The Conflict of Light and Dark

Ever since the first episode of Star Wars lit up the cinema screens (that would be Star Wars iv), and audiences almost universally had a sharp intake of breath, theological controversy has dogged the heels of the saga.

I clearly recall learned Christian articles, and a few books, that were written around the time, as dismissing the concept of a ‘Force’ being made up of the ‘Light’ and the ‘Darkness’, in a constant struggle to bring a ‘Balance’, as dodgy Eastern, Yin & Yang philosophy.  Pretty much all of orthodox Christian thought dismissed Star Wars’  theological universe as un-Christian, un-biblical and, well let’s say, spiritually unhealthy.

But, as a Christian, of some 50 years at time of writing, the debate has long intrigued me.  From an early age, I have always enjoyed Sci-Fi: Asimov, Arthur C. Clark, Van Vogt, John Wyndham, Star Trek, etc., the list is long and glorious, but when I became a Christian in 1966 at one of the Billy Graham meetings in London, Sci-Fi was laid aside as the Bible became my main reading. 

Later (1980) my wife and I went to Bible College, and the irony is that the intense Bible studies led me to places in the Bible along paths less trod; places rarely ventured, and verses rarely, if ever, preached upon.  And it was here, in the somewhat dusty corners of the book of Isaiah (45^th Chapter, 7^th verse) that I was effectively smacked in the face by this: 

I form the light and create darkness,

I bring prosperity and create disaster;

I, the Lord (aka God), do all these things.

I underlined the words in my Bible, knowing there was something contained within them, something extraordinary, which I couldn’t get my head round at the time, and even now, all these years later, still rocks me to the core of my faith. I tried to shut them out, but they kept coming back to challenge me, and I kept trying to ignore them.

The reason I desperately tried to ignore these words in Isaiah was because of this date, some three years earlier: Tuesday 27th December 1977, the day Star Wars was released in the UK.  Naturally, when it came to our local cinema in Essex, some time later, early 1978 I think, we (my wife and I) went to see it, and, yes, we had a sharp intake of - w0w - at the opening scene. 

Of course, the film was amazing.  Loved every moment of it.  Acknowledged the Yin & Yang philosophy, ignored it, as it went against the last 11 years of Christian teaching I had received, and got on with life, hoping the next film wouldn’t be too long in coming.

This Christian teaching (I am no theologian by the way) can loosely be summed up as follows:  the Lord God is high over all, God is good and God created everything and is in control of everything.  Evil (aka Sin, Darkness) entered the world because an Angel, Lucifer, aka The Devil, rebelled against God and he and his followers were banished to Earth from Heaven.  To sort out the resulting mess, God sent his Son, Jesus, to die for all our Sin.  All those who follow Jesus will be saved and live forever.  Yes, I know we could discuss this for a century or two, and many have and do, but let’s move on.

Indeed let’s move on, and go back to the future (another great film!), and those words in Isaiah’s book.  ‘I form the light and create darkness,  I bring prosperity and create disaster; I, the Lord (aka God), do all these things.’

Brain freeze, red alert, DEFCON 5........

As a child grows, and as they eventually make their own way in the world, they will discover for themselves what they believe to be true about everything; the world, the universe, body, mind spirit and soul. Sometimes they will naturally rebel against the core beliefs of those who raised them.  I found that, being faced with something which is in the Bible, but fundamentally shakes that core belief, leads to conflicting possibilities:  If the Bible is true, then it conflicts with everything I had been taught about everything.  So I choose to ignore that which caused this fundamental conflict.

But, as I have said, it kept on coming back over the years, and still does. 

Here then is the tough bit.  If, as Star Wars’ philosophy, which is basically rooted in Eastern Philosophy, contends, there is a ‘Force’ and that there is a ‘Darkness’ and there is a ‘Light’, and these two ‘sides’, Light and Darkness, are in constant conflict, do not those words begin to look very much like those words from the Bible’s book of Isaiah?  Are they not, indeed, saying the same thing, just under different names?

This view, if we go with it for a moment, makes a lot more sense of what we see and experience of the world around us:  the goodness balanced against the badness, The Light balanced against the Dark.  It also starts to put a different perspective on why doesn’t God simply stop all the bad things from happening?  Why?  If there is the need for a world both of Light and Darkness, in the same way that there is Day and Night, if this need is fundamentally part of the whole thing, then the significance might just blow all our home-brewed Christian theologies and philosophies clear out of the waters of our fundamental Christian belief.

There is an interesting moment in the first Matrix film.  Morpheus is confronted by Agent  Smith.

Agent Smith: “Did you know that the first Matrix was designed to be a perfect human world? Where none suffered, where everyone would be happy. It was a disaster. No one would accept the program. Some believed we lacked the programming language to describe your perfect world. But I believe that, as a species, human beings define their reality through suffering and misery.”

Maybe we are, at a deep and fundamentally level, only able to function within  a world of conflict between Light and Dark.  Is this what those shocking words in Isaiah mean?

Where then is Christian faith?  I still, in the face of this, deeply believe in Jesus as my Saviour.  I still believe there is a God, who made the Universe, and who loves me at a level I have no hope of truly understanding.  

Everything I have experienced in the last 50 years proves, deeply in my very being and soul, that God loves me.  Do I understand it all, how it all fits together and what are the deeper implications? No, and I would venture to suggest that after some 2000 years of debate and learned theological discourse, of myriad writings, of a million songs and of untold questioning, that no-one else does either. 

In the Bible, The Book of Hebrews, 11^th Chapter 1^st verse are these words - Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.  

The whole chapter is about what can be done, and was done, because of faith, even when people didn’t understand what was going on and could only see darkness rather than light.

And that is what faith is really about, isn’t it?

  

Making Me Cross

I am a Christian, and I have been since 1966, but I don’t wear a cross. Never have done. Wearing a cross is not a requirement of the Christian Faith. In fact, Christianity is not concerned with the wearing of certain garments or jewellery as a symbol of that faith. We need to be clear, before moving forward, that Faith and Religion (in its many Christian forms), are not the same thing, and much of the religious trappings of garments, vestments, etc., which surround Christianity are man-made and therefore irrelevant to this argument.

What is relevant, in the UK especially, is that there is a clear, deliberate, cowardly and mendacious policy emerging within both personal, corporate and governmental society, to marginalise and undermine the Christian Faith and those who hold to that faith. This is currently focussing on the wearing of crosses as a symbol of a person’s faith.

Now we have already said that wearing a cross is not a requirement of the Christian Faith, so where is the conflict? The conflict is occurring because, whilst the wearing of the cross is not a faith requirement, it is a tradition that goes back more than 2000 years to the very heart of the Christian Faith; the Crucifixion of Christ. From that time the cross, as a symbol of Christianity, was forever implanted within the heart of believers. It became the prime, the foremost and most important icon of everything that Christianity means, of what the Christian faith is, at its heart, and what it will always be about both philosophically, religiously, ideologically and personally.

Which brings us back to the argument. If a Christian chooses to wear a cross, whether as a necklace, badge, brooch perhaps even as a tattoo, they do so as a testimony to what they personally believe, as a testimony to their faith; the Christian Faith. That it is not a requirement has no bearing on the fact that the cross is what it is; a 2000 year old, deeply rooted symbol of Christian Faith, and to strike at its significance, to say that the wearing of the cross means nothing because it is a not requirement of the faith, is to insult 2000 years (and counting!) of Christian tradition, 2000 years of faith and 2000 years of deep, deep significance.

Those who dismiss the cross thus, are insulting 2000 years of Christian faith, all those who would call themselves Christians and the basic belief of Christianity; that Christ died on a cross for the redemption of the human race.

The Infection of Christian Faith.

The recent High Court ruling against Eunice & Owen Johns, where the judge regarded Christian faith as an 'infection', continues to be extremely disturbing. Although the wording was later, 'regretted', it was said in one of the highest courts in the land, and indicates worrying prejudicial, and legal, bias against the Christian faith in the UK.

It is only a very small step away from the rhetoric employed by the Nazi party in 1930s Germany, regarding the Jews. In many Nazi writings, the Jews were referred to as an infection. An infection that needed to be 'cured'.

Horrific and unthinkable as it is, has the judiciary in the UK, made a step along that road, in its decision to deny Eunice & Owen Johns the legal freedom to foster children?

If this were an isolated incident, we could, perhaps, simply regard it as the mendacious ramblings of a semi-senile judge for whom retirement should have beckoned some years ago. But this is not an isolated incident.

In March 2010, a Christian nurse, Shirley Chaplin, was barred from work for wearing a cross. She won support from seven senior Anglican bishops. Dr George Carey, said this was a fresh example of discrimination against their faith.

Interestingly, but unsurprisingly, The NHS trust involved allows exemptions from its uniform policy to other faiths, including allowing Muslim nurses to wear headscarves.

In October 2006, Nadia Eweida, a Christian employee of British Airways, was asked to cover up a necklace which depicted a Christian cross. She was wearing the necklace on the outside of her uniform, contravening BA's uniform policy, and yet Sikh and Muslim employees are not prevented from wearing religious garments at work.

There are numerous other examples where, in small, but increasingly common ways, Christian Faith is being marginalised.

The problem is not confined to the UK. Across Europe, Christians find that expressing their faith as part of their everyday life, in public, his become more difficult.

A new report has voiced concern over the ability of Christians in Europe to publicly express their faith.

The Nov 2010 report from the Vienna-based Observatory of Intolerance and Discrimination Against Christians in Europe, warns that discriminatory laws were preventing the equal exercise of freedom in the areas of speech, conscience and religion, while the introduction of equality legislation was leading to “side-effect discrimination”, against Christians, and that, “Hate speech legislation has a tendency to indirectly discriminate against Christians, criminalising core elements of Christian teaching”. read the article here

A here are a couple of other articles.

Street preacher wins wrongful arrest case

Council worker looses appeal

What therefore should we say to this. Religious persecution, in a sense, comes with the territory of faith. Indeed, history records that at various times, different branches of the Christian faith were at each other's throats. In the 16th Century, Protestants and Catholics were, by turn, burning each other at the stake. Indeed, religious persecution has been, and continues to be, so wide-spread that countless books have been written and websites put online.

What makes the events of the last few years deeply significant, is that the marginalisation of the Christian faith is taking place in, what used to be called, a Christian country whose very basis of law is from the Bible, the Christians' Holy book. And also, that the marginalisation is isolated to the Christian faith; no other UK faith group being treated in such a way.

This is completely unacceptable. This concerted marginalisation, persecution and anti-Christian discriminatory ideology must end.

The DEDD Blog calls on the Government, the UK judiciary, and faith leaders to take action to end this situation.

Faith Journey

A piece I wrote on the Faith Journeys website.

It's the early 60s. The Beatles were the new kids on the Merseysound block, I had just started an engineering apprenticeship and had met my first Christian. Of course, I didn't know he was a Christian. As far as I was concerned he was a religious nut who blathered on and on about God and Jesus. However, although I didn't realise it at the time, meeting him put my feet firmly on the faith path, and my first destination was just over the horizon.

Two years later he had nagged me into submission and I went along with him, and a whole coachload of young people, to hear Billy Graham at Earls Court, London. It is 1966, and reluctantly I find myself standing in front of the charismatic American saying the sinner's prayer. The Holy Spirit had fished another one from the waves.

Going to the small Brethren hall for the first time was a cultural shock. I managed a few weeks, but I didn't own a suit, and I felt uncomfortable in this weird environment. I left and joined the young conservatives (not such a cultural shock!) learned guitar, formed a folk duo and managed to avoid God stuff for a year. But the Holy Spirit still had his fish-hook in me and began reeling me in. The folk duo split and the attraction of the Young Conservatives faded. So after a year of invites to a young people Bible study, I RSVP'd a, yes, and got back on the faith-track.

It was at that Bible study I began to learn what being a Christian was about. It was also the place where I met my future wife,Jan. At the time of writing (2010) we have been married 38 years! Nice one God!

The next few years saw me involved in a coffee-bar evangelistic team, a couple of local churches, getting engaged, an outreach rock band, getting married, buying a house and then.....

..... all our furniture is stacked around us. We're sleeping on the floor of an old house in Birmingham. Our house is sold, the bridge is burnt and we're at Bible College. How did we get here? Another destination along the path, and this path is straight up a really steep learning curve. The journey along this bit of the path was, and remains, 30 years later, a priceless spiritual experience at the feet of men and women of God who led us to places we would never have visited in a local church situation.

Faith in God is easier when things are going well. Real faith grows when you have nowhere to turn, except toward God. Many times at College we find ourselves praying that our Father will meet our different needs. Money to buy food; we never go hungry, healings, guidance, spiritual insight, courage.

The water of a number of different jobs and different churches flows under the bridges over the next few years. We now have a Son, Joel. We work together at a Christian outdoor centre and then we move to the North-West, to the Wirral, and I work for a few different Christian charities. In the local church we belong to, we are involved in home-group leadership, diaconate, worship group, worship leading, preaching, teaching, sunday school. The steep learning curve in Birmingham pays dividends.

Then the local church falls on hard times. There are three huge leadership splits and traumas. We wonder should we stay. God says stay. We stay, but often find ourselves caught in the middle as people take sides. But from the middle, sometimes, the view is clearer. We are able to see things others don't, but it doesn't prevent the traumas, but God does reveal some of the spiritual truth behind what is happening. At the end of it all God says it is time to go. We join with the ex-Pastor building a new fellowship; a fellowship which will do things differently. The difference lasts a few months. It isn't working. We leave.

But now our pathway starts to lead in a strange direction. For the first time in decades we realise our path is leading away from the institutionalised church we have been used to, have been an integral part of, and could never imagine being outside of. And this is where we find ourselves now, still continuing along the path of faith, still following Jesus, still fellowshipping with other Christians, but not aligned to a building, denomination or institution. We are openly involved with the body of Christ - which is what 'Church' really is - but not behind brick walls, not under some man-made idea of 'church'.

The journey continues. Already there have been new and interesting destinations, but the ultimate destination is still over the horizon. But in the dark sky of this fallen world, its glow is now brighter as each day passes, and we keep our eyes fixed in that one direction. End of the path? The New Jerusalem!