Tag: doctrine of creation

What Bluey can teach us about creation, wisdom, and image bearing

Bluey has gone gangbusters globally; and such recognition is, of course, utterly well deserved. Last night I had growth group (what our church calls our small groups) at my friend’s house — a house that, thanks to her two boys, always has a collection of sticky geckos stuck to the roof; this is to say that if you’re a parent there’s a relatable Bluey moment for every parenting experience.

Our church is currently working its way through the Biblical concept of wisdom, in conversation with the wisdom literature — but also (with the help of good Bible scholars like Will Kynes) seeing that “the Wisdom Literature” is a made up imposition on these few texts because wisdom is woven into the fabric of the whole Bible, and indeed, the whole of creation. We’re in the ‘10,000 feet’ abstracted part of the series at the moment considering how wisdom is lived, not just ‘believed’ and that it is about right relationship and understanding of God, his world, and each other, shaped by God’s revelation of himself in his word, and the ‘second book’ of creation. You can follow the sermons as they get closer to ground level via our Vimeo.

Our created purpose — in Genesis 1 — is to bring order to the world; to “be fruitful and multiply” as we rule the created world as God’s regents. Psalm 8 suggests this rule is connected to God’s glory — a glory displayed in the heavens, and the heavenly realm, that we were meant to co-operate with in the world as we spread the conditions of Eden across the face of the planet, “cultivating and keeping” the garden; shaping the world to be like the garden-temple — the place of God’s presence, as we partnered in wise relationship with him.

right after human nature is corrupted in the pursuit of wisdom (via the fruit) apart from God — or in broken relationship with him as an expression of a desire for self-rule, that fractures our co-operation with each other and the world — we get this genealogy that notes that people and cities become ‘culture-makers’ — who make a mix of generative, life-giving things that can be used to glorify God (or in idol worship, or entertainment), or implements of destruction; musical instruments, agricultural tools, and weapons — we are homo faber — “man the maker”…

Lamech married two women, one named Adah and the other Zillah. Adah gave birth to Jabal; he was the father of those who live in tents and raise livestock. His brother’s name was Jubal; he was the father of all who play stringed instruments and pipes. Zillah also had a son, Tubal-Cain, who forged all kinds of tools out of bronze and iron. — Genesis 4:20-22

This is a family of makers — but in the next sentence we hear how Lamech, the patriarch of this little family — is a maker of death.

In our first week in this series — considering what a wise relationship with the world looks like — I noted how often wisdom in the Old Testament is tied to craftsmanship — to the right use of raw created materials to co-create (or in Tolkien’s words maybe, ‘sub-create’) beautiful creations that glorify God. To fulfil our vocation as image bearers is to create things in accord with our purpose, in relationship with God — those same skills and imaginations can be used to build idol statues, and weapons — and the priestly garments — that take the gold and jewels present around Eden in Genesis 2 (and plundered from Egypt and use them to recapture humanity’s (now Israel’s) priestly representative role as people creating God’s Eden like presence in the world.

See, I have chosen Bezalel son of Uri, the son of Hur, of the tribe of Judah, and I have filled him with the Spirit of God, with wisdom, with understanding, with knowledge and with all kinds of skills— to make artistic designs for work in gold, silver and bronze to cut and set stones, to work in wood, and to engage in all kinds of crafts. — Exodus 31:2-5 (see also Exodus 35:30-35).

The tabernacle and priestly furnishings are a reflection of Eden; and an anticipation of the Temple that Solomon will build, and the new creation golden heavenly city of Revelation 21. So the craftsman who makes the bronze furnishings — especially fruit trees, fruits, and other ‘garden’ imagery for the Temple is described in similar terms in 1 Kings.

“Huram was filled with wisdom, with understanding and with knowledge to do all kinds of bronze work. He came to King Solomon and did all the work assigned to him.” — 1 Kings 7:13

We were created in the image of the creator to be creators. Dorothy Sayers put it this way in her most excellent The Mind of the Maker:

“When we turn back to see what [the writer of Genesis] says about the original upon which the “image” of God was modelled, we find only the single assertion, “God created.” The characteristic common to God and man is apparently that: the desire and the ability to make things.”

Tolkien specifically saw this role playing out in the telling of stories — the creation of worlds — that would teach us true things about the world; but that were also in themselves, an expression of a truth about us — that we are image bearers of a story-telling, world creating, God. Here’s some Tolkien (from On Fairy Stories).

“The human mind is capable of forming mental images of things not actually present. The faculty of conceiving the images is (or was) naturally called Imagination. But in recent times, in technical not normal language, Imagination has often been held to be something higher than the mere image-making, ascribed to the operations of Fancy (a reduced and depreciatory form of the older word Fantasy); an attempt is thus made to restrict, I should say misapply, Imagination to “the power of giving to ideal creations the inner consistency of reality.”

Tolkien makes a distinction between the illusion of creation and genuine ‘sub-creation.’ He sees ‘sub-creation’ as a sort of elvish life-giving, or generative creation, working with the fabric of the natural world (and God’s design), and illusory ‘magic’ as de-generative. And so, in his books, the elves are sub-creators, but the magicians are a metaphor for those who would make and use technology outside our sub-creative purpose. Elvish stories tap into our deep desire to be makers who sub-create rather than destroy.

At the heart of many man-made stories of the elves lies, open or concealed, pure or alloyed, the desire for a living, realized sub-creative art, which (however much it may outwardly resemble it) is inwardly wholly different from the greed for self-centred power which is the mark of the mere Magician. Of this desire the elves, in their better (but still perilous) part, are largely made; and it is from them that we may learn what is the central desire and aspiration of human Fantasy—even if the elves are, all the more in so far as they are, only a product of Fantasy itself.

In a letter, to his friend Milton Waldman, Tolkien speaks about what happens not only when our sub-creative tendencies draw us to the creation of machines, but when they are motivated by hearts bent on autonomous power and dominion — disconnected from the creator. He calls this “fallenness” — and says it is a tension at the heart of Middle Earth (and our own earth as well), he says a desire for the ‘things of this world’ (we might call it ‘idolatry’) corrupts our making, and so our making corrupts the world.

“It may become possessive, clinging to the things made as ‘its own’, the sub-creator wishes to be the Lord and God of his private creation. He will rebel against the laws of the Creator – especially against mortality. Both of these (alone or together) will lead to the desire for Power, for making the will more quickly effective, – and so to the Machine (or Magic). By the last I intend all use of external plans or devices (apparatus) instead of development of the inherent inner powers or talents — or even the use of these talents with the corrupted motive of dominating: bulldozing the real world, or coercing other wills. The Machine is our more obvious modern form though more closely related to Magic than is usually recognised.”

Which is all well and good, you might be thinking.

But what about Bluey. You promised this was about Bluey.

First up — Bluey is just beautiful Tolkien-esque sub-creation; the layers of careful, thoughtful, generative and life-giving ideas, imagery, and music woven together in the life of the Heeler family and their community is pure faerie. Bluey even has a little explicit dose of elvishness, or faerie, to it in the episode Fairies. It is, maybe to Tolkien’s dismay — a world exclusively made up of talking animals; but it is everything that good sub-creation should be. And so, it should be taken seriously because it is a manifestation of our human desire for rightly ordered relationship with the world and each other — it is a source of wisdom inasmuch as it rightly recognises truths about flourishing life in this world.

But I want to talk about the episode Flat Pack (and I will be this Sunday, in my talk).

I went back to watch Flat Pack (currently available on iView) because it is something like peak relatability to me as someone who might be better sub-creating in words, than with ‘wise hands’ — I have several flatpack horror stories that mirror Bandit’s efforts in constructing an outdoor chair. I wanted to talk about the folly of pursuing wise work in the world without reference to the maker’s instructions — and I still will — but I was blown away by the high art of this episode. I know it is an episode with a little controversy and history attached to it — and, no doubt it carries a certain amount of controversy within the realm of conservative Christianity.

Flat Pack is a creation story told next to a sub-creation story that then integrates the two stories in a beautiful and profoundly religious way; it also — consciously or not — offers an integration between the ‘science story’ — a story of the pursuit of knowledge from God’s second book — and the theological story told by the Bible.

Augustine spoke of the world being God’s second book in order to encourage people to pursue deep and wise knowledge and use of the ‘gold’ buried in nature — he saw the purpose of the world, and our knowledge of it — to be somewhat connected to the use of material gold in the Old Testament (whether the gold is in the hills or in nature). He said we should ‘plunder gold from Egypt and use it to preach Christ’ — and that the task of the Christian is to be well informed about God’s world; to be widely and wisely educated. He was, with others, part of the impetus for the development of science, in the west, as a quest to know more about God from his world; the idea that knowledge about the material reality would somehow contradict knowledge of God from the Bible was anathema to Augustine (his commentary on Genesis is quite brilliant; especially on Christians who use it to make truth claims about the world that science makes obviously not true, particularly, in his day, this was about the movement of heavenly bodies). In a book called The Literal Meaning of Genesis he wrote:

“Usually, even a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other elements of the world, about the motion and orbit of the stars and even their size and relative positions, about the predictable eclipses of the sun and moon, the cycles of the years and the seasons, about the kinds of animals, shrubs, stones, and so forth, and this knowledge he holds to as being certain from reason and experience. Now, it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for a non-Christian to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking nonsense on these topics; and we should take all means to prevent such an embarrassing situation, in which people show up vast ignorance in a Christian and laugh it to scorn.

The shame is not so much that an ignorant individual is derided, but that people outside the household of faith think our sacred writers held such opinions, and, to the great loss of those for whose salvation we toil, the writers of our Scripture are criticized and rejected as unlearned men. If they find a Christian mistaken in a field which they themselves know well and hear him maintaining his foolish opinions about our books, how are they going to believe those books in matters concerning the resurrection of the dead, the hope of eternal life, and the kingdom of heaven”

For Augustine — creation rightly understood would involve an alignment between what the Bible says about creation — the questions it is answering — and what science would reveal about God from creation — and wise living would connect the dots; so that we wise image bearers might sub-create good things (including in speech and writing) that reveal and glorify God.

Whether deliberately or not Flat Pack stands in this great Augustinian tradition; it is a thing of beauty.

Bandit and Chilli are building a piece of flatpack furniture from the Bluey equivalent of Ikea; in the world of Bluey they are the dog-gods. Existing in the ‘heavenly’ realm, upstairs — while Bingo and Bluey are in the lower, earthy, regions. As Bandit and Chilli — Bluey and Bingo’s mum and dad — fashion their heavenly constructions — a heavenly throne — Bluey and Bingo play with the off-cuts. While mum and dad create — they also create as little images of dog-gods (or images of god-dogs?).

While mum and dad struggle with their chair, Bluey and Bingo play their way through the evolutionary story — starting as fish, on some bubblewrap, becoming frogs, then dinosaurs, then monkeys, and then cave-people-dogs as their environment is subtly changed by the provision of the upstairs dog-gods. While they’re in the cave, these cave-people dogs draw the creation story complete with the heavenly ‘mum and dad’ as gods overlooking the process.

Bandit and Chilli finish their work in the heavenly realm, and look down, proudly, at the little living image bearers they made — “we made them,” Chilli says; and they are good and pleasing. The little makers are chips off the old block — images of their parents; but also, in the ‘cosmic story’ — images of their making-gods. The supreme creation of these god-dogs (or dog-gods?).

Bluey and Bingo eventually become grown-up people-dogs who master their physical world, once the ‘upstairs gods’ have finished their creation, they find their tools and say “let’s be builders.” They have become like their gods. They use their tools and resources to cultivate an entire culture; one that looks a lot like a temple-city, with a library, before Bingo ‘finishes growing up’ — building a rocket ship to explore the cosmos.

Once her life as ‘mum’ is complete, with Bingo a little ‘image’ of her, who has learned her ways, Bluey feels at a bit of a loss. She sits down. It could all be over. But then — she reaches out to the gods (in a little homage to Michaelangelo’s Creation of Adam), and ascends to the heavenly realm to sit down with her makers in their heavenly throne. And, as she does, and we see this golden vista — the world put right, filled with ‘sub-created’ culture — Bingo says “this is heaven.”

It’s beautiful. Heavenly. Elvish even. This is children’s television — but there are some deep ‘cosmic architecture’/understanding of reality flat packed into this seven minute episode if you know how to put them together. The thing is, according to the Bible’s own creation to heaven story (which is, pretty much, the story of the Bible in a nutshell) — we don’t just figure out wise, generative, life by ourselves — in fact, we do the Tolkien thing of idolatry; the ‘machine-based-domination’ of one another in a sort of ‘military-industrial-complex’; and we actually need God to step in to the story to redirect our making, and to show us what it is our sub-creating hearts need in order for us to be truly human and to flourish as sub-creators with our sub-creation connected to both the image and likeness of God, and the purpose he made us for. There’s a nice little picture of this where Paul visits Athens — and sees in their building; their sub-creation — even in the creation of idols, temples, and altars — some part of our human need to know God and to make things from his world.

Our making of art, and stories, and even things that reshape our world — temple-cities, libraries, buildings — can be an expression of our ‘reaching out for’ — our quest — for God, and the way his nature is still imprinted on ours; it can be — like the tower of Babel (a picture of the city of Babylon in the Bible) our quest to reach for the heavens and our assertion that the gods in heaven are like us; dominant military-industrial death-hungry monsters who justify our corruption, and sometimes it can be both those things at the same time.

“The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by human hands. And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything. Rather, he himself gives everyone life and breath and everything else. From one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands. God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us. ‘For in him we live and move and have our being.’ As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring.’

“Therefore since we are God’s offspring, we should not think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone—an image made by human design and skill. In the past God overlooked such ignorance, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent. For he has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed. He has given proof of this to everyone by raising him from the dead.”

The world changes — our human quest changes — because God came down the stairs; the creative word — the light and life of the world — Jesus, the maker — stepped into the earth as the true image of God, the true human — to show us the true way of ‘sub-creative’ life, and to restore us to it by reconnecting us with God, pulling us up into the heavens (seating us with God, even, in Ephesians 2, and Colossians 3), so that we make with our eyes and hearts fixed on God again, rather than on our idols and our destructive will to power.

Our making doesn’t have to be an expression of our quest for God any more, if the Christian story is true, because in Jesus God finds us, and so our making can be re-cast as sub-creation — taking up the task we were made for to be like God, and to reveal God’s nature — his love and glory — to the world. Our redeemed making is an expression not of God’s absence; but his presence.

Tolkien saw the Christian story — the Gospel — as the justification for making; for sub-creation; for fairy stories with joyous ‘eucatastrophic’ endings (that’s “good catastrophe”); he saw in Jesus the ‘good catastrophe’ written into the fabric of the world. The ‘true fairy story’ that doesn’t just redeem us and re-create us, but redeems our making so that we participate in God’s work in the world. He said:

Redeemed Man is still man. Story, fantasy, still go on, and should go on. The Evangelium has not abrogated legends; it has hallowed them, especially the “happy ending.” The Christian has still to work, with mind as well as body, to suffer, hope, and die; but he may now perceive that all his bents and faculties have a purpose, which can be redeemed. So great is the bounty with which he has been treated that he may now, perhaps, fairly dare to guess that in Fantasy he may actually assist in the effoliation and multiple enrichment of creation. All tales may come true; and yet, at the last, redeemed, they may be as like and as unlike the forms that we give them as Man, finally redeemed, will be like and unlike the fallen that we know.

We humans were made, and we Christians were redeemed, in order to sub-create — to make things that reflect God’s presence and nature in our world, to bring the conditions of heaven to earth — it’s our idolatry and corruption that gets in the way; an idolatry and corruption that required God’s intervention in our story, and his re-creation of us as image bearers caught up with Jesus, but this re-creation involves us being given the task of being wise sub-creators who reveal his glory to the world; we could do much worse than making art as wonderful as Bluey, or Tolkien’s Middle Earth, or getting our flatpack furniture rightly ordered.

May 4, 2021

God and the God Shot: How the quest for the perfect coffee points to the perfect creator

God and the God Shot

“…The Lord God made all kinds of trees grow out of the ground—trees that were pleasing to the eye and good for food…” // GENESIS 2:9

For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse. // ROMANS 1:20

God created Coffee. Coffee reveals something about God’s qualities. Coffee is good.

Coffee is proof that God loves us. 

It’s an interesting premise. A great T-Shirt slogan. But does it hold up to scrutiny?

I think it does. Here’s an attempt to prove the premise. This is long. Don’t think of it as a long blog post, but rather, a short e-book. But, for the blog post types – here’s the summary.

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Coffee is part of God’s good creation, God’s creation includes creativity and beauty – he made things of quality to be enjoyed, the purpose of this good world God created was to point people to him, and to reveal his goodness.

Coffee is also proof that we are fundamentally messy.

The way we drink coffee reveals that our hearts are diseased, and that this disease is because we don’t use the stuff God created for what he created it for. The way we consume coffee, and the narrative we surround it with, diagnoses our heart.

We consume coffee, and are consumed by it. We consume coffee, and as we consume it, we consume others and consume our world.

We worship coffee. We are tempted to find our identity in coffee – to use it as a point of pride – or to make it part of the way we control the world. We are addicts. Unable to function without a daily dose.

Whether you call it ‘instant’ (an abomination that literally causes desolation), or ‘specialty’ (where my preferences more naturally lie), you’re introducing a narrative to your consumption that reveals your idols.

On the ‘instant’ front: we trash God’s good creation and the people who work the land, to mass produce low quality crops that we then turn into a dehydrated, chemically-maimed, husk of its former self for our instant gratification. We want total deniability when it comes to process, but want it to fuel our addiction.

On the ‘specialty’ front:  We’re obsessed with control. We spend all our time finding finicky details to tweak for the sake of one iota’s difference, while crafting a narrative for the humble bean that explains just how sophisticated we are as we sip it – even if this means treating people and the planet more ethically, we wear our ethics as a badge of pride and self-glorification.

We engage in what CS Lewis calls the ‘gluttony of delicacy’ and can spend our time and money pursuing a perfect coffee, which doesn’t exist. Chasing a taste of heaven only regarding the creator of heaven and earth as something of an Arthurian punch-line. The chief end of our quest for perfection. Yet. The closest we get to the ‘God Shot’ – the Holy Grail of coffee craftsmanship – the more we realise it is unattainable.

We’ve taken God’s good gift of coffee and turned it into an idol, but even when we’re not worshipping it – the best most God-directed coffee experiences are still a reminder of what we crave. 

Our best experiences of coffee now involve fleeting moments, ephemeral visions of the future, a tantalising window between two worlds, where we pull a few wisps of heaven into a porcelain cup, and have them drift past our taste buds into oblivion. They can’t be savoured for long because they are vapour. There, and then gone. Such momentary bliss is a reminder that we are not yet home. That the world God created has been frustrated by humanity’s choice – corporately, and individually – rejecting him and choosing to use the things he made the wrong way.

This ‘God Shot’, and what we do with coffee, is a simultaneous testimony to our limits, our brokenness, and God’s goodness.

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WHAT IS THE GOD SHOT

“It is a homage to God in a way because when someone talks about a God Shot, it is something so special, so unique, so perfect, it’s almost as if God Himself has blessed it.”

// Mark Prince, coffeegeek.com, ‘Defining what is the God Shot,’ 2002

 

What is the God Shot? You could do worse than reading this 12 year old attempt at a definition from Mark Prince. It’s hard to describe exactly what separates the God Shot from the great shot. There is a certain quality that lingers. That you identify when you find it, and that tugs at the edge of your palate when you don’t. The God Shot has a certain Je ne sais quoi about it that one can’t really begin to describe without dipping into foreign tongues to borrow words. It’s a picture with colours beyond the average spectrum.

Perhaps it’s like asking someone to imagine a blue yellow that isn’t green – our heads can conceive of such a fantastical construction – but picturing it is beyond us.

This is the God Shot. It brings impossibilities together. It is paradox in a cup. Or, as Mark Prince puts it while trying to find words…

“…the God Shot is the ristretto shot maximized to the point of achieving something that David Schomer (of Espresso Vivace) and many other espresso purists before him have sought: coffee that tastes as good as fresh roasted coffee smells.

This is the fleeting thing. It really is.”

// Mark Prince, coffeegeek.com

Specialty coffee tasters describe coffee with all sorts of ‘tasting notes’ – something akin to the things you’ll read on the label of a bottle of wine. There’s a tasting wheel that invites people who spend a lifetime honing their senses of taste and smell to describe the flavours and aromas of coffee – and the sides of the wheel very rarely meet. The God Shot brings them together.


Image Source: coffeesnobs.com.au

Here’s how to spot a God Shot in the wild… it’s a multisensory thing…

“The God Shot is a double ristretto shot that looks special from the moment it starts slurping down from the portafilter spouts. The colour of the streams is always a dark rust-red colour, and often a sense of tiger striping, with alternating lines of lighter rust with darker rust, can be seen. In the cup, the shot is 100% crema from the get go right up until the end of the pour, and the black nectar starts to form as you complete the shot. It can take up to 30 seconds or longer for the crema to settle in the top third of the cup, leaving the bottom two thirds an opaque black. The top of the crema is quite often a dark ruby rust color with no traces of over extraction (blond or beige spots), but often something called tiger-mottling, or specks of darker spots where the intense, highly concentrated colloids and flavours of the espresso draw show themselves – these are the barely-solubles that made it to the cup.

The aromas as you lift the cup to your nose almost overpower with the intense, pure smell of what the roasted and ground coffee smelled like moments before. As you swirl the shot to release even more aromas, the true God Shot will almost overwhelm you. Then it comes time for the first sip. You’ll know at this moment, if you didn’t already, this was something unique – the mouthfeel is beyond almost anything you’ve sampled before – the aromas, tastes, colloids, flavours, you name it, they all coat the tongue and seem to constantly hit the perfect notes on all four major taste areas of your tongue. They compete with each other, but always seem to compliment the areas of sweet, sour, bitter and sharp on the tongue.

As you swallow the shot, the back of your mouth and throat get the final joy – the espresso coats this part of your mouth and doesn’t want to give up. Where a normal espresso shot may leave bitters and an unpleasant tang in the throat, the God Shot gives such an amazing sensation of mild bitters and sweets that it is almost as if your mouth doesn’t want to lose this sensation – it wants to keep it around for a while.”

// Mark Prince, coffeegeek.com, ‘Defining what is the God Shot’

MY QUEST FOR THE GOD SHOT

Of the perhaps six thousand coffees I’ve consumed in the last eight years (at a rate of two a day, which is conservative)- this is when my chemical romance with C8H10N4O2 truly blossomed (it’s not really about the drug though – the effect of caffeine gets in the way of the consumption of delicious coffee as far as I’m concerned) – there are around six coffees that I remember – and salivate over just a little bit – six that I experienced as ‘God Shots’ – purists would say that by adding milk I’ve adulterated the untamed beauty of the espresso, but milk, too, is a gift from God to be enjoyed. And the creative coupling of milk and coffee is a match surely made in heaven.

I poured two of these six myself – a Brazilian and a Tanzanian – within a few months of each other.

The other four were from cafes – I can’t name dates, but I can list places. And flavours. One came from Coffee Dominion in Townsville, one was from One Drop, one was from Shucked Espresso, and one was from Merriweather – these three cafes are in Brisbane. Two of these were on blends that were carefully orchestrated and calculated to stimulate and excite the senses. I’ve had exceptional coffees from cafes too numerous to mention. But these are the memories that stick. Feasts for the senses.

  • The Coffee Dominion coffee reminded me of butterscotch.
  • The One Drop coffee was on a day that I was flying up to North Queensland in my first year back in Brisbane, and I still remember the toffee-apple after taste as I drove home.
  • The one from Shucked was a Costa Rican that evoked a strong sense of lemon meringue pie.
  • The coffee from Merriweather was two Sundays ago – I don’t know quite how to describe the blast of sweet fruity flavours that cut through the milk in my flat white. You know a coffee is good when you text the roaster to thank them.

These moments stand out in what is almost literally an ocean of coffee. Well. About 175,200mL of coffee.

175 litres of exceptional coffee.

Coffee made in the best cafes in Australia. Coffee systematically and methodically produced at home, or at the hands of some of Australia’s best baristas. And despite limiting the search to the cream of the crop the God Shot has appeared for me 0.1% of the time (if my maths is right – it rarely is). Even if I add my next 20 or 30 favourite coffees we’re still at less than 1%.

I’ve got fancy equipment. I’ve tried roasting my own coffee. I’ve tried sourcing coffee from the best roasters wherever I go. I’ve read about coffee. I’ve practiced and honed the craft of espresso extraction. And my success ratio is significantly smaller than the percentage of God Shots to shots.

I drink more coffee at home than out, but God Shots from elsewhere outnumber the coffees I’ve produced three to one.

HOW DO YOU PRODUCE A GOD SHOT?

Mark Prince’s symposium of baristas (surely the official collective noun for a group of baristas?) agree that while the God Shot requires the perfect preparation – the perfect preparation is no guarantee of a God Shot.

The God Shot will not be tamed by human ritual or superstition.

The God Shot is not subject to the whims of the one searching for it, but one must search in the right places.

“Do everything right, and hope for the best.

That’s it. Do your prep the right way – make sure you’re using the best quality specialty coffee beans you can get, fresh roasted and well blended. Make sure your grinder is working in tip top shape and it is a top notch grinder. “Be at one” with your grinder, as in know how your grinder will react to the beans you put in it, know about the tiny things such as humidity, ambient air temperatures, age of the beans and the like, and adjust the grind accordingly.

Make sure your espresso machine is set up right, and running right. Know the proper temperatures and boiler pressures your machine needs to pull off a great shot. Keep your equipment clean.

Prepare your portafilter with all the skill and experience you can muster. Dose the exact proper amount. Level it off, get ready to tamp, and do your tamp. Tamp and spin and wipe. Flush the grouphead for a second or two, even on the commercial machine in a high volume shop. Lock and load, set up the cup and brew.

And hope (or more appropriately pray) for the best.

Do the things right, and you’ll get a great shot of espresso every time. But great doesn’t equal a God Shot. Why? Even the most seasoned, professional and passionate Baristas know they can pull great shots, but also know the God Shot only comes if the stars are aligned, the moons in phase, Jupiter is in Venus, yada yada… oh yeah, and for some who believe in it, God looked down, and decided, yes, this one is worthy, I bless it.”

// Mark Prince, coffeegeek.com

The religious pursuit of the God Shot highlights the problems with all human religiosity – we don’t control God via a series of buttons, variables, and levers, which can be carefully balanced to deliver us a desired outcome. The God Shot mocks our desire to be in control.

THE GOD SHOT AS (UNATTAINABLE) JOY

My experience of the God Shot is fleeting – and I’m not alone. But it’s also what keeps me going back for more, hoping that I’ll taste it again.

This reminds me of CS Lewis’s (and Rammstein’s) concept of sehnsucht.

CS Lewis writes about the fleeting experiences of joy we have now, in this world, and how their fleeting nature reminds us that we are not yet home. We are not where we were created to be – our world is not what it was created to be. Coffee is not yet what it was created to be. And the gap between our experiences now and what we anticipate – the gap that drives our longings – our cravings – and their final satisfaction… that’s this sehnsucht.

“That unnameable something, desire for which pierces us like a rapier at the smell of bonfire, the sound of wild ducks flying overhead, the title of The Well at the World’s End, the opening lines of “Kubla Khan”, the morning cobwebs in late summer, or the noise of falling waves. It appeared to me therefore that if a man diligently followed this desire, pursuing the false objects until their falsity appeared and then resolutely abandoning them, he must come out at last into the clear knowledge that the human soul was made to enjoy some object that is never fully given–nay, cannot even be imagined as given–in our present mode of subjective and spatio-temporal experience.”

// CS Lewis, PILGRIM’S REGRESS

This is the same sense I think I feel when it comes to the fleeting experience of the God Shot, and the desire that sparks… CS Lewis also speaks of joy in similar terms…

“All joy (as distinct from mere pleasure, still more amusement) emphasizes our pilgrim status; always reminds, beckons, awakens desire. Our best havings are wantings.”

// CS Lewis, LETTERS

He speaks of this momentary experience of joy – which, again, describes these six coffees.

“It was a sensation, of course, of desire; but desire for what?…Before I knew what I desired, the desire itself was gone the whole glimpse… withdrawn, the world turned commonplace again, or only stirred by a longing for the longing that had just ceased. In a sense the central story of my life is about nothing else… an unsatisfied desire which is itself more desirable than any other satisfaction…”

// CS Lewis, SURPRISED BY JOY

 As an example of joy, provided by something God has created, the God Shot (and the quest for the God shot) reminds us that God is good, and that we are not home. That we are only seeing glimpses of heaven in our coffee cup. It’s a bit like the God Shot – both in its presence and in its absence – helps us see what the writer of Ecclesiastes says in chapter 3.

“He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end. I know that there is nothing better for people than to be happy and to do good while they live. That each of them may eat and drink, and find satisfaction in all their toil—this is the gift of God.”

// ECCLESIASTES 3:11-13 

THE GOD SHOT AND THE HEART

“For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened…  They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator”

// ROMANS 1:21, 25

“Stop drinking only water, and use a little wine because of your stomach and your frequent illnesses.”

// 1 TIMOTHY 5:23

Coffee is actually good for your heart (and many other aspects of your health). But the way we consume coffee reveals that our hearts are profoundly diseased in a non-medical sense, and this disease permeates our every action, and our every use of the good things God has made.

Our hearts are diseased in such a way that when they control our hands and mouths we perpetuate this disease – inflicting it on others.

Our use of coffee – when it’s not properly directed to giving glory to the creator for what he has made, joyfully co-creating with his good gifts – falls into two opposite and equally pernicious uses of God’s world. We trash it, or we worship it. While both ends of the coffee spectrum – instant or specialty – can involve trashing or wrongly treasuring creation (rather than the creator), they tend to gravitate towards either pole.

Coffee helps diagnose our diseased hearts. We speak casually of coffee addiction, when what we really mean is dependence. We’ve become slaves to this created thing. The labels we apply to coffee – at either end of the quality spectrum – reveal our idolatry. Instant coffee. Specialty coffee. The narrative we use to surround our consumption of coffee is part of the narrative of our lives – and if it isn’t connected to God, this is a problem. 

THE SIN(S) OF INSTANT COFFEE

Instant coffee is symptomatic of the spread of our destructive disease into God’s world – the root cause may well be described as idolatry, but it’s the idolatry of self. Instant coffee. Instant gratification. An instant fix. Caffeine is this tool we’ve harnessed to further our ends, and instant coffee is the most efficient delivery mechanism that maintains some sort of veneer of pleasure (or connection to God’s wondrous coffee bean – I mean, you could take caffeine tablets or inject caffeine – but who’d want to do that?).

But is it instant? Really? We do not question. We don’t need to. Instant coffee is simply fuel, not fun. It’s all science, no art. Pure utility. It is instant. Quick. Cheap. Easy. To focus on the process is to miss the point – or, a lack of focus on the process is precisely the point.

‘Instant’ is a counterfeit claim. It’s not instant (it’s also arguably not coffee). But we want to be ignorant of everything leading up to our fix lest it reveal the deception inherent in the name, and the narrative.

The soluble instant coffee crystal is produced by a convoluted process that, in its lack of care for the world and its people, is both symptom and symbol of our corrupt hearts. It’s a symbol of our quick-paced, fix-driven world of convenient utility and productivity, and a symptom of the corruption we sow wherever our diseased hearts pump sin around our bodies and into our actions.

Our consumption of ‘instant coffee’ involves our consumption of the world around us – consuming both people and planet on the altar of our own convenience.

While much of the world’s coffee – including coffee at the specialty end – is produced in under-developed countries, and many coffee farmers are underpaid (passing that underpayment on to their workers – or slaves) – instant coffee uses the cheapest and nastiest coffee grown in the worst conditions.

The drive to supply the ever-increasing insatiable desire for coffee (largely in the developed west) is leading to deforestation in some of the planet’s most significant rainforests.

The coffee grown for instant coffee is much less likely to be ‘ethical’ on either the environmental, economic, or personal front than anything further along the spectrum towards specialty. This is because the people drinking it care less about quality, and less about process.

Instant coffee is not mankind creatively using God’s good gift to bring life. It’s destructive. This destruction spans the entire process – from planting to packaging, and arguably includes the way the coffee itself is treated – roasted without care, batch produced, dehydrated and crystallised using either extremely hot air or snap freezing. Subjectively speaking it’s hard to see how the generic approach to coffee production – where the only distinction in quality or process appears to be which process is used to crystallise the coffee – can point you to the good and creative creator better than specialty coffee – but if you love the taste of instant, and think you can drink it to the glory of God, then go for it. But remember…

“Most of the ethical problems in today’s coffee industry occur with poor quality Arabica coffee (ie Arabica which is grown at low altitudes, and poorly processed) and most of the world’s Robusta. This low cost coffee predominantly ends up in jars of instant coffee. Many of the large companies that use this coffee don’t purchase based on quality, their most important factor is price — as low as possible.”

// Five Senses, What is Ethical Coffee

Here’s a rule of thumb. If something you enjoy, that you didn’t produce by the sweat of your brow, is really cheap, then someone else has paid the price. It could be this kid.


Image Credit: The Atlantic.

THE SIN(S) OF SPECIALTY COFFEE

“…the human mind is, so to speak, a perpetual forge of idols… The human mind, stuffed as it is with presumptuous rashness, dares to imagine a god suited to its own capacity; as it labours under dullness, nay, is sunk in the grossest ignorance, it substitutes vanity and an empty phantom in the place of God. To these evils another is added. The god whom man has thus conceived inwardly he attempts to embody outwardly. The mind, in this way, conceives the idol, and the hand gives it birth…”

// Calvin, INSTITUTES, I.XI.8

Lest you think I’m only prepared to point the finger at the side of the coffee spectrum I’m biased against – the specialty end of the coffee spectrum is every bit as pernicious. Where instant coffee denies the significance of process, specialty coffee celebrates it – praising the human ingenuity of farmer, roaster, and barista. The idolatry associated with this emphasis on process and control also sees the end user forging their identity on the basis of their consumption decisions.

You are your coffee order. I’ve got no doubt this is true, because it has, at times, been true for me. Here’s a description of the modern obsession with the designer life based on curated choices…

“We declare our individuality via our capacity to consume differently — to mix purchases from Target with those from quirky Etsy shops — and to tweet, use Facebook, or pin in a way that separates us from others . . . Unique taste — and the capacity to avoid the basic — is a privilege. A privilege of location (usually urban), of education (exposure to other cultures and locales), and of parentage (who would introduce and exalt other tastes). To summarize the groundbreaking work of theorist Pierre Bourdieu: We don’t choose our tastes so much as the micro-specifics of our class determine them.”

// Anne Petersen, ‘Basic is just another word for class anxiety,’ buzzfeed.com

If you want to order the ‘single origin honey processed Costa Rica De Licho as a double shot, three quarter latte, with the milk at 62 degrees’ and you know what each of those things contributes to the taste, and you care so much that you won’t accept any less – then you’re probably engaging in what CS Lewis calls the Gluttony of Delicacy.

“She would be astonished—one day, I hope, will be—to learn that her whole life is enslaved to this kind of sensuality, which is quite concealed from her by the fact that the quantities involved are small. But what do quantities matter, provided we can use a human belly and palate to produce querulousness, impatience, uncharitableness and self-concern?”

// CS Lewis, SCREWTAPE LETTERS

Sound familiar. Enslaved to sensuality? The woman described in the Screwtape Letters is one being led away from God by her particular tastes, her desire for her needs to be met in just the right way.

“You will say that these are very small sins, and doubtless, like all young tempters, you are anxious to be able to report spectacular wickedness. But do remember, the only thing that matters is the extent to which you separate the man from the Enemy. It does not matter how small the sins are provided that their cumulative effect is to edge the man away from the Light and out into the Nothing. Murder is no better than cards if cards can do the trick. Indeed the safest road to Hell is the gradual one—the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts.”

// CS Lewis, SCREWTAPE LETTERS

Specialty Coffee is much more likely to be ethically produced. Partly because specialty coffee producers are generally nice people and want to do the right thing, and partly because partnerships on the ground with coffee growers will produce a guarantee of supply and allows the specialty industry to have some control over growing conditions – ensuring a better quality crop. Here’s the thing – such is the disease of our hearts – that even our most altruistic moments are part of a ‘triple bottom line’ approach to life – there’s a sense that we are ethical in our decision making because it is a way to buy some sort of indulgence to mitigate our consumption of the world around us.

We are often ethical because it makes us feel better. If we this wasn’t the case then the ethics of a particular coffee wouldn’t be a massive marketing tool. We’d care more about whether or not ethical systems like Fairtrade actually work (they don’t really, relationship based coffee purchasing seems to be the most ethical approach).

Or, we’re ethical because we see the good that our conscientious purchasing decisions do for someone else, and  feel a sense of pride that  our consumption is making a difference, which frees us to consume more, and invites us to continue to find our identity – or our point of difference – in just how special our decisions are. For us, and others.

The way our diseased hearts affect even our good deeds is the result of what Martin Luther called humanity curved in upon itself (or, in Latin, incurvatus in se) – even our good deeds are directed to our own glory, not to God’s. Even our good use of the coffee bean becomes a chance for us to celebrate our own ingenuity.

The pitfalls of ‘specialty’ coffee aren’t just limited to the bench seats of your local small-batch roaster. They’re just as prevalent in the coffee laboratory of the home coffee snob, who seeks to outsnob the other shots, to pour the most consistent god shots, to control every possible variable with increasingly complex (and expensive) equipment allowing minute adjustments to be made to the grind size, the temperature, the pressure, the water purity – every variable can be tweaked in the pursuit of that elusive and fleeting moment of joy. Joy that should be found in the appreciation of the one who made the coffee bean, and gave us taste buds. This joy is counterfeit joy. It is pleasure. And we seek to stimulate the senses as they grow and develop. The bar keeps raising. We’re never satisfied. We invest in bigger. Better. Brighter. We become discontent. Upgraditis is another word for idolatry.

Too often the quest for the God shot – for joy, be it in coffee, or any good thing God has made, becomes the ultimate quest.

THE SIN OF DELIBERATELY BAD COFFEE

You may have heard the line that really good coffee is expensive, so Christians should steer clear of it in order to spend that money on important work. Like telling people about Jesus.

I’ve certainly heard it.

I’ve used it about other stuff.

Like free range eggs and the environment (Thankfully. While the archives of my blog represent my thoughts in the past – our thinking grows as we do…).

But I don’t think you can separate using God’s world rightly and excellently from telling people about Jesus quite so easily.

The God of the Bible is good. He made a good world. A beautiful world. For people to enjoy – to find their joy in him, through the things he made. While there is certainly a place for asceticism – forgoing pleasures – in the face of a gluttonous world, there’s also a place for aesthetics in the good world God has made. For Christians to be modelling the best uses of God’s world in order to point people to the goodness of God. Otherwise, why will people listen to us when we tell them that God is good? God’s goodness isn’t just revealed at the cross of Jesus – though it certainly is revealed there. It’s revealed in the world he made, and his love for it. Jesus didn’t just die to gather a people (though he certainly did that) – his entering the world, his death, and his resurrection are part of the redemption of the world and God’s plans for a new creation – where the joy we experience fleetingly now will become complete.

Our presentation of the good news needs to be embodied, and it needs to mesh with people’s experience of the world. Too much of our evangelism is disconnected from reality – and there’s incredible scope for aesthetic and existential apologetics as well as the philosophical, or historical stuff we normally engage in, so long as we navigate away from idolatry.

Personally, I think this rules out instant coffee. But you might love the flavour, and find other people who do to… and you might be able to overcome the other issues – like the ethical issues – associated with instant. We’ll deal with this a bit more below – where I’ll again, make my case against Instant Coffee.

DIVINE ‘HEART SURGERY’ AND THE RIGHT USE OF COFFEE

“The LORD saw how great the wickedness of the human race had become on the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time.”

// GENESIS 6:5

“He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end.”

// ECCLESIASTES 3:11

So the God Shot points us to the idea that we were created for something better, while our attempts to capture and reproduce it show that we are broken. Our hearts are simultaneously wired to point us to eternity, and diseased in such a way as to sow death at every turn and in our every action (the very opposite of eternity).

Here’s a cool quote from author William Faulkner when he won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1949… this is, in part, why I think an aesthetic/existential approach to sharing the Gospel is worth pursuing.

“Our tragedy today is a general and universal physical fear so long sustained by now that we can even bear it. There are no longer problems of the spirit. There is only the question: When will I be blown up? Because of this, the young man or woman writing today has forgotten the problems of the human heart in conflict with itself which alone can make good writing because only that is worth writing about, worth the agony and the sweat.”

// William Faulkner, NOBEL LITERATURE PRIZE SPEECH, 1949

His whole speech is worth reading – especially if you work as though the poetry he wants people to be writing is an analogy for the God Shot.

The tension in the human heart is not solved by itself – or, as Faulkner suggests – pointing to some higher version of itself. It needs recreation, intervention, a redefinition of what it means for it to beat for its maker again. It needs surgery.

This surgery happens when God makes an incision into time and space, decisively entering to declare both the true trajectory for history, and the true pattern for the human. So, when Paul describes Jesus become a man, within creation, to Timothy, he says:

“Beyond all question, the mystery from which true godliness springs is great:
He appeared in the flesh,
was vindicated by the Spirit,
was seen by angels,
was preached among the nations,
was believed on in the world,
was taken up in glory.”

// 1 TIMOTHY 3:16

This is God performing cosmic heart surgery. This is God pouring himself out on the world. The perfect pour. A multi-sensory experience that redefines every other experience of the senses. It’s only when our hearts are radically realigned with their creator that we can start to appreciate the good things he made the way they were intended to be enjoyed – as good gifts from a good God.

PUTTING COFFEE IN ITS PLACE

Here’s where Paul goes next when he’s talking to Timothy – this little description of Jesus’ entry into time and space – in the flesh – is how Paul is addressing a bunch of wrong thinking about what to do with delicious and nutritious gifts from God (and, indeed, what to do with everything God made).

“They forbid people to marry and order them to abstain from certain foods, which God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and who know the truth. For everything God created is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving, because it is consecrated by the word of God and prayer.”

// 1 TIMOTHY 4:3-5

It’s worth breaking this down – Paul tells Timothy that some hypocritical liars who have abandoned the faith will come telling people not to enjoy God’s good gifts that were there from creation. Marriage. Good food. But these things were made by God “to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and who know the truth” – and in the context this “knowing the truth” must surely be linked to “the mystery from which true godliness springs” – knowing Jesus. This puts the physical world into perspective. It has value (like physical training), and it frames our labour and our strivings – there are echoes of Ecclesiastes 3 to be found here, because this is where meaning is to be found.

“For physical training is of some value, but godliness has value for all things, holding promise for both the present life and the life to come. This is a trustworthy saying that deserves full acceptance. That is why we labour and strive, because we have put our hope in the living God, who is the Savior of all people, and especially of those who believe.”

// 1 TIMOTHY 4:8-10

The right response to God’s good gifts is not to reject them but to receive them. With thanksgiving. The right response to coffee is not to baptize it – like Pope Clement VIII but to accept it as already good, in line with God’s good intentions for his creation.

When coffee was first introduced to the western world – from Islamic Africa – it was suspiciously treated as the ‘Devil’s Cup’ – before condemning it, Pope Clement VIII asked to try some and apparently said:

“This devil’s drink is delicious. We should cheat the devil by baptising it…”

Coffee is good. It is made by God. It is made by God to be enjoyed so that we are thankful to God – not trashing it, or treasuring it (as God) – but treasuring God through it. In the next couple of chapters Paul says a few other things about how we’re to approach good stuff God has made.

“Stop drinking only water, and use a little wine because of your stomach and your frequent illnesses.”

// 1 TIMOTHY 5:23

“But godliness with contentment is great gain. For we brought nothing into the world, and we can take nothing out of it. But if we have food and clothing, we will be content with that.”

// 1 TIMOTHY 6:6-8

And here is the clincher.

“Command those who are rich in this present world not to be arrogant nor to put their hope in wealth, which is so uncertain, but to put their hope in God, who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment. Command them to do good, to be rich in good deeds, and to be generous and willing to share. In this way they will lay up treasure for themselves as a firm foundation for the coming age, so that they may take hold of the life that is truly life.”

// 1 TIMOTHY 6:17-19

God provides us with good gifts for us to enjoy them. We are rich – especially when it comes to the coffee world – our consumption of coffee is a chance for us to enjoy God’s creation, do good deeds, and be generous to others, with our senses fixed on the true life to come.

USING COFFEE TO TELL GOD’S STORY, NOT OUR OWN

“I am not, however, so superstitious as to think that all visible representations of every kind are unlawful. But as sculpture and painting are gifts of God, what I insist for is, that both shall be used purely and lawfully,—that gifts which the Lord has bestowed upon us, for his glory and our good, shall not be preposterously abused, nay, shall not be perverted to our destruction.”

// John Calvin, INSTITUTES I.XI. 12

So. To wrap up. And here’s where I get a little more speculative – feel free to disagree with me…

Lets assume for a moment that when Romans talks about the function of what God makes it’s not our job to sit passively by why the heavens point people to God.

This seems pretty clear. A long held understanding of ‘natural theology’ -which is basically the understanding that we can know of God from nature – is that nature might point us to a God (enough to earn us judgment), but it won’t point us to God as he reveals himself in his word, and in Christ. So, people then think we should focus on sharing this special revelation from God – teaching God’s word and preaching about Jesus… This might be where the “don’t spend money on coffee when you can spend it on Jesus” idea comes from. This involves ignoring one stream of God’s revelation to us (about his character and qualities) in order to promote another. Why not do both?

“For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.”

// ROMANS 1

So. If what a few people call ‘God’s second book’ – what has been made – is meant to point us to God why don’t we think his people have a responsibility to interpret ‘what has been made’ and use it rightly to point people to the maker?

And. Is there any evidence to suggest this is how we should think of the world God has made?

I think so. The Calvin quote shows this sort of idea isn’t novel. But here’s a cool thing – when God creates his people and puts them in the garden, we’re told about the other stuff God makes.

“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.)”

// GENESIS 2:11-12

This is such a bizarre thing to mention. God made lots of other stuff. But we get this mention of some (presumably) really good things he made. Gold pops up all over the place – including when Israel is escaping Egypt.

“The Israelites did as Moses instructed and asked the Egyptians for articles of silver and gold and for clothing. The Lord had made the Egyptians favorably disposed toward the people, and they gave them what they asked for; so they plundered the Egyptians.”

// EXODUS 12:35-36

We’ve covered our tendency towards idolatry already. The tendency to turn God’s good gifts into God, treasuring them too much. Look what happens when Israel is waiting around at the foot of the mountain while Moses speaks with God.

“When the people saw that Moses was so long in coming down from the mountain, they gathered around Aaron and said, “Come, make us gods who will go before us. As for this fellow Moses who brought us up out of Egypt, we don’t know what has happened to him.”
Aaron answered them, “Take off the gold earrings that your wives, your sons and your daughters are wearing, and bring them to me.” So all the people took off their earrings and brought them to Aaron. He took what they handed him and made it into an idol cast in the shape of a calf, fashioning it with a tool. Then they said, “These are your gods, Israel, who brought you up out of Egypt.”

// EXODUS 32:1-4

Gold. The good stuff God made, that was there at Adam’s disposal, presumably to help remind humanity that God made a good world (the constant refrain in Genesis 1). It has become an idol. It is not revealing God. His second book is not being properly understood – or taught by his people. Here’s another reference to Gold – being rightly used – from the Old Testament. This is Gold being used to tell God’s story – to bring ‘general’ and ‘special’ revelation, or God’s two books, together. Note that Moses is being given the design for this priestly garb at the same time that Aaron is turning the gold into an idol, and that it specifically mentions onyx (there in Genesis 2), and that it makes mention of the artistry of the human craftsman…

“Make the ephod of gold, and of blue, purple and scarlet yarn, and of finely twisted linen—the work of skilled hands. It is to have two shoulder pieces attached to two of its corners, so it can be fastened. Its skillfully woven waistband is to be like it—of one piece with the ephod and made with gold, and with blue, purple and scarlet yarn, and with finely twisted linen, and finally, that the design, and artistry, has a purpose.

“Take two onyx stones and engrave on them the names of the sons of Israel in the order of their birth—six names on one stone and the remaining six on the other. Engrave the names of the sons of Israel on the two stones the way a gem cutter engraves a seal. Then mount the stones in gold filigree settings and fasten them on the shoulder pieces of the ephod as memorial stones for the sons of Israel. Aaron is to bear the names on his shoulders as a memorial before the LORD”

// EXODUS 28:6-12

Coffee is gold (it’s a metaphor – like in those banking ads). 

The pursuit of the ‘God Shot’ so long as it is rightly framed by the pursuit of the God who made the coffee, is a way to both enjoy God’s creation with thankfulness, and point others to it.

As you pursue perfection (while knowing it is unattainable this side of God’s new creation), applying ingenuity, science, and art, to achieve the very best cup of coffee possible – so long as you are not turning coffee into an idol – you have a chance to tell God’s story, and ours.

If God brews coffee in heaven (it may well be tea) – I can’t imagine him serving up anything that tastes like International Roast. I don’t think you can truly reveal God’s character from a cup of instant coffee – not when you see the contempt with which it treats his creation, and not when you make the comparison to the significantly richer double ristretto that tastes as good as ground coffee smells.

This is where God’s good creation meets art, meets science, to the glory of a transcendent creative and good God.

God’s story is the gospel – his story of redemption of our broken hearts, and their realignment to him through Jesus. Our use of the world he made should mirror that realignment, and tell that story. This has to change our consumption habits for the benefit of our neighbours – global and local.

Good coffee is proof that God is good.

October 28, 2014

Paul House on preaching Isaiah: Part two

Some random points here from the second lecture. I’m fading fast.

There’s nothing worse than a combination of pride and ignorance. “I’m stupid, and proud of it” is dangerous. Isaiah addresses that.

Isaiah is great at digging the needle in. He uses satire and irony and has an unfailing ability to hit the target.

Materialism leads us to think we don’t need God, which leads to bad stuff.

Some of the greatest issues we have with God are to do with timing – we either want him to move slower or faster than he currently is.

It’s easy to see the problems in society. To isolate and identify them. But it’s very hard to remember to pray for those problems.

Many missionary messages stop at about verse eight of chapter six. Here am I. Send me… but when you keep reading – “you will preach, and their hearts will be hardened. Jeremiah seems to have preached for forty years. And only produced two converts. We can’t buy into the theory that numerical success is linked to ministry. Growth is not a sign of your faithfulness or God blessing you. But nor is the antithesis true – it’s not a case of the smaller you are the more holy you are. We need to be Great Commission churches. Church growth fans sound a lot like prosperity preachers – suggesting that the size of your church is somehow linked to your approach. How do we explain Jonah? He didn’t want any converts and converted a city.

Know your congregation. Know their concerns. That will drive how you apply their lives to the text (not the text to their lives).

How do we do ministry without quitting. We’re required to love people even if we don’t see fruit tangibly. We’re to love our enemies, that’s the mark of a Christian, and it’s hard.

Israel are being called (by Isaiah, in chapter 7) to have faith (in God – where all faith in the OT is directed) in the face of tough times. When the superpower nations around them are agitating for conflict. Israel are scared. For good reason. Evil is real, and it may be out to get you. It was for Israel. Paul used chapters 5-12 to address his small group in the midst of the GFC and a bunch of individual examples of turmoil. Isaiah is a reminder that God is faithfully redeeming his people and bringing them into the new creation.

“If you are not firm in faith you will not stand at all…” (Isaiah 7:9a) is like a theme statement of this section of the book.

Isaiah doesn’t let disappointment with earlier results keep him from ministry. Firm faith requires steadfastness and Isaiah has that quality.

On the renewal of Creation (Isaiah 11:6-9)

Sin mars creation – but nothing will mar the new creation. The future is secure, the future is bright. We should always be a forward looking people. Believers appropriate this theology in the New Testament and we must reclaim it today. We have a home, a king, and a society that is flawless. All the temporal things are going to change so our focus needs to be on serving the servant and going to Zion (this future creation). We’ll have a resurrected body. We need to be focused on that future – not our present brokenness.

If we ask “what is your hope as a Christian” and it’s not marching into Zion and bringing people to the service of the faithful servant then you’ve missed the thrust of Isaiah.

Where is your confidence? it needs to be in the suffering servant whom God has sent. In this season we have every reason to say things and sing songs that we will say and sing forever in the new creation.

August 31, 2010

On redeeming creation

Izaac, in reflecting on the Engage conference he was at recently, mentioned what he sees as a push towards redemption in our doctrine of creation. I think it’s probably a helpful corrective, I have been accused of having an “anaemic doctrine of creation“1 in the past. Pretty much any time I said anything about why I think caring for the environment is a secondary issue (compared to preaching the gospel).2 I’m not suggesting it has no value, just that it only has value when it aids our primary purpose.

The danger of correctives is that they push to far. As Zack points out, and Mikey reiterates. Here’s the quote from Izaac:

“But I’m concerned when redeeming creation is starting to get equal billing with the gospel. The balance hasn’t tipped yet, but it ain’t too far away. At the moment its simply good critiquing of the church.”

This issue nicely fits in with my post about work, rest and play, and my post about my ethical framework – and the “redemption angle” is probably the best articulation of the difference between my approach on the issue of gay marriage, and Mark Baddeley and Tim Adeney’s corrections (and I think, by extension, Oliver O’Donovans – who I really need to read).

Here’s my doctrine of creation in analogy form (from a comment on Mikey’s post). As you’d expect, it takes a pretty utilitarian approach to “redeeming creation” where the end is not the work in itself, but the work of the gospel.

I like to think of culture/the world as a sinking ship, Robinson Crusoe style, where any redemption is pulling stuff off the ship and waiting for a new one to come. I think sitting around on the ship polishing floors (or rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic) is a little pointless in the bigger scheme of things… Even though the ship will eventually be refloated.

I think the concept of “redemption” is more helpful, and more often related, to getting people off the sinking ship as opposed to cleaning up the sinking ship. And I think, to stretch the analogy, that cleaning the ship is only useful so long as it clears a pathway to make it easy for other people to get off.

So I think we ought to work hard too, but I think we ought to work hard primarily because it’s part of the process of having a consistent witness and part of our gospel mission.

I think the restoration, Romans 8 style, is a complete renewal of Creation not just a renovation where God fixes the bits we’ve missed. It seems to me that the planet gets a refresh regardless of our efforts – while people don’t get that same second chance, so that’s where we should be focusing our energy (unless you’re a universalist, in which case being a tree hugging hippy is equally morally valid).

I guess my sinking ship analogy almost perfectly personifies a retrieval ethic. And I’m ok with that.

Also, this PDF study guide to Christian ethics from AFES is pretty good.

1Also, it’s very interesting how closely my conversation with one “David Walker” paralleled my conversation with one “Mark Baddeley” – perhaps they are the same person. Separated by oceans.
2And nothing proves the point about the danger of being a corrective like the way I put forward those views in that pretty ugly series of posts. While I agree mostly with what I said still – there was a bit of nuance missing. I don’t think either/or dichotomies are a helpful way of approaching these issues – I think primary/secondary concerns is probably better – and acting for a secondary concern can often aid in a primary concern, but should never supplant, or contradict, it. That’s my theory.

August 31, 2010