Kurt Cobain and Jesus

Kurt Cobain (centre) with Nirvana band members Krist Novoselic (left) and Dave Grohl (right) in a fabulously 90's-styled photograph

Last week was the 20th anniversary of Nirvana‘s Nevermind album, an album (and a time) that had a profound effect on my generation and culture – a middle-class Generation Xer who was just entering high school when the whole ‘grunge’ music scene broke in America. This little write-up is my way of commemorating the album.

I watched a documentary on the making of the Nevermind album with my dad on Saturday and walked away with a buzz of thoughts in my head. The question of what made Kurt Cobain (the lead singer of Nirvana) so influential and moving was on the mind. I then delved on the thought of how people called Cobain ‘messianic’ in a way and began to wonder about this phrase and think of how Jesus and Cobain could possibly be similar.

The crunch is an interesting one. The thing about Cobain is that he was aregular guy getting on with the struggles common to his generation and he sang about these. That was the instant connection many had with him. In a world that was, prior to the grunge revolution, dominated by glam, fashion, corporate perfectionism, Christian religious conservatism, and a myriad of other voices telling us how to live, act, and be; a lone voice singing about how things really were and how we really felt – alienated, different, misunderstood – was a welcome change. Even though many times no one really understood what he was singing about (he would regularly say that people got it wrong) there was some understanding that he was singing about something you knew all too well.

Cobain’s struggles and the struggles of my generation, in retrospect, were actually not that unique. Many people trumped the whole thing up to teen angst, but the reality is those feelings of alienation and frustration with this world are not unique to teens. As adults we might have learned to handle those things in various areas in various ways, or we might have just given up and gone with it, or learned to hide our feelings better etc. but the simple truth is that most common people, like me (and probably you reading this) are still, quite truly, powerless in this world and frustrated with its voices and the pressure it puts on us to be what it wants us to be.

Cobain might have been a kind of messianic figure in that he resonated with the common person (and this is an interesting point which I’ll delve into below) but the problem is that I think he both didn’t really know his enemies – he was almost boxing the air, rebelling against a system but not knowing exactly how to do that – and he provided no actual salvation out of the situation.

Now we look at Jesus and we see some connections here. Jesus was also a revolutionary, a rebel, but he wasn’t boxing the air. He knew who the enemies of mankind actually were, and these are precisely the things he rebelled against.

When you look at Cobain’s music you see these enemies pop up but he doesn’t know how to deal with them and in many ways he actually just accepts that he’ll need to live with some of his demons – indeed, just do what those demons tell him to do. I’m using the word ‘demons’ first metaphorically but I’m going to come at it a different angle later.

One of the three enemies we see Jesus rebel against is the system of the world. And this is precisely where, I think, many Christians have misunderstood and have actually lost their ability to be relevant. Cobain was relevant because he rebelled against an oppressive society (that’s what the Bible refers to when it talks about ‘the world’). Jesus was relevant because he did as well.

In the society of Jesus there was the religious society which hated him, because he rebelled against their oppression. Religious society was intrinsically linked to politics and Jesus rebelled against this whole idea as well. Now, in our days, we see this all too often (especially in America) – religious ideas are tied into political ideas and vice versa. The result is an oppressive system that tells you how you ought to look, what you should eat, how you should talk, what kind of music you should listen to, who you should vote for, what you should vote for, and so on. It tries to control every area of your life – your private and your public – and sets itself up to be God.

God is very interested in every area of our lives but not in the same way. The life of Jesus shows how God is interested – he wants to bring healing, restoration, joy and life into every area of our lives. Rather than tell us what to wear, he wants us to be ourselves. Jesus is not that concerned over who you vote for, but there is a reality that the Kingdom of God is about seeing society transformed from an oppressive society to a free society. A society where my freedoms actually don’t encroach on yours, either. (This requires more explanation and I don’t have the space.)

Jesus also understood the powerlessness of the ordinary man, mainly because he lived like an ordinary person. He wasn’t even some rich king who give up his goods to live amongst the ‘common people’ but was a common person from birth – the son of a carpenter, living in dusty desert towns.

In those days, much like these, if you didn’t have a lot of money, weren’t of noble background, or were in the wrong place at the wrong time you were powerless. Consider today, how common people like you and I are powerless in the face of corporations, governments, banks, and even religious institutions. Cobain often sang of this powerlessness as a young man starts realising that, quite honestly, all the dreams of his childhood are crushed by real living. It’s not because real life sucks, it’s because the system of the world sucks life out of you, oppresses you, ensures you’re powerless and that all the money and power goes into the hands of the elite which we must serve with our hearts and lives.

I realise this might be a melodramatic picture but it’s not too far away from my reality as a middle-class white guy living in South Africa. If I’m not careful the banks, as an example, will own me for the rest of my life. If I don’t know how to discern religion from what the Bible calls ‘true’ religion, I will be driven by a religious organisation that wants to control my life. If I don’t know how to separate my political opinions correctly, politics will dictate to me for the rest of my life. If I don’t keep my wits about me, corporations will tell me what to buy and why I’m not a success if I don’t buy their car, product etc. and consumerism will start consuming me. The system of the world oppresses us on every corner.

If Christians, like me, want to be relevant we better know how to relate to the common person. In many ways, I think God doesn’t take us out of tough situations sometimes so that we know how to relate to the common person. If I didn’t experience the oppression of the world in my own life in some way, then I would never understand just how the world oppresses the common person and I would be irrelevant to the common person. Rebels are relevant because they’re really the common person who understands the common struggle. Jesus is relevant today because he not only knew the struggle, he experienced it himself – eventually experiencing the ultimate injustice as the systems of the world put him onto a cross when he was the least deserving of such a death.

There are two other enemies which haunted Cobain and which Jesus understood and looked to defeat through his life, death and (yes) resurrection. These other two are sin and Satan. These two are difficult for people who hold different beliefs to me to really take seriously (indeed, sometimes I struggle to as well because of our culture) but they’re worth bringing up.

We see Cobain struggles with his own sins regularly – it seems to me they troubled him and he was frustrated because the world and not even religious institutions had any grace. This is true – there is no grace in the world system. If you’re not on the top of the game (and even if you are) you are vulnerable and, if you make one mistake, you can pay with it for the rest of your life (think of debt and so on). Religious systems are the same in their own way. It’s unfortunate that, from a spiritual perspective, Cobain turned towards more religion (Buddhism) as an answer. Buddhism doesn’t really have any grace but, as far as I’m concerned, ties you into an oppressive system of karma that insists you will pay, if not in this life, in the next for everything you’ve done wrong and the only way of changing that is to do right. Unfortunately, there’s nothing to indicate just how much you need to do right before you’ve satisfied Karma – and besides, even sometimes we do the right thing and people still get hurt.

Jesus attacked the enemy of sin and how our sins haunt us through grace. That’s what his death is all about – he paid the price of sin so that we don’t need to. God has come to heal, not condemn. He gives us His spirit if we trust in Him so we can change and sin can rule over us less and less (sometimes even instantly with certain sins) but we now sit under a system of grace, not oppression, of acceptance not performance. Again, this can be explored in many books but I think the basic point here is made clear.

The last one, Satan – the spiritual evil of this world that tempts, deceives, and so on. People believe that they’re doing the right thing by oppressing others because they’re deceived into thinking that. People think their sins can save them because they’ve been deceived into thinking so.

I don’t believe there’s a little red man sitting on our shoulders telling us what to do, but I do believe that demonic oppression is very real and we see Jesus dealt with that thing over and again in people’s lives and, ultimately, by defeating Satan on the cross and being raised up to life on the third day. Satan’s deception into bringing us all into sin has brought death into this world. Jesus conquered death and promises all those who believe in Him that they will too.

The reality is while there isn’t a little red man sitting on our shoulder there is certainly a world system that truly looks like it’s influenced by some sort of spiritual evil. You don’t look at the Nazi ideology and think that humans came up with it all themselves. There’s always this underlying Madness, this strange Insanity, a dark spiritual evil that looks to influence in various ways.

I realise this may come across to some as superstitious but it requires some thought and also a clearing away of cartoonic ideas of a man with a forked tail and a pitchfork. Jesus knew that his enemy was not people but the spiritual evil influencing those people and that’s precisely what he targeted. Cobain, unfortunately, fell into the trappings of such spiritual evils and as a result couldn’t love himself, with the end result seeing him dead on the 8th of April 1994. (And, then, unfortunately pop and rubbish music went back to being the mainstream. Man, I miss those days in music!)

Jesus has defeated this spiritual evil and will one day bring His final justice on it by throwing Satan and his demons into the place reserved for them (not reserved for humans) – the lake of fire. I’m not keen to get into a discussion about hell here but if you struggle with God as a judge, read the Gospels and see that Jesus’ heart is not to judge mankind but to judge Satan and his demons, sin and the oppressive systems of this world. (Unfortunately, though, some humans have decided that Satan, the world and sin are all pretty good ideas, and they will be judged appropriately.)

Cobain was a legend in his own way and it’s a huge pity that his life was ended by the very enemies he tried to rebel against, but this is the way it goes when you don’t fight with the right weapons. I don’t believe we can rebel against the unholy trinity of the world, sin and Satan without the power of God – which God gives us through his Holy Spirit when we decide to put our trust in Him and not in ourselves or the unholy trinity. Cobain is an example of how we are unable to save ourselves.

I don’t mean to set up the sad death of someone as some sort of moral example, trivialising the sadness of his death, but in a way it is also honouring to him (I believe) to learn from his life.

Nirvana were never a technically good band in terms of music but I have to say that I miss that whole time of music when the scene wasn’t dominated by fashion and glam and image and, frankly, stupidity like we have to be subjected to today with Lady Gaga and the like. The record industry did, admittedly, make a fashion out of non-fashion (as true Capitalists would) and make a trend out of rebellion against the trends, but heck it was still a lot more real than Lady Gaga who thinks that being bisexual makes you relevant. I don’t think it does. (Yes, I know Cobain once said he might be bisexual too, but anyway.) It just means you’re a part of this oppressive system that hates us. It doesn’t make you a rebel it makes you a conformer.

I, for one, refuse to conform to any of it. That’s why I follow Jesus.

Jesus, Psychology and the Holy Spirit: Don’t be the Victim

Isn’t it interesting how you can’t really find much psychology in the Bible? Unless, of course, you really start interpreting verses in a particular (and even awkward) way?

This has often been a frustration for me because when it comes to morality I want to know how I’m supposed to live morally, not just what morals I should have. But the Bible is rather silent on this.

For example, let’s look at the case of addictions. If you have a certain addiction problem, such as a sexual addiction, there are many answers in the world of psychology to help you deal with it. But when you go to the Bible you can’t really find anything rock solid in terms of a formula. What you’re told are really a few basic things:

(1) Don’t do it
(2) Walk by the Spirit
(3) Think of things that are good and pure

But we want to know how to do all these things. Which steps do I put in place to walk by the Spirit? How do I think of things good and pure? Doesn’t God know it’s not that easy? And yet the Bible offers not much (if anything) in that department. All it says is do it.

But beneath this frustration lies something profoundly deep, yet profoundly simple and profoundly liberating. If that’s all the Bible says about something like sex addiction, it means that God really believes we can just do it. You never see Jesus offer a psycho-analysis of a problem, ever. You don’t see him say things like, “Why do you look at the speck in your brother’s eye” and continue with, “I’ll tell you why. It’s because when you were a child your parents shouted at you too much and judged you. The need to perform was ingrained into you. So now you are judgmental of others.” Rather, Jesus simply says, “Hey, stop judging others. First take out the log in your own eye.” (Matt 7:3, paraphrased of course.)

We like to shirk our faults onto others. For quite some time our Western society has punted the victim mentality. Every action of yours has a supposed psycho-analytical background and, of course, solution. It’s not your fault – it’s the fault of your parents or even, in the case of pop-spiritual-psychology, it’s because your great grandfather was a Freemason or something like that.

It’s rather typical of our society and for humankind in general, in its thirst for knowledge of everything without having accountability to God (remember the tree of knowledge in the Garden of Eden?) to formulate mathematical equations even around how to become a better person. This is nothing new. Except it’s always complicated. For example, to sort out a judgmental attitude we have to travel back in time to when we were kids and assess what our parents did to us and forgive them and work through the hurt they (often ignorantly) caused. Because this kind of thing involves forgiveness many people think it’s a very Christian way of looking at things, but I daresay it isn’t. It’s good to forgive our parents – when I realised they weren’t perfect and forgave them for that it was liberating – but how many times must I go back to my childhood to find the source of my attitudes, problems, addictions, sins and guilt?

Jesus says we should forgive and yet provides no reason why. It’s something we should do because God says so and He knows what’s best for us. It seems obvious that forgiveness is good and healthy and all of God’s morals bring lasting joy (some of them require pain first) but there’s not always a logical reason why we should do something Jesus commands us to do. Such as love our enemies, for instance.

And what is the point of going back in time anyway? That’s like tripping over a rock during my morning run and breaking my leg, then going back to the rock later to see how I tripped over it expecting that knowledge to sort out my broken leg. There’s obviously no point in doing that. We can’t go into the past for everything, that’s blaming the past rather than taking care of the problem in the now.

I’m not advocating a problem with psychology and with Christians who feel called to that field. Their task is a difficult one, however, as that field is in desperate need of some decent moral reasoning. It’s also in desperate need to stop nurturing the victim mentality. But more than that so is our culture.

As a generation X-er I was psycho-analysed and characterised from the day I was born and grew up in a culture when psychology really had become the new religion for many. Talk shows were and are all about it. In school it was drilled into me. The subject of ‘guidance’, for instance, never equipped me or anyone for the real world but only ever was interested in psycho-analysis and sex, at least as far as I can remember.

I couldn’t even get away from it in the Church, except here psychological ideas were tagged with an extra spiritual component. For example, you need to find where you were hurt in the past and let Jesus heal there; your grandfather was a Freemason so you are suffering from some sickness; you were laughed at in school and so you have a low self-worth, and that’s the result of your depression, but Jesus can give you a better self-worth, etc. While this may sometimes be the case(s) (although I question the Freemason thing) it’s not always the case for everyone, but the problem with our culture is it expects a blanket answer and formula for everyone. Many churches, books, pastors etc. got on board with this thinking and pop-psychology became the new religion. This is still a problem. Go into any Christian book store and it’s plain to see.

Getting rid of guilt

We do look for where we can shift the responsibility for our actions in the great quest to ease our conscience and no longer feel guilty anymore. I acknowledge this wide-ranging problem of guilt, but I believe the solution lies in the grace of God – coming under his Fathering and knowing there is grace and forgiveness there. I also acknowledge that true moral living can only be lived in reality when we have the Holy Spirit, which requires us to be born again.

But the issue is that when we believe too strongly in psychology (you need to go through endless healing ever to live morally well) and too little on what God says (you really have the ability to do this thing) we find ourselves constantly battling to live the way we want to. As I’ve jettisoned pop-psychology in my life more and more I’ve found it really is easier to live the way God wants me to, because it becomes simpler to do so. It’s liberating. My mind and my attitude aren’t hampered by a victim mentality and endless formulas for getting things done.

In parenting my kids I want to teach them very early to stop pretending to be a victim and to take responsibility for their actions and just live well. Victim mentality is not helping anyone. Pop-psychology and spiritual-pop-psychology is creating a society that doesn’t know its right hand from its left anymore, because every action has an excuse. Don’t be the victim. Walk by the Spirit. Don’t rely on psycho-analysis. Take Jesus’ word for it that we can just do it. He has given us everything for life and godliness (2 Peter 1:3). We can do this thing.

The Oprah Winfrey Network (OWN) and Why I Cringe

On New Years day Oprah Winfrey launched her very own television network, the Oprah Winfrey Network (OWN) and I cringe, more than I would if someone took a piece of blunt chalk and scraped it on a board for 10 hours.

In numerous interviews and articles I’ve seen Oprah define her goal for the network to revolve around people being ‘all that they can be.’ Finding the potential inside of you. Becoming everything you are.

I cringe at all of this because I find it incredibly shallow and fluffy. That’s not because I’m a man. My wife agrees with me. It’s not the crying or the so-called straight-talk that bugs me, it’s all this you, you, you stuff that’s mixed with a thorough ‘works’ and ‘formulas’ view to a better life and even salvation, with the latter end promoted by a shallow mystical spirituality that Oprah tends to really believe in, evidenced by her quote where she says she has asked God to “Use me… use me until you use me up.”

Oprah finds support because she appeals to something that is hardly new and has been around with us and has been the cause of many (or perhaps all) of our problems: this idea of ours to be the master of our own destinies, to be the gods of our own lives, where God’s main purpose in all of this is to bring us a better life, and our way of attaining God’s favour is doing all the right things.

Oprah’s many shows on her network represent all the formulas. We’ve got some phsycoanalysis with Doctor Phil, who might be a straight-talker and I can sometimes appreciate his way of dealing with things, but the whole vibe glorifies the West’s therapeutic culture where we are, in some way, a victim and ALL things are easy for us to overcome, if we just do it right. We needn’t worry about God’s grace or His Spirit (even though there might be talk of His Spirit in Oprah-land, but more in a way where its all about us and not about the Spirit), we just need to follow the formulas. The same idea even comes out in Oprah’s sex show. Good sex boils down to right formulas, even formulas for relationships, and formulas save us — not God.

You might say I’m taking a narrow and very conservative, gun-ho Christian fundamentalist attitude, but let me show you why I don’t believe I am. Oprah’s message resonates with many Western Christians and churches, liberal or conservative, precisely because it’s so formula driven. Even conservatives, who may say in one corner of their mouth that Oprah is some form of false prophet and New Age and whatever else, will go around saying that if we do thing’s “God’s Way” then we will find ourselves living in freedom. We need to raise our children “God’s Way”, or run our businesses “God’s Way” to enjoy a better life. In principle I might agree, but in experience even doing thing’s “God’s Way” doesn’t provide a ‘better life’. The problem is that the goal of a ‘better life’ may not be what God wants for us after all.

Both of these views rely on formulas to get what we want — a better life. But there are two problems here. Firstly, why do we think the point of living is to get a ‘better life’? And secondly, why is it that there are so many formula’s out there?

Christian teaching talks about grace, how we need God’s grace to have eternal life. The difference here is joy within circumstances, not joy because our circumstances have changed. The difference is also trusting God for salvation, salvation in this life and in the next age; not trusting formulas. So both Oprah and high conservatives I view on the same side — they’re both just selling different formulas that will get us to the same old myth; the same mirage; of a ‘better life’. Neither of them can promise joy in our circumstances, because that’s not really what we think we want. The goal is a better life now. And whoever can sell their formula the best, wins.

But joy in our circumstances — rather than our circumstances taken away — may just be what we really want, because it seems that these formulas work for some, but not for others, and I for one refuse to live my life going from one answer to the next trying to make it work. I’ve been there, done that. None of the formulas I was taught worked for me, and none of those I taught myself have consistently worked. Rather, I’ll rely on God’s grace, not to make life work, but to sustain me with his joy, peace, and love through the hard times — which can’t be avoided and <i>will</i> come.

Elitist Mentality

(Picture from here)

I’ve begun to despise the elitist mentality more and more.

What I mean by this is not so much when someone says, “my theology is right” but moreso when someone says, “we’re special and you’re not.”

An example might serve my purposes here. As you can see in this article, one man says this: “As a member of the church, you’re not following the true doctrine.”

Yes, I believe some doctrine has no merit and others have more merit. Heck, some doctrine I would even call ‘right’. But this isn’t really an issue of doctrine here, I think, this is more an issue of membership. See what the guy is saying? “As a member of the church, you’re not following the true doctrine.” He is basically saying that they (the article will explain who) are members of something that does follow the true doctrine. The heart of it isn’t so much the doctrine (which I would call ‘wrong’ in this context, by the way) but who’s in and who’s out. Or who’s more special, better, than the rest.

The disciples had a similar argument in Luke 9:46 – 50, about who amongst them is the greatest. This argument is still going on today, and Jesus’ response is always poignant. “Whoever welcomes this little child in my name welcomes me,” “He who is least among you, he is the greatest”, and “for whoever is not against you is for you.”

I’ve heard this ‘who is the greatest’ argument from numerous fronts lately. Some in the house church movement, for example, claim that they’re the greatest, believing they have hit the jackpot in terms of how God wants us to do church, with some going so far as to claim that God has left the other churches and now the Spirit is moving only with them.

See what I mean? It’s an issue of who’s more special than the other, overall. These have perhaps lost focus that no model of church will save us, but only Christ Himself.

Others claim that apostolic government is the jackpot, with some going so far as to say that if the church (or even the world, mind you) doesn’t humble itself under apostolic authority (and perhaps they have particular apostles in mind, too) God will ‘strike the land with a curse’. Again, the issue here is ‘we are the greatest, we are the super-apostles.’

I believe in apostolic government in the church, but not of an elitist kind. I also believe that salvation is in no other name except Jesus. But I don’t see that as elitist, as it’s not an argument around who is the greatest or who is loved more, but rather who is saved. (This would require a whole new discussion though.)

Everytime I read about someone else claiming that the church this and the church that and they have discovered some new shining model or belief that shows why they’re the greatest, I switch off (after getting a little angry). Get over yourself and stop your pride man! For the last shall be first!

All Those Sins are Washed Away

One of the hardest things to believe in Christianity is that, quite simply, all our sins are forgiven and washed away through simply asking God to forgive us.

We complicate this endlessly. But the Bible is emphatic — our sins are washed away by the blood of the Lamb.

If they are washed away when you become a Christian, they are washed away as you live as a Christian.

Listen to this: THEY ARE WASHED AWAY. If you sin and sin and sin and sin constantly, doing the same thing, these are WASHED AWAY by the Blood of the Lamb. You can sin now and ask for forgiveness and then sin in the next moment and then ask for forgiveness. God doesn’t count your sins, He washes them away. We count them. He doesn’t. When God looks at you He sees you as righteous because you are in Christ.

Your sins are washed away. Washed away, washed away, washed away.

It’s so hard to really believe it, isn’t it? We want to constantly add conditions. Are you sorry enough for your sins? Are you determined to stop doing them? Did you repent properly? Did you do all the acts of penance correctly?

The promise is that Jesus washes away our sins if we ask. It’s really simple. When I first decided to believe in Christ I asked God to forgive me of my sins and he did so. I didn’t have to worry about all this other stuff. I simply repented and that was that. Why should I have to worry about it now?

His mercies are new each morning. His steadfast love never fails. (Lamentations 3:22, 23.)

Raised with Christ – The Body of Messiah

(The Resurrection of Christ by Irina Kolbneva, see www.arthit.ru)

Eph 1: “…what is the immeasurable greatness of his power to us who believe, according to the working of his great might that he worked in Christ [Messiah] when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the one to come.

“And he put all things under his feet and gave him as head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all.”

(The word ‘Christ’ means ‘Messiah’, and I like the word ‘Messiah’ because it seems to carry more meaning to me than the Greek word ‘Christ’.)

The Christian idea that the church is the body of Messiah is a very mysterious and very interesting idea, one that encourages me greatly but also challenges me in terms of my work and purpose in my life.

The Scriptures are emphatic that the church is the actual, real, body of Messiah Jesus – in a spiritual way, of course, but a spiritually practical way.

As the body of Messiah we carry the same authority of Lord Messiah, who is Jesus. I’m speaking about it in this way because the word Christ is often used as a surname for Jesus rather than a title. Messiah means “anointed, chosen saviour”. So, in a very spiritual way the church is the anointed, chosen saviour’s body.

This means we carry the anointing (the call, commission and ability) of Messiah, which is an anointing to save, heal, bind up the brokenhearted, and set the captives free (Isaiah 61). It also means we are to carry the sufferings of Messiah, which was a suffering of persecution and the turmoil of wanting to see people saved (not sickness, I must add, but persecution).

It also means we have the authority of Messiah, authority over principalities and powers (Eph 6). These principalities and powers are demonic (evil) powers at work in the hearts and societies of men, which bring injustice, poverty, sickness and tyranny.

So we bring healing, salvation and all of that to not just the hearts of men but the societies of men.

We are to implement Messiah’s authority into society – which is bringing his kingdom into society. What does his Kingdom look like, though? Is it a tyrannical theocracy?

No, rather it is a kingdom of justice, peace, abundance (shalom in Hebrew), healing, reconciliation and salvation. This is what Messiah Jesus was anointed to do, this is what we’re to do.

I love this! It’s exciting and it reveals the purpose of Christianity. I don’t believe in Jesus just because it’s an insurance policy, but because I want the same anointing Jesus had to bring healing and salvation to this world – this comes both through the message of Jesus (that He alone saves) and the good works of His people (which includes forming systems of justice in place of systems of injustice).

So we have purpose, and it’s a grand and powerful vision indeed.

For those in the Sandton area, Shannon and I will be preaching about this on Sunday, which is Resurrection Sunday, at Church on the Square at 8 Stella Street, Sandton. Starts at 9:30am.

The Fact is We’re Made in God’s Image; The Fact is We’re Fallen; the Fact is We Can Be Redeemed

Many people are quite aware of the Christian doctrine of the Fall of Man, although I’m sure they’re also confused on the details that matter.

I was watching the movie Taking Pelham 1-2-3 this last weekend and a line of dialogue struck out to me, probably because I was considering this whole thing of us being a fallen race.

In a conversation with John Travolta (the bad guy), Denzel Washington (the good guy) asks him whether he is Catholic. After a series of conversations Travolta responds by saying, “a good Catholic knows no one is innocent.”

And this – that no one is innocent – is a fact. We are all guilty. We are all corrupt. But we’re not pure evil. We are made in God’s image, every single one of us, and that means there is a pure goodness in all of us that hasn’t been taken away. It’s just that we’re bent. We’re sick. But we aren’t pure wickedness with no goodness in it at all.

Somehow we have to hold the fact that we’re made in God’s pure, holy, utterly blessed image and that we are a fallen, bent and corrupt race in tension. We can’t go extreme on one or the other, or we lose the plot.

We can’t talk about our fallenness all the time, and we can’t talk about how pure and wonderful we are all the time. The former makes us obsessed with guilt and death, the latter is unrealistic to our struggles and leads to a Godless spirituality.

See, a bent piece of steel is still a piece of steel. We are a bent race that was made in God’s image. That doesn’t mean we’re not still made in God’s image. It means we’re bent. Our flesh isn’t evil, it’s bent. And through Jesus we slowly become unbent. Healed. And one day he will give us new flesh and bone that is no longer corrupt. Awesome!

Press On

Forgetting what lies behind, straining forward to what lies ahead
(Phil 3: 1-16)

This was the subtitle of my sermon “Press On” I preached this last Sunday at my church, Church on the Square.

You can download the sermon here.
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I thoroughly enjoyed it! Although, giving it a listen, I could have dropped some of the “ums” in places… oh well, I’m sure I’ll improve.

As Christians we need to leave the past behind, and leave those things behind that get us caught in a rut and prevent us from moving on towards the upward call and greater prize God has for us.

Once we are saved, we are saved, and when we fall we can get up in the grace of God and press on. We don’t need to dwell on our sins, our mistakes, guilt, shame etc. And we should sort out any relational problems, such as forgiveness issues etc.

Also, God wants us to know more about Him – who He is – and we need to be unsatisfied with what we know now. Some of our doctrines and ideas of God are not necessarily wrong, but they aren’t the full picture – God in His fullness. God wants us to open our eyes wider and see more of Him, and so we need to move beyond the rut that prevents us from seeing and knowing more of Him.

Grace is not just forgiveness, but also the power to get up and move on. Thankfully, when we’re saved we can sort out sin issues within God’s safety rather than run away from God. The problem is many times we run away from God when we sin rather than run TO Him, and it’s the latter that we need to do if we want to get rid of sin, even habitual sins.

Religion wants to tie us up in a sin-focus, where all we do is focus on our sins in an effort to be ‘perfect’ and ‘accepted’ by God, when we are already accepted by God and don’t need to be perfect – we just need to be moving on.

The more we focus on sin, the more we’ll sin. We need to focus on the victory Jesus attained for us, and race towards the prize – forgetting what lies behind, and straining forward to what lies ahead.

Those are a few snippets of my sermon. Download it here.
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Attainable vs Receivable

Grace is not attainable – this is evident by the Gospel. You don’t deserve grace, and you don’t attain it in some means. Grace can only be received.

Likewise, is holy living attainable? Is the power of God to live holy, and live as Jesus, attainable? Is healing attainable?

We have been led to believe, through many teachings, that it in fact is. While people differ between whether perfection is attainable in this life (some say yes, some say no) perhaps the entire premise is wrong. Perfection is NOT attainable. The power of God is NOT attainable. Healing is NOT attainable. Holy living is NOT attainable.

It is only receivable.

And that makes things very different. That changes a heck of a lot of stuff.

Doesn’t it?

It does for me.

Original Sin and the Sinful Nature, pt 2

In Romans 5 it talks about how sin brought death into the world.

It then goes on to say, on vs 17 that “If, because of one man’s trespass, death reigned through that one man, much more will those who receive abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man Jesus Christ.”

Romans 6 talks about how we HAVE died to sin, and now live to righteousness. That we WERE slaves to sin, but have become slaves of God (see Rom 6:22, but notice how most of the chapter is in past tense – we HAVE died to sin. We have BECOME slaves to God.)

The section about being a slave to whom you obey (vs 16) needs to be seen in this past tense context, because the whole chapter is in past tense.

I want to say something significant here. Notice, we have died to SIN (Not sinful nature.) Second, notice how there is never a part in the Bible that commands us to kill (or mortify) or sinful nature, but rather the DEEDS of this ‘sinful nature’ or this ‘flesh.’ Rom 8:13, “… if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live.”

In my studies of original sin, I’ve stumbled upon the Eastern Orthodox view (called “Ancestral Sin”) which places death and satan squarely in the middle of the original sin problem. I’m not going to talk much about Satan (yet), and I’ll admit I don’t know all of the Eastern Orthodox view entirely, so I can’t say whether I agree with it or not. So what I’m going to discuss is death, and putting ‘death’ in the center of this issue right now.

Logically, and Biblically, speaking, I have a sense that they are on the right track. Think about this. In Genesis the sin resulted in death in to the world. What is death? Death is a corruption of something.

I think the key word in this original sin problem is ‘corruption.’ Corruption came into the world because of sin, and not just man but the entire creation has been subject to this corruption (see Rom 8: 19-25.)

Consider this, that also the sin of Adam meant that God was no longer in relationship with him. Perhaps, even, God withdrew his Presence or Spirit from him (which seems obvious, and also may explain why Gen 5:3 says Adam’s son Seth was in his own likeness.) God has not withdrawn his Spirit entirely, but certainly in an intimate way. Now, under the New Covenant, this has been undone with the indwelling and infilling of the Holy Spirit.

How do you match something like Psalm 139: 14 up with Original Sin? “I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.”

Think of this : what happens when a being who was created to live eternally with God is now made mortal and no longer with God?

And think of this, what happens when a being who has a natural (and created) inbuilt ‘instinct’ for survival, has a limited number of days and does not have God inside them?

Is that instinct for survival wrong? No. God created us with a will to live. Would it have made sense if we were created without a will to live? Of course not. So, what happens when a being is created with a will to live but is, in fact, made mortal AND does not have the spirit of God from birth?
That being’s natural will to live goes haywire, and ‘survival of the fittest’ certainly takes over. It becomes about me and my, and I’m going to have to clamour and tramp on everyone to get ahead. I need to live, and if you’re in my way, you need to get cut down so that I can live.

What if this is what the ‘sinful nature’ is? What if everything that is natural about us isn’t evil? Say, our desires. I desire to live. I desire to eat. I desire to procreate. I desire to be loved. I desire to be happy.

Are any of these desires really evil? No. The desire to eat, for instance, isn’t evil. But what happens when this desire goes haywire? What happens when it becomes corrupt?

The simple, good, wholesome and godly desire to eat (remember, when God created human beings in Genesis, he said it was ‘good’) turns from something natural and good to something unnatural and corrupt – it turns into gluttony. There’s certainly nothing natural about gluttony. What has been natural here has been corrupted.

We’re not born, it seems, with this corruption entirely in place. We learn more corruption from a corrupted world (see 2 Peter 1:4, and 2:20.) But we are born without God, and we do inherit death which is what Romans 5 is telling us.

What’s the big deal here? The big deal is we are (mostly) taught that we are supposed to be killing the sinful nature as Christians, and – by implication – our desires are evil. This is not the entire truth, it’s a usage of words that (perhaps) is totally misunderstood. Our desires are GOOD, and NATURAL. Everything about me as a human is good and natural. These good and nature desires have been corrupted, and become more corrupted throughout my life. We are facing a disease of sorts on the human race, a corruption of what is natural and good.

Jesus makes the link between sickness and sin when he says “it is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick” (Matt 9:12) when questioned as to why he dines with sinners.

What if we are only believing for half the story here? We believe that God will kill our sinful desires. But we think this in the context that God is changing our NATURE, our very make up and being, making us something more than what we are – perhaps something more than human. However, when we read the Bible, God promises to resurrect our BODIES and wants to make a NEW Earth and a NEW Heaven. Wanting to be something more than human is not a Christian idea– more like a Platonic one.

We believe God will kill our desires (through our willpower, perhaps, or through our submission and obedience) when in fact he may want to heal our desires instead. He wants to take what has been made unnatural – what has been corrupted – and make it natural again, make it uncorrupted.

There’s no single verse in the Bible that says God is going to change our nature. It always puts the ‘sinful nature’ (which, now, may mean a corrupted nature) vs the Spirit (Gal 5:17, is a good example of this.) What if this is because your very nature, everything that makes you ACTUALLY human is perfectly good, holy, and wonderful. It is the corruption of this nature that Jesus saved us from through his death, having taken this sin and the corruption of this sin upon him by suffering what the corruption brought – death.

THEN, to show his victory over this corruption, he is raised on the third day. And, when we believe in Him, we die too to this corruption and are raised up with Him – spiritually speaking, now, but completely when He returns. The Spirit in infills us, to work towards our healing from the corruption of death, sin and Satan’s influence. The Holy Spirit heals us from our old thought patterns, our old bodily cravings (which are, in fact, just normal and good bodily cravings that have gone haywire and become corrupt.) I mean, he is more than just healing us of the issues in the mind – he is healing our entire beings. This healing process is called ‘sanctification’ and it happens slowly throughout our lives, because we’re still in mortal bodies – and still corrupted.

See, Jesus set us FREE from the corruption occuring even more, and wants to heal us from it. But he hasn’t taken us out of the corruption, because all of creation needs to be healed too and probably a whole lot of other things (which we can maybe look at some other time.)

My point, for this post, is to say that there is a possibility we’re believing God for the wrong thing. We want him to change our NATURE, when in fact he wants to HEAL our nature and make us MORE natural, and more who we actually are as human beings. Everything about sin is unnatural – lust is unnatural, jealousy is unnatural, coveting is unnatural. God wants to make us natural again.

It is easier to trust for healing of what has been corrupted than to trust that God would change my nature. Why? Because it doesn’t make sense that God created me this way, and then wants to change me. This is a problem many non-believers have with Christianity. It’s just too ascetic. A non-believer sees his desires as natural – and they are actually right. The problem, is, however, that non-believers see their SINFUL desires (like, gluttony, for instance) as natural and the church has largely agreed with them here too. We’ve said that the sinful nature is ‘human,’ because we’re all born with this ‘sinful nature’, and God wants to take away our desires and replace them with… no desires at all? We haven’t said it directly, perhaps, but certainly by implication.

If even the Church calls these sinful desires natural, then God should accept me for who I am – because he created me. This is the argument non-believers use. And I think they’re right to think this.

It must be that my sinful desires AREN’T natural, but that sinful desires are the corruption of natural desires.

However, if my desires are natural but my living them out is unnatural – and my body, mind and spirit is in need of healing and becoming natural again… well, I think many non-Christians would agree that this is in fact something they would want.

Jesus didn’t change a single person’s nature, instead he healed people and made disciples who followed Him and changed slowly. Should we be trusting for our nature to change? Or the healing of our nature? Uncorrupting what has been corrupted? Mending what has been broken? Changing us back to His Children. The second seems to fit within the biblical framework. The life of Jesus may just show us what the life of a Christian is – it shows that God wants to bring us healing (and certainly, he wants us to bring this healing to others.) We are often quite focused on the DEATH of Jesus, but we forget there’s a RESURRECTION too – and it’s not within His death that we LIVE, but it’s in His resurrection – the old has been taken away, and the new has come. We are new creatures, living in the resurrection of Jesus, the anticipation of the entire full healing of our bodies, minds and spirits. Slowly, as we live, we experience this eternal life now – we are inheriting it. We are being saved, as much as we have been saved. God brings our salvation not just through justification, but through sanctification. We are justified once, we are sanctified in increasing measure through life. Salvation has a beginning, a middle, and a final glorious end. You can’t lose your salvation, but you are still BEING saved from sin and corruption. You are being healed.

There’s so much more I would love to say here, but this post is already too long! Perhaps we should move to a pt 3 next week… would love to hear comments on these ideas, and see if the Spirit speaks to anyone through what I’m saying here ?