What Do We Do With Anger? Walter Brueggemann On The Psalms Of Vengeance

Someone once said that most of the Bible speaks to us, but the Psalms speak for us. Enter the famed Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann:

HT: the Pastors’ Weekly email from ChurchLeaders.com.

Brueggemann proposes there are three things we can do with our anger when something unjust has happened to us:

1. We can act it out – but surely Christians don’t want to do that;
2. We can deny it – but then it comes out somewhere else, perhaps in our family;
3. We can give it to God.

It is that third way which he says is present in the ‘imprecatory Psalms’.

I love Brueggemann’s illustration of the parent who has to deal with two children, where one has been hurt and accuses the other of having caused the injury. The wise parent doesn’t say, “Don’t be angry,” but, “Let me deal with it.”

Yet so often I see options 1 and 2. I see option 1 in the way some Christians support aggressive international policies by their governments. I see option 2 among those Christians who know they need to forgive, but mistakenly think that means denying their anger. Brueggemann is right, it does come out somewhere else. Either they take it out on an innocent party, or on someone who has only wronged them a little. Or they suppress it and it turns into something like depression. (Not that I am saying all depression is caused this way – it isn’t.)

Option 3 is the ‘healthy option’.

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My Unfunny Valentine

Vicky Beeching has written a great blog post, ‘Why I struggle with Valentine’s Day‘. In it, she shares some of the reasons (and not just the obvious ones) why she, as a single woman, finds 14th February discomfiting every year.

She talks about the privileging of eros love over other forms of love, and its reduction to fairy tale, fantasy and sentimentality. And to that, as one who peruses Valentine’s cards every year, I would add, its reduction to crude lust. There is much more in her post, and I commend it to you.

I submitted a comment, and I’d like to relay it here. I feel like someone who sees both sides of the coin on this one. Yes, I am married, but ‘the man to whom this miracle happened was over forty years of age’ – I was 41 when I married Debbie. Even now I have to put an annual recurring appointment into my diary to block the evening of Valentine’s Day, otherwise I accidentally schedule church meetings or pastoral visits. I can assure you, that does not impress my lovely wife.

And indeed I remember the way in which being a single adult in the church means being treated as second-class, or being viewed with suspicion, those whispers about what my sexuality might be supposedly just out of my hearing. The one time in my twenties I received a Valentine’s card it was an unfunny joke by a young woman at church.

The one time during those years that Valentine’s Day meant anything to me was while I was at my first theological college. That morning, my Aussie mate Steve led chapel worship. “Good morning,” he said, “and welcome to morning prayer on Valentine’s Day.”

“This,” he continued, “is the anniversary every year of the day Lynda and I lost our first baby.”

Of course I would never have wished that experience upon them, but for the first time I heard someone who understood that 14th February was painful for many.

If you love someone, I hope your Valentine’s Day is good and beautiful. But let’s be good news for those who will have a sick feeling in their stomachs.

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Whitney Houston: Conflicted Soul?

My first thoughts upon reading this morning about Whitney Houston’s death at the age of just 48 were most unworthy of a Christian. I recalled a conversation with another young Christian at church when she was first famous. My friend Karen said, “Isn’t it great that Whitney Houston is a born-again Christian?” I gave her a withering reply. “Oh yes? ‘Saving All My Love For You‘ – that nice Christian song about adultery?”

I went on to think about her cover of George Benson‘s ‘The Greatest Love Of All‘. All the stuff about building up children’s self-esteem might be very well meant, but ultimately it’s pop psychobabble about self-love, closer to narcissism or idolatry.

And as for her cover of Dolly Parton‘s ‘I Will Always Love You‘ that substituted bombast for Parton’s delicacy, don’t get me started. For my money, Linda Ronstadt got the balance right:

To me, Whitney Houston took the soul out of soul music and prepared the ground for the horrors of Mariah Carey.

Like I said, not a very Christian reaction, however true, or however much I might feel I had legitimate arguments for these points of view. This was hardly taking seriously the sensitive social convention not to speak ill of the dead, even if I did so only in my own mind.
But then I found a link to a Christianity Today piece in 2009 (via Tony Watkins on Friendfeed) that spun off her then latest release, an album called ‘I Look To You’. It detailed her upbringing in gospel music. I knew that. It acknowledged her turbulent marriage to Bobby Brown and her crack cocaine addiction. I knew that, too. It set out her connections with the gospel singers BeBe and CeCe Winans. It talked about lyrics and interview comments that were by turn both opaque and transparent in terms of faith. Now it was showing me things about her of which I was ignorant.

And I wondered … you never can tell what is behind the smoke and mirrors of PR machines, but maybe she was someone who struggled when she made the stepped into the wider world from the church. Plenty of people do. They are people we are meant to help and support.

Not that I knew her. (Obviously.) As a friend of mine called Matt Bird posted on Facebook this evening,

I will always remember Whitney Houston responding to a crowd of fans declaring their love for her. “How can you love me? You don’t even know me!”

Almost all of the commentary is guesswork, and maybe not all of it is appropriate. But I hope she found that grace was always there for her struggles and torments.

I think that’s a more worthy Christian response.

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Who Changed Your Life, And How?

Right now as I’m typing these words I shouldn’t be at home. I should be in a Methodist church building in Clevedon, Avon, for a memorial service. However, icy conditions have prevented me taking the journey.

The one being remembered is the Reverend Howard Ashby. Howard was my minister in those formative years of mine between the ages of twelve and nineteen. He and his wife Ida had something special about themselves. They were somehow different from the typical churchgoers who, while nice, seemed to my teenage mind to treat church like a religious club. At an age when rebellion was on my agenda, Howard and Ida had something indefinable that kept me questioning.

It was in his manse study that I found Christ. It was Maundy Thursday, 1976 – 9th April that year. As I’ve said from time to time here, I grew up with the mistaken idea that faith equalled believing in God plus doing good. As he took me and a few other teenagers through the promises and professions of faith in the Methodist confirmation service, I finally discovered that it was about faith in Christ and that the good works stuff only followed as a sign of gratitude.
As a family, we had such fond memories of him. My grandmother lived with us. She had had a stroke, and thanks to a medical error was treated for years afterwards with that evil drug Valium. Under its malign influence. Nanna retreated. She barely went out and she spent most of her time in her room. Whenever Howard visited, he always ended by saying, “God bless you – and he will.” I’ve used those words sometimes with people in my ministry as a result of his example all those years ago.

I’m sorry not to be in that service this afternoon. I would like to mingle with others who have fond memories of him, and reasons for gratitude. I would like to meet again members of his family. Howard’s son Paul was my ‘assisting minister’ at ordination, so the wider family is special to me, too.

But if Howard had that effect upon me, who was it for you? And how?

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Sermon: When Life Goes Pear-Shaped (Habakkuk): The Lord’s Reply

Habakkuk 2:2-20
Do you consider the recent snow a blessing? It was for me last weekend. At 8 o’clock last Sunday morning, one of my church stewards at Addlestone phoned to say they didn’t think most people would get to worship in the conditions, and I agreed they could cancel their service.

That’s why you saw me slipping into a pew near the back last week, and that’s why I felt blessed, to listen to Reza Naraghi preach his sermon that began this short series on Habakkuk. I chose Habakkuk, because he helps us struggle with where God is when bad things happen, and Reza spoke so movingly to us of what that meant for him when his younger brother was killed in an aerial crash of a passenger aircraft with a fighter jet.

Had you had to put up with my sermon, you would not have heard anything quite so personal, but what both Reza’s sermon and mine would have done would have been to bring you to this next point, where the Lord is about to speak a second time to the prophet. Habakkuk has outlined one complaint, namely that God is not doing anything about all that is wrong in the world, and the Lord has replied to say that he is doing something, but it is shocking to the prophet’s ears: he is bringing the Babylonian army as his instrument of judgment.

That provokes a second question from the prophet – not so much, Lord you aren’t doing anything, as Lord what you are doing is terrible! And the section ends with Habakkuk waiting attentively for a second reply, waiting like a soldier on sentry duty who expects instruction from the commanding officer.

And that’s where we are as we come to this week’s passage. Now, after that waiting period, the Lord speaks a second time to him. And he speaks with instruction. Essentially, there are three verbs of instruction for Habakkuk: ‘write’, ‘wait’ and ‘see’. They had particular application to the prophet, but they can also be significant for us as we too wrestle with the prevalence of injustice. So let’s listen in on God’s words to Habakkuk, and hear him also speaking to us.

Firstly, then, when God breaks the silence of waiting, he says, write:

Write down the revelation and make it plain on tablets so that a herald may run with it. (Verse 2)

What I’m going to say, Habakkuk, I want you to record it. This needs writing down, because it needs sharing – ‘so that a herald may run with it.’ The thing is, Habakkuk, this message is not just designed to change your outlook on life, it can change others. So it needs recording.

Now you might say, that’s all very well for Habakkuk, this prophecy was going to be recorded not only for his day but for future generations as a part of Holy Scripture. But Habakkuk didn’t know that at the time, and in any case there is an argument for recording all our lesser encounters with God. They may not constitute a word from God to all people for all time, but they are still worth noting. It’s valuable to do this, both for our personal benefit and for the encouragement of others.
So – I wonder how many of you have come across the spiritual exercise called ‘journalling’? It’s a little bit like keeping a spiritual diary, although you may not write an entry every day. It’s like writing down your relationship with God. You detail how you think things are going in your faith. You address God in writing. It becomes a record of your life of faith, with its ups and downs, and it is valuable not simply at the time for helping you to express your innermost thoughts and feelings, but at later dates when you look back on things and wonder.

For a period of time I kept a journal when I was wondering what God was calling me to, and it became useful to refer back to those notes when I had doubts about the direction in which I was going. Years later, when I was struggling in the ministry, Debbie was able to say to me, what about all those examples you had of how God had spoken to you about this? Not only did that inspire me to keep going, it also meant I had something by which I could encourage others to persevere in faith.

If you are wrestling with God about something, keep a written record of it. If you believe God is speaking to you about something, write it out or type it up. Keep it somewhere safe. If you don’t keep some kind of record, the day will dawn when you seriously doubt something that God had truly spoken to you about several years before.

What does it do for Habakkuk? He is living in that awful situation where life as it is surely cannot be as God intended, and that is the basis of his complaints to God. But the Lord gives him a word that contrasts life as it is now with life as God will make it to be. In a time of struggle and uncertainty, that’s worth recording – for his own benefit, and the edification of others.

Yet that tension between life now and life as it is meant to be leads to God’s second instruction to Habakkuk: wait:

For the revelation awaits an appointed time; it speaks of the end and will not prove false. Though it linger, wait for it; it will certainly come and will not delay. (Verse 3)

You’re going to have to wait, Habakkuk, for the time when God changes the injustice of now into the justice of the future. You can be sure God will do it, but in the meantime you have to wait (and hence why you should write down the revelation).

Wait. It’s not a word we want to hear when things are not as they should be. Yet this is God’s word to Habakkuk, and it’s often his word to us. Wait.

God’s gift of human freedom often means we have to wait. God allows individuals, groups and nations to exercise their free will, but then he acts. Look at the empires and kingdoms that have risen and fallen throughout history.

Waiting is also something God himself practised in Jesus Christ. There was the waiting for the Messiah. Paul says in Galatians that when the time was fully come, God sent his Son. But until that point, there was waiting. Long waiting, but worth it.

In his life, Jesus embodied waiting. He waited until he was about thirty before embarking on his public ministry. When Lazarus was dying, he waited, and didn’t even visit until after Lazarus had been placed in his tomb. What kind of pastoral visitor was Jesus? But he waited, and that waiting led to greater glory.

Psychologists tell us that what they call ‘deferred gratification’ is a sign of maturity. The adult who can wait for pleasure rather than the one who has to indulge it immediately is the mature one. God matures us as he calls us to wait for his work in our lives and the wider life of this world.

So we build disciplines of waiting into the Christian Year, twice a year. We call them Advent and Lent. The latter starts on Wednesday week. This could be a good time to remember the importance of waiting, as God shapes us in the ugliness and discomfort of the present into fit vessels for his great future, the new creation of his kingdom.

Which raises the third of God’s instructions to Habakkuk. Because it’s all very well writing something down, and it’s all very well waiting for that great something, but what is it? For that knowledge, the Lord calls the prophet to see:

See, he is puffed up; his desires are not upright— but the righteous will live by his faith (verse 4).

And in the rest of the chapter, God contrasts the situation now with what he will bring about – so much so that in verse 6 we hear the word ‘woe’ addressed to Babylon. Anyone else in those days would like at the power and wealth of Babylon and use a word like ‘blessed’, but God says, ‘woe’.

Now, there is a nation drunk on greed and invasion, making riches by theft and extortion. But God says, the debtors of Babylon will arise and call in the debt (verses 4-8).

Now, the peoples see a nation that has protected its interests by using unjust gain and has ruined others. But God says, you are foolish if you think you have silenced your enemies, because even the stones will cry out and you will lose your life, O Babylon (verses 9-11).

Now, we witness a superpower that conquers by bloodshed and crime, but that is not how it will always be, says the Lord. The labour of Babylon will come to nothing, and instead of Babylon’s glory filling the earth, the Lord’s glory will (verses 12-14).

Now, a nation holds power that demeans its neighbours through encouraging drunkenness and shame. But God says, that will change. In God’s future, Babylon will be shamed and exposed. The violence you dished out will be returned in the same measure to you (verses 15-17).

Now, Babylon thinks it can create its own gods, but a culture foolish enough to bow down before lifeless objects will discover that the Lord is on the throne of the universe, and they must acknowledge the one true God (verses 18-20).

Can you see where this leads for us? Now on our TV screens we see an oppressive régime in Syria crushing the opposition. But in God’s future, we see President Assad brought down and a reign of peace and justice.

Now, we see a western world torn apart by debt caused by greed – not only the greed of some bankers, but the greed of consumers who were happy to take advantage. We see innocent victims thrown out of work as the economic price, while CEOs still contemplate large bonuses. But it will not always be like that. In God’s great future, there will not be a needy person, and greed will dissolve.

Now, we see families torn apart by a lack of faithfulness that exhibits itself in many different ways. Children cry as they have to choose between parents. But in God’s economy there is reconciliation and forgiveness. It will not always be this way.

Now, we suffer chronic illnesses and loved ones are taken from us early. Medicine brings us many wonders, but still has its limits. But we look forward to the Day of the Lord when there will be no more mourning or crying or pain.

Of course, though, that is then and this is now. And while in the interim we may work for the kingdom of God, we shall still have a long time to wait for all the wrongs to be righted and the woes to be trumped by blessings. What do we do in the meantime, apart from living as faithfully as we know how to the teachings of Christ?

We go back to that word ‘wait’. As Habakkuk waited for the Lord’s second reply, and as he then was told that the revelation he was to write down awaited its fulfilment, so now he is in that very time of waiting.

How is he to wait? How are we to wait? What attitudes and actions would be appropriate to the season of waiting for God to act?

For the answer to that, we’ll have to wait. Until next week’s final instalment.

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Be Yoda, Not Luke Skywalker: How To Craft A Memorable Presentation

Here’s a thought-provoking talk by Nancy Duarte, the woman who designed the slides for Al Gore’s film ‘An Inconvenient Truth‘. See what you think about her idea of cycling between ‘What is’ and ‘What should be’, leading to a final climax promising future bliss:

Today I’m writing my sermon for Sunday. I think part of the passage might lend itself to the ‘What is’/’What should be’ dichotomy. Would it work for all sermons, though? Opinions?

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Regrets, I’ve Had A Few

An article entitled ‘Top five regrets of the dying‘ is a popular link at present. An Australian nurse wrote a blog on the theme which has turned into a book. The top five are:

1. I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.

2. I wish I hadn’t worked so hard.

3. I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings.

4. I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.

5. I wish that I had let myself be happier.

For a minister, number 2 is a big risk, especially if there is any truth in the existence of the Protestant work ethic. In my case, and I’m sure with others, number 4 is another big risk. Being busy, and moving every few years to another appointment in a different part of the country, puts pressure on this. Facebook helps, but only so far. Number 3 can be a risk when your livelihood depends on the whims and opinions (and sometimes the prejudices) of congregations.

What, in your experience, are the major regrets people have in life? Has forgiveness helped?

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The Bishops, The Poor And the TV Presenter

So the bishops in the House of Lords supported an amendment that defeated government plans that would have limited benefits in such a way as to penalise the children of poor families. Predictably, the government didn’t like this. It feels like 1985 again, with ministers briefing that the ‘Faith in the City‘ report is Marxist.

Into this debate weighs journalist, TV presenter and poker player Victoria Coren. In a passionate piece in today’s Observer called ‘Attacking the Church is a Cheap Shot‘ (subtitled ‘Has everyone forgotten these are men of God? It’s actually their job to stand up for the poor), she puts it like this:

It doesn’t matter whether I think they’re right or wrong; I think it’s their job to do what the Bible tells them to do, ie look out for the needy, like the innocent children on whose behalf they raised the amendment, who might otherwise get lost.

The right-wing press that is so angry with the bishops has been complaining for years that Christianity (for better or worse, our national religion) is too weak and small a voice, that its values are not fought for. Now it’s happening, they hate it.

And later:

Their hands are tied. The gospels say what they say. If their lordships wanted to support the idea that handing out bread and fish is bad for people because it demotivates them from doing their own baking and fishing, they’d really have to leave the pulpit and get a job on a tabloid.

And while the Stephen Hesters of this world, already paid 1.2 million loaves a year of arguably public bread, are being given fish factories as bonuses, the church can hardly join in with a move to reduce herring portions for the hungry. It would look ridiculous.

If this were X-Factor for journalists, Louis Walsh would be saying, “You nailed it.” The Bible calls us to be fair, but it calls us to a special concern for the poor. She therefore argues it’s unfair for the bishops to be criticised. They are only doing their job. Quite right, too.

However, it shouldn’t surprise us as Christians. Critique the powers that be and opposition will come. Jeremiah, John the Baptist, Jesus – all suffered. While being on the receiving end of criticism isn’t a guarantee of doing a good job, it may be a sign that the bishops scored a bullseye.
More worrying for me was the criticism by my former college principal, George (Lord) Carey. In an article in (of course) the Daily Mail, he seems to stereotype almost all people on benefits as being part of a dependency culture. Yes, some are, but overall – surely not! He knows all about growing up poor in the 1940s, but the pride of poor people he knew then in Dagenham still exists in many quarters, whatever else has changed. And yes, the national debt of £1 trillion is a scandal, but it was a scandal caused by the reckless folly of big business and a culture devoted to consumerism – a consumerism heavily promoted by the government that nominated him to the Queen first for Bath and Wells and then for Canterbury.

So well done the bishops, keep it up, whatever is thrown at you.

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Sermon: Jesus The Alarm Call

It’s been two or three weeks since I’ve posted a sermon. This weekend I’m not at one of my churches, and I’ve been asked to preach from the Lectionary. My study of this passage led me to what I found to be a surprising twist on the meaning I had always thought it had. See whether this sheds new light on a familiar story for you, too.

Mark 1:21-28

[Sermon begins with sound effect of an alarm clock.]

It’s OK, I’m not trying to wake you up before the sermon sends you to sleep. (Although I hope it won’t.) Were it not for copyright laws, I would have played you the beginning of the song ‘Time’ by Pink Floyd from ‘The Dark Side of the Moon’, which begins with a cacophony of alarm clocks.

But if I gave you an unwelcome foretaste of Monday morning, it was for a reason. You heard an alarm clock. And I want to suggest to you that in the synagogue at Capernaum, Jesus’ listeners heard a first century alarm clock – ringing in their hearts and minds.

How so? Robin read, ‘They were astounded at his teaching’ (verse 22). When we read passages like this one in the Gospels, we get a sense that the people are amazed and impressed by Jesus. Indeed, that’s how we tend to interpret the statement at the other end of the story in verse 27, ‘They were all amazed’.

And if the alarm clock makes me think of Pink Floyd, the sense of amazement takes me to Kate Bush and her old song ‘Wow’, with its chorus, ‘Wow, wow, wow, wow, unbelievable!’ That’s what we think the people are saying about Jesus: ‘Wow!’ ‘Unbelievable!’

But the bad news, is that here we side with Pink Floyd rather than Kate Bush. It’s alarm, not wow. Mark has six different words he uses for this sense of amazement, and the one he uses here means not ‘wonder’ and ‘amazement’ but ‘alarm’[1]. Strictly speaking, we should translate verse 22 as ‘The people were alarmed at his teaching’.

Why should the synagogue congregation be alarmed at Jesus’ teaching? We don’t know what Jesus taught on this occasion, but we do know from earlier verses in Mark 1 what the general tenor of his teaching at this time was. Take verses 14-15:

Now when John was arrested, Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God, and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.”

Most of this should not cause alarm to his hearers. Good Jews were waiting for the time to be fulfilled. They longed for the kingdom of God. They wanted good news. They were being ruled over by Rome, whose emperor (‘king’) claimed to be the Son of God, and who claimed that the rule of Rome was good news. The announcement of a new emperor was called a ‘gospel’. The Jews don’t like this. Here is someone whom Mark calls in the first verse of his Gospel ‘the Son of God’, rather than Caesar. He is proclaiming that God, not Caesar, is King. Can you not imagine the cheering? This is good news to believe in!
But … there is one word hidden in the midst of all this that will alarm them. ‘Repent.’ God’s people weren’t meant to repent. It was pagan, Gentile sinners who were supposed to recognise their sin and change. God’s people were the oppressed. They were the ones who were going to be vindicated.

Yet no. Jesus comes and addresses them with the word ‘repent.’ “What? Us? You’re kidding! How dare you!” Sound the alarm. There’s good news, but to receive it you need to change. They didn’t expect that.

And maybe as a community that is a decreasing minority in a society that no longer understands us, a culture that is far less sympathetic to us, maybe we in the Western church want Jesus to ride into town with an angelic cavalry and vindicate us, too. However, what if he did show up here this morning and he made all sorts of gospel promises to us, but they are the bread around the filling of repentance?

Don’t get me wrong. I am sure God is concerned about the decline of the western church, just as I am convinced he cared about Israel suffering oppression. But his main concern may not be to come to us and say, “I’m OK, you’re OK.” He may need to challenge us.

The other day the BBC and various newspapers carried coverage of a report from the University of Essex which plotted the decline in honesty and integrity in our society over the last ten years. To take just one statistic from among many, a decade ago 70% of people agreed that extra-marital affairs were always wrong. Now, only 50% agree with that. In the comments that readers contributed on the BBC website about this story, one person asked, ‘Where is the church in this?’ An avalanche of replies said that the church had little credibility in the honesty stakes, given the way she had covered up child abuse by priests. Now I know that some people use the child abuse scandal as a stick with which to beat the church, and I also know that the vast majority of churchgoers are not culpable, but the fact remains that our claims to integrity are tarnished in the world and it therefore may well be that Jesus comes to us with a message of repentance.
If you remember the comedy series ‘Are You Being Served?’ you may recall the scenes where the elderly and doddery owner of Grace Brothers Department Store, the so-called Young Mr Grace, would turn up on the shop floor on the arms of his beautiful young nurse and tell the staff, “You’ve all done very well.” Sometimes I wonder whether that is the only message we are willing to hear from Christ, when he may have reason with us, like ancient Israel, to slip the word ‘repent’ in amidst all the good news.

We may hear the alarm call to repent, to change our minds about the way we are living, to do a u-turn in our direction. However much we would like to see churches growing numerically again and with a greater proportion of younger generations, one thing is sure: it is not going to happen while we keep on doing the same thing. Albert Einstein had a famous definition of insanity. For Einstein, insanity was to keep on doing the same things while expecting a different result. As someone else has said, what got us here is not what is going to get us out of here. It is going to require change. That won’t just be about techniques, methods and strategies: it will probably involve repentance as well.

If these are some of the implications of the initial observation that the people ‘were astounded’ [alarmed] at his teaching’ (verse 22), then we need secondly to think about the time they repeat their amazement after Jesus expels the demon from the afflicted man:

They were all amazed, and they kept on asking one another, “What is this? A new teaching—with authority! He commands even the unclean spirits, and they obey him.” (Verse 27)

Take those words – which I said we normally interpret as meaning, wow, what an amazing guy! He’s fantastic, so much better than the regular guys – and think about it again. If they were not so much impressed as alarmed, you see it in a new light. What if they were alarmed that Jesus taught with authority, and that even unclean spirits obey him? Let me illuminate it by sharing with you a strange pet theory I have.

It’s this: I think that secretly, a significant number of churchgoers actually prefer boring preachers. I know we hear plenty of complaints about boring sermons, a good deal of it with justification, but I think there is a group of people in many congregations who are clandestine supporters of the tedious preachers whose sermons lack considerable lustre.

Why? Not just so they can catch up on sleep after Saturday night. Not merely so they can get a good blood pressure reading at the doctor’s on Monday morning. No: if the preacher is mind-numbing, then they aren’t challenged. They don’t want to be confronted with the need to change, which a lively preacher might do, and so they can keep on with their own sweet way of life. Repentance and other ugly things that are really for those who are altogether too enthusiastic about religion can be side-stepped.

These people will be alarmed at a preacher who has authority, to whom people respond with changed lives (and even unclean spirits have to get up and leave the building). It gets a bit too close for comfort.
This manifests itself in other ways, too. Tom Wright has pointed out in his recent book ‘Simply Jesus’ that scepticism about the miraculous can be used by people precisely to avoid the challenge of Jesus. He says this:

In Jesus’ own day, there were plenty of people who didn’t want to believe his message, because it would have challenged their own power or influence. It would have upset their own agenda. For the last two hundred years that’s been the mood in Western society too. By all means, people think, let Jesus be a soul doctor, making people feel better inside. Let him be a rescuer, snatching people away from this world to “heaven.” But don’t let him tell us about a God who actually does things in the world. We might have to take that God seriously, just when we’re discovering how to run the world our way. Skepticism is no more “neutral” or “objective” than faith. It has thrived in the post-Enlightenment world, which didn’t want God (or, in many cases, anyone else either) to be king. (Pages 58-59)

The Jesus who teaches with authority is an alarm call. The Jesus whose authoritative teaching leads people to change their attitudes and actions is a subversive, if not a revolutionary. He unsettles the status quo.

The thing is, it’s not enough to tick all the boxes, follow the rules of the church culture, sing the right hymns and say the creeds. In our story, the unclean spirit knew who Jesus was. He is the Holy One of God, who has come to destroy evil (verse 24). But was that sufficient? Not in the slightest. Unless encounter with Jesus leads to the response of a changed life, it is worthless.

You see, Jesus’ fame spreads around Galilee after this incident (verse 28), but what do you do with the fame? You can offer adulation to a famous person, but big deal: look at the vacuous nature of celebrity culture in our day. But what practical, positive and healthy difference does celebrity worship make in the life of the fan? Little or none, I would suggest. You can become a Jesus fan, but still not be changed, and so not be aligned with the revolutionary project of his kingdom. You can’t around the alarm of having to follow Jesus by substituting the shallow veneration of a fan.

Ultimately, no manoeuvres are possible. We come face to face with Jesus, and we have to do something. We need to make a choice. Sitting on a fence is painful. Going down the middle of the road only gets you run over. It has to be one side or another. Either we stay with our alarm and our fear, and we end up joining the opponents of Jesus (and the opposition in Mark’s Gospel begins in the very next chapter). Or we recognise that the Jesus who claims to be the true king and Son of God rather than Caesar is one who claims our allegiance. His reign as king will turn upside-down the values of human empires. The poor, not the rich, will be blessed, and so on.

And as he turns human values upside-down (or right way up), so he will upend our lives. When we meet Jesus, the only constructive response is to repent.

Let us make no mistake. Let us not be imprisoned by the fear of our alarm that he calls us to repent as part of his good news.

Jesus is worth a complete change of mind.

[1] William L Lane, The Gospel of Mark, p72 n110.

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Mark Driscoll And The Mars Hill Churches: When Discipline Becomes Control Becomes … ?

I am recently on record as having grave reservations about Mark Driscoll‘s teaching and attitudes to those he disagrees with. But as goes the man, so goes the church and group of churches he has founded. Here are some gruesome links. The stories are so consistent.
Matthew Paul Turner tells in two parts the story of a young man who confessed to sexual sin and sought help, but who was then placed under draconian discipline with a ‘contract’ that could be described as voyeuristic. When he deems it unfair, he is removed from Mars Hill’s social network and those in his home group are told not to associate with him and are even given a form of words to say, indicating their assent to Mars Hill’s decision. Frankly, the way they put words into the mouths of people could come from North Korea.

A couple separately tell of the pressures they were put under by church leaders when they decided to leave a Mars Hill church, even though they tried to do so diplomatically. Detailing Scripture just isn’t good enough in a church that likes to talk more about correct doctrine than Jesus.

Earlier, when another member queriedwhy he was being asked to shun a sacked staff member when he doesn’t see evidence of the kind of outright sin that would lead to ostracisation in the New Testament, he is told by an elder, “When dad and mom are having an argument the kids don’t need to know what’s going on.” The church member concludes,

So when dad and mom live off the tithe checks given by the children they don’t have to explain why dad decides to fire mom?

Later, his membership covenant (which has to be renewed every few years – a strange kind of covenant that, he observes) is voided by the elders.

Time and again, if you click on these links, you will see people are using words like ‘control’, ‘spiritual abuse’ and ‘cult’.

Bill Kinnon understandably asks why that bastion of the neo-Reformed movement, the Gospel Coalition, hasn’t spoken out against Mars Hill. Driscoll is one of their council members, and they have had resignations before on grounds of doctrinal controversy, as Bill points out. But what does Driscoll have to do for that to happen? Let’s suppose that actually it’s being addressed behind closed doors. If so, that would be a good start. But this has gone on for a long time now. The sacking of two key leaders (one of whom was the person to be ostracised in the last story above) happened in 2007. It’s unthinkable to consider that any such measures were still at the first level of New Testament discipline, the private stage.
Why, then, is there a conspicuous silence in the public arena? Could it be that Driscoll is the poster boy of the movement, untouchable due to the numbers he and his churches draw in? Could it be that he is regarded rather like a mercurial and talented footballer who is something of a rebel, when he might be more like a Paul Gascoigne character, out of control?

And if Driscoll’s friends can’t deal with this, who can? Is it surprising that in desperation some outside that camp (either always outside or, like those above, people who have left) raise strong voices?

Those of us who are critical nevertheless have the responsibility not to lower ourselves to the standards we find objectionable in Driscoll in the way we speak out. We have to be careful that the fear we have for the damage that we believe is being done to people and will be done to Christian witness does not make us act out of fear and hence just lash out. If we do, it just gives an excuse for Mars Hill/Driscoll to say, there you are, look at how our opponents behave. It is hard not to be cynical and sarcastic, though, but we must guard against it.

Yet on the other hand, to be too soft is to give in. What else would those who exercise control want than to make people fearful to criticise?

Then there is the question not only of tone, but of language. Are words like ‘cult’, ‘spiritual abuse’ and ‘control’ unfair? If the evidence above is at all reliable (and the consistency tells us something, I think) then certainly we’re talking about control issues, and that raises the issue of ‘why?’. You can’t help thinking about fear and power, maybe a combination of the two, a fear of power being undermined, perhaps. If the structure is hierarchical, with all vision and pronouncements coming down from on high as if Driscoll has descended from Sinai carrying two stone tablets, then anything that questions that approach is not an isolated problem, but an attack on the foundations. And jolly good, too, because no frail mortal can cope with that kind of elevation. Even Moses didn’t.
What about spiritual abuse? Fifteen years ago, near the end of a difficult phase in my life, I heard Marc Dupont speak on the subject, and I bought his book, ‘Walking Out of Spiritual Abuse‘. Helpfully – in my opinion – he draws lessons from King Saul. On the one hand, the people of Israel got the king they deserved, because they rejected seeking the face of God in favour of having a charismatic personality. If that doesn’t ring alarm bells in all sorts of ways on today’s church scene, I don’t know what does.

But on the other side was the character of Saul himself. He looked the part, but his fears and insecurities led him into control and manipulation. At the conference where I heard Dupont speak, he talked about the incident where Saul is picked out as king. You may recall how Samuel ‘drills down’ through tribes and families before finally picking him out. Dupont pointed out that it says that Saul was found ‘hiding in the baggage’, and while the ancients didn’t use the notion of ‘baggage’ metaphorically as we do and so this is strictly bad exegesis, we can say from painful experience that it often is people with ‘baggage’ who cause spiritual abuse. As he says in the first chapter of the book,

Most leaders who end up with a harsh and demanding style of leadership are not individuals who would deliberately hurt others. (Page 13, author’s emphasis)

Could it be that Mark Driscoll is a man with unresolved baggage? He has owned up to fair amounts of difficulties in his marriage. Is he a man who wants to see many people come to Christ? Might it therefore be that this is a man with deeply good intentions, but whose emotional pain has led to the founding of a chronically misshapen church, leading to the problems described in the testimonies cited at the beginning of this post? On this basis, the accusation of spiritual abuse is possible – religious power misused in a way that consistently harms others, and done so by a wounded person who has been elevated to the level of celebrity, one place where a Christian minister probably never should be.

The most contentious allegation, though, is that of ‘cult’. This is a loaded term for Christians. It is a term often applied to religious movements that are essentially heretical deviations from Christianity, such as the Jehovah’s Witnesses, the Mormons or Christian Science. However, these should more properly be regarded as heretical sects, not cults. Or it is applied to heretical groups that engage in spiritual abuse – the Children of God, the Moonies and the like – and perhaps end in extreme dangerous devotion to the leader, such as David Koresh at Waco or Jim Jones at Jonestown.

On the surface, Mars Hill’s devotion to neo-Reformed theology still puts it in the Christian mainstream, which is why I can raise issues about whether the Gospel Coalition is doing anything about one of its Council members. But some cults began with orthodox Christian leaders who then deviated – David Berg of the Children of God could be a case in point here. Mars Hill cannot be regarded as unorthodox, and many of its currently contentious doctrines have been held by large numbers of Christians for a long time. Theologically, it would be wrong for Christians to call it a cult.

However, there are other definitions of ‘cult’ that operate not merely theologically but more sociologically. Is there intense devotion to a particular individual other than Christ? Are there behavioural patterns enforced which lead to, or are based on, a sense of superiority or exclusiveness? Exclusivity can be ruled out, due to associations with other Christian leaders such as John Piper and Terry Virgo (and, presumably, the Gospel Coalition leaders), even if they come from a fairly narrow field.
Even here, then, it is hard to justify using the word ‘cult’ of Mars Hill, but it must be admitted that the warning signs are there in the intimidatory and manipulative tactics to which those who have left testify. Authoritarianism certainly seems to be present, and if you read the ten signs of authoritarianism that Scot McKnight quotes from Wade Burleson, you will see a number of similarities.

But given these warning signs, the only right thing to do is to continue to raise the alarm. Today, much of that is going to mean doing so on the Internet.

I repeat: I do not think Mark Driscoll is evil. I think he has good intentions. He wants many to find Christ. He wants a disciplined church. He wants healthy relationships and for young men to be responsible. He wants to preserve the historic Gospel. All these things are honourable. I disagree with some of his emphases, as I do with some of what the Gospel Coalition stands for. I do not believe that Calvinism is the pure Gospel. Nor do I believe that the arc of Scripture points to a complementarian view of relationships, or to a view of hell as eternal conscious torment. I believe in substitutionary atonement, but I believe other images of the atonement also come into play in the New Testament. I also believe the Gospel Coalition intends well (I should point out that another of their council members is an old friend), although my expression of evangelical Christianity differs from theirs in almost exactly the same ways, and I have severe ideas with a sense that anything other than their exposition of the Christian message is unsound, just as Driscoll tends to label his detractors as automatically ‘liberal’.

Yet … for all the sincere intentions with which I believe Driscoll and Mars Hill started out, the combination of what looks like a possibly wounded (or maybe ‘undiscipled‘, using Bill Kinnon’s word) leader and a church celebrity culture makes for an explosive mixture. And when it does explode – quite regularly, it seems, because it is also volatile – great damage is caused. And for that reason, those of us who are concerned must keep raising our voices.

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