Humans, men and women

 It is always worth remembering that men and woman are human beings. That’s probably most of most of the interesting and important stuff about them.

But men and women are obviously not identical nor interchangeable.

Differences between men and women might be influenced by creation and / or the fall.

They might be a matter of nature and / or nurture, creation and / or culture.

We ought to distinguish between narrative and normative, description and prescription: is and ought.

There could be questions of principle and application. Or of a rule and its situational expressions.

There could be exceptions.

Valid generalisations are valid, as generalisations. If we concluded that (in general) men are physically stronger than women, that doesn’t mean that Sally couldn’t box my ears.

1 Corinthians 2v6-end - a handout

 

1 Corinthians 2v6-end (page 1145)

 

TRUE SPIRITUAL WISDOM FROM GOD

 

“Nones”

 

Spirituality / Wisdom / Power / Rule

 

In response to divisions and rivalries in the church (1:10-17; 3:1-4)

 

Bold claims (e.g. v6, v16b)

 

The message of true wisdom (the good news of the cross) Paul, the apostles and all faithful Christians proclaim is…

 

… not the wisdom of this age (v6)

 

… nor of the rulers of this age (v6)

 

… secret / was hidden (v7)

 

… foreordained for our glory (v7)

 

… not understood by the rulers of this age (v8)

 

… inconceivable to human beings, but revealed by God’s free gift of the Spirit in Christ (vv9-16)

 

So…

 

Ø  Receive this wisdom (the work of the Spirit needed! - vv10-15)

 

Ø  Live according to this wisdom (without boasting, rivalry and division etc. and…)

 

Christianity: Left or Right?

 It’s hard to escape politics at the moment.

I’ve found myself wondering about left and right. What do those categories mean? Are they useful?  

Maybe we might compare the conservative (right?) and the progressive (left?). Does the Christian faith line up with either?

Christians are, in a way, fundamentally conservative. They receive creation as a gift to be preserved. We don’t make or define ourselves. What we have we receive. We conform to the reality which the Creator confers on us. Christianity is in a sense a Tradition to which we are to be loyal and which we are to hand on.

But Christians also think we world has gone radically wrong. They think change – a revolution – is needed. We are not for conserving this world order as it is. We are for the lifting up of the humble poor and for the over-turning of the tables of the money changers. Jesus has already brough in a New Creation. There is a new power at work in the world, new life, transformation. Our prayer is that earth might be more like heaven. We are progressing to an end. There is an arc to history which ends with the Kingdom come in all its fullness.

Christianity, then, is both profoundly conservative and radically progressive.

1 Corinthians 1v18-2v5 handout

1 Corinthians 1:18-2:5 (page 1144)

 

THE CHRIST-CRUCIFIED REVOLUTION:

 

Not words of wisdom (1v17) but the word of the cross (1v18)

 

 

Divisions and rivalries (1:10-17)

 

 

 

§  The apparent weakness and foolishness of the cross to those who are perishing, but its power and wisdom to those who are being saved (1vv18-25) [1^st person plural: we]

 

 

 

God’s revolutionary cross-shaped wise and powerful purposes proved by:

 

 

(1)   The recipients of the gospel who were mostly unimpressive (1vv26-31) [2^nd person plural: you]

 

 

(2)   The preacher / preaching of the gospel which were mostly unimpressive (2vv1-5) [1^st person singular: I]

 

 

 

Ø Who / what will you boast / glory / rejoice / put your faith in? (1v31; 2v5)

 

 

Louise Perry and Mary Harrington on left and right, life and death

 

I know next to nothing about online feminism, Louise Perry and Mary Harrington, but I found their wide-ranging discussion on The Maiden Mother Matriarch podcast 84 ‘The Trouble with Modernity’ interesting. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n6qDj_YyVoc

 

We might say that modern people tend to be a bit like ancient magicians. They think they can master the world by technology. They do not welcome the world as it is with all its givens. They try to control and tame it.

 

But birth and death alike are things that happen to us. They are done to us and we must receive and endure them. We do not do them.

 

This seems intolerable to the modern person. We medicate our pain and eliminate it. We do not think that suffering is compatible with human dignity. So we choose when and how to give birth, and increasingly in the modern West we choose not to. And we say we must choose when and how to die, and be assisted if our suffering is too great.

 

(All this got me thinking about the cross too: voluntarily chosen suffering which is both a death and a birth).  

 

Perhaps this is a fundamental difference between left and right, progressive and conservatives. Do we think there are natural givens which we must accept, or is everything (life, death and the in-between) open to revolution? Do we receive the world on its own terms, or do we use it aggressively, seeking to master, control, change and tame it for our own ends?

 

 

If

 

From The Rectory

 

At the Warbleton and District History Group in June, we had an fascinating talk on the life and family of Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936), and his home, Batemans, Nr. Burwash. Despite a full hour, there wasn’t much chance to talk about his writing, so I thought I’d say something here about his most famous poem, which has also been voted the nation’s favourite, If. You know: “If you can keep your head when all about you / Are losing theirs and blaming it on you… / If you can fill the unforgiving minute / With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run, / Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it, / And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!” Refresh your memory online e.g. at: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/46473/if---

 

Leave aside for a moment the hot topics of masculinity, toxic or healthy, and think about the poem as a vision of human flourishing. There is certainly much to admire: a calm level-headedness, trust, waiting, goodness, thinking, truth, resilience, perseverance, diligence, industry.

 

But I can’t help thinking that the whole thing is impossibly Stoical and far too buttoned up. To contemporary ears, the poem sounds decidedly repressed. Kipling certainly reflects Christian virtues such as turning the other cheek and doing to others as you would have them do to you. But I think the Bible would be rather more realistic about Triumph and Disaster. They’re not the same and life often hurts – sometimes terribly. There are times to rejoice and times to mourn. Many of the Bible writers find themselves lamenting and crying out to God. They don’t just sail serenely on and pick themselves up for another throw of the dice.  

 

If holds out a vision, but it gives us little help as to how that might be achieved. Frankly, I find it impossible and – as I say – not wholly desirable.

 

The biblical book of Proverbs is advice from a father to a son. He is warned to avoid the adulterous woman, Lady Folly. With all her promises and supposed charm, she seeks to lure him to unfaithfulness which will be his ruin. Instead he is to marry Lady Wisdom. Proverbs tells us that the fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom. God seems entirely lacking from Kipling’s poem, but of course knowing God as our loving heavenly Father makes all the difference to how we think and live. Although this is a hard truth to grasp, Christians believe that God is on the throne of the universe and all things (triumph or disaster) come to us from his loving hand. Life is sometimes horrific and horrible. But Christians believe that we can build our lives on the solid rock of Jesus Christ, who is an immovable foundation and shelter, through all the storms and “chances” of life. The cross shows us that God loves to use even the worst evil for good. God exalts the humble and lifts up the broken hearted. When all seems death and despair, there is resurrection hope.  

 

Jesus said as he faced his own death, that it is possible to trust in God with an untroubled heart, even if you are betrayed and facing death, or bereavement. As all Jesus’ disciples’ hopes are dashed, their dreams in tatters, Jesus says that they can have a peace and a joy, even, which the unbelieving world cannot give, understand, or take away. Christians are not promised an easy, charmed life this side of Glory, but they can have the kind of secret inner security to which Kipling encourages us to aspire. They key is not our own fortitude, but that Jesus holds us fast.

 

Elements of Kipling’s heroic vision need to be combined with a sense of our humble dependence: our weakness, our finitude and, frankly, our many and frequent failures – some of them deliberate. The Bible’s message to us is more than: Man Up! There is grace and forgiveness in The Man Jesus Christ, who alone had a perfect trust in God. Life will sometimes buffet and batter us. But we have a Saviour who has gone before us and who can bring us through. We won’t always sail on through life placidly unaffected. But we need not be anxious. Rather than pressure to live up to an impossible standard, God invited us to cast our worries on him, knowing that he cares for us.

 

The Revd Marc Lloyd