CHRISTIANITY AND WORLD PEACE

It will never be possible for Christians for the sake of peace to compromise their proclamation of a resurrected Lord Jesus who was crucified for the forgiveness of sin. Neither can they compromise their commitment to a godly life lived in the power of the Holy Spirit and walking in the commandments of God. Indeed Jesus spoke plainly of the strife that such faith would bring and the need to face persecution.

However, one thing stands out very clearly in the teaching of Jesus; whilst we may be persecuted and suffer violence from others, whether political or religious, our calling can never be one of violence. It is totally contrary to the spirit of genuine Christianity to advance its cause in that manner. Wherever that may have been done in the past it has always been an offence to the gospel. It will have happened usually because some political force or person has hijacked and used Christianity for its own worldly ends, or because Christians have sold out to political powers rather than curb them.

Three statements of Jesus in particular make this position of non-violence very evident. First, there was an occasion when Jesus went through a Samaritan village and was shunned by the villagers. The disciples wanted to call down fire on them (expressive of their own untutored and bitter religious hatred). Jesus rebuked them with the words, “You do not know what spirit you are of.” (Lk 9:51). Second, he taught, “Bless those who persecute you” (Matt 5:28). Third, he told Pilate, “My Kingdom is not of this world. If it were my servants would fight to prevent my arrest” (Jn. 18:36). With these statements Jesus flatly turned his back on violence and coercion.

Thus, whilst Jesus never compromised in what he preached nor mollified the warnings he gave to those who refused his offer of salvation, he also never threatened violence. There was nothing in his message that sought to dominate, no words or threats of physical violence for those who would not toe the line. That was not his “spirit”. He was proclaiming a Kingdom of love, and that demanded a totally voluntary response of heart, not a slavish response of fear. He required no savage punishment for anyone blaspheming him; on the contrary he died a criminal’s death on a cross for sinners.

This represents an absolutely fundamental principle that, as far as true Christianity is concerned, “religious” differences are not to be settled by the sword (or the gun). Jesus left people free to choose, even if they chose the false. They were then left with the consequences of their own choice. That is the way of the Kingdom. It is this principle that has to find its way into the world of religious differences in the modern world if we are to know peace. It is this principle that the disciples of Jesus must not only teach, but live out. This is the principle upon which alone true tolerance can be found. We are to live and let live, and allow God to be the judge.


The modern process of trying to blur the distinctives of religions is not a viable way forward to peace; adopting a position of tolerance such as is at the heart of the Christian faith is the only viable way, though one may question the ability of the human heart and of human religion to walk it!




Bob




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RAY OF HOPE?

I have recently read two separate articles in a leading reputable newspaper by columnists both of whom have raised the same question, “Why do the public want to ascribe moral traits to their heroes?” In other words, why is the public concerned about morality?


The question was prompted by the string of high profile sportsmen, particularly in the field of golf and football, who have been exposed in their lurid and persistent adulterous behaviour. There was something of a public surge of judgemental anger against such behaviour, and particularly over the blatant treatment of their wives; it was not acceptable behaviour; it was wrong. The anger and the reproach found expression is such vivid tabloid phrases as “love rat” and “love cheat” by which each culprit was bitingly described. Even though the glossy gossip magazines dropped on the stories like unclean vultures on carrion, the underlying condemnation was evident. Something much better was evidently expected in the character of such gifted people.


The first of the columnist I read clearly belonged to the “intelligentsia”. He openly declared that he simply could not understand why people should get upset about these antics. For him it meant that people simply had not yet grown up; they had not moved into the educated and enlightened modern world where people could be free in their behaviour. If I understand his argument aright he saw the outcry as retrogressive behaviour in our developing civilised culture.


The second columnist was a sports writer. He pointed out that these sportsmen had been given a “squeaky” clean image by those business companies who used their famous profile in their advertising. The public was taken in, and should have realised that they were just ordinary men. The public expected too much of their heroes. It was absurd to get upset. They needed to adjust their expectations and (presumably) take it rather more casually.



Actually there may well be a real ray of hope here. My answer to the question is that the response of the public to such behaviour seems to indicate that there is still a basic public moral conscience that is active. If that is true it is good news! I don’t think the public have been conned by the advertisers at all. There is a deep public feeling here that if you are going to be looked up to in any way, you have to back it up by your personal life. If as a person you are shown to be deceitful, unfaithful and promiscuous, then you don’t really deserve to be looked up to. It is certainly the established fact, as the advertisers have discovered to their cost, that if the pin-up star advertising your product gets tarnished then he (or she!) ceases to attract buyers for your product. That in itself indicates that moral misbehaviour produces a massive fall in public esteem. If there is, therefore, a public conscience still, then there is some hope for society, despite the avant guard intelligentsia. There is precious little conscience evident among the latter, for which the very word “conscience” is a dirty word.



What is surprising about this public conscience is that it should still exist in our world of visual and written media which peddles in the most coarse and repulsive manner all the adultery, affairs, promiscuity and pornography that it can lay its hands on, and which the same public are soaking in day after day. It is astonishing that the same public can see and read all this, and yet retain an underlying sense that this is wrong. Why is that? It is not because we are just slow in throwing off old shackles; it is because the God given sense of right and wrong is so fundamentally a part of us as human beings. Thank God for that – there is still something for the Holy Spirit to work on in bringing conviction of sin.



Conscience can be cauterised, of course, and it can be found so nullified in so many of the movers and shakers of our society, in those who lead and steer public opinion. They will always remain puzzled by the question, “Why do the public want to ascribe moral traits to their heroes?” I just thank God the public still do! Pray God that they may continue to do so.






Bob




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PENTECOST AND THE NATIONS

There was very little delay between the physical ascension of Jesus, with his assumption of all power and authority on the throne of God, and the outpouring of the Spirit at Pentecost – just ten days. His earthly ministry had been wonderful, but now Jesus launched his new ascended ministry, no longer a ministry confined only to the “lost sheep of the house of Israel”, but a world-wide ministry to all the nations. He launched not only his world vision, but also poured out the enabling Spirit by which it was to be achieved. Two thousand years later the vision remains and the Spirit continues to be outpoured. Jesus is as active as he ever has been; he continues to see the fruit of the “travail of his soul” at Calvary and is satisfied. And he will continue until the nations and this creation are fully restored.


There are a number of background strands to the Feast of Pentecost, one major one of which is that it marked the beginning of the wheat harvest. It was a harvest festival, and an ingathering of first fruits. This thought was very evident in Luke’s description of the event in the book of Acts, a fact not surprising considering that he himself, a Gentile, was part of the widespread harvest that was being reaped in his time, a harvest in which he himself in fact was a worker. When he heard from fellow Christians what had happened at Pentecost he was not slow to pick up its vast spiritual implications, and especially its inauguration of world mission, world harvest.


Luke makes the point very clearly that at Pentecost “there were staying in Jerusalem God-fearing Jews from every nation under heaven” (Acts 2:5). He emphasises the point by actually listing some of the prominent nations. The largest part his account of Pentecost in Acts 2 is then devoted to how three thousand of this great international throng were gathered into the Kingdom by Peter preaching in the power of the Spirit. Here was an astonishing in-gathering, a real show of spiritual first fruits being displayed in the Temple area. These converts were a great prophetic statement of what was to come among the nations.


Similarly Luke finds real prophetic significance in the way in which the group of disciples on whom the Spirit fell began to speak out in “other tongues”. Though they did not understand the tongues themselves, the “Jews from every nation” quickly recognised the tongues as the actual languages of the nations in which they had settled. Here was a scene where God was being praised in all the languages of the world. No greater prophetic act could be imagined to make the point that a harvest was to be reaped world-wide. The gift of tongues was never a random “ecstatic utterance”; it was always (and still remains) a major prophetic sign of a time when God would be praised in every tribe and nation.


Nothing of the chaos and judgements that engulf the world in which we live will prevent the process of ingathering and restoration which Pentecost inaugurated, for Jesus continues to reign. When the fullness of the Gentiles is gathered in the ascended Lord will himself bring things to a close. Even if the Western world succumbs to a flood of secularism or worse, even in the midst of that a harvest will be reaped.


Our great calling at this time is to be caught up both in the vision of Pentecost and its empowerment.

Bob




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