Putting it all on the line

I’m loath to quote Carl Trueman at length on a Saturday morning, but what he’s saying here is pertinent.

[A] steady stream of courageous ministers are taking a stand and choosing now to leave as the CofS courts seem to have reached a point where it is no longer possible for ministers to expect them to maintain and defend that most important mark of the church – the true preaching of the Word.  The courts of the church seem indifferent, if not hostile to it.  In other words, as the Reformers would have seen it, the C of S as an institution seems to have left the church of God.   Those who leave the C of S are thus not schismatics; as an institution, she is no longer a church in the Reformation (and indeed biblical) sense; she has left them, not vice versa.

My concern is to simply note the courageous Church of Scotland guys putting it all on the line.   To demit a charge with a wife and family as dependents is no small thing.   Job opportunities for such men are scarce – even if they were willing to consider leaving a task they feel called to.   Nor do I want to question the courage of guys staying in to “fight”.   If I had to make one observation of them it would be that I’ve yet to see a strategy for “fighting” that doesn’t involve attacking those brothers who are leaving.   Maybe the stay-in guys feel abandoned, but it’s hardly the fault of men demitting that the CofS has ended up the way it is!

But the challenging analysis is that with the numbers we are now seeing demitting charges, plus the high number of evangelical ministers who are getting very close to retirement (perhaps the 70s were a high point for the training and recruitment of Evangelical ministers in the CofS?) it is going to prove very difficult to turn the ship around in 2013.

But then the question is, “What next?”   The Presbyterian Church is Scotland is notoriously fractured – partly because our brand of Presbyterianism is terribly Victorian with monolithic structures.   I have long suspected a more relaxed Presbyterianism would be better, where doctrine and mission, not money and influence, were the key points of communion.   Just imagine – if men had been humble, and not worried about a tension over Highland/Lowland influence, would the Free Church have had nearly such a horrible schism in 2000 – a schism which ended up disproportionately affecting Highland churches!

The demitting guys should rightly fear entering a Presbyterian union not because of joining “schismatics”, but if the one big factor in driving its functions is money.   If you think I’m wrong, here’s the commonest objection to a lot of CofS guys joining the Free Church: “We couldn’t afford them.”   That’s true, but only because we’re not willing to be agile with our structures, and think outside the neat Free-Church-franchise box.   Victorian monolithic Presbyterianism is not helping.

But at the same time, the alternative is lots of non-Presbyterian Presbyterian churches springing up.   The result is not just chaos, but generations of Christians worried about their tribal divisions. Congregationalist Christians are a whole lot more fractious than Presbyterians!   Practical Independency is not the solution either.

Is there an alternative somewhere in-between – and what will have to be “put on the line” to reach that?

“Who will go for us?”

I just read this update on David Robertson from Becky Millburn (his daughter).

…have had a really positive few days, little steps of progress continually happening. He has been moved out of Intensive Care today to High Dependency Ward which is a step up. We have all really been moved by everyone’s prayers, and would ask you to keep praying for his continued recovery. We are really praising God for the way he’s looked after Dad and us

At the risk of being labelled a fawning hagiographer I think David is one of the finest Christian apologists of his generation. He could easily be making the big time in well sponsored ministries in the U.S., or hold tenure in the academy. But he has seen his calling to be a minister in the largely insignificant realm of the Scotland. Not only Scotland, but in the Free Church, where he’s been unfairly demonised by insiders; dismissed as a Wee Free by outsiders.

And Scotland needs his message. We stand on the brink of the moral abyss. Our politicians try to write social policy to suit minority groups with little care for the fabric of society. We stand on the brink of financial ruin. Our politicians try to appease the enemy – not bankers, but the incessant greed that’s rooted deep in each one of us – pretending our standards of living can go on rising. (“An end to boom and bust” – they laughed, but are Cameron, Osborne, Balls or Millbean acting with any practical difference to Brown’s folly?). These symptoms cry out: Scotland needs the Christian message David preaches. Scotland needs the Christian messengers David educates. The good of Scotland seems to demand these things…

And yet, it has pleased almighty God to silence his servant at this hour. I can’t stop asking myself, “Why?” Not the why of doubt, but the why of wonder – what is the reason for this?

Isaiah 6 holds some sort of answer. For a long while now, Christians have been busy talking to each other. The agenda of the Presbyterian Church in Scotland has not been counter cultural – the Church of Scotland presses ahead with conforming, the Free with worries, legitimate yes, but distracting too. Yet the message of Isaiah – not just the remedy he presents, but his diagnoses of the malady – that is missing. We’ve relied on specialists like David to speak into this moral chaos, while sitting back happy to watch, or worry about other things.

I wonder, is God asking, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” Will you be sent, and will you go – that age old tension between God’s sovereign choice, and our will coming together, so delicately stated. The qualification already declared: not a sense of our greater righteousness, but our shared guilt with our fellows in their moral vacuum. And not a pride in our glorious heritage, but in the glory of the One upon the Throne.

There is also another side to Isaiah 6 – Isaiah was told that even if he went, few if any would listen. I don’t know if Scotland is in listening mood these days. But the messenger must still carry the message. Scotland needs faithful messengers. Who will go?

Please pray for David’s recovery, but also for an answer to this question: “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?”

Sectarianism needs a non-Secular Fix.

Over the last few days Twitter, blogs and the social media have conspired to hit me with a frightening reminder of humankind’s capacity for tribalism. My web interests are, in order, Christianity and Scottish current affairs.

That means Twitter can’t cope with me. My Twitter follows are in two diverse and seemingly exclusive bubbles – church leaders and politicians. Twitter struggles in vain to peg me into one of these two bubbles. Digging a bit deeper, this is because all the church leaders I follow (Keller, Piper, Macarthur, Derek Thomas, Sproul, Chandler…) are followed by other church leaders. When they tweet, they mostly tweet within a bubble, with other people sharing their interests. The political types are the same.

Inside each of these bubbles, the tribal factions are evident. Among the Church issues I follow, the Reformed and Neu-Reformed camps are waging a never ending series of debates – this week, the mission of the church is in focus (who’d have thought that was an issue?). It doesn’t take much to realise that the Church is pretty fractured and tribal. My local area looks set to give birth to yet another “fellowship” in the coming weeks. This will be made up mostly of refugees from the Church of Scotland, but who are tribal in the sense that none of the existing denominations in the area are quite what they are looking for. And there are Scotland’s religious hate crime figures – up 10%, and disproportionately targeting Roman Catholics – not Muslims, but Catholics. 693 charges aggravated by religious prejudice is 693 too many. Sectarian tribalism is pretty standard for us.

Inside the Scottish political scene the tribal Labour and Nationalist divisions are fierce. The political tribalism means most of the “discourse” is noise, trying to drown out the other side. Sometimes this can be hilarious (#newscarestorylatest). But mostly it’s no better than the sectarian chanting at an Old Firm match – annoying noise unless you feel strongly about one side or the other.

A typical "cyber-nat" - not threatening really

Let me make a couple of observations:
Many of Scotland’s problems with tribalism look like humanity’s problems with tribalism. But owing to history, Scotland’s sectarian problem isn’t quite like normal tribalism. It isn’t just political. It isn’t just religious. My Reformed friends don’t go stabbing their Neu-Reformed opponents. My Nationalist friends will take great pleasure in winding up Tom Harris, who sees Cyber-Nats everywhere, but he isn’t going to glass them in a Holyrood pub (if he ever gets there!).

Scotland’s sectarian problem is rooted in both bubbles, owing to our ethno- and religio-political past. But our current crop of largely secular politicians don’t get the issues of the Religious bubble, and so will fail miserably to address these problems. Sadly, the religious leaders don’t get the issues of the Political bubble either, hence the rise of irrelevant faux parties like the SCP, or the muscle flexing of Philip Tartaglia.

A solution to the sectarian problem will need fine minds working in some harmony, and with sensitivity to many agendas. The secular agenda that longs to dispose of an embarassing past will not expunge the errors of the past. But similarly a religious agenda that longs to return to a glorious past will only repeat the errors of the past. Tribalism of religious leaders vs. political leaders will not serve Scotland well.

Scotland needs Christian religious leaders who will engage our political class not with brawling tactics, but with guile and sensitivity. But Scotland also desperately needs politicians who will engage with, not over-ride or mock our religious classes and the concerns they represent.

Until that respect is thrashed out, I fear efforts to tackle sectarianism will be largely fruitless; and tension over religious “rights” – to name just one concern – will only heighten.

Applying the Lessons of Galatians

Occasionally, once a month or so, I’ve been preaching through Galatians on Sunday evenings. At the moment, I’ve reached Galatians 4, and have been struggling to apply it to my congregation directly – there are, after all, no people pitching up and telling them to ignore what I’m preaching on Salvation by faith alone. Or are there?

In Galatians 4 the case Paul contrasts the rule-bound minority of being under the law – the elemental principles – with the wonderful liberty of both the legal and experiential reality of adoption. In Christ, and in-dwelt by the Holy Spirit, believers really are sons of God. And we really do experience son-ship in meaningful ways.

It strikes me that in my context, this is about the path to maturing faith. It seems that returning to slavery of the elemental principles is all about living out discipleship constantly obsessing about rules. “Is it right to wear skirts just this length?” “What about the Sabbath – how do I keep it holy?” There are plenty believers around who will say that ongoing Christian growth depends on working hard make sure we “go and sin no more.”

But Paul sees the path to maturity in other things. The path from minority to maturity seems for him to be all about Christ – the Timing of his coming, his divine Origin, the Manner of the incarnation, the Conditions he lived under (i.e. the Torah), the Purpose for which he came (i.e. to redeem) and the Outcome of his coming (i.e. the reality of our adoption). That makes us sons! And no longer minors!

Not only is the work of Jesus vital to really making us sons, but the work of the Holy Spirit enables us to experience it. He is the one who confirms to us the loving fatherhood of God, so that we can cry with trusting affection, “Abba! Father!”

So, application time – do you learn more of what it means to cry “Abba! Father!” through obsessing about law keeping, or through meditating on what your Father has done, and resting on his provision for your life? I suspect it’s the latter.

And what of these elementary principles? Well, is it possible that Paul is talking about them the same way we talk about elementary math? You don’t obsess (normally) about the detail of what exactly happens when you add things. You just know that if you had two apples, and you buy four more, you have six. The same in the disciple’s life: if you are maturing, you don’t obsess about the rules of a Godly life too much. instead, you live them in the life the Spirit is working in you. Such obsession will reward you with frustration, because your life is in Christ, not in the rules he has taught you.

The Ninth Commandment

This morning I was preaching on the Ninth Commandment – don’t bear false witness.

My theme through the series has been this: these are not simple rules we break, they are a commentary defining the “character” God looks for in us – a character we are totally unable to attain in our own efforts.   This “character” we fall short of is the perfect Image of God which was ruined by the Fall, and original sin.   That means the commandments serve at worst to merely condemn us, but at best can be used by God to show us our need for the gracious salvation offered in Christ Jesus.

Today I suggested a reason why the Ninth Commandment is included.   By bearing false witness we are betraying not a character shaped by the Image of God, but we are betraying a character more akin to that of Satan, the Devil himself, the “Father of Lies”.   Clearly, God would rather we bore the Image of God in Christ Jesus, the “Faithful and True”.

My question – was this too harsh?   Certainly, today some folks in the congregation felt that went a bit too far.   Have we become too comfortable with the commandments, thinking they are merely rules we can follow if we just put in enough effort – and does that mean we are uncomfortable with our character not measuring up to their requirements?