JUDGEMENT AND JOY

I will not be posting a column during August, and the next column will be on Tuesday 7th September. It seems good to end the current series on a positive note, despite the seriousness of things happening around us. I am prompted to this by Habakkuk who struggled and grappled with the decadent state of his nation, and quivered at the threats God was making to it, and yet whose collected prophecies end on a note of joy. His words have resounded over many centuries now: “Though the fig tree does not bud and there are no grapes on the vine(marks of devastation and destruction)yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will be joyful in God my Saviour....He enables me to go on the heights”. It’s much more than a “grin and bear it” attitude to trouble; it’s an embracing of the antidote of joy.

Habakkuk had come to a point where the sources of human joy had dried up. Humanly there was very little to look forward to in the nation; quite the contrary. Pessimism and depression seemed the inevitable response to the natural situation. But there in front of him was the “joy of the Lord”. Like Nehemiah he found that the joy of the Lord was his strength.

What is the joy of the Lord? It is joy that springs from that assured knowledge that God is a living God, and that despite difficult present circumstances he offers a future, a hope and a present strength. It is a joy that comes from knowing that nothing can separate us from the love of God. There is a great deal of this sentiment in the prophetic writings: God’s love for his people, God’s love for the nations, God’s purposes of redemption, God’s present help and care.

It’s a joy, therefore, that is anchored in our faith in the love of God.
Perhaps one of the greatest expressions of this is to be found in another prophet, Zephaniah: “The lord your God is with you; he is mighty to save. He will take great delight in you, he will quiet you with his love, he will rejoice over you with singing”. Zeph. 3:17

May God fill you with such joy! Refresh yourself in Him!


Bob

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CULTURE AND CORRUPTION

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We might define “culture” as the artistic expression of the way in which a society or nation or civilisation thinks, believes and does things. It is a mixture of artistic ability (writing, composing, painting etc.) working on compelling contemporary interests and desires. I grew up thinking it to be also inherently allied to what was noble; culture stood for standards. I’ve had to learn how utterly wide of the mark that early thinking was. I’ve had to learn that no matter how intriguing the artistic element might be, the interests and desires to which it gives expression can be utterly debased; culture can be thoroughly corrupt. Our world does not seem to make that distinction. The Christian must.

The Times “Saturday Review” is typical of numerous places where the intelligentsia unwittingly (or quite deliberately!) reveal just how corrupt our culture is, and take delight in it. Characteristically the large front page headlines this week cried out, “We drank, we smoked, we slept around”. The article which followed featured a group of men engaged in the advertising business, one of who wrote a memoir of their life and behaviour. The memoir inspired a multi award-winning drama “Mad Men” of which the author of the memoir said, “I became an advisor on the show. Audiences were shocked by all the sex and alcohol and outrageous behaviour on the screen. But let me tell you, the reality was so much worse”. The Times article appeared because the memoir has just been republished. The Times felt it was worth a complete front page spread, followed by a second page spread, along with a 14 x 19inch photograph of the author. The article is an extraordinary mixture of obscenity, which provides the real show case for the article, and shrewdness of observation on the advertising world.

What it is really saying is, “Look! This is our culture; this is what we value; this is real living; this is life; let it titillate us!” This sort of article is by no means a “one off”; it is common place. Our culture is as clever and as decadent as ever the “Renaissance” and “Baroque” culture was at its worst, and, it ought to be said, as decadent as great areas of Greek and Roman “Classical” culture.

We should not be snared by the tempting word “culture”, still less by its modern obscenity. The latter is something for profound regret. Music, art, drama should express beauty, something it can never achieve if its subjects are lasciviousness and uncontrolled indulgence, which are the very antithesis of beauty.
Heaven is full of music and poetry, song, drama and endless creativity, but uncorrupted. Things there are “noble and of good report”.


Bob

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THE “UNIVERSAL WOUND”

The author of a recent newspaper article discussing how music can help a sick mind made the following statement; “To speak to us, artists must connect their private wounds with the fundamental, universal wound that comes from the human condition: that of having been born for insufficient reason and consequently fated to die after a lifetime of incomplete meaning”. Here is an intellectual voicing the deep malaise of our times, a pessimism that says that there is no meaning in our birth and no meaning in our lives. It springs directly from a complete denial of the person of a living God. That is where the denial of God always leads to - a blank wall of hopelessness. The elegance of his words does nothing to help his deep pessimism. Perhaps music might be made to echo that pessimism and perhaps that may be therapeutic to a point, but it can, of course never be a cure for pessimism – it may actually deepen it!
The modern intellectual world, and especially those intellectuals whose voice is heard in the media, is rife with such unbelief. Such unbelief does not simply affect their outlook, it affects behaviour. It is only a revelation of a God who in his very essence is holy and righteous that can keep humanity from falling lower and lower in both its understanding and its observance of moral obligation. Man without God is infinitely more adrift in this world than the intellectuals can conceive: he is blind and on course for disaster.
The denial of God, or the form it mostly takes in our society, the attitude that God is simply irrelevant to modern living, is the great curse of our times. The last fifty years have seen this attitude grow enormously (despite some real Christian growth), not only among the intellectuals but in society at large. The pessimism is felt deeply but for many is buried by the consumerism of “eat, drink and be merry …” and the moral collapse is blatantly obvious. That is why society is also blind and on course for disaster.
We have to be faithful to the uttermost in our witness that “the fundamental wound that comes with the human condition” is the wound of sin, but that God has the cure and the healing balm in the life and sacrifice of Jesus. There is simply no healing, no optimism, no hope, no future, no eternity outside of God, but with him there is an abundance of all these things.


Bob

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