Category Archives: Arts

Arts, Christianity, Culture

Isaiah: Society drifting without a leader

OLD TESTAMENT

ISAIAH: AN OVERVIEW

PEOPLE who wait on the LORD shall “soar on wings like eagles”, Isaiah declares (40:31). His book does just that. In the second half especially, the poetry and thought rises above the petty concerns and trivial harassments of human life and transports us gracefully into the presence of God.

Isaiah looks down from a great height on Judah, Israel, and the surrounding nations, and sees them all from God’s vantage point. Then he looks upwards in paeans of praise and adoration that surpass even the best of the psalms.

Yet the book has been the subject of some of the bitterest wrangles among scholars. Although regarded by the Jewish community and the New Testament writers as a unity, Isaiah’s authorship of chapters 40-66 has been doubted consistently over the past 150 years.

Although such questions are important for our understanding of Scripture as a whole, they have only a mild influence on our interpretation. “Second Isaiah” clearly relates to a specific historical situation (which, despite the often-timeless character of its poetry, should inform the way we use its message), whether it was written in advance by Isaiah or closer to the time by someone else, prolonging the whole wide range of Isaiah’s emphases.

Among Isaiah’s great themes are the promises of God’s refreshment and restoration after a time of trial, discipline, and correction. Isaiah never minces his words, but he is a prophet of hope even when he roundly condemns social injustice and religious apostasy.

He is at his greatest when he contrasts the power and resourcefulness of Israel’s holy God with the poverty and impotence of idols which people create from what they can touch and see to give meaning and purpose to their lives. Our idols are different from those of his day, but they are aggressively marketed by image-makers in advertising and public relations agencies.

Music lovers will hear in the call to prepare the way (ch 40) and the catalogue of the servant’s suffering in chapter 53 words immortalised in Handel’s Messiah: readers familiar with the New Testament will recognise them as being fulfilled by John the Baptist and then Jesus’ crucifixion.

If you come to the Old Testament with doubt and suspicion as to its relevance for today, and you want to retain your doubts and suspicions, it is may be best that you avoid Isaiah.

The Book of Isaiah contains majestic poems of God’s greatness and supremacy, as we witness in Isaiah 40:25,26

“‘To whom will you compare me? Or who is my equal?’ says the Holy One. Lift your eyes and look to the heavens: Who created all these? He who brings out the starry host one by one, and calls them each by name. Because of his great power and mighty strength, not one of them is missing.”

SOCIETY DRIFTING WITHOUT A LEADER

– A narrative on Isaiah 3

THE philosophy of leadership changed in the latter half of the twentieth century from “command and control” to “team building”. People who can inspire others are more likely to gain respect than those who shout orders, give few reasons, and expect to be obeyed.

We need leaders at every level of society to hold the structure together. But sometimes people aspire to leadership simply to feed their own emotional or power-hungry needs. And the wrong people may be given leadership roles because other people can’t be bothered to do the job.

The picture in this chapter is of a leadership society, drifting like a rudderless ship. Instead of having mature, wise leaders with a steady hand on the tiller, Jerusalem is being piloted by inexperienced “boys” prone to naïve mistakes and laddish excesses.

It is a form of judgment on a degenerate society to have the leaders it deserves. As society drifts from God, it loses its bearings. When people start to pull in different directions fellowship and outreach break up on the reefs of schism. Lack of leadership in such situations compound the misery of what is going on.

So, we hear calls for “strong leadership” to tug society or the Church back to its moorings. But that sounds like a return to the command and control of a military dictatorship. Modern leadership theory is much more in line with Jesus’ teaching. He said that leaders were to act as servants and lead by example (Matthew 20:24-28). When we feel ourselves to be drifting towards the rocks, don’t pray for a tugboat; pray for a helmsman.

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Arts, Christianity, Culture

Hard knocks form rounded character

OLD TESTAMENT

– A narrative on 1 Samuel 17-19

SOME people become sharp and angular when pelted by life’s hard missiles. Others, like David, are rounded by them and their concerns are rubbed off. Once again, a Bible author is giving us a potted biography that reveals the familiar pattern of God’s dealings with those he calls to his service.

David began in obscurity where he learnt survival and faithfulness in the harsh realities of an unsympathetic world (17:14,15,34-37). His secret anointing was perhaps not fully understood by either his family or himself (ch 16). It was followed by minor service in Saul’s court which may explain why Saul knows him in 16:14-23 but not in 17:55, unless the chronology is reversed for the sake of giving us an earlier summary.

He is then elevated quietly to high office (18:5), succeeds, but becomes the object of Saul’s jealousy and is ousted from his job, surviving several assassination attempts.

Many Christians in such a situation would ask why God behaved so badly towards them. The author is telling us that it is Saul who is behaving badly, and that God is protecting David from him. The heir apparent is a victim of human injustice, not of divine caprice. It was that knowledge that enabled David to survive his outlaw years, and it will enable us to survive the wilderness periods when God’s call seems to have been forgotten.

Love and serve the LORD.

. See also The Books of Samuel: Real lives and frank confessions

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Arts, Christianity, Culture

New Testament: Paul’s letters to the Thessalonians

OVERVIEW

MASS EVANGELISTS who jet into a city, conduct a campaign, and jet out again, are often accused of leaving their “converts” high and dry, with no on-going support.

Paul, on his visit to Thessalonica, may not have intended to do this but in the end had little option. He was there for just three weeks before opposition forced him to make a hasty exit.

His new converts had no trained pastors to teach and support them. They had no New Testament to learn from, and no Christian books to read. They had no established church traditions to latch onto. They didn’t even have a telephone over which to get quick advice from the apostle.

Yet they not only survived but grew spiritually in double quick time. They became examples for others to follow. The letters to the Thessalonians provide today’s Christians with important encouragement: when God begins to work in someone’s life, he can continue it even if no human support is available.

That does not excuse any lack of pastoral follow-up. Paul was anxious to provide it: the letters are one means he used; visits from his associate Timothy were another.

Despite their growth in numbers and vitality, like any other fledgling church they had their problems. Not surprisingly, they had to endure ongoing opposition which raised doubts about Paul and his motives in some minds.

Others, captivated by the thought that Christ had promised to return, assumed that he was coming soon and packed in their jobs to wait for him. They present us with one of the first examples of the trend repeated later by “millennium cults”. Beliefs about Christ’s return often excite as much passion now as they did then.

Thessalonians provides some simple guidelines for today. Unfortunately, because they are simple and incomplete, they have been the source of as much speculation in the centuries since Paul wrote them as was the apostle’s original verbal teaching to the church. What followed in Paul’s letters, however, was a need to return to the original simplicity.

GUIDELINES FOR CHRISTIAN LIVING

– A narrative on 1 Thessalonians 4:1-10; 5:14-24

THIS is a brief manual for Christian living. It is incomplete because Paul has already given it verbally (4:11) and here he is stressing only what the Thessalonians need to give further attention to. Which is what most people need to give attention to.

On the subject of personal conduct he warns against unbridled lust and encourages marital faithfulness (4:3-8). The former was common and the latter rare in his first readers’ society.

Perhaps some church members were still struggling and failing. Being different is not easy and new habits take time to learn. There is none of the righteous indignation here which he unleashes against the Corinthians. Instead, he stresses the social dimension of immorality. It destroys relationships within the church.

As history repeats itself and people come to Christ from non-Christian lifestyles, his firm but non-judgmental approach sets a pastorally sensitive example.

Social conduct seems to be his chief concern. Brotherly love exists and he encourages it further (4:9). He describes what it looks like in 5:14: patient, kind, supportive and encouraging.

As for spiritual conduct, Christ, not circumstance, is to dominate Christians’ thoughts and feelings (5:16-18). The Thessalonians faced potentially depressing battles with their opponents, yet even they were to rejoice and give thanks. Christ is bigger than our problems.

They are also encouraged to keep the charismatic balance. The gifts of the Spirit are not to be despised, but neither are they to be received and exercised uncritically (5:19).

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