War is hell 2

My family and I just watched a DVD, My Brother Jack, based on a classic Australian novel by George Johnston. I read the novel when I was around 20 and found this adaptation as a TV mini-series enthralling.

It describes the story of the author's struggle into adulthood, in suburban Melbourne between the world wars. As David Meredith, he grows up with an abusive father, who is tormented by his WWI experience, including exposure to mustard gas. The whole story is reflected through the uncertain David's relationship with his older confident brother.

It chronicle's David's passion and struggle to be a writer and eventual success as a journalist and then war-time correspondent and author. But, this is against the backdrop of his failing marriage and strains with his parents and brothers.

The movie captures well the influence of close family relationships, for better and for worse. And the incredible damage that war does, long after the shooting stops....

Searching for understanding

In trying to understand the relationship between science (indeed all human knowledge) and the Bible, Job 28 is helpful. Job has encountered great personal suffering and his friends eagerly share with him their wisdom, which crudely speaking seems to be based on the equation that suffering is directly proportional to ones sin (or inversely proportional to personal integrity).

In chapter 27, Job defends his personal integrity. In Job 28, he considers man's search high and low in the material world to find wisdom and true understanding.

¹²"But where shall wisdom be found?
And where is the place of understanding?
¹³Man does not know its worth,
and it is not found in the land of the living.
¹⁴The deep says, 'It is not in me,'
and the sea says, 'It is not with me.'

¹⁵It cannot be bought for gold, ....

²³"God understands the way to it,
and he knows its place....

²⁸And he said to man,'Behold, the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom,
and to turn away from evil is understanding.'"

Man's search will reveal many mysteries about the material world but it will not reveal the true meaning of life. In particular, it will not reveal answers to the deep questions that Job asks about the meaning and significance of his personal suffering. Indeed, the best place to find that is in the suffering of Jesus. 1 Corinthians 1:18-31 contrasts that wisdom in weakness to the power and strength of the world.

Our humiliation of God

To mark Easter, last night my family watched The Passion of Christ movie produced by Mel Gibson. This is the second time I have seen it. Both times I have been reluctant to watch it, probably because of its graphic depiction of the violence. Yet both times I have been glad I have watched it. Both times, I must thank my wife for her eagerness to watch it.

A few things I appreciate about the movie are the depictions of:

• the spiritual battle of Jesus, both in the Garden and as he goes to the cross
• the inner torment of Judas
• Mary's grief as she watches her son tortured
• the anger and self-righteous confidence of the religious leaders
• the brutality of the Roman rule of Judea
• Pilate's inner struggle to act justly, to maintain stability, and listen to his wife
• the complete humiliation of Jesus (and God)
• the mocking of Jesus by the crowds

The movie confronts the viewer to ask: which character in the drama am I?

Struggling with the dialectic of faith and works

This morning my son and I read the second Faith chapter in C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity. He considers our struggle to understand the relative role of faith in Christ and our own efforts in living as a Christian. I found the following passages particularly helpful:

Christians have often disputed as to whether what leads the Christian home is good actions, or Faith in Christ. I have no right really to speak on such a difficult question, but it does seem to me like asking which blade in a pair of scissors is most necessary. A serious moral effort is the only thing that will bring you to the point where you throw up the sponge. Faith in Christ is the only thing to save you from despair at that point: and out of that Faith in Him good actions must inevitably come....

The Bible really seems to clinch the matter when it puts. the two things together into one amazing sentence. The first half is, 'Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling'- which looks as if everything depended on us and our good actions: but the second half goes on, 'For it is God who worketh in you'- which looks as if God did everything and we nothing. I am afraid that is the sort of thing we come up against in Christianity. I am puzzled, but I am not surprised. You see, we are now trying to understand, and to separate into watertight compartments, what exactly God does and what man does when God and man are working together. And, of course, we begin by thinking it is like two men working together, so that you could say, 'He did this bit and I did that.' But this way of thinking breaks down. God is not like that. He is inside you as well as outside: even if we could understand who did what, I do not think human language could properly express it. In the attempt to express it different Churches say different things. But you will find that even those who insist most strongly on the importance of good actions tell you need Faith; and even those who insist most strongly on Faith tell you to do good actions. At any rate that is as far as I can go.

The Bible verse Lewis is quoting is Phillipians 2:11-13. Until now I had not appreciated the logical tension (or dialectic) inherent in that verse.

There is no Good Friday without Easter!

Since it is Good Friday I read the chapter, "Was crucified, Dead, and Buried, He descended into Hell," from Karl Barth's Dogmatics in Outline [an exposition of the Apostle's Creed]. His summary is

In the death of Jesus Christ God has humiliated Himself and rendered Himself up, in order to accomplish His law upon sinful man by taking his place and thus once for all removing from him to Himself the curse that affects him, the punishment he deserves, the past he is hurrying to meet, the abandonment into which he has fallen.

Barth stresses the importance of not separating Good Friday and Easter, described as theologia crucis and theologia gloria. There is a tendency to gravitate more towards one than the other.

But we ought not to erect and fix any opposition. ... there is no Easter without Good Friday, but equally certainly there is no Good Friday without Easter!

New DVD about science and Christianity

The Centre for Public Christianity just sent me a copy of a new DVD God Science which features interviews with scientists, philosophers, and historians about the relationship between science and faith. A few of the interviews can be seen online here.

On the DVD, I am interviewed about the concept of emergence in science and theology.

What is the Bible clear about?

The Bible is not clear about everything (diet, politics, science, free will vs. pre-destination, baptism, church government, ....)

But it is VERY clear about who God is, who we are, and how we can be in a covenantal relationship with God through Jesus. I found this statement (partly based on 2 Timothy 3:16) in the Westminster Confession of Faith helpful:

VII. All things in Scripture are not alike plain in themselves, nor alike clear unto all; yet those things which are necessary to be known, believed, and observed, for salvation, are so clearly propounded and opened in some place of Scripture or other, that not only the learned, but the unlearned, in a due use of the ordinary means, may attain unto a sufficient understanding of them.