Mindset of the Spirit Blog

Heaven - It’s what we wish were true...

Mon, 13 Sep 2010 09:04:45 +1000

“[Humankind] finds itself in the middle, knowing neither the end nor the beginning, and yet knowing that it is in the middle.” (Bonhoeffer, Creation & Fall)

These are the words of Dietrich Bonhoeffer in his winter semester course of lectures (1932-33) on Genesis 1-3. Outside the window of his Berlin lecture room the brown shirts were busy building the Third Reich on piles of burning books. Bonhoeffer, with characteristic astuteness, identifies the disturbance, or even the threat, posed to the human being by any authoritative depiction of our beginning. He insisted, we meet this threat by taking comfort in the lie that we always were and always will be. Against this Bonhoeffer boldly counters, “No one can speak of the beginning but the one who was in the beginning.” If this is true of the beginning, and much of the popular enmity between Christianity and science in the Modern period has been focussed on just such a question, must it likewise be true of the end? That is, could a valid and reliable voice be found to testify to our end because he was there? The conceptual difficulties involved in such a notion are many and, at least at the surface, obvious. For while a voice may call to us from the past about our beginning, our ordinary experience does not allow for someone to speak of the future in the past tense – “I was there at the end which is to come!”

The issue of testimony to the end of the world seems all the more poignant in the current climate. Historically such testimony has been the vocation of prophets and/or mystics. For its part, the modern secular state looks instead to computer models. However, since the end is something to which all of us feel closer when compared to a beginning lost in the mists of time, how could one voice claim absolute certainty above and beyond all others? Consequently, it seems only appropriate for us to maintain a far more democratic approach to the end – especially at an individual level. This, by and large, is the assessment of Lisa Miller in her recent release, Heaven: Our enduring fascination with the afterlife. (NY: Harper Collins, 2010)

The book’s genesis was a moment of personal truth for journalist Miller – when asked by an early-morning TV anchor, “Do you believe in heaven?” she had no answer. Considering the interview was focussed on Miller’s recent cover story entitled, “Why We Need Heaven,” the irony was palpable. The obvious implication was that the religion editor of Newsweek maintained her perfect objectivity via one of secularism’s more odious hypocrisies – it takes an agnostic to talk honestly about faith. Consequently, and very much to her credit, Miller embarked upon a six year journey to produce her current monograph. The result is an engagingly written genealogy of heaven in contemporary American culture. Though restricted to the “Abrahamic faiths” and launched from the common rooms and kitchens of east coast intellectuals, Miller’s quest spans the continent encompassing moderates of every ilk be they Muslim, Jew or Christian.

This social history of heaven for Americans unfolds largely by way of accounts of the many conversations in which Miller has engaged. Denying any authority as a scholar or a religious apologist, Miller states her goal is, “to write a book that might guide people through the thicket of their own views about heaven by holding up a mirror of others people’s beliefs, both current and past.” The path towards this goal follows three parallel tracks, the first being the wide range of contemporary American views of heaven. The second track is the extent to which these views do or do not reflect adherence to official Jewish, Christian or Islamic teaching. Finally, the reader is presented with Miler’s conclusion that any question about heaven that could be asked, has been already, and further, that the answers to these questions have been debated fractiously and perennially over the course of twenty centuries with common themes (these make up the chapter titles of the book) but without consensus.

Always urbane in her scepticism, Miller tends to favour romantic imagination in her conversation partners. Hence it is the rich sensuality of the Islamic vision with its culinary delicacies, the deep bonds of familial history amongst her Jewish kin and the vivid poetry of Dante’s Christian Paradisio that receive most favourable attention. From these heights her esteem descends through various levels of prophets, poets, priests and philosophers ultimately saving her only explicit disdain for a New York spiritualist she describes as “trafficking in grief.” Along the way Islam is relieved of the burden of obsessing with heavenly sex, the Sadducees win out against a general resurrection of the dead and the audacious hope of Christianity is found to lie in a Democratic agenda, provided it maintains liberal amounts of Catholic self-deprecating humour.

For her part, the end of Miller’s quest is a “radical hope” in a heaven described as “a place that embodies the best of everything – but beyond the best…what’s most beautiful, most loving, most just and most true.” Neither transcendent nor metaphysical, for Miller God “is the word I use to describe what is miraculous about this life, the aspect that is awesome and defies rational explanation [metaphorically speaking of course].” Consequently, in this scenario, heaven is “a constant hope for unimaginable perfection even as we fail to achieve it.” While it is as attractive as it is middle-class, Miller’s materialist pantheism has a good deal more humility than the cultured despisers – Harris and Hitchens – whom she chastises for burning a straw effigy of God. On the whole, Miller’s analysis of the mosaic that is the American dream of heaven is empathetic without being patronising. The author is agnostic enough to hear others’ aspirations towards a particular notion of the afterlife and respond with disagreement but not dismissal.

The author’s final acknowledgements concede that though thorough, the book is by no means comprehensive. The most dissatisfying omission for this reader was an inevitable consequence of the “pro-democracy” style of enquiry into the afterlife. The necessarily cultural portrayal of Christianity was largely oblivious to the radical claims of the risen Jesus as Lord and Messiah. As such, his person and work are both a radical promise of God’s favour towards those we might deem unworthy of any kind of heaven and, at a the same time, a radical challenge to our middle-class aspirations of perfection. As the crucified Messiah, Jesus is God’s choice to save us from ourselves. As the bodily risen Lord, Jesus is God’s promise to transform us for a new world free from sin, death and evil – for heaven.

The Spirit of Agreement?

Mon, 23 Aug 2010 09:10:06 +1000

There is a good reason why the wisdom of God that comes to us through the cross of the Lord Jesus does not seem to make sense, in the first instance:

1Cor. 2:10…for God has revealed them to us by his Spirit. The Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God… In the this way no one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. 12 We have not received the spirit of the world but the Spirit who is from God, that we may understand what God has freely given us. …14 The person without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God but considers them foolishness, and cannot understand them because they are discerned only through the Spirit. 15 The person with the Spirit makes judgments about all things, but such a person is not subject to merely human judgments,

We need to gift of God’s Spirit in see the world through God’s wisdom. Without the power of God’s Spirit we will not be able to understand the wisdom of the cross and will continue like worldly philosophers or religious experts. What this means is that without God’s help, you will never understand that God loves you enough for Jesus to sacrifice himself for your sins, you will never understand that your sins are serious enough to warrant the death of Jesus for them and where people cannot accept those two things then we can never have the fellowship of God Spirit. Without God’s Spirit we can never agree on anything of genuine and lasting value. Without God’s wisdom we will never be a church but rather a group of lovable but slightly odd individuals who regularly sit together in a freezing cold building

God’s Wisdom in the Cross

Thu, 19 Aug 2010 17:49:51 +1000

Paul connects the wisdom of the cross to the way we agree one another in his letter to the Philippians:

Phil. 2:6 [Jesus], being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; 7 rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness.8 And being found in appearance as a human being, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death—even death on a cross!

God’s wisdom is that power and authority amongst a community are directly proportional to self-sacrifice. It demolishes pride and self-righteousness with grace and generosity. Therefore, there could never be a time amongst God’s people when those with the most power of influence coerce the rest into “agreeing” with them. Instead, God’s wisdom does nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility, God’s wisdom values others above oneself, God’s wisdom does not look to one’s own interests but each of us to the interests of the others.

Yet this is not a matter of “obeying the golden rule - do unto others as you would have them do unto you - this is more like, be prepared to sacrifice you life for others’ sake, especially when you disagree with them. Jesus absolutely disagreed with sin but graciously gave his life for sinners. From the perspective of the coolly rational or the religious zealot this seems ridiculous - yet there is more to say....

God’s Wisdom on Disagreement

Wed, 18 Aug 2010 09:06:05 +1000

God’s wisdom, seeing the world through God’s eyes, is radically different from the world-view of the religious expert or worldly philosopher.

So God’s wisdom is not a matter of coolly detached and individualistic rationalism that avoids the interference of feelings - “the philosopher of this age.” You may have encountered this person in a church somewhere, they always operate with extremely clever sounding arguments that are thoroughly logical and especially good at preserving individual liberty such that to disagree with them you must be completely stupid. They are masters of reducing an issue down so as to only focus on “the main thing,” even when that conveniently means ignoring everything else. In Corinth it may have been a matter of people saying, “God couldn’t become a human being certainly wouldn’t have died on a cross to forgive our sins!” In more contemporary circumstances it may be something like an extremely well researched but entirely individualistic reading of the Scriptures. Paul tells the Corinthians, “this is not God’s wisdom”

However, God’s wisdom it not a matter of zealous passion for traditions either like “the teacher of the law.” This person passionately defends historic traditions or community authority - they dismiss those who disagree with them as being heretics or simply following the latest fad...In Corinth it could well have sounded something like, “God’s Messiah would never dispense with the Law or Moses and he couldn’t possibly die on a Roman cross!” Paul tells the Corinthians, this is not God’s wisdom either.

Neither of these world-views know the God who reveals himself in the cross of the Lord Messiah Jesus - “the world through its wisdom did no know him” says Paul. God’s wisdom is a threat to the rationalist and the zealot - “we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles” This clash of world-views between God’s wisdom and worldly wisdom was foreseen long before hand:

Is. 29:14 Therefore, once more I will astound these people with wonder upon wonder; the wisdom of the wise will perish, the intelligence of the intelligent will vanish.”

More Disagreement

Tue, 17 Aug 2010 09:18:24 +1000

So what was the problem in Corinth that led to so much disagreement? In short it was factionalism or even, tribalism. Paul exhorts the Corinthians to “agree with one another” as opposed to allowing their church to disintegrate into various factions.

1Cor. 1:11 My brothers and sisters, some from Chloe’s household have informed me that there are quarrels among you.12 What I mean is this: One of you says, “I follow Paul”; another, “I follow Apollos”; another, “I follow Cephas”; still another, “I follow Christ.”

The Corinthians had divided their church according to the popularity of various leaders within the greater church - on face value it seems as bad as the church being taken over by allegiances to various sporting teams in the city. Paul won’t have a bar of it because this kind of behaviour is completely inappropriate for members of the body of Christ Jesus.

1Cor. 1:10 I appeal to you, brothers and sisters, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree with one another in what you say and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be perfectly united in mind and thought.

Of course this kind of behaviour is not unusual in any culture and that is a large part of the Corinthian problem - worldliness. Their behaviour as a church is too much like the pagans around them. Yet as foolish as the divisions were themselves - Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Were you baptized into the name of Paul? - the divisions were a symptom of a greater problem that so often and easily leads to divisions amongst God’s people.
Divisions amongst Christians arise where individuals have not allowed the gospel to transform their world-view, their way of seeing the world - the people and everything else in it. They are looking at the world, and importantly, each other, through the wrong kind of glasses:

1Cor. 1:20 Where are the wise? Where is the teacher of the law? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? 21 For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe. 22 Jews demand signs and Greeks look for wisdom, 23 but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, 24 but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.

Paul identifies two main rivals to God’s wisdom: the rational skeptic and the religious zealot. We’ll consider more of how they infect churches and kill love tomorrow.

Disagreement

Mon, 16 Aug 2010 08:49:50 +1000

Benjamin Disraeli is quoted to have said, “There is politics, dirty politics and church politics.” There are three ways that agreement can be manufactured in churches:

1) Coercion: This is where the people who have the most power of influence force others to “agree” with them.
2) Abdication: This is where people “agree” with each other purely for the sake of avoiding conflict. It is not that they are actually united in their thoughts or practices, it is more a matter that they agree that they hate conflict more than whatever it is that they disagree upon.
3) Ignorance: This is most like the Modern notion of “tolerance.” We are not united on anything of actual importance, we simply choose to ignore one another and “leave each other alone.”

What could it mean then when Paul tells the church in Corinth to “agree with one another?”

How to Kill love...Indifference

Thu, 22 Jul 2010 10:15:09 +1000

Here are three ways that indifference kills love from Hebrews 10.
1. Be indifferent to God’s forgiveness.
The Hebrews Christians who received this letter were under the constant temptation to turn back from Christianity to Judaism with its extensive system of worship. For anyone in the first century a faith based on laws and sacrifices meant that you were part of a legitimate religion - you had a serious faith in a serious god. But the constant message of Hebrews is that God has done away with the need for all those practices through the person and work of Jesus:

Heb. 10:11 Day after day every priest stands and performs his religious duties; again and again he offers the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins. 12 But when this priest had offered for all time one sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God, 13 and since that time he waits for his enemies to be made his footstool. 14 For by one sacrifice he has made perfect forever those who are being made holy.

In the old days the priest had to continually offer sacrifices for sin - which never actually achieved anything. However, when Jesus - whom God has promised will act as our priest - sacrificed himself for our sins, there was no longer any need for the whole system of practices that made up Jewish faith. In fact, the sacrifice of Jesus eclipses any religious attempt to gain favour from God - It’s like trying to give money to the bank for a mortgage that has already been settled. The net result is that the Hebrews could feel completely confident to approach God - what’s more their faith in God’s promises is completely legitimate in God’s eyes even if others don’t think so.

Heb. 10:22 let us draw near to God with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled to cleanse us from a guilty conscience and having our bodies washed with pure water.

The first way to be indifferent to one another is to consider God indifferent to each and every one of us. Soon we’ll begin to question whether or not we all equally belong in church. If we don’t relate to one another as forgiven children of the same heavenly Father we’ll feel less obliged to joyously welcome each other in his presence. If we become indifferent to God’s forgiveness then we shall find it easy to discard one another as insignificant.

2. Be Indifferent to the hope of the Lord Jesus
Based on the promise of forgiveness that comes in the Lord Messiah Jesus, Christians have a unique hope amidst a hopeless world.

Heb. 10:23 Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for he who promised is faithful.

The Christian hope is exclusively Christian - there is no other group who hold to the hope for resurrection from the dead into a new of the Lord Messiah Jesus. Many of those who adhere to the Jewish faith don’t believe in life after death. Muslims, who do believe in life after death, believe they will face the justice scales of Allah. If their lives have not been appropriately faithful they will be condemned to everlasting suffering. Christians believe in a final judgement but the promise of the Gospel is that the judge they will meet is their saviour who sacrificed his life for their forgiveness. There are, of course, a plethora of other notions of what happens when we die but most, if not all of them, have no real hope. Just a morbid combination of death that ends in darkness or a perpetual re-incarnation leading to oblivion.

The Christian hope is based on God’s promise. Yet, as we have already seen it is a promise upon which God himself makes good. Not only does Christ Jesus die and rise again to make us right with God, Jesus shares with us His Holy Spirit by whose power Jesus was raised to life. God’s Spirit enables us to call on God as Father now, he enables us to know God personally now and to love God:

Heb. 10:15 The Holy Spirit also testifies to us about this. First he says: 16 “This is the covenant I will make with them after that time, says the Lord. I will put my laws in their hearts, and I will write them on their minds.”

The second way to be indifferent to one another is consider ourselves lost to God in death - to forget that we are and always will be secure with God even if we succumb to death before Jesus returns. If we abandon our hope in the power of the God who raises the dead - in contrast to the Lord Jesus - we shall have little reason to value this life or the lives of others. When the chances and changes of this fleeting world overshadow us we’ll quite quickly seek haven in our hedonistic death defying culture.

3. Be Indifferent to Encouraging one another
The last way to kill love is by being indifferent to the promise we are to each other - that we can and will encourage each other while we await Jesus’ return:

Heb. 10:24 And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds, 25 not giving up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another—and all the more as you see the Day approaching.

We show our indifference to each other in a variety of ways but principally in the way we ignore opportunities to encourage one another to love and good deeds. So we stop reading the Bible to each other so that we can hear again God’s promises, we neglect sing together to celebrate the hope that we have in these promises, we forget to pray for each other as we labour to hold on to these. We foster these anti-practices by not meeting together - or perhaps more poignantly by regarding meeting together as if it was a Facebook event where we just swap trivial tidbits of self absorption. We show our indifference to one another by overlooking our common future. Ignorant of what God has done for us and what he is doing for us we fail to look at one another with future eyes:

Phil. 1:4 In all my prayers for all of you, I always pray with joy 5 because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now, 6 being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.

How to Kill Love...Cain & Abel

Tue, 20 Jul 2010 11:51:03 +1000

What we learn in the Bible is that we don’t or can’t love others because we can’t believe that God loves us. Cain’s story is about not loving others because we don’t believe that God loves us. Cain did not receive the Lord’s favour and so became angry and envious of his brother. He did not heed the Lord’s words and instead he gave into sin:…If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must rule over it. (Gen.4:6) As John (1 Jn.3:) describes it, Cain showed himself to be of the evil one, giving in to sin and becoming a murderer. Instead of loving his brother he murdered him, but here is the great tragedy; Cain killed his brother because he was envious of God’s favour on Abel. Because God reacted favourably to Abel’s righteous sacrifice, Cain assumed that God must love Abel more or worse, Cain assumed that God must not love him at all.

I see this kind of behaviour - albeit without the violence - in my own children all the time. I say something affirming to one of the them and the others who are present don’t rejoice in the praise of their siblings, they immediately ask what’s wrong with them - it’s envy, plain and simple. Envy is when I don’t want you to have what you have. Instead I want what you have for myself. Cain envied his brother, envied God’s favour. In John’s letter (1 Jn.3:11ff) failure to love fellow-believers is linked to hatred of them which results in murder. It would seem that anyone who does not love their brethren is, at least, in danger of being in the mould of Cain and therefore a murderer and of the evil one.

If we don’t love one another, we are in danger of being like Cain even if our desire does not lead to murder, our envy of others and God’s favour towards them exposes our reactions as evil. Cain wanted God’s love, his favour even, without realising that God always and already loved him. Cain envied Abel. His envy became hatred which led to murder. He took from Abel instead of giving to him - he took Abel’s life instead of surrendering his own and hence became a murderer and not a lover.

God intended it for good...

Fri, 28 May 2010 09:00:02 +1000

In the letter to the churches in Ephesus Paul states that the mystery of God’s will for the course of history is that all things be summed up in the Lord Christ Jesus. (Eph.1:9&10) God’s intention is that life, the universe and everything find their perfection in the Lordship of Jesus as God’s chosen saviour King. Yet this needs to be understood in light of what Paul also tells the church in Colossi, “all things are for him [the beloved royal son]” (Col.1:16) The implication here is that the clearest and most concrete means we have of understanding God’s will or purposes for the world is revealed in the life, death, resurrection and heavenly rule of Jesus.

So far, so good perhaps but what difference does this make to the discussion of evil? Well in the first instance, if this is God’s intentions for the history of the cosmos - which he determined before the foundation of the world (Eph.1:4) - then sin, death and evil need to be understood in this context. That is, these phenomena exist solely as attempts to derail God’s purposes to glorify himself in and through His royal and eternal Son.

In the second instance, as we shall see, the Bible describes the sovereignty of God as his power to bring about the Lordship of Jesus by the Spirit over and against alternatives which can only be evil. It does not describe God using evil to bring these purposes to perfection even if he does allow evil things to happen - like the cross!

Love and evil Pt.3

Mon, 17 May 2010 11:39:06 +1000

I hope by now you have been saying to yourself, on more than one occasion, why doesn’t God do something about all this? Why doesn’t he put an end to suffering? Well he has, this is what makes the Gospel good news. God has acted in the world in a way that gives our question the most bizarre twist – When we ask, “If God is Loving, why all the suffering?” – the most loving answer is TO SAVE US. All the suffering is to save us because it was for us.

Now of course, I do not mean that your grief and loss will somehow make you a better person – although it will give you wisdom. I am talking about the suffering of God himself, which by the way we have been looking at in some detail the whole time we have been reading Ps.22. The other reason I chose this psalm was because it is a prophecy of the suffering of God for us. Let me explain what I mean.

Let’s compare Ps.22 with some snippets from the Gospel accounts of the crucifixion of the Lord Jesus:

Mat.27: 46 And about the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, "Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?" that is, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"

Jesus is deliberately quoting Ps.22 in order to give us some insight into his suffering at the cross – that is, the Godforsakenness that is mentioned in Ps.22 belongs first and foremost to God the Son – the crucified Jesus of Nazareth. Many of the elements of Ps.22 are present in the crucifixion accounts. Consider first the mockers who ridicule faith in God:

Ps.22:7 All who see me mock me; they hurl insults shaking their heads: 8 He trusts in the Lord: let the Lord rescue him. Let Him deliver him since he delights in Him.

Mat.27:41…the chief priests, with the scribes and elders, mocked him, saying, 42 "He saved others; he cannot save himself. He is the King of Israel; let him come down now from the cross, and we will believe in him. 43 He trusts in God; let God deliver him now, if he desires him; for he said, 'I am the Son of God.'"

Enter the wild animals and evil doers:

Psa. 22: 16 For dogs have surrounded me; a gang of evildoers has closed in on me; they pierced my hands and my feet … 18 They divided my garments among themselves, and they cast lots for my clothing.

Mark 15:17 The whole company of soldiers dressed Jesus in a purple robe, twisted together a crown of thorns, and put it on Him. … 19 They kept hitting Him on the head with a reed and spitting on Him. … 20 When they had mocked Him, they stripped Him of the purple robe, put His clothes on Him, and led Him out to crucify Him…22 And they brought Jesus to the place called Golgotha … 24 Then they crucified Him and divided His clothes, casting lots for them to decide what each would get.

In the Gospel accounts of the crucifixion of Messiah Jesus love and suffering come together in the most profound of all mysteries, that the one through whom and for whom the world was made – the one in whom all things hold together and in whom all things will be summed up; out of his amazing love, the author of life suffers death at the hands of his own creatures – God takes our suffering personally.

Love and evil Pt.2

Mon, 10 May 2010 15:57:31 +1000

I’m continuing on with a reading os psalm 22. In the midst of the spite and cruelty of others (Ps.22:6&7) the poet recalls the tenderness and compassion with which God has overseen his life to date:

Psa. 22:9 You took me from the womb, making me secure while at my mother’s breast. 10 I was given over to You at birth; You have been my God from my mother’s womb. 11 Do not be far from me, because distress is near and there is no one to help.

WE have perhaps a turning point in the poem as the psalmist recalls God’s presence with him since his earliest days – this is his only hope in face of the violence and menace around him – and as desperate as it may be, the right thing to do when we suffer is to call upon God to save us. And well may the poet cry out for help because the next few verses give us a lurid portrait of chaos and cruelty:

Psa. 22:12 Many bulls surround me; strong ones of Bashan encircle me. 13 They open their mouths against me—lions, mauling and roaring. 1 4 I am poured out like water, and all my bones are disjointed; my heart is like wax, melting within me. 15 My strength is dried up like baked clay; my tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth. You put me into the dust of death. 16 For dogs have surrounded me; a gang of evildoers has closed in on me; they pierced my hands and my feet. 17 I can count all my bones; people look and stare at me. 18 They divided my garments among themselves, and they cast lots for my clothing.

Within the images of ferocity and vehemence, savagery and callous indifference, we gain another bleak reminder of the state of the world. God’s good creation is marred by sin, death and evil. Both visible and invisible powers collude to frustrate the purposes of God:

Rom. 8:20 For the creation was subjected to futility—not willingly, but because of Him who subjected it—in the hope 21 that the creation itself will also be set free from the bondage of corruption into the glorious freedom of God’s children. 22 For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together with labour pains until now.

The world is frustrated, it is unable to reflect the full beauty, goodness and truth that flows from God our Father, through his Son and by His Spirit and so the Bible speaks of creation groaning as if in labour pains. We gain some insight into this frustration when we think of climate change but there is no clearer example than the shadow of death that looms over all of life – stealing that which is precious, leaving us impotent and seemingly defeated.

The poems description of circling, roaring beasts is in part symbolic of the forces of chaos that surround us and thwart us every day – whether it be in the form of crashing stock markets or demonic oppression – we suffer in this life as a result of opposition to our loving Creator:

Eph. 6:12 For our battle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the world powers of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavens.

It is not something well received in our scientific Western culture but, whatever form they may take, the bible makes consistent references to super-natural or invisible beings that are in a constant and continuous state of rebellion against God and his good creation. They need not be a seen as a direct cause of sin, death and evil - human beings are well proficient enough at that. However, these real forces are able to exploit to their advantage the evil that we perpetrate upon each other.

So on the face of it, with the help of Ps.22 we may say that there is suffering in the world because the world is marred, frustrated in its attempts to glorify God’s Son through whom it was made and we play all too great a part in much of the affliction that exists. Yet we cannot leave things there for if nothing else we still have no means by which we might speak of God as loving in such a situation. In the face of such obvious godforsakeness, how shall we speak of a loving God?