Walking the Tochar, Part III | Let Us Walk in the Light of the Lord

“It shall come to pass in the latter days

    that the mountain of the house of the Lord
shall be established as the highest of the mountains,
    and shall be lifted up above the hills;
and all the nations shall flow to it,
    and many peoples shall come, and say:
'Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord,
    to the house of the God of Jacob,
that he may teach us his ways
    and that we may walk in his paths.'
For out of Zion shall go forth the law,
    and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.
He shall judge between the nations,
    and shall decide disputes for many peoples;
and they shall beat their swords into plowshares,
    and their spears into pruning hooks;
nation shall not lift up sword against nation,
    neither shall they learn war anymore.

O house of Jacob,
    come, let us walk
in the light of the Lord.” (Isaiah 2:2-5, ESV)

"Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up again." (John 2:19, ESV)

***

Peter dropped me at Boheh Stone, where he had picked me up the day before. The weather had changed. Yesterday, although the mountain was visible for most of the walk, it was veiled in in a thick haze, making it appear distant and indistinct. Today, the air was clearer - and I was closer.

The mountain had been topped in cloud since sunrise. Over breakfast, Peter had urged me with unsettling gravity that I was not to climb the mountain if, when I reached the bottom, I could not see the top. For fear of causing insult, I didn’t care to ask whether this advice was based on safety concerns or mere superstition. Either way, I was hoping that the Reek would “take off his cap”, as Peter put it - if nothing else to get the views.

I was shown no such respect. It wasn’t long, though, before I could see a steady stream of people making their way up and down the Reek from the seaside town of Murisk, where my pilgrimage would end. Not only did this reassure me - if the tourists can make it up, a seasoned pilgrim should be ok - but it also evoked a strong sense of deja vu. The spectacle reminded me of a dream I had dreamt years ago - I dream I had forgotten, but now remembered as if I was dreaming it again. Indeed, as I came within a mile of the mountain, it felt as if the mountain was approaching me rather than vice versa, as if it was growing inside my mind. And as I began to climb, it felt as if another world was emerging within the present, as if something hidden was being revealed.

In time, I reached the point at which the visible became invisible, and ascended into cloud.

At the summit lies a chapel dedicated to Patrick, who turned the mountain from a pagan site of idolatry into a Christian site of prayer. According to the legend, he achieved this transformation by fasting on the mountain for 40 days and 40 nights. I like to think that, like Jesus in the wilderness, he was tempted by the trappings of power, the comforts and riches of Babylon, and persevered.

Patrick was certainly not aligned with powers and principalities of his age. His practice of relating the Christian message to existing, pagan traditions is usually interpreted as pragmatic at best and syncretistic at worst, allowing him to get his message across without provoking resistance. But as the information provided along the Tochar had made clear, he encountered plenty of resistance - usually by local power-holders who were threatened by his claim that the One God was Lord of All, and that our true allegiance is to Him and Him alone - not to false gods or earthly kings.

So perhaps his ministry was neither pragmatic nor syncretistic. Perhaps he was following the example of Paul, who identified Yahweh as the Invisible God, winning the souls of many at Mars Hill. But perhaps, even moreso, he was following the example of Jesus, who claimed at Caesarea Philippi, “on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hell shall not prevail against it” (Matthew 16:18). Jesus made this statement while standing on a literal rock that was used a temple to Pan, where a literal Gates of Hell had been marked out in the cliffside as a space for lewd acts of demonic worship.

Indeed, what occured to me most strongly on this final day of walking was that the two opposing kingdoms - the Kingdom of Heaven, God, and light, and the kingdom of the world, Satan, and darkness - can often be found in the same place, possibly even at the same time. There is a kind of quantum dynamic involved, whereby our own consciousness and our own actions determine which outcome prevails - and until that happens, both outcomes coexist in the realm of potentiality.

Maybe this is what Jesus meant when, after proclaiming that the Gates of Hell will not prevail against His church, He promised to give us the “keys of the Kingdom of Heaven”, and that “whatever [we] bind on Earth shall be bound in Heaven, and whatever [we] loose on Earth shall be loosed in Heaven.” (Matthew 16:19). On this reading, how we see the world and what we do about it matters a great deal, because part of the way God answers our prayer for His Kingdom to come on Earth as it is in Heaven is to give us eyes to see, which in turn gives us a mind to act.

I was particularly assured of this when my host Peter, seemingly out of the blue, told me about a local economist who was well before his time in identifying the destructiveness of our economic system for communities and the environment (deriving in particular from our reliance on economic growth) and presenting a number of viable alternatives (such as local currencies). On a separate occasion, Peter's wife Jojo commented, again spontaneously: "Isn't nature amazing? The problem is that we don't take care of it. And we don't take care of each other." She was right, of course; but the fact that she and Peter seemed to spend all of their time caring for their garden and caring for their guests was proof that a different world is possible.

What is more, not only can Babylon become Zion, as with Patrick’s Mountain, but Zion can become Babylon. In Galatians 4 (verses 21-31), the Apostle Paul draws a distinction between the earthly Jerusalem and the Heavenly Jerusalem. The earthly Jerusalem, he explains, is represented by Mount Sinai, the symbol of the Old Covenant. This Jerusalem is characterised by slavery, which I have identified as the hallmark of Babylon, and Paul urges the Galatians to leave it behind. There is therefore a sense in which, as a church, embracing the Old Covenant, the earthly Jerusalem, is tantamount to embracing Babylon. Unfortunately, also like Babylon, Jerusalem can become a “cup of reeling” which intoxicates and deceives (Zechariah 12:2). As a result, Christians have conflated the earthly and Heavenly Jerusalems since the dawn of Christendom, with devastating consequences.

The city which Abraham was seeking will not be found or bound within the dominions of this world, which are beholden to the Destroyer, the ruler of this age (Ephesians 6:12; 1 Peter 5:8-9; Luke 4:5-6). In their thirst for power, their lust for violence, and their penchant for greed, those systems are hard-wired to reject Christ, who is nevertheless the chief cornerstone (1 Peter 2), the true foundation of the true Zion (Hebrews 11:10). Indeed, when all is revealed, there will be no foundation other than Christ (1 Corinthians 3:11), for no cornerstone will be taken out of Babylon when it is destroyed (Isaiah 51:26).

This is a subtle insight which is not amenable to simplistic, dualistic thinking. On the one hand, we are to ask (and act) for the Kingdom of Heaven to be here, now, on this very rock, this very mountain. But on the other hand, we are emphatically not to mix ourselves with the powers and principalities of our age, for the Heavenly Kingdom is not of this world (John 18:36). To my mind, the Western evangelical church has this backwards. It conceives of the Kingdom as something that will be realised in a galaxy far, far away, sometime in the indefinite future, possibly not until the afterlife. At the same time, it acts as a “chaplain to Empire”, to use Brian Zahnd’s words, sanctioning the destruction of man and land. Ever since Constantine, the church has sided with the warmongerers, when, according to Isaiah, and according to Jesus, the Kingdom of Heaven is radically peaceful. It has sided with the oppressors, when the Kingdom of Heaven defends the oppressed. It has sided with the status quo, when the Kingdom of Heaven promises to upturn everything.

This strategy will not end well, for it ultimately pits the church against Christ Himself. This is evidenced by the reaction of the priests and the scribes when Jesus cleansed the Temple: they "[sought] a way to destroy him" (Mark 11:18). They did eventually kill Him - using the implements of empire, no less. But we know that isn't the end of the story. Jesus will return to destroy that destroying mountain; he will separate the goats from the sheep, those who served "the kingdoms of the world and their splendor" (Mathew 4:8) and those who served the everlasting Kingdom, the Kingdom of Heaven, which eschews earthly power and embraces the powerless (Matthew 4:8;25:31-46). The Apostle John would therefore admonish us from the grave, and from Heaven:

“Come out of [Babylon], my people,
    lest you take part in her sins,
lest you share in her plagues;
for her sins are heaped high as Heaven...
    mix a double portion for her in the cup she mixed.” (Revelation 18:4-5).

JRR Tolkien does an excellent job capturing this distinction - that the Kingdom of Heaven is on Earth, but separate from the earthly kingdoms - through the role of Erebor (‘the Lonely Mountain’) in his enchanting book The Hobbit. Erebor is occupied by an evil dragon, so Gandalf the wizard incites its dwarvish heirs to reclaim it. But Thorin, the king of the dwarves, is enthralled by the riches in the mountain and becomes no better than the dragon. I do hope it means something for the church that Thorin ends up repenting from his service to mammon!

***

I waited for about an hour for the cloud to clear. Having climbed all the way up the mountain, I was keen to witness its legendary panorama. Suddenly, though, it dawned on me: I was on a pilgrimage, not a sightseeing tour. I didn’t come for the views, or even for the mountain; I came for the journey (also, I was getting cold!). I threw away my sharp stone and began to descend with the crowds.

The fact that there were so many people scaling the mountain formed a nice contrast with Moses, who alone was permitted to ascend into the clouds of Mount Sinai to receive the Old Covenant under pain of death:

“For you have not come to what may be touched, a blazing fire and darkness and gloom and a tempest and the sound of a trumpet and a voice whose words made the hearers beg that no further messages be spoken to them. For they could not endure the order that was given, ‘If even a beast touches the mountain, it shall be stoned.’ Indeed, so terrifying was the sight that Moses said, ‘I tremble with fear.’ But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels in festal gathering, and to the assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in Heaven, and to God, the judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant....” (Hebrews 12:18-24)

The prophets had long ago picked up on a similar distinction, except that they referred to Babylon rather than Sinai. Speaking of Babylon, Jeremiah (51:44) prophecies that “the nations shall no longer flow to [it]”; and by contrast, speaking of Zion, Isaiah (2:2) prophecies that “all the nations shall flow to it”. Later, God speaks through Isaiah (56:6) to declare:

“And the foreigners who join themselves to the Lord,
    to minister to him, to love the name of the Lord,
    and to be his servants,
everyone who keeps the Sabbath and does not profane it,
    and holds fast my covenant—
these I will bring to my holy mountain,
    and make them joyful in my house of prayer;
their burnt offerings and their sacrifices
    will be accepted on my altar;
for my house shall be called a house of prayer
    for all peoples.”

Centuries later, Jesus would quote this passage as he evicted the moneychangers and the merchants from the Temple, the place where Heaven and Earth meet (Mark 11:17). I have already referred to this episode in the first part of this journal, but what I would highlight here is the paradoxical relationship between inclusion and holiness. On the one hand, holiness is traditionally defined by exclusion - a state of separateness from the world. Our discussion of Babylon and Zion would confirm this definition, in the sense that we must be keep ourselves separate, undefiled, and free from the powers that be. But Isaiah’s prophecy seems to suggest that holiness is also defined by inclusion. Babylon enriches the few at the expense of the many, and Jesus is incensed to find this exclusionary system operating in a place that is supposed to be “for all peoples”.

In the Gospel of Mark (ch.11), the cleansing of the Temple is sandwiched in the middle of a teaching about a fig tree. Immediately before entering the Temple, Jesus finds a fig tree without fruit - which is to be expected, since it was not the season for figs - and curses it. Immediately afterwards, the disciples return to the tree to find it withered. It is then that Jesus makes the claim that their faith can move mountains - which, I have suggested, is an allusion to Jeremiah’s prophecy against Babylon. The Temple is a house of prayer, and it is through prayer that Babylon will be destroyed, Jesus tells them. It therefore seems to me that the fig tree, like the mountain, represents the system of Babylon which Jesus confronted in the Temple - perhaps because, like Babylon, it gives life only selectively.

After the fig trees of Babylon wither, the fig trees of Zion, which give life unconditionally and universally, can flourish. The passage from Isaiah at the beginning of this post describing the House of God is repeated almost verbatim by the prophet Micah (ch. 4), except for a couple of extra verses which begin, “but they shall sit every man under his vine and under his fig tree…” (v.4). If we keep following the trail of breadcrumbs, we find that Jesus alludes to this very passage when he tells Nathaniel that he saw him sitting under his fig tree (John 1:35-51). When Nathaniel reacts with amazement, Jesus responds, “‘Because I said to you that I saw you under the fig tree, do you believe? You will see greater things than these.’ And He said to him, ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, you will see the heavens opened and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man.’” (John 1:50-51).

Completing this whirlwind tour of scripture, the reference to angels ascending and descending between Heaven and Earth is, in turn, a direct allusion to Jacob’s ladder, the original image of the House of God (Genesis 28). As I ascended and descended the mountain with the crowds, I felt indeed that I was amid a multitude of angels, moving seamlessly between Heaven and Earth, dwelling, even as I journeyed, in the place where God Himself would dwell.

***

Truth be told, I wasn’t that thrilled to be around all those people. Besides being an an introvert, I was wearing the wrong shoes, I hadn't slept as much as I should have, and my knees were beginning to act up. To be honest, I really wished that all those people would just disappear. They were noisy, distracting, and in my way.

It was then that I felt a stone in my shoe. It felt like standing on a nail - that is to say, it hurt. When I stopped to remove it, I was reminded of Father Fahey’s advice - “if you get to the top of the mountain,” he said, “and God hasn’t shown you something about yourself that needs to change, then put the stone in your shoe.” God had shown me a lot about His Kingdom over the course of the pilgrimage, but nothing about myself - until then. It’s in the presence of other people - particularly when there are lots of them - that my worst side comes out. That needs to change.

That needs to change because systemic change starts with individual change. As individuals, we must be "transformed by the renewing of our minds" before we can go about transforming society, for it is only then that we will really have eyes to see (Romans 12:2). Insofar as we still conform to the patterns of this world, we are part of the problem, not the solution. Personal sanctification and social justice are therefore two sides of the same coin.

Before setting off again, I picked up another sharp stone. My pilgrimage wasn’t over, even though I’d (more than) conquered the Reek. When I reached the bottom, I cast the stone into the sea, praying that the Lord would take my heart of stone and give me a heart of flesh. After walking along the shore for a while, I also let go of the shell that I had carried from my home in Edinburgh, making sure to find another to replace it. I will take this shell with me on my next pilgrimage - and there will be a next one, of that I am sure.

***

Patrick experienced the destructiveness of Babylon firsthand, having been abducted from his homeland and pressed into slavery. Yet he rolled that kingdom down from the mountain and cast it into the sea. In its place, he established a house of prayer for all peoples. Like Abraham, like us, he was looking for the House of God.

O Destroying Mountain...

...Be Cast into the Sea

Your Kingdom come, Lord Jesus.

Seasons within Seasons: Everything is Beautiful

"Beauty is truth, truth beauty, —that is all

Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know".

John Keats was in good company when he penned these immortal lines in his Ode on a Grecian Urn. The wisest man to have ever lived save God Himself, King Solomon of the Old Testament, came to a remarkably similar conclusion. After spending two solemn chapters expatiating on the futility of life - the way in which progress seems to undo itself, in which in nothing is truly new and in which everything comes full circle -  Solomon reaches an epiphany: "For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under Heaven...He has made everything beautiful in its time." (Ecclesiastes 3:1,11).

Like Solomon, I have spent much of my life struggling against its inexorable seasonality. When I was successful, productive, happy, comfortable, energetic, peaceful, healthy, confident, hopeful, and otherwise a-ok, I felt as if my life had meaning. But when the winter came, as it always did, I would wonder, like Solomon, why I was even alive.

In no small part thanks to Solomon's teachings, I've come to realise that our conventional dualisms - life and death, dark and light, even good and evil - need to be accompanied by the all-embracing holism of beauty if we are to attribute meaning to the otherwise meaningless aspects of our lives. According to Solomon, meaning can be found even in the midst of grief, hate, war, and death if we are willing to embrace the beauty of the seasons.


Seasons and Spirals

At its core, this beauty derives from the intrinsic circularity of the seasons, whereby the dark is always followed by the light. In fact, in light of the overarching story of the Bible - from Eden, to sin, to the New Jerusalem, from being with God, to separating from God, to becoming one with God - the trajectory is more accurately conceived as a spiral, so that the light which shines tomorrow is always brighter than the light which shines today. To quote the ever-hopeful Samwise Gamgee as he confronted the depths of hopelessness:

“I know. It’s all wrong. By rights we shouldn’t even be here. But we are. It's like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger they were. And sometimes you didn't want to know the end. Because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? But in the end, it’s only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer. Those were the stories that stayed with you. That meant something, even if you were too small to understand why."

Jesus alluded to this idea in His own teachings. Consider, for example, the beatitude: "Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted" (Matthew 5:4). What's striking about this statement is that those who mourn, and are then comforted, are somehow more "blessed" (alternatively translated as "happy") than those who did not mourn at all - those, perhaps, who were merely 'comfortable'. Indeed, Jesus's own life is the ultimate illustration of the spiral principle, since His death and resurrection brought about eternal life.

Such a perspective raises questions, however. Why, if we have been saved, do we still sin? Why, if death has been defeated, do we still die? This is where we need to augment our analysis to recognise that, not only do seasons form spirals, but there are seasons within seasons. That is, in order to appreciate the beauty of every season, we must view our present season within the broader sweep of seasonality.


Seasons within Seasons

Broadly speaking, the story of Christianity can be divided into four seasons: the first summer, in which everything is good; the fall, in which evil arises; the winter, in which evil prevails; the spring, in which goodness starts to return; and the second summer, in which everything is even better than it was at first. As I see it, Jesus' death marked the winter solstice - the pivotal point at which the spread of darkness was complete, but also the point from which darkness began to recede.

By this logic, we are living in the early spring, when the first fruits of new life are just beginning to emerge. It should be no surprise, then, that good and evil are intermingled in our day-to-day experiences (see Romans 7-8). By contrast, the Bible deliberately emphasises that the 'second summer' - the age of the New Jerusalem - will mark the end of duality, since darkness will be banished forever (Revelation 21:22-22:5). Thus, in the broadest possible sense, we are living in the season of seasonality, which will one day come to an end. There is indeed a season for everything, including the seasons.

I think we know this intuitively, which is why find the seasons to be natural on one level but unnatural on another. Solomon himself discerned this paradox: "He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also, he has put eternity into man's heart, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end" (Ecclesiastes 3:11). John Keats seemed to arrive at the same revelation when he mused on the equivalence of truth and beauty and their sufficiency for mortal man, who nevertheless perceives that eternity is in his midst, and who is thus tormented by its riddle:

"O Attic shape! Fair attitude! with brede
Of marble men and maidens overwrought,
With forest branches and the trodden weed;
Thou, silent form, dost tease us out of thought
As doth eternity: Cold pastoral! 

When old age shall this generation waste,
Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe
Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou sayst,
"Beauty is truth, truth beauty," – that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know."


Everything is Beautiful

Western Christianity, influenced as it is by Western culture, is inclined to 'skip to the good bit'. We often struggle to celebrate Good Friday, for example, qualifying our sentences with 'but' clauses that really belong on Easter Sunday. I think this is a problem, because it doesn't tally with our lived reality, seasonal as it is. Even before His death, Christ embraced this seasonality: practicing what He preached, He mourned for His friend Lazarus, even though He was about to resurrect him (John 11). Some who witnessed the event questioned why Jesus did not simply heal the man; others, struck by overwhelming beauty, marveled at His love.

As Samwise recognised, evil is a corruption, a deviation from what was originally intended; after all, there was no death in the Garden of Eden. Yet God, in His ultimate sovereignty, has worked even evil together for good by weaving it into a beautiful story of redemption (Romans 8:28). Where sin abounds, grace abounds all the more (Romans 5:20); though death persists, it has been "swallowed up" in an unstoppable spiral (1 Corinthians 15:55). In this way, He has made everything beautiful.

Eternal Life as Circular Time

I really enjoyed this article on how different cultures and religions conceptualise time. I would, however, dispute the author's claim that Christianity is based on a linear conception of time. A more accurate characterisation would be that Christ ‘closes the loop’ by transforming the finality of death into the beginning of life. Surely this is what the Christian doctrine of ‘eternal life’ signifies. Indeed, the author cites Jesus’ claim, reported in the book of Revelation, to be “the beginning and the end”; but, curiously, she does so to support her assessment of Christianity as linear.

Christianity also contains elements of the ‘place-based’ conception of time which the author attributes to indigenous religions. There is of course the Holy Land, with its prophetic significance, but numerous locations in the Bible are accorded a certain timeless quality in which events spanning the epochs somehow merge into a single pattern of experience.

I’m not saying that Christians all or always embrace a circular, spiral, or place-based view of time – and when they do, it is not always for the best. But we should remember that, contrary to the author’s implication, Christianity is not really a ‘Western’ religion at all. It began in the Middle East, of course, and – at the risk of introducing some cartographical confusion, but also in the hope of demonstrating the ironic crudeness of dividing the world into East and West – there now are about 50% more Christians in the ‘Global South’ than the ‘Global North’.

Anyway, worth a read.

The Theology of Smell

I love the sense of smell. Somehow, it seems to be more intimately connected to memory than the other senses. Apparently there's even research showing that the smell of cut grass reduces stress, likely because it elicits childhood nostalgia. Yet, paradoxically, it seems harder to vividly remember a smell at will than, say, a sound or a sight. There is something ephemeral yet eternal about the sense of smell.

When you think about it, this makes perfect sense (no pun intended). Smell was arguably our first ever sensation, for our very life was born (and reborn) when God breathed His Spirit into our nostrils. Even now, we can't live without inhaling, without inspiring - without smelling.  And it is no wonder, I think, that virtually all of my favourite smells pertain to the earth or 'earthiness' in general (see below). Since we were formed from the earth, it is plausible that the earth was the first thing we ever smelled.  If smell was our first ever sensation, and the earth was our first ever smell, then the smell of the earth was our first ever experience, our first ever memory.

Smell is therefore more than a sense, more than a sensation; somehow it embodies our union with life, the universe, and everything. Indeed, smells can even evoke memories that we never knew we had. For example, one of the reasons I moved next to the sea is because I love the smell - it reminds me of the time when the earth was without form and void, when the inscrutable chaos that holds everything together was all there was. I didn't grow up by the sea; but my Father did, so it's in my genes, in my Genesis.

Over time, I've compiled a list of my favourite smells. These are not necessarily the smells that I consider to be the most interesting; for example, I find the smell of petroleum utterly fascinating, but in a purely analytical, rather than sentimental, way. Conversely, there are a myriad of smells which I find lovely, but not sufficiently profound; I would place vanilla, lavender, and several other 'scented-candle' fragrances in this category, for instance.

Finally, I'd note that I could have equally compiled a list of my least-favourite smells, i.e. smells that I most hate. But, other than a few possible surprises, such as fried bacon and Axe body-spray, such a list would be disappointingly unremarkable, not to mention needlessly unpleasant.

So, here they are - my favourite smells, ranked in order of favouriteness. (I will of course add to the list as I encounter new and forgotten smells.) For each smell, I've also added a list of Biblical word associations (to which I also reverse the right to add).

1) The earth before it rains; the earth while it rains; the earth after it rains. Associations: out of the dust; the early and the latter; Highways to Zion.

2) The cool, damp smell at the end of a hot summer day; the cool, damp smell of the forest. Associations: it was good; the shadow of the Almighty; we are indeed His offspring.

3) Coffee; cardamom; cocoa. Associations: blessed are those; the earth is the Lord's; see how He loved him.

4) Chopped wood; burning wood; burnt wood. Associations: dwelt among us; I will be with you; God will provide.

5) Freshly cut grass; freshly baked anything. Associations: all things new; I shall not want; the healing of the nations.

6) The sea. Associations: in the beginning; deep calls to deep; You are there.

The Bible equates breath with spirit - the very ruach of God, the very pneuma by which all things live and move and have their being. Insofar as smell is related to breath, it is therefore essentially spiritual. But then, at the end of the day, I suppose everything is.

Sunday-School Christianity: Taking off our Training Wheels

I can still remember the first time I rode a bike without training wheels. At first, it was frightening - I had to trust that, as long as I kept pedalling, the bike would stay upright. I had seen others do it, but it still seemed like such an impossible feat. But once I got going, I never looked back. Riding a bike suddenly become not only fun, but also useful - I could actually get places!

I think that our Christian faith sometimes works like that. Take the Old Testament Law, for example. In Galatians 3:24-25, Paul tells us that "the Law was our guardian until Christ came, in order that we might be justified by faith. But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian...". The Law, in other words, acted as set of training wheels. Its purpose was to 'train' us in proper conduct ('guardian' is alternately translated 'teacher' or 'tutor') and to make us respect the actual laws that govern the universe (gravity/God). When God Himself came to show us how to live, it became redundant. 

In fact, as Paul elaborates in several letters, it became a hindrance (e.g. Romans 7). Clinging to the Law when we already have Christ would be like insisting on using training wheels even after you've learned how to ride without them - you would be unnecessarily constrained. Paul therefore exhorts his readers to cast off the shackles of the Law and live in the freedom of Christ. As for Gentile believers, who bypassed the Law and went straight into free-style, the apostles gave them a condensed version of Law just to make sure they didn't hurt themselves (Acts 15).

Taking the analogy further, training wheels only really work on flat, smooth ground. When you start to navigate uneven terrain, they may actually destabilise you, because they prevent you from adjusting the angle of your bike to align with the real force of gravity (i.e. God). When Jesus healed on the Sabbath, for example, He was actually staying more 'upright' than the Pharisees who accused him of breaking the Law (e.g. Matthew 12; Mark 3; Luke 6, 13-14; John 9). Rather than obsessing with the letter of the Law, He lived by its spirit - which he helpfully spells out for us in Matthew 7:12/22:40 -  and thus obeyed its real lesson.

Unfortunately, the kind of inhibiting, destabilising legalism exhibited by the Pharisees persists in modern Christianity. For example, I've written elsewhere about a simplistic, Sunday-School formula of salvation, whereby Christians go to Heaven when they die, leaving the Earth behind to live forever. While this may be a handy way of capturing some important truths, and is therefore useful for teaching children or new believers, the truth is actually that Heaven comes to Earth. If we refuse to discard the training-wheel doctrine, we therefore deprive ourselves of living in new dimensions of faith, in which the Kingdom of Heaven can be here and now (Matthew 6:9-13; Luke 17:21). What is more, we may be inclined to treat the Earth with neglect or even contempt, thus acting, like the Pharisees, in a way that is completely antithetical to the Gospel.

To be clear, I am emphatically not suggesting that we disregard the Bible or question its core doctrines, which are as indispensable as the bicycle's frame. However, we should always be digging deeper, moving from "milk" to "meat" (Hebrews 5:11-6:3; 1 Corinthians 3:2). Paradoxically, it takes faith to reconsider one's faith - but if we don't, we'll be stuck with a set of rusty, squeaky old training wheels.

The Purpose of Mystery: Letting the Bible Read Us

Theologically conservative Christians often give the impression that the Bible is completely uncontroversial, that the entirety of its truth can be unambiguously comprehended. At the extreme, the Christian faith is reduced to a list of unequivocal, categorical doctrines - accept them and you're in, doubt them and you're out. It may seem strange, then, that I've learned more from such folk about the mystery of the Bible than I have from anyone else.

The resolution of this paradox, I think, lies in the conservative approach to scripture. Whereas liberal believers are disposed to conflate mystery with relative truth, using it as a license to stray into erroneous territory, the conservative approach demands Biblical precision. By the same token however, if you really take the Bible seriously, you are confronted inescapably with mystery. The result is a difficult, beautiful, and authentic tension whereby we accept the Word as both inerrant and enigmatic.

To be sure, theological conservatives are inclined to sidestep this tension with apologetic acrobatics. While there is certainly a place for this kind of philosophy - as rational beings, we do have an urge to resolve conundrums, and as believers, we are called to defend to our faith against worldly argumentation (e.g. 1 Peter 3:15) - I would suggest it suffers from two inherent weaknesses.

Firstly, there are some mysteries that are explicitly identified as such in the Bible, and therefore cannot be 'explained away'. Considering the conservative fixation with systematic eschatology, perhaps the most pertinent example is found in Acts 1:7, where Jesus tells the apostles: "It is not for you to know times or seasons that the Father has fixed by His own authority." In Matthew 24:36 (emphasis added), he goes further, relating to His disciples: "But concerning that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father only." A significant amount of scripture is dedicated to the "day and hour" and "times and seasons" in question - namely, Jesus' own return - and yet we are told in no uncertain terms that it is essentially inscrutable!

Secondly, even when there is a way to escape a mystery, it might not behoove us to do so. The presence of mystery raises the question of why it is there in the first place; if we truly believe that all scripture is "God-breathed and useful" (2 Timothy 3:16), we must believe that inconvenient, incongruous, and seemingly incomprehensible scriptures are there for a reason other than to be 'explained away'. As I have suggested elsewhere, such passages can reveal higher truths, expose false dichotomies, and speak to the paradoxical nature of our day-to-day experience - precisely thanks to their mysteriousness.

The parables of Jesus are an especially relevant example. One would expect a parable to be used in order to make a truth easier to understand, yet Jesus tells us that their purpose is to conceal the truth, to ensure that only those who truly seek the truth will find it (e.g. Matthew 13:11-13). To truly seek the truth requires faith - faith to subject our beliefs, including our theology, to the scrutiny of scripture. This in turn requires humility, since we must never be so haughty to claim that we 'already know' what the Bible says. Only then can we 'let the Bible read us', as my theologically conservative pastor used to say.

Psychologists, philosophers, literary critics, and sociologists would tell you that this is impossible: not only do we have unconscious biases, they would aver, but meaning is itself subjective, a matter of a perspective and interpretation. Impossible for man, certainly; but certainly not for God (Luke 18:27; Colossians 1:17; cf. 1 Peter 1:20-21), whose Spirit we have received. With the Spirit, we can know the unknowable; but that requires us to set aside our earthly mode of understanding and accept that spiritual wisdom is "hidden in a mystery" (1 Corinthians 2:10-16). I, for one, am grateful that it is.

When Heaven Comes to Earth

In a previous post, I argued that the Bible is essentially an account of Heaven coming to Earth. From Eden, to Jesus, to the New Jerusalem - from the indwelling of the Spirit in the Temple, to Its indwelling in man, to its indwelling in the whole world - the story of the Bible is one of the spiritual colliding, intermingling, and uniting with the physical. In light of this idea, I'd now like to evaluate two prevailing strands of theology, each of which fixates on either Heaven or Earth while neglecting, or even disdaining, the other.

According to the first worldview, our souls and/or spirits will one day be evacuated from this temporary nuisance called Earth to live forever in Heaven. The Earth, in turn, will either burn up or fade into irrelevance. Contrary to this view, the picture painted in the Bible is one of Heaven coming to Earth - not us going to Heaven.

There are two parts to this distinction. The first is the direction of movement: Heaven to Earth, not Earth to Heaven. In fact, when the Earth was first created, it was not strictly separate from Heaven; only after mankind sinned did such a separation fully emerge. Even then, God promised that He would one day dwell on the Earth again - a promise which was maintained through His indwelling in the the tabernacle/temple and fulfilled in Jesus, who came from Heaven to Earth. In turn, Jesus promised that He would one day dwell on the Earth again - a promise which is guaranteed through His indwelling in us and will be fulfilled in the New Jerusalem, which will come from Heaven to Earth. This pattern of Heaven coming to Earth, of the two being reconciled - of God dwelling with us here - is the exact inverse of the common preoccupation with 'going to Heaven' and leaving the Earth behind.

The other part of the distinction is that the Bible includes all of the Earth in its saga of reconciliation, not just mankind. To be sure, people have a special place in creation; we are even apportioned our own creation story, in which we receive "the Breath of Life" (Genesis 1-2). Notice, though, that we are created for the Earth (specifically, to tend it) and from the Earth (literally, from the soil). Notice, too, that animals are also described as possessing the Breath of Life, for they, too, are conscious beings. As I've elaborated elsewhere, moreover, God's promise of reconciliation is imparted to all of creation, not just us. Mirroring the two creation stories, the Abrahamic covenant on which theology usually focuses was actually preceded by the Noahaic covenant; and while the latter pertained specifically to man, the former pertained to all of creation. As a result, not just us, but all the Earth eagerly awaits its reconciliation with Heaven (Romans 8). We have been made into New Creations (2 Corinthians 5:17), but we represent only the first fruits of the New Creation (James 1:18; Romans 8:23); for He is making all things new (Revelation 21:5).

The second group that I would like to address is at fault for trying to build Heaven on Earth - rather than seeing the Kingdom of Heaven come to Earth, which should be the goal (Matthew 6:19-13; Luke 11:2-4).

This view also has the direction of movement backwards, but misconstrues Heaven rather than Earth. Its principal omission is that Heaven is a Kingdom, and as such is established and governed by a King. The Earth is merely His footstool (Isaiah 66:1); and will it only become his throne when Heaven comes to Earth (Revelation 21; Ezekiel 40-48; Acts 17:24). Even Solomon, in all his wisdom, questioned whether the temple he was building could really contain the Kingdom, power, and glory of Heaven that we still ask would come to Earth (1 Kings 8:27; 2 Chronicles 2:6, 6:18; Matthew 6:13).

As illustrated by the fate of the Tower of Babel, trying to reach Heaven from Earth, or trying to fabricate the former on the latter, is utterly futile (Genesis 11; see also Psalm 127:1). It is also satanic, since Satan is the world's incumbent ruler (2 Corinthians 4:4; John 12:31). Indeed, the original sin - which Satan himself incited, and which precipitated the separation of Heaven and Earth - is the deception that we can be like God on our own terms, that we can set our own rules. It not the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, which Adam and Eve so fatefully chose, that represents Heaven on Earth; rather it is the Tree of Life, which was guarded by the cherubim after the Fall (Genesis 3:24) but which will be multiplied in the New Jerusalem, when Heaven and Earth are fully reconciled (Revelation 22:2).

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When Jacob envisioned angels ascending and descending on a ladder between Heaven and Earth, when the God of Heaven was standing on the Earth beside him, he called that place the House of God (Genesis 28:10-17). As symbolised by the very shape of the cross, this intersection between Heaven and Earth - between physical and spiritual, secular and sacred, natural and supernatural - is the overriding theme of the Bible. Because God became flesh and dwelt among us (John 1:14), we can become the House of God (Hebrews 3:6) and one day see that role extended to all of creation (Revelation 21-22).

So often, though, we are prone to missing half of the picture: either we are 'pie-in-the-sky' Christians obsessed with the end of the world, or we are 'head-in-the-sand' Christians pretending like the world is fine and dandy. The reality of the Bible invalidates both of these positions: Heaven and Earth are reconciled, but only by Heaven coming to Earth. It is only then that we can dwell in the House of God forever (Psalm 23:6).