Back on the road again

The other day, my daughter was driving home from Stratford when, at Wootton Wawen, the dashboard showed a warning light, the car started to judder and then to lose power. Realising that she was in trouble, my daughter pulled over and called for AA roadside assistance. In due time, a yellow van arrived and a competent chap got out armed with his diagnostic tester. The problem was identified and the cause soon located and corrected. ‘Hop in’ said the mechanic ‘and I will follow you for six miles, then, if all is well, pullover and we’ll complete the paperwork.’

‘Never,’ said my daughter later, ‘have I felt so confident whilst driving as I did during those six miles, knowing that my saviour was right there behind, continuing to watch out for me. There must be a Faith Matters article in that for you Dad!’

Well of course there is. On life’s journey there will be occasions when we encounter things that threaten our progress. These judders and loss of power which knock us off track can be things like employment, financial hassles, health issues and personal relationships. Sometimes, especially when a problem assumes crisis proportions or penetrates to the depth of our soul, we get a spiritual warning light. Questions come into our minds like ‘Where am I going anyway? What’s it all about? What’s the point? Is there a God or isn’t there? Does it matter…?’

Now the AA man had told my daughter that she had done the right thing in pulling over, as to continue would have resulted in serious damage. When we get a spiritual warning light it is the time to pull over and take stock. Often we will try and sort out the problem and get ourselves back on the road. I believe however, that what we need is to allow God’s (diagnostic) word to speak to us, and then trust in him to get us running properly.

If we will put in a call to God’s appointed rescue agent, Jesus, then we may anticipate an accurate assessment of our personal ‘breakdown’. Symptoms will be different for each of us, although the fundamental problem for us all is the same one - estrangement from the true God. Jesus is the one who can fix that for us by applying his forgiveness and restoring us to God. He goes further too; Jesus then empowers us by his spirit to get on the right road. What’s more, he doesn’t just stick with us for the first few miles, but promises to stay with us through thick and thin saying, ‘I will never leave you, I will never abandon you.’ (Hebrews 13v5).

First things first

After all of the violence and unrest in recent weeks, I’ve heard religious comments in the media. You know the sort, ‘we must all work together to secure the peace in the world for which we all long. We need to live out the content of our prayers by loving our neighbour as ourselves.’ It’s not wrong but I guess a lot of us don’t believe it is the answer that will cut it.

I think we need to start from a different place. Rather than just focusing on peace with one another, first we need peace with God. Jesus was once asked ‘Which is the greatest commandment?’. He replied, ‘To love the Lord your God with all of your heart, mind, soul and strength’. In short, devotion to God. What does devotion to God look like? Certainly not acts of terrorism. It is said that one becomes like the thing one worships and, as God cares about people, so will his devotees. In other words, love for our neighbour - actually the second commandment - is borne out of the first commandment which is about our love for God.

The problem is, such full-on love for God is not in our nature because, whether we realise it or not, we are not at peace with God until we agree to his surrender terms. There are any number of ways I could illustrate these surrender terms. Try this one: God wants people like you and me for his own, as a King might pursue a woman in order to have her for his betrothed. He will want to love her, care for her, be a blessing to her, have her by his side and ultimately make her his Queen. Of course it would be expected that the betrothed woman relinquishes whatever would hinder or spoil that engagement and she would need to be prepared to work in preparation for her role as Queen in the royal palace. Her life would no longer be her own in a way that it had been hitherto. If, however, up until that time, she had lived in poverty, perhaps shunned by other men or even used by them, then the summons ‘The King wants you for his own so that he might love you’, would be good news. Sweet surrender into his welcoming arms would seem to be the obvious response.

In a similar way, many have seen the outstretched arms of Jesus on the cross as God’s welcoming embrace. When we personally experience this love, it awakens love for God in us. This peace with God not only gives us love for him, but also releases us to love others in a new way. Isn’t this what a hurting world needs?

What's wrong with the world?

G. K. Chesterton was the author of the Father Brown novels featuring a priest who turns his hand to detective work. There is an unsubstantiated anecdote about Chesterton which goes like this. He wrote a letter to one of the London-based daily newspapers that read, ‘Dear Sir, in response to your article “What’s wrong with the world?”, I am. Yours faithfully, G. K. Chesterton’.

An insightful observation is it not? We know that we ourselves are not perfect and would not dream of making the claim of Muhammad Ali, ‘I am the greatest!’. However, if we are pressed to consider the implications of this admission in the light of God our judge, we will soon start justifying ourselves with statements such as ‘I am not as bad as so and so’ or ‘I do this or that decent thing’. Surely, we reason, if there is a God who brings people into judgement, then he is only on the case of the really bad guys such as the men who murder people like Jo Cox MP, the Parisian police couple or the dozens in the Orlando nightclub etc.

I can understand this line of thinking especially as I am aware of my own reaction to the sentence handed down by a Berlin judge recently. Here, I was taken aback to hear that a 94-year-old wheelchair-bound Reinhold Hanning was sentenced to 5 years in jail (almost certainly a life sentence), for being an SS guard at Auschwitz. He was a relative nobody in the mass of crimes committed at that place. There was no accusation of him committing violence but nevertheless, he was there - a small cog in a large wheel. Yet, what else could the judge do? The man had participated in things that should not have been done and failed to do the things that he should have. That is just like me, on a different scale, yes, but I think, say and do things that I ought not, and I fail to do all of the good that I should. Hence the Bible’s assertion that each person living has a flawed human nature.

So, ‘What’s wrong with the world?’ I am, and there is a price to pay according to Jesus. He does not say this in order to frighten us. As a truthful physician, he diagnoses our problem in order that we might take the cure. That cure is his forgiveness which he offers to each of us irrespective of what we have or have not done.

#judgement #humannature #forgiveness