For a long time I have avoided teaching from the book of Revelation mainly because I find it a hard book to read. I don’t resonate with the genre much at all. Beasts, dragons, angels, trumpets and seals all make for rather confusing reading.

While I recognise its epistolatory/apocalyptic genre within scripture, the closest I can get to it, is to think of the fantasy, sci fi stuff, another genre I rarely read if I can avoid it.

But the difference with Revelation is that this stuff is the inspired word of God and therefore a little more significant than Lord of The Rings or the like. So I thought it might be a challenge to overcome my aversion to this book and really dig into it so that we could get a handle on it as a church.

There’s no question it is a significant section of the entire biblical account, but one that either gets avoided or ends up being the domain of nutbags and crazies. My hunch is that most of us end up doing our first reading Revelation through the lens of whatever view we have grown up with. For me that was the world of Left Behind, a movie that scared the crap out of me as a 12 year old and then has come back more recently to haunt this generation of 12 year olds… and Larry Norman crooning ‘I wish we’d all been ready’… So my thinking on the issue was formed by popular (Christian) culture and by the odd sermon that was drawn from that perspective. Although to be honest once I scanned Hal Lindsay’s stuff as a teenager I discovered that even then I had enough discernment to regret wasting money on his book.

So a few days back I sat down to engage this subject again – as an adult – as someone wanting to start from scratch and wanting to make some sense of it. I recognised there were various takes on Revelation and I thought it would be good to begin with one of the ‘counterpoints’ series books entitled ‘Four Views on Revelation’. The introduction went well…

Then came the ‘preterist’ view – that Revelation was written for the people of the time. This is a fair argument. Surely a book that is part letter is addressed to people for whom it will have immediate significance? However I found myself zoning out as I was reading…

The whole interpretative process is laborious and needs careful analysis to do it justice. I went back to reading the book itself again, to try and make more connections. But once you get beyond the concrete first 3 chapters it begins to become obscure and ethereal, difficult to follow and quite bizarre. If we hadn’t been told that John had been sharing a vision and I’m sure it would qualify as some drug induced hallucination.

So I finished the book, went back to the overview and got bogged down yet again. I began to surf the net and observed that as well as four views of the book, there are several views on the millennial issue (depending on how you interpret them) and then within the dispensational view there are three divergent views on the location of the rapture… And having dug into some of those rapture forums for the last hour I can tell you that is feisty stuff. It seems the narrower you draw the lines of interpretation on this book the more fanatical people become and the more they detest each other and their heresies! I’m wondering if post-mill guys are even allowed to intermarry with pre-mill girls? My reading is that the cultural /theological jump might be a bit too big to navigate…

I find myself asking ‘do I really want to keep going with this?’ Will it be in any way helpful?…

What I would like to do is to be able to give people some tools for understanding this book – for reading it intelligently – as opposed to reading it thru the novels of Tim LaHaye. I actually haven’t decided which ‘millennial’ view I would subscribe to yet, but I fear for those who seem to swallow popular culture as facts when there is clearly no consensus on this issue.

So its back into it this afternoon after this short rant and we’ll see if I can make more sense. It’d be nice to be able to:

a) help people understand how our theology gets shaped – I seem to do a lot of this as we all have filters and lenses that we don’t always realise are there and it needs reminding.

b) present people with 4 lenses that they can look thru and help them think critically about the content thru those lenses.

c) help people deal with the popular ideas and assess them in light of other views.

The biggest struggle I see at the moment is that in a very short time I need to get across a mountain of information to be able to do this intelligently. Not sure if I can manage in the limited time I have, but now that I’ve started I might as well push on for a bit longer. We will soon know… And by the way I have no idea what the hell ‘blood moons’ have to do with anything…

So I finished yesterday essentially asking what happens if it turns out you have married a complete psychopath who is doing permanent damage to you and your children, but who has not been unfaithful and is not looking like leaving?

Can you seek a divorce under those circumstances or is this your cross to bear for as long as you both live?

Its a cruel and twisted mutation of a Christian faith that would ever answer that with an ‘unfortunately yes’. While we want to be true to scripture in all we say and do, surely there is a point when we say ‘come on – we can’t be getting this right if its going to lead to the destruction of people?’

One my abhorrences of fundamentalism is the way it can take the ‘directives’ of scripture and apply them without context and often without compassion. I get the sense that this is what happens when we see divorce like this.

About now some of you are seeing me ‘go weak’ on scripture. And others of you are saying ‘please… someone… give an explanation for this bizarre two condition divorce clause that offers no comfort to those who are dying in abusive marriages’.

If we do our theology by working from directives to outcomes then chances are we will finish up in strange and disturbing places. But if we do theology by looking at broad themes and purposes and stories and then locate the directives within those then I think we have a better chance of arriving at sane and Christlike conclusions.

So my thinking starts like this:

God’s intention for this world is for the kingdom of God to come in fullness and for his ways and his plans to be the ones that shape everything. Immediately you know that a tyrannical abusive household is not a depiction of God’s kingdom. There is nothing of his goodness, love and grace in that picture. If relationships are at the core of the kingdom (and his ultimate hope is for ‘triune’ like relationships) then this is the antithesis. So why would he insist that people just suck it up in those settings?

When a passage of scripture leads to a conclusion that is completely contrary to the overall tone of scripture and the overall goal of scripture then we must question it – and possibly even reject our conclusions as false.

It simply is not within the character of God to command a person to remain in a hostile home situation when there is a solution. When we run with the two option and no more divorce scenario then we almost inevitably at some point turn God into a monster.

I got this far and got stuck…

If the ‘clear sense’ doesn’t make sense in the bigger picture then where do we go from there?

My only conclusion was to say that there was some knowledge we didn’t have that would complete the puzzle… if only we could find it…

So am I rejecting the traditional/historical view?

I guess I am. It doesn’t do justice to the rest of scripture or to the character of God. While those two conditions may still hold there isn’t scope in that view to manage the question I mentioned before.

Fortunately at this point, late on a Friday evening, the ‘sun came up’ (see the intro to the previous post to make sense of this) I stumbled on some work by David Instone-Brewer, an English Baptist pastor and theologian (a practitioner and theorist)  who is able to articulate a coherent way of viewing this situation. A summary of his work is here on Christianity Today and you will need to read it all to get the gist of where he is coming from. But here’s a truncated version to get you in the loop of his thinking.

Essentially Brewer argues that in the OT marriage vows revolved around 3 core objectives –  fidelity, provision and love/care and as a result if any of these were violated repeatedly and unrepentantly there was grounds for divorce. These were the only reasons and obviously Rabbis spent their time interpreting what was legit and flawed cause.

A few decades before Jesus came along there arose a new divorce option – the ‘any cause’ divorce that allowed a husband to divorce his wife for whatever he chose. If she were late home, overweight, wore the wrong clothes… she was fair game. The Hillel Rabbis came up with this one as a new way forward and not surprisingly it became popular.

This was a more expensive option to implement but got men out of marriages quickly and easily. This was the option Joseph considered when Mary was pregnant and it would have avoided proving her adultery in court (would have been interesting to see him try though…)

So when the Pharisees come to ‘test jesus’ they are in fact asking him if he approves of ‘any cause’ divorce and part of their entrapment was to try and lure him into thereby condemning Herod for his marriage of Herodias after an ‘any cause’ divorce. They want to know if he is with the Hillel (any cause) or Shammai (traditional causes) crew and of course they are hoping that he will either ‘come out’ as liberal, or finish up like John the Baptist. Either way its a no win for Jesus.

That is a summary of a summary of Brewer’s teaching so if it doesn’t do it justice its because you can go to the article and read the whole thing. Or you can go to Amazon and buy the book here. Or you can watch a cartoon version of the teaching here. (No really… theological cartoons…)

But the point he makes is that there is a way of reading this stuff that is consistent with God’s character and the rest of scripture and isn’t a ‘fudge’. I sense that what often happens is we fudge and assume that ‘marital unfaithfulness or porneia’ can be extrapolated to mean domestic abuse.

Its a stretch – and we know it.

So while Instone Brewer is no advocate for divorce, he is seeking to provide a way to understand biblical teaching that makes sense and doesn’t have God becoming a monster.

I stumbled on Instone Brewer thru a John Ortberg article here and a sermon here. As I was throwing all this together on Friday I found myself spending most of Friday evening reading and poring over Instone Brewer’s academic papers and some of his more popular papers.

You wouldn’t put him in any kind of liberal/heretic camp. He is a biblical scholar – and a pastor who has been seeking to find a way to deal with the apparent incongruencies in our traditional theology of divorce.

That said, John Piper is not a fan. I think its good to read some push back on a person’s work and Piper certainly does that with an article entitled Tragically Widening the Grounds of Legitimate Divorce. It begins like this:

The October issue of Christianity Today carried an astonishing article on divorce and remarriage by David Instone-Brewer. What makes it especially amazing is that CT simply published it as if it were faithful to Scripture, with no counterpoint, and used the phrase on the cover “when to separate,” not “whether to separate”—even though Jesus said, “What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate” (Mark 10:9).

Piper however doesn’t offer any way of making sense of the question I asked earlier and the more I read of him the angrier he sounds – in the name of Jesus and for his glory of course…

If you want an even broader approach to the topic that Instone Brewer then Dallas Willard has this to say here.

The basis for divorce among disciples is precisely the same as the basis for marriage. Where it is the case that the persons involved in a marriage would be substantially better off if the marriage were dissolved, the law of love dictates that a divorce should occur. If indeed the divorce is realized as a consequent of the law of love, the evil which is present in most divorces will not be present—and, indeed, very few divorces will occur. But the disciple will make sure of his or her obedience to the law of love in any divorce by making God his lawyer and judge through prayer.

Willard opens a pretty wide door I feel and I could see ‘substantially better off’ being interpreted in ways that are not at all healthy.

Of course that is what we do now anyway isn’t it?

Unless people are thoroughly rigorous in their own reasoning and considering of divorce, reality is that most will divorce because ‘it just isn’t working’ and ‘we’re better off apart’.

I think Willard paints with a broad brush but there is much good in what he says too, particularly his critique of our elevation of romantic love.

Back to Instone Brewer. I haven’t read his whole book, but I am assuming he is on the money with what he says as he is not a mug. I intend to read the whole thing as I have invested enough in this now to make it worth the extra mile.

How does all this play out practically?

For those with ‘marriage problems’

At the end of the day if I were to offer married couples with problems some advice what would it be?… Here is a 7 stage process assuming the previous stage has failed

1 Work it out amongst you

2. Go away and try again

3. Get some help to work it out

4. Keep getting help to work it out

5. Get better help to work it out

6. As above

7. Repeat as needed.

I will concede that there are times when a marriage is a farce and then divorce may be the only option, but I believe that wherever faith, hope and love are present there is always a chance of finding a way forward.

For those in destructive relationships…

If there are destructive things happening repeatedly in a home that are damaging both partner and children then I would have no hesitation in saying get out of there and work it out from there. It might something you can work out. But if there is no cooperation from the aggressor then a divorce may be the best option and the Bible would give you permission both for that and for a subsequent remarriage.

If your partner refuses to reconcile and seek help with you?…

It is down to us to ‘live at peace’ with everyone as much as it depends on you. You can’t force someone into a marriage. You can’t change someone else’s heart and tragically you may find yourself the innocent victim of a person who just wants out. I’d say the Corinthians passage addresses you. You are free to move on and remarry. You are not an ‘adulterer’.

But if you’re just ‘over each other’?…

No.

Grow up and work it out. Because if you don’t you will do it again. Seriously – that may sound harsh, but selfish, fickle people need a really hard kick up the butt.

Finally what about if you have been the aggressor – the one who has been the source of the problem?

The beauty of the gospel is that there is always hope, forgiveness and grace to be found in Jesus. Nothing we can ever do is beyond the pale of God’s love, so even if you think negatively and destructively about yourself there is a way forward.

So those are my thoughts. Many thanks to David Instone Brewer for his work in this area and for helping us make sense of an area that has long been a difficult one.

There is an online sermon and if you are part of QBC you will be able to access it. If not then email me, let me know who you are and I may send you the link. Because its an issue we have been discussing as a community it isn’t necessarily something I want digitised and spread anywhere.

I haven’t heard this one used for so long that I thought maybe we had grown up and moved on, but then it popped up again in conversation yesterday.

“I was going to go to XYZ Bible College, but a friend told me they were liberal…’

‘Liberal…’

What exactly does that mean?…

Well there is a fairly technical meaning in relation to theology (which I won’t try to unpack here) and then there is the ‘people aren’t as conservative as me on issues of theology I deem important’ meaning.

This was the one in question.

We probably need to be clear that ‘liberal’ really ought not be applied to a Bible College that doesn’t preach a party line, or that allows people to examine the evidence and arrive at their own conclusions. That is not ‘liberal’. That is good learning practice. Nor is it ‘liberal’ to employ lecturers who don’t all hold the same theological convictions on all issues – as if that were even possible…

But clearly ‘liberal’ is still out there and accompanied by its old friend ‘fear’. If you go to a liberal college then chances are you will end up believing that Jospeh Smith died for our sins and then married a re-incarnation of the virgin Mary… Its the slippery slope… Next you’ll be wearing lipstick and going to movies…

No…

During my time leading Forge we mixed with all varieties of denominations and I discovered that those I once labelled ‘liberal’ (yes I was a liberal labeller for a while…) were actually people who took the Bible seriously, but arrived at different conclusions to me. On some issues they were actually more conservative, but then we only use liberal to biff people on our pet issues.

So maybe next time you hear the word ‘liberal’ used against someone ask what’s meant by it. Ask which definition of ‘liberal’ is being employed and ask what role fear plays in the equation.

There is a place for scrutinising theology and there is a liberalism that is destructive to genuine biblical theology, but there is also narrow minded, red necked, fear mongering that only knows one word to pin on those with whom there is either disagreement or concern.

This Sunday we come together at QBC to look at Heaven, Hell and all that stuff. Its the stuff we rarely think about (at least hell is) and then there is the idea that we will spend eternity in ‘heaven’… another curious inheritance that may need some re-thinking and clarifying. I like NT Wright’s assertion that ‘sure – you will go to heaven – but you don’t stay there’. He focuses on what he calls ‘life after life after death’ which is definitely more hope-filled and inspiring than whatever heaven may be.

Bell’s book Love Wins (see promo above) put this issue back on the mainstream agenda quite significantly when it was released and Francis Chan’s response Erasing Hell pushed back hard arguing for a more traditional take on the subject.

This video is a clever pushback on the Love Wins promo and takes a different perspective

Chan’s basis for argument was that ‘God is always right about everything’ so if I don’t understand hell then the problem lies with me. Bell was a bit more elusive, but does seem to be saying that God will ultimately draw everyone to himself in this life or the next.

There are of course other options and the late John Stott is known for his annihilationist perspective an argument he suggests may not be traditional but is certainly within the bounds of orthodoxy.

So on Sunday we will come together to chew this one around. And… yes… I will offer my two bobs worth at the end but only after we have helped people really grapple with the issues both biblically and practically.

The title of this post is of course tongue in cheek as I’m sure we all will feel that our persepctive is the ‘truth’ and that we have taken the ‘biblical’ position. Whatever you may think of Rob Bell (I like the guy) he does remind us that we have a tendency to use the word ‘biblical’ as a lump of 4×2 to batter others into submission to our point of view. In reality we bring our own perspectives to the Bible and while we will endeavour to interpret it truly we may well end up with the ‘truth as we see it’.

If you read the gospels and listen to Jesus it seems that he comes to ‘preach good news to the poor’ and that it is almost impossible for the rich to enter the kingdom of heaven. He is pretty harsh on ‘the rich’ (whoever they may be…)

If the gospel is (as Scot McKnight summarises it) ‘Jesus is Lord’ then the news of his rule taking place will certainly be good news for the poor. They are going to get a much better deal than they have done and life is going to be much more attractive – perhaps even something like what the creator intended…

But for the rich…

‘Jesus is Lord’ can be a complicating statement, because to most of us who are rich that is not very good news… You see we tend to see ourselves as in control of our lives and destiny and Jesus wanting to stake a claim is hard to swallow.

Jesus never spoke of preaching ‘good news to the rich’, in fact if anything he preached ‘woe to you who are wealthy now because you have your reward in full’ (Luke 6:24) It has me reflecting this morning on the challenge of mission to the middle class west – where we are actually ridiculously rich beyond belief – even if we can’t see it.

The news of God’s kingdom coming may not be that exciting. The news of God restoring the world and dealing with poverty, sickness and sin may not ‘work’ for us because to deal with poverty means sharing what we hoard.

Perhaps that is why the gospel in middle classdom gets translated almost exclusively as ‘sins forgiven and eternity in heaven’ – a far more attractive package to the person who doesn’t want to resign control of their own life and possibly share their wealth…

I think the gospel is good news for all, but given our self centred western mindset it is difficult for us to see how there is any good news in life revolving less around us.

I found this quote on Stephen’s Said’s facebook today and it ties in well with our struggle to accept the gospel.

Christianity is a lifestyle—a way of being in the world that is simple, non-violent, shared, inclusive, and loving. We made it, however, into a formal established religion, in order to avoid the demanding lifestyle itself. One could then be warlike, greedy, racist, selfish, and vain at the highest levels of the church, and still easily believe that Jesus is “my personal Lord and Savior.” The world has no time for such silliness anymore. The suffering on Earth is too great.”

I picked this up at Scot McKnight’s but its actually by Ben Irwin – the gospel sketched for kids. I have to say I think this is one of the most helpful articulations for adults who need to have their understanding fleshed out to see the gospel as the whole story of God’s work in the world from the creation to the new creation rather than the truncated version that often gets preached in evangelistic messages.

I have read it a few times and love its simplicity. I might read it to my kids, but as an adult who didn’t ‘get’ this framing of the gospel for a long time I think it might be of value amongst us older folks as well. Ben wrote it after reading McKnight’s King Jesus Gospel

The King Jesus story

It all began with God.

God made everything you can see.

(And even some things you can’t see!)

God made the world to be his home.

Then God made the very first people

so he could share his home with them.

God gave them a beautiful garden to live in.

He gave them a job to do:

take care of God’s good world;

rule it well on his behalf.

But they didn’t.

They didn’t like doing things God’s way

and not theirs.

So they took what wasn’t theirs,

and tried to rule the world their own way.

They tried to be God.

So the very first people

had to leave the garden.

They had to leave God’s presence.

Without God,

they began to die.

But God never gave up on his people.

He still loved them.

He promised to fix the world

so he could share it with them again.

But it wouldn’t be easy.

Everyone who’s ever lived,

from the very first people

all the way to you and me,

have gone the same way.

We’ve all taken what isn’t ours.

We’ve all tried to do things our way.

We’ve all tried to be little gods.

Things kept getting worse.

But God had a plan.

God chose a man named Abraham.

He gave Abraham children,

and grandchildren,

and great-grandchildren.

God turned Abraham into a great nation

and called it “Israel.”

God made Israel his chosen people.

They would help him fix the world.

God went with Israel

everywhere they went.

When they were slaves in another country,

God remembered them.

When they were treated badly,

God rescued them.

God gave Israel a home.

He gave them a job to do:

show the world what it’s like

to be God’s people.

God gave Israel priests

to teach them how to love God.

He gave them laws

to teach them how to love each other.

God told his people,

“If you follow me,

you’ll have a good life.

You’ll get to help me fix the world.”

But Israel didn’t listen.

God’s people didn’t want God

telling them how to live.

They wanted to do things their way,

just like the very first people — just like all of us.

God’s people didn’t want God

to be their king.

They wanted a king of their own,

a person just like them.

So God gave Israel a king.

Then another king.

And another.

Some were good. Some were bad.

Mostly, the kings did whatever they wanted.

They took what wasn’t theirs.

They ruled Israel for themselves, not God.

They tried to be little gods.

So God sent prophets

to tell the kings and their people

that there is only one true King;

there is only one true God.

But the kings and their people wouldn’t listen.

So they had to leave their home.

Other nations came and conquered Israel

and carried God’s people off by force.

Israel lost everything.

Then there was silence.

Years went by.

No one heard from God anymore.

Until . . .

something new happened.

God sent someone:

a person just like us, yet different.

Someone who could rule the world

the way God wanted.

God sent Jesus,

his chosen one,

to rescue Israel

and fix the world.

Jesus did good wherever he went.

He healed the sick.

He fed the hungry.

He rescued people from all sorts of problems.

Jesus did everything God wanted,

but it wasn’t what God’s people wanted.

They didn’t want Jesus to be their king.

They didn’t want the kind of kingdom he would bring.

So one day, some powerful people decided

they’d better put a stop to Jesus

before he took their power away.

So they arrested Jesus.

They stripped him naked.

They nailed him to a cross

and watched him die.

Jesus didn’t fight back.

He didn’t raise a sword;

he didn’t even raise a finger.

And so the powerful people

thought they had won.

They thought they had beaten

God’s chosen one.

But there was something they didn’t understand.

They didn’t know that Jesus died

not because he had to,

but because he chose to.

They didn’t know that they,

like all of us, deserved to die

for all the times we’ve gone our way

and ruined God’s good world.

They didn’t know a servant’s death

was the only way to live.

They didn’t know a servant’s cross

was the only crown worth having.

The one true King had come

and given his life for the world.

But they didn’t even know.

No one did.

But then God —

the one who made the world,

rescued Israel,

and sent Jesus —

raised him from the dead.

Lots of people saw him alive

before he went back to God.

But Jesus didn’t just rise from the dead.

He defeated death,

so it wouldn’t have power over us any longer.

God gave us the King we needed,

a King who loves, forgives,

and changes everyone who comes to him.

This King gave us a job to do:

love each other with all we’ve got.

Because that’s how we show others

what it’s like to be loved by God.

That’s how we show others

what kind of King we serve.

For now, the world is still broken,

still waiting to be fixed.

But someday, our King is coming back

to rescue us and share his home with us again.

Never again

will anyone take what isn’t theirs.

Never again

will anyone ruin God’s good world.

God will live with us,

and we will rule the world for him.

Forever.

(For Elizabeth)