consideration of others. This latter "freedom" is merely another kind of slavery, according to Jesus. It is slavery to our selfish desires. The great epistle of freedom is Paul's letter to the Galatians:

For you were called to freedom, brothers and sisters; only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for self-indulgence, but through love become slaves to one another. For the whole law is summed up in a single commandment, ‘You shall love your neighbour as yourself.’ If, however, you bite and devour one another, take care that you are not consumed by one another.

- Galatians 5.13-15

Are we indeed loving our neighbour? Or are we simply consuming and thereby consuming one another? To follow Christ does not give simple answers. While we may find a new centre and coherence to our lives in seeking to love our neighbour, it does not remove the necessity of working out just what it means for us to love one another today.

So let us examine ourselves without any of the false safety nets of misplaced security or simplistic notions of freedom and ask: what are we to do today? Not "what do we want to do today?", nor "what will enable our lives to continue as they have been?" nor even "what must be do to survive?" But simply, what are we to do today? This question is not easy. The pressing needs of the hour do not remove its complexity. The answers are not found in the back of a book. The apparently obvious solutions put forward by so many interests do not remove our responsibilities to pay attention, to deliberate and to act.

May God have mercy on us all.

Two styles of Anglicanism: on not being in schism

I have generally steered fairly clear of recent global Anglican politics, and for those interested there has always been plenty of coverage on other blogs. However, I thought I might make a comment on a recent address by Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, titled "Communion, Covenant and our Anglican Future". In it, he outlines possible implications of pursuing a covenant model of Anglican communion, including the possibility that some churches will signup and others won't, resulting in two kinds of Anglican churches.

23. This has been called a "two-tier" model, or, more disparagingly, a first- and second-class structure. But perhaps we are faced with the possibility rather of a "two-track" model, two ways of witnessing to the Anglican heritage, one of which had decided that local autonomy had to be the prevailing value and so had in good faith declined a covenantal structure. [...]

24. It helps to be clear about these possible futures, however much we think them less than ideal, and to speak about them not in apocalyptic terms of schism and excommunication but plainly as what they are – two styles of being Anglican, whose mutual relation will certainly need working out but which would not exclude cooperation in mission and service of the kind now shared in the communion. It should not need to be said that a competitive hostility between the two would be one of the worst possible outcomes, and needs to be clearly repudiated. The ideal is that both "tracks" should be able to pursue what they believe God is calling them to be as church, with greater integrity and consistency. It is right to hope for and work for the best kinds of shared networks and institutions of common interest that could be maintained as between different visions of the Anglican heritage. And if the prospect of greater structural distance is unwelcome, we must look seriously at what might yet make it less likely.

This point is worth making and repeating. That we may well end up with two Anglican paths (at a formal level) doesn't mean we all hate each other, or that all possibilities of ongoing co-operation or mutual mission are now closed. It might be sad, but it is not the end of the world, nor even of that thing known as Anglicanism.

I've been thinking recently about the merits and pitfalls of avoiding unnecessarily apocalyptic modes of thought in other contexts and so this quote jumped out at me.

Part of living prior to final judgement is that we are to refrain from judging others (e.g. Luke 6.37). This does not mean we must never make any kind of humble preliminary evaluation about the lives and witness of those who claim to represent Christ, but it does mean that we hold back from doing so in ultimate ways, pronouncing condemnation upon others. If we embrace the goodness of God's action in Jesus, then false teaching that denies or undermines it will need to be gently corrected, but it quite possible to do this without turning everyone with whom we disagree into a diabolical and godless villain.

One implication of this is that I think it is best to avoid using military language and thought-patterns in how we understand the present Anglican crisis. If we want to speak in terms of fighting our enemies, the holy scriptures remind us that our true foes are not those Christians on the other side of this or that issue. Our enemies are spiritual: the spirits of disunity, factionalism, pride, impatience, fear and so on. The Anglicans with whom we disagree are brothers and sisters for whom Christ died and who may well have been blessed with some of the very weapons required to help us fight our own demons.
PS For those struggling to understand exactly what the Archbishop's address means, the Bishop of Durham has published a commentary. There are many other responses in various places, but I post this one because it is as much exegesis as analysis of the Archbishop's text.

The Gospel from Outer Space

Kurt Vonnegut's classic 1969 novel Slaughterhouse 5 is a humorously bleak look at, amongst other things, the firebombing of Dresden and alien abduction. Both are experienced by the text's mentally and temporally unstable protagonist, Billy Pilgrim, and both are equally shocking and inexplicable. The novel's title refers to the building in which Billy, an American POW in Nazi Germany, survived the Allied bombing raid in February 1945 that killed tens of thousands of civilians. Vonnegut was also a US POW who survived the Dresden firestorm in Schlachthaus fünf, though he is not Billy Pilgrim.

Within the novel is a minor character called Kilgore Trout, an undiscovered science-fiction writer, whose ideas are usually better than his prose. Brief plot outlines of his works are scattered throughout Slaughterhouse 5, providing ironic commentary on the characters:

     So Rosewater told [Billy Pilgrim what he was reading]. It was The Gospel from Outer Space, by Kilgore Trout. It was about a visitor from outer space, shaped very much like a Tralfamadorian, by the way [the alien species who abduct Billy once he has returned from the war]. The visitor from outer space made a serious study of Christianity, to learn, if he could, why Christians found it so easy to be cruel. He concluded that at least part of the trouble was slipshod storytelling in the New Testament. He supposed that the intent of the Gospels, was to teach people, among other things, to be merciful, even to the lowest of the low.
     But the Gospels actually taught this:
     Before you kill somebody, make absolutely sure he isn't well connected. So it goes.

The flaw in the Christ stories, said the visitor from outer space, was that Christ, who didn't look like much, was actually the Son of the Most Powerful Being in the Universe. Readers understood that, so, when they came to the crucifixion, they naturally thought, and Rosewater read out loud again:
     Oh boy – they sure picked the wrong guy to lynch that time!
     And that thought had a brother: 'There are right people to lynch.' Who? People not well connected. So it goes.

The visitor from outer space made a gift to Earth of a new Gospel. In it, Jesus really was a nobody, and a pain in the neck to a lot of people with better connections than he had. He still got to say all the lovely and puzzling things he said in the other Gospels.
     So the people amused themselves one day by nailing him to a cross and planting the cross in the ground. There couldn't possibly be any repercussions, the lynchers thought. The reader would have to think that, too, since the new Gospel hammered home again and again what a nobody Jesus was.
     And then, just before the nobody died, the heavens opened up, and there was thunder and lightning. The voice of God came crashing down. He told the people that he was adopting the bum as his son, giving him the full powers and privileges of The Son of the the Creator of the Universe throughout all eternity. God said this: From this moment on, He will punish horribly anybody who torments a bum who has no connections!

Moltmann on the end of the world

"Some people think that the Bible has to do with the terrors of the apocalypse, and that the apocalypse is 'the end of the world'. The end, they believe, will see the divine 'final solution' of all the unsolved problems in personal life, in world history, and in the cosmos. Apocalyptic fantasy has always painted God's great final Judgement on the Last Day with flaming passion: the good people will go to heaven, the wicked will go to hell, and the world will be annihilated in a storm of fire. We are all familiar, too, with images of the final struggle between God and Satan, Christ and the Antichrist, Good and Evil in the valley of Armageddon - images which can be employed so usefully in political friend-enemy thinking.

"These images are apocalyptic, but are they also Christian? No, they are not; for Christian expectation of the future has nothing whatsoever to do with the end, whether it be the end of life, the end of history, or the end of the world. Christian expectation is about the beginning: the beginning of true life, the beginning of God's kingdom, and the beginning of the new creation of all things into their enduring form. The ancient wisdom of hope says: 'The last things are as the first.' So God's great promise in the last book of the Bible, the book of Revelation, is: 'Behold, I make all things new' (21.5). In the light of this ultimate horizon we read the Bible as the book of God's promises and the hopes of men and women - indeed the hopes of everything created; and from the remembrances of their future we find energies for the new beginning. [...] If the last is not the end but the new beginning, we have no need to stare fascinated at the end of life."

- Jürgen Moltmann, In the end - the beginning: the life of hope
(Fortress, 2004), ix-x.

I will be very interested to read the rest of this little book. Moltmann can be so inspiring, though sometimes his language is a little over the top. "Christian hope has nothing whatsoever to do with the end"? What about the end of death? The end of crying and mourning and pain? The end of endings?

Condemning condemnation?

Andrew Errington has posted some thoughts and a confession on condemnation and the goodness of God. Here's a taste of the issues he's wrestling with:

If there is a God who will damn his children forever, I would rather go to hell than to go to heaven and keep the society of such an infamous tyrant. I make my choice now. I despise that doctrine. It has covered the cheeks of this world with tears. It has polluted the hearts of children, and poisoned the imaginations of men…. What right have you, sir, Mr. clergyman, you, minister of the gospel to stand at the portals of the tomb, at the vestibule of eternity, and fill the future with horror and with fear? I do not believe this doctrine, neither do you. If you did, you could not sleep one moment. Any man who believes it, and has within his breast a decent, throbbing heart, will go insane. A man who believes that doctrine and does not go insane has the heart of a snake and the conscience of a hyena.

- Robert Green Ingersoll, The Liberty Of All (1877).

Williams on church leadership

What I have been proposing is that the empty tomb tradition is, theologically speaking, part of the Church’s resource in resisting the temptation to ‘absorb’ Jesus into itself, and thus part of what its confession of the divinity of Jesus amounts to in spiritual and political practice. Jesus is not the possession of the community, not even as ‘raised into the kerygma’, because he is alive, beyond qualification or risk, he ‘lives to God’. The freedom of Jesus to act, however we unpack that deceptively simple statement, is not exhausted by what the community is doing or thinking – which allows us to say that Jesus’ role for the community continues, vitally, to be that of judge, and that those who are charged with speaking authoritatively for or in the community stand in a very peculiar and paradoxical place. The distance from the community that is built into their role has to be something other than a claim to share the kind of distance that exists between the risen Jesus and the community. They remain under the judgement of the Risen One, along with the rest of the community, and their task is to direct attention away from themselves to Jesus, to reinforce the community’s awareness of living under Jesus’ judgement.

- Rowan Williams, 'Between the Cherubim: the Empty Tomb and the Empty Throne' in On Christian Theology (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000), 192-93.

This fascinating essay is sobering reading for one charged to speak in the community this Sunday. I've re-read it since I'm preaching on the tabernacle (and ark) in Exodus 25-31. Here's another quote from earlier in the essay where Williams is setting up the imagery of the 'empty throne', the space between the cherubim on the ark of the covenant, where the God of Israel is said to dwell. Williams reads it an emobodiment (or disembodiment as the case may be) of the second commandment:

The cherubim flanking the ark define a space where God would be if God were anywhere (the God of Judah is the one who sits between the cherubim or even ‘dwells’ between the cherubim); but there is no image between the cherubim. If you want to see the God of Judah, this is where he is and is not: to ‘see’ him is to look into the gap between the holy images. What is tangible and accessible, what can be carried in procession or taken to war as a palladium is not the image of God but the throne of God, the place where he is not. … YHWH is not capable of being represented definitively or indeed at all except as the one who is invisibly enthroned on the kapporeth [mercy seat] of the ark. … [There is a] non-representable, non-possessible dimension [to] the paradoxical manifestation of God to God’s people.

- Williams, 'Between the Cherubim', 187.

The prohibition against images of God is to remind the people of God's freedom, that though he might be 'on our side', he is never in our possession. He can't be put in a box, because he sits on the box!

Yet there is another dynamic here that Williams places less emphasis on: God makes his own image. Jesus is the image of the invisible God (Col 1.15; Heb 1.1-3). God's transcendence and invisibility might lead us to silence about God, theology dumbfounded. But this is not the case because God himself speaks. He supplies his own icon in Jesus. This is how we are to speak and think about God. This is how we are to follow and obey him. This is what we can and must hope for. God's freedom is not an endless deferral of open potential. He decisively acts to give himself.

Nonetheless, in doing so, he does not give himself away. He remains the Lord. And this is the thrust of Williams' christological point in the first quote. We don't own Jesus. Jesus' friends can and do get him wrong.
Eight points for correctly naming this English abbey.

O'Donovan on the church's role in society

An effective church with an effective ministry, in holding out the word of life, than which there is no other human good within the world or outside it, will render assistance to the political functions in societry by forwarding the social good which they exist to defend. But that is to take the very longest view of the relationship. In holding out the word of life, an effective church with an effective ministry issues the call "Repent, for the kingdom of God is at hand!" And so in the short, the medium, and even the penultimate term the presence of the church in political society can be a disturbing factor, as those who first thought Christianity worth persecuting understood quite well. It presents a counter-political moment in social existence; it restrains the thirst for judgment; it points beyond the boundaries of political identity; it undermines received traditions of representation; it utters truths that question unchallenged public doctrines. It does all these things because it represents God's kingdom, before which the authorities and powers of this world must cast down their crowns, never to pick them up again.

- Oliver O'Donovan, Ways of Judgment, 292.