(Photo Credit: SantiMB)

Movements have a cause. Their message behaves very much like a virus. I was intrigued about the guidelines released by Governments for containing the H1N1 virus, the virus also know as 'Swine Flu'. These same principles that will stop viruses form spreading are the principles that will cause a movement to die out. Viruses are stopped firstly by there being a mechanism in place to 'catch' or 'contain' the delivery of the message. If you want to quench the power of a movement, start to dictate how, when and in what way the viral message is to be delivered. Start to issue guidelines on what is appropriate and what is not, on who should be involved, and what the right 'qualifications' for the task at hand are. Secondly you 'bin' it. You try and keep control over your message - keep it 'contained' in a secure and safe place. Thirdly you 'kill' it by using a chemical agent that works anti-virally. When a counter-message is evoked, an anti-message, if you will, is spread, that has the power to totally undermine your movement and leave it dead on the water. In many circles, churches have almost killed-off the raw power of the message of Christianity by doing just that. The 'virus' is 'caught' by insisting on qualifications for the job. Thus a whole clerical hierarchy has evolved and it ensures that only appropriate channels are used to deliver the message. Secondly, special 'bins' called 'churches' and 'cathedrals' are the only places authorised to house this message. Thirdly, an anti-virus is applied - a positive message (virus) of hope, love, and peace has been replaced by one of end-of-the-age-doom, of judgement and of performance against standards of behaviour. This tragedy has seen the people of God transition from being the light of the world, to a community that shies-away from the world in order to avoid being contaminated with impurity. God is now raising an end-time army of surrendered ones who have totally been infected with the virus of LOVE, and who are actively engaging with society in order to get as many infected with the same virus as possible.

The cross is the surest, truest and deepest window on the very heart and character of the living and loving God; the more we learn about the cross, in all its historical and theological dimensions, the more we discover about the one in whose image we are made, and hence about our own vocation to be the cross-bearing people, the people in whose lives and service the living God is made known. When therefore we speak... of shaping our world, we do not - we dare not - simply treat the cross as the thing which saves us 'personally', but which can be left behind when we get on with the job. The task of shaping our world is best understood as the redemptive task of bringing the achievement of the cross to bear on the world; and in that task the methods, as well as the message, must be cross-shaped through and through.

Hailed as a modern version of C.S.Lewis' "Mere Christianity", NT  Wright's work strikes me, not so much as an apologetic of the Christian faith (although it could indeed be that) but as a gift to the Church to help her be the Church.  The central theme of the book is that there are four fundamental longings of the human heart, which Wright describes as "echoes of a voice":  a longing of justice, a quest for spirituality, a need for relationship, and a delight in beauty.  These four echoes resonate hauntingly within human hearts and are "strange signposts pointing beyond the landscape of our contemporary culture and into the unknown" we hear these echoes, but not the voice.... we seem to grasp them... but alas they slip away! - At the end of this road we find that those signposts point us to this one speaker whose voice we heard only as faint haunting echoes.....Jesus.  In Jesus we find our longing for justice fulfilled, our quest for spirituality satisfied, our need for relationship completed and our delight in beauty realized. If these four "echoes" are its central theme, Wright addresses these within a framework of different views of Heaven (he calls them "options"). Option 1 is the pantheistic image of everything on earth carrying the divine. Option 2 is the root of the deist and gnostic image of heaven being a very beautiful place very far away and separated from this cruel and dark world - with the divine sometimes intervening in human affairs. Option 3 is the Judeo-Christian view of Heaven being different to Earth but near, indeed overlapping and intersecting it at specific times and in specific places. It is amazing how much of the first two options have inadvertently crept into Christian thought and theology, providing for very unhelpful attitudes, thoughts and positions. This Option-3 framework sets the tone and tempo for much of Wright's ensuing work. It is critical for the reader to grasp this if the book is going to make a lasting impact on him or her. It is this big vision of Heaven being a real place that intersects and overlaps Earth, and God's ultimate purpose of joining these two together to be one, that in my opinion makes for a great work by this theological heavyweight. It is within this framework, in my opinion, that the tenets of the Christian message and mission start to make remarkable sense: God is indeed intending to put the world to rights (justice) and remarkably has already begun to do this, firstly in the resurrection of Jesus (an advance signpost and prototype of the general "Resurrection" at the end of the age), and secondly in the ongoing work and mission of the Church. In Part-2 of this blog post we shall cover the specific instances where Heaven meets Earth in the life of the Church!

The line between justice and injustice, between things being right and things not being right, can't be drawn between "us" and "them". It runs right down the middle of each one of us.

Simply Christian by N. T. (Tom) Wright.

photo credit: frozenchipmunk Reading "On the Lasting Evangelical Survival" by Christianity Today Online. Whereas sometimes I have to ask myself if there is such a thing as an "evangelical movement", it has been said that such a "movement" is in danger of dying out. I would certainly contend that rather than evangelical faith dying out (indeed, charismatic evangelical Christianity is probably the one segment of Christianity that is experiencing exponential growth) what is dying is a certain "project" that resembled a politico-evangelical faith, especially in the USA.  Mark Galli, senior managing editor of Christianity Today has written about this online, and has these comments to offer:

What I will do, to my dying day, is work with anyone who knows he was lost but now is found, whose Bible is worn because she repeatedly looks there for God to speak, who finds the Cross the most meaningful of symbols, for whom the Resurrection is not just a doctrine but a power, and who wants nothing more than to find new and creative ways to share the evangel of Jesus in word and deed. I'll work with these people no matter what scholars decide to call them.

WOW - awesome words Mark! I wish they were really heard by many evangelicals and then shouted from the rooftops!!