Of the Writing of Parenting Books, There is No End.

There really isn't. They just keep multiplying. Not unlike rabbits.

Jean has a great post here, where she discusses parenting books and how to read them.

I read parenting books every other week. The nice thing about them is that they are quick (most aren't all that profound), they have mostly one idea and they keep me thinking about what I am doing as a parent.

The downside of course, as Jean points out, they come with a huge amount of guilt attached. My favourite is the book which implies on the first page that if you don't follow their exact method your children will be drug dealers. Thanks. Very much.

But aside from that, they often have good ideas and useful insights.

Ultimately though, like marriage books, they tell you more about the person who is writing the book than they do about the subject itself.

I was slumming it this week with The Yummy Mummy's Family Handbook. Such a great title! I came across it at the library. It has been absolutely fascinating because it is written by someone from my generation, who is not even remotely Christian and who essentially spends the book unpacking her values and worldviews.

A full review would be fun, but I really don't have time. So two comments will do instead.

The first is that she has no absolutes in her world. Nothing is just 'wrong' (except smacking your kids), but she still has really strong values and beliefs. An affair, for example, is not on as far as she is concerned. Why? Because commitment builds stronger relationships and is far more rewarding long term. So having an affair might seem like a good idea, but it really is just a mirage. There is nothing wrong with having one, in her mind, but it would just be stupid to throw away all that you have worked for in this relationship and have to face divorce. (Interestingly she assumes that very few people can cope with adultery in marriage, though she doesn't explain why). Unlike our parents' generation, she states baldly that divorce is just bad for children (ours is after all the generation that got to test that one out for ourselves), and you need to minimise it as much as possible, if after all you decide to go ahead with you affair, or your partner has one. It's a 1950's view of marriage with no basis but with a strong sense of conviction.

This book has helped me realise that my generation is far more 'moral' in one sense than the previous generation, but just as selfish and self-interested. Affairs might be frowned on and spoken against (as opposed to the self-expression, love-must-have-its-way kind of 'open-mindedness' of the previous generation). But only because of the damage it does to what might otherwise be a rewarding relationship. There is nothing inherently wrong with having sex outside marriage. You don't even do it for the sake of other people, but for your own sake. Your happiness is best served by faithfulness in marriage.

Selfishness springs eternal in the human heart. And sometimes it can even prompt people to make good decisions.

The second thought I had was that this book reflects the kind of nervousness I have noticed in many of my generation. When it comes to the big things of life, like getting married, raising children and so forth, we seem to become quite anxious. How do we do it properly? The number and level of dysfunctional families in the previous generation has scared many off the whole family thing permanently. This creates a level of anxiety about doing the thing properly and not ending up with a wreckage at the end. The way some of my generation do this is to find the Right Method and stick to it, believing that this will guarantee a good outcome. I think this might be why whole groups of people in my generation have split over whether or not controlled crying is the best way to get babies to sleep. (Please feel free to comment passionately about this subject on this blog; I will feel free to not publish your comments because I am only using the issue of controlled crying as an example. When I post about controlled crying, then I will publish your comments if you care to make them. Just so we understand each other).

This tendency to needing the answers is illustrated in The Yummy Mummy's Guide in that for a relatively short book most things are covered and dealt with in a paragraph or a few pages. The writer has an audience who wants to know the answer. And she provides answers. What to say if your child complains of boredom; what kinds of toys to buy; how to manage 'play-dates'; how many times per week post-children married people have sex (I am not kidding); how long to let children surf the internet at which age, how long a child should be allowed to have the door to his or her room closed per day, at what age children are allowed to swear and which words at which age (again, not kidding) and so on and on.

I think it is true of my generation that we do want answers to the minutiae of life. Of course, what we'll do is take a few from her book, another lot of answers from another book and so on until we have a unique pastiche that we are fairly committed to. And that way, life is kind of under control. We base our fragile confidence in doing an OK job of raising our children in a bundle of answers other people have given us. I think this is true of non-Christians, but I also think it equally true of most Christian families I know in my age-group.

I like the determination that many in my generation has to get it right. We take it seriously and we don't want to mess up the lives of our children and realise that we can't just take this for granted: we have to think about this and act deliberately. We realise that we will make mistakes and want to avoid that as much as possible. Our actions and speech affect our children. It is good to take responsibility for that.

But as always, we have to take our attitudes and thinking from God: because he is our Creator and is where wisdom lies for all our lives, and because he is our Judge and will ultimately assess our lives to his standard. God's central command pivots on love: to him and to others. So when we think about being faithful in marriage, we don't think about our own fulfillment and reward, but about the person we are married to, and we follow God's instructions about marriage, thereby loving God and our neighbour in the one action. And simultaneously, we say 'no' to selfishness. The only way we can do this is by God's Spirit working in our lives, transforming us into people who delight to do his will and enjoy serving others. It's not something we slip into. It takes the salvation of God, through the death of his Son on a cross to enable ourselves to be put to one side.

Similarly, when we feel our shortcomings and weaknesses, we don't resolve them by arming ourselves with all the answers, and place our confidence in those answers, or in ourselves for having come up with the answers. We place our confidence in God: asking him for his mercy and wisdom in our lives, and for his blessing and kindness to our children. And, most difficult for my generation I am beginning to think, trusting God to act in their lives as he will, recognising God will act according to his Word as he thinks best. We want guarantees, I think, and will do anything to get them. But we don't get them. God doesn't guarantee us a spouse that won't stray, or children who won't rebel. We have to trust God in the face of the uncertainty that comes with life in this world and we find it very difficult, as all generations have found it. The only way we can trust God is to be certain of his kindness towards us, which we see in the salvation he provides for us in Jesus. There we have unarguable love, demonstrated, making it possible to trust God beyond today with ourselves and our children.

God's kindness to us in revealing himself to us in Scripture and coming to us in his Son overflows into all of our lives, and because of that, into our children's lives. This is a great place of confidence and grace, and is the wellspring for a life of service to our families. Reading Yummy Mummy drove this home to me, from another angle.

(Photos brought to you courtesy of Scotland; a very photogenic place!)

Remembering the Brave

So you want to know who the Covenanters were and why you should care?

The Covenanters were a group of mostly ordinary people who lived in Scotland in the mid to late 1600's. The simple version goes like this: The English King was a tyrant and insisted on a kind of obedience that would make Saddam Hussein look cuddly. He made it illegal not to go to church (which a lot of people weren't doing because the King had changed the way church was run so that they were really uncomfortable participating in it). He not only made it illegal, but made it treason, which meant people could be arrested, tortured and exiled, transported or executed, or a special package deal, which included several of those options. So enthusiastically was this policy pursued that special tortures were invented for the Covenanters.

Opposition to the King's decrees was expressed through the signing of a Covenant or 'National Covenant' in 1638 in which those who signed promised to keep the Scottish church faithful to the Gospel, and not let the King interfere. It all becomes very complex politically as the next 50 years unfold, but that is roughly what is at the heart of it all. It is mostly influential or official people who sign the Covenant, but is adopted by many Scots, who are keen to see Scotland as a land where people can love and follow Jesus without needing go through priests and so forth.

The villain of the piece was a guy called Sergeant Claverhouse who is always depicted as having neither fellow feeling nor conscience. He comes to notice particularly in the martyrdom of John Brown of Priesthill, one of the more famous Covenanters, who was shot without a trial by Claverhouse in front of his wife and two children. His wife is similarly remembered for her great bravery in the face of this.

Many ordinary people were killed: men and women, elderly through to children. One of the more famous tales includes the execution of two women: one young (about 16) and one elderly (about 70?), who were taken by the soldiers and tied to post in the sea. They died as the tide came in. The older was tied further out in the hope that the younger might lose courage and recant. She did not. They both died.

A memorial to these two women in a graveyard just beneath Stirling castle. It is rather idealised, with an odd emphasis on the younger woman's virginity, which I frankly I find somewhat alarming. It really isn't relevant.

It was no less devastating when the clergy died. They had left the church, their livelihood and were often hunted by the soldiers. They held services on the moors for their people, and lived in hiding, going from place to place. One memorable tale involves the execution of a faithful preacher, whose head was put on a pike and displayed outside the city gates. His little boy was hidden in the attic at the time, but somehow got out of the house (as is the way of little boys), and sadly, saw his father's head. He came back to his aunt's house in tears and wouldn't say anything except "I saw my father's head" again and again. (I believe he grew up and become a clergyman himself, but died young from fever, I think).

This time was known as the "Killing Years" in Scotland.

There was much bloodshed. There was little mercy. Ordinary life for these folk was put on hold. Some never knew 'ordinary life' at all.

Why didn't they just go to church??

They didn't go to church because they knew that their only Lord was Jesus. No-one else could save them, and no-one else should have first claim on their lives.

It's a difficult movement in some ways because it is Scottish, and so necessarily tied up with Scottish nationalism (as with all things Scottish). As you read accounts (many have been 'polished up' since the 1600's), it is sometimes hard to distinguish what it is that people are dying for. But it clear that for many of them, it wasn't about Scotland the Brave so much as their commitment to the Lord Jesus.

For those folk, they didn't go to church because they believed that Jesus was their Lord. He had died to make them right with God and so they both loved and followed him, trying to imitate his love and loyalty to them. Jesus was their Lord, so Jesus had the final say in all of their life: the way they lived in everyday life, the way they spoke when they went to church, and the way they thought and the way they prayed for the King of England. They did pray for him, often as they were dying, but refused to acknowledge that he was in charge of the church. Jesus was true Lord.

Jesus had to come first for these Scottish Christians because he is true Lord and king of Kings. Not just that they thought he was, but that he is. So, you can't play around with that. If you have to suffer because of it, you have to suffer. You can't change true things just because other people tell you to. And while this is true of many people all over the world: political activists and so forth, what sets Christians apart is the assurance we have that Jesus is with us where and when we suffer, that it doesn't go unnoticed and that he warned us this would happen if we followed him.

So when we hear the tales of the brave Covenanters, standing firm in the face of fire, ocean, hunger, cold, torture and other such situations, we need to remember that they weren't bravely standing up for their beliefs all alone. They were standing with their Saviour, being loyal to him and he was with them, comforting them and infusing bravery into worn out hearts for one last stand.

Their martyrs deaths may seem remote and distant to us, here in the relative comfort of the 21st century. But their readiness to put all their hopes and dreams for this life aside and endure pain, hardship and ridicule should remind us that the Lord they died for is the same Lord whom we know, if we are Christians, and who will comfort us and make us brave in the face of persecution.

These battered, faithful Christians found him a faithful Saviour in the cold, bleak days of the seventeenth century. In our day, here and now, let us look to him and find him faithful for all our trials and in all our suffering.

Motherhood (II) Scandalous Things

So we have been telling Jonathan about Jesus. A story at night before we pray with him and put him to bed. (Notice I said 'put him to bed' and didn't make any outrageous claims about sleep. Honesty is important).

And we've done Jesus' birth and lots of the teaching and healing stories, some other miracles. Each time we talk about Jesus we try and tell Jonathan why Jesus is special and different, and particularly that Jesus is the only way to God.

And then we got to the crucifixion. I was suddenly very glad that we've started this early. It is hard to know exactly what Jonathan genuinely understands, though Mark and I have agreed that we want him to always hear us talking about Jesus, so we're not going to hang about until we're sure he'll understand.

I was glad we started early in this situation because the scandal of it really hit me. Here we are talking about Jesus to Jonathan every night and showing how fantastic he is, how he rescues people who don't deserve it. And suddenly we're explaining that Jesus died.

Not just that he died, but that he was executed by humanity. Our whole response to being rescued was to insist that we didn't need it and were offended by the very suggestion. And this person who did nothing but good was suddenly killed.

It was hard work. Not hard to recite the well-known facts, but hard to face again the utter sinfulness of humanity. We're wicked. Scandalously wicked.

And over and against that you have Jesus. Dying for his enemies. Determined in the face of rejection to do a work of mercy so extraordinary that it cannot be described. Scandalous love.

It was difficult partly because we know that Jonathan hasn't heard this before. And it's so hard to explain to a new human being that this is the species he's joined: we are all wicked like this. And difficult because it highlights what we know to be true about Jonathan: he's going to do wicked things. He'll live his entire life needing this death that Jesus died for him, while he was his enemy.

So.

We do the resurrection next. I'm looking forward to that.

Motherhood (I) Suffer the Little Children

This is a 'series' suggested by Karen. Now I have a little more time to write I thought I'd throw together a collection of thoughts I've had over the last few weeks. In no particular order. One thought per post. You never know. I might even have more in my series than my esteemed husband!

One important thing which I realised soon after Jonathan was born was the complexity of his relationship with God. Like all of us, Jonathan is called on by God to repent and believe in the Lord Jesus, but unlike us grown ups, the dynamic is different for him as an 8 week old baby.

Before he was born I had thought a lot about the relationship that children have with God and how it is different to and yet similar to that between adults and God. We always need God to know and love us, and to come towards us in his Son: but while adults can consciously repent, articulate their loyalty to Jesus and understand something of the complexity of his death and resurrection for us, children cannot.

Yet, Jesus calls the children to come to him as they are, not when they have grown up. It occured to me that God doesn't twitch back the veil that seems to cover the details of how he relates to young children, but that there are several key categories that are established by Scripture. First, God knows all those he has made. Second, knowledge of God is relational and so open to all human persons in Christ. Third, nothing except sin was a barrier to Jesus' relating to people when he was on earth; age, gender, social class, etc. Fourth, God calls on us to change and rattles our understanding of ourselves, but he does so in terms we can understand and in language which makes sense. Of course, we cannot accept his good news unless he opens our eyes to it, but that is a spiritual rather than intellectual revelation. This is evidenced in the number of people who can articulate the Gospel but utterly reject it. God can communicate to us at our level, because of his knowledge of us.

So, I had concluded that children can know God in Christ, though how this is achieved I could not explain. And I had concluded that Jesus can relate to young children and they respond to this in ways appropriate to their age. They may never even remember it, but that does not make it unreal or unimportant. And because a relationship with the Lord Jesus is a genuine relationship, the knowledge the child gains is not incidental but can be built upon as the relationship grows. In that way it is like Jonathan's knowledge of Mark or me at this age: he can't say who we are and might not even 'know' who we are but he does know us and this will be fleshed out as he grows older and continues to relate to us.* It isn't too surprising to come across people who state that they cannot remember a time when they didn't know and love Jesus.

It is at odds with the curious 'age-of-understanding' which is often wheeled out in the debate on children and salvation. While there is content to the Gospel and an intellectual component which cannot be dismissed, the idea that a person must therefore be of a particular age in order to be saved doesn't seem to be particularly based in Scripture. So, I think it is hard to maintain from Scripture that there is an 'age-of-understanding', where children are OK with God to a particular age and then suddenly they are not. As far as I have been able to discover, this idea of 'age-of-understanding' was generated in the early 1800's. That in itself doesn't mean that it is wrong, but it fits suspiciously well with the culture of the age and has no real basis in Scripture as far as I can see. Therefore, I am not convinced that 'age of understanding' is a good category.

At the end of my reflections I had pretty much come to the conclusion that children could be Christian from a very young age, and that their understanding of this was developed as they grew. I was confident that there would be no way of knowing this for any child with any precision, but that it was best to treat them as Christians and show them how to live lives pleasing to Jesus, all the while calling them to faith. Because no Christian needs to stop hearing the call to faith, and this is part of what it would mean for them to grow in their knowledge and love of Jesus.

I was glad that I had the opportunity to do this thinking.

I could pray with absolute confidence that Jesus would comfort Jonathan as he was wheeled away to have a lumbar puncture at 5 days old. I knew that God was capable of communicating his comfort to someone as young as Jonathan. It was good to have this confidence and not to have to try and think through the whole issue when my emotions were ragged.

And later that night when I told Jonathan his first Bible story (because we were finally in our own room at the hospital and we could have conversations at 4am rather than hushed urgent whispers), I knew that even if he understood none of the words, it was still important for him to hear about Jesus. Not that he'll respond to any one Bible story by itself necessarily, but that it is important for him to hear constantly about the Lord Jesus, who he is and what he has done, in order for him to understand his God and respond in faith, whatever the status of his relationship with God might be.

So, when I think about Jonathan and his relationship with God, I pray that he will respond in faith and that God will open his eyes. But I do so confident that God might not wait till Jonathan is old enough to speak to do so, and that God will save beyond the bounds of what we think is possible or are even able to understand.

(I told Jonathan the story of Jesus saving Zacchaeus, for those who are interested. It seemed appropriate as his name before he was born was 'Tiny'.)

*Our relationship with Jonathan isn't the same as his relationship with God however; the problem of Jonathan's sin is going to affect us in a completely different way compared with the way his sin has affected his relationship with God.

The Surprising Locations of Grace

I don't think many people would disagree that Ahab, King of Israel in 1 Kings, was a thoroughly unpleasant individual. He was, in many ways, the ultimate wicked character in a fairy tale.

[Digression: You can be fairly certain that Ahab would have been ugly and without any fashion sense, or had some serious physical defect because, as Disney teaches us, you can't be a wicked prince unless you are disagreeable to look at. It just doesn't work. Surely the reason why he's wicked is that he tries to impose his ugliness on the beautiful princess?* Thankfully there is no beautiful princess in the Ahab story (because Jezebel has to be ugly as well because she too is wicked!), so we are saved from such a difficult dilemma. Which is just as well, because this post is really not about fairytales at all].
*Despite attempts to reverse this in Shrek, it is remarkable that 'unattractive' Shrek and Fiona both look a whole lot more attractive than the prince, etc.

To get back to Ahab - he really is a dreadful king. The heart sinks as he is introduced, not just because we know him by reputation as evil and we know it won't be good. But also because of the narration: "Ahab the son of Omri did evil in the sight of the Lord more than all who were before him." (16:30) The exile looms. And yes, we always knew it was coming, but it's a bit like Frodo's movement up to Mordor in the Lord of the Rings - the closer he gets the more your dread grows. Yes, you know he'll defeat the odds and all that (oh, come on, if you don't know how it ends now, you never will). But the process is so excruciating, you can't help wishing that it could be avoided, that in fact Ahab could be avoided.

But having introduced Ahab as the evil king par excellence, he then becomes almost comic. He is there when Elijah triumphs in the name of the Lord over Ba'al with fire sweeping down from heaven and demonstrating the Lord's greatness. And what does he do? He runs back home to Jezebel and dobs on Elijah. It is Jezebel who then threatens Elijah and sends him running into the wilderness. Ahab is standing there watching the whole scene unfold and does nothing. His silence does not give consent however, as his interaction with Jezebel shows: he is just too spineless to do anything himself.

Similarly, when he defies God by making a covenant with his enemy and hears God's judgment against him, his response is to be 'sullen and vexed' (20:43). In the next chapter, he tries to get Naboth to give him his vineyard, which would mean that Naboth would have to break God's laws of inheritance. He is again so 'sullen and vexed' when Naboth won't do this that he actually 'lay down on his bed and turned away his face and ate no food.' (21:4) I know 6 year olds who have more emotional maturity. Again, it is Jezebel who sorts it out for him, and if we thought going to bed and refusing to eat was an overreaction from a grown man, we get the female version from Jezebel. Not only does she murder Naboth but destroys his reputation in the process, (like using a rocket launcher to take out a rabbit really). So Ahab looks like a joke: a dangerous joke because he will get his own way, even if he can't do it himself and needs his wife to use her rather terrifying imagination to carry out his whims.

It is no surprise to then find the comedy of errors which happens at the end of Ahab's life in I Kings 22. Here Ahab is so certain that a particular prophet will prophesy against him that he refuses to hear him. When the king of Judah insists that this prophet be heard, he actually prophesies in Ahab's favour. Ahab doesn't believe him and insists that he tell the truth. Whereupon the prophet does tell the truth: he tells Ahab that in the council of God, his demise has been determined through the deception of all his prophets (who are prophesying positively about the upcomign battle), but that defeat is certain. So, Ahab will be deceived. Ahab's response? "Did I not tell you that he would not prophesy good concerning me, but evil?" (22:18) You can almost see his lower lip protruding, complete with tremor. And he throws the prophet into prison, making his (Ahab's) return from battle the condition of his release, which of course the prophet already knows will not come about.

He is told he is deceived and he is deceived.

[This would deserve its own chapter in the Biblical Theology of Deception: it is so full of issues - God deceiving, but is it deception when God actually tells you the truth about the deception? Because you can't say that God hasn't been absolutely honest with Ahab (and Jehoshaphat for that matter). So is it still deception?]

Ahab feels like a joke: the kind of king who is so inept that he needs his wife to come up with the wicked plans: weak, dithering, childish - someone to make Macbeth look decisive and malevolent.

Which is why the two twists in the Ahab story stand out so much.

The first is the rescue of Israel back in chapter 20. This is standard, run of the mill stuff for the OT, in which the army threatens God's people, God reassures the rulers that he will deliver and then he does, miraculously. God fights for his people. God rescues his people from threats. And he does it all twice.

It's just that you don't expect God to do it for Israel (who are steeped in idolatry). And you really don't expect God to do it while Ahab is on the throne. Surely God can only use willing, obedient people who love him? Surely God would only be committed to his people when they aren't caught up in idolatry and when they aren't split into two 'nations', and even then, surely he would be more interested in Judah?

But God is not so neat! And his mercy is extraordinary, and nowhere seen more explicitly and more extravagantly than when it is poured out on his people. So, at precisely the place where most of us would turn from such a messy situation and wait for a better king with a more obedient people, God steps in and rescues. He demonstrates again that despite everything these are his people and he will not be deterred from their salvation. And he will not be deterred from demonstrating his love and kindness in whichever context he chooses. It takes the idea that God can only use the obedient and holy and turns it on its head. God will use whom he will to accomplish his purposes, and this is seen dramatically and frequently in God's decision to save the unworthy.

The second twist is in Ahab's reaction to God's judgment in the wake of Naboth's death. There is a long prophecy against Ahab from 21:20-24, which is really quite awful: there's blood, dogs, birds involved, the end of a dynasty and the gory death of his wife. Not what anyone wants to hear. The narrator interrupts here, and just in case we had forgotten reminds us that 'there was no one like Ahab who sold himself to do evil in the sight of the Lord...' and goes on to list some of those things for two verses (vv25-26).

Then we get Ahab's reaction, which is deeply surprising. No pouting or holding of his breath, but repentance, of all things. And this is not about God's people now, but about this individual. Surely after all he's done, God will get the dogs and birds ready and ignore this petty repentance?

Yet, we are left with the impression that his repentance was serious and God took it seriously, and so God was gracious. So his repentance was no momentary regret but a genuine recognition that he had done the wrong thing. We only know this because of God's words to Elijah (seriously - Ahab could have gone 'about despondently' and we'd just think he was sulking again; we only know it is serious because of what God says to Elijah). (21:29) God tells Elijah that Ahab's death scene is mitigated - it happens to his sons instead (which to us seems unfair but that is something for another day). We are never left with the impression that Ahab's repentance 'made up for' his wickedness.

And it is an interesting display of his mercy. God comments to Elijah but interestingly not to Ahab. Does Ahab ever know? It is not in the passage or anywhere else and Ahab goes to his grave without the dogs or the birds - but given that he dies slowly in the field of battle, does his heart chill at the cawing of the carrion?
(An argument from silence of course, but I always find an argument from silence is good for the imagination, if not the soul; and it can keep one's mind occupied at 2am, so it's not all bad).

But this reaction of grace by God is the most unexpected of reactions: the entire rest of the passage has set us up for the justice of God's condemnation of Ahab. There is no way, if we are paying attention that we can want Ahab to get away with the awful things he has done. He has stumbled the entire nation of Israel and moved the exile event that much closer. Terrible things will happen to people and in the narrative have already happened to people because of Ahab. Worst of all, he has led the people into idolatry and scores of people are facing God's anger because of their worship of other gods. All because of Ahab. He's not just a weak idiot who affects no-one; he is king over God's people and he has devoured them. Even though he is a joke, his evil is no laughing matter.

Why should he receive any mercy? And here I think we find grace again nestled in a most scandalous place.

God shows mercy to Ahab.

It reminds me of Jonah - God showing mercy to a group of the most bloodthirsty and wicked of nations, all because it repents. It feels so easy. Why should someone have their curse removed or mitigated because they were genuinely sorry? Why should they 'get away' with such wickedness?

There is no easy answer to such a question. Indeed, there is no way of really understanding the way God's grace works. But it does demonstrate again that God will 'show mercy to whom he will show mercy' and will expect his people to rejoice in the face of the repentance of the wicked. God does not delight in the death of a sinner, but in salvation, where he declares and reveals himself.

And it implicitly calls on us to rejoice that God has been gracious to another sinner, because that is always the reaction of the people of God to the grace of God being shown, in however small or however strange a way. I think that is why God told Elijah: so he could rejoice as well as to understand that when Ahab died it would not be as previously prophesied. Ahab did repent, if only once and we are to be glad. Not just because we too were God's enemies and at that moment Jesus died for us, and so in one sense we are no better than Ahab. But because of who God is - he is the God who will be merciful, even in the grimmest, grimiest of situations, even to the most unexpected and unworthy of sinners.

God saves and saves and saves again. That is the story of the Bible. It's a scandalous story but one which rejoices the hearts of those whose lives depend on just that kind of God and his salvation in life and death.

Knowing, Believing and John's Gospel

I read again during the week that 'knowledge about God is insufficient compared with knowledge of God'. The writer was trying to show that a personal relationship with God can't be generated by knowing a lot of facts about God.

I have no quarrel with this per se. But it tends towards the view that ignorance is an excellent way to know God, and that knowledge about God gets in the way of knowing God. And I know more than one person who exults in their limited knowledge as a kind of badge of spiritual honour. It's a cute position because there is no argument against it. You can't even engage with it; if you do, you demonstrate knowledge and so are obviously spiritually inferior and not worth listening to.

Having spent a chunk of time this week looking at how knowledge functions in John's Gospel, I am more convinced that ever that this view is neither helpful nor particularly Christian. In fact, I'm beginning to think its sheer laziness masquerading as spiritual righteousness. I have long thought that the self-righteousness produced by this position is an indication that it can't be a good position to hold, but saw it more as a means of self-protection by those who held it. I am beginning to discard this caveat, however. And I'm beginning to discard it because of how knowledge seems to work in John's Gospel.

Knowledge is of vital importance in John's Gospel. I think we see it most clearly in the way it works in people's lives throughout the Gospel. There are two key groups who give us a good indication of the importance of knowledge. There are those with some knowledge, and those whose knowledge grows before our eyes as the Gospel unfolds. In both cases, knowledge is of critical importance to how a person responds to Jesus. And so, knowledge is critical to a person's salvation. It doesn't get more significant than that.

In the first case, where there is some knowledge, that knowledge is used and filled out by Jesus to demonstrate who he is and generate belief. I think we see this most clearly in the woman at the well (ch 4) and in Martha's confession (ch 11). Both the woman at the well and Martha say "I know that..." and then include a piece of important, genuine knowledge about God. With the woman at the well, it is that the Messiah is coming and will reveal all; with Martha it is that God will give to Jesus all that he asks and that the dead will be raised on the last day. In both cases, Jesus then takes the important information they have provided and shows how he fits and exceeds the category. With the woman at the well, he so fulfills the category of Messiah (revealing all) that she runs off to bear witness to him to her township; with Martha, Jesus shows her that the knowledge she has of God as the God who will resurrect and who knows and honours Jesus, his Son is true to an extent that she hadn't imagined prior to this. So, she learns that Jesus is not merely an agent of the resurrection, but is himself both life and resurrection. He embodies it, showing that he is the true God of life with the power to resurrect: the God of the last day standing before her.

In both cases, knowledge which is genuine and valid is used to reveal Jesus to these women. He does not negate their knowledge. Their knowledge is not an impediment to belief but has established good and right categories in their thinking which Jesus enlightens. Knowledge is good for these women in their relationship with Jesus.

On the contrary, the prolonged argument with the Jewish leaders which peppers the entire book continually brings up the issue of their knowledge (and lack of it). So, they don't know where Jesus is from (9:29) and this impedes their ability to listen to him, let alone believe what he is saying. Or they know that salvation is found in the Scriptures but don't know that Jesus fulfills the Scriptures and so don't believe. Their lack of knowledge (and incorrect knowledge in other places) stumbles them to the extent that they reject Jesus completely and teach others to do likewise. Their lack of knowledge cuts them off from believing in Jesus.

The other group who show us the importance of knowledge are the disciples. Their growth in knowledge is important in their relationship with Jesus. From their earliest confessions in chapter 1, through to their post-resurrection realisations (for example: 2: 21-22), their knowledge of who Jesus is continues to grow. The critical moments seem to be in Simon Peter's confession (6:68-69), where Peter confesses not only that Jesus is the Holy One of God but that he alone has words of eternal life. The second moment seems to be the disciples' realisation in the Farewell Discourse (16:30), where they state that they now know that Jesus has come from God. This is particularly significant because in the following chapter Jesus uses this confession as proof of their genuine belief in his prayer (17:8). This is not their position at the beginning of the Gospel, but one which they have reached on the basis of hearing and watching Jesus. They believe because they know.

Far from knowledge stunting their growth as followers of Jesus, it is on the basis of knowledge that the disciples come to a fuller, deeper trust of Jesus and a belief that is not even toppled by the crucifixion event. They believe in Jesus, because they have remained with him (as he invited them to do in chapter 1), and so have seen for themselves who he is and what he has done. Certainly, part of this knowledge is relational kind of knowledge, but that is not the knowledge they speak of when writing their Gospels. In the Gospels they report what happened: what Jesus did, what he said, how he responded to things and so forth. This is the kind of knowledge that they provide us with in order for us to believe, which is their goal in writing their Gospels. The relational knowledge is no doubt there and no doubt significant, but the basis for the belief they call us to is found in the actions and words of Jesus: 'factual' knowledge.

In John's Gospel, Jesus is establishing them as witnesses, not only to those in their generation, but even to us today. And they would be useless witnesses if their belief was based on a sentimental attachment to Jesus which had no solid basis. We rely on their testimony: on what they saw and handled and touched. Our knowledge is dependent on their knowledge. If all they had to report was a collection of vague notions or feelings which could not be known, their witness would be severely limited. Instead, they tell us what they know to be true: what happened, what was said, what is meant by what was said and the reactions of others (good and bad).

It is on the basis of this knowledge that we believe that the Lord Jesus Christ is the Son of God, sent by God to redeem the world. We need a rock-solid knowledge base to believe something as grand as that. We need knowledge that is based in historical activity and speech, that is based on reliable and trustworthy sources. Only this is substantial enough to stand the test of life, with all its difficulties and with all its transient emotions. Believing because we know takes the limelight away from us (our knowledge is outside ourselves after all), and demonstrates that we depend on God and his word to know him through his Son. There is no room for the swollen pride of the ignoramus here.

God's Justice and Our Self-Deception

One of the most striking things about the passage in I Kings 13 is the way the younger and older prophets are treated by God.

It seems so unfair! The older prophet deliberately deceives the younger prophet in order to tell whether the prophecy he brings will come about. The younger prophet, with a good Israelite sense of respect for his elders believes the older prophet, and so is deceived. God speaks to him and tells him that he will surely die for his disobedience. Sure enough, on the way home the younger prophet dies: he is mauled by a lion who does not seem to be all that hungry: it neither eats him nor it seems does it even have an appetite for his donkey (who is no doubt traumatized by the event, though the passage is strangely unconcerned with the donkey’s state of mind). The older prophet hears nothing and is not punished at all.

God speaks clearly to the younger prophet, who is concerned to obey God in all the detail he is given. The relationship is obviously one of a God-fearing, bold prophet with a God who makes his purposes and desires known and is utterly faithful to those purposes he’s made known. On the other hand, the older prophet has no such relationship with God. By the end of the chapter we doubt that he is even a ‘prophet’. God never speaks to him (even when God tells the younger prophet he will die, no word is given to the older prophet who has masterminded this situation to the detriment of the younger prophet). The old prophet does not trust God’s word: God has already given a sign that the events the young prophet speaks of will come about in the destruction of Jeroboam’s altar. Yet the older prophet sets up the younger prophet for death in order to check whether he is genuinely a prophet, which he himself appears not to be. It would hard to argue that he feared God. God certainly doesn’t seem to have much to do with him. The closest he gets to any kind of relationship with God is to be buried with the bones of the younger prophet. He rejects God’s word to cultivate for himself a sign which satisfies him, and in doing so rejects God.

Yet, it is by no means certain that he thinks he rejects God. He doesn’t have contempt for the younger prophet when he finds out that he is a genuine prophet. Instead, he wants to be connected with him: he gathers up his bones and insists on being buried with them, which demonstrates a real respect for and desire for kinship with this younger prophet. It matters to him that this prophet was a genuine prophet and as he grieves he identifies with him as ‘brother’. If you’d said to the prophet: “Are you a prophet of God?” I think he would have answered, “Yes”.

And God seems to reject him. One of the most terrifying aspects of the narrative is that God does not say a word to this ‘prophet’. God is completely silent. He is a ‘prophet’ who has no access to the Word of God. The best he can do is trick a real prophet into having tea with him, and then plead to be buried with his bones. That is the closest he gets to God. God has nothing to do with him.

That is far, far worse than the fate of the younger prophet. The younger prophet hears the Word of God and then is tricked into disobeying. God then tells him that he’s going to die because of it, and sure enough he does. The young prophet has a relationship with God. God is completely faithful to his word, from first to last, and he speaks to this prophet. There are no games, no tricks as far as God is concerned.

This is God’s justice. There is nothing unjust about God’s treatment of either prophet. It probably makes most of us feel uncomfortable, but that says more about us, I think at this point. Two thoughts:

(a) We confuse ‘fairness’ with ‘justice’. We think that something is only just if it is ‘fair’, and we have incorporated into our view of ‘fair’ the idea of things being the same for everyone. This is a nifty invention of the Enlightenment, and from time to time is helpful for us. But on the whole it doesn’t help us deal with reality. Life is not fair. A cursory look at the water situation in the first world, compared with that in the third world should make it obvious that life is not fair. Even if we like to think of ourselves as scrupulously fair, we may not be ‘just’ or ‘righteous’. We might, for example, dispense our affection evenly throughout our family or friends, not taking in account that some might need more of it than others. We could congratulate ourselves on our ‘fairness’, but have we actually done the right thing?
And God is not ‘fair’. He is certainly ‘just’, but he doesn’t treat everyone the same. He gives gifts to those whom he will. He gives different life spans to people. And so it goes on. It is true that he doesn’t play favourites: he remains unimpressed with the beautiful, the intelligent, the wealthy, the highly talented, etc. Instead, he chooses for his family those who demonstrate that he is God and will be glorified through the weak, pathetic things of the world. All this should show us that God’s justice is beyond us. We can’t fathom it. We simply don’t have the wit to understand the wideness and complexity of it. And part of the reason is that our view of justice is stubbornly encrusted in the small, recently invented category of ‘fair’. God is far bigger than ‘fair’ and won’t be constrained by it. He is working with a far greater, more complex entity: Justice.

(b) One of the other issues raised by this narrative is the question of deception. How is it that God allows the younger prophet to be deceived by the older prophet? Why doesn’t he jump in and stop it? The assumption behind this is the idea lurking in our minds that God owes people who follow and trust him. He is obliged to smooth the path, at least partly, for those who take him seriously. After all, they are on his side.
But God doesn’t do this for the younger prophet. And this raises for us the disturbing possibility that God allows us to be deceived and even to deceive ourselves. Of course, this must be self-evident if we reflect on the number of Christians who disagree about important matters. We can’t all be right in everything. It is likely that we are all wrong in something, and that this ‘wrongness’ isn’t just a flaw in our logic. We get in the way of our own logic and believe things we want to believe: about ourselves, about God, about life, about other people. None of us understand the depth of our own sinfulness, so why should we have a handle on anything else in the world? We can’t function in the grip of such skepticism, and so, as Luther put it, we go and ‘sin boldly’, knowing that none of our actions are ever completely pure. But in knowing this, we must always know ourselves to be capable of self-deception and of being deceived by others. When we pray “Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil”, we are not praying about a hypothetical possibility, but about a real situation. The Bible does not stress that we are to be alert and pay attention to what we think and believe for no good reason. We readily and easily deceive ourselves and are deceived by others, often because we want to be.
In the end, if God does not open our eyes when we are deceived, we are hopelessly enmeshed in delusion. There is nothing we can do to cut the net.

This is scary, because we can’t ensure that we won’t be deceived. And we can’t be sure we won’t be deceived about something that really matters with significant consequences (like disobeying the word of God and being eaten by a lion, for example). How do we live with this? We live with it by realizing that we are only like this because we are sinners. This is not someone else’s fault. This is not God’s fault. This is not the ‘older prophet’s’ fault (whoever that might be in our lives). It is because we are sinful that we can’t see clearly. And the only thing left for sinners to do is to throw themselves on the mercy of God and pray for deliverance. Sinners can’t save themselves from their sin nor from anything else. They can only depend on God for salvation, and for clarity of mind and thought (and everything else they need for that matter). Pretending that we can work things ourselves on our own terms only binds the net more tightly around us and incapacitates us more. If we stop thinking we can be deceived, either by ourselves or others, we ensure we are deceived.
Depending on God is not a guarantee that we will not be self-deceived (or deceived by anyone else). God may allow us to be deceived (as he allowed the younger prophet to be deceived and to die for it). It is wise therefore to be suspicious of oneself and know that we are likely to be deceived. That’s why humility is so important: not some kind of ham-fisted attempt to pretend we have faults, but a genuine realization that we aren’t self-sufficient and aren’t on a level with God. We stand under his rule. When we say he is ‘all-wise’ we don’t mean that he is slightly more wise than we are, but that he is wise in a way we know nothing about.
So, we trust what he says because we know that he always tells us the truth about everything, including ourselves. A true understanding of ourselves as sinners capable of self-deception – probably engaged in it at this very moment – helps us depend on and be grateful to our only wise, faithful, true God who has promised wisdom to those who ask for it.

1 Kings 13 helps us to realise the kind of God we are dealing with: one whose Justice is beyond us. And it helps us realise who we are: the kind of people who are not self-sufficient and who can't trust ourselves to even think clearly. This is where 'trusting God' moves from a pious phrase to a living reality, as we say 'yes' to his justice and wisdom, acknowledging that both are out of our league.