Archive for the ‘Theology’ Category
Thursday, July 22nd, 2010
This is a draft session for the Window on Wycliffe course in July 2010. Many of the thoughts are inspired by Chris Wright’s The Mission of God, some are taken from various presentations from Wycliffe UK Director Eddie Arthur, and some are my random musings. Please let me know any comments that you have… (I’m thinking this might be a bit ambitious for a 35 minute session, but I’ve enjoyed thinking through these things)
Q. What is mission? What do we understand by Christian mission?
I’m guessing we’re all here today because we think mission is important in some way.
Q. Why do you think that Christian mission is important? What are your reasons for giving up a week of your life, and possibly a lot longer, to mission?
Q. If we look at the Bible, can we see that mission to all nations is indeed biblical?
Many of us, although maybe not all, have probably been taught since we were young that mission is important. This has been justified using verses from the Bible, and now we have a pretty good idea of the biblical basis for reaching out to people of all nations.
Mission in the Bible
I want to suggest to you that the Bible is the story of God’s mission to humanity. Chris Wright¹ says that we often look for a biblical basis for mission, when in fact we should be discovering the missional basis of the Bible. He would argue that the grand narrative of the whole of Scripture is God reaching out to his world.
Throughout the Bible we see God’s missional plan progressing – a plan to bring humanity back into relationship with himself.
Creation: God breathing life into man
Then the Lord God formed the man from the dust of the ground. He breathed the breath of life into the man’s nostrils, and the man became a living person.
Genesis 2:7
The Fall: God reaches out to Adam
When the cool evening breezes were blowing, the man and his wife heard the Lord God walking about in the garden. So they hid from the Lord God among the trees. Then the Lord God called to the man, “Where are you?”
Genesis 3:8-9
The Call of Abraham: Seeds of Redemption
The Lord had said to Abram, “Leave your native country, your relatives, and your father’s family, and go to the land that I will show you. I will make you into a great nation. I will bless you and make you famous, and you will be a blessing to others. I will bless those who bless you and curse those who treat you with contempt. All the families on earth will be blessed through you.”
Genesis 12:1-3
The Exodus: God promises to liberate Israel, to bring them into a covenant, and to bring them to the promised land
“Therefore, say to the people of Israel: ‘I am the Lord. I will free you from your oppression and will rescue you from your slavery in Egypt. I will redeem you with a powerful arm and great acts of judgment. I will claim you as my own people, and I will be your God. Then you will know that I am the Lord your God who has freed you from your oppression in Egypt.”
Exodus 6:6-7
The Exile: Even in judgement, God’s purpose is to reveal himself to Israel and the nations
I will summon the sword against you on all the hills of Israel, says the Sovereign Lord. Your men will turn their swords against each other. I will punish you and your armies with disease and bloodshed; I will send torrential rain, hailstones, fire, and burning sulphur! In this way, I will show my greatness and holiness, and I will make myself known to all the nations of the world. Then they will know that I am the Lord.
Ezekiel 38:21-23
The Return from Exile: God makes himself known through bringing Israel back home
I am the Lord; there is no other God.
I have equipped you [King Cyrus] for battle,
though you don’t even know me,
so all the world from east to west
will know there is no other God.
I am the Lord, and there is no other.
Isaiah 45:5-6
“Therefore, give the people of Israel this message from the Sovereign Lord: I am bringing you back, but not because you deserve it. I am doing it to protect my holy name, on which you brought shame while you were scattered among the nations. I will show how holy my great name is—the name on which you brought shame among the nations. And when I reveal my holiness through you before their very eyes, says the Sovereign Lord, then the nations will know that I am the Lord.”
Ezekiel 36:22-23
Hope for a new Covenant
I will gather all nations and peoples together, and they will see my glory. I will perform a sign among them. And I will send those who survive to be messengers to the nations—to Tarshish, to the Libyans and Lydians (who are famous as archers), to Tubal and Greece, and to all the lands beyond the sea that have not heard of my fame or seen my glory. There they will declare my glory to the nations.
Isaiah 66:18-19
Jesus fulfils the mission of Yahweh in the Old Testament, as creator, ruler, judge, redeemer, saviour and reconciler.
Christ is the visible image of the invisible God. He existed before anything was created and is supreme over all creation, for through him God created everything in the heavenly realms and on earth. He made the things we can see and the things we can’t see — such as thrones, kingdoms, rulers, and authorities in the unseen world. Everything was created through him and for him. He existed before anything else, and he holds all creation together. Christ is also the head of the church, which is his body. He is the beginning, supreme over all who rise from the dead. So he is first in everything. For God in all his fullness was pleased to live in Christ, and through him God reconciled everything to himself. He made peace with everything in heaven and on earth by means of Christ’s blood on the cross.
Colossians 1:15-20
Pentecost: God proclaims the Good news about Jesus in many different languages
“…and we all hear these people speaking in our own languages about the wonderful things God has done!” They stood there amazed and perplexed. “What can this mean?” they asked each other.
Acts 2:11-12
The Church takes God’s good news to the nations
God has given me the responsibility of serving his church by proclaiming his entire message to you. This message was kept secret for centuries and generations past, but now it has been revealed to God’s people. For God wanted them to know that the riches and glory of Christ are for you Gentiles, too. And this is the secret: Christ lives in you. This gives you assurance of sharing his glory.
Colossians 1:25-27
We see that right the way through the Bible God has been revealing himself – to Israel, and through Israel and later through the church, to all the nations of the world. God’s mission is making himself known to creation through creating, ruling, judging, revealing, loving, saving, leading and redeeming. All in the context of an enduring relationship with his people.
What is the most fundamental thing we can say about God?
He is trinity. Three in One. A perfect relationship.
My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me.
John 17:20-21
God is inviting us to join in the perfect relationship of the trinity. That we would be one as the Father and the Son are one, and that we would be in the Father and the Son. First and foremost God is relational, and he is inviting humanity to be part of the relationship.
At the end of the day, God’s mission is all for the purpose of involving us in his perfect relationship.
The Bible in Mission
The Bible itself is a missional book in two senses. On one hand we can see mission happening right the way through the Bible. But on the other hand it’s true to say that the Bible is also vital in mission. It contains the revelation of God so that we can know him and receive his salvation. We might say that the Bible and mission are two sides of the same coin.
You have been taught the holy Scriptures from childhood, and they have given you the wisdom to receive the salvation that comes by trusting in Christ Jesus. All Scripture is inspired by God and is useful to teach us what is true and to make us realize what is wrong in our lives. It corrects us when we are wrong and teaches us to do what is right.
2 Timothy 3:15-16
The Bible: God’s message for all nations
Ever since the day of Pentecost when each person heard God’s good news in their own language, translation has been at the heart of the gospel. Lamin Sanneh says that
“[Christianity] seems unique in being the only world religion that is transmitted without the language or originating culture of its founder” ²
Since the birth of the church it has been clear that God’s mission is not restricted to one language or culture, but that his message of salvation is for people of all nations. The diverse cultures of the world will see the Bible from very different perspectives, and live out its message in different ways, but the central message of the gospel is unchanging and relevant to people of every language and culture. As the church, our role is to share this good news with the world.
Communication: It’s about connecting
I’ll now give each small group a passage of Scripture where we see God speaking to people in some way. I want each group to answer the following questions:
- What do we see of God’s character, and his mission in this passage?
- Why do you think God speaks in this particular way in this situation?
- What are the implications for our involvement in God’s mission?
Exodus 3: God speaks through a burning bush
1 Kings 19: God speaks through a whisper
Matthew 13: God speaks through parables
Acts 2: God speaks through the disciples
Acts 10: God speaks through Peter
Right the way through the Bible we see that God is communicating in ways that are very specific to the situation and people he is speaking to. The aim is never just to pass information, but rather to reach out to people.
One thing I’ve learnt from spending time in Tanzania is that communication isn’t just about the passing of information from one mind to another, but is primarily about drawing closer to the other person. In many parts of Africa when you go to the market it’s important to discuss the price of whatever you’re buying. This isn’t because the seller doesn’t know what a good price is, or because he wants to rip you off, but because actually the time spent discussing is an important part of building a relationship. If you settle quickly on the first price the seller suggests, the seller may be happy to have made some easy money, but they’ll also be disappointed that you haven’t spent the time getting to know them and building a relationship.
The message of the Bible is that the Bible isn’t just a message, but through the work of the Holy Spirit it is God’s way of reaching out and restoring his relationship with a broken world.
Conclusion
- We see in the Bible that God is missional, reaching out to all nations
- God is first and foremost relational, and his mission is to restore the broken relationship with humanity (ultimately through Immanuel – God with us)
- The Bible itself is key in mission, helping us to know God and the salvation he has bought for us
- As the church shares this message with the world, we need to be doing so in ways that are consistent with how we see God reaching out in Scripture
¹ Chris Wright, The Mission of God: Unlocking the Bible’s Grand Narrative
² Lamin Sanneh, Whose Religion is Christianity? The Gospel Beyond the West
Tags: Bible, Bible translation, Communication, Connecting, Relationships, Theology, Window on Wycliffe
Posted in Bible, Bible translation, Mission, Theology | 5 Comments »
Saturday, May 15th, 2010
Having been busy with many Wycliffe events over the last few weeks I haven’t been able to blog a great deal, but I came across an article the other day written by Krish Kandiah about the positive effect of cultural diversity on the church. From the Lausanne Global Conversation website, it’s the kind of piece that sums up exactly what I think, but have never been able to quite put into words.
Krish talks about how following Jesus is something that we should do in and through our diverse cultures, rather than thinking we have to leave our uniqueness behind to become like everyone else.
As we navigate our pluralist societies we need to avoid two dangers tourists often fall into. We do not want to be the tactless tourist who presumes that shouting louder will make our foreign tongue more decipherable. Nor should we be the reluctant tourist who seeks out McDonalds in Madrid, Dunkin Donuts in Delhi, or Burger King in Bangkok. But unfortunately these are the approaches the church has often adopted when engaging pluralism.
Tactless Tourism
The tactless approach to pluralism can lead the church to retreat into an arrogant absolutism. Out of fear and misunderstanding we end up believing we have nothing to learn from people from other cultures and religions and so we resort to shouting the truth of the gospel at them and often not hanging around to listen to the response. I would like to balance Chan’s dire warnings of the dangers of postmodernity with the positive things postmoderns can bring to the discussion. Postmoderns help us recognize that we are all culturally biased, and therefore in every missionary encounter we have something to learn. The apostle Peter spent three years on the road with Jesus and preached the Pentecost sermon where thousands were converted, yet he still had more to learn about the implications of the gospel. It was only as he crossed cultural boundaries to evangelize that he realized “God does not show favouritism but accepts those from every nation who fear him and do what is right” (Acts 10:34-35, TNIV). I believe the gospel is God’s unique truth, but I also believe that we Christians cannot claim to have comprehended it exhaustively. We must learn the boldness to speak but also the humility to listen and learn.
Reluctant Tourism
The second danger is that we are reluctant to engage other cultures and so retreat into our own ghettos. I have eaten in McDonald’s on Hong Kong’s Repulse Bay, on Moscow’s Pushkin Square and on Hollywood Boulevard, and I know that as I walk through the door, it doesn’t matter which continent I am on. I get the same sense of cultural dislocation when I walk into many churches around the world, as I find recognizable books, songs, and fashions. I agree with Chan that the gospel is “universal truth”, but when this is emphasized at the expense of valuing culture, we can end up with a bland “Mcdonaldized” evangel. A fast-food message cannot compare to the nourishment offered by a local flavoursome organic church. read more
In cross-cultural mission it’s so easy to think in terms of what is easiest, most efficient and quickest, particularly if you are coming from a position of power. But this article reinforces for me the importance of not just shouting the gospel from a distance, but really engaging with each person in their own language and culture, so that like Peter we can learn at the same time as we proclaim Christ, and he can be lifted up in the glorious diversity of peoples serving him.
Another great reason not to teach everyone English!
(Image from Tim at Bible and Mission)
Tags: Culture, Diversity, Gospel, Lausanne, Unity
Posted in Church, Culture, Theology, Under the Baobab Tree | No Comments »
Tuesday, April 13th, 2010
Yesterday on the way up to Sheffield for a meeting I had the chance to listen again to some of N.T. Wright’s excellent 4-part series about what we see of Jesus’ mission in the gospels.
One quote from the end of the second lecture really struck me:
When we speak of following Christ it is the crucified messiah we are talking about. His death wasn’t simply the messy bit that enables our sins to be forgiven but which can then be left behind. The cross is the surest and truest and deepest window onto the very heart and character of the living and loving God – the God who made the world has the cross at his heart.
And the more we learn about the cross, in all its historical and theological dimensions, the more we discover about the one in whose image we are made, and hence our own vocation to be the cross-bearing people. The people in whose lives and vocations that living God is made known.
And when we therefore speak of shaping our world, we do not, we dare not, simply treat the cross as “the thing which saves us personally”, “the thing which assures us of God’s personal love”, “the thing which gives us ultimate salvation”, but which we then forget when we get on with applying the kingdom to the world, shaping the world in that sense. The task of shaping our world must be understood as the redemptive task of bringing the achievement of the cross to bear on the world. And in that task the methods, as well as the message, must be cross-shaped through and through.
Listen to all four excellent talks here:
(HT: Eddie, a while ago)
Tags: Cross, God, Jesus, Messiah, Mission, NT Wright
Posted in Mission, Theology, Under the Baobab Tree | No Comments »
Wednesday, March 24th, 2010
I’m very much enjoying reading Chris Wright’s The Mission of God at the moment. It is quite heavy going at times, but it’s a very thorough look at the way missional themes run right the way through the Bible.
I’ve just finished the chapter on God’s people, much of which is focused on how God called Abraham in Genesis 12, and how this echoes through the rest of Scripture:
The Lord had said to Abram, “Leave your native country, your relatives, and your father’s family, and go to the land that I will show you. I will make you into a great nation. I will bless you and make you famous, and you will be a blessing to others. I will bless those who bless you and curse those who treat you with contempt. All the families on earth will be blessed through you.” Genesis 12:1-3
Wright explains that right from the time when God called Abraham – the start of the Israelite nation – his purpose in choosing Abraham was that people of all nations be blessed through him. God blessed Abraham in order that Abraham be a blessing to others.
It struck me how the general principle of receiving in order to pass on resonates through the Bible and throughout creation. For example:
- In plant and animal reproduction, characteristics are passed on from one generation to the next through their DNA
- The Isrealites were commanded to give certain parts of what they have received from God back to him
- God’s people were given the law, and told to teach it from one generation to the next
- Jesus was sent by the Father, and in turn sent out the disciples
- Jesus spent time investing in his followers, and told them to go and do the same
We can often make the mistake of on the one hand thinking that receiving is an end in itself. We rejoice that God has blessed us. We look for blessing, as if our being blessed was the ultimate goal.
On the other hand, we see that there is a need to give, but our giving comes out of a pragmatic view of need, rather than a natural passing on of what we have received.
Our temptation is either to think that God could give whatever he wanted to whoever he wanted, so we ask for blessing for ourselves, and don’t see the need to give to others. Or we think that God is limited in how much he can give, so we have to help him by giving – our money, time, training – as a matter of necessity.
It would be quite easy for God to do everything himself – making disciples, providing for the priests, creating new plants and animals from scratch – but he chooses to work by investing in particular parts of his creation, in particular ways, with the intention that they pass on that blessing to all those around them.
Our pragmatic, individualistic approach to life can often mean that we miss the nature of how God works. We assume that God does things the easiest and most efficient way – that’s the way we like to work, so we assume God does the same. We would take a tree and clone it a billion times to fill the earth. We’d create a multi-billion dollar company to finance world mission. We’d design a super discipleship programme in a single universal language to teach everyone what they need to know about God. Our natural desire is to create efficient programmes to achieve our goals with the minimal effort.
God could meet every need directly, satisfying every desire without the involvement of anyone. But instead he chooses to work in very local, particular ways, giving with the intention that the gift be passed on. God wants to bless all nations equally, but it seems that he often does it by blessing particular individuals, communities and nations in very particular ways so that they can pass on that blessing to others.
- Where do you see around you the pattern of receiving in order to give, being sent in order to send, living in order to give life, in the way God works?
- Why do you think God uses the particular and the local (Abraham, Israel, Jesus, the disciples, the Church) in order to pass on a message that is global and universal?
- Given that we see God working in this way, what should this mean for the way we work?
Posted in Bible, Mission, Theology, Under the Baobab Tree | 1 Comment »
Thursday, March 11th, 2010
One of the challenges in working cross-culturally is the human tendency to naturally assume that everyone else thinks the same way as we do. We presume that others have the same problems, the same goals and aspirations, the same fears, that they value what we value, and that they see the world just as we see it.
In Christian mission this can mean that we naturally assume that when we move into a different culture, we know what people’s needs are, what the solutions are to those needs, and how to get from the problems to the solutions.
Onesimus has posted the transcript of a fascinating discussion between mainly African Christians, on the subject of African theology. What does theology look like in Africa?
Do have a read through the discussion, as it touches on how an African understanding of God through the Bible is different from the way that many western Christians read scripture, and the vital importance of having an African theology if Christianity is really going to impact the day to day lives of Africans.
GO: Why in churches where there are dealing with issues of barrenness and poverty, these are the churches that are thronged with people? Because they are addressing the felt needs of the people.
TJ: It’s because the African people are asking these questions. And they are asking, ‘Where is God in this situation?’ No one is asking about the virgin birth or the nature of Christ. They are more concerned about action rather than theological concepts. In my home area, there is an active volcano, and when the mountain shakes, the people go up on the mountain to offer sacrifice to calm the mountain spirits down. This is the real need of the people, and the churches are not meeting the need, and they don’t stop the mountain from shaking. The geologist don’t understand nor can they stop the situation. But the traditional practitioners deal with the actual situation and provide a solution.
MM: When the gospel came to Africa, it was foreign to the way of life of the people. It provided answers to questions nobody was asking. When crisis came, they had a fallback plan, which was to go back to the traditional answers to the pressing questions of the culture. Especially in the issue of marriage, naming of children, initiation, there was nothing in the imported Christianity that dealt with the felt needs of the people. What is the implication of the gospel for me who is an African and a Christian? read more
To borrow an idea from a Qom pastor from Argentina (quoted by David Smith in Mission after Christendom), there is no longer a need for westerners to go and teach the Bible to those in Africa, Asia or South America, so much as to read the Bible together with people in these places, each in his own language and culture, with each person bringing his own unique perspective on the glory of God.
I think that seeing more of God through different cultures and languages is something that should be at the heart of our theology of mission. Ultimately knowing God in our own language and culture isn’t just for our own benefit, or even for the benefit of the global church. The apostle Paul explains that God’s purpose in bringing the diversity of all the nations into his kingdom is to bear witness to his great wisdom.
God’s purpose in all this was to use the church to display his wisdom in its rich variety to all the unseen rulers and authorities in the heavenly places. (Ephesians 3:10)
Tags: Africa, Bible, Scripture, Theology
Posted in Bible, Bible translation, Culture, Language, Theology, Under the Baobab Tree | 1 Comment »
Tuesday, March 2nd, 2010
According to Brian, one of the most neglected sections of scripture (in the modern western church) is Genesis 1-11. And yet, Brian says:
The stories of Genesis 1-11 are foundational for understanding mission, salvation, and sin. They describe the world as God intended it as well as the world in which we now find ourselves. They are presupposition for the rest of Scripture. If we miss the message of these texts, we run the risk of mishearing the Bible. read more
I have just been reading about this section of the Bible in Chris Wright’s excellent The Mission of God, which has led me to agree with Brian that these chapters are key to understanding the rest of scripture. If we fail to understand what is happening in these chapters we can completely misunderstand the nature of God’s mission to the diversity of nations he has created.
In Genesis 1-11 we see a pattern of God creating good things, people misusing God’s good gifts, and then, instead of giving up on things and wiping everything out, God by his grace redeeming the situation.
In the beginning God creates everything and puts people in the garden of Eden. Adam and Eve disobey him and hide, but God doesn’t destroy them but clothes them and gives them a hope of a redeeming plan. God blesses people with crops and animals, but when Abel gives back to God a better offering than Cain, Cain becomes jealous and kills him. Even in his anger God gives Cain hope however, and promises that no one will harm him. As people continue to sin in ever worse ways, God decides to destroy humanity, but in his grace preserves Noah and his family, giving them hope and a promise of a future as they leave the ark to start a new life.
Genesis 10 and 11 then give two sides to the same story as people inhabit the earth. In Genesis 1, and again in Chapter 9 God has commanded people to go and fill the whole earth. Chapter 10 tells us that they did this – spreading out and occupying all the different lands, developing different languages. Chapter 11 then tells us something of how this came about – again as an act of God’s grace despite man’s disobedience.
Chapters 10 and 11 obviously aren’t in chronological order – chapter 10 tells of various peoples filling the earth and starting to speak their own languages, whereas chapter 11 starts by saying that at that time everyone spoke the same language. Instead, Chris Wright proposes viewing chapters 10 and 11 as two sides of the same story – one describing what happened and the other describing through what means it happened. One giving an account of the diversity of God’s creation as his people inhabit the earth and develop their own languages and customs, the other showing that once again this blessing only occurs as a result of God’s grace, despite the best efforts of mankind to rebel and take a different path.
This is a great example of why we need to read the Bible in the context of the whole story. To read Genesis 11 in isolation would leave us believing that everyone speaking the same language was a good thing, and that the linguistic diversity that we see around the world today is the result of a curse due to the rebellion of mankind. Our logical response is then to want to reverse this – we want everyone to speak the same language (as long as it’s our language) and everyone to understand each other. Why not just teach everyone English?
But reading Genesis 11 in context gives us a much different perspective. The confusion of languages at the tower of Babel was in fact following the familiar pattern of God creating something good, man rebelling and disobeying/misusing the responsibility, but God nevertheless going ahead with his blessing out of his grace.
God has already told people twice (in chapters 1 and 9) to inhabit and fill the earth. As a former sociolinguist I’ve seen first-hand that when a two groups go their separate ways, in just 3 or 4 generations their language (and probably their culture) tends to diverge to the extent that they struggle to understand each other and they become very much distinct and unique language communities. As God sent out his people to fill the earth, he did so knowing that they would form different communities and cultures, seeing the world from different perspectives, honouring him through different languages, the very nature of their praise reflecting the character of their creator.
But the people had other ideas. Their desire in coming together at Babel was twofold – firstly to make a name for themselves, and secondly to avoid being scattered across the face of the earth – in direct disobedience to God’s command to fill the world.
So God confuses their languages. But far from being a curse or an knee-jerk reaction to blatant rebellion against his command, the confusing of languages and scattering of peoples was in fact God continuing with his original plan that we see commanded in chapters 1 and 9 and worked out in chapter 10 – that people would inhabit the whole earth.
In Genesis 1-11 we see again and again (with Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, Noah, Babel), God’s punishment which may seem at first to be a curse, but far from rescinding the good things he planned for creation, the punishment is actually a means through which God sets his people back on his original path of blessing.
We shouldn’t then be surprised when in the following chapter God calls Abraham with the intention that he be a blessing to the nations. Or when on the day of Pentecost God speaks through the disciples in a multitude of languages – to each person in their mother tongue (when he could have easily allowed them to all understand Greek or Aramaic). Or when we see in Revelation 7 a vision of people from every nation, people and language standing before God’s throne.
God’s plan from the start was that people fill the whole earth, that they speak different languages, and that they see the world in different ways. His intention was that the diversity of languages and cultures, just like that of the rest of creation, reflect his glorious creativity and imagination.
Mankind rebelled against this, as we have against so many of God’s gifts and the responsibilities he’s given us. But through his grace he doesn’t reverse his blessing but rather redeems the situation so that people of all nations can be united in Christ, bringing glory to him in all their immense diversity – just as he intended all along.
A map where each red dot shows the centre of one of the world’s 6,909 languages (via ethnologue.com)
Tags: Babel, Bible, Bible translation, Genesis 1-11, Language, Mission, Sociolinguistics, Theology
Posted in Bible, Bible translation, Language, Mission, Theology, Under the Baobab Tree | 1 Comment »
Sunday, February 28th, 2010
In a recent post I talked about why I think it’s important for the church to have a whole-Bible theology of mission. I’ve just been listening to a talk by N.T Wright given at a launch of the Biblefresh initiative, where he talks of the need for the whole church to engage with the whole Bible.
I think one of the ironies of modern evangelical churches is that we can become so focused on Bible knowledge that we actually miss the message of the Bible.
Many churches have a value of reading through the Bible and teaching it verse by verse, which I think is an excellent aim, coming from a desire to live lives based solely on knowing God. But it’s also something that has to be done very carefully – the danger is that when you read very small selected portions of scripture and focus intently on just those parts that you can end up teaching on the themes you feel comfortable with, and taking the message out of the context of the whole Bible.
I would say that pastors who I’ve seen do this well intentionally teach through more difficult portions of the Bible as well as those they find easy, and that they do so by asking:
- what can we learn about this verse?
- how does this verse fit into the immediate and wider contexts of scripture?
- how do we fit in to this larger picture?
rather than the other way around:
- what can we learn about this verse?
- how does my situation relate to this verse?
- how can I apply this verse to my life?
As examples of how not to read scripture, Wright talks of how the South African government frequently quoted the Bible during apartheid, and how US slave owners in the American south similarly used parts of scripture to justify the keeping of slaves, ignoring the fact that one of the overarching narratives of scripture is that of release of captives. Time and time again we’re reminded how God set the Israelites free from slavery in Egypt as this event echoes throughout scripture.
Over the last few months I’ve become increasingly excited about seeing the Bible as a grand narrative, rather than as a collection of isolated gems of wisdom. If we’re to read the Bible in its own context, rather than through our own cultural quest for abstract knowledge, we have to see it as a narrative of God’s interaction with humanity, rather than as an encyclopaedia on life or a manual for how to live.
Only then can we truly join in with what God is doing, and not end up missing the wood for the trees.
Tags: Bible, Biblefresh, N.T. Wright, Theology
Posted in Bible, Theology, Under the Baobab Tree | 1 Comment »
Wednesday, February 3rd, 2010
After meaning to for several months, I’ve finally started my way through Chris Wright’s mammoth book, The Mission of God: Unlocking the Bible’s Grand Narrative. As it’s 500 or so pages long there’s no way I’m going to remember all the good quotes when I get to the end, so I thought I might post a few as I go along, if nothing else to provide myself with a summary of what stood out to me in the book.
The first section is about the Bible and Mission. Wright says that he used to teach a course on the biblical basis of mission, but became increasingly convinced that the western evangelical method of listing out a few proof texts to prove what we’d already decided was true, just didn’t do justice to the missional nature of the whole Bible, including the Old Testament.
But before we can gain a fuller understanding of such a foundational theme we need to become aware of the cultural glasses* through which we view the Bible, and the world in general, and take a step back to see the bigger meta-narrative that runs through scripture. Wright suggests that reading the Bible together with people from all nations can give us a much broader and richer view of God, and shed light on the missional theme running through every page of scripture.
Even when we affirm (as I do) that the historical and salvation-historical context of biblical texts and their authors is of primary and objective importance in discerning their meaning and their significance, the plurality of perspectives from which readers read them is also a vital factor in the hermeneutical richness of the global church. What persons of one culture bring from that culture to their reading of a text may illuminate dimensions or implications of the text itself that persons of another culture may not have seen so clearly. (p39)
And on the previous page:
There is a great irony that the Western Protestant theological academy, which has its roots precisely in a hermeneutical revolution (the reformation), led by people who claimed the right to read scripture independently from the prevailing hegemony of medieval Catholic scholasticism, has been slow to give ear to those of other cultures who choose to read scriptures through their own eyes, though the situation is undoubtedly improving. (p38)
In many ways the acceptance that different cultures will read the same scriptures in different ways reflects the trend of post-modern thinking. But Wright says firstly that Christianity in effect got there a couple of millenia before post-modernism as we know it came into existence, and secondly that the church has something unique to contribute to the post-modern way of thinking:
What we [the church] have to offer, I contend, is a missional hermeneutic of the Bible. The Bible got there before postmodernity was dreamed of – the Bible which glories in diversity and celebrates multiple human cultures, the Bible which builds its most elevated theological claims on utterly particular and sometimes very local events, the Bible which seems everything in relational, not abstract, terms, and the Bible which does the bulk of its work through the medium of stories.
All these features of the Bible – cultural, local, relational, narrative – are welcome to the postmodern mind. Where the missional hermeneutic will part company with radical postmodernity, is in its insistence that through all the variety, locality, particularity and diversity, the Bible is nevertheless actually the story. This is the way it is. (p47)
If I can get my mind around it I’ll try to continue to post some thoughts from the rest of the book as Wright explores how God’s mission to his world is an/the overarching theme of the entire scripture narrative. It might take a few months however…!
*Someone once told me he was going to Kenya for a couple of weeks to give some Bible teaching to Pastors because “they always read the Bible through their own cultural glasses”. While agreeing with his statement, I don’t think he had appreciated the irony that he also had his own cultural glasses through which he read the Bible… it’s just that our glasses are a lot more obvious to those around us than they are to ourselves.
Tags: Books, Chris Wright, Christian, Mission, Post-Modernism, The Mission of God
Posted in Bible, Books, Mission, Theology | 3 Comments »
Thursday, January 21st, 2010
I have a new favourite blog to follow: Onesimus Online, written by William Black, a lecturer at Nairobi Evangelical Graduate School of Theology.
William is originally from North America, but is a strong critic of the arrogance of western theologians in assuming that Europe and North America has all the answers about God. Here’s a great explanation from a recent post about why a western perspective of the Bible isn’t sufficient for Africa
So thorough is the westernization of my African students that they don’t seem to notice that all of their education, all of their theology, all of their assumptions, can be traced to the efforts of well-meaning western missionaries. These missionaries came (and sometimes still come) with an assumed posture of superiority, namely that they are here to ‘help’ these Africans escape their darkness and get saved like us. Salvation too often means getting Africans to accept that our problems are their problems and that our solutions must be their solutions. For example, most Western missionaries assume that Christ has come to save us from our legal problem before a holy God; namely, that our sin makes us guilty before God and deserving of his condemnation and wrath. Christ resolves our problem by becoming our sin on the cross, bearing our punishment and thus freeing us from the penalty of the law. We are no longer under condemnation, but are accepted into fellowship with God, with the end result that we will go to heaven and not to hell.
This is standard fare for Western Evangelicals and their predecessors. And while a solid case may be made from the New Testament that this is indeed an aspect of our salvation, our polemical stance against the perceived ‘works righteousness’ of Roman Catholics has meant that this becomes increasingly, by over-emphasis, the only aspect of our salvation, or certainly the most important, and certainly what is preached from Sunday to Sunday.
The problem is that Africans on their own don’t perceive that their main problem before God is their compromised legal status. So in order to get them to understand ‘the gospel’ – or at least our Western understanding of the gospel – we missionaries must first teach them about God’s law and what sin is and what Christ has done to satisfy God’s law. Once they understand these things, then they are in a position to ‘accept Christ as their personal Savior’ and be forgiven. To this end, evangelists urge congregations to respond to the ‘free’ grace of God in Christ so that their sins may be forgiven and they be reconciled to God.
Again, this sounds so normal to our Western Evangelical ears that we may be immediately suspicious of anyone that seems to have a problem with it. But as mentioned above, most of my African friends don’t first and foremost worry about their legal standing before God. Rather, they are far more concerned about demons which seem to afflict every aspect of their lives, they are concerned about people who manipulate spiritual power for good and ill in other people’s lives, they are concerned about sicknesses and barrenness, for which there seems to be no cure, they are concerned about capricious weather that makes their crops fail and their cattle die and causes them to go hungry, and they are concerned about death. The tremendous irony that I observe is that our Western gospel has come full force into Kenya (and many other African countries) through the ministries of thousands of Western missionaries, resulting in the majority of people here and in a number of other countries professing faith in Christ and testifying to having been born again. And yet this gospel does not touch those aspects of their lives that reflect their deepest needs and most profound concerns. read more
I’m looking forward to keeping up with William’s posts as he critiques western theology and hints at alternative African perspectives.The church in Europe and North America can tend to be extremely mono-cultural in its judgement of what is and isn’t a correct reading of scripture, so it’s good to look outside of our little box occasionally to get a better perspective.
Tags: Africa, Christianity, Culture, NEGST, Theology
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Wednesday, December 23rd, 2009
Flickering Pixels by Shane Hipps is a fascinating look at communication media and the role these media play in shaping an entire culture. While Western culture emphasises the message and generally disregards the medium, Shane Hipps argues that media affect the way we think, and that until we recognise this fact we will be under their control.
Does that sound too deep? Let me give some examples…
Shane talks about how in oral cultures, where there is no written form of a language, people store information in their minds. When something is learned, it is passed on through the community, generally through telling and retelling stories. The culture therefore tends to be very community-oriented, and people derive their identity from the community.
When literacy is introduced to a culture, people have the luxury of thinking apart from the tribe, without worrying that their thoughts will disappear. The community is no longer needed to perpetuate ideas, and people will tend to become more individualistic.
“In pre-literate societies, a person’s identity is bound to the tribe; the notion of individual has little importance. However, the technology of writing, regardless of content, weakens and even destroys tribal bonds and profoundly amplifies the value of the individual.”
Another fascinating example that Shane gives is that of writing systems. He compares the Chinese pictographic alphabet, with the western phonetic alphabet. The western way of writing is a simple, linear, sequential list of symbols. The symbols in themselves have no meaning, but when put together they are very efficient at bringing meaning. As a result, western culture values abstract concepts, efficiency, and linear sequential thinking.
The Chinese writing system on the other hand involves symbols that actually represent a particular thing. In many ways this is a very inefficient way of writing – requiring a separate symbol for every single word – but the writing system is as Shane says “a visual art form”. Eastern culture similarly has developed to be nonlinear and holistic, valuing these things above efficiency and simplicity.
These media shape our culture, and even our understanding of Christianity. The Roman alphabet’s tendency towards efficiency and simplification has meant that western churches tend to emphasise the simplicity, rather than the mysticism of the Christian message. Our approach to the gospel is to present it as A + B + C = Go to Heaven, when other non-western cultures might take a more holistic and less simplified approach.
Shane goes on to look at other media since the printing press – particularly photographs (allowing for non-textual literate communication) and the telegraph (bringing instant communication over a distance). The telegraph, in many ways the forerunner of the internet, for example changed the culture by providing a mass of information. This mass had to be sorted through, and was assigned subjective value based on how the reader responded to it, paving the way for a move away from modernism, where the printed book with its sequential argument was king, to post-modernism, where a mass of information is weighed up by each person receiving it.
He then addresses social media (and what some might call our post-literate culture), which in many ways are a strange juxtaposition of previous media and their cultures. As a result they bring paradoxical ways of interacting with each other:
- We are a tribe of individuals. Where pre-literate cultures value community, and literate cultures promote the individual, we long for the community of a tribe, but we define it on a strictly individualistic basis.
- We feel empathy at a distance. Pre-literate cultures feel great empathy for others in the community, and literate cultures allow people to distance themselves from what is going on around them. As post-literates we paradoxically feel empathy at a distance – we empathise with celebrities and African Aids orphans, but we also feel detached from them and unable to relate to them.
- We are anonymously intimate. Where pre-literate cultures are in many ways very intimate, and literacy brings the possibility of privacy and anonymity, as post-literates we are anonymously intimate. We share very personal and intimate parts of our lives with a large number of people, giving the illusion of intimacy as we present our façade to the world.
What does all this have to do with faith? Firstly Shane would say that it’s important for us to understand the culture that we live in, so that we are not trapped by it. Our culture likes to think that information is important, and the media of communication are simply serving us in our desire to pass on that information. But we need to be aware of how the media we use are actually influencing our entire view of the world, and of God himself.
But secondly Shane finishes the book by looking at the media God uses to communicate his message, and the fact that his ultimate means of communication with his people was through Jesus – a messenger who was himself the message. As Christians God has also chosen us to be his messengers, but like any medium of communication, we are part of the message itself.
“Why would God choose such a frail, failing, and inconsistent medium to embody his abiding message? Is it possible that God chose a collection of bent and bruised hearts to bear the message of redemption and reconciliation because that is a message in itself? Maybe God chose a medium of weakness to reveal his stunning power to reach through human failure, sin and sadness to grow new life.”
I don’t feel I’ve done the book justice in this post – you’ll just have to read it for yourself. You may also be interested in listening to a sermon I gave in the US a couple of weeks ago about Peter telling Cornelius about Jesus in Acts 10, which was actually influenced by some of the ideas of how God communicates that originated from the final section of this book.
Tags: Communication, Faith, Flickering Pixels, Media, Message, Mission, Shane Hipps
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