Becoming a New Creation

Here's my April article:

This year we've been having some work done on the Vicarage including having a new kitchen fitted. Anyone who has had work done on their house will know how disruptive it can be, but hopefully the end results make all the trouble worth it, because after all the chaos there's something new - a new creation.

Easter is all about new life and new creation: chicks hatching out of eggs; spring flowers growing from dormant bulbs; new-born lambs gamboling in the fields; and chocolate… well I'm not quite sure how that fits in! These are symbols and God-given signposts of how Jesus' resurrection ushers in a new creation: that is the new heavens and new earth that will fully come when Jesus returns (Revelation 21) but can be seen in part here and now. But this new creation is not just about the world being redeemed, renewed and put right, it is also about us as individuals being redeemed, renewed and put right. In both cases, this new creation comes through disruption.

This sounds very similar to countless self-help books and motivational talks. Phrases like "No pain, no gain" are applied not just to physical transformation but also to personal, mental, professional and even spiritual transformation. The message from the transformation gurus and influencers is that you need to kill your old self in order that your new self can emerge, and this transformation is hard work, disruptive and painful, but worth it in the end.

But this is not the message of Easter. It might seem like the new creation of Easter only comes after the hard self-discipline of Lent and the self-sacrifice exemplified by Good Friday, but that would be a misunderstanding of the Christian message. Jesus is not a transformation guru who coaches us from the side, encouraging us to work harder. Instead he tells us that we cannot transform ourselves, no matter how hard we try: we don't need a trainer, we need a Saviour.

Just like I would not be able to fully fit a new kitchen but need someone else to do it for me, so I cannot transform myself. That's why God says "I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you…[and] I will put my Spirit within you" (Ezekiel 36:26-27). It's God who transforms us; we do not create a new heart within ourselves because we cannot. We need something from outside of ourselves to redeem, renew and put us right. We don't just need a better version of ourselves, we need God's Spirit to transform us and re-create us. The pain and disruption we need to go through is not the pain of self-correction and trying harder to be good, it is the pain of admitting we cannot redeem ourselves no matter how hard we try; it is the pain of swallowing our pride and admitting we need help. This is the message of Easter: God offers us the new creation we long for and that we cannot achieve by ourselves.

Faithful or Traitor?

Here's my article for March:

Photo by Lance Reis on Unsplash

“Are you a Faithful or are you a Traitor?” This question reverberated around the heads of many people who watched the latest series of 'The Traitors' which bills itself as being “the ultimate reality game of trust and treachery.” IMDB summarises the show as “Twenty-two strangers compete in a series of missions for a chance to win £120k. However, amongst the players lie the 'Traitors', who meet in secret and decide who to eliminate from their fellow players known as 'Faithfuls'.” The Faithfuls have to try to guess who amongst them is a Traitor and vote them to be banished. It's basically an elaborate game of wink murder!

I only started watching it halfway through the previous series, but it has an addictive quality akin to morbid curiosity, and I'm not quite sure what to make of my interest in it. There is something about the premise of the show which revolves around lies and deception that makes me uncomfortable, and although “it's only a gameshow” it involves real people trusting other people and often being really betrayed. And I'm not sure whether it makes it worse that these are 'good' people pretending to be bad, but doing actual bad things in order to win a game. In some ways I'd rather it were 'bad' people doing bad things because ironically at least they would be being 'faithful' to their nature.

But perhaps what really makes me uncomfortable about the programme is the mirror it holds up to me. In reality I am like the 'Traitors' – projecting a 'good' persona to hide my inner self-interest. Jesus was the first to use the word 'hypocrite' in the way we use it today (before that it simply meant an actor), and he once said to the religious leaders of his day “You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of the bones of the dead and everything unclean. In the same way, on the outside you appear to people as righteous but on the inside you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness” (Matthew 23:27-28.)

The temptation is to blame our surroundings for the way we behave; just as the contestants justify their behaviour because 'it's the game', so we say we have to be self-centred because the world and everyone else is fallen. However, the Christian doctrine of Original Sin exposes that as simply an excuse. There are many jobs that we say we will do 'when we get around to it', but the COVID lockdown proved that many of those jobs don't get done not because of lack of time and opportunity (there was plenty of that in lockdown!) but instead because of a lack of will and motivation. According to Douglas Murray, Original Sin teaches us that “we are this very, very contorted being which is capable of incredible greatness and beauty and kindness and forgiveness and also capable of their opposites and that it's not that you are one and other people are the other but all of us all of us are both all the time.” In the perfection of the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve chose disobedience and self-centredness, and demonstrated that the problem is not our environment, but ourselves. As is often said “the heart of the human problem is the problem of the human heart.”

Jesus likened himself to a doctor (Luke 5:31) who both diagnoses the problem but also offers the remedy. In Lent we are encouraged to face squarely our hypocrisy, not to crush us with guilt but to direct us to Jesus who took on that guilt, our guilt, on the cross. We are all 'Traitors' but the one we betrayed died taking our punishment – that is a priceless prize!

Unconquerable

Here's my article for February:

This February, the seventh Invictus Games will be held in Vancouver and Whistler. The Invictus Games were founded by Prince Harry as an international multi-sport event for wounded, injured and sick servicemen and women, both serving and veterans. They were first held in London in 2014 and speaking at the launch, Prince Harry said that the Games would "demonstrate the power of sport to inspire recovery, support rehabilitation and demonstrate life beyond disability."

The word 'invictus' is Latin for 'unconquered' and according to the Invictus Games website “The term embodies the fighting spirit of the participating men and women, as well as their motivation to move on with their lives, to gain a new place in life, and to not let themselves be defined by the trauma they have suffered.”

'Invictus' is also the title of a poem by the Victorian poet William Ernest Henley that is closely linked with the Games – the 2016 hosts Orlando said “the 16 short lines of the poem encapsulate the indefatigable human spirit, which is at the heart of the Invictus Games.” The poem is an example of stoicism in the face of the author's medical difficulties, including the amputation of his leg as a teenager due to complications from tuberculosis. He talks of his “unconquerable soul” and that despite his circumstances he has not “winced nor cried aloud,” his head “is bloody, but unbowed.” It ends with the famous defiant cry “I am the master of my fate / I am the captain of my soul.”

This is not just stoicism but it is a belligerent declaration of individualism and self-determination. The 'fighting spirit' that motivates the competitors to move on and demonstrate life beyond disability is very commendable, but in this poem it takes a dangerous turn into arrogance and hubris. Henley disregards “whatever gods may be,” only thanking them for making his unconquerable soul, and also disregards any consequences of his actions either in this world or the next.

This is partly because he doesn't believe in God and therefore this life is just a “place of wrath and tears” and after death is only “the Horror of the shade.” Contrast that with the view of the Apostle Paul: “We were under great pressure, far beyond our ability to endure, so that we despaired of life itself...But this happened that we might not rely on ourselves but on God, who raises the dead” (2 Corinthians 1:8-9. Paul lists the things he suffered in 2 Corinthians 6:4-10 and 11:23-27.) Suffering and adverse circumstances will make us either rely on ourselves or turn to God for help. Paul says that God is the one who can raise the dead, who can bring something good out of something bad and that because eternal life exists, this life as meaning and purpose. What good is it to be captain of your own soul if you don't believe there is a destination to sail to?