“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of light, it was the season of darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair.”
How could it have happened? How is it that the foresight of the Simpsons in the year 2000 could have come to pass? The reality however is that Donald Trump is president of the USA, but this is NOT a political blog. What I want to do, is to look beyond the surface of the events that surround us be they global ones or personal ones and ask some questions about how the world works.
The world in which we live seems so confused that
the quote from Charles Dickens seemed a good place to start.
I have friends who, I am sure, would say ‘it is God’s will Donald Trump is president of the USA; but I have also read Christian commentators in the USA who would say “the electorate put him there – not God”. At the political level I might be able to dismiss Trump but the question of how the world world works is profoundly important. Is everything that happens the result of some unseen manipulation, or the result of random complex interaction?
At a personal level, as someone involved in pastoral work, my understanding of how the world works affects what I say to the people I am praying with. How should I respond to someone who asks “why did God take my child”? Over the years, and by the way I am 63, have 4 children and 8 grandchildren, I have heard people say “God knows what he is doing” or “it must be for the best, we just can’t see God’s plan at the moment”.
Are such statements true and what does the bible have to say about how God ‘runs’ the universe? This blog is the second in a series in which I hope to examine what it means to read the bible, and understand what it has to say, in a way that is consistent the assertion that ‘God is like Jesus’. It will inevitably be a quick overview but my prayer is that it will stimulate your own thinking about the world in which we live.
As ever, the response to questions like the ones I am posing depend on one’s starting point and world view. Part of a recent discussion with a Christian friend involved him quoting Romans 13: 1-2 in which St Paul says “Let everyone be subject to the governing authorities,for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God. Consequently, whoever rebels against the authority is rebelling against what God has instituted…” One could read this as ‘God at the helm’ and everything happens as he wants. Later on, in this blog, I will ask questions about what that might mean. But for the moment I want to use that passage to highlight the idea of a supernatural dimension to life. The idea of the supernatural, while not uncommon in a global sense1, is not common in a ‘Western world-view’.
The world in which I live, and the experience of most of my friends and contacts, is dominated by the five senses. The extent to which we enjoy or indulge these senses will vary. What I see, taste, touch, hear or smell in my daily life will not be exactly the same as you. Indeed, preferences differ. Most of my friends like curry, I do not. My children frown at my discerning taste in food (they call it fussy) and my wife and I watch different TV programmes. So then back to the question; is ‘the physical’ all there is to life, and if not, what more is there?
How many times in your life have you experienced something that can’t be explained by your five senses? Maybe you have walked in to room or a building like a school and felt ‘peace’ or ‘tension’. Nothing might have been said or done and you might not even have met or spoken to anybody but you still ‘felt’ something.
A memory that will always stay with me is crossing the border from Poland to Belarus at Brest at Easter 1993 . My oldest son and I were driving towards Moscow. Our purpose was to ‘check out’ the route for a long distance walk that was due to take place later that year. As we drove away from the crossing point Matthew turned to me and said “Dad, this place feels intimidating!” I agreed with him, but what was the source of that feeling? The road was empty, there was no police or military presence. In fact there was nothing but open space for maybe a quarter of a mile all round. Were we ‘picking up’ something from a previous event? Maybe some forced removal of people and demolition of their homes? I honestly don’t know, but what I do know is that there was no logical, visible reason for what we felt. There was no obvious threat but there was still a feeling of intimidation.
To a greater or lesser extent all human beings have, or have had, some capacity for spiritual awareness even if do not understand those feelings. We also, I believe, have the capacity to develop or suppress that awareness by how we respond to it. So where does this intuition come from? Is it anymore than some form of ‘super hormonal reaction’ or similar. Dare I admit to such feelings and lift my head above the parapet of cultural conditioning to find answers?
The cultural conditioning to which I refer is twofold. The first part is the scientific thinking and questioning that has grown out of the Age Enlightenment in Europe from 18th century onwards. As scientific knowledge progressed and there was a greater ability to explain the world around us the ‘otherness’ of a spiritual world was pushed back. The first world war created an extreme disillusionment with the church in England. God, if he did exist, clearly could not be good and, an established church that had colluded in sending men to war to be slaughtered could not be trusted. The sense of the self improvement and moving upward and onward through science and medicine was growing. Yes, there were still people of ‘faith’ but they were being increasingly marginalised. This was even true is some Christian denominations where social action took precedence over prayer and preaching.
The second aspect of this conditioning is felt particularly in the socio-political arena where individualism has risen to a point where the pre-eminent principle of ‘choice’ related to topics such as assisted suicide and abortion mean that any accountability to a ‘higher power’ in terms of morality is so unpopular that to question the prevailing view is to be regarded as ‘intolerant’!
It is against this back ground that I want to ask questions about the nature of the world in which we live and how it is ‘governed’. In keeping with the basic principles of this series of blogs I want to examine what we can see in the life and teaching of Jesus and the boarder scope of the Bible.
In Matthew chapter 26 we find an account of Jesus arrest and trial before the Jewish leaders. The apostle Peter in his usual impetuous way is ready to fight, and cuts off the ear of the servant of the high priest. Even in this physically threatening situation and knowing what was going to come, Jesus calms Peter and goes on to say “Do you think I cannot call on my Father, and he will at once put at my disposal more than twelve legions of angels?” The point Jesus is making is three fold, first – there is an unseen world that intersects with the seen one, second that the unseen world is more powerful than the one we see, and finally he is prepared to submit to the seen world. He knows that there will be a victory in the cross and resurrection that others cannot yet see.
Then, in Matthew 28 we have the account of an angel at the tomb of Jesus and speaking to ‘the two Marys’ and telling them of the resurrection; but perhaps the most well known mentions of angels in the Gospels are the ones related to Jesus birth. Gabriel comes to Mary to announce the conception of Jesus, and later an angelic choir sing praises over the hills of Bethlehem. These passages and a number of others show, I want to suggest, indicate that use of angels is a ‘normal’ part of the way in which God operates in the world. He works through angelic agents.
For Jesus there was no doubt that the unseen world was real and it was an ever present part of his life. In addition to the angelic he is pictured in the gospels as confronting the demonic on an almost daily basis. His public ministry is preceded by an encounter with Satan in the wilderness and he is soon confronted by a demon possessed man in the synagogue in Capernaum. There are many other examples one could give of Jesus encountering the supernatural forces. But what does the Old Testament show us about the way God works in the world?
Let’s jump to what is virtually the centre of of the bible as we know it today, to the book of Job. Chapter 1 begins with a description of Job and his family but then the setting of the story moves and verses 6&7 say, “One day the angels came to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan also came with them. The Lord said to Satan, “Where have you come from?”Satan answered the Lord, “From roaming throughout the earth, going back and forth on it.””
Many scholars take this as a picture of God’s heavenly council with Satan as an interloper Satan’s answer to God is the equivalent of ‘a little bit of this, and a little bit of that’! Satan, it would seem, had been out looking for ways to make mischief. But the bigger picture of this heavenly council might be an ‘angelic reporting’ session. The implication being that they had been given responsibilities and this is a point of accountability. There are many other places in the Old Testament that point towards angelic involvement in the world and I want to highlight just a few.
Right from the beginning of the bible there are references to angels eg ‘the sons of God’ in Genesis chap 6, the rescuing of lot from Sodom in Genesis 19, or the one blocking the road when Balaam is riding his ass along a narrow path between two walls in Numbers chap 22. In each of these cases angels are the agents of God’s action. Perhaps some of the most interesting and enlightening material is found in the book of Daniel chaps 8 – 10. In chapters 8 and 9 Gabriel is sent to interpret a visions for Daniel. Then chapter 10 Daniel is visited by a different supernatural being who draws back a curtain on what has been happening in the spiritual realm when he says in verses 12&13 “Do not be afraid, Daniel. Since the first day that you set your mind to gain understanding and to humble yourself before your God, your words were heard, and I have come in response to them. But the prince of the Persian kingdom resisted me twenty-one days. Then Michael, one of the chief princes, came to help me, because I was detained there with the king of Persia…”
In context Michael is clearly the ‘archangel’ of the same name, and the prince of Persia a spiritual being who contested the ability of Daniel’s supernatural visitor to bring him the answer to his prayer. The picture of the spiritual battle continues in verse 20 of the same chapter as the visitor says “Soon I will return to fight against the prince of Persia, and when I go, the prince of Greece will come; but first I will tell you what is written in the Book of Truth. (No one supports me against them except Michael, your prince.)”
These passages highlight a battle in the heavenly realm, the action of God’s angelic agents and clear opposition to what God intends. Please do not misunderstand, I am not suggesting dualism. God is the creator of the universe and the source of all power but we are, I am suggesting, beginning to see a biblical picture where God has delegated authority and works through his agents. In addition we need to note that although some of these agents are working in rebellion against God he has left them in place.
If we go back to the Gospels and Luke chap 13 we see that in verses 10-13 there is the account of a healing and an indication that spiritual forces are the cause, at least in this case, of physical sickness “On a Sabbath Jesus was teaching in one of the synagogues, and a woman was there who had been crippled by a spirit for eighteen years. She was bent over and could not straighten up at all. When Jesus saw her, he called her forward and said to her, ‘Woman, you are set free from your infirmity.’ Then he put his hands on her, and immediately she straightened up and praised God. (emphasis added). Jesus is shown as bringing freedom from the power of malign spiritual forces. This principle is ‘picked up’ by the apostle John when he writes in his first letter, chap 3:8 The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the devil’s work.
The Apostle Paul expresses the view that Jesus is victorious, through his death and resurrection, when says in Ephesians 1:18-21 “I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in his holy people, and his incomparably great power for us who believe. That power is the same as the mighty strength he exerted when he raised Christ from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms, far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every name that is invoked, not only in the present age but also in the one to come.”
So where does this wander through history, our experience and the bible and leave us? The answer, I suggest is as follows:
- There is more to the world in which we live than the physical things we experience. Therefore unless we take this seriously we could end up be victims of forces we cannot see.
- God runs the world using delegated agencies that he put in place to work on his behalf for good. Some of his agents still work to fulfil his commands but some do not.
- The power of God is available to us, as followers of Jesus, to enable us to act for good in the physical world. Jesus is calling us to be his agents through prayer and demonstrate his love and goodness. The question is will we rise, with his help, to the task or sink below rhe surface of the culture in which we live?
I will aim in my next blog to look a little more at how we as, followers of Christ, respond to human government and authorities.
1Gregory Boyd, God at War, Introduction p9-13; pub IVP 1997