A different church sermon by Rowan Atkinson

I’m not sure whether this is absolute genius or just blasphemy, but I enjoyed (most of) Rowan Atkinson’ alternative reading of the Gospel of John (start at 0:45ish):

Of course, I couldn’t get away with just this on its own, so a couple of thoughts off the back of it:

• I think his presentation of this guys in the kitchen is probably the most historically accurate retelling of this story I’ve ever heard.
• The idea of Jerusalem being the biggest stage of them all is a bit weird – Jesus went there because of Old Testament prophecies rather than to get his message out there, otherwise he’d surely have gone to Rome.
• Laughing at the final line (‘they absolutely crucified him’) is a bit weird really. I know it’s part of a comedy evening so when you’re in that mood it’d be hard not to, but that’s pretty much as funny as the sick jokes about the Holocaust, Diana’s death and 9/11. I have a feeling that a similar sketch of a Muslim cleric making jokes about Muhammad’s 9 year-old wife wouldn’t be allowed in that situation.

Related articles

• Blackadder is back for some banker bashing – video (theweek.co.uk)
• The Gospel according to St. Rowan (alanrudnick.org)
• Rowan Atkinson Right And Cameron Wrong, Says Crown Prosecution Service (mundabor.wordpress.com)

Evan Almighty

Cover of Evan Almighty (Widescreen Edition)

A couple of weeks ago I watched the film Evan Almighty again. A couple of things stood out to me.

Those moments throughout that suggest that God has a sense of humour are spot on. Christianity’s a relationship with a perfect Person, so it makes sense that he’s a funny guy.

Evan knew that God had spoken to him, but it still needed faith. Christianity isn’t blind faith in spite of the overwhelming evidence that disproves it, we Christians know that what we believe is true!

The conversation about God giving opportunities rather than fuzzy feelings is genius. If you ask God for patience does he magically make you patient, or give you opportunities to become more patient?

Of course Evan was laughed at, he looked and sounded like a madman! There’s no wonder that the prophets in the Old Testament, Jesus’ disciples and the early church, and Christians ever since have been ridiculed for what they believe, because of course it flies in the face of what the world believes! Sex only for marriage? How foolish!

It’s all about God’s grace. Every single individual in the movie has the chance to pause for a moment and think, ‘Perhaps Evan’s story is true,’ but no-one did. Evan’s desperate cries to the people who would be drowned to ‘get on the ark!’ because of one man’s sin is emotional, but the cry from Acts 4:12 is exactly the same: ‘there is salvation in no-one else!’ To actively choose to ignore that warning and head into eternity without Jesus as Saviour is to drink judgment upon oneself when the offer of a free ride is available.

Aah! Legalism! Run!

Without money (Photo credit: Toban Black)

A bit of a thought for you this bright, joyous Wednesday morning.

Christians have a bit of a love-hate relationship with routine, because we love grace and dislike rules. We should read our Bible every day, but not become legalistic about it. We should keep Sunday meetings consistent yet free. We shouldn’t sin, but that’s because we’re free not to, not because God is some control freak who demands his own way.

And then, of course, there’s giving. Despite some having a different understanding of tithing, the concept of giving a minimum of 10% of our gross income is pretty common in Christian circles…but we shouldn’t get legalistic about it, that’s a rule!

Here’s my thought: some rituals aren’t just ok, they’re important, and can even be fun! I eat every day because it’s healthy for me to do so; that’s not legalistic. I spend date night with Anna because it improves our marriage and it’s actually fun to spend time with her!

I think giving (among other Christian disciplines) is like that – it’s important, vital, healthy, and can even be fun…doesn’t God love a cheerful giver? Is giving precisely 10% (or 18%, or 50%, or 85%) legalistic and therefore bad, or just a way to make sure we’re staying healthy?

ONE – the Gospel According to Mike by Michael Williams

This is an awful book.

Ok, perhaps that’s a bit unfair; I’ve read worse, but not much worse. On with the review.

The subtitle of the book (The Gospel According to Mike) is spot on. The gospel presented in this book is certainly according to Mike. Reading the introduction you might be tricked into believing that it’s the biblical account, but unfortunately that simply isn’t the case. I was hoping (again, from the introduction) that this was going to be a well-developed study of a topic I love: the Church is one new man in Christ. But I’m genuinely sorry to say that it is far and away the worst development of that idea I’ve ever seen, for two main reasons.

Firstly, and most importantly, Williams’ attitude to the Bible would be laughable if it wasn’t so tragic. In his eyes the New Testament is only useful as commentary on the Old Testament; apparently Paul says quite a lot of good stuff (when Paul agrees with Mike), but the other authors got quite a bit wrong. It’s lucky Mike’s around to correct them. He misquotes Scripture (spends half a chapter talking about what ‘the lion will lie down with the lamb’ means – that isn’t in my Bible). He adds his own words to make Scripture says what he wants it to say. He ignores Scripture’s own interpretation of events and adds his own interpretation because the Bible authors didn’t really understand what was happening.

Secondly, Williams’ misrepresentation of Christianity is embarrassing. After discovering this ‘true gospel’ he apparently searched for five years, but couldn’t find one single person who believed it – alarm bells should have been ringing by this point! For Mike, evangelical Christianity is characterised by ‘Word of Faith’, prosperity gospel preachers, people who evangelical Christians would most likely distance themselves from. He ridicules anyone who doesn’t agree with him, saying that the only Christians he respects are members of Westboro Baptist Church (again, alarm bells) because Christians demand that everyone must agree with them. Which is sort of what he is saying in this book anyway.

If I’m being honest here, there were some little nuggets of usefulness in this book. Some of his observations are alright, but all I’d recommend this for is a training course in discernment. One example of this would be Williams’ ridiculing of Christians who believe that the rainbow showed God’s mercy for all humanity at the flood (i.e. not just believers). He clearly misses the point that the flood killed everyone except those on whom God’s grace rested (i.e. believers).

In short, please don’t buy this book. I got it for free from SpeakEasy in return for an honest review.

When to get baptised

English: Baptism of Christ (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I’m not sure what’s happened but everywhere I look at the moment someone seems to be talking about credos and paedos.

Yes, I know. People who believe that infants should be baptised have historically been called paedobaptists, and someone somewhere thought it would be a good idea to shorten that to paedos. No points for you. Credobaptists believe that only believers should be baptised. And holding either position requires that you think the others are wrong, plain and simple.

Here’s where the problem comes in; only one of the following is true:

• Baptism is the New Testament version of circumcision in the Old Testament (OT). Children born under the OT were circumcised, so kids born to Christian parents should be baptised.
• Baptism is a required response to demonstrate our faith. Kids aren’t born with a Christian faith, so shouldn’t be baptised.

It can’t be both. If the first is true then Christian parents are being disobedient to God by not having their kids baptised, and if the second is true then having kids baptised is a waste of time at best, and a heretical practice of works righteousness at worst.

A couple of Bible quotes to muddy the waters (no pun intended):

In him also you were circumcised with a circumcision made without hands, by putting off the body of the flesh, by the circumcision of Christ, having been buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through faith in the powerful working of God, who raised him from the dead. (Colossians 2:11-12)

We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life. (Romans 6:4)

For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. (Galatians 3:27)

Baptism, which corresponds to [Noah's Ark], now saves you, not as a removal of dirt from the body but as an appeal to God for a good conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ (1 Peter 3:21)

From a biblical perspective baptism seems to be important then! It would appear that it’s through baptism that we’re united by faith in Christ, saved from the wrath of God by his death and raised to new life by his resurrection. It’s not enough to say baptism just represents something (often the stance taken by credobaptists), but it’s very difficult to align these passages with the paedobaptist view seeing as the Bible’s very clear that salvation is by grace, through faith…and newborns don’t have that.

So here’s my twofold conclusion. (1) I think believers’ baptism fits the Bible passages better. (2) Baptism is far more important than it’s often made out to be.

No, I was not like!

Photograph of the debating chamber of the British House of Commons in the Palace of Westminster, London, looking north-east (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

It’ll surprise no-one (and that really says something) that I just overheard someone’s phone conversation:

…and he was like, ‘what are you looking at?’ And so I was like, ‘nothing,’ but he was like ‘it looks like you’re watching that guy.’

Now, here’s the thing: in conversation this seems fine, but written down it’s a bit odd. Can you imagine reading a newspaper and reading:

In the House of Commons today the Prime Minister stood up and was like ‘here’s our new bill,’ but the Shadow Chancellor was like, ‘that’s a silly idea.’

But my prediction is that over the course of the next generation this is just going to become an accepted part of the human language; to say something ‘was like’ will somewhat replace saying ‘he said.’

Stranger things have happened.

Just a little idea, I suppose. Language just changes, but without knowing what something meant when it was written it can be difficult to understand it. The Bible was written over a very long period, a very long time ago, and some bits of it were difficult to understand even at the time (just look at 2 Peter 3:16!) – when we read the Bible we should be asking these questions in this order:

1. What does the passage mean?
2. What did it mean at the time?
3. What should I do as a result?

Is God mean or loving?

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I can remember studying Christianity in my RE class at school, and being told that the God presented in the Old Testament is this mean, judgmental God of fire and brimstone, but that He must have gone on holiday for a couple of hundred years and apparently came back a changed, more left-wing God for the New Testament. Old Testament = Mean God, New Testament = Tolerant God.

And the first Christians I properly got into conversations with tended to confirm this – I was pointed to Jesus’ words that the Old Testament teaching of ‘an eye for an eye’ was being replaced by ‘love your enemies’. It was only last week that a friend of mine told me that ‘God learned to love’.

Well done everyone.

No, sorry, I just don’t buy it. In the opening chapters of the Bible Adam and Eve just completely lose it and disobey God, then lie about it and blame one another. The God of Wrath we’ve been told about doesn’t fly off the handle, he prepares clothes for them. A couple of chapters later we see that the entire population of the world was caught in an orgy of sin and evil but that God poured out undeserved grace on Noah’s family to preserve humanity in the face of the coming floods.

This theme of grace is repeated throughout every story in the Old Testament – it would seem that the God of Wrath is some fictional character rather than the actual Christian God. No wonder Dawkins hates him so much, he doesn’t sound very nice at all but thankfully is a figment of our imagination.

But I don’t think that the idea I was given of the God of Tolerance is much closer to the truth either! In the New Testament we see Ananias and Sapphira killed on the spot for lying about how much money they gave to the church, and Jesus seems to have something about casting out unfaithful servants to places of darkness where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth…so the God who simply accepts everyone as they are seems to be a fictional character too.

Is it possible that God is actually completely holy, righteous and just, and can’t bear sin in His presence or among His people so promises to punish sinners for stepping even ever-so-slightly off the mark, yet would sort the whole problem of sin out in one action through the grace-fuelled punishment of his only Son as a substitute sin-bearer and redeemer for anyone who believes? Well, that doesn’t sound like either of the false gods presented in my RE class.

But He sounds a whole lot better in every way.

God hates

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Pretty much anyone who knows anything about Christianity is able to quote that ‘God is love’ (1 John 4:16), so it’s been commonplace for Christians to avoid saying that God, and Christians, hate anything; how can a Person whose very character is love hate at all?

Well, the Bible unashamedly claims that God ad0pts Christians into his family, so the love of a father to his child is going to be the most easily-applicable analogy out there. Now let’s say that there’s some dangerous dog whose owner is specifically training it to kill this child. Is it right for the father to hate the dog? Or the owner? Or the consequences? How otherwise can God rightly say ‘Every evil of theirs is in Gilgal; there I began to hate them.’ (Hosea 9:15)?

Maybe the analogy isn’t quite perfect (we’re talking about an infinite God beyond our comprehension so I wouldn’t expect it to be!) but maybe Christians should speak out more strongly and more specifically about what God hates? That’s not going to be very popular I know, Christians already get bad enough press for being judgmental, homophobic and prudes but when managed biblically isn’t this exactly what the Old Testament prophets were accused of?

This needs wisdom – I think that ‘Jesus loves pornstars‘ is more biblically accurate than ‘God hates fags’ (I’m not going to link to them) – but it seems to me that the church in the UK falls into one of two camps. One side, in the name of love, simply ignores sin in reaction to societal pressures. The other side has a clear idea of what’s sin and what isn’t, and legalistically pursues righteousness resulting in ‘whitewashed tombs’.

Is there a third way, one which highlights God’s righteous hatred toward sin and therefore shows his love when we realise that his love overcomes that hate? I think that’s a far more powerful message than the command that today’s church has a tendency of giving to God: ‘take me as you find me’.

Proverbs 2:6-8

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‘For the LORD gives wisdom; from his mouth come knowledge and understanding; he stores up sound wisdom for the upright; he is a shield to those who walk in integrity, guarding the paths of justice and watching over the way of his saints.’ (Proverbs 2:6-8)

For

There are certain words in the Bible which should sound alarm bells in our minds; ‘for’ is one of them. We can’t understand this passage properly unless we understand what this is ‘for’. Reading Proverbs 2:1-5, as we did last week, we find out that God has promised wisdom to those who seek it, if only we put our trust in Him; it’s almost too simple to communicate. And these verses tell us why it is that simple.

The LORD

Reason one that we can know that wisdom will come our way is down to who God is. Read the passage above and it’s clear that it’s all about God. We can know that verses 1-5 are true because God has said so: ‘the LORD gives wisdom’. If God wants us to be wise, we will be wise. It’s the same with His mercy: ‘I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy.’ (Exodus 33:19, Romans 9:15) This doesn’t take anything away from our free will, it simply underlines God’s almighty power and control.

His people

But there is a bit of a flaw in our logic. We have assumed that we are the ones who receive wisdom, but where have we got this idea from? Reading this verse it’s clear that God’s talking about a particular kind of person: ‘the upright,’ ‘those who walk in integrity,’ and ‘saints’. If my personal record is anything to go by I am extremely likely to sin today, tomorrow, and every day for the rest of my life. I’m not upright, I don’t walk in integrity, and I am certainly not a saint! This seems to be bad news – that wisdom is not for me after all.

But we have the joy of seeing the Old Testament through the lens of the New Testament, and it all eventually comes back to the fact that God is in control. As much as many want it to be true, our receipt of wisdom and mercy is not down to us working hard and doing well! The apostle Paul is always good at summing this up:

‘For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved. For the Scripture says, “Everyone who believes in him will not be put to shame.” For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek; for the same Lord is Lord of all, bestowing his riches on all who call on him. For “everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.”’ (Romans 10:10-13)

Our qualification as ‘upright’ or as ‘saints’ is not down to our own efforts, but down to whether or not we have called on His name! This is the same message that we have been seeing throughout Proverbs: wisdom does not begin by opening an encyclopoedia, it begins with fear of the LORD. As we humble ourselves before Him, then we will be given the qualifications we need to begin on the path of wisdom. Glory to God for His grace.

Proverbs 2:1-5

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‘My son, if you receive my words and treasure up my commandments with you, making your ear attentive to wisdom and inclining your heart to understanding;
yes, if you call out for insight and raise your voice for understanding, if you seek it like silver and search for it as for hidden treasures,
then you will understand the fear of the LORD and find the knowledge of God.’ (Proverbs 2:1-5)

Formula

This is one of those Bible passages which is simple to understand. ‘If you do this, this will happen.’ Like the good ol’ Windows instruction saying ‘Click here to Start’ we’re told ‘Do this for wisdom’. Nice and easy. We’ll look at it backwards, from the result through to the instructions.

Results

We’ll go into more depth on this next week, but we’re promised understanding of the fear of the LORD, and a discovery of the knowledge of God. Both of these seem to be one step removed from reality, don’t they? We’re not promised ‘fear of the LORD’, we’re promised an understanding of it. We’re not told that we will know God, we’re told that we will find the knowledge of Him. In any case, the promise is for a deepened understanding of hidden things – these should be a goal of every Christian; who doesn’t want to understand the fear of the LORD better?

Instructions

Have another look at the commands given in verses 1-4. We’re told to:

• Receive Wisdom’s words; just like Jesus’ parable of the sower in Matthew 13, we must actively listen to these words and take them in. What words would they be? The recorded words of God: the Bible. So we must read the Bible.
• Treasure up Wisdom’s commandments; just like Mary ‘treasured things in her heart’ (Luke 2:19,51) we are to meditate on the Bible – perhaps reading a verse in the morning and holding it close all day to improve our understanding.
• Make our ears attentive to wisdom; we should be ready to receive – that means perhaps taking notes during sermons so that we’re engaged – basically, making sure our minds aren’t wandering when we should be focussing on Scripture.
• Incline our hearts to understanding; this talks about our attitude towards understanding. We should never think that certain levels of understanding are only for special people: ‘you’re a preacher, so you need to know what the Bible’s about, but I just show up.’ No, we should be eager to learn, and expectant that we will.
• Call out for insight and raise our voices for understanding; we need to ask God. This is so simple but done so rarely – we must pray as we read the Bible, that God would speak to us. His Spirit lives in us, and His Spirit inspired the Bible – that combination means that with His help, we’ll understand it as it’s meant to be understood.
• Seek it like silver and hidden treasures; we’re reminded of Jesus’ words in Luke 11:9: ‘ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find.’ Simply put, we have to be looking for a deeper knowledge of God, not just knowledge for knowledge’s sake – by reading the Bible we may get a deepened understanding of Old Testament Jewish practices, or of Roman society, but if we’re not ultimately aiming to learn more about God, that is where we’ll stop.

Assumptions

With every scientific formula there has to be an assumption. Although everything here is correct, we need to recognise that this simple formula only works because God said it in the first place. God wrote the Bible, He gave these instructions, and ultimately He gives the knowledge. Any time we take a line out of Scripture and attempt it on our own we are going to fail; bear in mind that this passage immediately follows chapter one in which Solomon has made abundantly clear that wisdom starts with God.