Tag: Babylon

Revelation: Pointing the lens at the throne room of heaven

This is an amended version of a sermon I preached at City South Presbyterian Church in 2021. If you’d prefer to listen to this (Spotify link), or watch it on a video, you can do that. It runs for 42 minutes.

You can tell a lot about a king — or a kingdom — by the throne and the throne room, and who is in it.

Like the throne in “Game of Thrones” — a throne made of swords — to remind anyone who sits on it their rule is secured by the sword, and will be ended by one.

“Game of Thrones” is a hyper-violent show based on a series of books that are a deep dive into the violence at the heart of modern empires.

It is a bit like the Netflix sensation [current at the time of preaching] — “Squid Game” — the hyper-violent series aiming to expose and critique the violence at the heart of capitalism, where the haves capitalise on the have nots, in the show the super-wealthy sit on thrones watching people indebted by the system give their lives in violent games, hoping to win financial freedom.

The catch is we are so enmeshed in the system these shows critique that instead of being shocked, and exposed, we find ourselves sitting in this same chair, embracing the fruits of the system and the entertainment it uses to keep us from revolution.

Empires built on immersive violence as entertainment are not all that new. In fact, this was part and parcel of the Roman empire around the time Revelation was written.

The person occupying the throne in Rome embodied the worst of the political and economic realities “Game of Thrones” and “Squid Game” unpacked, but when you were enjoying the show it was hard to escape… The throne needs to be seen from a different angle.

And that is what this Revelation does.

John’s vision now zooms in on the throne in heaven (Revelation 4:2). There is some imagery that carries over — seven lamps are blazing — seven lamps perhaps sitting on the seven lampstands —these lamps are the spirit of God blazing; shining light on the throne. Thunder and lightning are rolling out (Revelation 4:5).

There are twenty-four elders around the throne, or, literally, twenty-four Presbyterians (Revelation 4:4), and we will see more of them later. Then we zoom out on these four living creatures who are “covered with eyes, in front and in back…” one is “like a lion”, the next “an ox,” the third has “a face like a man,” and the last “was like a flying eagle” (Revelation 4:6-8). They sound weird, but we have met them before.

They were in the heavenly throne room in Ezekiel (Ezekiel 1:5). There are some little differences, but in both scenes they are these critters that are this mix of the human and beast; the same animals (Revelation 4:6-8, Ezekiel 1:10). In Revelation these critters have six wings, but in Ezekiel, they had four. We are told the identity of these heavenly creatures in Ezekiel.

These weird lion-man-cow-eagles are cherubs. Cherubim is the Hebrew plural for cherubs.

You might picture a cherub like this.

But according to the Bible, they are beastly creatures who look more like this:

And the thing is — this picture of these heavenly beings that serve and worship Israel’s God — these did not come from a vacuum. The prophets in the Bible are making a point here.

It is not that cherubim actually look like this; they are a visual commentary, drawing on the thought world and gods of the nations to make the point that worshipping lesser spiritual beings from God’s divine court makes no sense when it is actually God who is on the throne.

Remember, these empires around Israel worshipped images of beastly gods — serpents, dragons, weird hybrid animals like this Babylonian picture.

Their stories were violent and bloody and their kings were supported by beastly supernatural beings — gods — who triumphed, tooth and claw, over other beastly gods.

And we saw how Daniel makes the connection clear, even with Nebuchadnezzar running off to the wilderness looking like the beast gods (like the cherubim) Babylon was tempted to worship in the place of the Almighty (Revelation 4:7-8, Daniel 4:33).

These cherubim are an amalgam of these beast gods, only, they are not superior beings, but servants of Israel’s God; worshippers of Israel’s God. To worship them would be a big mistake. Isaiah does the same thing with some six-winged critters; the seraphim (Isaiah 6:2).

John’s vision brings the cherubim and seraphim together.

We might picture cherubs as little angels with wings, but seraphim — the word means both burning as a verb, and snake, as a noun, and there is a good case to think that seraphim are actually flying fire serpents. The word might have its origin in cobras who spit venom. These winged snakes were a popular religious image in Egypt — where they were a cosmic symbol of divine authority.

Pharaohs even had them on their crowns. But Ezekiel and Isaiah – then Revelation – picture these beastly heavenly creatures not as objects of worship, but as worshippers of the Almighty who sing praise to him (Revelation 4:8, Isaiah 6:2).

Why would you worship other spiritual creatures who sing “holy holy holy is the Lord God Almighty”?

John’s vision pulls together these threads to show the position God occupies in the heavens; as absolute ruler over the so-called gods of the nations.

But there is more, because the cherubim had a job. They were divine gatekeepers, keeping sinful people out of God’s presence.

When humanity gets exiled from God’s presence — in Eden — cherubim guard the way (Genesis 3:24). When Israel operates as God’s priestly kingdom, carrying God’s presence with them in the tabernacle, cherubim symbolically separate people from God’s presence in the holy of holies (Exodus 26:30-31). The curtain in the tabernacle, and then the temple — the one that tore when Jesus died — was a cherubim guarded barrier between God’s holiness and the people — part of it tearing at the death of Jesus was because that barrier is now broken, but part of it was also a picture of God declaring he will not live in that temple. Statues of cherubim framed the Ark of the covenant in the Holy of Holies (1 Kings 6:27). The Ark was a physical picture of the throne of God, and the cherubim were keeping the people from God’s presence, except a priest, once a year, keeping humans away from the presence of the holy, holy, holy, God.

Here in Revelation these cherubim are not excluding people from God’s presence. They are these powerful awe-inspiring cosmic beings who draw the eye — but we are not meant to gaze at these crazy critters. Because their gaze is fixed on someone else.

We might be tempted, by all this descriptive language, to keep our eyes on the weird heavenly beings.

Especially if they represent some sort of powers or rulers of the kingdoms of the world who might impact us. Where Ezekiel’s vision ends with the camera pointed at this glorious figure “like that of a man” on the throne (Ezekiel 1:26), John opens with our gaze firmly on the throne; on this figure (Revelation 4:2), who like in Ezekiel, is surrounded by rainbows and light and glory (Ezekiel 1:27, Revelation 4:2-3).

The lens zooms out on another miracle — Presbyterians moving their bodies in worship (Revelation 4:9-10). When the cherubim and seraphim worship the one on the throne, these twenty-four elders join in. Now there is a lot of debate about who these elders represent, whether they are spiritual beings who are part of the divine council that gets mentioned in the Old Testament a bit — or glorified humans — ruling with God — but these creatures have crowns, and they lay them down in recognition of God’s rule… and say:

“You are worthy, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power, for you created all things, and by your will they were created and have their being.” (Revelation 4:11).

I think these are probably also meant to be spiritual beings; the powers and principalities the Old Testament pictures ruling over the nations, and those who Jesus now rules over as the king of kings and Lord of Lords.

I recognise how weird and otherworldly this all is, but remember this is a letter written to real churches in the first century and this sort of vision of the cosmos was bread and butter. Especially with an emperor claiming his ancestors had ascended to the heavens to rule as gods within a council of gods.

But there is an Old Testament background here too. Isaiah the prophet anticipated a day of the Lord, when judgment would be dished out on the earth; not just on people, but any powers and principalities — those beastly nations — who had stolen Israel’s hearts through false worship. Isaiah anticipates this day when God will come in judgment, laying waste on the earth (Isaiah 24:1), and punishing the cooperating rebels on earth and in heaven – the powers in the heavens, and the kings of the earth (Isaiah 24:21).

And on that day, the heavenly bodies — that is how ancient people viewed the moon and the sun, as part of the heavenly realm; the heavens will be dismayed and ashamed for this rebellion, and the Lord will reign from his throne. Remember this was in the Temple, on the ark, in Jerusalem (that’s how God is described dwelling in the temple “reigning between the Cherubim”), and in heaven. He will reign before the elders (Isaiah 24:23). This is not definitively heavenly or earthly, and in some ways it could be both — it is just that humans will come later in the piece in John’s vision. But, again, these elders are looking at the one on the throne. And that should be our focus. Not the weird beasties or the heavenly dancing Presbyterians, and not, in this next bit, the things in the hands of the people on the throne; the scrolls and seals.

The lens is pointed at the throne.

If we look at the other weird bits and worry about the scary stuff that worry can consume us and distract us, and remove our confidence in the one ruling on the throne. John’s lens wants to keep drawing our attention to him.

These heavenly characters are not just circling God’s throne, but the slain lamb standing at the center of the throne (Revelation 5:6); the one who sends God’s spirit into the earth; God’s life giving, glorious, presence.

The Lamb takes a scroll from the one on the throne — God, and when he takes it the elders fall before him in worship. They make us look at Jesus again. These heavenly elders are God’s servants, John also sees them serving God, before the throne, holding on to the prayers of God’s people; bringing the people of God into the presence of God (Revelation 5:8). And it is not the contents of the scroll they draw our focus to — but the worthiness of the lamb who was slain who by his blood purchased people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation (Revelation 5:9).

And made them one kingdom — a kingdom of priests who will reign on the Earth, the way Jesus is now reigning in the heavens (Revelation 5:10). The King of Kings who rules over the powers and principalities has brought people from all sorts of other kingdoms into his own kingdom of priests.

The heavenly host expands — 100 million angels join in song — praising the lamb (Revelation 5:11-12). The King. The one who was slain and is now worthy to be worshipped; to be honored, glorified, and praised in song. And then we get the super wide shot — each transition the lens is expanding to include more people and creatures — from the center — the throne — outwards; from the one on the throne to every creature in heaven and earth glorifying both the one who sits on the throne and the lamb (Revelation 5:13).

Whatever you want to make of the next bit — the opening of the scroll in chapters 6 and 7 — we are meant to know that God and the slain lamb are in control. They are ruling over what comes next.

So when the scroll is opened and the four horsemen of the apocalypse trot out in Revelation 6, they are not sinister figures opposed to God, but the ones who bring his judgment — the day of the Lord — anticipated by the prophets, and even earlier, in the law. All the plagues and pestilence and destruction the horsemen bring are the punishments promised by God for people who turn their backs on him and worship false gods in Leviticus.

The first rider brings the sword; turning people against each other; leaving us playing the game of thrones, dominating people to get what we want, like we are all caught up in a squid game (Leviticus 26:17).

The second horseman — the black horse — is a picture of economic destruction; inflation, the land working against people, scarcity, and no bread (Leviticus 26:26).

Then it is the pale horse — death and hades — bringing death; even through attacks from wild beasts (Leviticus 26:22). This is where beastly worship leads. He also brings the sword, wars, and plagues (Leviticus 26:25). There is a reminder of Egypt here too, and this is a picture of judgment, exile from Eden; curse; for breaking relationship with God.

This is Jesus bringing the day of the Lord promised by the prophets. This lines up with Jesus’ proclaiming judgment on Jerusalem as he approaches the cross, and his promise that the temple will be destroyed and God’s kingdom removed and given to others; a picture he, and John, both drew from Leviticus, Isaiah and Ezekiel (Ezekiel 9:2).

When Israel experiences this exile from God’s presence, when the sword is unleashed, in that moment, in Ezekiel, the cherubim, who had been gatekeepers of God’s glorious presence in the temple, they move from the Holy of Holies to the threshold, and some guys with swords turn up. God sends this bloke with a writing kit along with the sword guys (Ezekiel 9:2-3). His job is to mark out God’s people — like at the Passover — to spare them from the judgment that is about to be dished out. Those with this mark on their foreheads will be protected (Ezekiel 9:4). This is a new Passover, only it is happening in Jerusalem — and it is imagery we see in Revelation too. Once that judgment is carried out, Ezekiel pictures God and his gatekeepers, the cherubim, taking off; departing (Ezekiel 10:18-19).

Exile was the beginning of God’s judgment on religious and political Israel for not being his priestly kingdom — a judgment finally sealed for them when its leaders kill Jesus, and the curtain tears.

John is showing how exile in Babylon – for Israel — was just a shadow of the exile that comes when you kill God’s lamb, which comes on all the nations.

I know this is a lot.

So let’s just take stock.

In the Old Testament the Cherubim and Seraphim were heavenly beings — like the elders — powers and principalities. The Bible depicts them as the sort of beastly figures worshipped by the nations — and condemns Israel, in particular, for worshipping these beastly gods rather than the God they serve — the Lord of Hosts.

These divine creatures though, they were gatekeepers of God’s presence. They kept people out. Out of Eden, out of the Holy of Holies. And when the exile happened — when judgment came on Israel — they took off with God.

Now, in the New Testament, John is using all this same imagery to say the same judgment that came on Israel in the Old Testament is — like the prophets anticipated — about to come on Jerusalem and the nations.

Jesus, the slain lamb, has won a victory over the powers and principalities, which means the nations, and the spiritual realm, are now called to worship Jesus as king. He is creating a kingdom of priests from all nations, not just Israel, by inviting people to come out of those nations — to be marked by him — rather than the beast — and so to be saved from God’s judgment. Because when Jesus — the slain lamb — comes as judge, and unleashes God’s promised consequences — that bit in Isaiah is fulfilled — all the kings, the princes, their mighty armies and the powerful economies that sustain them — everyone not marked for life, they face the terrifying prospect of realizing they have stood against God and his king (Revelation 6:15).

And it is terrible. They do not want to see God’s face, or feel his wrath.

In Revelation this judgment — this Passover — does not just fall on Israel. It is coming for all people, and those who are marked by the lamb, rather than marked by the beast, will live in God’s presence (Revelation 6:16-17).

Exile from God’s presence or Exodus to be made a kingdom of priests. Beast or Beauty. Those are the choices.

This is the lens we are given — the lens is often on the horses and horsemen, and the punishments, and trying to figure out where we are in history, rather than on the one who unleashed them, and how we should respond.

Then the lens points at people.

Suddenly the cherubim are not keeping people away from God’s glory — people are now joining their song. First the 144,000 (Revelation 7:4). Now. Lots has been said about this, lots of people have guessed what is going on — but I think it is a picture of a restored Israel — Israelites who put their trust in Jesus — not a literal number that has to be filled up, but multiples of 12 as a picture of completeness.

This is not all the people who are saved ever. It is not those of us who are gentiles — also saved and marked by the lamb, because we come next.

This is the bad stuff in the Old Testament coming untrue; the exile of Israel, the destruction of a bunch of the tribes, and the exile of the nations and us all being handed over to other powers, and humanity’s exclusion from Eden; from life with God.

Now, all humans everywhere are invited to be God’s glorious people again; to become part of this great multitude from every nation, tribe, people, and language, standing before the Lamb (Revelation 7:9).

Calling out:

“Salvation belongs to our God, who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb.” (Revelation 7:10).

We are invited to look at the throne and join the chorus of heaven; worshipping God as one (Revelation 7:11). This great multitude is the people saved by the blood of the lamb — like in the Passover — washed, cleansed, glorified — marked as his (Revelation 7:14).

We are invited to join in; to be saved by the Lamb, to no longer be separated from God by swords and judgment, but be brought into the presence of God — back into the place sealed off by the cherubim — whether at the gateway of Eden, or the curtain temple. Our exile is over (Revelation 7:15).

We now enjoy blessing — covenant blessing — rather than those Leviticus curses for false worship (Revelation 7:16), being led by the Lamb, as our shepherd, to living water and a world beyond curse — there is a nod here to the new creation pictured at the end of the book (Revelation 7:17).

John sees things Old Testament anticipates like the choice between exile from God, or restoration through God’s anointed king in a new Passover; or between death separated from God’s presence, and life in the new Eden, a restored creation — centered on the lamb.

John invites us to share his vision of the throne room, and to choose the throne we serve.

We might not have beastly gods. We might not worship spiritual powers and principalities — heavenly beings who actually rightly serve God. We might not even have categories for cherubim and seraphim.

We might not have a tyrant on the throne — like Nero — a beastly ruler who killed his own mother to hold his throne; who commanded citizens of his empire worship him and his ascended ancestors.

But we face the same temptations that people pulled to beastly worship by the imperial cult faced.

This was a significant pressure in the world Revelation was written to. My old college principal, Bruce Winter, wrote a book Divine Honours for the Caesars, about how pressure from the Roman imperial cult was profound for early Christians, and how this pressure was not just the sword. It was cultural. The beastly empire of Rome had a beastly violence at its heart.

Emperor worship was propped up by blood. He wrote:

“Imperial veneration was also combined with other public activities, including spectacles such as gladiatorial and wild beast shows, athletics, chariot races and public feasts, such was its assimilation into the life of cities in the Roman Empire.”

Beastliness was embedded into the religion, the politics, the economy, and the entertainment and culture. It formed the imagination of the people.

So what sort of thrones shape your imagination?

Probably not Game of Thrones — but almost certainly the world it tried to unveil — a world where might makes right and violence solves problems; a world where entertainment is embedded in the same system it sometimes tries to critique, so we are never sure if we are escaping it, or escaping to it.

These systems are so compelling — just like Rome’s culture of games and feasts — that even critiques of the system become part of the system; things that feed our hearts, but also make the people making the critiques stacks of money. It is a vicious — beastly — cycle.

And the solution — the solution offered by Revelation — is not more escapism into beastly throne rooms, or onto your couch where you join in glorying in violence and cultivate desires that pull you from Jesus.

It is to keep our eyes fixed on Jesus, the Lamb at the center of the throne of heaven (Revelation 7:17); to worship him as king; to find ourselves deeply embedded in his story, having our view of the world shaped by gazing upon him. The challenge is to fill our eyes — and our vision — with this throne room. This king. This kingdom. Rather than having our hearts shaped by the beastly world around us. That does not mean not watching super violent shows, or the art or entertainment from the world, but it should prime us to see critiques and push for change; rather than reveling in the violence and misery.

We should be moved to want more of God’s kingdom to come when we are confronted with the stark reality of the kingdoms of this world.

But it does mean not just watching the world through the lenses it provides.

It means not being caught up in beastly regimes through bread and circuses.

It means finding things — the Bible, art, people who live in ways led by the Spirit — that centre your life on the throne; and finding ways to feast on those things so we keep our eyes on the Lamb.

One way I do this — and we do this as a family — is with the Bible Project. Their videos are fantastic — they love the big story of the Bible — our kids love watching Bible Project with us.

But they have also got a podcast that sometimes moves me to tears as it keeps me finding new ways to see the glory of Jesus and the wonderful intricacy of the Bible’s story. They have fantastic content on Revelation. So does the Naked Bible podcast. It gives me fresh eyes as I am engaging with God’s word, and it is full of rich stuff on Revelation going at a much slower pace than we are.

We also train our hearts as we sing like they do in the throne room — singing words joining the chorus of heaven. All the songs we sing are on a Spotify playlist so you can soak in them, sing them in the shower — do whatever it takes to focus in on the Lamb.

And of course, we are about to share in the feast of the Lamb together — the picture of a new Passover — that marks us out as Jesus’ priestly kingdom [note, we share communion together every week after the sermon].

January 22, 2024 Add Comment

Origin Story — Getting outta Babylon

This is an amended version of a sermon I preached at City South Presbyterian Church in 2022. If you’d prefer to listen to this (Spotify link), or watch it on a video, you can do that. It runs for 46 minutes.

Well, we’re at the end of the beginning of the beginning. Like any good origin story, the scene is set here for the rest of the franchise. Modern origin stories — like in the Marvel universe — give us a picture of what heroism looks like, but also, if they’re any good, they give us a sense of the setting, not only of the external threat — the baddy — but also the flaws of the heroes that are going to be part of their story.

So, let’s just use this lens on Genesis for a moment as a way of recapping where we’ve been. First up, there’s the question ‘who is the hero’? One of the mistakes we can make with any part of the Bible is jumping to seeing humans as the hero, or even the subject of the story. Genesis tells us straight up that this is God’s story, not only as the author but as the one who’s acting to create, and we get the setting here too, not just the ground but the heavens and the earth (Genesis 1:1).

We saw how there’s a hint that maybe heroism would look like bringing heaven and earth together, but for humans, it’ll look like joining God, filling the desolate and uninhabited earth (Genesis 1:2) with life that reflects his rule, his kingdom, as his image-bearing representatives, like the sons of God were meant to reflect his rule in the heavens (Genesis 1:26).

We’re not the hero, though. We’re the kids dressing in costumes, or maybe we’re the Hawkeyes, the Black Widows — heroic people without heavenly power. We’re not Aragorn or Arwen. We’re the Hobbits, the ground-level heroes.

And we met our first big baddy, a heavenly critter of some sort who turns up as a legged serpent, a dragon even, who wants to craftily pull people away from defining heroism as reflecting who God is to defining heroism as being godlike on our own terms (Genesis 3:1, 5). This leads to grasping, and then quickly to violence (Genesis 4:8), building violent cities, where vengeance creates a vicious cycle (Genesis 4:17, 24), ultimately producing a world soaked in violence (Genesis 6:11).

We even met heavenly baddies who joined the cause of the big baddy like we’re meant to join the cause of God, grasping humans, “taking any they chose” (Genesis 6:2) like Adam and Eve plucked the fruit, creating super-powered baddies, the Nephilim, warrior kings of name (Genesis 6:4), who will pop up in the story of the Bible as giants or the leaders of violent empires.

And though we saw godliness as generative, as creating life and providing abundance and hospitality, and beauty and order and love, God, the hero of the story, detests this grasping violence, sin, our attempts to be godly, and so he de-creates and re-creates in the flood, exiling evil and violent people from his presence (Genesis 3:24, 4:16), and then his world (Genesis 6:13).

Exile is pictured as this movement east, away from the Garden. And in our last ‘episode’, we landed in the furthest east we get here, in Babylon (Genesis 11:2), where a warrior king, Nimrod, is trying to build a name for himself by building another city, Babylon (Genesis 11:4).

Each week we’ve traced how this origin story creates threads or scenes or patterns that repeat through the story where our picture of God and heroism develops, but mostly it develops against the struggle, the failure, for the humans in the story to be heroic, to be godly, and how much we’re trapped in the coils of the serpent.

But in the midst of the story, we’ve been tracing two lines of seed set up in Genesis 3 (Genesis 3:15). There have been two types of human, children of the serpent like Cain, Lamech, and Nimrod, and children reflecting the image of God, potential serpent crushers, new Adams — Abel, then Seth, then Noah.

And now, in this line of Shem, the line of name, that gets us to Abram (Genesis 11:10, 26), the camera narrows down again after the Babel story. We had a family tree of the three sons of Noah back in chapter 10, and now we get the family tree of the one son whose line we’re going to keep watching.

Now, there’s a thing we haven’t looked at much in these genealogies as we’ve passed them by, but Genesis keeps telling us how old someone is when they have a kid, and how old they are when they die, even if the camera moves on from that person. It follows this formula: When ____ had lived X years, he became the father of _____. After he became the father of ____, ____ lived X years and had other sons and daughters (Genesis 11:10-11, 12-13, 14-15, 16-17, 18-19, 20-21, 22-23, 24-35).

For this whole family tree, right up to two years before Abram is born, Noah is still alive. There are so many generations of this family tree still mingling around the traps, and so when Abram’s dad is called to uproot and leave, this is a big deal. He’s pulling out of a family system where multiple generations are still around. Here’s a visual of the overlapping lifespans of each person.

There’s a little more backstory to this repeat of the line of Shem. We met Peleg back in chapter 10, and his brother Joktan, but then the story divided (Genesis 10:25), we followed Joktan’s line. We’re told the world was divided when Peleg was around, so I reckon that’s giving us a bit of a timeline for when the Babel story happened, when Peleg’s great-great-grandfather’s brother’s grandson Nimrod was doing his thing.

All these characters are still very much related in an extended family network, and the scattering from Babel into nations with different languages is starting to unfold. And one way it unfolds is in this family line we zoom in on — the line of Peleg (Genesis 11:18-19); Shem’s other great-great-grandson, who turns out to be the great-great-grandfather of Abram, and the camera has zoomed all the way from an account of the heavens and earth (Genesis 2:4), to the account of Abram’s dad Terah (Genesis 11:26-27).

We’re told a couple of times his roots are in this place called Ur of the Chaldeans (Genesis 11:27-28). It’s the land where Abram and his brothers are born, and one of Abram’s brothers, Lot’s dad Haran, even dies there. Now, this is significant because Ur of the Chaldeans is in Babylon. The Chaldeans become part of Babylon. In fact, if you flick forward to Jeremiah, where Jeremiah tells the story of God using Babylon to bring judgment on Israel, through Nebuchadnezzar, where it says Jerusalem was surrounded by Babylon and the Babylonians, it’s the same Hebrew word here for “Babylonians” that we get for Chaldea in Genesis (Genesis 21:4).

Abram’s family, the line of fruitful seed we’re going to follow for the rest of the story, all the way to Jesus, was born in Babylon and comes out of Babylon to become God’s chosen people. They start off with Abram’s dad Terah taking his brother, his nephew Lot, and Abram, and Abram’s wife Sarai, out of Babylon towards Canaan. They start heading west, which is a significant movement. Remember back to the idea that the gates of Eden are on the east, so to head west is to head back towards Eden. And Canaan is significant too because it’s what’s going to become the Promised Land, the land flowing with milk and honey. It’ll become Israel, where the temple mountain is and where God dwells with his people.

But they don’t make it. They stop in Harran (Genesis 11:31). Now, there’s some fun Hebrew visual punning going on here with the name of this place Harran, and the name of Abram’s brother Haran. By changing just one consonant slightly, you get two different names with two different meanings. But I wonder how much both are being invoked. Haran, Abram’s brother, his name is the Hebrew word for mountain climber. It gets used six times in five verses here, while Harran, the city name, is a word that means crossroads, a word borrowed from the early Babylonian empire, which named the city, and on the map, this city lands in Assyria, where Nimrod also built cities. Terah and his family of mountain climbers reach a crossroads at the edge of the empire set up by Nimrod, and they stop. They’re right at the edge of the east.

They’re at a crossroads. Do they leave the land of the east, where their family is connected, or do they go west, towards Eden, or in this case, Canaan? And Terah and his son settle there. Terah dies there, at the crossroads (Genesis 11:32).

So from this crossroads, God calls his people, his line of faithful seed, from the line of Shem, name, and the line of Eber, the Hebrews, who he’s going to attach his name to, out of the land of Nimrod, and Babylon, and its walled cities, into the land. He calls Abram to leave his established family network, the people and household that give him security, and go into a land God will show him, to keep going west (Genesis 12:1). God makes these promises that are going to set up the story of the rest of the Bible, all the way to Jesus.

God promises Abram’s family will become a great nation. They will be blessed, like humans were blessed in Genesis 1. They will be fruitful and increase in number, and they’ll do this in relationship with God. They’ll be an image-bearing people so that God will make their name great, and they’ll be a blessing to others. In fact, whether or not people are blessed like humans in Eden, or cursed, like humans east of Eden, is going to depend on how people treat this line of seed, starting with Abram. And through this line, all the nations we’ve just seen spread through the earth will be blessed (Genesis 12:2-3).

Now, there are some barriers here that pop up in the narrative. For starters, we were already told Sarai couldn’t have kids (Genesis 11:30), and things get pretty sketchy pretty quick in terms of how Abram and Sarai deal with this promise. The first thing Abram does is demonstrate faith at the crossroads. He and his family, and Lot, who throws his lot in with Abram, they pack up, and they head off to Canaan, and arrive there (Genesis 12:4-5).

Where Terah was heading, and where God told him to go. He goes to a great tree, where God appears to him. There’s an Eden image here (Genesis 12:6-7). God promises this land to Abram’s seed, his offspring, so Abram and his family stake a claim. Abram does what Noah did after the flood, and what faithful people will do through the story all the way through. He builds an altar to the Lord. He’s a new Adam, a human who is in relationship with God.

He moves further west, towards Bethel, a place named house of God. That’s what Bethel means, not towards a hill. This is the Hebrew word for mountain, where he puts up a tent and builds an altar, to the east of Bethel. So the house of the Lord, framed like a new Eden, is to the west, and he calls on the name of God (Genesis 12:8-9).

A tent. An altar. Calling on the name of God. Near the house of the Lord. This is tabernacle type stuff. This is a high point. It sets up a sort of ideal, and then, things, like they often do, go downhill as Abram heads into Egypt because of a famine, which is a scene that’ll repeat with his great-grandkids (Genesis 12:10).

There he creates a repeat of the fall. There’s a repeat of seeing beauty and taking, only this time Abram gives Sarai to the Pharaoh. It’s bad (Genesis 12:14-15). God sends plagues on Egypt. We’ll see that again. It’s a curse on the Egyptians, those who curse Abram are cursed (Genesis 12:17). And the Pharaoh sends him out of Egypt and back to Canaan. It’s a mini-Exodus (Genesis 12:19-20).

In the space of one chapter, Abram leaves Babylon and becomes a new Adam, promised the land of Canaan, and then leaves Egypt with the wealth of Egypt given to him as God blesses him and curses the people who curse him. But right in the middle, we see Abram as this conflicted character, a new Adam who God’s going to work with, who calls on God’s name, and a reflection of the old Adam, who brings curse as he rules over his wife, and lets her be taken.

What a scrambled mess. But what a picture of the scrambled mess that this line of seed goes through in the Old Testament as they end up in Egypt, and are created through an Exodus, coming out of Egypt, and into Canaan, setting up an altar on a mountain, not just in a tent, but in a temple, a house of God.

In chapter 13, when he comes out of Egypt, Abram and Lot are both blessed with wealth, and rather than fighting, Abram lets Lot choose what land he’s going to settle on. Lot land that is described as being like Eden, and he heads east again, while Abram chooses the land on the west, the land of Canaan (Genesis 13:10-12).

Finally, Abram goes to live near some more trees, where he pitches his tents and builds an altar (Genesis 13:18). There’s an interesting contrast set up between Nimrod and Abram, where Nimrod builds a city with bricks and Abram sets up as a nomad, living in tents in the trees. It’s a real return to Eden.

And so in Abram’s story, we have a pattern that defines Israel’s story and Israel’s hope, even as they come out of exile in Babylon, and head back west into these same places. Going back to the call of Abram out of Babylon, to enter a covenant with God for the land. And Israel coming out of their suffering in Egypt, to make a name for God (Nehemiah 9:7-10). Only the retelling of this story doesn’t end in hope in Nehemiah, but in despair. Even as the people rebuild the temple and the walls in Jerusalem, they know exile isn’t over yet.

They’re in the land, but now they’re in the land and still in Babylon; they’re slaves still ruled by Nimrod-like kings because they keep doing evil (Nehemiah 9:36-37). They’re in distress — because of their sin. Their harvest is going to foreign Nimrod-like kings — all the Eden-like fruit goes elsewhere — and they want delivery.

They’re left wondering how the promises to Abram are still being fulfilled. What home looks like. Whether they’ll ever be a house of the Lord; a people who meet with God and so provide blessing to the nations ever again.

They want the hope expressed in the prophets to actually be fulfilled; for God’s people to be called back from the ends of the earth, for God to keep His promises to Abram to bless the world through his servant — this line of seed. They want to know that even in exile, God hasn’t rejected them and will call them back to produce blessing and fruitful life (Isaiah 41:8-9).

They want to truly come out of Babylon; led by a new Adam, by a new Abram, a son of Abram, to be led by a king. They want exile to be over. And Genesis sets us — children of the nations — to want that for us too; restoration from our own exile, the exile from Eden and at Babel into these cities of the world, ruled by these powers and the human rulers who line up with the snake.

So let’s tie these threads together — and maybe the threads of the whole origin story as we’ve seen it. We’ve seen a few times that the end of the story — Revelation — is a new beginning, shaped by the origin story in Genesis. It gives us not just a first story to live by but shows how the gospel becomes our origin story and what the end of the story we’re living towards looks like.

It has the same hero — God — but revealed in a more pointed way in his Son, the victorious King, who appears from Revelation 1 to the end as the Son of Man and Son of God who rules in a way that truly reflects God (Revelation 1:5). John is writing to the church, communities of Jews and Gentiles around the world facing the beastly Babylonian rule of Rome, but he calls Jesus the ruler of the kings of the earth. He says he’s freed us from sin by his blood; ending the claim the powers and principalities had over Israel in Nehemiah, and over all of us from Genesis, and making us a kingdom of priests to serve God (Revelation 1:6). This is what Israel’s called in the Exodus, as they’re called out of the nations, and it’s what we’re called to do as Jesus calls us out of these cities ruled by these kings to live under his rule. He’s come to deal with rebellion in the heavens and the earth — and the same big bad guy, the dragon, Satan (Revelation 12:7-9), and his heavenly and earthly minions — beastly powers and principalities and their human expressions — Nimrod-like cities of Babylon (Revelation 13:4).

And it tells the story that the hero wins. He destroys the beastly and his buddies — the kings of the world, and their armies — the Nimrods in fiery judgment — and the dragon, who he destroys, with the beast, in fiery judgment. He’s the snake crusher (Revelation 19:19-20, 20:10).

Revelation tells this new exodus story, where God’s king calls his people out of Babylon; Babylon and Egypt and Rome and Jerusalem and whatever cities we belong to that teach us that violent grasping is how we secure the good life. Our economies built on grabbing wealth and beauty on our own terms — where we chase Eden life without God — and making a name for ourselves.

It describes this judgment on Babylon, on the cities of Nimrod that started in opposition to God in Genesis; Babylon the great is falling because it has become a dwelling place for demons and impure spirits — for those like the Nephilim, opposed to God (Revelation 18:2). These are the cities of those nations disinherited at Babel and given to these powers, who refuse to come home.

Babylon becomes a symbol of political and economic rebellion against God: wealth, power, an empire opposed to God that corrupts the nations drunk on the lies of the serpent and kingdoms built on grasping (Revelation 18:3-4).

The world that rejects God’s faithful seed faces curse — these Babylons will get something like the plagues that hit Egypt when Abram was there, and when Israel left in the Exodus — something like the flood, because her sins are piled up like bricks in Babel. Revelation describes judgment falling on all the beastly kingdoms represented by Babylon — Rome, Jerusalem, our own human empires — as a result of the death, resurrection, and rule of Jesus.

But God calls us to be like Abram — to come out — leave these empires and find Eden-like life with God, with the fulfillment of the same promises driving us — blessing, a home, and being his nation of priests (Revelation 18:4-5). And we’re invited to hear God’s call to Abram to come out — to live as an exodus people — not a people exiled from God, but people like Abram who know our home is the new Eden — because we’re following a king who brings blessing to those who receive him, and judgment — curse to those who don’t.

Babylon is coming down to earth. Falling. And blessing is going to be found with God’s faithful seed, who’ll bring a heavenly city — a heavenly city brought down from the heavens to earth — an anti-Babel that achieves all the Sons of God and the Nimrods and the Nebuchadnezzars were trying to do; and is a more permanent home than Abram’s life under the Eden-like trees (Revelation 21:1-2).

A new Eden with a new tree of life (Revelation 22:1-2).

The end of the story ties all these threads together, and it invites us to live with this as our story — our hope.

So now we find life under the branches of the tree that gives life — the cross — while we wait for this new tree of life.

We find life with Jesus as the one who connects us to life with God as we feed on him — called to come out of Babylon and come to him (Revelation 22:17).

Abram’s story becomes our story — we all come to a crossroads in life where we have to decide whether to choose Babylon, and the serpent-rulers, or to head towards life up the mountain and into the heavens with God — and for us the crossroads is the cross — where Jesus secures the fate of the serpent, and the earthly kingdoms opposed to him secure their fate too.

Communion, or the Lord’s Supper, is such a great picture of this shift. It’s easy for us to ask what does this mean for us, to not live in Babylon even if we reside there. This means — like Israel in literal Babylon — not seeing Babylon as home, and believing its stories about God, the world, and the good life. That’s what these texts did as a story for Israel.

Communion with God doesn’t mean leaving our cities — it actually means living in them, but living differently.

A bit like Israel when they were in exile in Babylon who weren’t, at that point, called to pack up everything and get out like Abram; but to plant their own trees; their own Edens in the city that wanted to be just like Eden but without Israel’s God in the mix; they were to do this and love their neighbors as they lived a better story; seeking the peace and welfare of the violent city (Revelation 18:4-5).

Precisely because they knew God was going to call them out and to a new home, and this was how to testify to that hope; to God’s promise to bring them back in a new exodus (Jeremiah 29:10-11).

The catch is we’re not Israel in exile, or even Israel restored — we’re citizens from the nations, also brought back — not exiles, but those who’re on the journey home to God even as we live in empires that will fall.

The trick is to make homes — to be dwelling places of God in the world, but not to be too at home. To do the Abram and sit under Eden-like trees — not as exiles cut off from God, but as people who know we have a home that we’re waiting for, so that we’re never truly at home in the places we live; we’re foreigners.

There’s an early letter circulated in the Roman empire in the 2nd century, the Epistle to Diognetus, about how Christians lived in this tension. Where they might speak and dress the same as their neighbors. But had a “wonderful and confessedly striking method of life,” dwelling in their countries as sojourners — knowing this isn’t the end of the story because we have a home.

This letter unpacks how Christians lived differently — because we have a different story about what it means to be human. This played out in how Christians shaped their homes — their families and their tables — and how they approached sex. They were marked by generosity — by participating in a different economy. They lived lives on Earth as citizens of Heaven.

Living this better story means not participating in the religious worship of the cities we find ourselves in — which was easier when there were literal temples to sex, and money, and success in the landscape of a city. We’re still worshippers; and we still have our own versions of temples and rituals and sacrifice we make; and we still live in empires built on the capacity to do violence and the desire to constantly grasp our share of capital, as nations and individuals. And we’re called to come out and live differently.

There’s an interesting picture of this in Corinthians — and this’ll lead us into sharing communion together — so can I invite those who’re handing out the bread and juice to come forward, now, and as they do, if you’re someone who’s heard the call out of Babylon, and into life with God — even if you want to take that step today — just grab hold of the bread and the juice and consider what that represents.

In Corinth, Paul talks about the cup of demons (1 Corinthians 10:21). He calls the church not to participate in both the Lord’s cup — being united with Jesus, and this cup of demons. Now, this is almost certainly partly about idol temples, where parties happened at altars, but Corinth was also home to an imperial cult temple; a temple to the deified Caesars — at the highest point of the city. The Roman rulers learned a bunch from Nebuchadnezzar — and the way they talked about the spirit of the emperors who became gods. The thing that made him a god — was his daemonius — his demon.

There’s this inscription about Nero taking the throne that uses this word demon to describe his spirit; his genius:

“…the expectation and hope of the world has been declared emperor, the good genius of the world and the source of all good things, Nero has been declared Caesar” (P. Oxy. 7).

An early Christian, Tertullian, points out that Christians don’t swear to the demon of emperors. Demons are for exorcising:

“We make our oaths, too, not by ‘the genius of the Caesar’ but by his health, which is more august than any genius. Do you not know that genius is a name for daemon? Daemons or geniuses, we are accustomed to exorcise, in order to drive them out of men…” (Tertullian, Ad Nationes, Chapter 17).

To share in the table of the empire was to call Caesar lord, and commit yourself to his rule; and Revelation certainly has Rome in view as a beastly human kingdom. The Corinthians were called to live in the city of Corinth, but under the rule of Jesus — in communion with him — not giving their lives to the earthly kingdoms of people who claimed to be like God and went about doing that through grasping and dominating.

Sharing in the cup of Jesus — at his table — means not being shaped by the violent and grasping patterns of people who believe the origin stories that say ‘this life is all there is’ and we’re just a speck in time and space produced by randomness so we should grab what we can, while we can, or look to make life as long as we can by seizing godlike control of ourselves. And so, we serve the God-king who comes to bring heaven to earth the way Adam was meant to — not by grasping, or becoming beastly, but by giving — and that becomes our pattern; a pattern that’ll produce fruit in our lives as his Spirit dwells in us, and as we tell ourselves his story in our own Babylon, and here is a call to come out.

Will you take and eat this bread remembering the body of Jesus, given for you, that you might live in communion with God; his heavenly life dwelling in you so that your home is this heavenly city, the new Eden?

And will you drink this cup — remembering that you are not united to Satan or demons or the powers and principalities that make Babylon; that Jesus drank the judgment poured out on those empires for you on the cross, so you might drink from his cup and share life with him under the trees of the new Eden, by living waters.

January 4, 2024 Add Comment

Origin Story — Why be a brickman when you can be a brick, man?

This is an amended version of a sermon I preached at City South Presbyterian Church in 2022. If you’d prefer to listen to this (Spotify link), or watch it on a video, you can do that. It runs for 43 minutes.

Do you want your name to last beyond your time here on Earth? I don’t know my grandfather’s father’s name on either side of my family. Do you?

It’s unlikely any of us will be remembered in a hundred years. And I’m increasingly okay with that—I guess because I realize that there are people whose names we remember because they did outrageously awful things, like Judas, Hitler, Nimrod, or John Dring, who invented the first instant coffee in 1771.

We can try to make a name for ourselves—but others have sought to make a name for their city or nation.

Building projects—making giant stuff—is one way to put a place ‘on the map,’ like Coffs Harbour with its Big Banana, Nambour with its Big Pineapple, or the Gold Coast with its Big Clive. If anybody has tried to make a name for themselves in Australia this year—Nimrod style—it’s the guy who has put up billboards and images of himself everywhere.

This isn’t just an Aussie thing—we do like our big things—but in Brazil, there’s a town trying to make a name for itself using the name and image of Jesus.

Obviously, Rio de Janeiro has had its Christ the Redeemer statue for ages; this town, Encantado, has built a taller Jesus statue—five meters taller—Christ the Protector.

I just love this image from construction time.

But now, you can take photos from his heart.

How lovely.

Just what Jesus and the first commandment wanted us to do.

You can book your holidays now—and while you’re there—maybe you could book a trip to the Creation Museum in America— built by Aussie Ken Ham— where work is beginning on a Tower of Babel; a life-size replica.

Human projects are so often part of us attempting heaven on Earth projects in our name, not God’s. And look, neither the Jesus statues nor the replica Tower of Babel are only built to make a person or town’s name famous, but they feel like other big things. Tourist attractions rather than architecture representing heaven on Earth like—say—the Temple in the Old Testament.

I can’t help thinking the builders of these projects haven’t quite nailed the way the Bible approaches monumental building projects—whether they’re bricks and mortar, or ways to promote His name.

So the Babel story has some background. One way to read it is as a prequel to the events we read last week because here the whole world’s got one language (Genesis 11:1). In chapter 10, in the table of nations, the text says these nations spread across the world each with their own languages (Genesis 10:5). It’s also more of the Bible’s origin story of Babel — Babylon— which we were told Nimrod built last week (Genesis 10:10). The passage starts on the plain of Shinar (Genesis 11:2-3), a word that’s also translated as “Babylonia” in the Old Testament, like in Daniel (Daniel 1:3). We’ll see that this story relates to other origin stories, and especially the Enuma Elish, the story of the creation of the city of Babylon and its temple tower as a gateway between the heavens and the earth.

There’s also some Genesis backstory that I reckon should inform the way we see this. Let’s remember that in the beginning, God created the heavens and the Earth (Genesis 1:1), and that for the first readers of this text, their concept of reality was that heaven is high above the earth—through the dome. God created humans to represent Him on Earth like God rules—with the ‘us’ He speaks to in Genesis 1—in the heavens (Genesis 1:26-28, Psalm 8:5-6).

We’ve seen how there are other heavenly beings who are part of a divine council — heavenly rulers — in the Bible’s story, and how some of these sons of God tried to bring heaven to Earth on their own terms in the whole Nephilim episode; they try to bring heaven down (Genesis 6:4). I mentioned then that Babel is a mirror of that story with humans trying to bring heaven and Earth together from the ground, even from bricks made from the ground (Genesis 11:4).

There’s just a couple of other things to bear in mind here too — we open with this final move eastward (Genesis 11:2). This is as far east of Eden as we get in the story of Genesis; that movement that began with humanity’s exile from the garden ends here in Babylon (Genesis 3:24, 4:16), and the construction of a city (Genesis 11:4). So far cities have been bad places in Genesis; human versions of the garden, but without God. The only other use of the word city that’s used here is for the city Cain built, that became the city of his violent descendant Lamech (Genesis 4:17). The word used for city means fortified or guarded place. What’s interesting here is that the word for garden that we get in Genesis is literally an enclosed place (Genesis 2:8).

We’ve got these two sorts of places that are marked out as ‘not the wilderness’ — and I reckon they unfold in contrasting ways; one type of non-desolate land is made by God, with boundaries He establishes, while the other’s made by humans who’re trying to recreate heavenly life outside Eden — with the walls we put up, and trying to shove heavenly life in on our terms.

Walls were an interesting part of nation building — the capacity to shift life in the ancient world from nomadic to something like urban life. You can read a bunch about them in this book Walls: A History of Civilisation in Blood and Brick.

Walls separated the desolate and uninhabited land in the ancient world — where nomadic warrior people and shepherds would roam, fighting off predators, plundering the weak — from the cultured city space where people lived in comfort and security, protected from the wilderness, where they would carry their goods — and bricks — in baskets. Here’s a quote:

“The world outside their walls was not exactly uninhabited, but it was, in the eyes of the basket carriers, dangerous. This was civilization in its infancy: every city its own frontier, never far from hostile neighbors in the mountains, desert, or steppe.”

People living behind walls found comfort, security, and wealth, so kings through the ancient world would brag about their wall building as the source of their power.

Chapter 1 of Walls explores exactly this period in history — life before Babel. Before baked bricks. Before bricks walls were just mud, and they’d sink, and you couldn’t defend them. Baked bricks, like we find in Babel, brought a whole new era of building stuff to make a name for yourself, and to build with ambition; a whole new way to make new Edens, or cities. Here’s another quote:

“Lacking sufficient fuel to bake all their mud bricks, the Mesopotamians settled for drying them in the sun, a process that created building blocks of such dubious quality that they could not withstand even occasional rain.”

So we zero in on the origin story for this city — Babel — Babylon — the story of Nimrod the warrior king from chapter 10 getting people together to build a city trying to bring heaven on Earth, to make a name for himself like he’s a Nephilim; so he’s not just a mighty warrior, but a man of name. They’re on a plain — not a mountain — and he’s using this new brick technology (Genesis 10:10).

Genesis is retelling the story of the god-king Gilgamesh — whose epic is an origin story shaping the life of other nations in Mesopotamia. On the very first tablet of the Gilgamesh Epic, one of the very first boasts is that he built the wall and the temple of the city of Uruk — which Genesis 10:10 said was one of the cities Nimrod built.

Here are some quotes from the Gilgamesh Epic:

“He carved on a stone stela all of his toils, and built the wall of Uruk-Haven, the wall of the sacred Eanna Temple, the holy sanctuary. Look at its wall which gleams like copper…

Go up on the wall of Uruk and walk around, examine its foundation, inspect its brickwork thoroughly. Is not even the core of the brick structure made of kiln-fired brick…

One league city, one league palm gardens, one league lowlands, the open area of the Ishtar Temple, three leagues and the open area of Uruk the wall encloses.”

Nimrod, in the Israelite imagination, is Gilgamesh.

The Epic says these walls were made from kiln-fired bricks, and the walls encompassed this whole open area — the temple, the city, and the plains. Where that epic tells the story of Uruk, Genesis zeroes in on the Nimrod-Gilgamesh character building Babylon. We’re going to meet a later Babylonian brickman in a bit — but for now the camera’s pointed on Nimrod and his quest moving from a forgettable nomad to a builder of cities — from being a warrior on the Earth, to a warrior king directing earthworks — building walls and filling the space behind them.

Look what the goal is here as they build a city and then a tower to reach the heavens from the Earth; literally it’s a tower with its head in the heavens (Genesis 11:4). It’s the same word for the top of the mountains in the flood (Genesis 8:5). They want to make a name for themselves and not be scattered — only, we’ve just seen the nations scattered already; so we know how that’s going to go, and we know that humans were meant to fill the Earth — spreading — spreading a garden meeting place between heaven and earth made by God rather than a city made by humans (Genesis 1:28, 11:4). Remember too, somewhere in the Israelite imagination, at least according to Ezekiel, Eden was a mountain (Ezekiel 28:13-14). In Genesis 3, Eden was a meeting place between heaven and Earth, where God walked — and — that’s exactly what Nimrod and his buddies are trying to build (Genesis 3:8).

This tower to the heavens is what is called a ziggurat — a type of temple from the ancient world. It’s more than a temple, it’s a gateway between heaven and Earth. A set of steps that the gods could climb down, so Nimrod the Brickman builds one of these Ziggurats.

We have names recorded for ziggurats from nations around the same time — that are all variations on the theme ‘Mountain House’ — these buildings — like this one in Ashur that was called “the house of the mountain” — this was man-made, and its ruins look like a mountain.

Or there’s this one in Nippur called “the house of the mountain of heaven and earth” — these were man-made mountains with their heads in the heavens.

The Mesopotamian region had their own walled-garden-mountain-temple idea — their own Eden, and that’s what is being built here; a gateway, in a city, to bring divine beings — God, or sons of God — down to earth. It’s a staircase to make the events of Genesis 6 happen again — bringing heavenly life to earthly people to make their name. It’s a monumental project.

In Babylon’s own creation story the Enuma Elish, there’s a tower just like this. Only in that story the tower is built by the gods so they can come down. In this story, Marduk, the chief god, tells humans to build Babylon by making bricks. Here are some quotes:

“Build Babylon, the task you have sought. Let bricks for it be moulded, and raise the shrine!” The Anunnaki wielded the pick. For one year they made the needed bricks.

They raised the peak of Esagil, a replica of the Apsû. They built the lofty temple tower of the Apsû.”

Then:

“Be-l seated the gods, his fathers, at the banquet. In the lofty shrine which they had built for his dwelling, Saying, “This is Babylon, your fixed dwelling, Take your pleasure here! Sit down in joy!”

When they “raise the peak of Esagil,” that’s a word that translates as “the house that raises its head,” it’s a replica of the Apsû — which are those flowing living waters in the Babylonian story. A mountain where the waters of life flow out (that sounds like Eden). They build a lofty temple tower. So the gods come down and party with them in Babylon — their “fixed dwelling,” this lofty tower.

The Babel story turns this on its head.

The Gilgamesh-Nimrod king who wants to be a Nephilim — who wants to make a name for himself — he’s not a grand heavenly player who is godlike; he’s a wannabe. He has this grand unity plan to make himself a god on earth, but things don’t go the way he wants. There’s no divine party. Before they even finish the tower that is meant to bring heaven to earth, God comes down (Genesis 11:5).

He takes one look at this tower project — and there’s an echo of Genesis 3 here — where there he says “they’ll be like one of us” — when they already were, he says if they finish this “nothing they plan will be impossible” (Genesis 11:6). This is another push to be godlike — heavenly humans on earth, but they’re doing it wrong.

They’re trying to build a Garden of Eden — a place where God dwells on earth with His people — rather than receiving that as a gift from God. It’s an attempt to build security and paradise and a name on earthly terms, with baked earth, rather than letting God make His name great through His earthly representatives — images of His heavenly rule — given life by His breath.

So God — just like he does in Genesis chapter 1 — says “Let us” (Genesis 1:26, 11:7). There’s a plural here that could be God talking within the Trinity, or it could be God talking to the divine council — and there’s a reason to think that’s what’s in view here that we’ll see in a minute. Then rather than the humans coming up into heaven, or building a tower that enables God to come down — God comes down to confuse — which is the same word for Babel or Babylon in Hebrew — He Babylons the people, scattering them all over the world, and the city doesn’t even get finished — this heaven on Earth project doesn’t work out; even if Babylon is going to look great, and bricky, and powerful with its garden mountains and lofty temples and big walls — it isn’t Eden. It offers no security.

And this scattering—into nation states around the earth—it’s an act of judgment on these nations (Genesis 11:8-9). We’ve picked up Deuteronomy 32 a couple of times in this series—back when we were talking about the sons of God, where we noticed that there’s a good reason to translate this verse as God setting up the boundaries of the nations according to the numbers not of the sons of Israel, who haven’t been born yet when the nations are scattered in Genesis 10 and 11, but according to the sons of God (Deuteronomy 32:8-9). This act of scattering in Genesis is him disinheriting the nations—giving them to the sons of God, these other heavenly beings in the divine council to be ruled by these powers and principalities—while God keeps his own people, Israel, as his portion—his own inheritance.

There’s a warning here about what’ll happen if God’s upright people—Jeshurun means upright—abandon the God who made them—fathered them—and who saves them—to bow down to these gods—idols, and literally here in bold demons—a word only used twice in the Old Testament—but the nations aren’t condemned for this idolatry here (Deuteronomy 32:15-17). Just Israel, who’re God’s children. The punishment for this people; it’s to be scattered and to have their name erased (Deuteronomy 32:26). It’s exactly what the people in Babel wanted to avoid; and what happens to everyone at Babel.

Reading Deuteronomy this way—picking up a thread from Babel—I reckon, is compelling when you look at how Genesis moves from the people who want to make a name to the line of the son of Noah whose name is Name, the line that now runs all the way to Abram, whose name God is going to make great as he blesses the nations (Genesis 12:1-3). We’ll see more of Abram’s story next week—and there’s another good reason to read Deuteronomy 32, and its commentary on God’s relationship to the nations and to Israel this way that comes a little earlier in Deuteronomy, in chapter 4, where God says all the other nations have been given over to the worship of these other heavenly bodies—the host of heaven, while Israel has been brought out of the furnace of Egypt—like a cast idol statue—a baked people—as God’s inheritance (Deuteronomy 4:19-20). It’s similar to the language Exodus uses when it talks about Israel as a kingdom of priests (Exodus 19:5-6).

God’s people are called out of the scattering that happens when Nimrod builds this temple city of Babylon to make a name for himself; this walled centre of security trying to bring heaven and earth together on human terms. Cities can be like this — centres of human security without God appearing to set the boundaries, which is part of the story for Israel through its history as it comes to have its own cities, and its own walls, and its own heaven on earth spaces—the tabernacle, while they’re living as people without walls; people roaming the earth heading towards a destination—the promised land.

On their journey, we’re often told about the cities in the land as though they’re little Babylons—walled cities full of violent people—led by giant kings—that was what scared the spies who were sent into the promised land (Numbers 13:28). On their journey, we’re told about these big cities, with big walls and giant people—like King Og, or the Anakites, as though these walls offer security against God’s plans (Deuteronomy 3:3-5, 9:1-2), but like Jericho with its famous wall tumbling story—these walls weren’t a barrier to God.

Israel is warned that when they turn to idolatry and get scattered—these same walls, in their cities, won’t protect them either. He’ll bring a nation against them from far away. A nation whose language they won’t understand, who’ll tear down their city walls, and cart them off. They’ll be scattered just like the people in Babel—only they’ll be scattered into Babel itself (Deuteronomy 28:50-52, 64). The seeds for the exile are planted in the Babel story, and in the way the Old Testament picks up these threads.

So this becomes a particularly interesting story for Israel while they’re in exile in Babylon. Nimrod isn’t the only Gilgamesh figure in the Bible. He’s not the only brickman. What he does with his cities and the Babel story in Genesis, king Nebuchadnezzar repeats—and Daniel wants us to see the repeat of the name-making warrior king—a Nimrod—who wants his own version of heaven on Earth; his own Eden.

Babylon’s king Nebuchadnezzar was a mighty warrior king in history who expanded Babylon’s empire—including by taking the southern kingdom of Judah into exile—he might’ve inspired just how popular the Gilgamesh Epic became by being a city-building god-king. He was a famous brickman. Like Nimrod who built with baked bricks and tar, he built walls (Genesis 11:3).

There are stacks of surviving inscriptions like this one about his building projects; where he brags about the strong wall he made with bitumen and baked bricks, building this as high as a mountain. Just like in Gilgamesh. Just like in Babel.

Here’s a translation from some of the inscriptions:

“I built a strong wall that cannot be shaken with bitumen and baked bricks… I laid its foundation on the breast of the netherworld, and I built its top as high as a mountain.

I added to the palace and raised it as high as a mountain with bitumen and baked brick.

I constructed a strong, sixty-cubit spur of land along the Euphrates River and thereby created dry land. With bitumen and baked brick, I secured its foundation on the surface of the netherworld, at the level of the water table, and raised its superstructure.

As for the merciless, evil-doer… I drove away his arrows by reinforcing the wall of Babylon like a mountain. I strengthened the protection of Esagil and established the city of Babylon as a fortress.”

Nebuchadnezzar the Nimrod brags over and over about building brick mountains. Even that he made dry ground on the waters—like Genesis, but also like the tower in Babylon’s creation story—and in Babel—out of bitumen and baked brick. He brags about driving back Babylon’s enemies and protecting the ‘house that rises its head’—establishing Babylon as a fortress.

And every brick laid was Nebuchadnezzar making a name for himself—it’s estimated there were 15 million bricks used in his construction projects—bricks like this one.

Each one was imprinted with his name and a list of his achievements as a temple builder who made tower-mountains that reached the heavens. These braggy inscriptions were on every brick, on every wall, and built into the foundation of every project.

You want to make a name for yourself in Babylon, you be a brick-man. A Nimrod. A Nebuchadnezzar.

Daniel draws a link between Nebuchadnezzar and the Babel story.

He starts off with Israel being brought to the plain of Shinar, and then, over time, has Nebuchadnezzar getting too big for his boots in a ‘head in the heavens’ scene. This time it’s not with bricks but with gold. Nebuchadnezzar, like Nimrod, goes to the plains of Babylon and he builds a giant tower with its head in the heavens (Genesis 11:2-4, Daniel 3:1), only this tower isn’t a ziggurat, it’s a giant image — it uses the same word as Genesis 1 just in Aramaic — it’s a giant golden image of God, representing his rule.

He does this right after Daniel interprets a dream where Nebuchadnezzar’s kingdom was a gold bit of a statue made from different materials; it’s just the head (Daniel 2:38-39). He wakes up and builds the entire ‘man’ of his dreams from gold. He’s claiming his kingdom and name will last forever; that he’s the one who’ll bring heaven and earth together as he unites all people under his rule; people of every language bowing and worshipping on his command (Daniel 3:4-5). What a Nimrod.

Just imagine for a moment reading the Babel story while you’re in Babylon. That’s where the big story of Israel’s history — Genesis to 2 Kings — ends up. Imagine reading about Nimrod while carting around bricks with Nebuchadnezzar’s name on them, building his towers. The book of Daniel is a kind of ‘after the event’ commentary on faithful life in this moment in history, but the Genesis story invites you to see Babylon and its mountainous buildings that are trying to link Babylon to the gods, and its Gilgamesh-like king who is uniting the earth while trying to make his name great with these building projects as a dead end. As a path to disinheritance and being scattered, and being brought down. Nebuchadnezzar is a Nimrod; and so is anyone who tries to unite heaven and earth without God.

But God has a heaven and earth reunion project he’s working on through history (Daniel 2:44), one that centers on a king who brings heaven to earth in a forever kingdom as he lives not for his own name, but for God’s — a son of Abraham — who brings blessing and restoration to all nations.

Another inversion of the Babel story comes with the nations, not just Israel, being not disinherited but re-adopted. That’s the story Paul tells when he visits Athens; a modern-to-his-day Babylon, with amazing walls and lots and lots of idol images (Acts 17:26, 30-31). He looks at these images as attempts to reach heaven, and how God’s plan was to bring all people back to himself, even after they’re given the boundaries of their lands, Deuteronomy 32 style; given over to the powers and principalities and this temple building idolatry. He says something has shifted in the heavens and the earth, where the God who “isn’t served by human hands building stuff out of bricks” has revealed himself through this one man; Jesus, who is now the ruler of the heavens and the earth — and all nations. Jesus the anti-Nimrod, who calls us out of our own building projects and into his.

Those are two threads tied up, but what about the bricks and the temple building? Our “brickman” tendencies to get swept up in the name-building project of our empires? Or even our own name-building, image-making efforts; whether that’s to make a name for ourselves now, in our own spaces, or to be like a Nimrod or a Nebuchadnezzar or a Big Clive, or a Donald, trying to build a kingdom that will last.

Here’s a fun payoff for that thread. Babel was a temple-building project, trying to bring heaven and earth together, which is ultimately God’s plan for the renewal of the heavens and the earth. At the end of the Bible’s story we see the heavenly city descend so humans live with God, and have his name written on us (Revelation 21:1-2, 22:4). There’s a rabbit hole here where the Hebrew word for “brick” is basically “white stone,” and the faithful church gets a white stone with a new name written on it, as we’re called out of Babylon in Revelation (Revelation 2:17).

But we’re not called to be brickmen — Nimrods, Nebuchadnezzars, or Clives — we’re called to be a brick… Man.

We’re not people who use bricks to make a name for ourselves, but bricks swept up and joined together in God’s building project — connected to the living stone — Jesus. Jesus, God’s living image who reveals what life lived for God’s name looks like; the true Israel and the forever king, who calls us to join in his Exodus-styled kingdom of priests—his living temple—as we journey towards this heavenly home (1 Peter 2:4-5).

The idea isn’t to build monuments or monumental lives so our names’ll be remembered like Nebuchadnezzars—but for our lives to be temple-like monuments to him; as we become a living temple, together, proclaiming the name of Jesus because we know that God remembers our names and we are heirs with Jesus who live lives with this as our story. Nebuchadnezzar might’ve built Babylon with 15 million bricks with his name on them; God is building a heavenly temple with billions of living bricks, through history, with his name written on us.

We’re not brick builders trying to bridge heaven and earth on our own terms, but bricks with God’s name stamped on us, showing the world what God’s bridge between heaven on earth looks like as we get swept up in his program to proclaim the name of Jesus. Being part of this building project is the anti-Babel way to invite people to meet the anti-Nimrod king who brings the nations back into relationship with God through his death, resurrection, and the pouring out of God’s Spirit to give us heavenly life here on earth.

January 2, 2024 Add Comment

Origin Story: Treason against the tree son

This is an amended (and extended) version of a sermon I preached at City South Presbyterian Church in 2022. If you’d prefer to listen to this (spotify link), or watch it on a video, you can do that. It runs for 37 minutes. I’m going to be honest, 90% of the reason I started posting these sermons is that I think the title of this post is pretty great.

What’s your utopia?

Your picture-perfect society — not your heaven on earth place, or ‘thin place’ from the last piece, but your idea of a heaven-on-earth people or community?

500 years ago the English philosopher Thomas More imagined an ideal society in Utopia. In his vision kings were generous not corrupt; there was no private property, just abundance, and everyone ate meals together all the time…

Some of you are thinking that sounds like hell.

It wasn’t ‘eu-topia’ — “the good place” — but ‘u-topia’ — “no place” — more knew this was impossible.

Anna Neima wrote this fun book, The Utopians, deep diving into six post-World War One, post-Spanish flu communities that tried to build ‘the good place’ as a response to the combined trauma that emerged out of a pandemic and a war.

She describes utopias as:

“A kind of social dreaming. To invent a ‘perfect’ world – in a novel, a manifesto or a living community – is to lay bare what is wrong with the real one.”

There’s a prophetic function to these attempts to re-order relationships. The catch, she concludes — none of them worked, they promised too much change from the status quo, but couldn’t deliver. She wrote:

“These experiments in living all ended up facing a similar set of problems… There were tensions between the ideals of cooperation, egalitarianism and democracy, and the practice of elitism and hierarchy.”

This can end up being true not just of our view of the perfect society – whether that’s family, or church, or a sharehouse. Our utopian visions often end up no places not good places because they all involve people and end up as a product of the hearts of the people living in them.

We zero in on the first good place today, and the first ‘ideal human society’ where two humans face a choice; a life-or-death choice between eutopia and dystopia; between two trees: the tree of life and the tree of knowledge of good and evil. There’re plenty of other trees to eat form too, but these two trees represent a choice between loving and listening to God — trusting him as good source of goodness and fruitful life, or rejecting god and pursuing wisdom and life in some other way. To eat from the Tree of Life is life, to eat from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil is death.

I’m going to go out on a limb here — to suggest humans aren’t pictured as immortal creatures, but dust animated by god’s breath depending on the Tree of Life to live forever. A little later in Genesis, God will say his breath won’t contend with human flesh forever (Genesis 6:3). So when humans are cut off from the Tree that means being cut off from forever life, and facing death as de-creation; becoming dust again.

At the end of Genesis 2, the man, or “earthling,”  and woman made from his side are together, united, and things look good. They are destined for oneness; created to represent God, fruitfully multiplying and ruling the world together; based in the garden in Eden, to work it and guard it together; not alone. We’re also told they’re naked and unashamed (Genesis 2:35). This lack of clothing is an interesting point for the author to make; it’s almost unimaginable for us to feel this safe while naked. Imagine feeling safe to turn up to church naked without judgment or fear; was that part of your utopian vision? The reasons we don’t do this are pretty obvious, right? And when we probe these reasons it doesn’t take long to find sin and brokenness in the mix — ours and other’s. The point here is that things are good and safe and glorious. And oneness is a real possibility; oneness in purpose — in rule – in generative life that brings fruit. The oneness doesn’t last long though.

We meet this chaos figure, this serpent (Genesis 3:1). Imagine it with legs, too. Like a dragon. Like this sort of ‘divine’ beings you might find pictured with kings in Babylon or on their architecture.

Image Source: Wikipedia article The Mušḫuššu, Image from Wikipedia Commons.

The serpent’s crafty. It’s a wild animal — a “beast of the field” in Hebrew; the sort of creature humans were meant to rule over (Genesis 1:28), it’s also leading a rebellion on earth that we’ll see echoed in heaven. It’s a threat to the good and fruitful order of the world.

I suspect guarding the garden (Genesis 2:15) probably meant keeping sinister critters out; especially critters the humans are meant to be ruling over. Maybe these humans should’ve crushed the intruder’s head straight up, especially as the serpent speaks with a forked tongue, “did God really say “you mustn’t eat from any tree in the garden” (Genesis 3:1). God says nothing of the sort. Right up front the serpent is reframing God as a miser — as someone who restricts rather than graciously giving — this isn’t the God we’ve met so far in the story who makes and shares fruitful and beautiful life and wants to see it spread and enjoyed. God said they could eat freely of every tree — including the tree of life. There’s just one choice that leads to death.

And the woman does her bit to set him straight, only, she adds some stuff to god’s instructions. She creates a restriction — a boundary — that wasn’t there before. The seed of doubt has been planted.

We can do that too. Create rules that sound righteous, but actually restrict good things God has given us. The trick is actually listening to God’s word; and contemplating his good creation. God did not say they couldn’t touch the fruit on the tree in the middle of the garden.

And so the serpent twists. You can eat. You should eat. God’s holding back. God doesn’t want you to be like him. You won’t die. Your eyes will be opened and you’ll be like god knowing good from evil.

Now, pause, because this bit is important. In our work through Genesis one and two we’ve seen that God made humans with the exact purpose that they be like him. It’s hard to imagine that being like him means being ignorant about what good and evil is. There’s an issue with how we picture knowing as being about the head alone, about information, not about experience, or right relationship — as we worked through the Wisdom literature together we saw that wisdom is actually about right action — action aligned with truth (note: this is a reference to an earlier sermon series I might repurpose as articles one day too, but that you can find on our podcast here).

What the serpent is actually offering is an opportunity for them to make themselves like gods who get to decide good and evil for themselves; apart from God their creator. To speak rather than listen, to be laws unto themselves, to grasp hold of autonomy and be their own images of god, like the kings of the nations around Israel. It’s interesting that these kings — and their gods, like Marduk, get pictured with little dragon gods – serpents — next to them.

Image Source: Wikicommons, 9th century BC depiction of a Statue of Marduk.

I think it’s a legitimate question to ponder why God made this tree; what it’s doing in the Garden — what its purpose is and in what sense it does what it is named after. I suspect the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil was a test, but also a teaching aid; providing wisdom to humans who contemplate it as a beautiful gift from God, along with his instruction, rather than grasping hold of it in disobedience to God. It operates just like wisdom in the Old Testament operates; where the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge and wisdom (Proverbs 1:7).

The question in this interaction with the slippery serpent is will the humans fear and listen to God?

I wonder too if the idea was always that humans were meant to ask God for wisdom; God seems to delight in giving wisdom to his people — like with King Solomon, who’s pictured as a new Adam, naming the animals and plants (1 Kings 4:32), and who asks for exactly this sort of wisdom — not just to know right and wrong — but good and evil — it’s the same words in Hebrew — in a way that pleases God (1 Kings 3:9). Solomon asks for a listening heart because he needs this sort of heart and wisdom to rule as God’s representative.

So long as these humans were in the garden, listening to God, obeying him, enjoying him, and contemplating the tree, they actually were knowing good and evil, and finding life, and being like God, the way the rest of the Old Testament frames it.

Humans should be ruling over the wild animals — the beasts — but the serpent tips the world upside down. They should be co-operating in the task of guarding the garden and representing God as his priestly people — the sort who speak his word into the world. They were meant to be being like God, but they take matters into their own hands

There’s no joint pondering of God’s word and testing it against the serpent’s, just impulsive action in the belief that God is holding something good back and we’re better off deciding good and evil for ourselves. There’s joint action — the woman sees — she sees the fruit is beautiful and pleasing to the eye (Genesis 3:6), which is how the fruit in the garden has been described (Genesis 2:9). And I think we’re meant to believe it is beautiful even that it looked delicious. She’s attracted to it, and I wonder if contemplating its beauty, but not taking something that is forbidden might have been, and might still be, a path to wisdom. But then she declares the fruit that God has said is “not good to eat” is “good to eat” — and she eats it, and she gives some to her husband — the flesh of her flesh — and he doesn’t say “stop,” he eats too (Genesis 3:6). There’s not just one sin here — not just one action — the whole thing, from the moment they let the serpent misrepresent God uncorrected, to the moment they add to what God has said and so present God as miserly and harsh, to the moment the woman takes the fruit — it’s all a failure — a joint failure to be like God.

They eat the fruit and everything changes; suddenly their nakedness is a massive problem (Genesis 3:7). They make clothes out of leaves — dressing themselves like trees; they become what they’ve worshipped. They identify themselves with the bottom of the food chain — the very things given to them to eat (Genesis 1:29, 2:9), but from here on they aren’t going to be as fruitful as they could’ve been. There’s now a barrier between them; and worse — a barrier between them and God; and a loss of this function reflecting his glorious image.

God turns up to walk in the Garden. This word used here is a way his presence is described with Israel through their history — both in the tabernacle, and temple. This walking — it’s part of the Eden-as-temple package. God comes to be present with his people, and they hide from him (Genesis 3:8-9). They’re dressed as trees trying to hide in the trees — the original camouflage — as though God won’t find them. They are ashamed. But God calls for them.

And Adam calls back. “I heard you. I was afraid. I hid” (Genesis 3:10-11).

That’s not how we were meant to respond to God. This isn’t the relationship they were created for as representatives of God’s rule. And God — like a parent catching their kid with a face covered in the chocolate they weren’t meant to eat — asks if they’ve been eating what they shouldn’t. He knows what’s going on… “who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?” (Genesis 3:11). I wonder if things could’ve gone differently at this point too, but the man straight up fails to own the one flesh nature of what’s just gone down; the barrier between man and woman becomes obvious. He blames the woman, and he blames god for putting her with him; ‘I can’t be fruitful because of her and you,’ “she gave me the fruit and I ate it.” And she blames the serpent. Nobody takes responsibility. Nobody repents. They shamelessly blame others (Genesis 3:12).

God recognises they’re all complicit, so, as a result, more barriers are put up to fruitfulness. The first two chapters have been about the desolate and uninhabited lands becoming fruitful places inhabited by God’s image bearing people who reflect his rule in the world. This can’t happen without people being like God and listening to him, and pursuing wise life in his presence — trusting his goodness and enjoying his hospitality — his provision of life. And now, this is frustrated. Cursed. The serpent bites the dust. It is cursed “above” all the other livestock by becoming below them; crawling on its belly and eating dust (Genesis 3:14).

The serpent and its offspring are set at odds with humans and their offspring; in keeping with the tree-fruit metaphor the word for offspring here is seed. Serpent-spawn will strike the heel of the seed of the woman, while there’ll be a seed produced from the woman that’ll crush the serpent’s head (Genesis 3:15).

For the woman, fruit-producing, childbearing, is going to be frustrated. This word encompasses everything about that process from sex to birth. It’s a breaking of the relationship with the man; they’re meant to rule together, but now there’s a cursed hierarchy (Genesis 3:16). The patriarchy as we know it (and as it unfolds in the Bible’s story) isn’t god’s good design; it’s part of the curse (this doesn’t mean we should accept it any more than we should refuse to fight against weeds and thorns in the production of food). We saw last week that ‘helper’ meant more than servant – it meant ally — where men rule over women like this we see curse at work.

While for earthling-Adam — suddenly the earth is a rival and a destiny. Instead of cultivating a garden from a garden, with god’s life-giving help — the ground is now cursed because of ground-man. Eating will be a result of painful toil. Thorns and thistles will be an expression of curse (Genesis 3:17-18).

And they’re both going to die; to return to the ground. Dust to dust. Earthling to earth (Genesis 3:19).

Now earthling — Adam — exercises rule over eve, he names her like he named the animals. Something has shifted (Genesis 3:20). She’s still going to be the mother of the living — but they’ve become like beasts not like God; and God dresses them up in animal skins — you are what you wear — they’re not trees, but wild things — ruled by the serpent — rather than ruling (Genesis 3:21). And as God declares this curse on humans in verse 22, the Hebrew we get translated as “has become like us” is ambiguous, it can also be “was like us” (note: Old Testament scholar Doug Green as a whole lecture on this idea that he once gave at QTC that was profound for me, and I think, unlike the Serpent, has legs).

I think we’re meant to ask the question of that ambiguity: were humans like God, and now they’re not, or have they in this moment become “like god” as an act of idolatrous or treasonous self-actualisation. The answer is they were like God, or they were meant to be — and now they’ve tried to make themselves into gods, just like the kings of the nations — but they’re actually beastly.

As a result, they’re exiled from the garden (Genesis 3:23). It’s what happens to Israel when they want to become like the nations by grasping hold of power and idols and rejecting God as creator too; they get kicked out of the fruitful land and sent to Babylon. Israel’s story echoes this origin story. Beastly humans don’t get the Tree of Life; they don’t get immortality and life with God in his garden (Genesis 3:23). They’re outside the garden. East. Outside the gates.

God’s still in the picture, but they aren’t in the garden anymore. And now there’s a heavenly being — a cherubim — wielding a flaming sword (Genesis 3:24). A heavenly being, doing the work Adam and Eve should’ve done; guarding the garden; keeping out the beasts; the wild things, the beings not committed to bringing a heaven on earth society as God’s representatives — which now includes these beastly humans.

They can’t live forever as beastly critters, enjoying the Tree of Life. So what do we do with this story?

It becomes a story for God’s people, Israel, to contemplate; both when they’re headed towards a fruitful land again, and invited to choose life in Deuteronomy (Deuteronomy 30:19-20), and when they’re in the valley of the shadow of death, in Babylonian exile. Where they’re contemplating what went wrong again; how history repeated, as they too tried to be gods on their own terms, rather than being like god; and how this got them there. The pattern of sin we see bring curse into human relationships repeats (internationally or systemically, and individually) through the Old Testament — seeing, desiring, declaring things God has said are not good as good and taking them; pursuing life, deciding good and evil on our own terms, and it keeps leading to exile and death.

And yet — the pursuit of wisdom itself — through listening to god’s word — becomes a tree of life (Proverbs 3:13-18). The person who plants themselves in god’s word becomes like a fruitful tree (Psalm 1:1-3). For the Israelite reading these words in exile in Babylon, surrounded by the people of a beastly king, that path back to Eden; back to life is obvious: listening to God.

The prophets also promise the way back to Eden-life will come through a faithful seed; a branch of a tree, the “root of Jesse,” so a son of David, a tree-son, who’ll delight in the fear of the Lord (Isaiah 11:1-3), this figure will create an Eden like land where animals are at peace and serpents aren’t a threat anymore, and the earth will be filled with the knowledge of God (Isaiah 11:8-9).

A fruitful tree will emerge. A king. An image of God who leads us to life with God, while crushing the serpent. Jesus — the branch of Jesse — comes to lead us back to blessing — to fruitfulness — to a pattern of life that doesn’t look like the curse.

At his arrest, John tells us that Jesus enters a garden; Gethsemane (John 18:1), where he doesn’t grasp and decide what is good and evil, but gives himself to God, saying “not my will but yours” (Matthew 26:39), before people storm the garden, wielding clubs and swords (Matthew 26:47). The Greek word for club here is the word for wood and tree that gets used in the Greek version of the Genesis story for the two trees — they come into a garden wielding trees against the branch of Jesse. They come wielding trees, committing treason against the tree-son (look, that’s pretty good).

Jesus is arrested and taken off to face a beastly trial — treated like an animal — he has a crown of thorns pushed into his head — the picture of the cursed ground pressed into his skin (Matthew 27:35). Then he’s stripped naked and crucified — nailed to a cross — publicly shamed as he’s nailed to a tree. The cross is described using that same wood word (Acts 13:28-29). Jesus absorbs the worst the world and the serpent can throw at him. His death on a tree isn’t just him taking on curse — as Paul puts it, but an exchange of his life for ours in a way that secures forgiveness of our sins, our redemption from curse, and our restoration as people of God as we receive his Spirit (Galatians 3:13-14).

Jesus comes to restore us from exile, to lead us towards life and wisdom by being the life and wisdom; the living word of God; and we now choose life or death in our choice regarding one tree; the cross. The cross is both our Tree of Life a way to eternal life where God gives his life to and for us, and our Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, where we find true wisdom; a way of life through contemplation. It’s where we choose to be God’s image bearing children, or to side with the serpent.

We’re invited to stop grasping, to stop trying to be gods, to stop being ruled by sin, to no longer be led by our desires to take what we want in disobedient rebellion against God. So much of my sin is me just repeating that pattern. So many of our utopias — our ideas of the good life — our temptations to sin — involve the serpent’s vision casting — the idea that God is withholding something good from us, or we shouldn’t listen to him, and these visions lead us to grasp and destroy, and they lead us away from god, feeling ashamed, and hiding as our humanity is diminished, and replaced with beastliness as we become what we worship.

Jesus, the tree-son — the firstfruits — gives us God’s Spirit to dwell in us, making us one with God, so we’re no longer hiding from him, but hidden in him; protected, seated with him as his children, and invited to produce the fruit of the spirit in our lives as we give up treason and contemplate the tree-son, as he re-creates us as imperishable humans.

There’re lots of ways the New Testament talks about this re-creation that pick up ideas of what Genesis suggests it means to be human — we become transformed into the image of Jesus; we get clothed with Christ; we become a kingdom of priests and ambassadors of the message of reconciliation; a living temple, and the body of Jesus — united in him, by the Spirit and growing towards maturity in Christ.

We’re invited to a new pattern of life together — we’re not a people who rule over one another, Genesis 3:16 is not our pattern for fruitfulness. So much of church history, like Israel’s history, has involved male leaders operating to protect their power and to lord it over others, and then husbands being told to do that at home. That is curse. Not blessing.

We’re god’s children — with a new way of life we find in the example of Jesus — where we don’t grasp, or give others up, but give ourselves for others in love (Ephesians 5:1). This is utopian. Imagine a world where everyone did this; imagine a you where this was the image you were presenting to the world.

God’s design is for us to rule the world together not by dominating or ruling over each other, but by submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ (Ephesians 5:20). This won’t look like grasping patriarchy, or abusing our power to take what we want, or putting our desires first. This isn’t servant leadership; it’s just service in a body of people who mutually serve. That’s the shape of marriage, and church, it’s a dynamic of loving service.

Our task as “rulers” of God’s world, in whatever context, is to rule together; to lead each other to find life in obedience to God; feasting on our new tree, finding life in Jesus, and so following his example, as we head towards a new Eden, and a new Tree of Life together.

This origin story shapes our life, and our community, so the ‘good society’ isn’t no place, but breaking out in the world as Jesus transforms people and our communities into little eutopias. Even as her book reaches the conclusion that utopian visions fail, Anna Neima doesn’t see them as a waste of time.

She says:

“Utopian living is extraordinarily generative. It creates openings in the fabric of society, inspires change, reminds us that it is possible to reach beyond the dominant assumptions of our day and discover radically different ways of being.”

The world needs communities who live differently — generatively — creating new ways of being that challenge the dominant assumptions of our day and model radically different ways of being.

 Jesus invites us to do that.

December 6, 2023 Add Comment

On Cultural Marxism, Capitalism and Christianity as a third way

There’s what seems like a coordinated push from hard-right Christian media and social media outlets this week to raise awareness about the dangers of ‘cultural Marxism.’ Here, for example, is a quote from the ACL’s Martyn Iles in his third post linking “Black Lives Matter” to cultural Marxism.

“Black Lives Matter: not what it says on the tin.

It is so important to exercise discernment – a virtue mentioned dozens of times in scripture, essential to living wisely.

There are many labels doing the rounds at present – Black Lives Matter, Safe Schools, Extinction Rebellion, Liberation Theology… and others.

Each of these attractive labels has a surface appeal, but masks what lies within. They are fronts for Cultural Marxism.

The “facts” that lie at their roots are popular deceptions. A supposed underclass of children oppressed by heteronormativity… horrifying, systemic racism by police officers… an imminent ‘end is nigh’ style climate catastrophe… Jesus as a figure concerned mostly about the earthly ‘oppressed’ and mostly for their empowerment in earthly systems.

These deceptions alarm people.

They recruit people’s emotional support for an anti-Christ political cause.”

Now. Before I go much further, I think it’s worth making a distinction in our conversations around race issues between Black Lives MatterTM (@blklivesmatter), and “Black lives matter” the statement, and #blacklivesmatter the hashtag. One way to imagine the distinction would look like:

“Because black lives matter that we should rally against systemic racism, and also because #blacklivesmatter, we should ask @blklivesmatter to reconsider its position on abortion.”

This would, as an example, use the phrase to affirm a truth: black lives do matter. Connect the use of that phrase to a conversation on Twitter, where #blacklivesmatter works as a hashtag, and address a concern that one might have with the Black Lives Matter organisation and its vision of the good. One might stand with @blklivesmatter on its diagnosis of the problems in our western society, and the way white privilege works systemically to disenfranchise non-white people, and see how historic injustices like slavery or dispossession continue to work themselves out today (so they’re not really history) without sharing @blklivesmatter’s solutions to the problem.

Others, like my friend David Ould have a principled disagreement (along the lines of avoiding association with evil) that I think is both an example of the sort of prescriptive v descriptive word games I’ve mentioned before, and too much of a concession around terminology (rather than entering a contest) to one party in a conversation. If the meaning of words is contested, rather than fixed, more people are able to enter a conversation, bringing more perspectives and richness to the commons. Objections to participating in the Black Lives Matter cause or conversation tend to, at one level, conflate entity, statement, and hashtag and treat them as a monolithic identity marking thing — and then some, like Iles, jump from that monolith to this idea of “cultural marxism.”

It’s not just Iles who’s on the warpath against “cultural Marxism” — you can find articles in The Spectator from the Presbyterian Church’s very own Mark Powell titled ‘Cultural Marxism’s War On Freedom‘ (and if one was to play Presbyterian assembly bingo you can tick off that box on your sheet just about every time Mark speaks about a social issue), you can follow the dirt sheets at Caldron Pool where, for example, young Ben Davis says “Cultural Marxism is a poison eroding the West from within and we need to know how to identify it,” the definition this piece offers is:

“One of the ways in which relativism has influenced society is through Cultural Marxism, or “Social Justice”. Like Classical Marxism, Cultural Marxism is an inherently divisive ideology. Where Classical Marxism was concerned with class warfare between the wealthy and the working class, Cultural Marxism shifts the focus to imagined conflicts between the privileged oppressive majority and the disadvanced oppressed minorities.

Which category a person falls into is determined by certain aspects of that individual’s identity, such as gender, skin colour, sexual preferences, family, ethnicity, culture, and religion.”

The “Canberra Declaration” an obtuse right-wing Christian thinktank, defines Cultural Marxism as “a secular philosophy that views all of life through the lens of a power struggle between the oppressed and the oppressor,” where:

“The oppressor is usually an aspect of traditional Western society such as the family, capitalism, democracy, or Christianity. The oppressed is anyone who is or who feels marginalised by these institutions, depending on the cultural and political debates of the moment.”

Using word or hashtags (like ‘privilege’ or ‘feminist’ or ‘systemic injustice’ or ‘patriarchy’) — even to acknowledge those as categories — can trigger an avalanche of despair from anti-social justice warriors who want to stamp cultural marxism out of the system; and certainly want to prevent anything like “cultural marxism” slipping into the church; in doing so these political activists end up setting up a boundary marker around the Gospel such that anyone to their left is either a ‘woke panderer,’ or partnering with an anti-Christ, or both. Here’s Iles again:

“I condemn Black Lives Matter because they are a Marxist movement.

Marxism is anti-Christ.

They substitute sin with power.

They substitute the individual with the tribe, imputing guilt, innocence, and judgement to collective groups, not responsible people.

They absolve guilt, not by repentance, but by claiming victim status. Sin is justified for some tribes.

They do not absolve guilt for all. It cannot be absolved for the wrong tribes.

They exist to agitate, tear down, create chaos, divide, and destroy. That is the cultural Marxist objective – wreck the joint; destroy the system; do it violently.”

“Anti-Christ” is very loaded and evocative terminology in Christian circles; it draws on beastly satanic imagery (and eschatological conspiracies about end times); and it is pretty much the ultimate statement of anathema. Thing is, the Bible is quite careful to describe the term:

“Dear children, this is the last hour; and as you have heard that the antichrist is coming, even now many antichrists have come. This is how we know it is the last hour.They went out from us, but they did not really belong to us. For if they had belonged to us, they would have remained with us; but their going showed that none of them belonged to us.

But you have an anointing from the Holy One, and all of you know the truth.I do not write to you because you do not know the truth, but because you do know it and because no lie comes from the truth. Who is the liar? It is whoever denies that Jesus is the Christ. Such a person is the antichrist—denying the Father and the Son. No one who denies the Son has the Father; whoever acknowledges the Son has the Father also.” — 1 John 2:18-23

Now, this isn’t to say that the Bible doesn’t speak about political systems and structures to condemn them; it does; it tends towards describing those structures as beastly, animalistic, following in the footsteps of that dragon/serpent Satan. Revelation is loaded with this sort of imagery with the finger pointed squarely at worldly power. But more on that below…

What it uses the term ‘antichrist’ for is for those who deny that Jesus is the Christ, those that “deny the Father and the Son,” those who were once part of the people of God, who have “gone out from us” — for John this is probably people returning to Judaism denying that Jesus has been raised from the dead (see this post to flesh this out a bit). To be antichrist is to deny substantial and fundamentally important truths about Jesus; it is not to subscribe to a particular political system, or to use terminology to enter discussion with those subscribed to a particular political system.

But interestingly, each of the figures I mention above — Iles, Powell, and the writers of Caldron Pool — have, in the last 12 months, very carefully and closely aligned themselves with one who fits this bill: a Trinity denying modalist who denies that Jesus, the son, came in the flesh, denying father and son (by saying only the father, named Jesus Christ, exists). Iles in particular did his very best to position this figure as a Christian for the sake of his politics and fundraising, despite being given substantial evidence for this person’s theology.

But back to “Cultural Marxism”…

One of the problems I have with the attack on cultural marxism is that part of the critique is a critique of the idea of systemic sin, built on an argument that there is systemic sin at play in our institutions. What the noise about cultural marxism really boils down to is a feeling amongst a subset of conservatives that they are losing the culture war because they’ve lost control of cultural institutions.

If the so-called left, including the “black lives matter” conversation, is suggesting that systemic racism is a problem, and that part of the problem is with a ‘hegemony’ consisting of white people (typically males) who control political, economic, and cultural institutions, and so set patterns of behaviour in order to hold on to the status quo of wealth and power, at the exclusion and expense of others; and if this is “cultural marxism” — then the so-called right is responding by suggesting a conspiracy  where a system of leftists (the cultural marxists) are conducting a long march through the institutions. This leftist system now apparently seeks to deconstruct and reconstruct public belief, behaviour, and discourse. It’s actually “systemic set of sins A” v “systemic set of sins B” — and Christians should have issues siding with either. We have our own kingdom, with our own king.

While I’m happy enough for ‘cultural marxism’ to be a contested descriptor of a certain element of the left, I think it’s dangerous to use it prescriptively, to label and dismiss a group of people (and I’m struck by how often the same people not happy to use Black Lives Matter because of its political association are happy to use “cultural marxism” with no regard to its political associations). I don’t use it as a label or to open up discussions with those on the so-called left because it’s not a description they would typically apply to themselves, and it is a term with troubling origins. Aussie scholar Rob Smith has a long article on Cultural Marxism and its origins as a school of thought in Themelios that concludes:

“Given the existence of conspiratorial explanations of the nature and goals of Cultural Marxism, is there a case for avoiding the term and using an alternative (e.g., neo-Marxism or Critical Theory)? In my view, there is no inherent problem with the label, but Christians ought to be careful with how (and to whom) it is applied. It really can function as a kind of “weaponised narrative” that paints anyone who gets tagged with it as being “beyond the pale of rational discourse.” It can even be a way of dismissing fellow believers who display a concern for justice or environmental issues or who are mildly optimistic about the possibilities of cultural transformation. We should certainly discuss and debate such matters, but Carl Trueman is right: “Bandying terms like ‘cultural Marxist’ … around simply as a way of avoiding real argument is shameful and should have no place in Christian discourse.”

One might then ask if the Caldron Pool, Canberra Declaration, Spectator articles and Martyn Iles’ recent Facebook posts manage to clear the jump of ‘avoiding real argument’ and bandying the term around to create a boogeyman, and dismiss other perspectives from fellow Christians.

I was convinced by Christian friends with some Marxist sympathies (especially because of the Marxist critique of capitalism), that ‘cultural marxism’ is an unhelpful pejorative, or snarl, that shuts down dialogue between Christians, and between Christians and non-Christians on the so-called left, so I don’t use it. I was probably more convinced by an analysis of the phrase “cultural marxism” from the guys at The Eucatastrophe (here’s part 1) than I was by Smith’s take. I do use other ‘contested’ terms in order to open up dialogue with those same groups, and I’m increasingly aware that this closes down dialogue with those on the so-called Christian right, either because my use of terminology makes me a ‘woke panderer’ or because my descriptive use of language (and post-modernism) is an affront to their modernist prescriptivism. I’m yet to be convinced that ‘privilege’ and ‘patriarchy’ aren’t essentially Biblical terms that align with the Biblical picture of sin. That’s an area for me to consider carefully. I do think the dominant Christian voices in my tradition tend to conflate ‘Christian’ and ‘right wing’ in ways that exclude those on the left so my bias is towards including or embracing those who might otherwise feel excluded by default.

If I were ‘code switching’ and speaking to my friends on the Christian right, or just secular conservatives, I’d be acknowledging a particular agenda from the left wrapped up in deconstruction, and cancel culture, and attacks on free speech, religious freedom (in some forms) and occasional attempts to enshrine a particularly gnostic view of sexuality and gender that denies the reality of bodily sex in favour of feelings. I’d acknowledge that there are certain expressions of marxism, and certainly its solutions beyond the toppling of capitalism and oppressive power structures, that are just as evil.

I’d reject the idea that it might be ‘better the devil we know’ and suggest a Christian approach to politics might be one that seeks to obey Jesus, and for Christians to be people of virtue who practice the “golden rule” while taking up our cross rather than our sword. I’d acknowledge that the secular left is unforgiving, and weaponises shame, having watched cancel culture attack a prominent Aussie barista this week, and J.K Rowling. I’d suggest it’s odd that “the left” wants to pit Donald Trump (the big evil) against Martin Luther King (the big good) in this present moment, while ignoring significant evidence that MLK should’ve been “cancelled” because #himtoo. I’d acknowledge that culture wars and politics as a zero sum game are destructive to civility, pluralism, the ability to coexist, democracy as an acknowledgment of the equality of all (rather than the victory of the winners), and ultimately to our ability to love our neighbour.

These figures on the so-called “Christian right” might pretend to be acting neutrally, but by supporting a status quo (especially a capitalist one as opposed to a Marxist one, as though there are only binary options for our economics) are identifying their own version of systemic or structural sin to condemn the identification of structural sin as antichrist.

What might be true of a leftist conspiracy, where a system is developed to fight a culture war could also be just as true of a rightist conspiracy. The right’s antithesis to cultural marxism, where the so called ‘free market,’ and individual autonomy and the right to own property (including, as Locke put it, the idea that an individual person is a property in their own right) is just as systemic. And ultimately the market is actually controlled by a group of people (those who decide the rules of the game and serve as gatekeepers), and the whole game is rigged to benefit people who fit with, and perpetuate, the status quo (we might call these people ‘the privileged,’ and these people might include me). If the left enshrines various ‘identities’ as idols, the right enshrines money, property, and personal autonomy.

There is nothing sub-Biblical about the idea that sin and curse are enshrined in structures that oppress. This is a thoroughly Biblical idea — and it’s a double edged sword. It cuts down the utopian eschatology of both the left, and the idea that we might find heaven on earth if we get rid of some bourgeois class of oppressor and their oppressive structures (especially capitalism), and the right, and the idea that we might find heaven on earth if individuals are free to own and accumulate property and wealth according to their ability (with no acknowledgment of the way this might play out intergenerationally, and that greed might occur and massively distort the market at the expense of those without that same intergenerational cachet). Both ideologies are beastly without Jesus, and neither totally align with the kingdom of God as we see it revealed in Jesus in his death, resurrection, ascension, pouring out of the Spirit, and his eventual return to make all things new.

Christians should not be surprised that sinful people form communities (and political visions) around idols, and that as we do this, our sin becomes enculturated and forms the structures and norms of life together.

This is precisely what idolatry does to the nations around Israel, and precisely what happens to Israel when they become like the nations and choose to worship created things instead of the creator. Our common objects of love — and whether we’re in lefty sub culture or righty sub culture — our common political visions — will form and deform us, and they don’t simply do this internally but as we build societies, cultural artefacts, relationships, and systems to pursue these (idolatrous) visions of the good. To suggest that this sort of system is never built along racial lines is to ignore the testimony of the Old Testament; but these systems are also built along ‘market’ or economic lines too.

The Bible is not neutral about questions of power; specifically about questions of dominion, and the abuse of power where instead of cooperating in spreading God’s dominion over the face of the earth as his image bearing gardeners, we turn to seek domination over one another and enshrine that in nation v nation, or culture v culture contests. Ultimately the Bible pits God’s kingdom as revealed in the crucified, resurrected, exalted, spirit-giving, and returning Christ against the beastly kingdoms of this world.

Systemic racism is a feature of the Old Testament; peoples who, by virtue of belonging to one nation, oppress outsiders, is a feature of the Biblical narrative. The answer is not political revolution from one idol to another; the answer is Jesus. Now, Iles wants to acknowledge this too; but his Jesus has nothing to say to those oppressed in this world by power structures, because his system somehow wants to deny that power structures can be oppressive. And this, ultimately, is sub-Biblical — especially in that if fails to grapple with the way “Babylon” and beastliness work in the narrative of the Bible from beginning to end (and Egypt before it). Babylon becomes a cypher for Rome in the New Testament; but it really is just any empire that makes power and dominion — a kind of ‘might is right, take what you want’ mentality its fundamental way of life; it shouldn’t be hard to recognise ‘take what you want’ as one of the most basic pictures of sin (think Adam and Eve in the garden), but here’s a little primer on how all this works; and how the Bible is not just concerned about freedom from slavery to Satan, but about the creation of a world where Satan’s pattern of behaviour does not infiltrate and influence human government (whether in the guise of right or left).

In the Bible’s creation account, God’s image bearing people are given this task of exercising power as God’s agents in the world (Genesis 1:27); they are to use this in life giving ways that allow humanity to flourish and multiply; to ‘fill the earth’ — the picture we get of what a filled earth should look like is in Eden. People were made to cooperate with one another as God’s agents, in partnership with God, working in this garden like world, taking natural resources (Gen 2 mentions gold, etc) to spread the conditions of a good and flourishing life. There’s no sense of private home ownership (or even total self-autonomy here, as Adam and Eve belong to each other); there is a sense of God’s ownership and our stewardship. When Adam and Eve desire and take the fruit; when they usurp God’s rule, part of the curse is that their cooperation is broken, and their relationship will now be marked and marred by how power is used (Genesis 3:16). Later, when humans conspire to build Babel — a towering monument to human achievement — God scatters people into lots of nations so that they might not seek this glory and autonomy again. This is an archetypal storyline about the human condition and our relationship with God as creator; the attempt to build Babel is a particularly obvious example of ‘structural sin’ — of people working together to enshrine particular sins as both a very visible ‘norm’ and an architectural feature that would’ve testified and enshrined a particular story about human achievement, power, and dominion.

We’ll come back to the Biblical storyline in a moment — it’s just worth noting some parallel stories from the ancient world; especially in Babylon (the relationship between ‘Babel’ and ‘Babylon’ is not a coincidence). The Biblical story has an interesting relationship with Babylon’s alternative story — its vision of the good life. The Babylonian story does not have a hospitable God who makes a garden and tasks people with fruitful multiplication; in the Enuma Elish, the Babylonian gods are gods of chaos and dominion. The earth is created out of the dead body of a god after a god-v-god war; the winner and chief god, Marduk, gets to build a monument to himself; Babel is ultimately his city, and people are made as servants of this hungry god of power and conquest. This is the story that shapes the life of Babylonian people in the ancient world, and defines their picture of kingship. Those who are outside of this god’s particular people; outside his city; are to be oppressed and conquered and put to work for the people who work for the god. This is based on race. It creates an oppressive group of people and an oppressed group of people. This is before Marx. Obviously.

In the Genesis story, God makes people and eventually these people want to build a stairway to heaven to ascend and take God’s glorious place in the sky; only to have the ‘Babel project’ — their empire — frustrated by God. In the Babylonian world, the gods fashion people but also build Babylon as the city where they descend from the heavens to feast on the earth, enjoying the slave labor of the people they’ve made. The Enuma Elish has Marduk describing his building of the great city of Babylon as a stairway between heaven and earth:

“Beneath the celestial parts, whose floor I made firm,
I will build a house to be my luxurious abode.
Within it I will establish its shrine,
I will found my chamber and establish my kingship.
When you come up from the Apsû to make a decision
This will be your resting place before the assembly.
When you descend from heaven to make a decision
This will be your resting place before the assembly.
I shall call its name ‘Babylon’, “The Homes of the Great Gods”

There’s lots of scholarship out there suggesting that the Tower of Babel is meant to be pictured as a ‘Ziggurat’ — a building functioning as a resting place for the gods, and a stairway between heaven and earth; the Biblical story offers a critique of the sort of worldly power and empire of Babylon right from the beginning (including its vision of ‘images of God’ — who is, and isn’t, an image bearer, and how images are made).

God’s people are not to be “Babylonian” — and part of what defines Babylon is the systemic oppression of those who are not Babylonians. Babylon, as the ultimate destination of Israel’s exile from God, is foreshadowed in Egypt. Egypt is its own oppressive system — a system built on structural or systemic racism. Hebrews are made slaves in Egypt by virtue of their ethnicity. They are oppressed. A system of sin and opposition to God is established that enslaves God’s people; and God cares not just about their pie-in-the-sky-when-they-die spiritual salvation from sin; but a fully embodied emancipation from slavery and systems of oppression; and Israel is specifically not to become an oppressive system; remembering how they were treated in, and saved from, Egypt.

Babylon gives was to Persia, gives way to Greece, gives way to Rome — each of these empires is a human empire built on dominion, and power, and systemic/structural institutionalisation of sin via stories about what it means to be human, the nature of the gods, and why their particular culture is superior to all others (as justification for conquest). Empires in the Bible are systematised sin built around idolatrous worship of things other than God. Empires in the Bible oppress and create victims. God’s people — Adam and Eve, Israel, the church — are called out of empire, out of these systems of sin, and into the people of God so that we become citizens of heaven and ambassadors of Jesus, being transformed into his image. While the so called ‘left’ might envisage an empire built on the destruction of a variety of institutions it deems oppressive, and progress through a reconstruction or redistribution of power from the oppressor to the oppressed — the so called ‘right’ envisages an empire built on power, dominion, and money. It wants to conserve an idolatrous status quo.

Babylon never really disappears; as I mentioned above the book of Revelation equates Babylon with the prosperous market-driven, military powered, dominion of worldly kingdoms — specifically those kingdoms that set themselves up in opposition to the kingdom of God. Those on the Christian right are quick to point the finger at Marxism for its hostility to Christianity (viewed as an oppressor, post Christendom), but very slow to point the finger at the right’s coopting of Christianity for its own power games (*cough* Trump *cough*), or to deny that the status quo in the west could possibly share anything in common with Rome, or Babylon, and be oppressive in its unfettered pursuit of wealth and the good life here and now. Greed is idolatry. Idolatry is inherently destructive. Politically enshrined idolatry is oppressive and destructive to those ‘outside the kingdom.’

Marxism, “cultural” or otherwise, as a systematised vision of the good, not defined by the Lordship of Jesus, is an idolatrous and destructive system.

Capitalism, as a systematised vision of the good, not defined by the Lordship of Jesus, is an idolatrous and destructive system.

Marxism might give us a language and diagnosis of the ills of capitalism, and help us recognise the oppression it creates. But it does not give us a solution if it simply invites us to deconstruct capitalism and change the nature of ‘dominion’ or ‘domination’ any more than a move from Babylonian to Roman rule freed the people of God from slavery and oppression.

Capitalism might give us a language and diagnosis of the ills of Marxism, and help us recognise the oppression it creates. But it does not give us a solution if it simply invites us to deconstruct marxism and change the nature of ‘dominion’ or ‘domination’ any more than a move from Babylonian to Roman rule freed the people of God from slavery and oppression.

To deny that human systems enslave and create victims, oppressor and oppressed, or to suggest Jesus does nothing but automatically save us and provide the good life, is to preach a Gospel that simply enshrines the political status quo, rather than critiquing it through the lens of the Gospel. It is to promote a gnostic Gospel that is only concerned about the Spiritual dimension of life; not a Gospel where Jesus came to offer a different political vision, to create an alternative polis where power is used quite differently.

And this is exactly what Martyn Iles, in his crusade against “Cultural Marxism” is doing; propping up the status quo — capitalism — by spiritualising the Gospel and denying the presence of “victims” or “the oppressed”… Here he is again:

“You don’t need a skin colour to fall into the victim trap. Every one of us can find a way, because every one of us has disadvantages and setbacks in life. That’s the human condition.

But so long as Jesus lives, you are no victim. Not only do you have all the blessings of God’s common grace each day, but He offers you everything, no matter who you are, when you deserved nothing, no matter who you are.

Like I keep saying, the God of the universe offers each one of us the greatest equality in the world. All of us need to get out of our seat in the dust and realise that.”

Iles does not acknowledge the way sin is not just a spiritual reality affecting our relationship with God, but a reality affecting our treatment of one another; that sin affects the experience of people in the world, and that this clearly affects some people disproportionally (think the Hebrews in Egypt). Faith in Jesus does not automatically end oppression; the return of Jesus to make all things new does; a world free of sin, and curse, and beastly governments. Iles ends up preaching an incomplete Gospel because he has a narrow view of sin, and so a small Jesus. He says of the anti-christ left:

“The “facts” that lie at their roots are popular deceptions. A supposed underclass of children oppressed by heteronormativity… horrifying, systemic racism by police officers… an imminent ‘end is nigh’ style climate catastrophe… Jesus as a figure concerned mostly about the earthly ‘oppressed’ and mostly for their empowerment in earthly systems.”

I’d say Iles himself ends up with a Gospel that minimises the importance of the divinity of Jesus and the Triune character of God by elevating the political; with a Jesus more concerned about righteousness, natural order, and sexual purity than those oppressed by injustice the abuse of power, denying the impact of sin on the physical world (whether the environment or human relationships), and a Jesus who is only interested in some disembodied heavenly future. A Jesus you don’t find in, say, Luke’s Gospel.

A Jesus who arrives on the scene as Caesar Augustus is flexing his muscles and measuring his empire with a census; a Jesus whose arrival is announced as an expression of God’s character, the God who, in Mary’s song:

“He has brought down rulers from their thrones
    but has lifted up the humble.
He has filled the hungry with good things
    but has sent the rich away empty.” — Luke 1:52-53

Who launches his ministry in Luke by announcing Jubilee; freedom for the oppressed, who then sets about contrasting his kingdom to the kingdom of Herod, Caesar, and Satan.

“The Spirit of the Lord is on me,
    because he has anointed me
    to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners
    and recovery of sight for the blind,
to set the oppressed free,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.” — Luke 4:18-19

There’s certainly a spiritual dimension to Jesus’ announcement; he is announcing the end of exile. But there’s also a physical dimension to his announcement; he is announcing the breaking in of the Kingdom of God. This isn’t news to Martyn; the ACL’s whole schtick is attempting to enshrine and create a certain vision of the kingdom of God here on earth, in part through worldly institutions, it’s just this kingdom looks a lot like ‘the right’… and a lot like victory over ‘the left’…

In the meantime, Christians have an alternative political vision to both Marxism and Capitalism; both left and right, and are also free to adopt the critiques of worldly power (and language) from those critiques in order to make the Gospel known. There will be Christians who, because of experience or observations of the world will be particularly attuned to the beastliness of capitalism and the worship of money and power, just as there will be Christians who will be attuned to the beastliness of ‘woke’ marxism and its deconstruction campaign. It serves nobody to label one side of that equation “antichrist” — so long as they’re not denying Father and Son in their politics.

If those on the right feel free to throw around “Cultural Marxism” as the greatest evil, they shouldn’t be surprised if those on the left throw around “Capitalism,” “systemic sin,” “systemic racism” or “black lives matter” in response. There’s a better way than the culture wars, inside or outside the church… The way of Jesus. Who calls us from all forms of idolatry, to have relationships redefined by a new form of worship and a new politics.

June 11, 2020

Upload: the digital good place?

Upload dropped on Amazon Prime this week. It’s like The Good Place, only there’s no twist. Really, it’s not that like The Good Place at all, except that it deals with life after death in a universe where God is mostly absent. Belief in a spiritual afterlife is a quaint hope held by some “Ludds” (from Luddites) pitted against the very real virtual hope peddled in Upload‘s universe — our universe, just in 2033.

There’s some interesting dynamics right up front with this program being on Amazon Prime; Amazon’s end game might look very much like the in show company, called Horizon. Amazon’s smile logo can be found on packaging within the show, but their push into cloud computing, digital media, and Jeff Bezos’ ‘end game’ (not to mention his exorbitant personal wealth — no seriously, click that, spend a few minutes scrolling it, and then come back) make them prime candidates for attempting to produce something like this for reals. It won’t be Elon Musk who does it; probably; he believes we’re already in this future; already characters in a computer program indistinguishable from reality. You can trust Amazon to find ways to keep making money from your consumption after you die.

In Upload, Horizon is the company responsible for the richest afterlife experience (an afterlife experience for the rich, where you have to keep paying for room service and minibar items by swiping left for your virtual pleasures. Horizon’s prime afterlife location is called Lakeview. Residents pay big bucks to have their consciousness digitised and uploaded; stored on servers, so that their lives can continue not in the clouds with harps (like some poor Ludds believe), but in ‘the cloud.’

As far as reviews go, we watched the whole first season over two nights. It’s a fascinating (but not Good Place esque) dig into some philosophical questions about what it means to be human; leaning into Descartes’ “I think therefore I am” to suggest that so long as a person’s mind is still active, no matter what happens to their body, the person still is; and later probing whether a soul exists as a thing apart from a mind. We’re in a sort of new gnostic territory most of the time, except that scientists are also working on synthetic bodies that can host a download of the individual’s upload. There’s a hint of the unnaturalness of life without a body, but even the Luddite hope of heaven is the hope of a disembodied soul in the sky when you die (where salvation, and immortality, is not secured so much by wealth, but simply by death).

The show’s main upload, Nathan Brown, is hanging out for the availability of a download because he knows, deep down in his soul, that to exist as a person, a human, is to have a body. He’s also died in a freak self-drive car accident (or was it), and lost some vital memories in the upload that also make him less than him. Uploaded beings are served by ‘angels’ — employees of the ultimate surveillance capitalism firm, who are voice activated. Unlike Siri and Alexa, these are real humans sitting at computers waiting for voice commands from now-digital beings. And so we meet Nora, Nathan’s angel.

The show also has some fun pictures of technology in the not so distant future; including consent cameras for kicking off sexual encounters largely curated via Nitely, a future version of Tinder. The show handles sex and bodies in a fascinating way; the boundaries between the digital afterlife and the real world are almost totally porous, any avatar can cross over and connect in virtual reality, which means your loved one is never truly gone — even if they stop aging (so long as you don’t pay for age up updates). Sex is excarnated, rather than incarnating — though for those on the meaty side of reality, feelings are reproduced by a frankly kinda creepy VR suit. When Charles Taylor observed that the ‘disenchanted’ world we now live in is an ‘excarnated’ world — he was describing a world that pushes us out of being enfleshed in bodies, and into ‘being’ in our heads. Where sex may once have been ‘enchanting’ — sacramental almost — as a good gift from God, in the disenchanted, excarnate, world it is simply transactional.

At one point in A Secular Age, Taylor notes that the more intimately connected we are with a person the less worried we are about cross contamination — we’ll share a spoon with those we kiss — he suggests sex is the ultimate expression of such intimacy, that “love making itself is a mixing of fluids with abandon” — it’s a bit gross; but as we become excarnate, culturally, our approach to intimacy gets a bit blurry, when our bodies don’t matter anymore, we’ll mix fluids with anybody. And yet, the VR ‘sex suit’ proves too much for Nathan’s girlfriend, stuck in embodied life, because she sees them being cleaned in the hire shop — and hears all about the fluids they have to wash out — the suits are also used for people hugging dead grandparents; so there’s a cocktail of snot, vomit, sweat, and other things. Gross. Bodies are gross. And yet, sex-as-intimacy, for two embodied people, can also be sacramental; Nathan’s girlfriend, Ingrid, is prepared to overcome the ick factor because she “misses their intimacy.” Touch matters. Bodies are essential to that, and while our approach to sex (think pornography, hookup apps, consent video cameras, VR suits etc) can ‘excarnate’ — we can push ourselves away from our bodies and into our brains, sex, like other embodied pleasures, has the capacity to re-incarnate us. To remind us of the goodness of our bodies, and even of something enchanted or transcendent; something meaningful. Taylor calls this ‘haunting’ we sometimes experience in the real world — the reminder of something beyond us a ‘frisson’ (sometimes called “skin orgasms“) — that’s the little thrill you get sometimes that makes your neck hairs stand up and your skin get goosebumps. That power of touch — even in the afterlife — gets explored too.

The fundamental question in season 1 of Upload is can a human be a human without a body; what are we? While the eschatological hope served up by Amazon Horizon is frictionless consumption in a digital eternity controlled by a corporation that exists to serve your every whim with a voice command (“Alexa…” I mean “Angel…”), the question Upload asks is just how satisfying such a future can be; and whether a download into an eternal body might not be a more desirable, human, outcome.

Those in the digital world have lost all the limitations of embodiment; there is no longer any mourning, nor crying, nor pain… it’s a world made new. Digitally.

Except, you can pay to be sick — because after a stack of time in the digital afterlife, your yearning for a bodily existence leaves you wanting the feeling of pain or sickness, just to feel alive. So, you can pay to have a headcold…

_______

Zach: “Having a cold is no fun”

Nathan: “Why are you paying extra for this, isn’t it like a dollar a minute”

Zach: “When you’ve been here a little longer you’ll see that having no fun can be kinda fun. My nose is actually stuffed up. Just like real life.”

_______

The conversation pauses here because a new afterlife experience pops up; it’s pay to play, remember.

Trust Amazon Horizon to figure out a way to monetise a sneeze.

One of the more depressing sub-plots (and there are a couple, if you push too hard), is the story of Luke. Luke is a war veteran whose body was broken in conflict; he lost his legs, and rather than suffer life in the body, with no legs, he chooses to ‘upload’ early, and spends his digital life chasing experiences from the other parts of his body he gave up (mostly sex and food). Life without a body isn’t all its cracked up to be in Lakeview. But he’s also just a bloke desperately looking for connection. The show wants love to be enough for him, and for him to find compensation for the other bits, but it also leaves open the idea that life without a body just won’t be enough.

There’s a great dialogue between Nathan, and Dave, the Luddite father of his angel (it’s complicated) about the nature of the person, the soul, the afterlife, and hope.

_______

Dave: “You see Nathan, when you died, your soul went to real heaven, so whatever simulation I’m talking to now has no soul. It’s an abomination.”

Nathan: “Ok, or, there is no soul. And there never was, and in a sense both of our consciousnesses are simulations. Mine on a silicon computer and yours on a computer made of meat. Your brain.”

_______

Dave’s hope is a tangible future where he might hold his wife in his arms again; an embodied resurrection even, but Nathan, like many good moderns, can’t conceive of heaven as anything more than disembodied consciousness; eternal life for the soul, but not for the body. Like in the finale of the Good Place, the message from episode 1, to the end of episode 10, is that heaven is other people; the chance to spend eternity (or as much time as possible) with the people you love. God isn’t in the picture — even in Dave’s heaven — heaven is other people. For Horizon/Amazon — that’s an opportunity to make some money…

There’s an open source alternative to Horizon weaving its way through the storyline of Upload; the good guys who want heaven to be ad free. That might be the truly ‘good place’ — and Nathan hopes to be able to bring some of that open source goodness to Horizon; to hack away some of the overreach of his corporate overlords. Whether or not a ‘good’ digital afterlife is possible, Upload reminds us that we really want bodies for most of the stuff we love; which fits with the Christian understanding of the person. We are not souls in a meatsack — that’s gnosticism or Platonism — we are people who have bodies. The Christian hope is a resurrected body; a body made imperishable because God’s Spirit works not just with our soul, but on our body, to make us heavenly and immortal (1 Corinthians 15).

And while the show is billed as ‘science fiction,’ there are actually people out there seriously contemplating what such a digital afterlife could or should look like. Let me remind you again, Elon Musk thinks this is it; that the digital afterlife, where we exist not as people with flesh and blood, but as 0s and 1s in someone else’s program (with Covid-19 a really weird glitch in the software; a virus even). This was also, taken in a more dystopian direction, the plot for The Matrix.

There’s a question about what a good digital afterlife might look like, if the tech was available. We humans love the idea of being in control of our own end game; being able to work towards an eschatology (a view of the ‘end times’) where we, collectively (or corporately) are gods who can select our afterlife of choice and then consume our way to bliss. That fits the secular narrative pretty neatly. Amazon is a master of that narrative; a master of frictionless consumption and seemingly limitless consumer choice; which makes its involvement with the production of this program quite bizarre to unpack. Is being sucked into Amazon’s mainframe a good death? A good afterlife?

In Greek, the letters ‘eu’ at the start of a word work as a prefix for ‘good’ — so ‘euthanasia’ is a “good death.” In 1993, tech-philosopher David Porush published a journal article titled ‘Voyage to Eudoxia.’ It was an article exploring a potential escape to cyberspace; a good cyberspace. He suggested an obsession with cyberspace emerged earlier than he was writing (almost 30 years ago), after space exploration became a little passe. The next big tech things would be computers. Games were just starting to become ‘immersive’ (though nothing like they are now). He wrote then:

“Eventually, in the far-flung future perhaps, we may all emigrate, at least part time, to this new and gleaming electronic suburb, there to revel in an excess of sensory stimulation that today’s cinema or MTV can only hint at.”

He called this future place ‘Eudoxia,’ after Eudoxos of Knidos, and an invisible city in the work of an author he liked, Italo Calvino who wrote Cybernetic fiction. Porush used the term ‘cybernetic’ to describe a future “Cybernetic Age” where technology might enable us to capture (and maybe understand) the mind and how it works. Porush described a genre of science fiction exploring this potential as “cybernetic (or even better, “anti-cybernetic”)” — Upload joins a long line of stories, like William Gibson’s Neuromancer, exploring the potential that technology might free us from our bodies. Calvino, and Porush use the word ‘Eudoxia’ to describe the ability to write and create virtual worlds, or cities, built on ‘good discourse.’

“We now have a word for a magic technology that will create a complete sensorium or virtual reality on a cybernetic platform; cyberspace, an accessible, self-referential, genre-destroying hyperspace, a soaring sensorium that will imitate, model, and link to its mirror image, the human brain.”

Porush believed such a future technology, or place, Eudoxia, would render the story — TV or fairy tale — impoverished.

Lakeview, the ‘heaven’ in Upload, is a picture of a Eudoxia. And it turns out, people still want their bodies. That the mind itself is not enough; and that the sort of ‘transcendence’ Porush dreamed of, where we push out of our bodies and into our brains, is actually disenchanting rather than magical.

In a follow up piece, Hacking the Brainstem, published in 1994, Porush argued that (even then) our “centuries-long romance with technology” where we used technology to, for example, achieve intimacy with others, “has already cyberspatialised us,” preparing the way for us to experience ‘sensuous information bodilessly’ — he breathlessly hoped that cyberspace would help us transcend our bodies. He said in the sort of science fiction that anticipated cyberspace — this cybernetic fiction — “Cyberspace already transcends the physical “meat” body by creating a simulated “meta” body in the brain and communicating with it directly via electrical implants.” He said:

“Eudoxia is presently enacted in video games and cybernetic fiction, which will find their ultimate material marriage in the computer’s cyberspace.”

Whether or not this future can, or will, happen is immaterial. It’s clearly a future that we like to imagine happening; an escape from the meat of our bodies into the meta. Life forever; freed from pain and suffering, beyond death.

That a company like Amazon is going to be best placed to deliver such a future is a scary thought Upload presents us with; but its story, like other anti-cybernetic stories, should cause us to pause and ask if this is the best good place we can imagine.

Porush describes the promise of cyberspace peddled in such stories in this reasonably long passage, it’s worth it though…

______

The imminence of the cyborg is not a matter of speculation, it is a matter of reporting the news, a matter of postmodern sociology and introspection. We are already experiencing the reflux from a time twenty seconds into the future when our own media technologies will physically transcribe themselves onto our bodies, re-creating the human in their own images, forcing our evolution into the posthuman through a combination of mechanistic and genetic manipulations… yberspace will renovate human relations; it will unite art and technology; it will represent an altogether new and radical domain for improved social, psychic, and perceptual transactions. Bypassing the infirmities of the body, cyberspace will free the cripple and liberate the paralytic. Enabling multimedia and sensory access to the entire wealth of world data, cyberspace will deliver a universal education. Through its anonymity, cyberspace will invite the construction of a more ethical code and create norms for human interaction that strip distinctions of gender, class, race, and power. Cyberspace will provide a playspace for the imagination to roam free, liberating the mind from its inevitably neurotic relationship to the body. Cyberspace therefore has untold psychotherapeutic possibilities. Yet cyberspace will incapacitate destructive urges and consequences by removing our bodies. Cyberspace will create the means for a pure and perfect democracy and universal suffrage in which everyone can vote immediately on any issue. Cyberspace will present the possibilities for “virtual communities.” Cyberspace will reconstruct the nature of the relationship between labor and time and labor and space and will reconstruct authoritarian technics as they are manifested in the workplace —although one wonders who is going to empty the garbage and build the roads after we have all emigrated to this new virtual suburb. While cyberspace will undoubtedly present new opportunities for criminality, rape and physical assault will become impossible. Cyberspace will present a new opportunity for our manifest destiny, a new frontier. Cyberspace will make war obsolete by turning it into a Desert Storm videogame. Cyberspace will create a totalized hypertextual platform that will cure what ails American higher education. We will become immortal there. It will enable us to combine work and play in a new way. Even the music will be better there. Cyberspace will be the new, clean, virtual Eden to which we will all emigrate when this physical world becomes an unlivable ecodisaster. In cyberspace we will finally perfect the academic’s dream of sex: we will be able to indulge lust without the involving of our bodies (perhaps I should have said “the dream of sex that’s academic”). The New World, World Without End, amen.”

______

Cyberspace in Porush’ vision, is the cyberspace on offer in Upload. A world built by Horizon Amazon.

In Hacking the Brainstem, Porush makes a pretty interesting point about ‘utopian visions’ served up in our stories; eschatologies, even. He suggests we create utopias, culturally, by ‘modelling our view of human nature rationally and then inventing a technology to control or direct that model’ — by ‘technology’ he says he means “systems that seek and project perfect control” — so when a human is placed in the system the system encourages the “best part and controls the worst part of human nature” while the human maintains the system by their participation. This is particularly interesting when one considers Upload’s utopian vision; a digital world where the technology pictures the ideal human life as one of unfettered consumption in the pursuit of goodness and pleasure, surrounded by those people you love (such that you might consume them too).

The world we live in is one where corporations want that to be our utopian vision; because it’s what keeps them profitable.

The corporate world wants to keep us disenchanted and placing our hope in a technological future — a eudoxia — because if we put our hope in some transcendent otherworld, heaven — clouds outside the cloud — then they lose us now. We no longer want to play in their system.

There’s a reason there’s no God in Upload — that the priest for hire at the funeral parlour offers up factoids about Nathan that he’s gleaned from wikipedia, and no comfort beyond his digital avatar being there on the big screen behind him. God upsets the apple cart of these apple vendors.

Like in The Good Place, the ‘eudoxia’ of Upload — Lakeview — is in need of a good eucatastrophe. A “good catastrophe” — the term coined by Tolkien for the fantastic moment in a fairy story where the failure of our attempts to build our own utopian visions; craft our own ending to the story, our own ‘afterlife’ is met by an interruption; a good catastrophe. Tolkien’s ‘best catastrophe’ — the one that means I’d be banking on fantasy novels outlasting cybernetic fiction — is the enchanting story; the story that reminds us that reality is not all there is; that the physical world points to a supernatural world; that sex in bodies is, like other experiences in our bodies, meant to throw us towards something ‘enchanted’ rather than excarnated, and to remind us that our bodies are fundamental to our personhood. Tolkien’s best version of the good catastrophe is, of course, the version where the story of Jesus is true; where the heavenly future he offers is not disembodied life in the cloud(s), but an embodied life in a re-created and renovated world; this world; not a digital world; not a world fuelled by consumption and the pursuit of pleasure through choice where you have to keep paying a corporation; but a transformed world centred on the love of God for his people, and the love of his people for God and for one another. This is our hope. The real new eden — not the digital one.

“Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. ‘He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death’ or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.”

He who was seated on the throne said, “I am making everything new!”

Revelation 21:4-5

Who needs a Lakeview when you can have a river view anyway…

Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, as clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb down the middle of the great street of the city. On each side of the river stood the tree of life, bearing twelve crops of fruit, yielding its fruit every month. And the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations. No longer will there be any curse. 

Revelation 22:1-3

May 3, 2020

Exiles?

It’s a common trope (and one I’ve maybe engaged in a little in the past) to frame the Christian life in the post-Christian world as a life of exile. Part of the post-Christendom reality and the apparent aggressive shunning of Christian assumptions about life is this sense that we are now outsiders from the corridors of power, or the seat at the table, we might once have occupied; in those good old days when the church was an ‘estate of the realm.’

There’s lots of theological reasons to run with the paradigm of exile, and it can be a reasonable sociological observation, but I’m finding myself increasingly uncomfortable with the paradigm (and with things I’ve said in the past). I think it’s fundamentally true that following Jesus as king positions one in opposition to human power as it is used in ‘cursed’ patterns in kingdoms that the Bible paints as beastly (like Rome). We are ‘exiles’ in as much as Babylon is our frame of reference for worldly societies. And yet, the history of the western world, as laid out nicely in Tom Holland’s book Dominion, is profoundly shaped by Christianity, so no western culture is capable of being exclusively Babylonian. As Mark Sayers puts it in This Cultural Moment we live in a time where people in the west want ‘the kingdom without the king’ — we’re trading off the fruits of Christianity but don’t want the source of that fruit given space in political decision making.

Exile is on my mind right now because, like many churches, we’ve slated a teaching series on the book of Daniel; because Daniel is an exemplary figure when it comes to navigating life in Babylon as a faithful presence. All the cool kids are doing it. I read the new David Kinnaman book Faith For Exiles to help frame some reasonable application for life in these complex times. It’s a reasonable book, but I find myself longing for a Christian approach to life now — whether it’s a political theology or simply an approach to discipleship (and evangelism) — that recognises the way exile functions as a paradigm in the Bible.

The question of exile is not primarily about whether one lives in the Promised Land in political power (though it is true that this is an element of exile). The question of exile, for Israel, in the Old Testament, is about living in God’s presence, under God’s rule. So Adam and Eve are exiled from Eden, and in a sense that begins humanity’s exile from God, while Israel is created as a non-exiled nation through the exodus, and they lose that status in the exile when they become just like the nations. Exile is predominantly framed by our relationship with God and his powerful presence, not the kingdoms of this world.

We’re working our way through Luke’s Gospel at the moment, where Jesus has set about bringing a homecoming of sorts; an end to the exile via a new exodus (he speaks concerning ‘his exodus’ literally in the Greek during the transfiguration). Jesus’ coming to Jerusalem and his judgment on the physical temple reveals that while its rebuilding happened after Israel returned from Babylon, Israel was still, ultimately, exiled from God. Waiting for the day of the Lord. Waiting for God’s glorious presence to re-animate the Temple. The tearing of the Temple curtain at the execution of Jesus shows that hope will not be realised. The temple is judged. Israel is ultimately, at that point, exiled from God. Jerusalem becomes Babylon (it’s interesting that Jesus’ apocalyptic section in Luke 21 seems to take a bunch of imagery from Isaiah, and especially from Isaiah’s pronouncement of judgment on Babylon in Isaiah 13) to apply it to Jerusalem, and then in Revelation John seems to do the same thing — equating Jerusalem with Sodom, Egypt, Babylon, and Rome.

It’s true that to be caught up in God’s presence again makes you an ‘exile’ from Babylon, or the cities of the world, but I’m not sure it’s the most hopeful description of our reality, and indeed, in the places where the New Testament encourages us to “live as exiles” in the world its actually in those places that our coming back to the presence of God, and being his presence in the world, are most stressed. We need to be careful with how we use the metaphor — acknowledging that the beastly kingdoms of the world are ‘exiled’ from Eden, and from God’s presence — and that we are now God’s presence in this world precisely because we are no longer exiled.

In Ephesians 2, where Paul is using a pronoun that probably applies to gentiles within his logic in the letter, Paul says the exile experienced in Adam — not being part of God’s people — is over for gentiles through Jesus and the coming of the Spirit. Such that:

Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and strangers, but fellow citizens with God’s people and also members of his household, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone. In him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord. And in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit.

Ephesians 2:19-22

In 1 Peter, Peter writes to “God’s elect, exiles scattered throughout the provinces of Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia and Bithynia” (1 Peter 1:1) — where there’s a juxtaposition of the two ideas of being God’s chosen people while being exiled in the gentile (Roman) world. The profound statement he makes in his opening (which might primarily refer to Jewish Christians) is that while they might be ‘exiled’ among the nations, they certainly aren’t exiled from God. It’d be a mistake, I think, for us to adopt one half of this paradoxical existence in our narrative, in a way that shapes our political theology. I suspect some of our ‘exile’ language — even amidst a call to be a faithful presence — might miss the triumph of the cross, and what is achieved through the pouring out of the Spirit into God’s new temple. The moment that exile from God, from Eden, and from the temple and the promised land profoundly ends (for funsies, I reckon the events of Acts 2 actually take place in the temple, where the church was meeting daily, and where ‘exiled’ diasporan Jews were gathered for the Pentecost festival). While we’re to live as exiles in the world — this is a posture we are to adopt, not one the world pushes us into (though by nature a beastly empire won’t deliberately make a bunch of room for God’s people). It’s not a reason for fear; or one we need strategies for. Our strategies — or disciplines — should be those that allow us to be a faithful presence — God’s temple — in the world, not one that starts with the foundational assumption that we are being excluded from the world, but that we have now been included in God’s people within the world. As Peter puts it:

… you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light. Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy. Dear friends, I urge you, as foreigners and exiles, to abstain from sinful desires, which wage war against your soul. Live such good lives among the pagans that, though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day he visits us.”

1 Peter 2:9-12

It’s not us who are the exiles; it’s the nations still exiled from Eden; still cut off from the presence of God. It’s only that we’re home with God, as he makes his home in us, that we become exiles to the world. The real exiles as Paul and Peter write are the nation of Israel, who’ve joined the nations in opposition to God, and expressed that by rejecting their Messiah. Those who don’t have the Spirit.

This sort of posture might remind us that the Gospel is actually good news; and that it creates an alternative kingdom as it makes us citizens of heaven who are then ambassadors to a world that so desperately needs what we have. This might allow us to adopt a more positive, less defensive, approach to both discipleship and politics even as we live amongst nations and communities that occur along a spectrum of those influenced by the fruits of Christianity in the western world, and those who, through idolatry, have become more beastly or Babylonian (or Roman). Those who because of their idolatry are further away from God; digging further into the conditions of exile. If ever we speak of exile without emphatically speaking of our new citizenship, we run the risk of making human power our frame of reference, rather than God’s presence, and that’d be a diabolical mistake. It’s the sort of thing that has Israel become Babylonian in its approach to Jesus; they’ve spent so long thinking like Babylon, and Rome, when it comes to worldly power that they marshall that sort of power against God, and in doing so the kingdom is taken from them and given to others — other exiles from Eden, brought home to God.

February 27, 2020

Why the problem with the church is the “church” (not with the people who leave)

I’ve appreciated the conversations that happened off the back of my “I can’t do this any more” — many friends have reached out to express concern about what might prompt such a raw post, some pastors have contacted me because I hit on a shared experience, but mostly I’ve appreciated the pushback (even from those who suggest it sounds like I want to authoritatively lead some sort of cult). The pushback I’ve most appreciated is from those who fear a message like this, from a pastor figure who has some authority might bind people who’ve been abused or traumatised to churches that will then continue that traumatising or that abuse.

That’s a legitimate concern to be raised in this sort of conversation; especially if I’m essentially arguing that our covenant commitment to one another in the church — the “bride of Christ” — is similar to the covenant commitment we make in marriage.

I want to say, like a pastor might say ‘marriage is a fantastic thing that God has made for the joining together of two people as one, and its value is ultimately not in ‘feelings’ or what it does ‘for me’, but in a lifelong commitment to love one another in sickness and in health; for better and for worse, as a picture of Jesus’ love for the church (Ephesians 5). I also want to say as I teach on marriage, that divorce is a necessary provision in a fallen world for the protection of people from abuse, and to provide a way to escape trauma when a covenant is broken.

So I want to say that belonging to a church is a fantastic thing that God has given us, as a gift, by uniting us to Jesus and one another by the Spirit; that belonging to ‘the church’ is expressed by belonging to ‘a church;’ and that the value of that relationship comes through covenant commitment to unity with one another. This commitment is expressed and lived out through forgiving and forbearing; through love as an act of sacrificing self interest for the sake of others; and for being in relationship for the long term on the basis of the covenant commitments we make to one another at certain junctures (like baptism, membership, and even sharing ‘communion’ or ‘the Lord’s supper’ with one another). In 1 Corinthians, Paul builds the metaphor of the body and our belonging to one another in marriage, to explain why believers should not unite themselves to others in sexual immorality; he argues that our bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit; and then in 1 Corinthians 12 that same Spirit is uniting the members of the church to one another so that we also belong to each other. This sort of belonging is as open to abuse as Paul’s teaching on marriage in Ephesians 5. I am certain that these verses can be used to force people into submission to church authority.

But, just as there are grounds for divorce in marriages that do not reflect the Gospel, but ‘Babylonian’ narratives about self, and power, and domination of others, so too there are grounds to leave a church. I think the duty of a believer in such circumstances is, perhaps, similar to the duty of a Christian spouse leaving a marriage where both partners have made a covenant with one another on the basis of a shared faith. I think sin should be rebuked, repentance and reconciliation sought, other parties involved, and the rights, safety and wellbeing of the victim protected above those of the perpetrator.

To be clear, the bone I’m picking in my recent post is not with people who leave the church; it’s with a church that perpetuates a view of itself that makes leaving the most normal course of action for someone as an expression of the free market and individual choice. Our problem is that we’ve perpetuated a thin view of church where church is a product; but also that our churches have essentially been Babylonian and so doing real harm to people without a path to restore relationships or reform the church; pastors and leaders of the institution of the church are to blame for this, because who else is shaping the culture, understanding and practices of the church and thus how we experience and understand church? My call is not for people to be more committed to bad models of church, to express that commitment by putting up with more — it’s for all of us to change how we conceive of church. If people have been traumatised by churches they should not stay in ways that perpetuate the trauma; but the church (as an institution) has a responsibility to consider why we’ve caused trauma and how we play a part in healing. But it’s also true, I think, that our conception of the church (or a church) as a thing we can just ‘leave’ is the result of a false picture of church that we have perpetuated (and one that is probably more inclined to traumatise people than a more Biblical, less Babylonian, church).

And, mea culpa, there are people who have left our church because of my failures as a leader. Some have perhaps been traumatised by my bad decisions, or my words, or my actions; or by our culture, our practices, and our environment. We have fed a culture of consumerism, and so consumed and burned out people by suggesting that godliness looks like doing more. I am imperfect and inexperienced. I have been Babylonian in my approach, at times. Lots of this is self critique and a desire to approach church differently. I am the leader of a church that is still working out how leadership and authority are worked out, and where elements of our practice have been more Babylonian than shaped by the Gospel. The thing that haunts me about these leavings, more than my guilt about my own failures (though that is real), is the lack of reconciliation — both because when someone leaves it removes some of the opportunity for repentance and forgiveness, but also because the break of fellowship removes the capacity for the healing that comes from forgiveness, forbearance, peacemaking, and ongoing love and unity.

The more Babylonian a church is in its structures and practice — including the authority given to the pastor and how much they are perceived as being the primary ‘image of God’ (remember the Babylonian creation story where the king was the image bearer) — the more likely it is to be abusive and traumatic. Don’t stay in Babylon; just don’t leave without challenging Babylon and giving those in leadership the chance to repent and be reconciled. Recent history is full of Babylonian, abusive, church leaders who fail to genuinely repent in those circumstances (there’s some well documented examples in the U.S, and probably some not so well documented examples in Australia with the current conversations about bullying within church ministry teams happening online), so the path towards this sort of leaving well is also fraught with danger. A hint will be if in such a conversation a leader appeals to his or her authority and refuses to let you go. But I suspect lots of the literature around domestic violence, narcissm, and abusive relationships will also help spot traumatising church systems and leaders. To say we shouldn’t work through that difficulty is a bit like saying that domestic violence is a reason to stop encouraging people to get married and pursue covenant faithfulness when times are tough.

Churches abuse. Churches traumatise. Pastors abuse. Pastors traumatise. Church members abuse and traumatise each other; where those churches, pastors, and members, are genuinely living the Gospel story those moments of sin that cause trauma are opportunities for forgiveness, reconciliation, and forbearance; and in those processes it will become more or less clear if the abusers are Babylonian wolves who should either be run out of town, or run from… but if that’s the case then your brothers and sisters in those churches should leave too, not be left behind. And the processes of church discipline that our western churches have departed from (because when you try to discipline someone — whether a pastor or an individual — they tend to just leave one church and go to, or start, another) were perhaps an essential part of a less individualistic church and its ability to be what the church is called to be in the world.  A lack of accountability to anybody but yourself; and your sense of where the Spirit might be guiding you is a recipe for Babylon. God gives us a community, who we’re united to by the Spirit, to discern where the Spirit might be leading us together. It’s hard for me to believe that the Spirit who unites us will also lead you away from the people he has united you to without any opportunity for you to talk through that leading with those people. But 99% of the people I see leaving churches have done that without speaking to anybody (except perhaps, the leaders of the church recruiting them to their ‘better’ show), and most of the conversations I’ve had have been with people who have already decided to leave (and so lost some of the capacity to be sent well to another church). Where people have left us because of trauma — or my failures to love and leave well — they have left without the conflict being truly resolved or any opportunity for reconciliation and ongoing fellowship and unity to be experienced by either party; this is the loss of an opportunity to experience the Gospel; the love of Jesus; in the midst of our sinfulness, but also in our new, non-Babylonian, relationships. It might very well be that in those circumstances the trust in a relationship is broken to the extent that forgiveness and reconciliation is possible, but full restoration is not. I’m not arguing people should never leave a church; or that the pastor alone should dictate when — Paul’s picture of the church has the pastor playing some sort of shepherding role, absolutely, but has the members belonging to each other; not the pastor as the image bearing king.  The trick is also that in church communities (as opposed to marriages) the absolute best thing for an abuser; a Babylonian; is to belong to a church — they may need to be sent to a different church to protect their victim, but connection to the body of Christ is the best context for repentance, forgiveness, and genuine reconciliation; for dealing with sin in a way that breaks a vicious cycle.

The point isn’t that churches or marriages should be built on rules, or even on vows. It’s that our vows reflect the story we are participating in (both in marriages and the church), and more than that, that we come together united in love; and love that expresses itself through deep, lifelong, commitment that does come at a cost, but also comes with benefits. It’s no coincidence that Paul lands his teaching on the oneness of the church, as one body, with a passage that gets read ad nauseum in weddings.

And yet I will show you the most excellent way. “If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing. Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away.”

‭‭1 Corinthians 12:31-‬13:1-8‬ ‭

A church built on this version of love won’t feel like Babylon; it won’t abuse or traumatise; it will deal well with sin and hurt. It might feel like a cult, but it will also be a place where the love and example of Jesus, and the story of the Gospel — of sins being forgiven, relationships reconciled, new lives being given — is lived and experienced by all those members of his body, and those who might come amongst us.

December 7, 2019

I can’t do “this” any more (and I’d invite you not to either)

For as long as I can remember I’ve wanted to tell people about Jesus as a job. I mean, I also wanted to be a sports journalist, I am quite idealistic about what the press might be and what journalism is, and I enjoyed my time working in public relations. But there has been a deep and abiding desire in my bones (and my genes) to see lives transformed by Jesus as people have their hearts and imaginations fired up by the way of life he offers, that is described in the story of the Bible. This new way of life that involves us being pulled from death and destruction — an old way of life that destroys others — as an act of forgiveness, grace and love from God, where we are given new life with God forever. I love that the pattern of the cross and the hope of resurrection could transform the world for better now, and that I believe it will, ultimately, for eternity. Christianity makes intellectual and emotional sense for me in a way that nothing else does; it lines up with how I think people and societies work (or should work), and offers a profound critique of the alternatives. It answers big questions, and gives bigger ones to explore. It is full of tensions, or mysteries, or paradoxes, that reward curiosity. The Bible is great literature that tells an amazingly integrated story (spanning genres, and millenia), centred on the heroic victory of Jesus through sacrifice, resurrection, ascension, and now rule. A story that we can tell, but that we can also live. I can’t comprehend a more valuable use of my time and energy than contributing to God’s mission in the world. I love the church. I love the way that God calls a bunch of weird people to follow Jesus and pours his Spirit into us to unite us in something bigger than ourselves.

I’ve been blessed to be supported by many people in the last six years (and four years before that as a student) who’ve given money to free me to do this as a full time job; who’ve loved and supported Robyn and I as we’ve supported others, and started our little family. I’ve worked alongside many others, paid and not, who are committed to this cause. We’ve seen lives transformed by the Gospel. This is my life.

But I can’t do “this” anymore.

At least not in the way “this” is happening.

This morning I had to console my four year old daughter because several of her favourite people are leaving our church community. I had to console her because she asked why we were so sad. Why I struggled to get out of bed this morning. Why I don’t want to do “this” anymore. Robyn and I have spent the last few weeks reeling from conversation after conversation with our brothers and sisters in Christ who, for various reasons, won’t be continuing in fellowship with us. And each one of these conversations feels like an amputation.

None of us should experience the sort of phantom limb feeling of looking around one week for the members of our body who were there last week with no idea where those members have gone. None of us should be cutting ourselves off from the body we belong to and are connected to. No parent should have to explain why their big sister in Christ, or their little brother in Christ, is not going to be part of their life any more. I recognise that we don’t live in an ideal world, and that the visible church is a complex and variegated reality; but we could, perhaps, attempt to be a little more idealistic in our execution of what church is meant to be, rather than simply accepting the status quo. Especially if that status quo is deadly and at odds with what the church is meant to be. As a church we’ve chopped off far too many pieces of ourself (or had too many pieces chopped off) over the last few years for that loss not to be dramatically and significantly felt. The job of the pastor seems to me to be a giving of one’s self over an over again, in all sorts of relationships, only for those relationships to suddenly disappear by the autonomous decision of an other; and this isn’t just true for those in ministry; it’s true for any member who stays connected to a body. Staying in church, belonging, often hurts. It can feel like people are wielding their scalpels with one another as we bump into each other, sometimes pruning one another, sometimes chopping into bits that feel more essential, and sometimes causing deep wounds that hurt; but healing and growth actually come through that pain, through wounds being bound up, hurts being forgiven, and blood or an organ or two being donated. Amputation is a terrible and drastic step that alters both the body as a whole, and the body part; even if that part is grafted elsewhere. Sometimes healthy transplants can be vital and life giving to other bodies though, but never without cost.

Our church is in a period of transition; you may have read my manifesto. Part of that transition involves a changing of place, time, and philosophy of ministry, and we’ve invited people to use this moment as an opportunity to commit with us, or look elsewhere. Every time we have made major changes in the structure of our church, people have left us. Some have told us, some have ghosted. I feel like each person who has left our church in the last six years has taken a piece of me with them. Sometimes we have sent people to other churches with our blessing, as an act of Gospel partnership. Some people have left fellowship with us because they’ve left Brisbane. Some have broken fellowship with us over theological disagreements. Some have tried really hard to stay and ultimately felt called to leave for a variety of reasons. There are good ways and bad ways to leave a church; but whether good or bad, each leaving is a cutting away at a unity that is meant to be greater than the unity we experience in the fibres of our embodied being. Paul uses the metaphor of the body to describe the church; it’s one of his favourites. The thing about metaphors is that the reality they point to is always ‘greater’ than the analogy we use to describe them. Metaphors are visual reductions of a concept to make it easier to grasp. The connection we enjoy to one another by the Spirit that dwells in us and units us to Christ is greater than any other connection between people — if Jesus is to be believed as he calls people to leave their family networks to follow him this connection is greater than our biological connection to family.

“Just as a body, though one, has many parts, but all its many parts form one body, so it is with Christ. For we were all baptised by one Spirit so as to form one body—whether Jews or Gentiles, slave or free—and we were all given the one Spirit to drink.” — 1 Corinthians 12:12-13

I can’t do this anymore because what we do in the west is not church. We’ve commodified the body of Christ so it’s something you can leave without being sent. We’ve individualised our spirituality so that our decisions around church are based on ‘choice’ and ‘personal growth.’ We’ve fragmented community life so that most of us are driving past a variety of churches to attend the community of our preference, and when our preferences change, or our stage of life changes, we change our community. C.S Lewis and Marshall McLuhan both wrote about the damage the automobile (literally ‘self’ mobile) did to village life, but beyond the combustion engine technology continues to wreak havoc on our shared life, fragmenting space and time and the rhythms of our life and freeing us to be autonomous authors of our own destiny and communities in ways that mean we don’t do the hard work of face to face life with people we don’t like, but who we are called to love. I’m not a Luddite, so not suggesting that we should stop driving to churches to be with those we are called to be in fellowship with; those whom we are united with by the Spirit, but I am suggesting that we should recognise the costs of our patterns of life, and the way that “Babylon” and its values keep infecting the church.

Babylon is a metaphor in the Bible. One the New Testament, especially the book of Revelation, picks up to describe the human empire opposed to God in favour of self. Its roots go back to the tower of Babel, where people rather than going into the world to generously and abundantly spread God’s flourishing vision for humanity, decide to ‘make a name’ for themselves. In Revelation, Babylon is depicted as a city built on power and commerce; on grasping hold of the things of this world to build one’s own security. Babylon comes crumbling down. Ultimately. And yet we still, as Christians whose future in the “New Jerusalem” is secure, keep turning back to Babylon for our patterns of life, in ways that shape our patterns of church. Babylon, as the empire that took Israel into captivity in the exile, offered a very different narrative about the good human life to Israel’s narrative, a story that came with very different patterns of behaviour, forging a very different character in its people.

Lots of Old Testament scholars argue that the Biblical creation narrative, where God brings life and order and makes us in his image, is in such stark contrast to the Babylonian narrative (The Enuma Elish) that it must have had a particular significance in counter-forming Israel during the exile. Some believe the parallels between the Genesis story and the Enuma Elish (and other ancient creation stories) are so strong that you should read them as polemics or correctives of the sort of Babylonian story that Israel might have been tempted to be ‘re-created’ by during the exile. The Enuma Elish depicts only the king as the ‘image of God,’ and the gods of Babylon as chaotic, destructive, self-interested figures who are obsessed with conquest and its spoils. This story was used to justify Babylonian military expansion around the ancient near east, but also shaped a certain approach to human life, where people are objects, with no inherent dignity, to be used to secure pleasure and prosperity; for the gods, and those who were most ‘godlike’ in their position in society. To be Babylonian was to approach life as a consumer; a consumer of the world, and a consumer of others. To flourish in Babylon one had to climb the hierarchy to become as close to the gods as possible; we see an interesting hint of this in the book of Daniel in those within the Babylonian court who do all in their power, in a dog-eat-dog world, to entrap Daniel and remove him from influence.

In his book Subversive Christianity: Imaging God in Dangerous Times, scholar Brian Walsh says our situation is very like Israel’s in exile in Babylon:

“We live in Babylon. Babylonian definitions of reality; Babylonian patterns of life, Babylonian views of labour, and Babylonian economic structures dominate our waking and our sleeping. And, like the exiled Jews, we find it very tempting to think that all of this is normal…

If our presence in this culture is to be Christian we must recognise with Christian insight the profound abnormality of it all. This means that we cannot allow our experience of exile to define reality for us. We must not allow the Babylonian economistic worldview so to captivate our imaginations that its patterns, its views, and its priorities become normal for us. This was also the central problem for the exiled Jews in Babylon. One of the ways in which they dealt with this problem was by constantly reminding each other of who they really were. In the face of Babylonian stories and myths, Jews told and retold their own stories. In fact, it was most likely at this time that they first wrote down one of their most foundational stories—the creation story.”

The difference is, unlike Israel, we are no longer exiled from God. It is clear what our story is; because in baptism and the pouring out of the Spirit we share in the death and resurrection of Jesus; our hearts have been made new as we are united to Jesus, caught up in the life of God, and marked out as children of God in the world. We are home. Not exiled. Babylon is a foreign land to us because we belong to a new kingdom with a new creation story. We have a new Adam. Jesus. We are new creations. Babylon’s days are numbered (see Revelation 18).

The Enuma Elish had its own tower of Babel story. Scholars have long suggested Babel was what’s called a ‘ziggurat’ — a stairway to the heavens; a stairway that would allow people to ascend to the heavens as those in the Babel story wanted, but that would also bring the gods down to earth. In the Enuma Elish the city of Babylon is founded as a ziggurat. In the Babylonian version of the story the tower isn’t built by people who want to be godlike, but by the god, Marduk. He announces his plan:

“Beneath the celestial parts, whose floor I made firm,
I will build a house to be my luxurious abode.
Within it I will establish its shrine,
I will found my chamber and establish my kingship.
When you come up from the Apsû to make a decision
This will be your resting place before the assembly.
When you descend from heaven to make a decision
This will be your resting place before the assembly.
I shall call its name ‘Babylon’, “The Homes of the Great Gods”,
Within it we will hold a festival: that will be the evening festival.

The Babel story, in its ancient near eastern context, is the Bible’s story of the creation of Babylon; a temple-city opposed to God. A story of people wanting to be godlike; of wanting to be like Marduk; of wanting to rule on earth and in the heavens. It is a story of a certain sort of autonomy; of self-rule. A story of people being like Marduk, the Babylonian god of war and destruction and consumption. So much of our approach to church in the west is Babel like; it’s Babylonian. Our New Eden story offers a stunning alternative picture to Marduk; Marduk who descends from the heavens so that his people-slaves will serve and entertain him…

“Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. ‘He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death’ or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.”

He who was seated on the throne said, “I am making everything new!” Then he said, “Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.”

He said to me: “It is done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. To the thirsty I will give water without cost from the spring of the water of life. — Revelation 21:3-6

This new Jerusalem is our future; not the new Babylon.

We are new creations in Christ living with this new creation as our end; our ‘telos’ — our vision of the good, flourishing, life. We are not to be caught up in Babylon because Babylon will be destroyed. Violently.

Babylon is consumerism.

Babylon is a pattern of self-rule.

Babylon is seeing others, and communities, as things that serve you, rather than a body that is held together by love.

Babylon is the pattern of this world that produces digital disembodiment in platforms driven by a sinister ‘surveillance capitalism’ that harvests us digitally like we’re some sort of organ farm, and sells our desires and whims to the highest bidder; platforms that exert soft power influence on us reshaping how we see the world in ways we don’t even notice as we uncritically embrace technology (like the car, or the smartphone, or new social media patterns of behaviour) that subtly deforms our practices, our imaginations, and our desires, and so re-casts the image we live in the world. We end up bearing the images of the gods of Babylon. Babylon comes with rulers who become more and more ‘godlike’ at your expense; whether digital platforms that know more about you than you know about yourself, or their owners who become obscenely rich selling what they know to people who are going to sell you stuff, or a vision of life that will subtly change the way you interact with the world and others. Babylon comes with the story that says ‘the most important person in this world is you’ and ‘freedom is autonomous individual choice in the pursuit of your authentic inner self.’ Babylon comes with the story that says people and relationships are disposable. That community exists to serve your needs. That relationships with brothers and sisters in Christ can be severed by your autonomous wielding of the surgeon’s knife without concern for the impact that cut causes on anyone but you. The pattern of Babylon has us thinking about our immediate pleasure and needs; recalibrating our hearts via the ticking of the second hand of the clock, not the hour hand or the eon hand. It has us making decisions without the ability to hold a preferred picture of the future in view; relationships become interchangeable and disposable because we want quick fixes not the transformation that comes via a patient plodding along with the same people, in the same direction, for twenty years — and the requisite making of sacrifices here and now to secure a future end. Babylon has us obsessed with short term results against metrics that are ephemeral — like wealth and power — rather than long term results. Babylon is what causes a climate catastrophe and leaves us ill equipped to do the sort of planning or sacrificing now to avert a diabolical future. But Babylon’s own future is secure precisely because Babylon is diabolical. It is the Devil’s way of life.

Church is the opposite. The Gospel — our new creation story — says that your neighbours — your brothers and sisters in Christ — are united to you by something stronger than the biological tie of blood; it says that you exist to serve one another as you are transformed by the Spirit to love and serve and build up each other. It says that we should not give up the habit of meeting together with people, that we are to forgive and forbear and maintain connection to one another and that growth as the body comes through the bond of love, and peace, and fellowship, as we let the message of Christ dwell among us richly. It says church is not a product that we buy, or discard, but a community of people we belong to, marked out by a shared story, that comes with shared experiences, and a shared vision of the future. Our story is not that we build a stairway to the heavens to dwell with the Gods, but that God in Jesus descended from the heavens, to a cross, in order that God might dwell in us by his Spirit — uniting us to each other — and that ultimately he will dwell with us for eternity. Our story is that our gatherings now, face to face, are gatherings where we reject autonomy and automobility and ‘freedom via authentic selfishness’ — where we resist Babylon — in order to be shaped in the image of Christ through belonging to one another as the body of Christ; God’s living temple in the world.

The church is life giving. It unites people. It holds us together. It should be impossible to leave a church without being sent out (the pattern in the New Testament, I reckon), so long as those you gather with are your brothers and sisters. Churches grow — not numerically, but that too — when people stay connected to each other for the long haul, even when it appears your particular needs aren’t being met as well as they might be elsewhere. Churches grow when people work hard at loving each other imperfectly, through the ups and downs, over an extended period of time. The best results for church aren’t immediate but are long term. Church is like marriage; or family.It is not meant to be disposable.

Babylonian church — an attempt to live the story of Babylon at the same time as living the story of the Gospel — attempting to synthesise its patterns with the patterns of Jesus and his body — is costly and destructive; and the bodies pile up.

And I can’t do “this” any more. I won’t.

I can’t be part of a church that people leave easily; a church that is as disposable of a pair of worn out running shoes; where obsolescence is built in to keep you buying more (and where those shoes are increasingly made of cheap materials put together by cheaper labour).

The church can’t afford to do this any more. Firstly, because this, more than anything else I suspect, is going to burn out leaders of churches more than any other factor; either as they play the Babylonian game and try to grow churches through transfer growth from disenfranchised consumer Christians, or as they chop of piece after piece of themselves; seeing those they’ve poured love and time and energy into walk out the door and into some other community. That old sexual purity scare tactic where we were once told that sex is like sticky tape is a terrible way to promote the true, created, purpose and goodness of sex, but the oneness we experience in the body of Christ, brought into oneness by the Spirit, is, at least for Paul in 1 Corinthians, part of the same extended metaphor he uses to talk about sex and the oneness two bodies experience in sex. We are one body. We are meant to be a community built on communion with God, via the Spirit (expressed at a shared table), not a consumity.

Secondly, the church can’t afford to do this any more because Babylon’s destiny will be our destiny if we operate as Babylonian church. The patterns of this world are Babylonian and are geared towards making church fail because they are shaped by a profoundly different creation story to the church; they are shaped by the anti-Gospel; new forms of the Enuma Elish that turn us into gods and technology and consumption into the key for us having power and dominion and a godlike ability to fight against the limits put upon us by space and time.

I can’t do Babylonian church anymore.

Part of the New Eden Project was a recognition that we have, for years, perpetuated consumer Christianity in our practices as a church; and there’s been a live by the sword, die by the sword reality at play as some people have left us for greener pastures, rather than engaging in the difficult business of sticking it out in the body of Christ and working for the good of all. Some of this being complicit has been caught up in limiting the ability for different parts of the body to operate for the benefit of all.

I met with a friend recently, another pastor, who has launched a new church plant in the last few years relentlessly committed to being anti-consumer. For this other church this looks like changing how gatherings happen so that every member is involved, changing the expectations around time and community so that church isn’t just an event you turn up to and consume in as short a time period as possible, so that you can get right back to Babylon, but an event where everybody participates, and one that lingers.

We so desperately need to change how we approach church; and by ‘we’ I might first mean our family, and our church community, but the project is so much bigger than that. Babylon will be destroyed. Don’t conform to the patterns of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Don’t get caught up in Babel projects; instead find a community that longs and lives for the new Eden; God’s presence with us, one for us and given to us in Jesus, and through the pouring out of the Spirit that brings life, and unites us to each other.

Please, if you catch this vision, if you share this frustration with the status quo; don’t leave your church. You might get sent by your church one day to be part of some new thing. But don’t leave your church. Stay. Commit. For the long haul. Plod away. Resist Babylon.

December 3, 2019

The _____ captivity of the church

Sometimes I think we Christians after Christendom think we’re William Wallace. That we’re in front of a shield wall firing people up for the battle we face… when, actually, we’re already not just prisoners of the enemy, but serving the empire we think we’re standing against. We talk about the world now being ‘Babylon’ and don’t always confront how much Babylon already infects our hearts. Here’s a piece, in part, inspired by Martin Luther’s The Babylonian Captivity Of The Church. 

“Aye, fight and you may die. Run and you’ll live — at least a while. And, dying in your beds many years from now, would you be willing to trade all the days from this day to that for one chance, just one chance, to come back here and tell our enemies that they may take our lives, but they’ll never take our freedom!” — William Wallace in Braveheart

Freedom.

Religious freedom.

Freedom of speech.

It seems we Christians are a bit obsessed with questions of freedom at the moment. We’re positioning ourselves like an army of Scots ready to fight to maintain our independence from the empire. We’ve got thought leaders who are bracing us for impact, telling us that we’re in the middle of a battle that will decide our future; the battle for our freedom. These freedoms. Hard won freedoms. Freedom from the tyranny of Babylon. Freedom from bending the knee to Caesar and his rainbow sash.

The problem is we talk about religious freedom and how important it is, while we the church are captives in Babylon; and if we think freedom looks like Babylon-lite we’re in big trouble. If we think freedom is simply the ability to maintain a distinct sexual ethic we don’t realise just how much we’ve already been captivated by a world that is an entirely different kingdom to the one we live for if we follow king Jesus. We’re so focused on sex, that we fail to realise that we, mostly, already belong to ‘Babylon’.

We’re captives.

We’re political captives.

We’re economic captives.

We’re captivated by a counter-Gospel. We’re narrative captives, enthralled by Babylon and its shiny promises and explanations about who we are, and what we’re for; blinkered so that we don’t often look beyond our defaults; the status quo of our immediate context and culture.

We’re captivated in our hearts, and our minds, in our desires and in our imaginations.

But still. We picture ourselves as William Wallace, just without the face paint (and so we end up looking a whole lot like Mel Gibson, it’s ok to be a raving lunatic if you’re in character, elsewise, not so much).

We think our freedom is at stake; that it is under attack.

Apparently our real enemies; the ones who will decide our fate, are those who’ve risen up from the margins of the empire who now threaten to take control of everything, or at least to wield disproportionate influence as they capitalise on our collective guilt and shame at how our culture has treated those who are different. We don’t feel guilt, or shame, not in any way that manifests itself in sitting down at the table to make reparations and to reconcile, anyway. We might have changed some of our practices so we don’t do conversion therapy any more or kick out our same sex attracted children (hopefully); we celebrate celibacy for those in our community who are same sex attracted, sure, but we’re not particularly on the front foot explaining to same sex attracted folk outside our community how Jesus is the best possible news for them, and better than any desire for earthly things, including sex, we’re not particularly interested in how life in a contested, pluralist world might be safe for them. It’s not just Christians, or the last vestige of christendom/Old Testament morality that cause bullying, or discrimination, or the world to be unsafe for those who statistically, are not normal. It’s the human heart. It’s the beastly part of the human heart. We’re like chicks, who turn our beaks on the little bird in the clutch who is different, and peck at them until we feel secure, and they are broken beyond recognition.

Well. Now these marginalised folks are at the head of an army; they’ve rounded up the forces of Babylon, both the politicians, and the market forces — corporations — and they’ve brought that army to our shield wall.

“They may take our lives… we might say, but they’ll never take our freedom.” 

We get these bracing call to arms type blog posts on all the big Christian platforms. We get books trying to chart a strategy for the church going forward in a hostile world where our freedom is under threat.

Freedom.

Religious freedom. That’s our shtick; and partly because we so value it for ourselves, it’s one of those things, those common goods, that we want to fight for for everyone else. We tend to see ourselves as the warriors fighting the good fight for freedom on the frontline. William Wallace in a battle raging against the ‘secular’  empire. And by secular this is the sort of hard secularism that sees no place for worship, rather than secularism as ‘no religion is favoured’ pluralistic secularism.

“They may take our lives… we might say, but they’ll never take our freedom.” 

Only we can’t really say that. Or rather, we can’t really say that and mean it. Because our freedom is already gone. We’re already captives. When it comes to Babylon, they’re not at the gate banging on the doors using the new sexual revolution to break down the walls. We’re already captives, and have been for a long time. This stuff on sexual difference is just, perhaps, the last defence to fall before we capitulate, bend the knee to Caesar and kiss the ring. And that we don’t realise we’re already captives makes our resistance pretty pathetic and futile.

We think we’re fighting the good fight here on same sex marriage and safe schools. But the truth is, we’re already captives to Babylon in so many ways that this resistance is pathetic, and unless it leads us to seek freedom in a whole bunch of other areas where ‘Babylon’ has infiltrated, we’re in a bit of trouble.

But the other truth is that Babylon in the Bible isn’t just judgment from God (as we’ll see below); it’s opportunity. It’s an opportunity to reach people outside Israel, and outside the church. Babylon is our mission field, and always has been. And the thing that keeps us focused on the main thing — joining with God in bringing dead people to life through the Gospel — is realising that we’re in Babylon, not Israel, that our neighbours are facing death for rejecting God, and that we’ll be part of God inviting them out of Babylon into a new kind of citizenship.

If we really want to resist Babylon in order to be part of winsomely calling people from death to life, there’s a whole lot of stuff we might need to free ourselves from first. We have to figure out how we’re distinct from Babylon (or should be) in order to reach Babylon with the Gospel (oh, and we need to remember that because we’re not Jews, we’re actually converts from Babylon, Babylonians who’ve decided to follow a different king, that our job isn’t first to identify with Israel and its story, but to appreciate that because of the one faithful exile, Jesus, we are brought home to God and made citizens of something new); we also need to be clear about what ‘Babylon’ means as a metaphor in a Biblical sense (beyond the exile).

There is a sense that God’s people being scattered into Babylon is both vital for his mission to see his image bearers spread over the face of the earth (Genesis 1), and judgment for failing to do the job of being his image bearers in the world; a case of God achieving his purposes through judgment. There’s also a sense in which exile into Babylon is judgment giving people a taste of what it seems they desire — to not live like his people; it’s a purifying thing. This is where his judgment in response to the impulse at Babel — where a bunch of people didn’t scatter, but instead stayed together to build a big, central, tower — probably an ancient ‘ziggurat’ (a staircase into the heavens to make themselves gods) — fits in with his plans for the world. These people rejected his call to go into the world, they built a tower for their own name to make themselves gods ascending to the heavens, and were scattered as a result. It’s this moment, in the Biblical narrative, that creates nations like Babylon, and there’s some pretty interesting historical ties between Babel and Babylon, so that in the first century, the historian, Josephus, says:

“The place wherein they built the tower is now called Babylon, because of the confusion of that language which they readily understood before; for the Hebrews mean by the word Babel, confusion”

The Babylonian captivity of Israel

When Israel was carted off into exile in Babylon the first time around, what got them there, what got them in trouble, was they were already Babylonian at heart before the armies arrived. They were captivated by Babylon before they were captives in Babylon.

They’d already rejected God, and what should have been their distinctives as his people, and they’d turned to idols instead.

They’d signed up with their hearts, and exile was a case of them becoming what they loved. In the book of Ezekiel we get an explanation read by people in Exile about why they’re in exile in the form of the words of the prophet who warned them what was coming.

There’s this scene where a group of Israel’s leaders rock up to Ezekiel to ask him what God says, and it turns out they’re in trouble because they’ve ‘set up idols in their hearts’ — abominations one might say… it turns out they’ve already deserted God. They’re already captives in this sense, even if the physical takeover is not yet complete (though it is for the first readers of Ezekiel)…

 “When any of the Israelites set up idols in their hearts and put a wicked stumbling block before their faces and then go to a prophet, I the Lord will answer them myself in keeping with their great idolatry. I will do this to recapture the hearts of the people of Israel, who have all deserted me for their idols.’ — Ezekiel 14:4-5

The heart reality, the ‘Babylonian captivity’, is going to become the real deal though.

“Therefore this is what the Sovereign Lord says: ‘Because you people have brought to mind your guilt by your open rebellion, revealing your sins in all that you do—because you have done this, you will be taken captive.

“‘You profane and wicked prince of Israel, whose day has come, whose time of punishment has reached its climax, this is what the Sovereign Lord says: Take off the turban, remove the crown. It will not be as it was: The lowly will be exalted and the exalted will be brought low. A ruin! A ruin! I will make it a ruin! The crown will not be restored until he to whom it rightfully belongs shall come; to him I will give it.’ — Ezekiel 21:24-27

Exile is a judgment from God on those whose hearts have already gone from him; those who are already captives. The end of this Babylonian exile, according to Ezekiel, is the restoration of the crown to a rightful king of Israel. That’s Jesus. This restoration would also include a restoration of the heart, and a return from exile.

“ I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean; I will cleanse you from all your impurities and from all your idols. I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws. Then you will live in the land I gave your ancestors; you will be my people, and I will be your God.” — Ezekiel 36:25-28

The first Babylonian captivity of the Church

The ‘Babylon’ of Revelation is, first, Rome. It’s the Babylon Israel are still enthralled by; to the extent that when Jesus came, they joined the Romans in executing him. Israel is still in exile, they don’t have new hearts, and they haven’t recognised God’s king. They’re part of this Babylonian kingdom. It’s a picture of a beastly kingdom that has set itself up in total opposition to the kingdom of God. The kingdom we see launched by the death and resurrection of King Jesus. It’s a kingdom whose values are both the opposite of Jesus’ values, and that are so totalising, coherent, and integrated, that once you let just one bit creep into your heart, it’s a trojan horse that lowers your ability to fight the rest. When John starts describing ‘Babylon’ in Revelation he paints this vivid picture of a powerful and beautiful woman who rides a beast, and seductively takes people away from God:

The woman was dressed in purple and scarlet, and was glittering with gold, precious stones and pearls. She held a golden cup in her hand, filled with abominable things and the filth of her adulteries. The name written on her forehead was a mystery:

Babylon the great

the mother of prostitutes

and of the abominations of the earth.

I saw that the woman was drunk with the blood of God’s holy people, the blood of those who bore testimony to Jesus. — Revelation 17:4-6

This isn’t some mystery where we need a decoder ring, or to get in touch with our inner Nostradamus…

“The woman you saw is the great city that rules over the kings of the earth.” — Revelation 17:18

For John, in his day, this is a description of Rome. Rome who loomed large as the totalising persecutor of Christians, but also as a compelling, integrated and coherent picture of civilisation; where order was kept and maintained and the seduction of beauty and power was never far away from the stick of its military. The carrot and stick of Rome were the threat to Christians aiming to maintain their distinction as citizens of heaven who bow the knee to Jesus, not Caesar, so we have a little exchange between governor Pliny and Emperor Trajan where Pliny is trying to figure out what to do with the Christians, and Trajan says “if they are denounced and proved guilty, they are to be punished, with this reservation, that whoever denies that he is a Christian and really proves it — that is, by worshiping our gods — even though he was under suspicion in the past, shall obtain pardon through repentance.” And this lure, which caught Israel, also threatens the church — when John opens Revelation by directly speaking to the churches who first read this apocalyptic (revealing) text; that showed the real lay of the land, he warns the churches ‘not to forsake their first love’, not to be lured by Jezebels and the promises of false worship, not to become ‘lukewarm’ because of their own economic might within the empire… people in the church are in danger of forsaking Jesus and ending up in judgment, in Babylon.Everyone is an exile — you’re just either exiled from God, or from the beastly Babylon. Whatever happens their lives are lived in the physical reality of Babylon. They’re not home. And they’re treated like exiles too, by the world. The church is facing persecution for not bending the knee to Caesar.

Escaping persecution was so simple. You just had to sign up, totally, to the empire. To give in to Rome; to the empire; to Babylon; was to become an abomination; to become “children of the mother of the abominations of the earth.” Now this is pretty strong language, and for a long time the church has got itself in a spot of bother by using versions of the Bible that seem to single out sexual sin as the only sort of ‘abomination’ and abomination as a particularly insidious different type of sin. All sin is fundamentally an abomination to God. Stuff we might give a hall pass to out there in the public square — like greed — but also stuff we’re thoroughly conscripted into and captivated by as Christians — like lust, gluttony, and, umm, greed.

An ‘abomination’ was something put in the place reserved for God — in the Temple, at the altar, but also, fundamentally, in our hearts. An abomination is anything you replace God with. It’s the thing that turns us, as it conscripts us and deforms our behaviours (and so the image we bear in the world), in such a way that we become more like Frankenstein than human. We become vaguely human, in terms of what God’s kingdom looks like. The whole Roman enterprise — though much of it looked beautiful, ordered, and admirable — was built on an abominable rejection of God as God and Jesus as king.

When the Maccabees revolted against the Seleucid Empire (a hellenic kingdom), they were motivated, in part, by that empire fulfilling what they thought were Daniel’s prophecies about the abomination that causes desolation. It was all about God’s temple, and the altar, and the purity of whole-hearted worship that Israel was able to offer to God. So 1 Maccabees describes this abominable moment:

Now on the fifteenth day of [the month] Chislev, in the one hundred forty-fifth year, they erected a desolating sacrilege on the altar of burnt offering. They also built altars in the surrounding towns of Judah — 1 Maccabees 1:54

This sacrilege is later described as an abomination.

… that they had torn down the abomination that he had erected on the altar in Jerusalem; and that they had surrounded the sanctuary with high walls as before, and also Beth-zur, his town. — 1 Maccabees 6:7 

The Romans, when they destroy Jerusalem in 70AD, build a temple to Jupiter on the site of the Temple. And some believe this is what the ultimate abomination Rome is going to carry out looks like. It’s abominable, no doubt.

But I think the ultimate abomination was what Rome — and ‘captive’ Israel — did to God’s ultimate temple. They executed him; utterly rejecting his rule; holding up a mirror to what the beastly kingdom looks like against the face of God’s king. The great irony is that this is where king Jesus is enthroned and his kingdom begins — the kingdom that would ultimately be the undoing of Roman rule and the downfall of the Caesars (if you take the long term view, and of course, the eternal view). We repeat the abomination that causes desolation whenever we put anything but God in the place of supremacy in our hearts — we were made to bear the image of God; to be walking ‘temples’ for whatever it is we worship (the things we love and serve).

The church’s job, according to Revelation, is to bear faithful witness in Babylon as people distinct from Babylon because we bend the knee to a different king — the king described in Revelation 1 who brings the kingdom described in Revelation 21-22, after Babylon is destroyed. In the meantime we’re to be faithful witnesses (see the letters to the churches at the start of Revelation), who call Babylon to repent; who speak truth to power; even to the point of sharing in Babylon’s treatment of our king. Or, as Revelation 11 puts it, when talking about the faithful ‘lampstands’ (which is what the churches are depicted at in the start of the book):

Now when they have finished their testimony, the beast that comes up from the Abyss will attack them, and overpower and kill them. Their bodies will lie in the public square of the great city—which is figuratively called Sodom and Egypt—where also their Lord was crucified. For three and a half days some from every people, tribe, language and nation will gaze on their bodies and refuse them burial. The inhabitants of the earth will gloat over them and will celebrate by sending each other gifts, because these two prophets had tormented those who live on the earth.

But after the three and a half days the breath of life from God entered them,and they stood on their feet, and terror struck those who saw them. Then they heard a loud voice from heaven saying to them, “Come up here.” And they went up to heaven in a cloud, while their enemies looked on. — Revelation 11:7-12

Avoiding ‘Babylonian Captivity’ in the early church

Avoiding Babylonian Captivity after Jesus is a matter of right worship; it’s a matter of being part of the return from exile promised in Ezekiel (and because we’re not Jews, most of us, a return from the exile where we’re humanity was kicked out of Eden). It’s a matter of participation in God’s kingdom, the church, following his king, Jesus, and having him rule our hearts via the Spirit; a removing of the ‘abomination’ of false gods that rule our hearts.

The point is — it’s not sexual sin per say that is the ‘abomination’ (it’s a form of it), it’s idolatry. It’s the participation in worship of things other than God, through undifferentiated participation in kingdoms that are not God’s. It’s captivity. And the thing about Babylon, ‘the mother of abominations’ is that it’s not just sex that captivates us and so makes us captive; it’s not just the ‘sexual revolution’ that aims to restrict our freedom… there’s politics (power), and economics (money), and philosophy/wisdom (education and a vision of the good life) in the mix too.

Early Christians, knowing what was at stake, were more William Wallace like in their ability to avoid this sort of captivity. They refused. They maintained a distinction that included sexual fidelity, and an approach to marriage that was counter cultural in the Roman world, but it included much more than this. Here’s a passage from a second century document called the Letter to Diognetus. It’s about how the Christians avoid being caught up in the trappings of Babylon.

Instead, they inhabit both Greek and barbarian cities, however things have fallen to each of them. And it is while following the customs of the natives in clothing, food, and the rest of ordinary life that they display to us their wonderful and admittedly striking way of life.

They live in their own countries, but they do so as those who are just passing through. As citizens they participate in everything with others, yet they endure everything as if they were foreigners. Every foreign land is like their homeland to them, and every land of their birth is like a land of strangers.

They marry, like everyone else, and they have children, but they do not destroy their offspring.

They share a common table, but not a common bed.

They exist in the flesh, but they do not live by the flesh. They pass their days on earth, but they are citizens of heaven. They obey the prescribed laws, all the while surpassing the laws by their lives.

They love all men and are persecuted by all. They are unknown and condemned. They are put to death and restored to life.

They are poor, yet make many rich. They lack everything, yet they overflow in everything.

They are dishonored, and yet in their very dishonor they are glorified; they are spoken ill of and yet are justified; they are reviled but bless; they are insulted and repay the insult with honor; they do good, yet are punished as evildoers; when punished, they rejoice as if raised from the dead.

The writer of this letter says some other stuff too, including this passage on the stupidity of the idolatry of ‘Babylon’ from earlier in the piece…

“Are they not all deaf? Are they not all blind? Are they not without life? Are they not destitute of feeling? Are they not incapable of motion? Are they not all liable to rot? Are they not all perishable?

You call these things gods! You serve them! You worship them! And you become exactly like them.

It’s for this reason you hate the Christians, because they do not consider these to be gods.”

This is what it looks like to really fight for freedom — to be poor and make many rich, to be lowly, dishonoured, without power, marginalised, but to bless, honour, and do good. To be sexually distinct, to share a common table, to be living a different story because we follow a different king.

Getting out of Babylon now (or getting Babylon out of the church)

I look at how we play politics as the church and feel like there’s not a huge amount of difference to how politics get played by other ‘religious’ groups. The politics of power, of zero sum games where it’s our way or nothing. The politics of picking the people who best represent our views, rather than the people most qualified for the job. We try to play politics with everyone else, we’re just not very good at it (bizarrely, perhaps, because other people have cottoned on quicker that we’re more shaped by our loves than by ‘knowing the facts’, and so they tell better stories).

I look at how I approach money, and career, and security, and experience, and toys, and I think that there’s not much difference in my approach to consuming and my pursuit of luxury, than anyone else in my life (except perhaps that I earn slightly less because of career choices, but this just means I crave slightly more in an unrequited way).

It’s not just about sexual difference, this Babylon thing — though that is important, and our marriages should be rich testimonies to the love of Jesus, and we should love and nurture our kids. And we should fight the temptation to sexual immorality and the corrupting of our imaginations by a ‘sexular society’… but there has to be much more than that in our kit bag.

If we want to be people who aren’t captives, people who live as though ‘every land is like a homeland’ and a ‘land of strangers’ we need to be people who are so caught up in the vision of a kingdom greater than Babylon and a sense of certainty that our future is greater than the present, and the past. That the picture of life in Revelation 21-22 doesn’t just surpass Babylon, or Rome, but Eden.

This will mean a totally different approach to politics that is not wedded to a sort of conservatism where we’re trying to restore paradise lost (and end up building Rome), but a progressivism that shoots for the kingdom of heaven — the kingdom we are citizens of even now.

This will mean, in some corners of the world, divorcing ourselves from worldly political establishments (and not shooting for a wedding with any particular political party here in Australia).

This will mean we don’t seek to be at the centre of the empire culturally, or politically, or economically — to be at the centre would require the ’empire’ being at the centre of our hearts — an ‘abomination’ and a form of captivity… like Spiritual Stockholm Syndrome. We won’t seek to be at the centre, but nor will we seek to be at the margins to the extent that we don’t participate in life with our neighbours. But we do need to be close enough to those at the margins to bless the people there, hear the people there, and be champions for the bringing about of change for the benefit of those Babylon treads on. Our distinctives on these fronts are to be prophetic and the noticeable and part of our appeal (think Daniel in Babylon).

This will mean listening to voices from the global church, from marginalised communities (from people who aren’t white blokes with multiple university degrees).

This will mean a totally different approach to economics. When John describes the downfall of Babylon he describes it with reference to its material prosperity — its luxury — and in terms of the downfall of a worldly economy built on the powerful controlling the goods of this world for their own benefit (and at the expense of other people — like those sold as slaves (Revelation 18:11-13) — and of the world itself which John says is “corrupted by her adulteries” (Revelation 19:2-3). The Babylon lost when God judges is not just built on sexual excess (though that is part of the picture), but on economic and political excess — a beastly and abominable approach to God’s world created by the worship of these things in the place of God. This sort of idol worship is totalising

This will mean a different approach to arts, and culture, and storytelling. The appeal of Babylon, in any form, rests in its counter-gospel and the way its gods are dressed up as appealing counterfeits to the real God. It’s no coincidence that even the word Gospel is ‘Babylonian’ (in the Roman sense); the proclamation of the marvellous victories of king Caesar. We need to be people who proclaim a different king in ways that call people to worship the one who ends our exile from God; the one who brings us out of captivity.

This will mean a different approach to personhood, discipleship, and education, that doesn’t see us just as solitary brains to be educated towards sanctification, but worshippers whose worship is cultivated in the ‘heart’, by practices, by stories, and in community where we follow our king by imitating him together, and show and reinforce our distinctive ‘story’ together.

This will mean a different approach to being the church. One that is not defensive or inwards looking, but that cultivates hearts that in looking to the king, and his way of life, joyfully and hopefully look to the lost sheep in our world; those crushed by worldly kingdoms, and offer them good news. Our practices and disciplines and the rhythms of our life together should, like the church from the Letter to Diognetus, be aimed at ‘making many rich’…  There are plenty of people at the margins of our society where the gospels of our ‘Babylons’ are exclusionary. Get an education; get a job; buy a house; collect experiences; be ‘free’… there are people for whom this vision of the good life is a millstone pulling them into depths of despair, not a picture of freedom at all. These are the people the freedom of the Gospel is for, and yet we spend our time hand wringing because the ‘elites’ don’t like us.

Babylon is a totalising system that aims for all of us — our desires, imaginations, beliefs, belonging, and actions… much as the Kingdom of God is a totalising system in a totally counter-Babylon, counter-Rome, way. These are where some of my misgivings about Christendom as an enterprise historically are located… we like to think the church civilised the barbarian empire… and in many ways we did… but we’re not so aware of the ways that this also allowed the empire to barbarianise the Church… and this was part of what Luther was getting at, in the Reformation he launched of the ‘Roman Church’ in a text like The Babylonian Captivity of the Church. This is the scale of the challenges we’re facing as the church now, and it might not be the Benedict Option that gets us to where we need to be, but we don’t really have the option of not changing if we’re already captivated by the trinkets and baubles of Babylon and just waiting for the last little bit of resistance to crumble while we fight for ‘religious freedom’… we need to fight for religious freedom, certainly, but more than that we need to fight to be free from abominable religions that pull our hearts from God.

When Luther described his task of pulling the church out of what he perceived to be a Babylonian captivity, he recognised how hard this would be because the captivity was so entrenched by the traditions of the church…

“I am entering on an arduous task, and it may perhaps be impossible to uproot an abuse which, strengthened by the practice of so many ages, and approved by universal consent, has fixed itself so firmly among us, that the greater part of the books which have influence at the present day must needs be done away with, and almost the entire aspect of the churches be changed, and a totally different kind of ceremonies be brought in, or rather, brought back. But my Christ lives, and we must take heed to the word of God with greater care, than to all the intellects of men and angels. I will perform my part, will bring forth the subject into the light, and will impart the truth freely and ungrudgingly as I have received it.” — Martin Luther, The Babylonian Captivity of the Church

Like many things, Luther saw the corruption of the way church was happening — removed from truths of the Gospel — as the work of Satan, work achieved through idolatry (any worship without Jesus); he says where we lose our centre — faith in Christ — we end up in judgment,  “removed from our own land, as into bondage at Babylon, and all that was dear to us has been taken from us.”

In this our misery Satan so works among us that, while he has left nothing of the mass to the Church, he yet takes care that every corner of the earth shall be full of masses, that is, of abuses and mockeries of the testament of God; and that the world shall be more and more heavily loaded with the gravest sins of idolatry, to increase its greater damnation. For what more grievous sin of idolatry can there be, than to abuse the promises of God by our perverse notions, and either neglect or extinguish all faith in them. — Martin Luther, The Babylonian Captivity of the Church

We need to be prepared to change; we, the church, need to acknowledge where we are captives, and we need to be prepared to reform. It’s a big deal, and it’s about much more than what goes on in our bedrooms.

“But you will say: “What? will you ever overthrow the practices and opinions which, for so many centuries, have rooted themselves in all the churches and monasteries; and all that superstructure of anniversaries, suffrages, applications, and communications, which they have established upon the mass, and from which they have drawn the amplest revenues?” I reply: It is this which has compelled me to write concerning the bondage of the Church. For the venerable testament of God has been brought into a profane servitude to gain, through the opinions and traditions of impious men, who have passed over the Word of God, and have set before us the imaginations of their own hearts, and thus have led the world astray. What have I to do with the number or the greatness of those who are in error?”

March 21, 2017

Reading the Bible (and life) as the story of God ‘re-creating’ and ‘re-vivifying’ broken images of God: Part 1 — By the rivers of Babylon

In which, over a two part epic, I quote significant chunks of Babylonian religious propaganda to make the case that we should understand being made in the ‘image of God’ as a call to play a part in representing God in his world, while our idolatrous hearts keep leading us to play that part for idols.

This post is fairly epic in size, but the good news is, I’ve split it in two. Ok. So here’s a fun way to read the Bible, in sum, think of this as the TL:DR; version of what follows:

  1. The Bible is the story of God giving life to his image bearers — making living images or idols to represent himself — and then restoring life to those images when they stop serving that function. Part of this restoration involves the image being ‘revivified’ — given life, breath, and a function — near or through water. This vivification, or revivification, happens through a ritual ceremony that was a ceremony used throughout the ancient world to give and restore life to broken idol statues.
  2. God’s people are meant to function for him the way idol statues function for the other gods of the ancient world — to represent the presence of his kingdom, to, in a sense, manifest his rule and give legitimacy to it.
  3. The flip side of this reading is that the stuff in the Bible about not making idols to represent God is actually a pointer to the truth that only the living God can make representatives of himself, that share his qualities, because all things that are made by makers reflect their maker. The problem with the gods of the nations — gods of stone, shaped from the human imagination but based on things that God made — is that its an overturning of the created order, in which it is God who makes images (humans), not humans who make gods.

God creates his images (and gives them breath and a purpose, near water)

Creation as ‘giving something a function’…

Old Testament scholar John Walton has written a bunch of stuff about how the Genesis creation account relates to its ancient near eastern context. One really important point he makes is that we, as modern readers, bring modern concerns to the text as well as modern notions of what it means ‘to be’ (a modern ontology). We think ‘being’ is meaningfully tied to questions of what substance a thing is made of, our ontology is material. This wasn’t the case in the ancient world, nor, (just to give you a sense of how this question plays out significantly in different times, while we might take our modern thinking for granted) for some time after that. The Greeks, for example, as described in Plato, saw being as a thing reflecting some perfect infinite form, and a thing’s ‘being’ was measured, in some way, against this ideal. The significance of this, in the Greek world, was that people often separated a thing’s physicality from its ‘ideal form’ — prioritising the ‘spiritual’ over the physical. This question matters more than we think it might. In the world the Bible came from, existence was tied not to its material essence, or a thing’s ‘ideal form’, but to the function it was given within a system of functioning things. The ancient world had what Walton calls a ‘functional ontology’… Here’s a quote where he explains what this means:

“WHAT DOES IT MEAN FOR SOMETHING to exist? It might seem like an odd question with perhaps an obvious answer, but it is not as simple as it may seem. For example, when we say that a chair exists, we are expressing a conclusion on the basis of an assumption that certain properties of the chair define it as existing. Without getting bogged down in philosophy, in our contemporary ways of thinking, a chair exists because it is material. We can detect it with our senses (particularly sight and touch). The question of existence and the previous examples introduce a concept that philosophers refer to as “ontology.” Most people do not use the word ontology on a regular basis, and so it can be confusing, but the concept it expresses is relatively simple. The ontology of X is what it means for X to exist… When we speak of cosmic ontology these days, it can be seen that our culture views existence, and therefore meaning, in material terms… Since in our culture we believe that existence is material, we consequently believe that to create something means to bring its material properties into existence. Thus our discussions of origins tend to focus on material origins.

If we are going to understand a creation account from the ancient world we must understand what they meant by “creation,” and to do that we must consider their cosmic ontology instead of supplying our own. What did it mean to someone in the ancient world to say that the world existed?

People in the ancient world believed that something existed not by virtue of its material properties, but by virtue of its having a function in an ordered system. Here I do not refer to an ordered system in scientific terms, but an ordered system in human terms, that is, in relation to society and culture… In this sort of functional ontology, the sun does not exist by virtue of its material properties, or even by its function as a burning ball of gas. Rather it exists by virtue of the role that it has in its sphere of existence, particularly in the way that it functions for humankind and human society… In a functional ontology, to bring something into existence would require giving it a function or a role in an ordered system, rather than giving it material properties… Unless people (or gods) are there to benefit from functions, existence is not achieved. Unless something is integrated into a working, ordered system, it does not exist… Consequently, the actual creative act is to assign something its functioning role in the ordered system. That is what brings it into existence.” — John Walton, The Lost World of Genesis One: Ancient Cosmology and the Origins Debate

Walton obviously takes a position on how this affects the way we read the nature of ‘creation’ in Genesis 1, but that’s a red herring in this discussion. His observation is borne out through a study of the sort of things ‘created’ and what is said of them throughout the Bible (it’s always linked to function, rather than form), and also in texts apart from the Bible — other creation accounts, and other stories about people ‘creating’ things in the Ancient world. I think its fair to say this ‘ontology’ is not disputed, and you might have to take it to whatever conclusions are necessary when it comes to how to read the Genesis accounts as they relate to our ‘material ontology’ and the questions we might want Genesis to answer. I’m going to go in a very different direction though, and specifically consider the questions this creates for us when Genesis talks about us. Humans. Where we’re made in God’s ‘image’ and likeness. I think the likeness part captures a sense that we share some qualities of God in how we operate in the world, we reflect him, but the ‘image’ part is also functional and is tied to us representing him.

I’m suggesting that to be made in God’s image in the sense in which Genesis (and the rest of the Bible talks about it), is not just to be something, but also to do something. And that something is caught up with the idea that we are the living, speaking, God’s living, speaking, statues, in the same way that dead and dumb statues represented dead and dumb gods.

The Hebrew word for image selem is often translated as idol, both later in the Old Testament (rarely, because there are a few different words used), and elsewhere in the ancient near east (frequently, like, this is a very common word for how the nations describe their statues), it does come up a few times like:

Speak to the sons of Israel and say to them, ‘When you cross over the Jordan into the land of Canaan, then you shall drive out all the inhabitants of the land from before you, and destroy all their figured stones, and destroy all their molten images and demolish all their high places; and you shall take possession of the land and live in it, for I have given the land to you to possess it. — Numbers 33:51-53

“You also took the fine jewellery I gave you, the jewellery made of my gold and silver, and you made for yourself male idols and engaged in prostitution with them.” — Ezekiel 16:17

The verbs used for God’s creation of humanity in Genesis 1 and 2 are later used when talking about the forming of idols, or to refer back to God’s creation of humankind.

There’s a consensus emerging amongst a stream of good Bible scholars — people who believe the Bible is God’s word, and is about Jesus — that Genesis 1-2 should be read as the story of God creating his cosmic temple, a place for him to dwell, and rest, and be worshipped. I don’t think this is controversial. This is the ‘ordered system’ then that we are placed in and given the function we’re given as ‘images’… The word for ‘image’ in Hebrew, selem, has an ancient near eastern link to the word used elsewhere for idol statue, salmu. We’ve added vowel sounds to Hebrew, which was traditionally just written as consonants, so slm. 

There are some steps to notice in what happens as God makes an image of himself in Genesis 2.

  1. Formed and fashioned, near water (and symbolically, in a sense, moved through water, it’s interesting that God places the man in the garden twice, once before the mention of the water, and once after) (Genesis 2:6, 8, 10-15)
  2. Inspired, or given ‘breath’ so that it the image is vivified. It is to be thought of as a living representation of the God whose image it bears. (Genesis 2:7)
  3. Declared fit for purpose within a system, and via connection to God. (Genesis 1:26-31)
  4. Placed (or enthroned) in the Temple/garden sanctuary and given a job within the Temple. (Genesis 2:8-9, 15
  5. The images are provided for with food and drink. (Genesis 2:16-17)
  6. The image fulfills a function in representing the God behind the image (Genesis 2:19-20)

These steps are pretty much a summary of the steps required for people to create images of God in the ancient world. The sequencing is interesting here because 3 actually happens in Genesis 1, and then Genesis 2 zooms in to sequentially cover 1-2 and 4-5. Genesis 1 also supplies the sense in which 5 happens. God creates and rules by speaking good things (and a good system) into being. God creates humans to rule over the things he has made — especially the other living things — as his images. And in Genesis 2, Adam ‘names the animals’ by speaking their names into being, and thus rules them — in the Ancient Near East, to name something was to express your authority over it.

Humans are meant to serve as God’s images in his temple — his living breathing representatives.

The creation, and re-creation, of images of God in the ancient world

The notion of ‘images of God’ in the ancient world, outside the Bible, was linked to the role the king of an ancient nation would play in being the representative of that nation’s god as both priest and king of the nation’s cult. Here are some things written about a couple of kings. The image of the king, and the image of the nation’s god were so closely tied that the king of a successful nation almost always became God.

“He [the king] alone is the image of Enlil, attentive to the voice of the people, to the counsel of the land.” — EPIC OF TUKULTI-NINURTA

 

“The King’s image, made brilliant like the heavenly stars, was set up before the eyes of the God Enlil”  — A HYMN DEDICATED TO SULGI OF UR

 

“He created his royal image with a likeness of his own countenance and placed it before the God Ninurta.”— INSCRIPTION DESCRIBING ASSURNASIRPAL, KING OF ASSYRIA

Some of the words in this bit are going to seem foreign — because they are. Not just foreign, but ancient. Just let those bits wash over you, but as you read (if you read the chunks of quotes from inscriptions) try to notice the similarities, and the differences, to how the Bible describes the making of an image of God. The Genesis account comes from a world much closer to these tablets than to our modern world. What’s really striking, I think, is how much the conclusion from the first section, and those steps present in making an image of God (and supplying a function), is supported in the ancient world — and what sort of comparison is struck between the Bible’s story of God’s creation of humanity, and the ancient, human, stories of how people were to make images of God. Those same 6 steps are there, with a couple of key subversions, in an ancient Babylonian ritual called Mîs-pî, where images are created, given the job of representing the god(s) who made the universe, and enthroned. Here’s the text of the ritual. There’s heaps of stuff here that sounds like it could be said about the God of the Bible, what’s interesting is what changes if you remember that this is a person speaking to the gods, about the creation of an image of a god. An image that is a statue where they need to create a sort of cognitive dissonance because the statue does not breathe or move, which brings into question just how powerful these gods are. The king/image-creator would say (the times ‘statue’ appears from here on in are ‘salmu’):

Ea, Ṧamaš, and Asalluḫi, the great gods, who judge the heavens and the earth, who determine the destinies, who fix decisions, who make sanctuaries great, who set the foundations of the throne daises, who lay out the plan, who outline the ordinances, who apportion the lots, who watch over sanctuaries, who keep the rites pure, who creates the rites of purification, it is in your hands to determine fates, to draw plans, you alone establish the fate of life, you alone draw the plans of life, you alone make the decisions of life, you inspect all the throne daises of god and goddess, you alone are the great gods who direct, the decisions of the heavens and earth, of springs and seas, your utterance is life, your pronouncement is well-being, the work of your mouth is life itself,  you alone bestride the farthest heavens, you dispel evil (and) establish the good, you loosen the evil portents and signs, disturbing and bad dreams, who cut through the cord of evil. I am the chief exorcist who <knows> the pure rites of Eridu, I have poured out water; I have cleansed the ground for you;  I have set up pure thrones for your sitting; I have dedicated clean red garments for you; I have set up the pure offering arrangements for you; I poured out for you a pure libation; I set up for you an adakurru-bowl with našpu-beer.

I libated for you wine and best beer. Because the completion of the rites of the great gods and the direction of the plan of the purification rite rest with you, on this day be present: for this statue which stands before you ceremoniously grant him the destiny that his mouth may eat, that his ears might hear. May the god become pure like heaven, clean like the earth, bright like the center of heaven. May the evil tongue stand aside! — Mîs-pî Ritual Tablet

After this had been recited, the king would “set up a libation for the gods Kusu, Ningirima, Ninkura, Ninagal, Kusigbanda, Ninildu, Ninzadim,” and ritually carry some incense and a torch past the image of these gods that had already been created. Then, the king would approach the new image that was being given life (vivified).

“You purify him with the egubbû-basin and (then) perform the Mīs Pî ritual, you set up a libation and the āšipu-priest stands to the left of that god. You recite three times the incantation “When the god was made” — Mîs-pî Ritual Tablet

The words of this incantation make it clear, or attempt to, that these statues are the products of all these other gods. Ignore all the funny types of Babylonian stone, and notice where those names of the gods mentioned above come up. And their ‘involvement’ as makers, but the key bits that are bolded. This is an exercise in overcoming the knowledge that these images are crafted by people, and can’t actually do what they symbolise.

“When the god was fashioned, the pure statue completed, and the god appeared in all the lands, then bearing an awe-inspiring radiance totally suited to rule with perfect strength; surrounded on all sides with splendour, endowed with a sparkling-pure appearance, he appears magnificently, the statue shines brilliantly; in the heavens, it was crafted; on earth, it was crafted. This statue was crafted in the entire heavens and earth… this statue grew up in the forest (of) Tir-ḫašur (ḫašur-cedar); this statue went out from a mountain, the pure place; the statue is the product of gods and humans; the statue (has) eyes that Ninkura has made; the statue (has) … that Ninagal has made; the statue (has) features that Ninzadim has made; the statue is of gold and silver that Kusibanda has made; [the statue ] that Ninildu has made; [the statue ] that Ninzadim has made; this statue of ḫulālu-stone, ḫulāl īni-stone, muššaru-stone, pappardillû-stone, pappardildillû-stone, ḫulālu parrû elmešu, by the skill of the gurgurru-craftsman, this statue that Ninkura, Ninagal, Kusibanda, Ninildu, Ninzadim have made,  this statue cannot smell incense without the ‘Opening of the Mouth’ ceremony. It cannot eat food nor drink water…” — Mîs-pî Ritual Tablet

These eyes can’t see. These features can’t do what they represent — see, or smell, or hear. These gods are made of gold and silver. These gods are statues. They are made by craftsmen, not gods. And here’s the ritual that ‘opens’ its mouth, that gives it life and breath and the ability to manifest the presence of the god it represents.

Water of the Apsû, brought from the midst of Eridu, water of the Tigris, water of the Euphrates, brought from a pure place: tamarisk, soapwort, heart of palm, šalālu-reed, multi-colored marsh reed, seven small palms, juniper, (and) white cedar throw into it; in the garden of the canal of the pure orchard build a bīt rimki. Bring him out to the canal of the pure orchard, to the bīt rimki. Bring out this statue before Shamash. Put again at their place the adze that was driven (into the wood), the chisel that carved it, the saw that cut it, and the master craftsmen who prepared it. With a scarf bind their hands; with a tamarisk knife cut off the fists of the stoneworkers who touched him. This is the statue that Ninkura, Ninagal, Kusibanda, Ninildu, (and) Ninzadim made. Kusu, the chief purification priest of Enlil, has purified it with a holy-water-basin, censer, and torch with his pure hands. Asalluḫi, the son of Eridu, made it resplendent. The apkallu and the abriqqu-priest of Eridu have opened your mouth twice seven times with syrup, ghee, cedar, (and) cypress.

May this god become pure like heaven, clean like the earth, bright like the center of heaven. May the evil tongue stand aside.” — Mîs-pî Ritual Tablet

The ceremonial ‘cutting off the hands’ of the stoneworkers to ritually deny human involvement fascinates me. The whole process to this point has been so very human. The king has been in the driving seat both in terms of speaking life into the god, via the incantations, and in terms of organising the design and creation of the god. This human involvement is clear from the number of “I did X” statements. It’s a very human process and this little ritual shows how much the idol maker must operate with a weird doublethink, the “I made this, it is my god” thing that Isaiah nails when he talks about how idol makers cook their food over half a lump of burning wood, and worship the other half. I say ‘ceremonial’ because tthe knife is wooden so I don’t think they actually chopped the hands off. After this ritual the statue is ‘commissioned’ by this prayer, and then carried to its temple.

“In the ear of this god you shall say the following: “Among your brothers you are counted,” you shall whisper into his left ear. “From this day let your fate be counted as divinity; among your brother gods may you be counted; draw near to the king who restored you; approach your temple…. To the land where you were created be reconciled.” — Mîs-pî Ritual Tablet

Notice the water mentioned at the start, is ‘water of the Apsû,’ the Apsû is the divine source of water in the ancient near east so this is ‘divine water’ from the mids of the god Eridu, which is said to come from two rivers. This water is brought into the place where this ritual happens, a ritual that happens in a garden-canal area in a ‘pure orchard,’ you may have identified all six of those elements of the Genesis creation narrative I mentioned above too, but check this out.

“A river watering the garden flowed from Eden; from there it was separated into four headwaters. The name of the first is the Pishon; it winds through the entire land of Havilah, where there is gold. (The gold of that land is good; aromatic resin and onyx are also there.) The name of the second river is the Gihon; it winds through the entire land of Cush. The name of the third river is the Tigris; it runs along the east side of Ashur. And the fourth river is the Euphrates. The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it.” — Genesis 2:10-15

This, then the subsequent creation of Eve, is how God places his images in his Garden/sanctuary/temple. To ‘work it and take care of it’ — and, for bonus points, the two verbs translated as ‘work it and take care of it’ are later used, and only ever used in this pairing, or construction, as describing the role of the priests in God’s temple. It’s also interesting that when God essentially ‘re-creates’ humanity, his images, a few chapters later through Noah, his family, and the waters of the flood, much of the same process repeats.

But God remembered Noah and all the wild animals and the livestock that were with him in the ark, and he sent a wind over the earth, and the waters receded. Now the springs of the deep and the floodgates of the heavens had been closed, and the rain had stopped falling from the sky. The water receded steadily from the earth. At the end of the hundred and fifty days the water had gone down, and on the seventeenth day of the seventh month the ark came to rest on the mountains of Ararat… Then God said to Noah, “Come out of the ark, you and your wife and your sons and their wives. Bring out every kind of living creature that is with you—the birds, the animals, and all the creatures that move along the ground—so they can multiply on the earth and be fruitful and increase in number on it. So Noah came out, together with his sons and his wife and his sons’ wives. All the animals and all the creatures that move along the ground and all the birds—everything that moves on land—came out of the ark, one kind after another.  Then Noah built an altar to the Lord and, taking some of all the clean animals and cleanbirds, he sacrificed burnt offerings on it.” — Genesis 8:1-3, 16-20

Then God blessed Noah and his sons, saying to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number and fill the earth. 2 The fear and dread of you will fall on all the beasts of the earth, and on all the birds in the sky, on every creature that moves along the ground, and on all the fish in the sea; they are given into your hands. 3 Everything that lives and moves about will be food for you. Just as I gave you the green plants, I now give you everything. — Genesis 9:1-3

Here, God re-creates humanity in his image. We see God:

  1. Forming a new people for himself through water (6:1-8:4),
  2. Placing them where the ark — his vessel for salvation — lands on a mountain (8:4, 16),
  3. Giving them a function in this cosmic system — he gives Noah and his family the job he gave his image bearers in Genesis 1 (8:17, 9:1)
  4. Providing food for them (9:3).

And we see Noah and his family ‘representing God’ — even if temporarily, as he builds an altar/sanctuary (8:20), and then as he, ‘a man of the soil,’ gardens, like Adam did (9:20).

There are also plenty of connections here to the later creation of Israel, through the waters of the red sea and the Exodus, to be placed in the Promised Land with it pictured as a rich, fruitful land marked by flowing water… When God speaks of his creation of Israel he talks in terms of creating a nation of priests, he does that through the waters of the exodus, and he moves them from Egypt to the Promised land (where, as they’re about to enter the land, he makes it very clear they’re not to follow any sorts of images given life by empty man-conducted rituals.

“Now if you obey me fully and keep my covenant, then out of all nations you will be my treasured possession. Although the whole earth is mine, you will be for me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.’ These are the words you are to speak to the Israelites.” — Exodus 19:5-6

Note the similarities here to the things humanity was meant to rule, and read it remembering who humans are meant to be.

You saw no form of any kind the day the Lord spoke to you at Horeb out of the fire. Therefore watch yourselves very carefully, so that you do not become corrupt and make for yourselves an idol, an image of any shape, whether formed like a man or a woman, or like any animal on earth or any bird that flies in the air, or like any creature that moves along the ground or any fish in the waters below. And when you look up to the sky and see the sun, the moon and the stars—all the heavenly array—do not be enticedinto bowing down to them and worshiping things the Lord your God has apportioned to all the nations under heaven. But as for you, the Lord took you and brought you out of the iron-smelting furnace, out of Egypt, to be the people of his inheritance, as you now are.

The Lord was angry with me because of you, and he solemnly swore that I would not cross the Jordan and enter the good land the Lord your God is giving you as your inheritance. I will die in this land; I will not cross the Jordan; but you are about to cross over and take possession of that good land. Be careful not to forget the covenant of the Lord your God that he made with you; do not make for yourselves an idol in the form of anything the Lord your God has forbidden. For the Lord your God is a consuming fire, a jealous God. — Deuteronomy 4:15-24

Just as Israel is about to be placed, like a divine image, in the promised land — a new Eden — there’s this reminder of who they’re to be, and a warning that if they do turn away from God, they’ll end up captured and taken into exile — God’s images removed from this temple — where they’ll worship ‘man-made gods of wood and stone, which cannot see or hear or eat or smell’ (Deut 4:25-28).

Images broken by exile, restored through waters

Ok. Here’s an extra fun part. When an image — as in the statue in a temple — was captured by an enemy army and taken into exile it lost its power. The God behind it was emptied, the statue was de-vivified. When nations went against nation they went after the idol statues in their temples. Statues functioned a bit like a flag in a game of capture the flag, if a nation held another nation’s statue of their god it was meant to show how little power the nation and its king had, and the king couldn’t exactly say ‘hey that statue is a fraud’ because the statue guaranteed the king’s own power — oh, yeah, the story of the capture of the Ark of the Covenant and its little power struggle with Dagon in 1 Samuel 5 is a fun example of this. If ever a nation captured back its statue, or if the winning nation wanted to take the power and prestige of the god behind the statue as a means to control the captured nation then the statue had to be re-vivified using a pretty similar ceremony, essentially following those same steps (this is fun background to read when we see foreign kings allowing Israel to restore the temple or practice their religion during exile).

There was a king of Assyria, Esarhaddon (he gets a mention in the Bible, in 2 Kings 19), who, famously restored the idols he’d captured in one of his conquests. I say ‘famously’ because Esarhaddon had his restoration of the Babylonian gods he (and his family) had captured inscribed in stone to shore up his own personal claims to divinity. Here are some bits of what he says in the inscription. In this you get a picture of the role the king played when it came to setting up an image of god, and the kind of kudos that came with it. The TL:DR; version, if you want to skip this quote, is that the king claimed divine right to create gods, found the craftsmen to do it, then decorated the image with gold and jewels to make them ‘more radiant than before,’ before conducting the same ceremony conducted to give them life in the beginning.

“When in the reign of an earlier king there were ill omens, the city offended its gods and was destroyed at their command. It was me, Esarhaddon, whom they chose to restore everything to its rightful place, to calm their anger, to assuage their wrath. You, Marduk, entrusted the protection of the land of Assur to me. The Gods of Babylon meanwhile told me to rebuild their shrines and renew the proper religious observances of their palace, Esagila. I called up all my workmen and conscripted all the people of Babylonia. I set them to work, digging up the ground and carrying the earth away in baskets… When in heaven and on earth signs favourable for the renewal of the statue of the gods occurred, then I, Esarhaddon, king of the universe, king of the Land of Ashur, the apple of Ashur’s eye, the beloved of the great gods, with the great intelligence and vast understanding, which the great Nudimmud, the wise man of the gods, bestowed on me, with the wisdom which Ashur and Marduk entrusted to me when they made me aware of the renewal of the the statue of the great gods, with lifting of hands, prayers, and supplication, I prayed to the divinities Ashur, king of the gods and to the great Lord Marduk: “Whose right is it, O great gods, to create gods and goddesses in a place where man dare not trespass? This task of refurbishing the statues, which you have constantly been allotting to me by oracle, is difficult! Is it the right of death and blind human beings who are ignorant of themselves and remain in ignorance throughout their lives? The making of images of the gods and goddesses is your right, it is in your hands, so I beseech you, create the gods, and in your exalted holy of holies may what you yourselves have in your heart be brought about in accordance with your unalterable word. Endow the skilled craftsmen whom you ordered to complete this task with as high an understanding as Ea, their creator. Teach them skills by your exalted word; make all their handiwork succeed through the craft of Ninshiku… When in the reign of an earlier king there were ill omens, the city offended its gods and was destroyed at their command. It was me, Esarhaddon, whom they chose to restore everything to its rightful place, to calm their anger, to assuage their wrath. You, Marduk, entrusted the protection of the land of Assur to me. The Gods of Babylon meanwhile told me to rebuild their shrines and renew the proper religious observances of their palace, Esagila. I called up all my workmen and conscripted all the people of Babylonia. I set them to work, digging up the ground and carrying the earth away in baskets… With red gold, the product of Arallu, ore from the mountains, I decorated their images. With splendid ornaments and precious jewelry I adorned their necks and filled their breasts, exactly as the great lord Marduk wanted and as pleased queen Sarpanitu. They the artisans made the statues of their great divinity even more artistic than before. They made them extremely beautiful and they provided them with an awe-inspiring force, and they made them shine like the sun… I, Esarhaddon, led the great god in procession. I processed with joy before him. I brought him joyfully into the heart of Babylon, the city of their honour. Into the orchards, among the canals and parterres of the temple E-kar-zaginna, the pure place, they entered by means of the office of the apkallu, mouth washing, mouth opening, washing and purification, before the stars of heaven, before Ea, Samas, Asalluhi, Belit-ili, Kusu, Ninigirim, Ninkurra, Ninagal, Kusibanda, Ninildu, and Ninzadim.” — Esarhaddon Inscription

It’s a bunch of foreign ‘super-powers’ like Esarhaddon who cart Israel off into exile, and gods like those he decorates in jewellery that Israel are so enamoured by, who so capture their hearts, to their peril. Not only are the Israelites taken into exile, as a result of worshipping stone idols dressed in fancy stones, they are ‘de-vivified’ — they lose the essence of their life as they lose connection with the life giver. They need restoration. Isaiah nails the ‘man made’ nature of the nation’s gods, and their destructive capacity, so too Psalm 115. Their idolatry leaves them exiled, and with hearts of stone. No longer living images of the living god in his temple, but dying images of dead gods captured by the foreign kings.

Here’s the thing — to bring this all home to 21st century you and me — we are all Esarhaddons. We don’t have ‘kings’ and ‘national cults’, but we all build pretty idols and become ensnared by them. Our hearts are led astray. We think we’re super impressive, we make life all about us, and our idols, though they don’t speak, are the things we look to, apart from God, for a sense of self worth or a picture of success. They guarantee our self-rule. Only. They destroy us. Because they take us away from God. That tendency you have to put yourself at the centre of the universe, the ‘Lord,’ as David Foster Wallace puts it, ruling your own skull shaped kingdom, that is going to kill you.

“Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And an outstanding reason for choosing some sort of god or spiritual-type thing to worship – be it JC or Allah, be it Yahweh or the Wiccan mother-goddess or the Four Noble Truths or some infrangible set of ethical principles – is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive… The insidious thing about these forms of worship is not that they’re evil or sinful; it is that they are unconscious. They are default settings. They’re the kind of worship you just gradually slip into, day after day, getting more and more selective about what you see and how you measure value without ever being fully aware that that’s what you’re doing. And the world will not discourage you from operating on your default settings, because the world of men and money and power hums along quite nicely on the fuel of fear and contempt and frustration and craving and the worship of self. Our own present culture has harnessed these forces in ways that have yielded extraordinary wealth and comfort and personal freedom. The freedom to be lords of our own tiny skull-sized kingdoms, alone at the centre of all creation.”

David Foster Wallace is right about the destructive power of worship, but wrong that there is anything other than God the creator who won’t ‘eat you alive’ — there’s only one right option. And the worship of self, which provides this apparent freedom, actually enslaves. We become what we behold. We cut ourselves off from the voice that set creation into being, and that’s why, to pinch another phrase from that famous DFW speech, we have that sense of having had, and lost, some infinite thing. We are, as a result of our worship of things other than God, in exile from God. De-vivified. In need of new breath. In need of re-imaging so we might re-imagine life as God’s people, his images, again. So that we might speak, and taste, and see, and smell, the world the way we were made to, not the way our senses are dulled as we pursue hollow gods.

Israel’s situation, in exile, is dire. They are images waiting to be restored. That Psalm made famous by Bony M, which, somewhat poetically, pictures those waters the Babylonians believe brought life to their statues, picture Israel losing their lives, and their identity and their ability to speak, or sing, as they were meant to — as God’s representatives.

By the rivers of Babylon we sat and wept
    when we remembered Zion.
There on the poplars
    we hung our harps,
for there our captors asked us for songs,
    our tormentors demanded songs of joy;
    they said, “Sing us one of the songs of Zion!”

How can we sing the songs of the Lord
    while in a foreign land?
If I forget you, Jerusalem,
    may my right hand forget its skill.
May my tongue cling to the roof of my mouth
    if I do not remember you,
if I do not consider Jerusalem
    my highest joy. — Psalm 137:1-6

The hope expressed by the prophets, especially Ezekiel, is that life will be restored to God’s people, that they’ll function as his images again. Re-vivified (given life and breath), re-commissioned, and replaced in his temple, through water, with God providing them with food. See how many of the six elements of Genesis 2 you can spot here.

“For I will take you out of the nations; I will gather you from all the countries and bring you back into your own land. I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean; I will cleanse you from all your impurities and from all your idols. I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws. Then you will live in the land I gave your ancestors; you will be my people, and I will be your God. I will save you from all your uncleanness. I will call for the grain and make it plentiful and will not bring famine upon you. I will increase the fruit of the trees and the crops of the field, so that you will no longer suffer disgrace among the nations because of famine.” — Ezekiel 36:24-30

Or, in chapter 37…

“Then he said to me: “Son of man, these bones are the people of Israel. They say, ‘Our bones are dried up and our hope is gone; we are cut off.’ Therefore prophesy and say to them: ‘This is what the Sovereign Lord says: My people, I am going to open your graves and bring you up from them; I will bring you back to the land of Israel. Then you, my people, will know that I am the Lord, when I open your graves and bring you up from them. I will put my Spirit in you and you will live, and I will settle you in your own land. Then you will know that I the Lord have spoken, and I have done it, declares the Lord.’”… I will take the Israelites out of the nations where they have gone. I will gather them from all around and bring them back into their own land. I will make them one nation in the land, on the mountains of Israel. There will be one king over all of them and they will never again be two nations or be divided into two kingdoms. They will no longer defile themselves with their idols and vile images or with any of their offenses, for I will save them from all their sinful backsliding, and I will cleanse them. They will be my people, and I will be their God. My servant David will be king over them, and they will all have one shepherd. They will follow my laws and be careful to keep my decrees. They will live in the land I gave to my servant Jacob, the land where your ancestors lived. They and their children and their children’s children will live there forever, and David my servant will be their prince forever. I will make a covenant of peace with them; it will be an everlasting covenant. I will establish them and increase their numbers, and I will put my sanctuary among them forever. My dwelling place will be with them; I will be their God, and they will be my people. Then the nations will know that I the Lord make Israel holy, when my sanctuary is among them forever.’” — Ezekiel 37:11-14, 21-28

 

Where and how this restoration happens is part 2.

November 21, 2015

When in Rome: Reframing our expectations as the post-Christendom church

I’ve loved two recent posts provocative posts from Stephen McAlpine on the church and our position in the Australian landscape:

McAlpine’s thesis (it’ll be easier if you duck over to those two links and read it for yourself) is, as best as I can sum it up, that the post-Christendom landscape is shifting so that our culture is moving from an attitude of ambivalence about Christianity to naked hostility. A shift, his pieces suggest, from Athens to Babylon. His solution is that we change the paradigm accordingly, and that this will mean changing the way we engage with the world.

They’re provocative pieces. Certainly. And should shock us churchy types to the core. We’ve made our bed by buying into Christendom, and then a kind of soft-exilic reality, and now we have to figure out how to lie in it. It’s going to get pretty uncomfortable with all those spiky rocks we’ve accidentally carried into bed with us in our combat boots (or Converse All Stars for the contempervant amongst us).

I’m hoping I haven’t misrepresented his arguments above, and that I’m not simply splitting hairs in what follows. But I think there’s something missing, certainly in the posts so far.

I’m completely convinced that exile is the paradigm we should be operating in as the Church. I think Christendom was a theological anomaly, that the Christian church is meant to operate at the margins of worldy society for the sake of those who are marginalised (and largely made up of the marginalised). I think we’re meant to be counter-cultural. I think nominalism is bad, and we’re not seeing a decline in Christianity in the Western world but a reduction of those who identified as Christians because the church operated at the centre of the corridors of power rather than in these margins. I think fleshing this out would require more words than I’m able to write in response to these two posts, but basically, if the church is the body of Christ we should probably expect our experience of life in this world to mirror the experience of our Lord, the head of the body. Who was crucified by the powerful worldly people. I think Paul carries this expectation into the church in 1 Corinthians where he says some things like:

“Where is the wise person? Where is the teacher of the law? Where is the philosopher of this age?Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? 21 For since in the wisdom of God the worldthrough its wisdom did not know him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe. 22 Jews demand signs and Greeks look for wisdom, 23 but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, 24 but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. 25 For the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength.”

But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. 28 God chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things—and the things that are not—to nullify the things that are,   — 1 Corinthians 1:20-25, 27-28

Too often we’ve wanted our engagement with the world to be clever and powerful on its own terms. There’s a sense where I think we want to be speaking the language of the world in the way Paul does in Athens, and the way he suggests we should in say 1 Corinthians 9, and Colossians 4. We often read these verses from Colossians 4 and forget the incredibly important context — Paul is in chains. He’s following the example of his crucified king. These are a guide to being culturally engaged, wise even, but expecting to be crucified…

“Devote yourselves to prayer, being watchful and thankful. 3 And pray for us, too, that God may open a door for our message, so that we may proclaim the mystery of Christ, for which I am in chains.4 Pray that I may proclaim it clearly, as I should. 5 Be wise in the way you act toward outsiders; make the most of every opportunity. 6 Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone. — Colossians 4:2-6

You can’t hold up Paul’s experience with the cultural elites in Athens where he heads to the Areopagus as a model for expecting us to transform the world from the top down via “cultural engagement.”

“When they heard about the resurrection of the dead, some of them sneered, but others said, “We want to hear you again on this subject.” —Acts 17:32

 

The results aren’t great. Sure. Some people convert, but most of them think he’s an idiot. The results aren’t great, but I think you can/must hold it up his method as a model for the Church in exile (stage one, two, three, or n).

Paul is phenomenally culturally engaged he quotes poets and philosophers — he’s speaking to the movers and shakers in the city — and while there’s some fruit from this (and so I think this remains the model for us as Christians trying to continue Jesus’ pattern of communication which I’d sum up (in many, many words if you want to read my thesis) as Accommodation through (cruciform) Incarnation. The cruciform bit is in brackets. But it’s the most important bit — we should be ‘incarnate,’ understanding the culture, engaging with the culture, critiquing the culture using the language of the culture, but our expectation should be persuasion through crucifixion. That is how God works.

What’s interesting, I think, is that Paul views Christians as exiles (I think that’s what’s going on when he talks about citizenship in Philippians, that he’s largely in sync with Peter’s exilic thinking at this point). Despite his Roman citizenship being a thing he uses to advance the Gospel, he doesn’t see the Church as part of the Roman kingdom but as the Kingdom within a kingdom.  I think he views Rome – specifically the worship of Caesar, and the imperial propaganda machine that supports it – as the worldly kingdom that is both powerful, and the antithesis of the Christian message. Caesar is the anti-Jesus. The propaganda around the Caesars involves claims and titles that Jesus claims for himself. The word Gospel is a Roman media term about the proclamation of a world-changing king. Again, I could write more about this, but let me assume that premise. The Roman empire is what makes Christians exiles, the Roman Empire is also (along with Israel) complicit in the murder of Jesus. It’s a Roman cross he’s nailed to after a trial under a Roman King, and the charge against Jesus is ultimately that he claimed to be King when Caesar really is…

“From then on, Pilate tried to set Jesus free, but the Jewish leaders kept shouting, “If you let this man go, you are no friend of Caesar. Anyone who claims to be a king opposes Caesar.”

But they shouted, “Take him away! Take him away! Crucify him!”

“Shall I crucify your king?” Pilate asked.

“We have no king but Caesar,” the chief priests answered.

16 Finally Pilate handed him over to them to be crucified. — John 19:12, 15-16

Jesus might have been executed in Jerusalem, but he was executed by Rome. You can’t reach any other conclusion reading John’s account of Jesus’ trial. It’s a smackdown. Jesus v Caesar. The most powerful king in the world is responsible for killing the King who created the world, whose true, infinite, power dwarfs anything Rome can muster. This is the foolishness of the Gospel. This is the Gospel.

Rome kills Jesus.

And yet. Paul resolutely sets out for Rome. That’s where he’s going in Acts. That’s his goal. It seems he wants to take the Gospel to the heart of the empire. To Caesar himself. Trial after trial he appeals to his rights as a Roman citizen, and appeals in order to have his case herd before Caesar (even when people want to release him). Trial after trial, as he appears before Roman governors, Paul tries to convert them.

When he appears before Festus, Paul launches this appeal — an appeal that would see him follow in the footsteps of Jesus.

 If, however, I am guilty of doing anything deserving death, I do not refuse to die. But if the charges brought against me by these Jews are not true, no one has the right to hand me over to them. I appeal to Caesar!”

12 After Festus had conferred with his council, he declared: “You have appealed to Caesar. To Caesar you will go!” — Acts 25:11-12

Then…

“I found he had done nothing deserving of death, but because he made his appeal to the Emperor I decided to send him to Rome.” — Acts 25:25

In Acts 26, Festus has Paul explain his situation to King Agrippa. Who says something similar:

“28 Then Agrippa said to Paul, “Do you think that in such a short time you can persuade me to be a Christian?”

29 Paul replied, “Short time or long—I pray to God that not only you but all who are listening to me today may become what I am, except for these chains.”

30 The king rose, and with him the governor and Bernice and those sitting with them. 31 After they left the room, they began saying to one another, “This man is not doing anything that deserves death or imprisonment.”

32 Agrippa said to Festus, “This man could have been set free if he had not appealed to Caesar.” — Acts 26:28-32

I’ve included a fair whack of Bible already. But bear with me, I think it’s important. At the end of Acts, Paul has made it to Rome. In chains (or house arrest). He’s chained, but the Gospel is unhindered. That’s how Acts ends. In the heart of the empire. But Paul’s story doesn’t end there — it’s clear he’s getting closer and closer to his goal when he writes to the church in Philippi. The start and end of the letter reveal these interesting little details about the result of his chained (cruciform) ministry of foolishness (remember, he didn’t need to be under arrest, it’s his choice).

Now I want you to know, brothers and sisters, that what has happened to me has actually served to advance the gospel. 13 As a result, it has become clear throughout the whole palace guard and to everyone else that I am in chains for Christ. — Philippians 1:12-13

All God’s people here send you greetings, especially those who belong to Caesar’s household. — Philippians 4:22

At this stage I’m not disagreeing with anything McAlpine says. Just to sum up.

1. Exile is the paradigm for thinking about life in this world as Christians.

2. We should expect those who hold worldly power to oppose the Gospel (and when the Gospel seems to support worldly power we should probably ask questions about that).

3. Athens, where there’s a marketplace of ideas and everyone gets a hearing, is not the paradigm for life in exile (even if Athens wasn’t the fair marketplace for Christianity we sometimes assume simply because Paul was invited to speak at the adult’s table and he managed to convince them).

We’re not in Athens anymore (or were we ever?)

There is much to like in McAlpine’s pieces and they’re certainly a wake up call for people who might either not be operating as though we’re in exile (like those who would lobby parliament on the basis of “Judeo-Christian heritage” and the size of the “Christian constituency). But here’s where I think his analysis goes slightly off target. I’ve tried to cut bits out of this section of McAlpine’s post, but it’s all so useful…

“For all of the talk about exile, the language of Athens, and the need to find a voice in a culture of competing ideas, was far more prevalent than the language of the true city of exile, Babylon. We were exploring ways to deal with the culture being disinterested in us, not despising us.  I well remember myself saying “People are not walking past your church and saying, ‘If I never go to church, that’s the one I am never going to.’ No, they don’t see it at all.” That’s Athens talk, and assumes that if we can just show a point of connection to the culture then the conversation will flow and we will all get along.

I have changed my mind on this one. If the last five or six years are any indication, the culture (read: elite framework that drives the culture) is increasingly interested in bringing the church back into the public square. Yes, you heard that right. But not in order to hear it, but rather in order to flay it, expose its real and alleged abuses and to render it naked and shivering before a jeering crowd…

If the primary characteristic of Exile Stage One was supposed to be humility, the primary characteristic of Second Stage Exiles will have to be courage.   Courage does not mean bombastic pronouncements to the world, not at all.  It has to be much deeper than that.  It will mean, upon hearing the king’s command that no one can pray to any god save the king for thirty days, that we go into our rooms with the window open towards Jerusalem and defy that king even as our accusers hunt us down.  It means looking the king in his enraged face and saying, even in our God does not rescue us from the flames, we will not serve your gods or bow down to your statue of gold.  Unlike Athens, Babylon is not interested in trying to out-think us, merely overpower us. Apologetics and new ways of doing church don’t cut it in Babylon.  Only courage under fire will.”

I think his reading of the culture is about right. Although. As a quick aside. I think I’m slightly more optimistic that if we were to offer grace, and turn the other cheek to our opponents, if we were quicker to give other voices a place at the table with the adults, we might get treated with a bit more respect. What would the gay marriage debate look like if we’d recognised that change was coming and tried to lovingly facilitate it in a way that recognised the longings at the heart of what our gay neighbours were calling for, but sought to maintain our ability to see marriage between two different people — male and female — as a reflection of the Gospel. What if we’d joined together to ask the Government to get out of defining marriage altogether, adopting what Michael Bird once called an approach developed via an “ecclesiology of exile”? I wonder if it’s too late to try to participate well in exile, as exiles who seek the welfare of our city, living good lives in our cities, and gaining a hearing on that basis… But anyway. Let’s assume the hostile exilic reality is right. Because it certainly is in some parts, and there’s certainly something prophetic about McAlpine’s warning.

I think he’s read the culture right, but I think his Biblical answer is incomplete (unless he’s using Babylon in the metaphorical sense the New Testament does — but his examples are too specific to the Old Testament for me to think this is what’s happening).

Rome, not Babylon (or Athens)

The reality now isn’t Athens. It isn’t Babylon. We’re in Rome.

We’re living in the world that killed our king. Jesus. And given the chance, this world we live in would do it again.

We’re in Rome.

The model isn’t Daniel. It’s Jesus. Daniel anticipates Jesus. We need to be prepared to be nailed to a Cross — probably metaphorically — and we need to be prepared to do that because we love our world, and our neighbours, even as it (and they) treats us as the enemy.

Briefly, on the exile as a model for interactions with the world — I think the Old Testament exile, and the exilic texts of the Old Testament like Daniel, anticipate the real exile. Throughout the Biblical story .those who aren’t finding their citizenship in God, but in the broken world, are hostile to God, and to his people. We’re exiles in our own home, because the world still does belong to God. The wicked tenants of Jesus’ parabolic vineyard, who killed the owner’s son, want to kill everyone who belongs to the owner. In a sense, the exilic motif begins with humanity being booted out of God’s presence in Genesis 3 and only ends in the coming of the New Creation (and there’s a taste of what’s to come in the Old Testament through the Tabernacle and the Temple, and in the New Testament in the coming of Jesus, and the gift of the Holy Spirit to the Church).

I think John makes this point in Revelation, where Babylon is used as a metaphor for this godless empire that is slaughtering God’s people, the church. Babylon in the Old Testament is a shadow. It’s a tiny fish, Rome is a shark.

Revelation talks about what it will look like for the faithful church to be a faithful witness to Jesus in a hostile world. The world that killed him. Get beyond the apocalyptic weirdness of some of the imagery in Revelation and this is the stark picture of exilic reality for the Church — in Rome, not Bablyon, following Jesus, not Daniel (though imitating Daniel, and Paul, as they imitate Christ, before and after the event of the Cross). There’s enough out there identifying Babylon in Revelation with Rome that I don’t feel like I need to defend or spell out this idea here… but I think this passage makes it clear enough given the way John himself depicts Jesus’ trial as being the coming together of Jerusalem (in a terrible act of betrayal), with Rome (in an horrific act of self-preservation at the expense of the rightful king of the world).

The two prophets in this passage from Revelation are the two faithful “lampstands”— which the start of John’s apocalyptic letter tells us are the Churches. The body of Christ. His representatives in the world. This is talking about what will happen to the faithful church in this messed up, hostile, world.

Now when they have finished their testimony, the beast that comes up from the Abyss will attack them, and overpower and kill them. 8 Their bodies will lie in the public square of the great city—which is figuratively called Sodom and Egypt—where also their Lord was crucified. 9 For three and a half days some from every people, tribe, language and nation will gaze on their bodies and refuse them burial. 10 The inhabitants of the earth will gloat over them and will celebrate by sending each other gifts, because these two prophets had tormented those who live on the earth.

11 But after the three and a half days the breath of life from God entered them, and they stood on their feet, and terror struck those who saw them. 12 Then they heard a loud voice from heaven saying to them, “Come up here.” And they went up to heaven in a cloud, while their enemies looked on. — Revelation 11:7-12

This should be our expectation when we enter the public square, no matter how culturally engaged we are, no matter how well we point people away from their idols and towards the living God. We should expect to be crucified. Cruciformity — a blend of courage and humility — is what will be required, and we should expect success to be from the margins, for the sake of the marginalised, even as we try to take the Gospel to the centre of the empire.

 

 

June 2, 2015