Year: 2022

Psalms Today Complete

/ Peter Mead / 3 Comments

During 2022, I decided to work my way through the Psalms. One video per Psalm. One point relating to interpreting the Psalm, and one point of relevance for today. I completed the playlist this week. I hope this can be useful to you. Please do let others know about this playlist if it might be helpful to them too.

I know some people used these videos as a companion to a personal reading of the Psalms this year, perhaps this can be useful in a similar way next year. Since the playlist is complete, it now allows that to happen at your pace instead of mine!

A Perplexing Silence – part 3

/ Peter Mead / 8 Comments

We are living in momentous times when the ethical foundations and nature of western society is being radically reshaped.  In part one, I briefly surveyed the situation.  In part two, I offered three possible reasons for our relative silence as Christians – some are unaware, some are strangely unconcerned, and some are understandably overwhelmed. 

Let’s continue that list with two very important additions:

4.  Some are afraid.  There is a lot of fear in Christian ministry.  Let me put it out on the table.  It is probably better to discuss it rather than pretend it is not there:

  1. Fear of upsetting people in our church.  Every church will have people across a spectrum of political or cultural views.  Our society controls contrarian perspectives by its reaction. This mechanism is evident with gender, sexuality, race, public health, climate crisis, military conflict, etc.  Some people sit primed to be upset if we touch the wrong nerve.  It always feels safer to play it safe.
  2. Fear of upsetting Christians beyond our church.  Maybe your local church is not as diverse as the wider church.  Perhaps you can speak freely in your local pulpit without concern.  But we live in an age of online recordings.  Spurgeon used to have his sermons typed and published in newspapers. At the same time, thousands of other pastors could preach anything, and only their smaller congregation would hear them.  Today the pastor of an obscure church can be heard by someone on the other side of the world. That person might disagree vehemently and take to their keyboard.
  3. Fear of upsetting people in our society.  A decade ago, church leaders were concerned about being forced into a complicated legal situation. “What if someone asks me to perform a wedding I can’t offer in good conscience?  If that happens, then I could get in trouble.” Today, we are already in trouble with many people because of our beliefs.  We don’t have to do anything wrong; we are already wrong.  We are already guilty of wrong-think.  We hold dangerous views.  When some agent in society requires us to affirm certain things, we will already be in trouble.  This dynamic can lead not only to silence but also to participation so as not to stand out.  When Daniel’s three friends did not bow down, they stood out.  They were heroes then, but it is genuinely challenging to know when to stand out in the complexities of today. 
  4. Fear of the backlash.  Nobody wants to be in the sights of the mob.  The destruction meted out by today’s cancel culture can be ruthless and unforgiving.  The antagonistic othering of people who do not conform to society’s expectations has already become quite sinister.  In the last couple of years, I’ve seen people wishing on me imprisonment, the withholding of medical treatment, the restriction of movement, and even death.  Thankfully they did not name me specifically, but I happened to be in a class of people that were overtly “othered.” Nobody wants to face the force of that anger on any of the triggering issues.

Solzhenitsyn’s stunning warning in 1978 at the Commencement of Harvard University still rings out today.  Does it apply to us? “A decline in courage may be the most striking feature that an outside observer notices in the West today.  The Western world has lost its civic courage, both as a whole and separately, in each country, in each government, in each political party, and, of course, in the United Nations.  Such a decline in courage is particularly noticeable among the ruling and intellectual elites, causing an impression of a loss of courage by the entire society.  There are many courageous individuals, but they have no determining influence on public life.”

5.  The category I have not mentioned.  You may have read through these points and said, “yes, but there is another perspective.” I know.  Let me raise the common one that I anticipate.  I agree that the hope of society, indeed the hope of humanity, is the gospel.  Absolutely.  Signing petitions, participating in protests, writing to our representatives, voting one way or another, or any other political action are not the ultimate answer.  I agree.  The gospel is the answer, and we must rest in it ourselves.  Then we must also broadcast it and share it from person to person.  

But can I be candid?  I feel like sometimes we might be hiding behind a gospel-only approach.  To do so allows us to say nothing about what is going on, human rights, moral evils, etc., and thereby not face much in the way of antagonistic response.  I know exactly how to say the right Christian things to avoid criticism or backlash. I’m sure you do too.  We still have the freedom to speak Christian truths to each other, so long as we do not trip the growing number of hyper-sensitivities in our culture.  Gradually the freedom to quote Bible verses will grow ever more restrictive.  When referencing the Bible at all becomes culturally unacceptable, will we then quietly comply with that expectation too?

As Solzhenitsyn provocatively wrote in Live Not By Lies, “And as for him who lacks the courage to defend even his own soul: Let him not brag of his progressive views, boast of his status as an academician or a recognized artist, a distinguished citizen or general. Let him say to himself plainly: I am cattle, I am a coward, I seek only warmth and to eat my fill.”

I do not quote that to point only at others.  I fear that I can too quickly be part of the herd too.

In closing, my mind goes to two scenes:

  1. The best burger I can remember.  I sat with another pastor enjoying both the burger and the conversation.  We were both expressing the same thought.  It isn’t easy to prepare people for what seems to be coming in our society when we are not allowed to mention what is coming.  In my preaching and social media, I can make every public statement both gospel-centred and relatively safe.  But the gospel has always been radically counter-cultural. And as culture pivots away from a Judeo-Christian ethical basis, the gospel will only become more radical. Many people in the church are not prepared for a world that is overtly antagonistic and institutionally persecuting them for their beliefs.
  2. That congress.  The film, Tortured for Christ, begins with the “Congress of Cults” that brought together religious leaders in Romania in 1945.  Richard Wurmbrand, a Lutheran pastor, sits with his wife listening to the leaders praising the “progress” brought by the new Stalinist regime. Then he spoke out. We could just as easily go back to the example of Dietrich Bonhoeffer in Germany a few years earlier. It is hard to speak out when almost nobody else does. I know some Christian leaders are taking a stand today and speaking out on various issues. I am thankful for them. But I also see that many are already choosing to play it safe. We aren’t in the 1930s or 1940s, but we are in the 2020s. How can we be so sure this decade will not prove equally significant?

As we come to the end of the year, we also may be coming to the end of an era.  One last quote from Solzhenitsyn, “If the world has not approached its end, it has reached a major watershed in history, equal in importance to the turn from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance. It will demand from us a spiritual blaze; we shall have to rise to a new height of vision, to a new level of life, where our physical nature will not be cursed, as in the Middle Ages, but even more importantly, our spiritual being will not be trampled upon, as in the Modern Era.” If we were not at a major historic watershed in his day, it feels like we are now.  So, let’s all pray for wisdom, insight, courage, and strength as we head into 2023. Let’s not take part in the lie. We need a spiritual blaze.  God has put us all here for such a time as this.

A Perplexing Silence – part 2

/ Peter Mead / 2 Comments

In part one of this post, I considered how we seem to be living in momentous times.  The very foundations of western society are facing an all-out attack that threatens to completely transform the world as we know it.  Solzhenitsyn famously wrote, “The simple step of a courageous individual is not to take part in the lie.  One word of truth outweighs the world.”  He released Live Not By Lies on the day he was arrested and then exiled to the West.  It was written to a people worn down by decades of Communist rule who felt so helpless and lacking the strength to stand and fight the system. 

Today we are not decades into a totalitarian regime, but we may be on the front porch.  Too many are already silently complying with the moral demands of the mob that seeks to rule and transform our society.  There are voices who are speaking truth, fighting evil, and taking unpopular stands.  But as we come to the end of 2022, I am wondering why there are not as many Christian voices as we might expect.

So why are we often so silent?  Here are some possible reasons:

1. Some are unaware. We live in an age with more information available than ever before. Still, it seems easier than ever to switch off current news or at least to switch off some perspectives on current news. It is emotionally draining to try and take in all that is going on. There is wisdom in choosing how much we expose our hearts to difficult news. Deliberately or accidentally, some of us are unaware of the seismic shift occurring under and in western society.

In his Warning to the West, Solzhenitsyn wrote provocatively about the ignorance he saw in that era, “It is astonishing that Communism has been writing about itself in the most open way, in black and white, for 125 years, and even more openly, more candidly in the beginning.  The book [The Communist Manifesto], for instance, which everyone knows by name and which almost no one takes the trouble to read, contains even more terrible things than what has actually been done.  It is perfectly amazing.  The whole world can read, everyone is literate, yet somehow no one wants to understand.  Humanity acts as if it does not understand what Communism is, as if it does not want to understand, is not capable of understanding.” 

The kind of societal transformation agendas I am concerned about today are published online and in print.  They do not get called out for what they are by the media, but they do not hide.  And yet, so many remain unaware.

Furthermore, as Solzhenitsyn wrote, “All Communist Parties, upon attaining power, have become completely merciless.  But at the stage before they achieve power, it is necessary to use disguises.” Some thinly disguised versions of communist-like totalitarianism still fool many these days.

2.  Some are unconcerned.  Most Christians are worried about specific issues when mentioned in conversation.  However, many seem unconcerned that the news and social media keep them in the dark about such matters.  It is genuinely bizarre that people seem content to have information proactively silenced, suppressed, or hidden.  I can only hope they are unaware of the extent of the narrative control rather than truly satisfied with it.

I remember hearing about a Christian ministry seeking permission to sell books in a one-religion country some years ago.  They were given permission but told not to sell Bibles to people of that religion.  When they asked how to know whether someone was from that religion or not, they received simple instructions.  They had to put the Bibles behind a curtain with a sign that read, “Not for people of religion X.” They readily agreed, and the Bible was the bestseller, of course!  We all know human nature causes us to ask questions when we are not allowed to see something.  But human nature seems to have morphed in the last few years.  Now it seems that people are happy to have everything pre-filtered by unknown ideologues with undisclosed guidelines sitting at a keyboard somewhere. 

Underneath a relaxed attitude to censorship, there lies complacency.  Since we cannot imagine foreign troops marching on our streets, we believe our society is immune to any takeover.  Solzhenitsyn wrote in The Gulag Archipelago, “There is always this fallacious belief: ‘It would not be the same here; here such things are impossible.’ Alas, all the evil of the twentieth century is possible everywhere on earth.”

Perhaps we should be more concerned about living in a controlled and crafted narrative.

3.  Some are overwhelmed.  It does not take long to find enough information to overwhelm your heart.  There is a heaviness to living through history.  As I read the Gulag Archipelago, my heart breaks for what so many suffered while the West remained unaware.  That weight only increases when you think of the people who have experienced Communism and are now issuing warnings to us in the West.  History is heavy.  History being repackaged and repeated is heavier still.

Solzhenitsyn in his commencement address to Harvard: “Humanism which has lost its Christian heritage cannot prevail in this competition.  Thus during the past centuries and especially in recent decades, as the process became more acute, the alignment of forces was as follows: Liberalism was inevitably pushed aside by radicalism, radicalism had to surrender to socialism, and socialism could not stand up to Communism.”

In Part three I will conclude this list with two more, perhaps the two most important, reasons for this relative and frankly, perplexing, silence.

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I would recommend reading Live Not By Lies, by Solzhenitsyn.  It is a quick read, but it is gold.  https://www.solzhenitsyncenter.org/live-not-by-lies

A Perplexing Silence

/ Peter Mead / 5 Comments

As we come to the end of 2022, I want to share a series of three posts with you.  Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s writings have been swirling in my mind, as has a single tweet from a few weeks ago.  A massive body of work and a lengthy sentence separated by a few decades yet resonating together.

As you may have noticed, there is always something going on in the news.  Of course, not every story is genuinely momentous.  Perhaps you can remember the end of 1989? The Tiananmen Square protest and massacre had happened earlier in the year.  As the end of the year approached, Hungary proclaimed the end of communist rule, the Berlin Wall came down, and Bulgaria’s long-serving leader resigned.  Apartheid rules were changing in South Africa.  Student demonstrations in Prague started the velvet revolution.  President Bush (senior) and Gorbachev declared the cold war over. Romanian dictator Ceausescu was ousted and then executed on Christmas Day.  The news was fascinating, and everyone knew we were watching history unfold.

How will we look back on our current time?  There have always been news stories, but some news cycles feel more significant. We live in a season of swirling stories – some are featured and polished for maximum coverage.  In contrast, others seem to be painstakingly discounted, twisted or buried.  For instance, and in no particular order:

  • The Ukraine war is stirring the threatening language of Armageddon from global leaders.  At the same time, celebrities fly into Kyiv for photoshoots with the president.
  • Many social media platforms restrict free speech.  However, the media dismiss new revelations of illegal government influence on Twitter as irrelevant.
  • Critical Race Theory is fundamentally shifting every academic discipline, business practice and even whole Christian denominations.
  • Excess deaths remain way above the pre-covid five-year average, or even the pandemic year, when daily and total death counts were constantly before our eyes.  And yet, asking why this is happening seems to be socially unacceptable.
  • Protests and legal wrangling over possible election fraud rumble away in various countries.  Reporting suspicious behaviour results in being labelled an election denier and a threat to democracy.
  • “Fourth Industrial Revolution” ideas derided as conspiracy theories only two years ago are explicitly promoted by proponents today.
  • One western government is confiscating thousands of farms because of the climate crisis.  And we are all required to pay the bill for Net Zero plans that may or may not make any difference to the projected catastrophe.  Again, don’t question it, or you will be labelled a denier!
  • There is a push for digital id and digital currency, a checkpoint society with a Chinese-style social credit system that will replace fundamental freedoms with earned privileges.
  • In another western country, Euthanasia is being promoted, celebrated and normalised with increasingly ineffective controls.
  • Children are being sexualised and offered life-changing surgery and puberty blockers. At the same time, parents are increasingly pushed out of the conversation.
  • And in the last few days, a woman was arrested and questioned by police about whether she was silently praying in a particular location here in England.  

There are many swirling issues, but we must step back and ask about underlying issues. We are living through a fundamental reshaping of the ethical foundations and the nature of the society built on them.  In the past, there was rebellion against the generally accepted Judeo-Christian ethic underlying western civilisation (e.g. think of the sexual liberation movement of the 60s/70s).  Today we see the replacement of that ethic with an entirely new moral code.  We also observe the culture militantly enforcing compliance so that everyone is required to not only tolerate but also proactively participate in and promote the new moral order.  A dictator enforces their will by sheer power, but a totalitarian tyranny seeks to control everything, even what subjects think.

Solzhenitsyn is both enlightening and provocative.  He warned the students of Harvard in 1978: “There are telltale symptoms by which history gives warning to a threatened or perishing society.  Such are, for instance, a decline of the arts or a lack of great statesmen.” I am no art critic, but I suspect many would agree that we are experiencing something of a decline.  And when did we last see a political leader in that category?  We live in a threatened, perhaps even perishing society.

I mentioned a tweet at the start of this post.  On November 18th, Owen Strachan wrote, “Christian men: it’s not Tucker Carlson, Jordan Peterson, Ben Shapiro, Joe Rogan, Elon Musk or other conservative (or just not super-left) voices who should be known for speaking the hard truths, fighting what is evil, taking unpopular stands, and promoting what is good. It’s us.” (We might add a few more names in the UK, like Calvin Robinson, Neil Oliver, Douglas Murray, etc.)

I’ve been pondering that tweet.  I know one of these men I added is a clergyman, but the point is well made.  I also know that merely stating any of these names will cause some to react negatively to this post.  That shows society’s shift from yesteryear, when people used to think and discuss provocative ideas, to today’s hair-trigger dismissal and antagonism.  I might disagree with soundbites from all of these people because of their content or tone. Still, I must be willing actually to hear the points they are making and engage thoughtfully. 

Honestly, I find myself regularly prompted to think, investigate, pray and take action based on monologues by Neil Oliver, interviews by Joe Rogan, books by Douglas Murray, and tweets from Jordan Peterson.  But then, when I look at my feed of Christian leaders?  Honestly, with some exceptions, it can often feel disengaged, out of touch and sometimes eerily silent on contemporary concerns.  It makes me think of that famous quote from Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, “The simple step of a courageous individual is not to take part in the lie.  One word of truth outweighs the world.”  Yes, there is plenty of biblical truth in the social media voices of Christian leaders that I follow.  But I fear our silence on some matters might mean we are inadvertently starting to take part in the lie.

In part two I will share some reasons for this perplexing silence.

Learning from a Different World

/ Peter Mead / Leave a comment

Travel can be transformational. By travel, I don’t mean layovers in airports en route to somewhere else (I’ve unsuccessfully visited some significant countries this way!)  No, I mean genuinely visiting.

Let me share two examples and then make my point for us.

A “Third World Country” – How often have you heard people return from a missions trip and say that the local people taught them so much? It is a consistent message! I remember visiting an East African country and experiencing a completely different life. 

There was the food, the wildlife, the weather, and the transport. The cultural differences hindered my teaching, but then again, they also supported it. There was that more remote tribe where the children could pick out their friends in a picture on my camera. And yet they could not recognise themselves because they had never seen a good reflection before. And there was much to learn from the simple lifestyle, not to mention the sacrificial hospitality. It was like stepping into a different world, and I came home changed by my visit.

A “Second World Country” – I visited an Eastern European country some years ago. We walked past the jail where political prisoners, including pastors, used to be held and tortured. Communism never has room for dissenters, free thinkers or any God except the state. Therefore church leaders and Christians are always a threat. 

I remember asking a man driving me to a meeting what it was like to live under communism. He spoke of how some things worked, but nobody was free. He gave me two examples. He described living in a world where one in three people worked for the government as an informer. It meant that you would never speak openly about politics or religion. You never knew who would inform and lead to your arrest and the suffering that might also come to your family. And he described how everyone would dutifully buy the newspaper, signalling that they were good citizens. But they would never read it because everyone knew it was all government-controlled lies.

I have thought a lot about that conversation over the years. It was like a haunting warning from another country at another time. I often think about how our culture is moving towards that kind of community spying. We now live around people ready to call out anyone who breaks the brand new moral codes related to gender, sexuality and race. And we have technology constantly monitoring every click of the mouse, message from our keyboard or even word uttered by our mouth. And perhaps most concerning is the number of people who digest the messaging disseminated through our news media but don’t realise how controlled the messaging is. It is not hard to imagine our world morphing into another iteration of communism with millions of people naively celebrating such a sinister transformation of society! After all, it always comes out of a crisis for the good of the people.

The bottom line – Travelling to a different culture and meeting people who’ve lived in other times can hugely impact us. It should have a significant impact on us. Insightful lessons that will enrich our lives. Haunting warnings to protect us. If we have the privilege of travelling and go eager to learn, it will change us.

So, what do we do as Christians when we open our Bibles? What happens when we preach the Bible to others? We get to travel to a different world.

1. A different world geographically & culturally – Good bible study and biblical preaching will take our imaginations to the battlefields of ancient Israel, the throne rooms of ancient kings, the living rooms of ancient peasants, and the discussion forum of ancient philosophers. We will visit the Sinai peninsula’s wilderness, the fishing villages of Galilee, the arid hills around Jerusalem, the stormy Mediterranean sea, and strategic cities around one section of the Roman empire.

2. A different world educationally – Good bible study and biblical preaching will take our hearts right into the crowd hearing Moses preach. Or we might join the crowd hearing an Old Testament prophet proclaim God’s message. We might sit on the grass and hear Jesus teach. Or perhaps overhear the apostles announcing the resurrection. We will spend time being mentored by the experience of a young shepherd fighting for his nation, a want-away prophet running from his calling, or a height-challenged tax collector hiding in a tree. Wonderful enrichment for life and haunting warnings await us if we just travel into the Bible with our hearts open and ready to learn.

3. A different world entirely – Good bible study and biblical preaching take us to faraway lands and insightful mentors and, beyond that, give us a glimpse into another world. The Bible is not an old travelogue. We are earthbound and tend to think very “down here” kinds of thoughts. But heaven has broken into our world, and we can hear from the world of love where God is forever reigning, without caveat or coup. We might pray, “your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” In the Bible, we get not only those words to pray but also the life-changing revelation of what that all means. 

Every day we have the privilege of travel with all its life enrichment, haunting warnings and unique mentoring opportunities. Open your Bible with an open heart. And every time we share our biblical travels with others in conversation or preaching, we can take them with us. Don’t shortchange yourself or others by simply grabbing for an applicational point or a quick anecdote. 

Too many of us visit the world of the Bible like a traveller in transit through an airport. We might pick up a local bar of chocolate in a kiosk, but we haven’t truly been to the country, and our lives show no evidence of impact. What would it look like to really go? To meaningfully visit? To spend time with the people, to see the sights, to be lastingly changed? 

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By the way, after going through the Psalms in 2022 on YouTube, I am planning to spend the next months offering short videos related to the subject of studying and enjoying our Bibles. Please let me know, at any time, if you have an idea that would help that playlist become more useful to you or your church!

Definition Matters – 7 Pro-Am Preaching Points

/ Peter Mead / Leave a comment

Definition matters massively. One person might say, “professional preachers are the problem!” Then another person might say, “amateur preachers are the problem!” And both might be right. It all depends on what they mean by what they say.

1. “Professional” can be referring to very different issues. What image does the term “professional” bring to mind? You might think of a person’s skill, or how they handle their communications with customers, or their manner in person, or their motivation for what they do. That is already four variations of potential meaning for the term “professional.” Perhaps an electrician is called to solve a problem in your house. They might be a real professional in their work (positive – they knew exactly what to do), their invoice was very professional looking (positive – good communications), their conversation and manner in conversation might have been a bit professional (negative – cold or aloof communications), and their reason for working may have seemed too professional (negative – it was all about the money).

2. “Amateur” can be referring to very different issues, too. What image does the term “amateur” bring to mind? You might think in the same categories as before. Perhaps the electrician was amateur in their work (negative – they did not know what to do), their invoice looked very amateur (negative – sloppy communication), their conversation might convey the enthusiasm of an amateur (positive – they love what they do), and their reason for work may have been the best side of an amateur (positive – they do it for the love of their craft).

3. In terms of skill, be professional. I don’t want someone showing “amateurish” skill levels when they fix my car, cut my hair, or operate on me. Skill is good. In reality, some of the most skilled people in the world may not be paid for what they do, while some who are paid should not be allowed anywhere near your car, your scalp or a scalpel. So actually, pay is irrelevant. The point is about skill. So as a preacher, it does not matter to this point whether you are paid to preach or not. In terms of skill, be as professional as possible. Read, learn, study, grow. Be a good steward of the ministry opportunity God has given you.

4. In respect to motivation, be amateur. When someone’s vocation has been “professionalised” then their motivation becomes suspect. This is why a nationally known car exhaust company may not be trusted (did they do more work than was needed in order to get more of my money?) Or why it is a problem if your medical practitioner is incentivized by drug companies to prescribe treatments to as many people as possible (whether they need the treatment or not!) In this respect, skill is not the issue. The point is about motivation. A highly skilled mechanic who rips off the customer is not to be celebrated. A brilliant clinician who risks lives to increase their income should be prosecuted. So as a preacher, your skill level (in this point) is not my concern. In terms of motivation, be as amateur as possible. Love God, love people, and love your craft. Be driven by the privilege of getting to speak God’s Word to people for their benefit.

5. And in the area of interpersonal communication, be genuine. I have underlined issues of skill and motivation, but interpersonal communication is also part of the package. Coming across as too professional can be problematic, even when you are not preaching. Coming across as an amateur might be an issue too. Instead, how about we settle on the need to be genuine? It does not resolve all the complexity of conversational dynamics, but it does leave us with two clear points to finish.

6. As a preacher, let’s do what we do as well as we can. If that means being professional in some sense, so be it. We certainly don’t want to be amateurish.

7. As a preacher, let’s do what we do with heartfelt motivation. If that means being amateurs in some sense, so be it. We certainly don’t want to be professionalised.

The definition of labels is important. This is an example worth pondering as far as preaching is concerned and how we might view our ministry. We should preach as professionals in the sense of “to the best of our ability” and as amateurs in the sense of “with the passion of a captured heart.” We should not preach as professionals in the sense of “relying on our own ability,” or “just for money,” nor as amateurs in the sense of “to a poor standard.”

It is also an example to keep in mind in a world where labels so easily get applied as a pejorative, and the mud sticks because people don’t question what is really meant.

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In the next week or so I will be completing my short video collection through the Psalms. Please do check it out and share with any who may find it helpful as a reference, or better yet, as a companion through the Psalms in 2023!

The Incarnation is Not Just for Christmas

/ Peter Mead / 2 Comments

We all say it every year. Where did this year go? Before we know it, the year has slid past, the temperatures have dropped, and the shops swell with Christmas sights, sounds, and shoppers. In church, we are busy preparing for the nativity play and dusting off the carols for their annual airing. We will hear the infancy narratives of Matthew and Luke, a briefer reading from Isaiah’s Immanuel section, or Micah chapter 5, and soon Christmas will be all over.

But the Incarnation is not just for Christmas.

The Incarnation is critical to the Christian faith. At some point during these weeks, someone will point out that Easter is the reason for the season. They are not wrong. Jesus had to be born to live the perfect life and then die in our place. But that is not the whole story. The Son of God became one of us for several reasons, including God’s great rescue mission.

I have introduced three more reasons that the Incarnation is not just for Christmas. To read the article, please click this link and then check out all the other great resources on the Union website!

Work To Really Know a Passage – 7 Thoughts

/ Peter Mead / Leave a comment

This might seem like a really obvious thing to say, but I think it needs to be said. We have to really work hard in order to really know a passage before we preach it.

It is very easy to assume we know a passage. It is very hard to recognize how much we don’t know. But learning to think clearly about your own thinking is a critical skill for the preacher.

Here are some thoughts to consider:

1. Knowing a passage involves more than knowing some highlights or landmarks in it. After reading a passage and spending some time in study, you may be able to identify some key features of the passage. You might be able to say that there is the truth in verse 3, and the truth in verse 5 and then the conclusion in verse 9. Do you know the passage? No, you are aware of some highlights in the passage.

2. Knowing a passage involves more than being able to launch preaching points from phrases in it. You might feel ready to preach because verse 3 mentions justification (and you have some things to say about justification), and then verse 5 mentions hope (and you have a nice illustration you want to share about hope), etc. Are you ready to preach the passage if you have some good preaching points ready to launch? No.

3. Knowing a passage involves more than being able to talk about each phrase with theological truth. But what if your preaching content is not illustrations, but rich theological truths? Maybe you have a whole theology of justification that you can launch in verse 3, and then you can make a presentation on sanctification because of a key word that appears later in the passage? Surely if it is rich theological truth, then you are ready to preach? No. Not if the passage is not saying what you are planning to say. Just because wind appears in John 3 does not mean that I should preach about God’s view of changing weather patterns from it.

4. Knowing a passage involves more than reading some commentaries about the passage. It is not a bad idea to have some conversation partners in your study. Other live humans can be super helpful. As can published ones. But even if I can quote from impressive commentaries, it does not mean that I really understand the passage yet. By all means use the best resources you can access, but remember the goal is still for you to understand the passage, not just to have studied things written about it.

5. Knowing a passage involves understanding the details as they work together in a coherent whole. This is where many preachers seem to stumble. They do reasonably well with the details. They speak theological truth. They associate that truth with the wording in the passage. But if they don’t recognize how the details are working together in the passage, they don’t know the passage. Remember, your goal is not to study a passage in order to find a sermon. Your first goal is to study it in order to understand it.

6. Knowing a passage involves understanding the flow of thought in the passage, with an awareness of context. A passage sits in a book, as part of the whole. If you don’t understand how the passage works in the book, how can you really grasp what the passage itself means? So we need to study each passage in its whole book, as well as whole Bible, context. The point is, each passage was written to communicate something specific, and we need to figure that out. Our job is not to generate meaning by creativity, but to find meaning by dogged humble persistence.

7. Knowing a passage means being able to explain it so that the original author would affirm your grasp of its essential meaning. That sounds like a bold goal. It is. That is why we can’t just study until we feel a message emerging. As preachers we can generate messages out of nothing. But God has given us something very specific. And unless we grow in our confidence that it is possible to communicate the essential meaning of a passage to a level where the original author would affirm our explanation, then we will not put in the work necessary to be ready to preach.

Implication? The big implication of this post is simple. Don’t be so confident that you know the meaning of a passage. Study more. Study longer. Study humble. Study persistently. Make it your goal to know the passage better than you ever have before, to be able to handle questions about specific aspects of the passage, and be willing to explain the meaning of the text even to the original author himself…and then start thinking about how you will preach it!

The Gospel is Not Amnesty

/ Peter Mead / Leave a comment

Recently an article in The Atlantic has created a stir.  In it, Emily Oster called for a pandemic amnesty.  She gave the examples of cloth masks and closed beaches, which both turned out to be pointless actions – but at the time, she points out, we didn’t know.  She writes that we need to learn from our mistakes and move on, focussing on the future rather than getting into a “repetitive doom loop” by analysing what went wrong.  She recalls being called a “teacher killer” for advocating that children were a low-risk group and should be allowed back into school.  She thinks it best that we do not dwell on things from a time when people just didn’t know better.  

I generally do not flag up articles from political publications of any persuasion, but I think this is important.  Why?  Because if the media decides to push an idea, that idea will become part of our everyday vocabulary.  I can imagine well-meaning Christians then taking that notion and seeking to co-opt it for the communication of the Gospel.  But the Gospel is not an amnesty.

What is amnesty?  An amnesty is an official pardon generally offered by governments to political prisoners for specific offences.  Technically, it differs from a pardon because it is offered to those not yet convicted but subject to prosecution.  A pardon relieves the convicted from the burden of punishment, but an amnesty forgets the offence ever took place.  An amnesty allows a nation to move on after political turmoil, especially where punishing such crimes would only entrench division and make national unity impossible. 

Notice that the cultural contradiction here is striking.  On the one hand, if we did anything wrong in the past two years, then there should be an amnesty.  After all, we didn’t know.  (And if we “fact-checked,” censored and silenced every scientist and doctor who did not support the official narrative; or if we vilified anyone who dared to question the prescribed behaviours; or if we dismissed the many voices who tried to tell us otherwise?  Well, that doesn’t matter because we are saying that we didn’t know.)

However, let’s say someone in the distant past can be connected somehow to a current issue of concern.  If that person ever expressed an opinion or even wrote a footnote that is now considered unacceptable, what then?  Well, there can be no pardon or understanding that they lived in a different time.  They will be tarred with one vast brushstroke of condemnation if we choose.  Then we must tear down their statues, ban their books, and erase them from our museums, libraries and education system.

Of course, there is something incredibly self-serving in this contradiction.  If the offender was in the past, I can signal my virtue by raging without knowing anything about them.  If the offender might have been me, I can protect myself and my tribe from scrutiny or accountability by signalling my virtue and calling for amnesty.  In the recent past, we didn’t know, so amnesty will allow us all to move forward.  In the distant past, they didn’t know, but we will show no mercy!

What are the implications of this call for amnesty?  Don’t investigate me or my tribe, we don’t want any scrutiny; let’s just move on.  Don’t convict me or any of my tribe; let us be considered innocent.  Don’t hold me or anyone I like accountable; let’s forget our offences.  (I mentioned at the beginning of this post that the article’s author, Emily Oster, pushed for schools to re-open.  To be balanced, I should note she also advocated for more stringent lockdowns, plus employer and student vaccine mandates.  In the article, it is clear her call for amnesty does not extend to the perceived offences of people on the other side.)

I think most people understand that in the initial weeks of the pandemic, so much was not known.  People were willing to do whatever they could that might help to save lives.  But that period gave way to a much longer season with a very different tone.  In this subsequent season, anyone questioning or offering evidence contrary to the official position was vilified, cancelled, censored and silenced.  It is still happening.  Critical voices remain banned from social media.  Leading doctors are losing their medical licences.  Ignorance cannot excuse the casting aside of fundamental human rights while censoring and vilifying any who might be better informed.  If this approach is allowed, the result will be a society where quietly obeying the official opinion is the only safe position to take.  The dangers of such a society are unfathomable.  You do not have to look far back in history to see the devastation caused by such regimes.  And so, any pursuit of justice is not with the members of the public.  They repeated the only information they were supposed to hear.  The pursuit of justice must be with policymakers at all levels of government and medicine, their influencers, their mouthpieces on TV, and the thought police in social media offices.

Does amnesty help the future, or would the future be better served by genuine inquiry and accountability?  Surely there must be accountability, or it can all happen again.  The job of decision-makers is to seek out the best data and make the best decisions.  Evidently, they did not have adequate data for all their assertions.  Yet those assertions were deemed unquestionable and were made with such certainty.  Now it is too late to go back and restore lost lives, or give families the final goodbyes they should have had in the hospital and at the funeral, or give the diagnoses that were missed at a more treatable stage of the disease, or give the withheld medical care that was needed.  It is too late to restart the destroyed businesses, or fix the harm done to children’s education, mental and physical health, or restore trust in those vilified for speaking truth, or restore the months of church gatherings, social gatherings, travel for family visits, or restore the economy, etc.  No, there is a lot we cannot undo.  But if there is no accountability, how will lessons be learned?  How will fundamental human rights and the principles of a free society be protected from such abuse in the future?  Amnesty is not a legitimate solution for our post-pandemic world.

We could pursue this discussion concerning so many specific pandemic issues past and present.  But actually, this is not a post about Covid-19.  It is a post about amnesty and how it is not the Gospel.

Three Gospel points to ponder:

1.  The Gospel includes justice and accountability.  If the media push the notion of amnesty, it will become part of our current vocabulary as a society.  And some in Christian circles will use the word because they long to laud the wonders of a God who believes the best and overlooks all offences.  This “no judgment” theology tends to come from people who have lived in a safe country and have not personally experienced the kinds of evil that are so prevalent in much of the world.  When evil runs rampant, people understandably long for justice.  Ultimately, every eye will see that God is perfectly just, and the price of every sin in human history will be fully paid.  The idea of a non-judgmental God may resonate with our culture, but it is not good news!

2.  Amnesty avoids unresolvable tension, but only true forgiveness forges genuine relationship.  When a new government offers amnesty to political opponents, it does not remove the differences or guarantee actual unity.  It merely makes possible a pathway forward.  But when someone owns their sin, confesses and repents, we can see a genuine relationship established and strengthened.  Too many parents offer amnesty to their children and wonder why their relationship is not closer as they move forward. Amnesty is undoubtedly easier, but maybe true reconciliation is worth the necessary work in a family or society. God certainly didn’t choose an easy route.  He makes us his children by inviting us to humble ourselves as he offers full forgiveness to bring us into the closest possible relationship with Him.  That invitation is in light of all he has done in Jesus’ atoning death on the cross.  God doesn’t hide from our sin; he dealt with it in full and then invited us to humble ourselves and accept genuine forgiveness. 

3.  The Gospel reveals that the true God is not just angry, nor is he merely loving.  Justice and mercy meet perfectly in the God of the Bible.  His heart toward a fallen and rebellious humanity is both just and loving.  God does not simply overlook offences for the sake of a future with tensions lingering below the surface.  Amnesty offers absolution without addressing justice – no payment, punishment, or accountability.  God does not offer amnesty.  God has paid the great and humiliating price for true justice, thereby inviting once rebellious sinners into his glorious embrace as his beloved children. 

Perfect justice, wondrous love.  God offers so much more than mere amnesty.  And that is genuinely good news!

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Here is the link to the Oster article.

Useful article along similar lines to this post – The problem with declaring a pandemic amnesty

and a pre-pandemic article worth considering – The Gospel is better than amnesty