Eternal Life, Quality vs Quantity

Christmas. Jesus. Baby. Manger. Hay. Doting parents. Awestruck shepherds. Nonchalant livestock. It's surely the ultimate divine comedy that God answered Mary and Joseph's frantic prayers for a room in a B&B by providing a parking space for their donkey instead. So who was he, this holy infant so tender and mild? Why did he come? What did his words mean? How should his actions be interpreted?

Probably the most famously used abbreviation of this remarkable life is the one found in John 3:16, 'For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life'. As it happens I've been thinking a lot lately about this eternal life. I'm far from convinced that it is at all synonymous with the much loved idea of 'going to heaven'. ‘Perishing’ has always struck me as being a greengrocer sort of image. We have a fancy silver bowl in our kitchen that frequently contains perishing fruits of various types. Leave them in there long enough and they'll all perish into various forms of fungus and fuzz. None of them have eternal life. You see the things of this world deteriorate. There is a peak of life, energy, vitality (that I passed many moons ago) and beyond this zenith life grows less and less. The words of Jesus quoted in John 3:16 seem to be suggesting that God desires to gift to us, through his son, a state of being with the fear of rot removed, a permanent peak, no morning after the night before.

Related to this, I find that all too often, at mention of the phrase ‘eternal life’, my mind races off into the future searching out to measure the length of that promised infinity. This of course produces nothing but an ‘error’ message in the brain, the concept of eternity is as troubling as it is promising. But what if I were to consider ‘eternal life’ in terms of quality- a fruit of spectacular taste and texture, rather than quantity - a fruit with no best-before date. Do you get me? I think I'm trying to say, what if the linear dimension of time were not my singular reference point, but rather I managed to gain a glimpse into a life being lived in and measured by fullness. And after all, wasn’t the language of fullness used very interchangeably with the language of eternity in the words of Jesus, and later of the Apostles too, most notably Paul?

Anyway, to draw this to a close, suffice to say, this Christmas I’m trying to remember that Jesus came to open the way for me first and foremost into a quality of life, with the quantity of that life finding relevance merely as a shadow finds relevance from a solid object. Is that a bit too philosophical for Christmas Day?

Opt In or Opt Out

I had a brief conversation yesterday whilst down in London. It went along fairly classic lines. My question: 'How can we get more missionally-minded Christians to move into council estates and inner city areas?' The response was all too predictable, a wearied frown and a small but perceptible dropping of the shoulders: 'But that's a very special kind of calling...'
The guy should've known better, he grew up on a council estate and is heavily involved in urban ministry with a very significant church. And he was talking to me. But we'd not met before so I didn't chin him.
I'm totally convinced of one simple thing; as long as ministry that impinges on our middle-class comfort is considered somehow 'special' we'll never see 'Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven.' As long as we keep acting as if the great commission (that pesky 'Go' thing Jesus said) is something we are expected to opt-in to things will never change. Basically the orientation is as follows: there's a lot of mess in the world and I should assume that God wants me out there in the thick of it unless I am given explicit instructions to the contrary.

Everything Is Spiritual

Binging. That word looks wierd when you spell it out doesn't it? Binge. Come to think of it that's not much of an improvement. Anyway, whatever the word used to describe it, today I may have had a bit too much Rob Bell. Now I know what you're thinking - 'Matt Wilson suggesting you can have too much Rob Bell?' Well no, you'll be pleased to hear that my Rob Bell groupie status is still intact. It's just that I'd taken a break from the spectacled wonder for a little while and now I'm realising again why I liked him so much in the first place.
Everything Is Spiritual is the name of the new DVD Rob has released, an hour and a bit of one man theatre theology produced off the back of his 2007 tour of the same name. I actually bought it because I thought it would be a great way to stretch the minds of some of our gap year trainees. Now having watched it (3 times!) I'm pretty sure it would just go right over their heads. The material in it is just superb - from theology to cosmology, blending observational humour with philosophy, bringing quantum physics to life with doodles and wisecracks... "because we all know how exotic leptons can be right?"
For everyone who worries or wonders about the shallowness or the narrowness of the arguments on both sides of the faith / science divide this really is a feast. For everyone else, well, there's a reason they don't stock this at your local Blockbuster.

The Language of Love

I would rarely ever turn to the book of Deuteronomy for inspiration. Yes I'm sure that there's loads of great stuff in there but I'm just being honest. Anyway, prompted by my 'New Best Friend' Eugene Peterson (OK I've been reading his books) I've been taking a fresh look. In particular my attention has been caught by the prominence of the word love within the book (29 uses)...
"Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength." Deut 6:5
I now find that wherever I seem to turn in scripture this single line, this simple but heavily laden injunction follows me around, the perfect example being when Jesus himself verbally affirmed the primacy of this command, which of course he also physically embodied. And it's this second element of loving God that I'm most profoundly challenged by. I can mentally ascent to the fact that I need to love God, after all 'He first loved me'. But how do I live that love? In the pages of scripture it appears plainly that higher than believing in God, higher than trusting God, higher than even worshipping God is the invitation to love God, which is a fusion of believing and trusting and worshipping plus a whole lot more.
I want to love God, I really do, but love just doesn't seem to be a language I'm very fluent in.

Holier than Thou

   I just finished 'Eat This Book' by Eugene Peterson, translator of 'The Message' version of the bible. What a stunning piece of work! As I've already said in my Amazon review, Peterson is a writer at the peak of his craft, such that 'I found myself re-reading lines and phrases just for the sheer pleasure of letting the words dance again through my mind'.
  The final chapter of the book was particularly fascinating as in it he deals with the whole subject of translation and interpretation. This immediately intrigued me as it offered insights into why on earth anybody in their right mind would want to use the King James version as their daily bible of choice. Take it's history for starters, the old King James version, dating back to 1611, was largely produced to trump the 1526 English New Testament that was in general circulation after being painstaking translated by William Tyndale in such a way that 'the boy that driveth the plough' would be able to comprehend it. King James has other ideas about religion - and social cohesion. His team of translators worked hard to ensure that their work gathered unto itself a majestic aloof-ness from the dirt of daily life.
   Now then, there's more to delve into here. As you ought to know, the New Testament is written in Greek. But there's more than one version of Greek. The Greek spoken 2000 years ago is not the Greek spoken today. It's similar, but different. The Greek written 2000 years ago is not the Greek written today, it's different again, in various ways. The key difference we need to pay attention to is not the difference between then and now but the difference between spoken and written Greek 2000 years ago. The Greeks loved literature and philosophy, and they reflected their esteem for it in the highly polished form of writing they used to record and communicate their ideas on paper. And here's the twist, for countless centuries the New Testament text was understood by means of translation using the language of classical (attic) Greek - that was the only written form of Greek that could be found in the libraries of the Roman world and the societies that followed after the great Empire's collapse. But there was a big problem for the translators. Of the 5000 words used in the New Testament's, about 500 could not be found anywhere in classical written Greek. What were these strange words. Well of course, they must be special 'holy' words, the language of angels, the special communications of the Spirit. Or so 'inspired' translators speculated. After all, how could the Word Of God be penned in anything other than the finest of vocabularies?
   Time passed and eventually Archaeology came into vogue and intrepid diggers set off on globe-trotting endeavours bringing to light all manner of artifacts that shed new light on the ancient world of the bible. One such discovery was made in 1897 by a couple of Brits underneath a rubbish dump on the outskirts of an unassuming village called Oxyrhynchus, 160 miles upstream along the Nile from Cairo. They brought up, preserved and intact, 27 papyrus documents that would revolutionize bible translation. 27 pieces of utterly ancient Greek text - but far from classical library Greek. Closer inspection would reveal this to be the greatest ever find of common street Greek (koine) from the time of Jesus. And guess what. Those 500 missing words in the New Testament. Koine. Common street Greek. Far from being the language of angels or special holy words God had entrusted his sacred revelation to the language of the marketplace and the fields, not the language of the temples and the academies. 

   So why should we join the company of William Tyndale, J.B. Phillips and Eugene Peterson in ensuring that scripture is always available in the language of the plough-boy? Because that's exactly what you'd expect of the true and living Word who 'became flesh and blood and moved into the neighbourhood.' 

Reading the bible is dangerous

Reading the Bible, if we do not do it rightly, can get us into a lot of trouble. The Christian community is as concerned with how we read the Bible as that we read it. It is not sufficient to place a Bible in a person's hands with the command, "Read it." That is quite as foolish as putting a set of keys in an adolescent's hands, giving him a Honda, and saying, "Drive it." And just as dangerous. The danger is that in having our hands on a piece of technology, we will use it ignorantly, endangering our lives and the lives of those around us; or that, intoxicated with the power that technology gives us, we will use it ruthlessly and violently.

For print is technology. We pick up a Bible and find that we have God's word in our hands, our hands. We can now handle it. It is easy enough to suppose that we are in control of it, that we can use it, that we are in charge of applying it wherever, whenever, and to whomever we wish without regard to appropriateness or conditions.

There is more to the Honda than the technology of mechanics. And there is more to the Bible than the technology of print. Surrounding the machine technology of the Honda there is the world of gravity and inertia, values and velocity, surfaces and obstructions, Chevrolets and Fords, traffic regulations and the highway patrol, other drivers whether drunk or sober, snow and ice and rain. There is more to driving a car than turning a key in the ignition and stepping on the accelerator. Those who don't know that are soon dead or maimed.

And those who don't know the conditions implicit in the technology of the Bible are likewise dangerous to themselves and others. And so, as we hand out Bibles and urge people to read them, it is imperative that we say, caveat lector, let the reader beware.

Eugene Peterson, Eat This Book: A Conversation in the Art of Spiritual Reading

The Beeb's Passion

I've just finished watching the final episode of The Passion on BBC One. It's been a great little series, the recreation of ancient Jerusalem felt particularly convincing (of course how would I know what ancient Jerusalem looked like!). The emphasis on the three way power struggle was a great angle on the story, particularly the Caiaphas character. I loved the tension between the protectors of the present order, Pilate representing the political and military might of Rome and Caiaphas representing the religious and cultural establishment of the Jewish homeland, both under threat by the stranger from Galilee who speaks of a new way and a new world. It reminded me again of the contagious revolutionary DNA Jesus carried.
But today is Easter Sunday, and ever since the first episode I've been feeling that this series would ultimately stand or fall by how well the resurrection was rendered. So what do I think? Well hey, a damn sight better than Jesus Christ Superstar which doesn't even include the resurrection, and I hesitate to say, even better than Mel Gibson's version with it's short but very sweet resurrection moment from inside the tomb looking out. Even so, it was still a tad underwhelming. The producer, Nigel Stafford-Clark, references Mark's gospel as his key source which may well be the problem, it's probably the least potent of the four resurrection accounts. If only he'd taken a broader creative approach the scenes could've been so much stronger, even simple touches like the location and the lighting would've helped as the dusty old hillside he used just had zero atmosphere. However, what saved it for me was the inclusion of the Emmaus road encounter (albeit with James and Matthew). I did find it genuinely moving to see their reaction as the guy they're eating with starts to break bread and then reveals his true face before their eyes.

Ssssh... don't mention the resurrection!

This afternoon I popped along to the Manchester leg of the EA sponsored tour exploring the subject of the Resurrection. Here in Manchester we got Prof Gary Habermas, an able scholar, but sadly minus his stellar counterpart Tom Wright who has appeared at many of the other dates. The first session began promisingly with an opening reference to 1 Corinthians 15, but then sadly descended into a ramble about the common ground that exists between conservatives, moderates and liberals when it comes to the teaching of the resurrection in the writings of 'the big 4' (Habermas' reference to Paul, Peter, John and James).
I cornered said Prof over coffee and pressed him for a preview of his second session, hoping to hear that he would indeed be getting into 1 Corinthians 15 or material of that ilk. Sadly not. We had a helpful chat about the impact of the bodily resurrection of Jesus on discipleship in the here and now but I could not coax him into a discussion about why the personal resurrection beliefs of the early church have been sidelined more recently for a woolly expectation of the soul drifting off at death to spend eternity in heaven. Even when I pitched a carefully worded question in the public forum later on, Prof Habermas and two other able theologians all seemed to fail to grasp what I was getting at. It really does seem that there are very few people alert to the fact that it's almost taboo for contemporary Christians to speak of their hopes about their own future bodily resurrection.
I popped round to my dad's later and asked him what he thought. After pondering for a minute he said that the last time, and only time, he had ever heard anyone preach on future bodily resurrection was 30 years ago! That seriously needs to change.

The Location of Evil

It's been dawning on me of late that we live in a world that teaches us to always locate evil outside of ourselves. This is manifest in the blame culture, the demonization of certain people groups and sub-cultures and the blatant hypocrisy of mass media. And this isn't just a problem that resides in secular society, the church is equally possessing of this worldview. We have a particularly effective way of ensuring we are not troubled by the thought that something within us may be wrong. Religious imagination weaves a spell constructing a Satan with powers out of all proportion with the character described in the pages of scripture. He is omnipresent, he knows our thoughts, he afflicts us with sicknesses of body, mind and spirit. Before long we actually begin to shift our focus away from the author and perfecter of our faith and begin addressing our prayers to this imposter - beckoning him nearer by the volume of our declarations that he must flee.
It is two millenia since the Master first warned us that nothing that enters a man from the outside can make him unclean, rather 'all these evils come from inside' (see Mark 7). Why then do we still fail to allow the transformational potential of these words to affect our discipleship? Are we so blinkered by pride that we fail to see that the seeds of every human evil lie dormant below the carefully raked topsoil of our hearts. I hope not but fear so. Don't get me wrong, I don't expect every believer to walk around in a state of permanent shame and unworthiness, I just want to hear less blaming of the devil for issues that are self-generated and need dealing with honestly in the privacy of the 'secret place'.

The Story...

I've heard hundreds of people attempt to communicate the big story we find ourselves in. Different people have different views - emphasis is placed here, there or somewhere else. As a way of ordering my thoughts I've had a go myself. So here it is, 'The Story of God + Us' using just 10 pictures. I have some words too but it's getting late and tomorrow's my first day back at work. Maybe it's better if you make up your own narration anyway ;-)

Happy New Year!

On the importance of tents

I'm pretty sure that my most quoted verse in the whole bible is John 1v14. It's the fulcrum of history. Eugene Peterson offers my favourite rendering of it, "The word became flesh and blood and moved into the neighbourhood." But you don't need to know more than very basic Greek to recognise that all the various translations are paraphrasing a root noun that basically means tent. According to John, when Jesus appeared on the scene it was as if God was, 'pitching his tent among us.' So it would seem then that the humble tent now becomes a pretty important New Testament image (as indeed it was in the Old). However, it was only yesterday, doing some prep for a talk on the subject of worship that I came across this in Revelation chapter 7v15: "he who sits on the throne will spread his tent over them". Same writer using the same metaphor. He clearly knows exactly what he's doing.
The importance of tents then? Well, don't you see? If the incarnation was merely a pitching of God's tent among us, what we can look forward to eschatologically is that great day when we will be fully enveloped within the tent of God. And even for someone with a deep-rooted loathing of camping, that sounds very cool indeed.

The Five Act Play

"Imagine that a Shakespearian play is discovered for the first time but most of the fifth act is missing. The decision to stage the play is made. The first four acts and the remnant of the fifth act are given to well-trained and experienced Shakespearian actors who immerse themselves both in the first part of the play and in the culture and time of Shakespeare. They are told to work out the concluding fifth act for themselves.

This conclusion must be both consistent and innovative. It must be consistent with the first part of the play. The actors must immerse themselves in full sympathy in the unfinished drama. The first four acts would contain its own cumulative forward movement that would demand that the play be concluded in a way consistent and fitting with that impetus. Yet an appropriate conclusion would not mean a simple repetition or imitation of the earlier acts. The actors would carry forward the logic of the play in a creative improvisation. Such an improvisation would be an authentic conclusion if it were coherent with the earlier acts.

This metaphor provides a specific analogy for how the biblical story might function authoritatively to shape the life of the believing community. Wright sees the biblical story as consisting of four acts - creation, fall, Israel, Jesus - plus the first scene of the fifth act that narrates the beginning of the church's mission. Furthermore this fifth act offers hints at how the play is to end. Thus the church's life is lived out consistent with the forward impetus of the first acts and moving toward and anticipating the intended conclusion. The first scene of act five, the church's story, begins to draw out and implement the significance of the first four acts, especially act four. The church continues today to do the same in fresh and creative ways in new cultural situations. This requires a patient examination and thorough immersion in what act four is all about, how act four is to be understood in light of acts one through three, and how the first scene of act five faithfully carries forward act four."

Michael W. Goheen expounding one of Tom Wright's ideas in Reading the Bible as One Story

Don't look back...

This week I was in Oxford checking out a Theology course that I'm considering bringing to Manchester. Sitting in on a lecture the following thoughts occurred to me... Why do we have a habit of reading our bible's backwards? So many people, when looking for models of how to live well for God look backwards. And why not, after all the majority of the bible's content is set in the past. But why is that past recorded for us? Is it there to show us how to live now - or does all that history actually serve a different purpose? I'm increasingly convinced that the story of the bible is a progressive revelation of what I'm beginning to refer to as 'the ultimate dream of God'. All of the bible is anticipating a future perfection that is far beyond the scope of our imaginations. In the same way that the Old Testament anticipates the coming of the King the New Testament anticipates his Kingdom. Here's a practical example: Slavery can easily be justified 'biblically' by reaching backwards in the book - but it's impossible to make a case for it when you look forward and get a glimpse of what God has in mind for his creation.

I wonder how many of the issues that Christians argue over would become irrelevant if we could all get out of the bad habit of looking back...

PS - I'll post something tomorrow on Tom Wright's 'Five Act Play' that will help explain this a bit more clearly.

Belonging then and now

Following on from my last post I thought it might be a good idea to insert the quotation from The Missional Leader that got me thinking about this in the first place:
"In the time of Tertullian, someone wanting to belong to the church had to go through a rigorous period of training focused on behaviour (how daily life was actually lived). In other words, to belong to the community of Jesus, a person was mentored in practicing change in habits. Today leaders talk about the need to create a safe, non-threatening, low threshold of belonging in order to draw people into the church. Note the two radically different ways in which the same language is being used. These approaches suggest contrasting sources of understanding. In the latter case and in our contemporary context, the source of this thinking is not theologically, biblically formed imagination but the latest marketing strategies that come from polls and studies about what people are looking for when they join a group... Tertullian's primary concern as a leader was formation of people around a specific set of habits and practices that came out of his engagement with scripture."

The quote is from the beginning of Part 2 of the book, which is probably the place to start if you're gonna read it.

A story of two gardens

I've been thinking recently that the story of the bible is in many ways a story of two gardens.

In the first garden (Genesis 3) we find a man and a woman playing the blame game and going through the pain of dislocation from the one who gives meaning to their lives. They are sent out of the garden disgraced and disillusioned.

In the second garden (John 20) we find a man and a woman. But this man treats the woman very differently. He wipes away her tears, removes her shame and restores her to her purpose. She is sent from the garden rejoicing. Go and tell of the victory... sing Miriam sing... God has made a way through the sea, the time of slavery is over!

It's not surprising that the apostle Paul calls this man in the second garden the 'last Adam'.

Forrest Gump Christianity

Forrest Gump was an endearing character and when the film came out in 1994 it took the world by storm. It won 6 oscars (nominated for 13), it had a top selling soundtrack, it tapped into something. Yes, he was slow, simple and made sense of the world around him through his mothers childish proverbs. But as Forrest Gump blundered through life amazing things happened to him and he did amazing things.
And that touches us deep inside.
Because we yearn for simplicity in a complicated world.
We shrink from the responsibility of being grown up.
It’s comforting to believe that we’re OK as we are, that we don’t need to change, that good things will happen to us because we’re good people.
And so we can make a nice comfortable theology for ourselves by plucking verses from here and there; that we don’t need to worry because God clothes the flowers of the field, or that we must simply come to him as little children, or that his house has many rooms and one day he’ll come and take us there… but who are we trying to kid? Jesus did not live a Forrest Gump style existence! Neither did he appear on the earth as a finished product - an all-knowing rugrat revealing universal mysteries at the Bethlehem mums and tots group. He needed to grow into all his human potential just like we do. The bible says that he, "grew in wisdom and stature, and in favour with God and men." (Luke 2:52) Later it says that "in all things" we need to "grow up into him". (Ephesians 4:15)
No matter how much we want our growing pains to come to an end we should just think first what it really means to stop growing... it means we start dying.

Anatomy of a Stronghold

It started with a thought.
'We can change it.'
It became an atmosphere of optimism.
'You know what, maybe it will happen soon?'
It took on a focus.
'If we can do it there it will prove it to everyone!'
It turned into action.
July 4th 1789, The Bastille, Paris. The epitome of absolute royal power.

2 Corinthians 10:4-5 "The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ."

We're often faced with full blown strongholds in life but how often do we pay attention to a stronghold under construction? If we look carefully at the words of the apostle Paul we can see that he gives us all the phases of the building process from start to finish. First there is the thought. The thought is processed into a pretension. The pretension is augmented into an argument. The argument solidifies into a stronghold. A stronghold is nothing more and nothing less than an entrenched belief that 'This is the way it is and it could never be different.' But like a mathematical equation that negative principle works out in its the positive too. All it takes to overthrow that stronghold is a thought. A thought that spreads an atmosphere. An atmosphere that finds a focus. A focus that inspires action. Action that proves, 'Oh yes it can!'

For more on this subject I recommend Paul Scanlon's Anatomy of a Stronghold audio series.

Turning the tables

Prompted by a conversation I had in a coffee shop the other day I've been thinking about the story of Jesus getting mad with the money-changers and traders in Jerusalem's temple courts. The writers of the four gospels all give us slightly different perspectives on the event and therefore the variations in the text offer shades of meaning. But going beyond the words into a bit of architecture takes us even deeper. The key thing in this story may well be not simply what the traders were doing but where they were doing it. I don't know a lot about the Temple but I know this, the spacious outer courts were known as the 'Courts of the Gentiles' and according to the Law unless you were a full-blooded Jew you couldn't get any closer than this in your desire for connection with God. How significant then that as he violently throws over the tables Jesus shouts out the words of Isaiah 56, the classic prophecy relating to God's desire to welcome foreigners into his presence, which of course contains these wonderful words, "my house will be called a house of prayer for all nations."
I've never considered before that Jesus wasn't simply embarking on some puritan vendetta against the sharks and the charlatans; he was reclaiming worship space for the foreigners, he was making a statement about the way the practices of those who are already in the in-crowd impact those who are still trying to find their way in. The anger was a venting of holy steam - God's own desperation to receive the worship of the seekers and the wanderers. The challenge to us today is are we still building temples of exclusion? Are we cluttering the outer courts, the fringe space in which those hungry to know God can come as they are without discrimination? God forgive us if we are.

Is God good?

For quite a while now I've been struggling with large chunks of the Old Testament. By struggling I mean finding it hard to engage with passages of scripture from my 21st century perspective, for example the amount of wanton and apparently God-sanctioned or even God-initiated violence. So on the whole I've buried my head in the gospels and hoped that I might be able to just ignore all that stuff. But of course it's impossible to ignore all that stuff as one of the amazing things about the bible is the continuity of it's meta-narrative and for better or worse those ancient tales make up a large part of it.
The other day I was challenged to re-engage with this stuff and to see what deeper examination of the text might reveal, so I did. So far I've just looked at the first 7 chapters of Joshua (one of the most bloodthirsty books) and guess what I found... Prior to embarking on the wholesale slaughter of the inhabitants of Jericho the zealous Joshua has an encounter:
"Now when Joshua was near Jericho, he looked up and saw a man standing in front of him with a drawn sword in his hand. Joshua went up to him and asked, "Are you for us or for our enemies?" "Neither," he replied, "but as commander of the army of the LORD I have now come." Then Joshua fell facedown to the ground in reverence, and asked him, "What message does my Lord have for his servant?" The commander of the LORD's army replied, "Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy." Joshua 5:13-15.
Fascinating. Bible scholars pretty much all agree that this incident was a christophany. And what message is delivered to Joshua? "I'm not taking sides here OK." And then he goes on to remind Joshua of the sanctity of the world in which he has been granted leadership responsibility. Even more fascinating then reading on to chapter 6 when: "the LORD said to Joshua, "See, I have delivered Jericho into your hands, along with its king and its fighting men." (v2). Er, did you hear that Joshua? According to the rules of engagement your army may put to the sword the enlisted men of the city, but who mentioned the women and the children? The NIV tactfully translates the genocide of the city as a 'devotion' to the Lord. Interestingly chapter 7 begins with God's anger burning against Israel because of the 'devoted things'. I'm no Hebrew scholar but seems to me that this incident is not at all what it first seems. What truth is hiding in that opaque language? I'm now wondering how many more of these Old Testament stories may have similar undercurrents? I'll do some more digging and let you know what I find.

The Big Fight: God vs Satan

I don't typically spend time thinking about the devil at all but just recently, maybe triggered by reading Paradise Lost, I have been. For a long time I've been baffled by the obvious mismatch between God and Satan. The God we meet in the bible is eternally all powerful and all knowing whereas his adversary is a jumped-up celestial being of limited power and influence. So why is the world so in thrall to his charms? I've come up with a possible answer. Imagine you're involved in a game of chess with a grand master. The grand master adheres to the rules fastidiously but you completely disregard the rules every turn and in doing so manage to give the impression to the audience (who don't know the rules) that you're doing quite well.
The golden rule in the celestial chess championship that is our world is that of free will. God has given it to us and will never take it away. Satan, in total rebellion against God, couldn't care less about our free will. Ever since the misty days of the garden he's been dead set on decieving and manipulating the human psyche. No wonder we see such chaos around us, no wonder so many people have warped and twisted ideas about God. But hey, the game's not over yet and despite his endless cheating Satan's never going to win.