Washing With Wine

Many people are increasingly dissatisfied with mainstream Christianity, and worldwide there is a hunger for a new reality. Questions are being asked about what we believe, and why; about how we express and live our faith. This article looks at how reduced and distorted ‘truth’ has opened the door to a legalism that is killing faith, and suggests that we need to rediscover the heart of what it means to be a Christian - a relationship with Jesus.

In this article (much too short to do justice to this subject) I would like to ask the question: ‘What is truth?’ Of course this is not the first time this question has surfaced. It was asked in an exasperated fashion, maybe with a sneer, by the Roman governor Pontius Pilate who ironically had, at that very moment, a man standing in front of him who claimed to be the truth. This simple picture illustrates what I want to suggest here: that truth can only be understood if it is based in relationship, and worked out through relationship.

Many people I meet these days are asking questions about how we should behave as Christians, how church should be expressed, and so on. The old ways of doing things do not seem to fit any more. So, as the director of a ministry aiming to help creative people, I write this to try and help my friends who are artists, musicians, and actors, make sense of this world in which we live; a world - at least when it comes to Christianity - of constriction, where the understanding of what it means to be a believer is reduced to a very narrow set of paradigms, or a very narrow interpretation of acceptable behaviour. Not a very nice place to live, particularly if God has given you a creative spirit.

The question ‘What is truth?’ is, of course, strangely alien to a post-modern world that claims to deny the existence of objective truth, and as you read this you may feel that I, too, am rejecting absolutes. But what I am rejecting are the caricatures of truth that have become common currency in our Christian speech and behaviour: reductions that have either trapped us in cage of conformity - the Christian equivalent of political correctness - or made us feel guilty for no longer feeling part of a Christian world that seems increasingly alien. Maybe you also find yourself, like Bruce Cockburn, pacing the cage? My prayer is that by understanding, at least in part, the answer to the question of truth, we will then be able to answer the question made famous by Francis Schaeffer: ‘How then shall we live?’

‘All the teaching of my youth seems useless to me’

This particular journey started for me when I read George MacDonald’s biography (William Raeper, George MacDonald, Lion Books, 1987). MacDonald (1824-1905) is one of my heroes, having written some extraordinary fantasy books in late Victorian times, as well as being a theologian and philosopher. He resolutely refused to conform to traditions that conflicted with his beliefs, this often getting him into trouble, or restricting his ability to earn money. Poverty and ill-health were his constant companions for most of his life, yet he was friend to many a Victorian intellectual, including Ruskin, Lewis Carroll, Mark Twain and Lady Byron. He was raised a strict Calvinist in Scotland, but later wrote to his father:

It is the candour of his writing, combined with creative thinking, that attracts me so much to his work; a man described by C.S. Lewis thus: ‘I hardly know any other writer who seems closer, or more continually close, to the Spirit of Christ himself.’ I was therefore taken aback when I read this statement by George MacDonald on the doctrine of penal substitution (that Christ was punished as a wrongdoer for the sins of the human race in order that God could reclaim the souls of the lost). He called it:

He went on to say:

Strong words indeed.

Caricatures of truth

This statement challenged my thinking. I asked myself: what do I believe? What do I really believe? I then discovered that, 150 years later, Steve Chalke also got into trouble in his book ‘The Lost Message of Jesus’ for suggesting that the death of Jesus was often portrayed as little more than ‘cosmic child abuse’ - an angry God demanding the blood of an innocent in order to appease his wrath. This was perhaps an unfortunate turn of phrase, but Steve’s point - and I agree with him - is that the wonderful story of salvation is often reduced to such a distorted caricature that many are unable to accept it, and those that do accept it grow up with wrong concepts about what God is really like. It is not the real Good News that people are unable to accept, but the distortions and caricatures (the focus on one aspect of truth at the expense of others), often presented as the whole truth. And these distortions, these caricatures, mean that we end up with systems, expressions and practices of the faith which are equally distorted. It is why many people are questioning how we ‘do church’. Consider for example the story that Jesus told about the wedding banquet where invited guests gave various excuses for not coming. The invitation is thrown wider to include random people off the street, and eventually the instruction is given: ‘And the master said to the slave, “Go out into the highways and along the hedges, and compel them to come in, so that my house may be filled.”’ (Luke 14:23.) The small phrase ‘compel them to come in’ helped to justify the use of torture to force people to become Christians - the Inquisition. I wonder what phrases we are using today that will horrify future generations?

Reductions of truth

Focusing on one phrase, or one aspect of truth, is one issue. Another is the attempt to simplify truth so that it can be easily understood. We live in a culture where it is common to try and reduce complex ideas to simple sound-bites to make them more media-friendly. Christianity is not immune from this trend, in fact it has been going on for two thousand years. Our faith is full of such reductions where truth is simplified to make it understandable, and in the process becomes (at best) dogma, and (at worst) heresy. It has got us into a lot of trouble in the past, and will do so in the future unless we can become more humble and open-minded.

There are are two main reasons why we like to reduce truth to simplified and oft-repeated mantras. The first is that we do not like to admit that there may be alternative readings of the same truth because it challenges the way we live. We base our lives on cherished concepts that shape our thinking and behaviour: to be told that these might not be as reliable as we think is unsettling, and so we choose to dismiss alternatives as false. Let me give you an example of this. Many of us grew up with the concept of Sunday being a sabbath day - it was a day to be devoted to God, a day to be kept ‘holy’, a day of supposed rest from our labours (though often we found ourselves exhausted from church work and going to work on Monday for a rest). The Puritan influence which informed evangelicalism led to many prohibitions: in Victorian England, for example, public parks were shut on Sundays so that ordinary people would not be tempted away from church; my mother tells me that early in her life knitting on a Sunday was prohibited, and anything amounting to fun was definitely not allowed. So Sunday was a severe day, a joyless round of meetings. (In passing, it is worth noting that workers in Victorian times only had one day off a week - Sunday - and therefore could seldom visit public parks, a leisure activity therefore reserved for the well-to-do who could afford time out during the week.) Contrast this with the spirit of the sabbath law. When God said ‘Remember the sabbath day and keep it holy’ it’s as if he is saying: ‘Listen: you only have to work six days a week. It’s not good for you to work all the time - take a day off! I’ll make sure I provide for you.’ So taking a sabbath rest is really to say to God: ‘OK, I’ll take a day off. I believe you’ll provide for me.’ The sabbath day is God’s gift to us; our response is a faith response which admits our dependence on him for provision. I believe this kind of interpretation lies behind Jesus’ comments in Mark 2: ‘The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.’

The spirit of the law

This illustrates a deeper truth. Laws are only truly effective when a society agrees with the sprit of the law. If, for whatever reason, people see the law as an ass, they will constantly try to find ways around it: so in countries where corrupt leaders are building palaces, black markets develop because people see no good reason to pay tax. When it is just the letter of the law that is being obeyed, crisis is not far away. It seems to me that Christianity is facing just this situation in that the expectations being placed on us as to how we behave, how we relate to society and how we structure ourselves, are no longer rooted in what we really believe. The evidence of this is a growing ‘black market’ church, as people vote with their feet against established religion.

Tinted glasses

The second reason we reduce truth to caricature phrases is that we have all grown up in traditions which emphasise certain truths more than others, always returning to the same pet verses. Even now at conferences and meetings the same verses get quoted over and over again as if the rest of the book is of little consequence. The set of verses that is used will depend, of course, on which circles you are moving in, and what is ‘flavour of the month’. It is ironic, for example, that growing up I often heard Paul’s words quoted: ‘Everything should be done in a fitting and orderly way,’ as I came from a tradition that emphasised sober, analytical, unemotional behaviour. Yet the previous verse of the same passage - ‘Therefore, my brothers, be eager to prophesy, and do not forbid speaking in tongues (1 Cor.14) - was never, as I recall, mentioned. This verse belonged to the crazy black pentecostal church down the road.

We find it so hard to take off our denominational glasses and read the bible (or the world around us) with un-tinted lenses. Consider, for example, Paul’s oft-quoted statement ‘all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God’ which he uses in the context of arguing that it is not just the godless gentiles who are condemned, but also the unbelieving house of Israel who arrogantly claim to be Abraham’s children without really knowing God. But what about God’s view of Job: ‘There is no one on earth like him; he is blameless and upright, a man who fears God and shuns evil’? Or Noah: ‘Noah was a righteous man, blameless among the people of his time, and he walked with God’? (Gen.6:9.) So I wonder what God thought of Mahatma Ghandi or Nelson Mandela? Even the admirable reformation maxim sola scriptura - radical in its day because it brought balance to the over-emphasis on tradition - has become a reduced truth which now locks many into a mindset that does not allow for the active work of the Holy Spirit in today’s church, let alone world. The Bishop of Durham, Dr. N.T. Wright, in an article discussing Steve Chalke’s book and a recent publication Pierced For Our Transgressions, notes with frustration that:

Dr. Wright uses the illustration of a child’s join-up-the-dots picture: although we may have grasped certain truths, it’s possible that we’ve reached entirely the wrong conclusion by joining up the facts selectively in the wrong order - drawing a strange mutant animal instead of the intended rabbit. I suppose it is this that concerns me most at the moment: as I look around the Christian world in which I work as a musician and teacher, I am conscious that it seems a far cry from the world implied by the teaching of Jesus. For examples: Jesus said: ‘I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full’ (John 10:10) and yet most believers I talk to (and this is not an exaggeration) talk of being discouraged, depressed, ill, sad, tired, and so on. Where is this full life? Jesus encouraged us to be salt and light in the world, but many Christians I meet are fearful of making any kind of relationship with unbelievers, inept at inter-personal relationships, and basically a bit weird! If we are walking advertisements for the fact that we have the best news in the world, something is wrong! If we claim to be followers of Jesus Christ, why is there so much back-biting, criticism and schism? (For example the 1988 Yearbook of American and Canadian Churches identifies 220 denominations in North America alone.) Why is it that church services often leave me feeling frustrated rather than encouraged? Why is it that control and manipulation is endemic in the Christian church? As someone said recently: we have spent too long trying to get people into the kingdom instead of demonstrating the kingdom. If what is being demonstrated at present represents Christianity, it should not surprise us that faith is in decline.

Terrible impotence in a warm world

Having accepted not only reduced versions of the truth, but also having limited the truth pick-list to those things we feel able to accept (and possibly having joined them up in the wrong order), we are left with a very distorted and much emasculated faith, incapable of producing vibrant and creative believers, and incapable of demonstrating the kingdom of God. Such a distorted and reduced faith has a carcegenic effect on the believer, eating at the heart of identity, of personhood, and robbing the believer of the ability to function in fulness. The evidence of this is clear when we see how little impact the present day church is having on society, but this is just the symptom of a deeper issue: that of individual believers who have been robbed of their true identity. As Walter Brueggemann puts it:

In other words, people are in some kind of prison which does not allow them to grow up and fulfill their potential. Brueggemann says that this could be understandable if it was merely down to worldly ideologies, but it isn’t - distorted faith is also to blame:

Creative and prophetic people, who see things as they might be, not as they are, feel particularly constrained - even unwelcome - in a system that denies them freedom of movement. I sympathise with the Welsh poet, R.S. Thomas in ‘Song of the Year’s Turning’ who looked around at the religion of his day, and described it thus:

The reason I am writing this article is that I, and many of my creative friends, feel this ‘terrible impotence in a warm world’. The fact that we feel this gives me hope, because those who recognise a problem can also be effective agents of change. We need, at this critical time in history, creative believers who can envisage an alternative reality and cry out: ‘It doesn’t have to be this way!’

It is time for us to challenge many of our pre-conceptions, cherished beliefs and practices. It is as if the road of faith needs re-surfacing, and we need one of those big scraper machines to take us back to the foundations. I take courage from the fact that many people world-wide feel the same way, and as in Exodus chapter 2, where the corporate cry of those in Egyptian slavery came to God, so I believe our corporate cry has come to God’s attention, and he also is taking steps to bring us out of captivity. The season is changing, and artists, musicians, actors, and preachers have a key role in bringing about change.

When truth becomes law

Before I suggest some ways forward, note that the reduction of truth raises another serious problem. When we draw a circle around our beliefs and call them ‘the truth’, we are effectively saying that everything outside the circle is either not a core belief, or, at worst, a lie. The implication - whether it is voiced or not - is that to be a true believer you must also believe the same set of beliefs that is inside my circle. We see this practiced regularly, particularly when someone experiences a particular touch from God, or discovers a new revelation about him: pretty soon sermons are being preached about how you too should have the same experience. You will note that in the last two sentences the dreaded words ‘should’ and ‘must’ are used, and before you know it, what is meant to be an encouragement becomes a law - yet another burden to feel guilty about. For example I recently listened to a talk by David Wilkerson (available on youtube) tearfully lamenting the lack of anguish in Christians today. He passionately (and emotionally) states that any ministry not born out of anguish is not really worth having. The message is clear: ‘you should feel anguish if you are a real Christian’. I have the greatest respect for David Wilkerson, a radical who has accomplished much for the kingdom, but I would challenge his premise that we should all feel anguish. Not everyone feels things in the same way. Not everyone has the same calling. If I treat my three children differently because they are all unique individuals, does not God do the same? I would even argue, with Steve Chalke, that the phrase ‘you must be born again’ does not apply in every case. How many Christians, like myself, who grew up in Christian families have been made to feel guilty that they couldn’t point to the day and hour when they became a believer? The fact that Jesus used this specific phrase with Nicodemus does not necessarily mean it applies in every case, and it is certainly not the whole truth about salvation. It would be equally valid, for example, for us to insist on people ‘drinking living water’ - wasn’t this also the advice of Jesus? Why is this not a law? My point is this: as soon as truth is circumscribed and fixed it becomes law. And as soon as law is preached, grace goes into retreat. Before long we find ourselves, like the Pharisees, tithing herbs and arguing about trivia instead of rejoicing in the freedom that Christ won for us. To use a phrase that I believe David Pawson coined: “If you let the nose of the bear into your tent, you’ll pretty soon have the whole bear in there with you.”

In Angel Mountain Ministries we have consciously adopted the creed used by the Moravian Brothers: “In essentials, unity; in non-essentials, tolerance; over all things, love”. But this begs the question: what is essential? It seems to me that the list of essentials has grown to almost Pharisaic proportions in modern Christianity, and that each of the main streams of faith has developed its own unique check-list of core beliefs. I believe the time has come to take a fresh look at what Jesus considered to be important, and to move forward away from law into grace.

Some Christians even have brains

I have talked about reading the bible without tinted glasses, but this does not mean that we throw away our common sense. I happen to believe that when God gave us the bible it was so that you and I - ordinary people - could use it to find the meaning of life. So it is disconcerting to see whole books written, and sermons preached, based on one verse taken entirely out of context, with no reference to historical context, the situation of the writer, who he was writing to, whether it is poetry or historical narrative, and so on. And often it’s a verse from the King James version where the language no longer means what it does today. Or someone looks up a word in a greek dictionary and assumes that every nuance of meaning can be inferred from the current context. This is such nonsense, but sadly very prevalent. It would be like me leaving the house with my cheque book and telling my wife: ‘I’m just going to the bank’, and she understanding it to mean I am going to sit by the river. We have extraordinary resources at our disposal: internet sites with multiple translations of the bible, commentaries, dictionaries and so on. Some Christians even have brains. And of course we can discuss things with each other. There is really no excuse for nonsense. (Sorry, I’m beginning to sound like a grumpy old man.)

Moving Forward

We have looked at how the selective use of truth, or the limitation of truth to comfortable sound-bites, has both restricted the message of the gospel, and opened the door to legalism. It has also resulted in a faith which sometimes bears little resemblance to that taught by Jesus. It is easy to look around and identify these problems. Let me suggest two things which will help us move forward.

Open source people

The first, an antidote to restricted truth, is to become open-source people. For those unfamiliar with this software term, let me explain. There is a trend these days for programmers to make the code for their programmes ‘open source’: it means anyone can download the source code (the programme) and add to it as long as they preserve the headers containing the original author’s details. (An example is the web browser Firefox.) The advantage of this approach is that other programmers can bolt on extra modules to add new functionality, or the code can be improved and modified. It means that the programme can become much more powerful and versatile as many people with different gifts and expertise work on it. A similar trend is happening in the music world: I’ve heard of bands putting the raw tracks from the studio recording of the latest hit on the web so that other musicians can download it and do their own mix, or add new sounds. It has also been suggested - as a final example - that those companies who will survive the storm of this recession will not be those who batten down the hatches and restrict their activities, but those who actively seek to encourage trade with others - even giving away free advice and so on. In other words, we don’t want to behave as Gollum in Lord of the Rings - holding on desperately to our ‘precious’ - but rather having an open-handed attitude to what we own, or - more importantly - what we think, allowing others to challenge our thinking. Paul’s comment about each prophet having a different piece of the picture applies here: it is as we share our understanding of truth that the rich tapestry of revelation will unfold. In this I am in agreement with my friends from the Northumbria Community who speak of the ‘heretical imperative’: that it is our duty to constantly challenge our beliefs to ensure they are worth holding.

You may now be thinking of Paul’s concern (Eph.4:14) about people being ‘blown about by every wind of doctrine’ - lost in a subjective sea of ideas - and I admit that there is that danger. But the question I have is this: what is better: to live a safe, boring, unfruitful life and never make a mistake, or to make the odd mistake but have fun and be fulfilled and fruitful? It is not as though we are throwing away our objective reference point, the bible, or that we are challenging the fundamentals of faith. It is simply that we allow that we (or our denomination) might not have a monopoly on the truth after all. All I am asking is that we try to take our tinted glasses off and begin using our brains again.

Debate is healthy

Consider further the potential for heresy: throughout history there have been those who have taken it upon themselves to act as God’s doctrine police, and inevitably it has been those with the most money and power who have won the day, rather than those who ‘accurately wield the word of truth’. Indeed for centuries the common people were not even allowed to read the bible in their own language and make up their own minds. It could even be argued that much of what we have come to believe as ‘the truth’ has its roots in false doctrines based more on the struggle for power and control than on the words of Jesus and his demonstration of servant leadership and the coming of the kingdom. This is such a contrast to the situation today when the internet allows debates across continents, and an article such as this may be read by hundreds of people worldwide within days. Does this open us up to more heresy? Well, my observation of blogs and posted articles is the opposite: healthy debate is more likely, and while it’s true that things can get blown out of proportion at times, it seems that the Holy Spirit is using our ability to communicate to bring many good ideas to the surface. Not only that, weird ideas do seem to be recognised for what they are, so I’m not sure we should be over-worried about taking a major theological wrong turn. My prayer is that this article might make people think and bring about positive change - we’ll see.

Finding somewhere else to live

Whilst some are talking about new expressions of church, or different ways to attract people to the faith, I suppose I am coming to the conclusion that something more radical is needed. Maybe this is just my own personal journey, and I certainly do not want to impose on you ideas that are simply for me, but I think that God is not so much interested in re-surfacing the road of faith as in taking us down a different route altogether. It’s not about rearranging the furniture in the old house, it’s about finding somewhere else to live. One reason which persuades me that this might be the case is that history does seem to be reaching a climax - you don’t need to be particularly perceptive to see that things are coming to a head. Against this backdrop there seems to be a large discrepancy between what the community of saints currently is, and the victorious images used in scripture which portray what the church will be. There also seems to me a ‘maturity gap’: how can people who are unable to work and relate together as a united group, or individuals who are unable to function as well-rounded mature adults, expect to be the movers and shakers in a future world order? And so I sympathise with how George MacDonald felt having to ‘learn over everything again from the beginning’.

If there is one message that seems to be coming over loud and clear in these days, it is the call to return to relationship. To turn our backs on legalism, control, hierarchical structure, and all the other ‘Roman’ ways of doing things, and to turn once again to the heart of faith - a loving relationship with both God and our fellow human beings. I believe we really do need to go through a repentance process - a turning away from law back to grace.

Washing with wine

As I re-read the story from John’s gospel when Jesus turned water into wine, I was struck by something I had not really seen before. Those six huge water jars were full of water meant for ceremonial washing, and washing would have played an important part at a wedding feast where ceremonial cleanliness was paramount. If guests had not been able to wash, for example, they would not have been able to eat the wedding meals (which probably went on for a week). Once Jesus had turned this water into wine, my guess is the host had a major problem: how do we wash? How do we satisfy the requirements of the law? Now John does refer to this as ‘the first of his miraculous signs’ (John 2:11). It was a sign that said: ‘Better to be transformed from the inside by drinking new wine than by trying to wash the outside to get clean.’ But I wondered if any of the guests continued to try and wash with this water which had now become wine?

I see this happening today as people try and use the scriptures as a book of law. But I say again: we were not designed to live under law, but by grace. As John Wimber put it - the bible is the menu, not the meal. Or as Jesus himself said to the legalists:

Please do not misunderstand me here. I am not criticising those of us (including myself) who study the bible and try to live by it; what I am saying is that it’s possible we are beginning to wash with wine - to demand that people adhere to external behavioural patterns, live their lives in a certain way and become little Christian clones - instead of drinking it. Christianity was never meant to be a religion of law, but a life of relationship.

The most important thing?

I am reminded of the time that Jesus asked a question of the legalists of his day: ‘What, in your view, is the most important thing?’ The answer he received was:

In Matthew 22 Jesus says: ‘On these two commandments depend the whole Law and the Prophets.’ For a Jew, the phrase ‘Law and the Prophets’ really meant ‘the sum total of what our religion stands for.’ Jesus is, in effect, saying: ‘If you understand this, you understand what life, the universe, everything, is about.’ He is also saying: ‘Love is at the heart of the universe.’

Loving the real God

The first part of this answer reminds us that we need to, first and foremost, develop a love-relationship with God. Not the caricature God who, according to Jonathan Edwards, dangles you over the fires of hell and can’t wait for you to make a mistake so he can punish you, or the caricature God who lives in a far-away land and is uninterested in his creation, or indeed the caricature God who doesn’t really think that sin is a problem and will save everybody whatever they believe. No, we need to develop a relationship with the real God. The one that Jesus talked about when he said: ‘If you’ve seen me, you’ve seen the Father’ - the one that John talked about when he said very simply: ‘God is love’.

During the heady days of renewal that some of us experienced in the 1990’s, some said God was saying: ‘I want my church back.’ I believe the question God is asking us today is: ‘Do you want your God back?’ It is a serious question, because many of us - perhaps with the best of intentions - have been following systems and rules, thinking we were following the Lord. We’ve been washing with wine. But it is not a question we should answer lightly, because he will take us at our word when we pray ‘Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.’ He may take us to places we have never been before. Are we prepared for this? Am I prepared for this? The answer for me is a definite yes, for without this love relationship with Jesus I might as well pack up and go home.

You may think that talking about a ‘love-relationship with Jesus’ is a bit nebulous. Surely we need more concrete things like statements of faith? Surely we need some structures and laws to keep us on the straight and narrow? Well, I would just like to take you back to Ephesians 4 where Paul says:

Just prior to this, Paul states very clearly that the goal of ministry is to:

So the knowledge of the Son of God is not an optional extra, but a central goal we should be aiming for. And for this we need each-other’s help, which brings us to the second part of the answer that the lawyer gave to Jesus: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’

Loving your neighbour

Leaving aside for the moment the fact that many believers are unable to love themselves because of caricature presentations of the Cross (for example ‘If you were the only person on the earth, Jesus would have died for you’), it means learning again how to walk in humility and love towards those with different views to our own. Here, as Jesus later illustrated (Luke 10), he wasn’t talking about those from your denomination that agree with you, or even those from your own nation who live alongside you. He means you to love even those who think that worship takes place on a different mountain: Muslim fundamentalists, Hindu extremists, atheists who put slogans on London buses. And loving means being an open-source, open-handed person, willing to admit that others may also understand truth, that others are worthy to be served, that others are made in the image of God. I think it was John who said that you can’t realistically claim to love God if you don’t like his kids, so the vertical love-relationship with God must co-exist with a horizontal relationship with others here on this earth.

Being in a true loving relationship with God and with his children will have practical implications. It will probably mean spending less time on meetings, and more time meeting. It will probably mean spending more time in the local pub than the local chapel, because it is there that people are hungry for relationship. It will probably mean dismantling hierarchical denominations and instead relating more at a local level. It will mean re-thinking how we relate to leaders. It may mean that we will invest in clubs and wine bars instead of new church buildings. It will mean, as creative Christians, being brave and taking bold steps to live differently. But most importantly, it will mean that we will demonstrate the true nature of the kingdom of God. ‘By this,’ said Jesus, ‘people will know you are my disciples.’

Jesus finished by saying: ‘You have answered correctly. Do this, and you shall live.’