Fear finds it’s power in the threat of loss, whether that be loss of reputation, possessions, one’s life or even one’s soul. As a child we are surrounded with a sense of security to protect us from feeling the fear of the real world. We are brought up with a general sense of the safety of the world. Authority figures know what they are doing and the world is safely in their hands. Bad people come to nothing and the good triumph in the end.

As we get older that security can begin to shake. We can start to feel like the threat of loss is very real and the world is not as safe or just as we thought. Religion often helps to replace that blanket of security by various means. It can provide us with a ground of meaning, a trust that despite appearances, the ultimate authority figure does know what he is doing. Also it can assure us that by engaging in something (a system of belief) or acting in a certain way (morality) we can be sure that after death there is ultimately reward and so death loses it’s sting. We place confidence in our beliefs or morality as that which will ensure we are “alright in the end”.

The problem with this is that both belief and morality are open to being destroyed. Facts or external evidence can shake belief and often the response is then to put our proverbial head in the sand or become more dogmatic about it even in the face of its absurdity. By threatening the system of belief one may actually be threatening the person’s security and to suggest that a person questions those beliefs is tantamount to suggesting they feel the horror of what “might be”, the very thing they seek to protect themselves from. Equally morality is just as problematic. We are all acutely aware of the failures of our own morality and if we hold our moral uprightness as our security from loss we will find that truly shaken when we stumble.

Perhaps Christ was not advocating either standard of religion and instead sought to move us beyond those foundations and onto one built on himself alone. A misconception that has recently been exposed was that Judaism was based on works of a moral law. It wasn’t. It was based on grace; the grace of being born a Jew. The only right response then was to fulfill the law. So it wasn’t that Christ corrected a false view of Judaism being rooted in moral behaviour to instead see it as being based on a system of belief. It already was a system of belief manifest in circumcision. I believe the call to faith is one that places our hope/faith/confidence in the grace of God alone. That He will “preserve us blameless before his presence with exceeding joy”. Then from a foundation that cannot be shaken fear and death have no sting as we have already, like Christ, suffered the loss of all things. Paul highlighted Christ’s criticism of believing that Jewishness saved by saying that we put no confidence in the flesh and that God could raise children to Abraham from these stones. We likewise must put no confidence in our belief as a path to salvation; even the demons believe.

One may counter that this faith is also shakable, that we must consider the possibility that God is not, in fact, gracious or may not exist. But that would be to confuse faith with belief. It is not a belief that God is gracious but a surrender to God, trusting his graciousness. It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of God, but once it has been done then there is nothing left to fear. Yes we experience the horror of complete loss of certainty and control. We lose any right to put a gap between ourselves and loss. Which therefore requires an embrace of it in the form of death to self. From this place of death to self there springs resurrection in the form of the indwelling Spirit. This Spirit is our hope. It is a transformation that one experiences not a belief in something subjective. God is no longer object, we become subject, and fear and death have no more power over us.

Perhaps then the path of fear fully overcome goes through these stages:

1. Absence of fear in innocence and ignorance (a child)

2. Realisation of fear when confronted with evil and loss.

3. Shielding from fear through religion, moral works or distraction.

4. An embrace of complete loss and a resurrection of hope in Christ.

In my opinion it is this stage 4 that marks the true nature of Christianity over against a Christianity or other religious system that founds itself on belief, ritual or morality.

God and theology are not one and the same. Neither is theology that which defines God behaviour toward us as if He is limited by our understanding of him. Rather theology is our way of framing His nature and providing a way of understanding our relationship with him. Allow me to use a crude example that I think helps. God must never be reduced to the level of a human, but if we can understand how we relate to one another it can help us understand a bit about what relating to God is like.

I know my wife. I know her more now than I did a year ago. If I were to describe her to you (who may or may not know her also) then I would be making definitive and justified statements about her physical makeup and about her character. But we also both know that my descriptions are not absolute and that she, as a free agent, can at any point behave or appear differently to that – by perhaps changing a hair style, clothes or by having a change of mood or simply revealing something about her that I previously had not seen. Also my relationship with her is undoubtedly different to others and two of her friends could describe her separately and you might not realise they were talking about the same person!

God is like that. We encounter someone unique and infinite. We grow in our understanding of his nature. He doesn’t have the more stable physical form but only an infinitely vast nature and personality. Out theology is way to attempt to frame a point of reference. When we say he is merciful this does not mean he cannot sometimes act in judgement. When we say he is holy and to be feared this does not mean that he can feel closer than our own breath and draw us as intimately as a mother. Our theology MUST always be secondary to the nature and personality of God. Once our understanding of God becomes what we honestly think God is, than he shifts from a being we seek to know and relate to, into an idol made by human minds.

Another way of thinking about it is by using an example CS Lewis once used. He gave an example of a tree. A scientist approaches the tree and analyses it. He dissects the tree and records it is made of xylem and phloem, it has a root structure for drawing up nutrients and water and it has a green substance in its leaves for photosynthesis. The scientist leaves satisfied that he now knows trees. An animist Indian approaches the tree and tenderly nurtures it, sits in its branches, gazes in awe at its huge size and perhaps even worships it. Which of the two knows the tree? In a way both do. But we must be careful that we don’t become like the scientist and in our desire to understand the tree and make statements about it and break it down that we lose something of the whole. The tree is more than the sum of its parts, just as humans are more than eyeballs, organs and skin. If we break down God/scripture and analyse him/it with our systematic theology and our apologetics we can in the process shrink God and think we know him better when we have in fact completely missed the awe of the whole and hardly know him at all! We must come to God and scripture humbly, seeking not to analyse and dissect it for understanding but seek to allow both to transform us. In the process of allowing scripture to simply be more than our understanding of it and meditate on it, sit with it, wrestle with it, we are transformed by it and then know it in a different way. The same with God, our theology comes out of an encounter with something bigger than our theology and we must give room for God to move in ways that are outside our understanding, otherwise we will be like the pharisees who cannot recognise God when he stands in front of us, because he doesn’t match up to what we expect him to be like.

If Christ brought an end to law, salvation does not come by works, and in Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, by what then do we build our identity? And how can we compare our righteousness with others to make a distinction?

The jews believed they were God’s chosen people with the outward display of circumcision. Even in the early church this was a divisive issue. How can we know that we are God’s and others are not? How do we know that we are righteous? Systematically through Christ, Paul and the disciples, each layer of identity was stripped away to leave only being “in Christ” by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. This, however, was not provable, not concrete. Humans long for something to lean back on as proof of their righteousness, their acceptance to God. But the Christian insistence is that the only thing you can lean on for righteousness is the totally free gift of grace that in the very place of sin “abounds the more”.

Religion can often serve to rebuild those external identities that it shouldn’t. Using titles, ministerial labels, ultimate doctrines, rituals as salvation, denominations, church attendance, holy living, tithing, virginity, celibacy, religious clothing etc. These can move from their God given place of usefulness to a place of centrality they were never meant to occupy because we make them our identity and trust that these are things that set us apart from others and that prove our righteousness. When this happens we root our identity on things other than Christ.

But when we have faith only in God’s grace and that he will “preserve us blameless before his throne in glory with exceeding joy” that frees us to live a life of love uncluttered by external distractions, and these other religious aspects are held differently, properly.

No exterior measure only one that must be re-entered every day by a life of love! Our Christian identity (as Christ’s disciple) is centred in a life of continuous love .

“For you will be His witness to all men of what you have seen and heard.” Acts 22v15. Paul is commissioned to witness to men what he has seen and heard. The term “witness” means exactly that. Someone who bears testimony to their experience. And a great evil occurs when someone bears “false witness”.

I think we need to temper our evangelistic efforts with the above in mind. When talking to people of the life we have found in Christ it must be in the form of a witness not a salesman. We speak to them of what we have seen and heard, not stress the importance of dogma. Jesus revealed to us the things his father had revealed to him. He spoke not on his own authority, and whether they believed him or not Jesus was not about to change the message. The response of people was more an indication of their heart (or the identity of their “father” John ch8) and not of the validity of the message. Sometimes in our effort to stress that all have a god-shaped hole and that the world is seeking him we think that all are equally able to be saved. This is very different to what we see in the New Testament scriptures. Yes, any who come to Christ he will by no means cast out, but there are many who simply have no desire to come and making our churches more seeker friendly isn’t going to change that.

We are called to be witnesses and nothing more. We speak the words that we have been given. The truths revealed to us by God. And that is a very different thing to the truths told to us by our leaders. We witness what we have seen and heard and speak those things which have been birthed within us, not the programmed lines of scripture or step by step points of belief. When we speak of things outside of our experience and stress with certainty things we feel we OUGHT to be certain about, rather than things we actually are certain about, we run the risk of being a false witness. You can even say something true and be a false witness. Just because you know something happened doesn’t mean you can talk as if you witnessed it happen. In a court that would be giving false evidence. A serious crime indeed!

The above said I think that if we actually focussed on doing our work, the work of bearing witness, and trusted the spirit to do his work, that of bringing conviction and grace, we might prove more successful in creating true disciples and less successful in giving the impression that Christians are bigoted and pushy.

We would then also disown the results in a healthy way. A witness in a trial tells the judge and jury the things which they know and have seen. They are not then responsible for the interpretation of that or the result of the court case. If they are ignored they are ignored. It may also be possible for the witness testimony to actually form the basis of believing the other side of the story and having a very unexpected result. Jesus sent the disciples to bear witness in the towns. If they were heard they were to go into the house of peace and remain there sharing all things with them. If not they were to shake the dust from their feet and move on. Paul may plant, Apollos may water but only God can give the increase. Sounds like a pretty good and far less terrifying way, of spreading the good news of Christ’s work in our lives to me!

We now start our study of Revelation in chapter 1 which lays many of the foundations required for considering the whole book. We look at the correlation between apocalyptic writing and the exile. In particular comparing the image of Christ in revelation 1 with that of the Son of Man in Daniel 10. Future talks on the topic will go through revelation in sections.

Revelation PART 2