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Last Sunday night I preached on the Good Samaritan. My final point was that the only sustainable motivation for loving our neighbours is an understanding of grace as opposed to morality.
I said that morality is used by secular society as well as every major religion to get its followers to do good deeds to those who are poor. Morality is essentially this: I am a good person if I do good deeds and I will therefore be worthy to receive an award. In religion it often manifests itself in: you must give to the poor because the bible commands it or the Koran commands it or the Torah commands it. If you do this, you will be rewarded by going to heaven; if you don’t do this you should feel guilty!
I stated that morality is a weak motivator; it doesn’t take people where Jesus wants them to go because it is essentially a selfish motivation. If I do good things then I will get a good reward, but if doing good things causes me to sacrifice then I will not do it because the reward doesn’t seem to be worth it. You see this clearly in the Priest and the Levite who show us how far morality can take you: not far enough. Morality is a weak motivation for mercy.
I then went on to say that experience of grace is the only motivation; Jesus puts the law expert (and us) into the story as the beaten Jew lying on the road being aided by our enemy who had no obligation to help us. A real understanding and experience of this in the saving work of Jesus is the only motivation for grace because it is not selfish but responsive.
Anyway that is all preamble to my current thought that I wanted to share with you.
(AAP: Alan Porritt)
I was thinking about how to illustrate this and I didn’t come up with anything decent for the night but since then I have had the thought that maybe the weakness of morality brought down an Australian Prime Minister!
I am speaking of course of Kevin Rudd who famously called climate change “the greatest moral challenge of our time!” The implication being that if you were a moral person – a progressive person, a good person, then you would care about climate change and vote for him. Which Australia did in the Ruddslide that was the 2007 election.
But morality is a essentially a selfish motivation and so once the cost became real, once the implications of sacrifice came home, once businesses didn’t want to pay for a price on carbon; the reward wasn’t worth it and it fell by the wayside. We couldn’t even take the first step towards conquering the greatest moral challenge of our time. Morality is weak in the face of sacrifice. Now neither party has a real policy on climate change.
I am not saying that everyone in Australia needs to become a Christian for us to do something about climate change (indeed that might even be a step backwards considering that the Christian Democrat Party for example are self confessed ‘agnostics’ when it comes to climate change, are against the Kyoto Protocol, against a prince on carbon (ETS) and refuse to do anything that will have a negative economic consequence).
The reality is that we are stuck in a way of life that has a large negative environmental impact, if we want to change that then it is going to mean sacrifice. Calling something the greatest moral challenge of our time and appealing to morality is not going to work.
But then again a citizen’s assembly of 150 randomly selected people isn’t going to work either.
Anyway, what do you think?
I posted up a quote yesterday from Robert Murray M’Cheyne. I was reminded by Sheryl of this other quote by M’Cheyne. Again this was said to his congregation while preaching on the Sheep and the Goats in Matthew 25.
“I fear that there are some Christians among you to whom Christ can not say “come thou blessed… inherit the kingdom”.
You heave a sigh, perhaps, at a distance
Your haughty dwellings rise in the midst of thousands who have scarce a fire to warm themselves at, and have but little clothing to keep out the biting frost; and yet you never darkened their door.You heave a sigh, perhaps, at a distance; but you do not visit them. Ah! My dear friends! I am concerned for the poor but more for you. I know not what Christ will say to you in that great day…I fear that there are many hearing me who may now know well that they are not Christians because they do not love to give. To give largely and liberally, not grudgingly, desires a new heart. An old heart would rather part with its lifeblood than with its money. Oh my friends! Enjoy you money; make the most of it; give none away; enjoy it now, for I can tell you, you will be beggars throughout eternity”
-Robert Murray M’Cheyne
If we are followers of Jesus then we must be people who seek to do justice and restore shalom in people’s lives. Justice is not an optional extra for christians, it is an integral part of our christian life that we cannot do without. If we relegate justice to being an ‘optional extra’ in our life then there is certainly much to fear when Christ returns.
Robert Murray M'Cheyne
This is a quote that I read a few weeks ago by a guy called Robert Murray M’Cheyne. He is a Scottish Presbyterian from about 200 odd years ago. He is the guy who designed the ‘read the bible in a year’ program that is so popular today. He was a preacher who was well known for his commitment to daily bible reading, evangelism and holiness. Anyway he wrote this about giving to the poor as an expression of the outworking of the grace we have been given in Christ.
“Now dear Christians, some of you pray night and day to be branches of the true vine, you pray to be made all over in the image of Christ, if so you must be like him in giving, though he was rich yet for our sakes he became poor.
Objection: my money is my own. Answer: well Christ might have said my blood is my own and my life is my own, then where should you have been. Objection: the poor are undeserving. Answer: well Christ might have said, ‘these are wicked rebels, shall I lay down my life for these? Or shall I give to the good angels, the deserving poor?’ But no, he left the 99 and came after the lost; he gave his blood for the undeserving. Objection: well if I give my charity the poor may abuse it. Answer: Christ might have said the same thing, yea with far greater truth, Christ knew that thousands would trample his blood under their feet, that most would despise it, that many would make it an excuse for sinning more and yet he gave his own blood. My dear Christians if you would be like Christ, give much, give often, give freely to the vile and the poor, the thankless and the undeserving. Christ is glorious and happy and so will you be. It is not your money I want but your happiness, remember his own word: it is more happy, more blessed, to give than to receive.”
- Robert Murray M’Cheyne
A Faith that was Grounded in what God had done
Verses 9-11 of this passage is sometimes called Rahab’s confession. In this confession we see that real faith is always grounded in what God has done. Rahab had faith in God because she knew what God had done for the Israelites, how he delivered them from their slavery to Pharaoh and how he defeated their enemies in the desert. Rahab didn’t just wake up one morning and decide to follow God, rather she had heard what God had done and from these things she knew that there is only one God in heaven above and on Earth below.
If you are in a relationship – a special friend type relationship, then you’ll know that you didn’t fall in love with the other person by just sighing and oohing and ahhing as you looked into each others eyes. Rather you talked and communicated and found out about each other – your pasts, your character your likes and dislikes etc. The notion of love at merely first sight is ridiculous; romance has its basis in knowledge! So too is the case with faith, Rahab’s faith was not just a warm cosy feeling towards God, her faith was a trust based on knowledge of what God had done.
Friends we like Rahab have heard how God has delivered his people and brought judgment to his enemies. We ground our faith in the real and true historical Jesus who died and rose again. Our faith is not just a vague belief that there is a God and that the bible is true so therefore we should live good lives and be kind to people. Nor is it just a warm cosy feeling we get when we hear that God loves us that helps us get through the tough times. No we have heard that God raised this Jesus from the dead showing to the entire world that this Jesus is both Lord and Christ! We know from this that he is alive today and that he has conquered death and sin and that we share in this victory. And we know that when we die we will not descend to the dead but will live forever with Christ in glory.
We know this because our faith, like Rahab’s faith, is grounded in what God has done.
I saw a guy with this T-Shirt while walking around Newtown yesterday. It has had me quietly chuckling to myself all yesterday and today!
I thought I would share it with you so you too can have a good chuckle.
he he he he he
Its now time for our weekly segment here at Micaiah Sells Out called:
“4 quick questions and 1 strange one with…”
Our next ”4 Quick Questions and 1 Strange one with…” is with Laura Southam. Laura is currently doing her honours year in classical Hebrew at Sydney University, specifically looking at the book of Lamentations and Lament Psalms generally. Laura is also very involved with the EU, she has previously served as Equip Senior Student, Arts Faculty Leader and is currently just about to finish up a year serving as the Female Vice President. Laura is the author of a blog where she shares some insights into Lamentations and Lament Psalms as she continues to work on her thesis. Laura lives and goes to church in Campbelltown and is full of ‘C-town Pride’, she also somehow manages to finds time in her very busy life to be a keen watcher of good TV shows like the West Wing and Arrested Development!
Laura Southam
1. Laura, you have been a keen student of Classical Hebrew for a few years and you are now doing an honours thesis in Classical Hebrew! How did you come to arrive at where you are now? Was it always your plan to be a classical Hebrew buff?
Well I started my time at Uni doing a Primary Ed degree, but after about two and a half years I realised I didn’t want to keep on with that, either in the present or for the future, but rather was very keen on being able to do more Arts subjects. I had already done some Modern History units, so when I changed to do a B.A. I took on more of them with the intention of my major. The Hebrew just came into the picture as a fluke really, as I decided if I was going to do an Arts degree I might as well do what I was interested in, and I was deciding whether to take up Greek or Hebrew and I just had a friend who’d done Classical Hebrew and strongly recommended it to me so I gave it a go!
Hebrew has been amazing to study, I think in large part that is due to the way in which USyd runs its courses – over eight semesters of studying Classical Hebrew the biggest class I was ever a part of had seven people in it! Of course, the uni itself couldn’t let classes that small run, so the department is funded externally to a very large degree by individuals and groups in the community who are concerned to see this knowledge passed on, who want to support research etc. But the department is really friendly, the teachers are all great, and come from really diverse backgrounds, and everyone is very supportive and encouraging.
So I had really positive experiences in my first couple of years of study, my teachers were great, and I learnt so much studying the Bible, I just couldn’t stop myself. I kept going with a major in Modern History (which by the end I was hating so much! ha ha. I really wished by the end that I had done Ancient History), but then took up Classical Hebrew for a second major as well. That meant also doing some Biblical Studies subjects and two years of Aramaic. And now I have the joy of doing Honours!
2. You are doing a thesis on lamentations and lament psalms generally. What have you learnt so far that you think would be helpful or interesting to an average Sydney Christian?
I think the thing that confronts me, and has done through my few years of Hebrew study, is just how awesome God is, and I am shaken from my apathy or forgetfulness to be reminded how He has worked amazingly in the world through history, and in the lives of his people. I think something laments generally do in this context is highlight a conviction of the promises of God and His character seen in his faithfulness to them, because as the psalmists cry out, it is because their framework based on their idea of God is being shaken. That brings them to repentance, they are encouraged to wait and endure, and often it means a return to praise God after reflecting on who He has revealed himself to be. The point being – in order to be able to cope, to understand a situation, to be able to wait and have confidence – it hinges on the relationship with God. The language in laments is often so extreme to our ears I think, but if we come to the words afresh we ought to be struck by the fact that the palmists are overwrought with the desire to know and be assured of who God is, and how he feels about them.
What this teaches me is that it is important for us to have a framework whereby the thing we care about most is to know God, and to know where we stand with him. As people living on this side of the Jesus’ death and resurrection, who have now received God’s Spirit, we have a clear answer to this, but we should keep reflecting on what we know and do and feel in light of this truth. Amidst great joy, real banality, and genuine suffering and despair, this stuff is the thing that matters and gives meaning in life.
3. Is there a tension between the times when you read the Bible as a scholar/critic and the times when you read the bible as a Child of God?
I’ve had to deal with this question a bit throughout my very short time of study. When I first started out I was just so plain surprised at the magnitude of scholarship that existed on the Bible and related texts that had no connection to Judeo-Christian communities or traditions, etc. That makes it hard because often their are scholars who know the Bible so so well (I mean, these people are freaks!), far better than a church pastor or theological student – yet they have no concern for what I personally understand as the main point of the text as a whole. It was very confronting to me to see people be able to know the Bible so well and yet not understand what I see as the whole point of having it!
Also, as I come to the text of the Christian Bible as a whole with the conviction that it is God-breathed, inspired, authoritative, etc., it has implications for the method by which I can read it. For scholars who do not hold regard for a concept of canon, or even for progressive revelation, it can be more difficult to make sense of some ideas that come out in just one particular section of a book. Without wider Biblical context, it is certainly harder to understand just what some Biblical passages are talking about!
You also come into contact with a wide array of approaches for dealing with the text, as by no means is the department at a secular uni intending to study these texts within a Christian framework. It means not being afraid to engage with what others say, in order to decide what is good and insightful, and what is nonsense altogether (and how to say so politely).
Whilst mentioning those difficulties though, I have found my studies in Classical Hebrew immensely helpful as a Christian! Partly I just wasn’t very literate in the Old Testament prior to my uni studies (to my shame), and a large part of the curriculum is centered around reading the Hebrew of the Biblical text. I think it can be easy for Christian communities to feel not very ‘at home’ in the Old Testament, as though you need some secret key to crack its code. And whilst it is set in a context very foreign from ours, just reading it helps you understand it! There is a lot of it there, but it is fantastic to read and I have come to enjoy that a lot. Also within the Old Testament there is an amazingly rich diversity of text types, and so it’s been very useful for me in my studies to learn how to read those literary genres well. Sometimes people think it sounds like very dry stuff when I tell them about it, but in truth it has only made the text seem more alive and vibrant and intense. So good!
Also in terms of getting to understand the Old Testament more, I think I have been been humbled to grow in appreciation of Jesus Christ. That He came as a human to dwell amongst us, and just to deal with the mess we were in. After persistent failure of humanity to live rightly before, and especially to love God, He gave himself in such a breathtaking way. And also outrageously. The more I study some of the history surrounding the Old Testament texts as well (another great thing about the units at USyd), I come to see how outrageous Jesus’ claims really were when he was on earth, and how he upset so many people because he just completely exploded their framework of what it meant to know and be in relationship with the true God. Yet the great grace and mercy of God is seen so ultimately in Christ. So yes, I am humbled in my own attitude towards Jesus constantly, to remember how helpless I am without him, and how world-changing is the thing He did.
Finally, I am really convinced that there is great benefit to have Christian scholars in the field (and by field I really mean fields – some of this stuff gets incredibly specific but you could spend your whole life time dealing with it!) of Hebrew and Biblical Studies, where people are grappling with the Scriptures, and some even to the point of deducing an understanding of God. Christians should most certainly be in this conversation! It definitely requires some serious critical thinking to measure what of the scholarship is useful for understanding God’s word and letting it change us, and what is unhelpful and not faithful to the texts themselves. But, let us not be put off by the hard work of it, especially since by it we may encourage people as they read God’s word, and help them enjoy that more, as well as being able to engage with non-Christian scholars about the scriptures. Otherwise there is a serious risk that the wider scholarly community will come to see Christians as claiming belief in a text they will not allowed questioned or explored. So, for any budding Biblical or linguistic scholars out there – go for it! (It is not for all though, and let me assure you the community is pretty darn nerdy 
).
4. The Old Testament is full of strange stories that seem unnecessarily violent or just plain strange! Lamentations is a good example of this. Do you have any thoughts about how to understand passages that are unnecessarily violent or just plain strange?
Hmmm. Well I think firstly, they are always there to make a point, and so should not be glossed over. When we come to read something and think “that doesn’t seem normal” – it probably isn’t!
I don’t really have a good answer in terms of a framework for how to understand every passage that might fall under this banner, but perhaps a few reflections…
- Sometimes the Old Testament texts, whether in narrative form or not, use pinnacle moments in history to demonstrate outworking of God’s covenant, etc – those pinnacle moments can take place in the context of warfare.
- Often references that seem strange or foreign to us indicate that we lack some contextual knowledge. My favourite example of this of late: Lam 3:10 ‘Like a bear lying in wait, like a lion in hiding…’ – in Ancient Near Eastern Warfare, settlements would be in large part evacuated, and bear and lions who usually dwelt in the surrounding countryside and wilderness would enter the empty settlement and take up residence in the houses which were just like caves or dens pretty much. And so when people were able to return, they could well meet a lion waiting for them in their house. That amazed me when I found out.
- Violence is bad, but the Old Testament also severely condemns oppression on the vulnerable and the ‘alien’ or outsider and corruption of the powers-that-be (ie the monarch or leaders at the temple). I take the overall message to be that all these forms of non-love towards one another are problems that just won’t go away and are greatly displeasing and heart-aching to God.
Hmmm… didn’t really answer the question.
5. “Even jackals offer their breasts to nurse their young, but my people have become heartless like ostriches in the desert”
Lamentations 4:3 is a great verse. As a Lamentations expert could you please shed some light on the meaning of the verse for us?
It is a great verse! Well spotted Jeremy. The obvious meaning is that ostriches are slack, especially in the desert.
If you were interested in a slightly more thoughtful consideration, I think the laments in Lamentations are really summed up in the opening word of the book, which means (in a despairing kind of way) ‘how??’ The question is out there – if we are God’s people, how can He have let this happen? How can things ever be restored? How have we managed to fall this far? How can we have turned from the destiny we thought was ours? It’s pretty severe stuff, and the psalmist uses lots of very graphic images throughout the book as a whole, including warfare and survival images. One image that recurs is about breasts (purely in the sense of a source of nourishment for the vulnerable and weak – ie babies) as a symbol of the means and the desire to care and provide for. Women who do not or cannot suckle their babies; and babies pouring out their lives into their mothers’ breast, when really it is there they should be getting nourishment for life from, etc. It’s a small picture of a big problem – things are so desolate the future generations are dying as children. How can God’s covenant be fulfilled if the Israelites are dying? It’s heavy stuff.
Today I had to read through the gigantic ‘Adoption Act 2000: No 75′. It is boring and tedious and very thorough. I am doing it for a family who have expressed interest in adopting a young child that they are caring for. After reading the Adoption Act I do not envy the road they are about to travel, it will be long, hard, tireing and expensive. The NSW State government makes very few things easy, but adoption is one of those things that is especially hard!
But why make adoption so hard? Its a good thing isn’t it… is anyone really against people adopting kids that they’re caring for, it just makes sense.
Well adoption is so hard, because adoption is a very big deal, and it is a very big deal because it is a complete new identity for the child being adopted: This child is now wholly the child of their adoptive parents, the child usually takes on the adoptive parent’s surname and if the adoptive parents have any other kids then they become ‘whole blood siblings’ to the child. The decision is a big deal because it changes who the child is.
Then, cap it off, to make it certain, the child is printed a new birth certificate. Adoption is a big deal.
The road to get there is long and tough, but the result is something truly amazing.
The Bible talks about us as being adopted by God. “In love he predestined us to be adopted as his children through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will— to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he loves.” (Ephesians 1:4b-6)
God, in accordance to his pleasure and will desired to adopt us. Not through the NSW courts, no he adopted us by forsaking his own son to die on a cross for the sins that we commited. Through the cross has God secured our adoption into his family…
We are now wholly the children of God, we have taken on the name of God, God’s son Jesus, raised from the dead is now not only our King, but our whole blood brother!
Finally, we are not simply given a new birth certificate, we are given a new birth, we have a new life, a new beginning, we start afresh. If you are in Christ, you are truly born again as a child of God.
To the praise of his glorious grace…
