Loving our (climate) neighbours

"Acting rightly with respect to the earth is a source of hope, for those who so act give expression to the Christian belief that it is God’s intention to redeem the earth, and her oppressed creatures, from sinful subjection to the domination of prideful wealth and imperial power. Such actions witness to the truth that the history of global warming has gradually unfolded; that those poor or voiceless human and nonhuman beings whose prospect climate change is threatening are neighbours through the climate system to the powerful and wealthy. And Christ’s command in these circumstances is as relevant as ever: 'love your neighbour as yourself.'"

- Michael Northcott, A Moral Climate: the ethics of global warming
(London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 2007), 285.

Northcott (a professor of Christian ethics here in Edinburgh) articulates a fundamental point for Christian discussions of ecology. That love is our motivation and the criterion of our choices: not greed in seeking profits or power through higher regulations, not fear or self-protection, not enlightened self-interest or guilt. Any Christian discussion of ecological responsibility needs this corrective lest we simply mirror or unthinkingly baptise unbelieving discourse and assumptions.

Note that framing the discussion within the concept of love doesn't necessarily mean that only humans are included within the sphere of our concern. Northcott here suggests, quite radically for some perhaps, that nonhuman beings can also be our neighbours. Much more needs to be said on this, but to suggest animals (and plants?) as neighbours, as fellow members of the community of life and fellow breathers of the divine Spirit, need not imply that there are not ordered relationships between different forms of life, though it does at the very least imply that nonhuman creatures are loved by God for what they are, not simply for what they can be for us humans.

UPDATE: Were the animals also waiting for the coming Messiah?

The difficulty of love

"Love is the difficult realization that something other than oneself is real."

- Iris Murdoch.

According to Jesus, we are to love our neighbour as ourselves. I take it that he means we are to love our neighbours in the same way that we love ourselves, rather than directing us to love the neighbour as an extension of ourselves. Love requires open eyes to the needs and opportunities of the neighbour. I cannot assume my neighbour is just like me but have to go through the sometimes painful process of recognising and understanding our differences.

The heart of the problem with industrial society

"It is no longer possible to believe that any political or economic reform, or scientific advance, or technological progress could solve the life-and-death problems of industrial society. They lie too deep, in the heart and soul of everyone of us. It is there that the main work of reform has to be done - secretly, unobtrusively."

- E. F. Schumacher, Good Work.

The heart of the problem is the problem of the heart. It is in the selfishness and greed, the pride and stubbornness, the lovelessness and apathy, the gluttony and presumption of our hearts that ecological problems have their roots. Yes, ignorance has played a role. Good goals have been pursued with unintended consequences. But the ways in which they have been pursued, the priorities this has reflected and the unwillingness to change when the harm has become clear, are all matters of our basic orientation to ourselves, to life, to our neighbour and ultimately to God. And it is here in the heart that the real battle lies. Of course social structures, ingrained habits, and official policies are not unimportant, but unless there is a fundamental change of heart then other changes will be cosmetic (this is not to say that sometimes structural change might not proceed and contribute to a change of heart, simply that unless change is wholehearted, it is unlikely to last or be effective). And here again the gospel of Jesus Christ is good news, because in it we find healing for wounded hearts, courage for faltering hearts, focus for straying hearts, wisdom for foolish hearts and joy for tired hearts.

Of gloom, doom and empty tombs

My old subheading used to be quite a mouthful:

A blog - always room for one more - devoted to thinking things through to the end. But not in a gloomy, doomy, or weird mushroomy kind of way, but in the roomy & quietly empty tomby kind of way that the God & Father of Jesus seems to work.

I changed it to make it snappier, but also to highlight a slight shift in focus here. The old description focused on "thinking things through to the end", i.e. on eschatology, the Christian doctrine of the 'last things' and of God's promised future in Christ. I then distinguished what I see as a properly Christian hope, based on the resurrection of Jesus from the dead ("empty tomb"), from dark apocalyptic scenarios of destruction ("gloomy and doomy" eschatologies) as well as from unfounded speculation and wild conjecture ("weird mushroomy" eschatology). I have long had in my profile that one of my nemeses is "escapist eschatologies", that is, understandings of God's promised future that lead us away from engagement with the world and our neighbour based on the misunderstanding that this present life is either irrelevant or mere preparation, and that our physical existence is a problem from which we must be liberated. In short, I wanted to distinguish Christian hope for the redemption of the world from sub-Christian hope for redemption from the world.

I still hold to all that, but the emphasis has shifted.

Reflecting the focus of my PhD work, this blog now spends more time on the ethical implications of hope based on an empty tomb. I am now writing more about eschatological ethics than ethical eschatology.

And the particular context that interests me is pursuing such ethical reflection amongst the gloom and doom of our present situation of interlocking ecological crises, which threaten the viability of life as we currently know it. Anyone with a passing acquaintance with these threats knows things are bad, and the more you look, the worse things seem: complex, intractable and menacing.

How is it possible amidst such nightmares to maintain Christian hope? One solution is to deny the darkness of the gathering gloom, or declare it irrelevant in comparison to the glorious news of a resurrected saviour. But such answers are shallow and ultimately irrelevant because they are once more escapist. Good theology leads us back into our situation to see it afresh, not off into comforting timeless truths. Unless we can face the shadows with honesty and integrity (which will include grief and lamentation as ways of groaning in hope), then I suspect that our theology might not be walking the way of the cross. Only a theology that sits with those in darkness can hope for the coming dawn.

Who is a child? I

“And whoever welcomes a little child like this in my name welcomes me.”

- Matthew 18.5

Introduction
I would like to begin a new three part series that attempts to give a rough outline of what, or rather who, is a child. In one sense, this is simply one way into a theological account of humanity, a discourse which interests me. But in another sense, I hope to begin a dialogue with parents, prospective parents, those who care for young people and those who have ever been a child, about the theological underpinnings of raising children. Why? Because children in our culture are too often ignored as an inconvenience or worshipped as idols. Also because Jessica and I are expecting a little girl in December. And today is Jessica's birthday and this was something she asked for.

So, who is a child? My answer will come in three parts (each with a few sub-points):
• A precious gift of the Father and a member of the community of creation
• A brother or sister for whom Christ died and an image-bearer called into service of neighbour
• A recipient of God's Spirit, an addressee of God's word and a bearer of living hope

A precious gift from the Father of all
The first thing to say about children is that they are received. Although they come from human flesh and partake in their parents’ DNA, they arrive gratuitously. They cannot be bought or sold, earned or deserved. They are unnecessary, entirely contingent, thoroughly dependent upon a source outside themselves. They are an expression of divine grace from one called Abba, Father, from whom all good gifts originate. They are not simply another one of his many gifts, but are a particularly precious one.

And so they are to be welcomed with thanksgiving wherever they are found. They are strangers arriving at our door, to whom warm hospitality is due. They ought not be turned away empty-handed or shut outside but received with joy. And once they have crossed into our lives they must not be abused or abandoned, but should be generously provided with all they need.

A member of the community of creation
As God’s creations, children share in the common existence of all creatures. They too fall under the original divine blessing; they are good, very good. They take their place amidst a complex and interdependent web of relationships, expressing their creaturely dependence upon God through interdependence with their neighbours, human and non-human. Like us and all living beings, they require nourishment, warmth and protection since their lives, like ours, are fragile and vulnerable. Theirs are particularly vulnerable. Compared with most other animals, human children are born very immature and with few resources to contribute to their own survival. And so while we receive them from God, they receive care from us. They require attention and affection, others who will take responsibility for them and provide for their needs.

Like the rest of us, they need the rest of us, and like the rest of us, they have something with which to bless the rest of us. They are recipients of care, and yet from the beginning and increasingly, they are also a source of blessing, a conduit of divine generosity. We are not simply to receive them from God as blessings, but to receive blessings from them.

Children are one of many, and the dependency shared by all created beings is particularly apparent in them. Yet they also have their own distinct being. They are not their father or mother. Their existence is not exhausted by reference to the family, the society and environment into which they are given. They are unique members of a common kind and so each requires particular attentiveness to this child.

And yet this uniqueness is not an undifferentiated negative freedom as some have falsely imagined pure subjectivity. Although they each have their own stories, they are born into larger stories already underway. They are not the beginning, but a new start within something already begun. And so they belong to particular locations, particular people, particular communities, particular cultures. They will be raised to speak particular languages and hold particular beliefs. These may be open to revision and correction as all living traditions inevitably are, and yet they belong within a tradition nonetheless. Tradition is not a prison from which to escape, but the ground under our feet. We do not fly like the angels (who, being immortal, did not arrive in history midstream like we each do and so do not require tradition). We are human from humus (earth), Adam from adamah (ground). We require a given basis upon which to walk, both literally and metaphorically, even if we are also nomads whose journeys may not always be circular.

Consequently, raising a child within a tradition is not an evil imposition or a form of child molestation, as it has become fashionable to claim in some circles. It is a gift and a necessary provision. No child begins the human race again, but we all receive from those who have come before us. Similarly, no child can claim to end the human race, and so these children will themselves become the bearers of tradition to future generations.

” Tell it to your children, and let your children tell it to their children, and their children to the next generation.”

- Joel 1.3

See here for the second post and here for the third and final post in this series.
Images by Steve and Bill. All children pictured in this series are my nieces and nephews.

Augustine on worship and love

"To this God we owe our service - what in Greek is called latreia - whether in the various sacraments or in our selves. For we are his temple, collectively, and as individuals. For he condescends to dwell in the union of all and in each person. He is as great in the individual as he is in the whole body of his worshippers, for he cannot be in creased in bulk or diminished by partition. When we lift up our hearts to him, our heart is his altar. We propitiate him by our priest, his only-begotten Son. We sacrifice blood-stained victims to him when we fight for truth 'as far as shedding our blood'. We burn the sweetest incense for him, when we are in his sight on fire with devout and holy love. We vow to him and offer to him the gifts he has given us, and the gift of ourselves. And we have annual festivals and fixed days appointed and consecrated for the remembrance of his benefits, lest ingratitude and forgetfulness should creep in as the years roll by. We offer to him, on the altar of the heart, the sacrifice of humility and praise, and the flame on the altar is the burning fire of charity. To see him as he can be seen and to cleave to him, we purify ourselves from every stain of sin and evil desire and we consecrate ourselves in his name. For he himself is the source of our bliss, he himself the goal of all our striving. By our election of his as our goal - or rather by our re-election (for we had lost him by our neglect); by our re-election (and we are told that the word 'religion' comes from relegere 'to re-elect'), we direct our course towards him with love (dilectio), so that in reaching him we may find our rest, and attain our happiness because we have achieved our fulfilment in him. For our Good, that Final Good about which the philosophers dispute, is nothing else but to cleave to him whose spiritual embrace, if one may so express it, fills the intellectual soul and makes it fertile with true virtues.

"We are commanded to love this Good with all our heart, with all our soul, with all our strength; and to this Good we must be led by those who love us, and to it we must lead those whom we love. Thus are fulfilled those two commands on which 'all the Law and the prophets depend': 'Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, with all thy soul, and with all thy mind', and, 'Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.' For in order that a man may know how to love himself an end has been established for him to which he is to refer all his action, so that he may attain to bliss. For if a man loves himself, his one wish is to achieve blessedness. Now this end is 'to cling to God'. Thus, if a man knows how to love himself, the commandment to love his neighbour bids him to do all he can to bring his neighbour to love God. This is the worship of God; this is true religion; this is the right kind of devotion; this is the service which is owed to God alone."

- Augustine of Hippo, The City of God, X.3.

This passage is critical for all kinds of reasons. Notice how Augustine takes the regular elements associated with worship in the ancient world and shows how they are transformed in Christian worship. The temple is our body and the body politic of the Christian community. The altar is our heart. The sacrifice is humility. And so on. This is not, as is sometimes thought, merely a "spiritualisation" of outward religion, in which meaningless rituals are replaced with right motives. The difference between ancient religions and Christianity is not merely captured by the opposition between "outward" and "inward" piety. True worship is always both. The key difference for Augustine is captured better by the concept of "wholeheartedness". True worship is the wholehearted turning of the self to God, without reservation or any hedging of bets. It is to turn our entire orientation, to re-turn, to a God-ward direction in our life story.

And this is why, Augustine explains, true worship is so closely tied to love in the biblical tradition. For wholehearted love is a motion of the entire life towards the object of our love. If we are to worship God, we must love him wholeheartedly.

And the command to love our neighbour must be understood, not in competition with this primary love, but as its horizontal expression. We love God by loving our neighbour. Yet this also means we love our neighbour by loving God, and inviting them to share that same passionate commitment to the origin of our bliss and goal of our striving.

Notice also that while the love of God is the source and destination of our love of neighbour, it is only through being loved that we learn how to love. Only as we are loved by our neighbour do we learn that God loves us, and only in the light of God's love are we able to love God and others for God's sake.

Finally, a word on Augustine's metaphors. Love is both resting in, and striving after; both choosing of a goal, and finding fulfilment; it is both active and passive. It is an embrace, where I am both taken and held, and also warmly grasp in return. But this is not merely the embrace of a friend, a comfort hug, a warm greeting or a fond farewell. It is the fertile cleaving of lovers, whose embrace produces the gift of new life.

Departing from fear

“The path out of fear is not power but trust, not strength but vulnerability before God.”

Scott Bader-Saye, Following Jesus in a Culture of Fear, 12.

Is it actually possible to fear not? So often, we think that the way to not be afraid is make ourselves stronger, become more secure through the acquisition of more resources, more money for a rainy day, or by hitting our enemies before they can hit us, or hitting them back harder than they hit us. Only when we have either removed the threat, or made ourselves impervious to it, can we let our guard down and cease our anxiety.

But a world where everyone is gathering more goodies lest they miss out is a world that is condemned to perpetual fear of our neighbour, and, increasingly, fear of the world itself that strains and groans under the demands we make of it. The only true and living path out of fear is trust. Trust in the God who provides abundantly. There is enough, and more. We can cease our desperate grasping and learn contentment.

But the path out of fear is not simply trust in God; we must also learn to trust our neighbour. This is a qualified trust, since trust has to be earned, or built, or grow. It is not simply bestowed unilaterally. Thus, I am not advocating a utopian vision that would recommend you leave your doors unlocked. Nonetheless, the way out of fear is showing yourself to be trustworthy and that you are willing to give some small sign of trust to your neighbour. Trust is built slowly as it is given and received. And fear is banished not by banishing enemies, but by loving them.

Of course, this is only possible through trusting the one who raised Jesus from the deadly hatred of his enemies. It is trust in this God that makes the attempt to love even a recalcitrant enemy thinkable. In this way, we make ourselves vulnerable to God, risking ourselves on his promise. We put him to the test, not in an empty show of self-aggrandisement, like throwing ourselves off a tall building to see if he sends an angel to catch us. No, we test him in the same way that Jesus did: through obedience, through not allowing fear to stop us loving our neighbour.
Eight points for guessing the country. Fifteen for the location.

Scarcity is not the problem

"The conflict between the narratives of abundance and of scarcity is the defining problem confronting us at the turn of the millennium. The gospel story of abundance asserts that we originated in the magnificent, inexplicable love of a God who loved the world into generous being. The baptismal service declares that each of us has been miraculously loved into existence by God. And the story of abundance says that our lives will end in God, and that this well-being cannot be taken from us. In the words of St. Paul, neither life nor death nor angels nor principalities nor things -- nothing can separate us from God.

"What we know about our beginnings and our endings, then, creates a different kind of present tense for us. We can live according to an ethic whereby we are not driven, controlled, anxious, frantic or greedy, precisely because we are sufficiently at home and at peace to care about others as we have been cared for."

- Walter Brueggemann, "The Liturgy of Abundance and the Myth of Scarcity"

My ethics lecturer at Moore College, Andrew Cameron, would often say "scarcity is not the problem". At first, I thought he was crazy. Of course scarcity is a problem. There are people starving for lack of food or ill from lack of clean water, others who sell themselves into slavery for lack of money, or who go without medical care and suffer apparently unnecessary pain, farmers whose crops fail due to drought and changing weather patterns. All these people cry "we do not have enough!"

But that is not what he was saying. He was saying (I think) that scarcity is not the problem. Scarcity only becomes a problem due to other, deeper problems: our unwillingness to share, our ignorance (willful or otherwise) of the needs of our neighbours, our confusion of wants and needs, our fear that unless we hoard all we can then we might miss out, our delusion that endless economic growth is necessary for a healthy society or that boundless consumption will make us happy. These are the real problems. Scarcity is the symptom of a world out of joint. And lives based on the assumption of scarcity compound other problems. If I fear that there will not be enough to go around, I will be more reluctant to share.

The quote with which I began is from this article by well known Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann. It is worth reading in full (it is not too long) as a great articulation of the fundamental Christian belief in God's generosity. God is not stingy. He has not shortchanged us. He provides abundantly (though not infinitely as our childish dreams desires). There is enough. There will be enough. Be not afraid.

Give us this day our daily bread. Amen.

The Word became flesh: looking again at Jesus IX

A sermon from John 1.1-14: Part IX
The Word became flesh. This conversation which we did not begin and into which we are invited, is to be conducted through a human, one like us. He is not so alien as to be unrecognisable. In fact, precisely the opposite: the danger is that he is too familiar. We think of him as just another guy. With six and half billion people around and in the middle of our busy lives, someone has to be pretty special to make it onto our “to meet” list.

Here’s what the great Swiss theologian Karl Barth says:

“Jesus Christ is not a demigod. He is not an angel. Nor is He an ideal man. He is a man as we are, equal to us as a creature, as a human individual, but also equal to us in the state and condition into which our disobedience has brought us. And in being what we are He is God’s Word. Thus as one of us, yet the one of us who is Himself God’s Word in person, He represents God to us and He represents us to God. In this way He is God’s revelation to us and our reconciliation with God.”

- Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, I/2, 151.

God surprises us by speaking a word that is far less alien than we might have expected. And yet its very familiarity - its human face, ten fingers and forty-six chromosomes - makes it quite possible to disregard. The light of the world shines in our darkness and we – overlook it. The Word became flesh and moved into our neighbourhood and we – treat it like any other neighbour: with polite inattention. I don’t know about you, but what usually happens when someone new moves into our building is you each nod and smile, maybe introduce yourself, and then proceed to ignore each other as much as possible. If we let you get on with your life, you’ll let us get on with ours. Is this how we treat Jesus? Have learned to not be too inquisitive, to limit our hospitality to the surface so all we see is our own lives mirrored back? Perhaps we are so easily bored with ourselves that when one comes who is flesh like us, we assume he too is boring. We are content with superficial relationships and so look superficially and do not see anything but the ordinary.
Series: I; II; III; IV; V; VI; VII; VIII; IX; X.

Individualism as a herd mentality

Why should we in Australia reduce our emissions when China and India are so much bigger? Why should I avoid littering/speeding/wasteful consumption when everyone else does it and I can nearly always get away with it? Why should I be honest on my tax return when much bigger incomes are dishonest? What can one person do?

Individualism as a way of life inculcates a stunted imagination. I lose the capacity to see myself as one of many, as a member of a body. By limiting my sphere of influence and responsibility to myself, social issues become insurmountable, or at least endlessly deferrable as "someone else's problem". But where everyone lives for him or herself, everyone loses.

The church as the body of Christ, the household of God, the temple of the Holy Spirit is a real taste of salvation from the echo-chamber of a life lived curved in upon itself. I discover how much more spacious life is when I stretch out in loving openness to my neighbour. I find in them the image of God, the Breath of life, a brother or sister for whom Christ died. I no longer live and die for myself.

Loving meat: why I am a vegetarian (almost)

"Better a meal of vegetables where there is love
    than a fattened calf with hatred."         - Proverbs 15.17

A vegetarian friend used to quote this proverb in support of her practice. I would then gleefully point out that the proverb assumes the superiority of meat to vegetables in order to make its point, namely, that the superiority of love over hatred is even greater. Nonetheless, over the last year or so, and particularly in the last few months, this proverb lies at the heart of why I have become an (almost) vegetarian (technically, a semi-vegetarian or flexitarian).

Our planet produces an abundance of food, enough to feed over ten billion people, according to some estimates. Yet we are in the middle of a food crisis, with wheat prices more than doubling in the last twelve months and other grain prices not far behind, leading to riots and political unrest amongst many poorer nations. If we are growing so much (and last year broke all records for maximum production), where does the food go? Increasingly, much of it is turned into biofuels so that first-world drivers (and governments) can feel less guilty about our energy-intense lifestyles. The corn used to generate one large petrol tank of ethanol-based fuel would feed a person for a year. Nonetheless, biofuels, although growing rapidly, still take only about 5% of the world's grain production.

So why are we short of food? One major reason is because we eat so much meat. To produce one kilogram of beef, it takes around eight kilograms of grain.* Chickens have a better ratio, but whatever your fancy, it still takes more energy to produce meat than other kinds of food. This article summarises a number of the key statistics and links them to current food prices (H/T Nicole), as does this one and this one and this one. The bottom line is that the western meat-based diet (and its increasing emulation by China and India) is helping push those on the edge of poverty into malnutrition. There is indeed plenty to go around, but our opulent lifestyle consumes so much that others cannot afford even the basics.
*This is also an issue of water management. To produce a kilo of wheat takes between 1-2,000 litres of water; a kilo of beef takes between 10,000-13,000 litres.

So can we, out of love for our neighbour, reduce our consumption of meat? I think it both possible and desirable, and now try to avoid buying or consuming it wherever possible. This is not to say that eating meat per se is wrong (though certainly there is much mistreatment of animals in our current system - another genuine moral issue, though a discussion for another time). On the contrary, I give thanks for meat as a good gift of God, but I am trying to regard it as an occasional luxury rather than a staple. There used to be a slogan "Live simply so that others can simply live"; I think we can also say "Eat simply so that others can simply eat". Better a meal of vegetables for everyone than a fattened calf for some while others go hungry.

PS This article puts some of the concerns well.

PPS I note there is also a Wikipedia article summarising some of the concerns.

Calvin on loving the unlovely

"We are not to look to what men in themselves deserve, but to attend to the image of God, which exists in all, and to which we owe all honour and love. […] Therefore, whatever man you meet who needs your aid, you have no reason to refuse to help him. […] Say he is contemptible and worthless, but the Lord shows him to be one to whom he had deigned to give the beauty of his image. […] Say that he is unworthy of your least exertion on his account; but the image of God, by which he is recommended to you, is worthy of yourself and all your exertions. But if he not only merits no good, but has provoked you by injury and mischief, still this is no good reason why you should not embrace him in love, and visit him with offices of love. […] We are not to reflect on the wickedness of men, but look to the image of God in them, an image which, covering and obliterating their faults, should by its beauty and dignity allure us to love and embrace them."

– John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion III.vii.6.

This is a very interesting point Calvin makes: that the basis for loving my neighbour is not lost through my neighbour's unworthiness, or even active hostility towards me. I am to see in my neighbour the gift of God - that God has seen fit to make even my broken and destructive neighbour a means by which others might see something of the divine life.

Of course, none of this makes sense until we learn to see Christ as God's image, into whose likeness we are drawn by the Spirit. The ever-open possibility that my neighbour might conform more closely to Christ's grace and truth keeps open the door to treating her graciously and truthfully. None are beyond the transforming power of the Spirit of Christ. All are vulnerable to grace. I love, then, in order that my neighbour might become more fully herself by becoming more like Christ.

The opposite of faith, hope and love

Eric Meyer over at A Few Words asks us to clarify what we mean by the central virtues of faith, hope and love by suggesting a word to express the opposite of each:

The opposite of faith is _______.
The opposite of hope is ________.
The opposite of love is _______.

How would you finish each sentence?

Eric offers his suggested answers.

It seems to me that there are at least three ways we could think about these virtues "going wrong": misdirection, inversion or absence. That is, faith, hope and love can be placed in the wrong thing, can turn sour, or can wither away.

First, they can have the wrong object and in each case, become idolatry (or at least find their centre in the wrong object, since trusting, hoping in and loving God does not compete with or destroy similar orientations towards our neighbour). However, this is not so much the opposite of the virtues as a perversion of them.

Second, we might think of the feisty opposites of each, that do battle directly against them. In this sense, the opposite of love is hate, of hope is despair, of faith is mistrust. In each case, there is still a good desire at the heart of each of these mirror-virtues. They are what often results when passionate but unformed virtue meets bitter disappointment. The one who hates still cares enough to put his heart into it; the one who despairs has not, in one sense, given up on the desire for things to be different, she has just come to think that nothing in reality corresponds to that desire; the one who is filled with cynicism still desires trustworthiness, but has never met it. In each case, I think such a person is close to the kingdom of God.

But I think the most common and most pernicious opponent of the central theological virtues is not when they are multiplied by -1, but by 0, not when they explode into protest, but when they fade into silence, muffled by fear. And so the true opponent of love is not hate, but indifference or apathy - the belief that others simply don't matter anymore. The true opponent of hope is not despair but resignation or complacency - the belief that another world is neither possible nor desirable. The true opponent of faith is not mistrust but isolation or independence - the belief that I am self-sufficient.

The Word became flesh

Reflections upon John 1.1-14

“Thus the reality of Jesus Christ is that God Himself in person is actively present in the flesh. God Himself in person is the Subject of a real human being and acting. And just because God is the Subject of it, this being and acting are real. They are genuinely and truly human and acting. Jesus Christ is not a demigod. He is not an angel. Nor is He an ideal man. He is a man as we are, equal to us as a creature, as a human individual, but also equal to us in the state and condition into which our disobedience has brought us. And in being what we are He is God’s Word. Thus as one of us, yet the one of us who is Himself God’s Word in person, He represents God to us and He represents us to God. In this way He is God’s revelation to us and our reconciliation with God.”

- Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, I/2, 151.

God surprises us by speaking a word that is far less alien than we might have expected. And yet its very familiarity - its human face, ten fingers and forty-six chromosomes - makes it quite possible to disregard. The light of the world shines in our darkness and we overlook it. The Word became flesh and moved into our neighbourhood and we treat it like any other neighbour: with polite inattention. We have learned to not be too inquisitive, to limit our hospitality to the surface so all we see is our own lives mirrored back. We are so easily bored with ourselves that when one comes who is flesh like us, we assume he too is boring.

Have you looked again at your neighbour? Are they worth a second look? Have you written yourself off? If the light that enlightens everyone became flesh like us, can we afford to ignore one another?

If we are not to be bored with ourselves, we have to learn to look at Jesus in such a way that we can say with the Evangelist: "we have seen his glory" (John 1.14). If we open our eyes, beware, the glare may be dazzling.

Jesus said, "I have come into this world for judgement so that those who do not see may see, and those who do see may become blind."             - John 9.39

Eight points for guessing the English city in the picture.

Jesus and climate change VIII

But what’s the problem?
Now, I’ve been speaking of how good God’s world is, but that’s only part of the picture. Things have also gone dreadfully, tragically wrong, as we can see with climate change, if we hadn’t already noticed it elsewhere. Instead of humanity caring for God’s world, receiving his gifts with thanks and sharing them with others, all too often our experience is of a me-first world, both in our attitudes and in how we have set up our societies. Many of us presume that we deserve our standard of living, or vote for politicians who will maintain and increase our affluence before all other considerations. We are often greedy and envious, wanting to hoard and consume more things than our neighbour. Or we might be apathetic about the suffering of others. Or just unthinkingly wasteful. And so often we are simply thankless.

Jesus said that our life is more than the abundance of possessions (Luke 12.15), that loving God and our neighbour are more important than financial security or chasing our dreams or the perfect romance or the pursuit of happiness (Mark 12.28-33). Yet our society often assumes that bigger is better, that everything must be sacrificed to economic growth, that the creation is merely a pile of ‘natural resources’ to be exploited for increasing our material comfort and affluence.

In fact the climate crisis that we face today is a classic symptom of what the Bible calls ‘sin’. Sin is a bigger problem than simply the actions of any one individual. It is an addiction, a deadly habit, found in each of us and woven into our social fabric. Climate change is a classic symptom because like many of the world’s problems, it is not simple. There is no single cause and no magic bullet solution. Instead, we’re faced with a complex series of related problems arising out of many causes, such as the small actions and inaction of millions, habits based on ignorance, pig-headed short-sightedness, greed or fear that refuses to see size of the problem, the desire to maximise our short-term gain without regard for the future. Or simply false beliefs: that the planet’s resources and ability to adapt is effectively infinite, that human actions don’t add to much, that the problem and its solution lie elsewhere. All these contribute to a mega-problem.

Richard Chartres, Bishop of London, has said ‘Sin is not just a restricted list of moral mistakes. It is living a life turned in on itself where people ignore the consequences of their actions.’ Abuse of the natural environment is a consequence and symptom of human sinfulness. It is a symptom of disobedience to God’s command to care for his world. This is both a personal and a collective failure. It is something to which we all contribute and yet something from which we all suffer, into which we were born and raised without being consulted. We are all both perpetrators and victims. And we are not the only victims. Creation itself is groaning in intense pain like a woman giving birth because of its bondage to decay (Romans 8.19-22).
Photo by ALS.
Series: I; II; III; IV; V; VI; VII; VIII; IX; IX(b); X; XI; XII; XIII; XIV; XV.

Luther on Lebensraum

We conclude, therefore, a Christian lives not in himself, but in Christ and in his neighbour. Otherwise he is not a Christian. He lives in Christ through faith, in his neighbour through love. By faith he is caught up beyond himself into God. By love he descends beneath himself into his neighbour. Yet he always remains in God and in his love.

- Martin Luther, The Freedom of a Christian

According to Luther, our problem is that we are curved in upon ourselves, trapped in self (incurvatus in se). Freedom is then to live not in myself, but in Christ and my neighbour. As a Christian, I am no longer the source of my own life, the provider of my own needs. I am delightfully dependent. My goals are no longer for myself, but for God and the common good. I can now live expansively, having been brought into the wide space of God's mercy: He also allured you out of distress into a broad place where there was no cramping (Job 36.16). Living in Christ and the neighbour: this is where we can find Lebensraum.
Eight points for picking the country.

O'Donovan on wakefulness IIb: Admiring

Admiring (cont)
This is a summary of the second half of Oliver O'Donovan's second lecture in the 2007 New College Lectures Morally Awake? Admiration and resolving in the light of Christian faith. This second lecture is on Admiring.

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The feeling of dread arises when we reach the limits of our knowledge. We fear the unknown. This is most clearly seen in children, who, in order to praise one thing as good, often need to demonise alternatives. We treat our dreads as though they were as real as our loves. We can love evil by refusing the adopt the self-reflective position, becoming curved in upon ourselves, according to Luther's definition of sin: incurvatus in se. We then divide the world in two: good and evil. This creates a negative sense of "world" to go alongside the positive use assumed throughout these lectures so far. This negative world is a world our self-enclosure pitched in opposition to the real world.*
*Perhaps I missed a crucial step in this paragraph. This is one section I'd like to revisit when the recordings and full text of the lectures appears on the New College website.

Repentence is thus the progress from unreflective knowledge to reflective knowledge. In coming to know ourselves we come to know (reflectively) our unreflectiveness. Conversion is the beginning of the perfection of love, which casts out dread, according to St John (1 John 4.8). Augustine spoke of learning to love the self, by this he meant that the love of God and neighbour is a self-aware love; we do not come to love God and neighbour absent-mindedly. These loves are not in competition. We do not love ourselves as much as we love God, for we are to love him with our whole being, and there is nothing left over after this love. Self-love is not self-interest or protectiveness, yet nor can we rule the self out of perfect love. Reflective self-love is the opposite of unreflective self-absorption in which we are left at the centre of our own universe without a purchase on the reality of others.

Love must be ordered. There are many good things in the world; how can we love a pluriform world? We need an ordered set of relations as we participate in the moral order. Our admiration has to be structured, rather than simply saying "wow" to each new thing. We must learn to value most what is most valuable. Our love must learn nuances, similarities, contrasts, causes and effects. An ordered knowledge of an ordered world will lead to an ordered knowledge of self. We come to learn about our eyes as we use them to observe the world. We discover that there are others like myself, who see and love. The neighbour is always the self's companion; indeed, it is through the neighbour that we come to awareness of the self: I am other people's other people - vulnerable, capable of disappearing to them as they are to me.

Returning (once again) to Augustine (a frequent touchstone throughout this lecture), in his De Doctrina Christiana he distinguishes between loving and using in order to create a hierarchy in which God is the supreme good to be loved. The first lecture spoke of wakefulness to the world, the self and to time, but why not to God? Why isn't God a fourth thing alongside the others? Each of the other three are not fully grasped except in relation to God. God is the source and end of our awakening. Yet God is not the direct object of our attention, except through the incarnation and prophetic utterance of the Spirit. How can God be the source of our admiration?

To answer this question, let us focus on the experience of gratitude. I admit that what is good, is good for me. I belong to this world and am indebted to its goodness. Gratefulness makes our knowledge of the world come alive. Yet it has also seen that good is a communication: it is for me, but from whom? Who is the source? Once we have caught ourselves being grateful, we are driven to address the supreme good. It is possible to enjoy this or that good without thinking of the source in the supreme good, though it is not possible to do so throughtfully. We can only grasp God's goodness is relation to created (and redeemed) goods. Love thus follows a path from the world through the self and neighbour to God.

Goodness for me is an event, a history. It occurs in time. This doesn't mean that change is all that matters. The goodness of God is not simply something past and achieved, it is also a promise. In admiring, we learn to anticipate God's future goodness. It is as we are placed before a given good that is open to perfection that we begin to hope. Hope holds before us a future that is our good. Opens a space in which we may act. Our ultimate hope, extended to an absolute future means we can intend to our immediate future.*
*Again, I wasn't sure I followed this section, but I think O'Donovan was making a similar point to Barth's comment about little and big hopes. He included a quote from Augustine and extending and intending, which I missed. There is more on hope in the third lecture.

Virtue is a form of goodness realised in others around us, a glimpse of what human action is given to be. Virtue is in the first place in the third person and visible, rather than internal. It is not a law, ideal or command. The virtues are not to be imitated, but to be loved. They are the evidence or seal on God's promise for our lives, communicating a promise of the perfection we lack. Virtue is a kind of goodness, not rightness.

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Question time included queries about the Word of God (O'Donovan spoke with great care of Christ, the Scriptures and Christian proclamation), more on his closing comments about virtues, the reality of evil (O'Donovan repeated the view of the fathers that Satan is perfectly good insofar as he exists. The problem with Satan is not what is there, but what is not there: love. There is a hole at the centre of Satan. Living from fear is living out Satanic emptiness [making interesting links with Voldemort]. When we confront the Other, do we highlight what is not known and centre on that? Satan asks us to worship a lack. A further question asked then if evil only existed in the mind, to which he replied that evil is an event, a doing, rather than a being. Satan's evil is not in his being, but in his rebellion. In our sin we assert ourselves against reality), the difficulty of portraying goodness in art due to our cynicism (a protective mechanism, which believers can dispense with in order to be expert admirers), and on eschatology. This final question took a few attempts to articulate, until finally the questioner came right out and asked "Are you pre-, post- or amillennialist? What is your eschatology?". There was an audible dropping of the collective penny and we turned to hear O'Donovan's reply. "I have no eschatology," he said, "apart from that of the New Testament." He refused to systematise or sequentialise the scriptural images of what he called "the absolute future", though confessed his orthodox belief in the return of Christ, the judgement of God and the resurrection of the dead.

All three nights were well attended and had excellent, albeit fairly brief, question times. Everyone I spoke with agreed that this second lecture was the hardest to follow. As I heard someone say on the third night, "I followed him down all the streets, but I missed some of the corners." And I think my note-taking reflects that: I got many/most of his assertions, but didn't always grasp the logical links and moves between them. If these summaries feel jerky, that is why.
Ten points for providing a link to a very similar photo on this blog, taken just a few metres further back.
Series: I; IIa; IIb; IIIa; IIIb.

Proverb of the week I

Like a maniac who shoots deadly
         firebrands and arrows,
so is one who decieves a neighbour
     and says, "I am only joking!"
                                 - Proverbs 26.18-19

God with us? VI

Tasting the future today
And these tastes of the future, these glimpses of God's coming presence, are genuine tastes, real glimpses, because of the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of the future. The physical resurrected body of Christ is hidden with God, but he has poured his Spirit, the Spirit of the risen Christ, into those who follow his way. And so by the Spirit, God is with us today. Not physically, not in fullness, not unveiled. But truly with us. The Spirit blows where he will (John 3.8). We can’t control or summon him like a pet dog. But when the gospel is truly proclaimed and people turn to Christ, there is the Spirit, there is God with us. When love overcomes hate and indifference, when death doesn’t get the last word on the meaning of our life, when we acknowledge our interdependence with all living things, there is the Spirit, there is God with us. When we share a meal of bread and wine and find ourselves bound together by a bond of peace, there is the Spirit, there is God with us. Where Christ is proclaimed and honoured in word and deed, there is the Spirit, there is God with us. Where there is a broken heart that cries to God in loneliness and anguish, there is the Spirit, there is the presence of God: The LORD is near to the brokenhearted, and saves the crushed in spirit (Psalm 34.18).

I recently received an email from a friend in long-term isolation on a cancer ward which ended like this:

I feel God's presence very strongly at the moment and throughout all of this there have been many blessings. I have realised more than ever that I would rather cross a raging river with God that stroll on the river bank without Him. I cannot imagine what it would be like to go through this without Him.

God is an ever-present help in trouble (Ps 46.1). This help is not necessarily what we expect or demand, but exceeds all we can ask or imagine.

But what of our ordinary life? Is God with me day by day?

For thus says the high and lofty one who inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy: I dwell in the high and holy place, and also with those who are contrite and humble in spirit.

- Isaiah 57.15

The Spirit of Christ, like Christ himself, prefers to hang out with those who recognise their need, who come to life with empty hands and are quick to give thanks. Is this me? Am I contrite and humble, or am I so full of myself there's no room for anyone else, no room for God? Are we as a community humble? Is God with us?

God’s Spirit, the Spirit of Christ, breathes life into us as the body of Christ, as a community tied together by our experience of God with us. This is what animates our meetings, what quickens our passions; this is who gives us a word of comfort or careful rebuke, a word of apology or hope. This is who moves us to care for the lonely, to stand up for the weak and voiceless, to share with our neighbour. This is who enables us to live fearlessly. It is the Spirit of Christ, God with us. God is not stingy. Our everyday lives are saturated with hints and echoes of his presence. Moments of beauty, of humility, of grace and truth.

We live everyday in the presence of God. But he is not our magic talisman, our lucky charm, our guarantee of success, our assurance of being right. He is not so much on our side, as beside us – in our neighbour – and inside us, giving us no rest until we find our rest in him. God is with us, but he is not in our box. Remember, he sits on top of the box, ruling as king, enthroned between the cherubim. He is lifted up on a cross, ruling as king as the nails are driven home. He is alive and amongst us as we live and move and have our being. He can be found in an embrace, seen in a gift, heard in a kind word, yet heaven and earth cannot contain him. He is here. He is coming soon.

Come Lord Jesus. Amen.
Series: I; II; III; IV; V; VI.

Would Jesus vote green? XII

Fear (cont)
But of all the responses we’ve looked at, while sorrow is probably the one I can most straightforwardly endorse, fear is the one that the Christian message affirms least.

Of all the commands in the Bible, by far the most frequent is ‘fear not’. It is often thought that hatred is the opposite of love. Not so. The greatest barrier to love is fear. The Apostle John tells us that ‘perfect love drives out fear’ (1 John 4.18).

And how, according to Jesus, is it possible to fear not?

Because God loves his world. God passionately, deeply, unswervingly, sacrificially loves his world. He will not abandon it. He has shown a pledge of his commitment to his good world by raising Jesus bodily from the dead. This is the start of his clean-up job. It is his pledge, his down-payment, guaranteeing that he will finish the job, that he will likewise raise all those who belong to Jesus, that he will liberate the groaning creation from its bondage to decay (Rom 8.19-22).

No matter how bad we get, God can heal and restore. Even if we destroy ourselves, which would be very sad, God can raise the dead. This is not an excuse, a safety-net freeing us from responsibility. Precisely the opposite. God loves his world and will restore it, but he will destroy those who destroy the earth (Revelation 11.18). Those who persist squandering God’s good gifts, ungratefully hoarding all they can lay their hands on, apathetically or cynically ignoring the plight of their neighbour, despoiling the world God made, in short, those who persist in rejecting life as Jesus shows us it was meant to be lived, they will eventually succeed in cutting themselves off from life as it should be. By rejecting Jesus, you reject the one who brings life and so choose death.

But those who weep over the cracked world, who admit they are part of the problem, who realise that Jesus paid the ransom to set them free from guilt, who renounce their selfish or self-righteous lifestyle, who yearn for the liberation of creation, who follow Jesus in loving all life, these ones are liberated from fear, and find themselves free to live a life of faith, hope and love. If you trust the God who made a good world, and so have a sure hope that he will complete the job that he began by raising Jesus from the dead, then you are freed from fear and are able to begin the delightful privilege of learning to love your neighbour and the whole community of creation.
Eight points for guessing the country. Series: I; II; III; IV; V; VI; VII; VIII; IX; X; XI; XII; XIII.