Blues, life and redemption

There is a website in the USA which every few months throws up some really interesting stuff - Reformation 21 - and now they have an article on something which I care about and yet have never really expressed.  Blues music has made a big impression on me.  Although I rarely blow them on my harmonica now I still find that is the music I hum or sing when I am alone.

The article shows that a theology which can only sing hymns and choruses but not sing the blues is shallow and cheap.  The guy who wrote it has a book on the subject coming out - that has to be a purchase.

Click here to read the article. 

The Easter Sabbath - on Theology Review

I have started a team blog for Pastors and other people interested in theology for churches (as if there were any other kind!).

I have post this item - click here to see it - because I think the Sabbath Rest of Jesus on Easter Saturday deserves more thought than it is usually given.

Some of my more scriptural musings are likely to end up there so feel free to check it or subscribe to the feed.

Dawkins - dazzling but dishonest

Richard Dawkins is a fanatic anti-supernaturalist anti-religionist who writes clever books. I suspect he is playing to his own gallery of fans rather than seriously discussing with anyone but here is a pretty fair minded review of his latest diatribe

http://ship-of-fools.com/Features/2006/dawkins.html

The Sanctity of Human Life.. a meaningless concept

Christian people react with an instinctive disgust to abortion on demand and medical murder of the handicapped or terminally ill.

It is an offence to us because we see human life as valuable and the nearest thing on earth to the life of the eternal God. We rightly invoke the Bible teaching about mankind bearing the image of God.

But we have also adopted the silly slogan of the “Sanctity” of human life.

In other words, our reverence of the Holy God is to be reflected in our reverence for the holiness of human existence. God is holy therefore his image is also holy.

This is not a reasonable position since God does not treat us as holy. He has cursed us and laid burdens of grief, frustration and death upon us precisely because we have lost our essential holiness.

Humanity is unholy, unsanctified and lost.

Nevertheless, we are not without value. Christ has died to save the world and his sacrifice revalues us all. Everyone deserves respect and no one is to be despised. The redeemer has placed a value on every scrap of humanity including the unborn child.

Where there is faith in Christ there is a sanctity which comes as a gift from God. Believers in Jesus are often called “saints” in the New Testament - even where their behaviour falls far short of their new designation.

Right wing campaigners seem to believe in the sanctity of unborn Western lives and that adult Middle Eastern lives are unholy and cheap. Would it not be better to say that all human life is valuable and not to be wasted?

It may be necessary to kill in some extreme circumstances but killing the unborn for economic or social reasons is as shameful as waging war for such low purposes.

Animals dying — good; men dying — bad.

There is a popular and widespread assumption that before Adam sinned there was no such thing as death in the world. In other words, the whole animal creation was immortal.
The basis for this weird assumption seems to be the statements in Rom 5 and 1 Corinthians 15 that death entered the world through the sin of Adam. But the context is quite clear that the apostle is talking about human death rather than the death of animals or plants. Rom 5:12

Therefore, just as through one man sin entered the world, and death through sin, and thus death spread to all men, because all sinned (NKJV)

But if there was no such thing as death then how could Adam have understood God’s warning that if he sinned he would surely die?

I believe the idea that the death or pain of animals is an evil is silly and anthropomorphic. I suspect it is a result of most Christian writers and preachers being town dwellers and rather squeamish about the realities of natural life. Every countryman knows very well that death and procreation are essential to the life of the countryside. Predators survive and prey species are kept fit by the process of hunting and killing.

Some of God’s most magnificent creations are meat eaters. The lion is an image of Christ in his Majesty and would not be the lion if it were a vegetarian. It would need to change its teeth, claws, digestive system, metabolism and behaviour. In other words, become something like a wildebeest or buffalo.

The modern science of ecology reveals what has been known intuitively from millennia past by country dwellers. That God has created an intricate web of existence encompassing the animal and plant kingdoms in a pattern of interdependence in which death and reproduction play roles which are absolutely essential.

When God created the world he created it to be self-sustaining so that he could rest from creation on the seventh day. I do not deny that, in some profound way, all things are still sustained by Him but they are sustained in the pattern of interdependence which Has has created and which He oversees still.

But what of the world to come? What of Isaiah’s prophecy in Isa 65:24-25:

24 “It shall come to pass
That before they call, I will answer;
And while they are still speaking, I will hear.
25 The wolf and the lamb shall feed together,
The lion shall eat straw like the ox,
And dust shall be the serpent’s food.
They shall not hurt nor destroy in all My holy mountain,”
Says the LORD.(NKJV)

My dear wooden-headed, cloth-eared Christian brother! Have you no poetry in your soul at all? Can you not see that it is people God is speaking about here? Go read 1 Cor 9:9-10 to see what God really cares about.

God will answer the urgent prayers of His people by bringing peace to the Earth. I have never prayed to see a lion eating straw but pray often for violence and destruction to be suppressed. What about you?

We humans have the dignity of being animals made in the image of God. We only bear that image by being alive and it is for this reason that human death is a tragedy and for this reason that the Christian hope is a hope of resurrection to an immortal bodily life. Jesus shared our death so that we could share his resurrection. Jesus died for you. He did not die for your dog.