On mercenary decisions: when economics trumps ethics

When considering a marriage, economics ought not figure prominently in the decision. You first decide “do I want to be with this person?” rather than “will being with this person improve my financial situation?”. Economic viability is a secondary matter, involving questions of how to pursue your goals given your fundamental relational commitments. With a marriage, it may affect how large your wedding is, or where you may live, or the choice of engagement ring. But to make it the primary question in determining your fundamental allegiances is to depressingly mercenary, and makes people wonder whether you've really understood what marriage is about. Even when you look at the other end of marriage, which is often much messier and more complex, to place economics first is to be guilty of mercenary relationships: if you leave because of "for poorer", then you're breaking your vow; if you stay only because of "for richer", then you're just as guilty of breaking your vow to love and cherish despite financial situation, even if the breach is not as obvious.

And though it is considerably more complex, there are parallels to the question of Scottish independence. Both sides (but especially the “no” camp) are acting as though the primary matter is economic: will an independent Scotland be able to afford its current way of life? But this is to confuse means and ends. The real questions in this debate relate to matters of fundamental political identity. Economics only comes into it after these matters have been solved, in order to guide the means by which goals defined by fundamental commitments are pursued. The 1707 Parliamentary Union was brought about in a situation of economic duress, with the Scottish economy on its knees following the disastrous failure of the costly Darien Scheme. It would be a shame if economics dominated or decided the debate about a potential divorce.

In the above, I haven’t said whether I would vote yes or no were I still in Scotland, though my answer to that question is no secret to those who have discussed the matter with me recently.

Not with a bang but with a sustained leak

Real Climate: Why Arctic methane release is bad, not catastrophic. This is a very important post. Many have been deeply worried about the possibility of a so-called "methane gun" in which truly staggering volumes of frozen methane clathrates that sit on and under the ocean floor of the Siberian continental shelf are released in a runaway feedback as the Arctic Ocean warms. Since methane (CH₄) has something like 100 times the warming potential of carbon dioxide over a twenty year period, it has been hypothesized that a rapid release of large volumes of stored methane could cause a sudden and likely catastrophic surge in global temperatures. A variation or accompaniment to this scenario is the rapid release of methane from thawing permafrost in Siberia. In the linked post, a senior climatologist argues that it is far more likely that methane release will be chronic rather than acute, and given methane's relatively short atmospheric residency (about ten years), this will lead to a dangerous (though not immediately catastrophic) rise then stabilisation of methane levels, supplementing but not overwhelming warming from carbon dioxide. However, since atmospheric methane gradually degrades to carbon dioxide in the presence of oxygen, a slow release would not only give a bump to methane levels but would also see carbon dioxide levels continue to rise. Unlike methane, carbon dioxide is basically forever, with about half of any increase in atmospheric concentration we experience likely to remain for centuries and about a quarter likely to remain for at least ten thousand years. So a relief (of sorts) for us. It's a bit like finding that the Nazis don't, as feared, have a nuclear weapon, but they do have twice as many conventional forces as was thought.

CD: A recent NASA study suggests that climate change may modify 40% the earth's surface from one biome (e.g. forest, savanna, tundra, etc.) to another.

ABC Religion and Ethics: The New Evangelicals: How Christians are rethinking Abortion and Gay marriage. Despite being published by the ABC, this piece (an extract from a new book) has its eyes on the US scene. How applicable are the trends it identifies elsewhere amongst evangelicals?

Guardian: More farmers needed. Feeding seven, eight, nine, ten billion without strip-mining the soil, using the atmosphere as a carbon dump, squeezing out biodiversity, depleting finite fuels or overloading rivers, lakes and oceans with nutrients requires more organic poly-cultural farming, which can often be more productive per unit of land overall than present industrial monocultural farming. However, it is less productive per unit of labour, meaning more people employed (again) in growing food, which probably means higher food prices and a greater share of incomes devoted to food. This in turn may help address obesity, though at the risk of increasing malnutrition associated with poverty. Hence, addressing inequality is also critical.

Peter preaches on the parable of the talents (Matthew 25.14-30). This passage is often used as a key plank in a justification of usury. There are elements in the narrative and context that suggest a very different reading. Peter highlights the key theological question lying behind this hermeneutical issue: which kind of God do we serve?

McKibben: On being hopefully naïve about getting corporate money out of US politics and why being cynical is hopeless.

Guardian: What have trees ever done for us?

NYT: My Guantánamo Nightmare. There are good reasons due process has come to be highly cherished in all civil societies.

Monbiot: The limits of vegetarianism, in which George changes his mind and shifts to ethical semi-vegetarianism. The Conversation publishes an even more provocative piece against ecological vegetarianism, and a very interesting discussion in the comments ensues.

SMH: Energy and water. In the 20thC, global energy use increased thirteen-fold and water use increased nine-fold. The two are related and any future has to consider our water habits, which might be less about having short showers than having cold ones, since energy production is one of the most water-intensive things we do (though conversely, where water is scarce, desalination is one of the most energy-intensive things we do).

I am, you are, we are Australian

Guest post by Michael Paget

A civil religion?
April was a busy month for religious occasions. Easter, of course: the high (and low) point of the Christian faith. ANZAC day, the zenith of cultic nationalism. And a royal wedding (the nadir of republican fervour).

And it led me to wonder: in a post-Christian world where, nonetheless, many of the most socially significant events take place (or are at least echoed) in churches, what is the relationship between Christians and the country in which they live?

I admit to being particularly provoked by the repeated parallel drawn by preachers between the death of diggers and the sacrifice of Jesus. Now, let’s be clear: I’m not a pacifist. (Though if I were, ought my argument to be heard differently?) My grandfather and father were senior officers in the Australian military; they both saw combat. I have a photo of them in Vietnam during the war, the only Western father/son photo in that theatre of which I’m aware.

But the death of diggers and the sacrifice of Christ are alike in only the most superficial manner. Soldiers die as a tragic and occasional side effect of the (sometimes) courageous use of violence to achieve ends. Every death is a failure. Avoiding the loss of soldiers is a growing priority for military leaders and technologists. The more removed humans can be from the field of combat, the better. The use of so-called 'smart' and laser-guided bombs from a flying fortress high out of harms way is an example.

But Jesus died as a direct result of his courageous refusal to employ violence. And the death of Christ was no side-effect – it was a necessary and planned step in his defeat of death itself.

When we Australians tell the stories of our past, then, we need to tell the truth. The freedom of our country is not built on the sacrifice of the many soldiers who died. Military success is not measured by the lives lost, but the lives preserved. The independence of this nation was sustained because Australia and its allies used violence more effectively than our enemies, killing sufficient strategically important humans on the other side and damaging or threatening damage to enough of their infrastructure to bring things to a close.

But we Christians have received a different story about ourselves as Christians: our freedom was won by one who had all the power in the world at his disposal, but refused to employ it to destroy.

All this suggests to me that the stories we tell about ourselves as Australians and the stories we tell about ourselves as Christians seem to be in fairly sharp conflict.

Which brings us to the wedding. And what a wedding! The pomp and ceremony made it impossible to forget, whatever the tabloids and magazines may have said, that this was not just a celebration of a couple in love. It was also a pageant for Great Britain’s imperial past and economic present, and a clarion call to reawaken the monarchy as the centre of British identity.

Oh, and it was in a church. An Anglican church, at that. So was it a state event, or a church event? And does it matter?

I think it does. The church acts on behalf of God – not the state – and receives his institutions. That the Christian – and Anglican – ceremony of marriage is recognized by the state as normative for the provision of certain civil benefits is a serendipitous (providential?) product of the historical coincidence that is Western history. All the chaff around the wedding of William and Catherine, then, is just that – an attempt by the monarchy and the state to lay claim to what happened in the church, but nothing more.

When the church is asked to celebrate and witness a marriage, it can and should do so in the story that Christians receive about marriage, not the story our world tells about marriage. These, again, are very different stories.

Why are our stories – of identity, of marriage, of meaning – so different? Because, ultimately, this is not our country. Our hopes and dreams are not found in our national success – on the battlefield or the sporting field, in romance or in business. We do not look to political or corporate leaders to save us or guarantee our happiness. We do not look to ANZAC for who we are, or royal weddings for who we long to be. We look to the cross - to Easter. As Paul says:

Our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Saviour from there, the Lord Jesus Christ.

- Philippians 3:20.

We await a saviour from somewhere else. That is who we are. That is the story we have to tell. About us. About our world. We await a Saviour, Jesus Christ, from somewhere else.

A wedding sermon

Heard this at a wedding today. Given that it has now set the record for being the most widely heard sermon in history, I would love to know your thoughts.

"Be who God meant you to be and you will set the world on fire."

So said St Catherine of Siena whose festival day this is. Marriage is intended to be a way in which man and woman help each other to become what God meant each one to be, their deepest and truest selves.

Many people are fearful for the future of today’s world but the message of the celebrations in this country and far beyond its shores is the right one – this is a joyful day! It is good that people in every continent are able to share in these celebrations because this is, as every wedding day should be, a day of hope.

In a sense every wedding is a royal wedding with the bride and groom as king and queen of creation, making a new life together so that life can flow through them into the future.

William and Catherine, you have chosen to be married in the sight of a generous God who so loved the world that he gave himself to us in the person of Jesus Christ.

In the Spirit of this generous God, husband and wife are to give themselves to each other.

The spiritual life grows as love finds its centre beyond ourselves. Faithful and committed relationships offer a door into the mystery of spiritual life in which we discover this: the more we give of self, the richer we become in soul; the more we go beyond ourselves in love, the more we become our true selves and our spiritual beauty is more fully revealed. In marriage we are seeking to bring one another into fuller life.

It is of course very hard to wean ourselves away from self-centredness. People can dream of such a thing but that hope should not be fulfilled without a solemn decision that, whatever the difficulties, we are committed to the way of generous love.

You have both made your decision today – “I will” – and by making this new relationship, you have aligned yourselves with what we believe is the way in which life is spiritually evolving, and which will lead to a creative future for the human race.

We stand looking forward to a century which is full of promise and full of peril. Human beings are confronting the question of how to use wisely the power that has been given to us through the discoveries of the last century. We shall not be converted to the promise of the future by more knowledge, but rather by an increase of loving wisdom and reverence, for life, for the earth and for one another.

Marriage should transform, as husband and wife make one another their work of art. It is possible to transform so long as we do not harbour ambitions to reform our partner. There must be no coercion if the Spirit is to flow; each must give the other space and freedom. Chaucer, the London poet, sums it up in a pithy phrase:

"Whan maistrie [mastery] comth, the God of Love anon,
Beteth his wynges, and farewell, he is gon."

As the reality of God has faded from so many lives in the West, there has been a corresponding inflation of expectations that personal relations alone will supply meaning and happiness in life. This is to load our partner with too great a burden. We are all incomplete: we all need the love which is secure, rather than oppressive. We need mutual forgiveness in order to thrive.

As we move towards our partner in love, following the example of Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit is quickened within us and can increasingly fill our lives with light. This leads on to a family life which offers the best conditions in which the next generation can receive and exchange those gifts which can overcome fear and division and incubate the coming world of the Spirit, whose fruits are love and joy and peace.

I pray that all of us present and the many millions watching this ceremony and sharing in your joy today will do everything in their power to support and uphold you in your new life. I pray that God will bless you in the way of life you have chosen. That way which is expressed in the prayer that you have composed together in preparation for this day:

God our Father, we thank you for our families; for the love that we share and for the joy of our marriage.
In the busyness of each day keep our eyes fixed on what is real and important in life and help us to be generous with our time and love and energy.
Strengthened by our union help us to serve and comfort those who suffer.
We ask this in the Spirit of Jesus Christ. Amen.

- Richard Chartres, 132rd Bishop of London,
delivered in Westminster Abbey on 29th April 2011.
Full text is from here and you can watch it here.

I found it interesting that on a day of widespread celebration, where continuity, tradition and history are very much on show, he made two mentions in seven minutes of the converging crises on the horizon. What struck you?

If you had seven minutes to say something in that context, where would you have gone?

Can we feed ten billion people?

By popular demand, my link dump posts will continue.

Jeremy asks the $64,000 question (ok, so you can add a few more zeroes to the value of that question due to inflation): can we feed ten billion people? He also answers the question: yes and no.

Another Jeremy wonders: what has nature ever done for us?

Bryan reviews a new book co-authored by John Cook (of Skeptical Science fame) on climate change denial. The book makes the point that there are different kinds of denial and that one kind is simply doing nothing with the knowledge that we have.

"I just want my child to go to a good school." Chris Bonnor points out the effects of this mindset.

Ross Cameron offers some reflections on the royal wedding: "The vows are uttered in public because they are so outrageous they have to be witnessed. In lives bombarded by change, there is something incredibly attractive in the idea of making a promise for life."

Mike Wells encourages us to stop being Australian (especially if we actually are).

What do philosophical arguments sorely lack? Referee hand signals.
H/T Kath.

Onion: Obama's new plan to balance the budget.

And xkcd makes us all feel old.

In praise of... short engagements

Prince William and Kate Middleton are to get married on Friday 29th April, within six months of announcing their engagement. For all else that will be written about this particular match, let me say that I'm a fan of short engagements (six months or less). Barring unusual circumstances (e.g. one partner being called off to war), short engagements have two great benefits. The first is relational, the second practical.

Relationally, engagement is an unstable time. Prior to engagement, only loose expectations form the relational bond. Both parties know that they can end the relationship for a variety of good reasons (there are, of course, also plenty of bad reasons, but the point is that good reasons exist). After marriage, lifelong promises bind the couple in a security that allows difficult issues to be faced with confidence that the other has publicly promised to keep holding and loving in whatever circumstances or difficulties arise. But during engagement, there exists the somewhat strange circumstance of a private promise that a public promise will be made. There exists during this period a rapidly closing door out of the relationship and this itself can bring added stress and uncertainty to the relationship. Limiting this stressful period to a definite (and relatively brief) period of time is healthy. Open-ended engagements seem either somewhat pointless or somewhat cruel. Once the decision to get married has been made, then all that is required is some time to prepare for the solemnity of the promises to be undertaken and to arrange the details of a wedding - which brings us to the second benefit of brief engagements.

Practically, the wedding preparation will expand to fill the time available. The longer that is given to this process, the more likely the celebration will grow into an all-consuming beast. Better to acknowledge that, while a day of great seriousness and great joy, a wedding is but another day that the Lord has made, and doesn't require great debts to be shouldered or unrealistic expectations (from whatever source) to be appeased. If present finances are insufficient to pay for the scale of expenses expected, then it is far better to humble one's expectations than delay the date. The point of the day is the making and celebrating of promises. All else is optional.

That said, I doubt the Prince and his family are accustomed to too much humbling of expectations. Yet humility befits even (perhaps especially) a future king.
Image by Scott Callaghan.

Ten years

Ten years ago today, I was at St Mary's, Waverley, making some promises that truly make little sense except that they attempt to echo something of God's passionate commitment to us.

Here I am, ten years older, and still just as reliant upon the promises of God in order to keep my promises - and to renew them each time I fail.
Image by Scott Callaghan.

Belief you can change in

I've just re-stumbled across this post by Mike Wells from a year ago and really enjoyed it: Belief you can change in.

And here is another link that's not brand new but which I found interesting on Andrew Katay's blog: Why Christian dating shouldn't be heading towards marriage.

Are unbaptised Christians like de facto marriages?

Some people live together, sleep together, share finances, raise children together and do many or most of the things that married couples do (argue together, begin to look and sound like each other...), yet have not exchanged explicit public promises of commitment to one another. Their habitual actions mean that while they have never publicly made and received the promises that make a marriage (or those promises remain implicit or private), they are nonetheless acting (and are generally treated) as though they are in fact married. Hence, their relationship is a de facto marriage.

Some people repent of their sins, place their faith in Christ, love God and neighbour, participate in a Christian community and do many or most of the things that Christians do (argue together, begin to look and sound like each other...), yet have not exchanged explicit public promises of commitment with Christ. Their habitual actions mean that while they have never actually made and received the promises that make a Christian (or those promises remain implicit or private), they are nonetheless acting (and are generally treated) as though they are in fact Christian. Hence, are they de facto Christians?

Just a thought.

Multiplying fears: Islam and the demographic freedom of the church

I saw this video a few weeks ago and was shocked. Not so much at the demographic claims (which have been around for a while), but at the manipulative attempt to scare Christians/Americans (the groups are treated as almost synonymous) into reproductive action. This video is little different from the tactics used to perpetuate the White Australia policy during the first three-quarters of last century, in which the fear of Chinese or Indonesian hordes descending onto our country to fill our wide open spaces was the justification for encouraging a higher birthrate and restricting immigration from those outside of the preferred race.

I am all for married people having children where possible and think that the loving and sensitive evangelisation of Muslims (and western nationalists) is a duty and a privilege of the church. But I found this video disturbing in its implicit theology and its barely concealed racism.

Christian honouring of the gift of singleness (based in Jesus' own life and the teaching of 1 Corinthians 7) is, amongst other things, an affirmation that the church is not reliant upon biological reproduction for the gospel to be passed on from generation to generation. As a missionary faith, it is not the natural children but the spiritual children who are our next generation. Of course, being raised in a nurturing Christian family is a great way of passing on the faith, but our hope is not in demographic trends. Children are a wonderful blessing and gift from God, but they are not a strategy that we employ in order to preserve a culture.

Indeed, the church is not bound to any single culture (whether European, American or Australian) and if it diminishes amongst some groups during the next few decades, that would be sad, but not the end of the world. This century the church will be far more African, Asian and South American than European or North American, and perhaps God may use this to bless the church and the world through fresh vigour and creativity in obedience and love.

I love the Australian cultural heritage in which I have grown up, but it is not sacred. It has its own many blind-spots and weaknessess. May God use our brothers and sisters around the world to help us notice and repent of the cultural sins that we drink in with our mother's milk.

One of those sins is a deep fear of those who are not like us, whose beliefs, habits and loves differ from our own. We are right to love what is good in the familiar arena of our own history and current society. And when something we love seems threatened, it can be right and good for some concern to be part of our response. But may God teach us also to love the alien and the stranger in our midst, for we too are aliens and strangers.
UPDATE: This post by Matt also seems highly relevant to this discussion.

Manent on the common good

"The common good is not a good that can be isolated from the different goods and elements that constitute the city. Nor is it a sort of common denominator, unlike the good of self-preservation which for the modern philosophers will be the foundation of human rights. It is both the supreme good and the good which binds the different goods together that can have no direct rapport without which the other goods could not coexist, that is, could not be present at all in the human world."

- Pierre Manent, The City of Man
(trans. Marc A. LePain; Princeton University Press, 1998 [1994]), 168.

Suspicion about the existence of a common good leads to the dissolution of politics into the cynical negotiations of self-interested individuals out to maximise their personal freedom. This is still a conception of the common good, albeit a very minimalist one, in which the only good thing we can share is to not disturb one another. Such a reduction in vision may be the result of previous scars, of well-intentioned policies that caused more damage than harm. But to give up at this point and retreat into self-protection is a failure of collective imagination. That it was "not good for the man to be alone" (Genesis 2.18) speaks not only the possibility of marriage, but also of society. Sharing goods is possible, even if it takes some creative compromises that enable us to each have a smaller share of a greater sum of goods.

Running from the past: Breakfast with Jesus I

An Easter sermon from John 21: part I
Introduction: Sweeping it under the carpet
From here, Britain is on the other side of the world, about as far from home as it's possible to go without joining NASA or using illegal substances. And up the very top of Britain is Scotland. Near the north-eastern corner of Scotland is the grey, cold city of Aberdeen (no points for this picture!).

If you go even further north from Aberdeen you’ll eventually come to a little town called Mintlaw. North of Mintlaw is the village of Strichen, where the accents are nearly incomprehensible and the food nearly inedible. A good drive outside Strichen is a byroad through the middle of nowhere. On a sidebranch of that byroad is a little house. And that is where my friend lives – about as far from Sydney as it is physically possible to get.*

Here we are in the local pub when we visited him two years ago. On the table is the food: deep-fried, plastered with pastry and washed down with Scottish ale. Also on the table is a map so that we wouldn’t get lost while driving from this obscure village to my friend's even more obscure house.

Although I love him, I’m not showing my friend’s face, because this man is on the run.

He hasn’t always lived in the backwaters of Scotland. For years he lived in Australia, and had a life and friends and a future all here. He proposed to a lovely local girl and she accepted and they were planning a wedding, a marriage, a life together. But sadly, it didn’t work out. Just weeks out from the big day, it was all called off. Having had a few friends go through this situation, I know something of how messy, painful, embarrassing, confusing and awful it can be.

And so, as far as I can tell, my friend ran away. He left his broken engagement, his confused friends and family, his once bright future here and went about as far as it’s possible to run into the obscurity of rural Scotland. He started a new life elsewhere and didn’t want to talk about his old life, the failed engagement or the girl who had once filled his life with promise and hope. The bitter disappointment was too much, and it’s easier sometimes to sweep it under the carpet, to move on.**

It's a common phenomenon. Although my friend's flight from his past was obvious and extreme, in more subtle ways I’ve done it myself over many things. Faced with a mess, with a mistake, with a hurt, it’s easier to cover it up, deny it happened, avoid the topic, avoid the person, avoid the whole situation, to walk away and start again elsewhere with a clean slate. Have you ever done this?
*Some details changed.
**At least, this was how his actions appeared to me. I could be wrong on this. He may have had other excellent reasons for the move. NB I preached this sermon before I knew I was going to Edinburgh myself. Unsurprisingly, a few parishioners have since asked me what I'm running from.
Series: I; II: III; IV; V; VI; VII; VIII; IX.

Eight years

Back in 2000, Sydney was gearing up for the Olympics, I was still studying philosophy, we'd all stopped worrying about Y2K (and those who cared were instead dealing with the dot com bubble bursting), the US was trying to decide between Gore and Bush (who had defeated McCain, amongst others, in the primaries), eventually needing some help from the Supreme Court, UK lorry drivers engaged in a series of crippling fuel protests over soaring oil prices (which had hit the outrageous sum of US$30), world population had just passed the 6 billion mark (we're now at over 6.7 billion) and on a sunny June day in Waverley a young couple were married.

Happy anniversary, Jessica!

Marriage and surnames

Whether a wife takes her husband's surname or keeps the one she grew up with is a cause of some stress in more than a few relationships, particularly where one party assumes the answer is obvious. Every option seems to have problems. The traditional move (wife taking the husband's surname) systematically distances wives from their parents. To reverse the precedence (husband takes wife's surname) merely inverts the direction of the sexism (though this is probably to be preferred, all things considered). The modern tendency (both spouses keep their original surname) can imply that the birth family is more important than the new marriage, and runs into further problems if and when children are born. Double-barreled surnames seem like a good solution, but my hunch is that this just postpones the issue for a generation; what happens when two people who already have double-barreled surnames marry? Taking an entirely new surname is possible, though loses the connection to both families of origin and has overtones of voluntarism (I create my own identity in an act of will). Merging two surnames to generate a new one will only work very occasionally.

So here is my solution. During the wedding service, perhaps just after signing the register and before the new couple are presented to the congregation and walk out, the minister or celebrant performs a ceremonial coin toss. No best of three. No appeals to a third umpire. No one knows beforehand who they will walk out as. It gets decided once and for all by the coin and the couple and both families live with it. Neither family is unfairly discriminated against. Any children can have the same surname as both parents. A perfect solution?
I don't usually include photos of people without getting their permission first. This time I didn't and I apologise to M&J in advance if this is a problem.

Mary's melody: a revolutionary hope II

1. A humiliated girl
Who was Mary? The enthusiastic fan base she’s generated in some sections of Christianity can obscure for us the drama and shock of this well-known story. The endless artworks and famous depictions can make us think of an attractive if modest young lady, strangely familiar and reassuringly (or disturbingly) Caucasian.

In fact, if she were around today, she would probably be described in police reports as being ‘of middle eastern appearance’, and, as women in that context usually married very early by our standards, it is most likely that she was only about thirteen or fourteen years old when the events in our passage took place. In our sexually permissive culture, we’re probably more shocked by teenage pregnancy than extra-marital pregnancy. Yet in a culture that took marriage vows more seriously, for Mary to be engaged and pregnant was a serious scandal, threatening her already meagre social and economic future.

A serious scandal for Mary and her family, but barely noticeable by anyone outside her village, a town so small that it had not been mentioned in written accounts until this point. Mary was merely an unmarried pregnant teenager from a repressed race in a small backwater settlement of an unstable region on the edges of the Empire. A nobody. Her one claim to fame of any kind is that her fiancé is a distant descendent of a local king dead for 1,000 years. And even he, according to Matthew’s account, was seriously considering calling off the engagement. Who was Mary? Eight times a nobody: female in a patriarchal culture; barely older than a child; unmarried; about to be ditched by her fiancé; a despised Jew in a land ruled by foreigners; from a hick-town; in a volatile and far-flung province of a hostile empire; and now shamefully pregnant.

But God chooses this nobody to turn the world upside down. God chooses this nobody to become the most celebrated woman and the most popular namesake in history. God chooses this nobody to bring to life the author of life. God chooses this nobody to nurture the comfort of the world. God chooses this nobody to raise the one whose voice will one day raise the dead, to teach the eternal and divine Word to speak, to cradle in her arms the one by whom the cosmos is held together. God notices this nobody.

Mary, the nobody, favoured by God out of his sheer grace, has been picked for a unique and crucial role in the climax of the human drama – she is to usher in the most important scene in which the playwright himself steps on stage. And her response is to simply trust: “I am the Lord’s servant. May everything you have said about me come true.”
Fifteen points for the artist or location of the image above. But you can only guess one.
Series: I; II; III; IV; V; VI; VII.

Lewis on desire

"If you asked twenty good men to-day what they thought the highest of the virtues, nineteen of them would reply, Unselfishness. But if you asked almost any of the great Christians of old he would have replied, Love. You see what has happened? A negative term has been substituted for a positive, and this is of more than philological importance. The negative ideal of Unselfishness carries with it the suggestion not primarily of securing good things for others, but of going without them ourselves, as if our abstinence and not their happiness was the important point. I do not think this is the Christian virtue of Love. The New Testament has lots to say about self-denial, but not about self-denial as an end in itself. We are told to deny ourselves and to take up our crosses in order that we may follow Christ; and nearly every description of what we shall ultimately find if we do so contains an appeal to desire. If there lurks in most modern minds the notion that to desire our own good and earnestly to hope for the enjoyment of it is a bad thing, I submit that this notion has crept in from Kant and the Stoics and is no part of the Christian faith. Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires, not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.

"We must not be troubled by unbelievers when they say that this promise of reward makes the Christian life a mercenary affair. There are different kinds of reward. There is the reward which has no natural connexion with the things you do to earn it, and is quite foreign to the desires that ought to accompany those things. Money is not the natural reward of love; that is why we call a man mercenary if he marries a woman for the sake of her money. But marriage is the proper reward for a real lover, and he is not mercenary for desiring it. A general who fights well in order to get a peerage is mercenary; a general who fights for victory is not, victory being the proper reward of battle as marriage is the proper reward of love. The proper rewards are not simply tacked on to the activity for which they are given, but are the activity itself in consummation. There is also a third case, which is more complicated. An enjoyment of Greek poetry is certainly a proper, and not a mercenary, reward for learning Greek; but only those who have reached the stage of enjoying Greek poetry can tell from their own experience that this is so. The schoolboy beginning Greek grammar cannot look forward to his adult enjoyment of Sophocles as a lover looks forward to marriage or a general to victory. He has to begin by working for marks, or to escape punishment, or to please his parents, or, at best, in the hope of a future good which he cannot at present imagine or desire. His position, therefore, bears a certain resemblance to that of the mercenary; the reward he is going to get will, in actual fact, be a natural or proper reward, but he will not know that till he has got it. Of course, he gets it gradually; enjoyment creeps in upon the mere drudgery, and nobody could point to a day or an hour when the one ceased and the other began. But it is just in so far as he approaches the reward that he becomes able to desire it for its own sake; indeed, the power of so desiring it is itself a preliminary reward."

- C. S. Lewis, opening lines of The Weight of Glory, a sermon.

I posted this in response to this post by Michael Jensen. Eight points for guessing the country in the image.

Divorce as amputation?

A suggestion
At the risk of sounding insensitive, I wonder whether we mightn't be able to compare divorce to amputation. It is a drastic emergency procedure undertaken as a last resort when life is at stake. It is not unthinkable because it is possible for relationships to become so broken that an end is 'healthier' than leaving the relational destruction to fester and become gangrenous. But it is not a quick and easy solution to the problem. It is not easy. It is not a solution. Rather, like amputation, the aim is harm minimisation, attempting to retrieve at least the possibility of some good from a severely damaged situation. It is an option that will leave scars and require rehabilitation to regain some measure of lost abilities. It is not done for cosmetic reasons, or because you have a sore toe, or even when you have a broken leg - in fact, not even when there has been partial or total paralysis. Where there is injury, even severe injury, seek healing through repentence, forgiveness and reconciliation (of course there is much more to say here). Seek help early (wise counselling saved us in our first years of marriage). Divorce only becomes thinkable when the damage to the marriage is so severe that unless there is separation, then the 'blood loss' or 'poisoned blood' will kill you. Except in very rare emergencies, it is also not a decision to be made (or executed!) without skilled help.

I speak as one who has not been divorced, nor as one who has experienced the divorce of parents. I also do not have any significant experience of amputation. Yet I have ministered (a little) to those with struggling and broken marriages, and to some going through divorce. I would love to hear reflections and comments on this analogy. It is not intended (like any analogy) to be perfect, but is intended to fire the imagination and provide a sense of the gravity of this decision in a culture where it has been too-often abused.

UPDATE: I did not mean to imply that the ex-spouse is to be compared directly to the lost limb.

A whole new world

[Photo by Adrian Smith]
What will be new about the new heavens and earth? Where is the discontinuity? What will not last?

The short answer is: death. The long answer is death and mourning and crying and pain, the bonds of futility: in sum, the old order of things. It will be a new world order for a renewed world. No longer will God be absent, no longer will mortality loom and pronounce doom. What is hidden will be revealed. Injustice and half justice will be banished; things will be right.

But of course, all I am doing here is quoting the Bible. What does it mean?

Theologically, the problem with this world is neither physicality nor transience, nor temporality, nor humanity per se. It is evil, and its partner, death: the chaotic destruction and convoluting of life, of God's good world. Where did it come from? See my coming post on the origin of evil (and here). What is it like? See my coming post on the nature of evil. What is God doing about it? The gospel: the life, death and resurrection of his Son. Why is it still around? Because the gospel continues: the cross and resurrection were promise as well as achievement; there is a chapter yet to come in which the resurrection is applied to the entire world. What is its destiny? Exclusion from the new world. Whatever we make of the images of eternal destruction, they are complemented by images of exclusion: there is no symmetry between the new creation and what is not in it.

However, this raises the question of whether good things will be excluded. I have often stressed the continuity between creation and its redemption through the language of release (as in Rom 8) or of renewal. But is it true that no good thing will be lost? That not a hair of creation's head will perish?

Now, of course, one piece of scriptural witness I haven't yet mentioned is marriage. Specifically, 'in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven.' (Matt 22.30) Is this a good part of this creation that misses out on renewal? No: though like everything else, it must 'die' in order to be raised/transformed. Marriage will remain: the new Jerusalem is 'prepared as a bride adorned for her husband'. The wedding feast of the Lamb and his Church affirms, liberates and restores marriage. What does this mean for those presently married? I am not entirely sure; but the good gift of marriage is not excluded.

Have I here undermined all my previous confidence in continuity? If marriage can be so transformed as to possibly mean the end of all present human marriages (remember, our vows are until parted by death), is anything really 'safe'? Of course not, if by safe we want to retain them as they are. But absolutely, they are secure in the transformative power of God to become truly themselves. The risen Jesus was not at first recognised by even his closest followers. But it was truly him.

Towards the end of The Great Divorce (and despite other problems I have with this text), Lewis captures this dynamic with a beautiful image. One man's lust, a sneering whispering slimy lizard on his shoulder, is killed so that he can 'go on to the Mountains' (an image of new life). As it dies, it becomes an enormous stallion that then carries him on his journey. The narrator reflects upon this with his guide (the Teacher, who is meant to have a Scottish accent. Don't ask):

‘Do ye understand all this, my Son?’ said the Teacher.
I don’t know about all, Sir,’ said I. ‘Am I right in thinking the Lizard really turned into the Horse?’
‘Aye. But it was killed first. Ye’ll not forget that part of the story?’
‘I’ll try not to, Sir. But does it mean that everything – everything – that is in us can go on to the Mountains?’
‘Nothing, not even the best and noblest, can go on as it now is. Nothing, not even what is lowest and most bestial, will not be raised again if it submits to death.’

- C. S. Lewis, The Great Divorce, 95.