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What is so sacred about sex? – Part 2

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This continues from part 1…..

In part one of this article, we discussed the sexual mood of our present culture and whether or not as human beings, we are the owners of our own bodies and minds. We ended on the note that if it is the case that we have been made or created by someone else for his own purposes, then surely we would have a lot more obligations than we would have if we only belonged to ourselves. But we also noted that, this is a big “IF” because some people do not believe (or at least they live as if they don’t believe) that there is any Being higher than ourselves, to whom we must be responsible. Is it reasonable to believe that an actual Being exists who is responsible for our existence and to whom we might be accountable to, regarding our sexual lives? If there is the possibility for such a Being to exist, why would he be interested in what we do with our bodies sexually?

For starters, let us be brutally honest with ourselves: everything in this world – from ourselves to the flowers to the stars to sea to animals etc – points to the fact that some sort of careful designing has gone into the creation of our world and of ourselves, doesn’t it? We often take it for granted that this physical world of ours is structured the way it is. But mathematically speaking, the probability of this world happening by a mindless random or unordered process is incredibly small. According to Astrophysicist Hugh Ross’ conservative calculation, the chance of a planet like ours existing in the universe is about 1 in a trillion billion billion (i.e. 1 in 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 or 1 in 10 raised to the power 30).

 Scientists are discovering that had even a single feature of our universe been just a little bit different, the stars, galaxies and human life would not exist. Let us briefly look at a few amazing scientific discoveries before we go on. The distance from the earth to the sun is just right. Why? Even a small change of around 2% and all life would cease. If the earth was too near the sun, water would evaporate. If it was too far from the sun, its coldness level would not support life. In fact, even the rotation speed of the earth is just right; if it was too slow, the temperature differences between day and night would be too extreme, and if it was too fast the wind speeds would be catastrophic. Furthermore, if the ratio of the electromagnetic and gravitational forces had differed by about one part in ten thousand billion billion billion billion (i.e. 1 part in 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, 000,000,000,000,000,000), then stars such as the Sun, which are capable of supporting life, could not exist. Do you see any picture emerging?

The delicate balance of the elements in our universe, to use the illustration of the theoretical physicist Paul Davies, is like the accuracy level that a marksman needs in order to hit a coin twenty billion light years away on the other side of the observable universe. [A light year is the speed travelled by light in one year. And light, by the way, has the fastest travelling speed in our universe]. In fact it has been noted by some researchers that the earth is placed precisely in a part of the universe that is congenial to scientific studies in cosmology, galactic astronomy, stellar astrophysics and geophysics. That is, if our earth had been positioned in a part of the universe with too much starlight, we could not have been able to see into deep space. There are more than 3000 galaxies in the observable universe, each containing millions to trillions of stars – many being bigger than the earth.

Further, Oxford mathematician John Lennox in his book, ‘God’s undertaker: has Science buried God?’, notes that the distinguished mathematician and astronomer, Sir Fred Hoyle, admitted that his atheism was shaken profoundly when he discovered the degree of fine-tuning needed between the nuclear ground state energy levels in order for carbon to be formed either by a combination of three helium nuclei, or by a combination of nuclei of helium and beryllium. (And for the record, life cannot exist on earth without an abundant supply of carbon). Sir Hoyle’s discovery, according to Lennox, led him to remark that, “a superintellect has monkeyed with physics as well as with chemistry and biology,” and that “there are no blind forces in nature worth talking about.” Interesting isn’t it? And let us not forget the issue of the human DNA – the molecule containing coded instructions for the cells in the body. A group of scientists have recently estimated that the adult body contains about 37.2 trillion cells, each containing DNA. Each person’s complete DNA is unique; the exception being identical twins. The instructions are in what is called Genetic language and they are detailed, complex and specific. These instructions include for example, which cells should grow and when, which cells should die and when, which cells should make hair and what colour it should be.  If all this sounds too technical, then let me make it simple: the scientific discoveries are pointing in the direction where it is highly unlikely that an intelligent Being did not plan and execute the creation of this whole skilfully crafted universe, including human beings like us.

What is my point with all this information? It is this: if conditions in this universe, and the nature of our human bodies, are the way they are – so delicately precision-tuned – and if human beings like us posses the kind of intelligence we posses, even to study them, then it is very reasonable to (and unreasonable not to) suppose that a more intelligent Being, (1) is out there, (2) is the cause of our beings and (3) is interested in our lives. Now if we relate this thought to Mr. Lewis’ thoughts about moral duties (discussed in part one of this article), we can say with a fair degree of confidence that the whole of mankind must have a Landlord. Our bodies, strictly speaking, are not ours. Our Landlord is this Intelligent Being who created this world and everything in it. Religious folks simply call him, God. Since this God is the cause of our intricately designed bodies and existence, it is not mind-boggling that any “Dos and Don’ts” on how we use our bodies should come from him.

 

A Curious Worldview

 In his speech to the members of the city council of Athens, Paul the apostle of Christ tried to give them a new view of God, saying, “God, who made the world and everything in it, is Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples made by human hands.” (Acts 17:24 GNB) In a city so used to building alters and shrines for every imaginable god, this news was however unimaginable. But to the people in the city of Corinth (a city well-known for its immorality), who became believers in Jesus Christ, Paul wrote them a letter in which he explained to them the sacredness of their bodies: “…the body is not to be used for sexual immorality, but to serve the Lord, and the Lord provides for the body. God raised the Lord [i.e. Jesus] from death and will also raise us by his power. … Don’t you know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, who lives in you and who was given to you by God? You do not belong to yourselves but to God; he bought you for a price. So use your bodies for God’s glory.” (1 Cor. 6: 13,14, 19,20 GNB). Dr Ravi Zacharias, a Christian philosopher, appropriately explains that, “the Christian walks with God, not to God. We no longer go to the temple to worship. Rather we go with our temples to worship.” The body of a believer in Christ, rather than a church building, is the holy dwelling place of God and must be treated as “holy grounds.” Thus what this person wears, or touches, or says, or looks at or reads or listens to must uphold God’s holiness.

So much for the Christian “bodies”! What bearing does this worldview have on those who do not subscribe to it? The non-Christian is a prospective temple of God. God wants to live in this person. The Christian explanation for human existence in general is that God made us and not only that, but also that he made us all for himself (Col. 1:16) and he made us in such a way that only in union with him can our greatest good be had (John 10:10). Sin does not allow this to happen. But God became man in Jesus Christ, lived uprightly among us, identified with our human weaknesses, paid for our sins in his death and rose up and wants to live in us to empower us to live as we ought to. Like C. S. Lewis once observed, God invented us in a certain sense like how a man invents an engine. And when a car is made to run of gasoline, it would not run properly on anything else. In this same sense God made the “human machine,” as Lewis puts it, to run on himself.

The fuel we need in order to function the way he designed us is God himself and the food we need to keep our souls spiritually alive is God himself. We cannot expect to function properly on our own terms. Sexual fulfillment (a major hunger of our generation) with its proper joy, peace and security does not come through the pulling down of God’s boundaries. Without God at the centre of a sexual relationship, our much desired real and secure intimacy which we often believe can be found in sexual intercourse will prove elusive. Any person, Christian or not, who tries to outsmart God on this front will soon find that the last laugh is always God’s, not ours; restlessness, emptiness, meaninglessness, broken trust, guilt and shame will ultimately come resting at our door steps. There is definitely pleasure in sin but it is fleeting. Kenyan Christian Apologist, John Njoroge, insightfully says that, “Trying to meet our real needs without God is like trying to satisfy our thirst with salty water: the more we drink, the thirstier we become.  This is a sure path to various sorts of addictions.”

Even in our limited wisdom, we realize that playing our cherished game of football without any rules does not make it really enjoyable. So we have created rules, in all their imperfections. Even with the rules in place, some people hurt others and get hurt themselves; they offend and get offended during the course of the game. Can you imagine the unbridled chaos that would exist if there were no clear rules? In the same way, we are living in an increasing sexually chaotic culture today because we are desperately throwing off God’s moral restraints: husbands and wives are sleeping with people other than their spouses, young unmarried boys and girls are “training” themselves in the act of sex yet ironically the idea of marriage is appearing uncomfortable to them because of its widely acknowledged moral limitations. God has provided a framework within which sex can be properly enjoyed physically, emotionally and spiritually, and it is not outside marriage.

 In God’s scheme of things, according to Christian teachings, you do not need to be experienced in sex before marriage. This is because you have the whole of your married life to get to know your spouse’s body (God’s gift to you) as your bodies lock and your spirits mesh in sexual intercourse before God. With each encounter you get to know the body of your spouse even better to the glory of God. And here is the rich wisdom of the Christian faith (which may seem foolish on the face of it): Any person who genuinely relies on Jesus Christ before his marriage and also during his marriage will be given the grace and spiritual strength to stay the course of marriage should he find out that he has ended up with a sexually defective spouse. Tough to take in, I know, but I cannot make this truth any more appealing than it sounds right now in a time like ours. Marriage is not a selfish enterprise, where if you are not having a sexually exciting life everything else must come crushing down for everyone in it. Rather it is essentially a self-giving worship of God as you commit yourself exclusively to that one person, to love, to cherish and to seek the good of this person always.

 The Christian scriptures teach that all who trust in God will not be disappointed, ultimately. But break God’s precepts on sex (or on any other issue of life) and you can be sure that you will not only separate yourself from God and into a dark loneliness of the soul but you will also hurt yourself and others. Let us be clear: the idea that God is an unloving and unfeeling Judge up there who is simply watching down to see who has gone even slightly wrong so that he may swiftly punish him, is wrong. God wants to reconcile us back to himself. This is the Christian message to the world. God’s precepts in the Bible are intended to facilitate our happiness and not to stifle it. A parent sternly warns her child to steer clear of fire not because she wants to make the child miserable but because she wants to prevent the child from getting hurt or even dying. How can a child enjoy life when he is hurt or dead? If we separate ourselves spiritually from God (a spiritual death), through sin, how can we expect to receive God’s best? God knows the limits within which our best can be had. Stolen waters are not as sweet as we want to believe. Many people may look happy on the outside but on the inside they may be empty, restless, bitter and troubled because they have violated God in this area of sex.

Conclusion

We were made for God and if we spend ourselves in illegitimate pleasures, we will only come away broken and impoverished in our souls (and perhaps with physical scars too). No one enriches his soul by being sexually immoral. Rather we bankrupt ourselves spiritually; we feel the emptiness, restlessness of the soul, the guilt and shame of sin because we have divorced ourselves from God, who is our ultimate good. A more serious side to sexual immorality is that in the end, we must give account of our lives to the God. Some people realize this quicker than others but the important thing is that we are willing to take the necessary steps back to God through the path he has provided – faith in his Son, Jesus Christ. And to be clear, faith in Jesus Christ is not mere intellectual belief in Jesus as Lord but includes a willful commitment to live the whole of one’s life in reverence of him and his teachings. Christ offers forgiveness and rebirth even to the one who has wrecked himself or herself sexually yet is willing to repent. Are you a mess, sexually? Jesus gives hope and strength to those seeking to please God in their sexual lives.

Ghana’s Part-time Christianity

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“Among my first impressions of Ghana was how deeply religious the country is. In fact the question I got asked most frequently by Ghanaians was, ‘do you have faith?’ With a religious mix comprising approximately 70% Christian, 20% Islam, 5% traditional beliefs and only 5% Irreligious, religion is everywhere in Ghana and it’s often found in the most unlikely places. … The first thing that strikes you is how deeply religious a society Ghana is, with worship performed both regularly and with devotion.  This struck home on my drive away from the airport after landing, with the preponderance of shops and stores that are named to reflect religious beliefs: ‘Praise the Lord Welding Services’, ‘Good Shepherd Plumbing and Building’ and ‘The Lord is our Provider General Stores’. The most souped up car I noticed was a ‘boy-racer’ type, with a massive custom spoiler, alloys and undercarriage neon which was emblazoned with ‘Lord is my Shepherd’ transfers on the rear shield in a ‘scary’ halloween script!.” These are words I read on the blog of a UK visitor to Ghana.

We would be hard-pressed to deny these observations – we are religious. Unfortunately, these public displays of religiosity are worlds apart from the personal characters of many Ghanaian Christians, who form the majority of Ghana’s population. Whether you are looking at politics or business, academia or popular music, you will find many professing Christians. There are certainly Christians who are genuinely living Christ-like lives but one does not encounter them often enough, even within the church walls. They are embarrassingly outmatched by those who pay lip service. Many Ghanaian Christians love to make a show of the religion but when it comes down to godliness and moral uprightness, they are found wanting. Ghana is drowning in the filth of corruption, dishonesty, indecency and sexual promiscuity yet the biblically prescribed morality of the Christian majority, whose songs, symbols and landmarks immediately stand out to visitors to this country, cannot be easily seen nor felt. This is one of the most disturbing and irreconcilable features of Ghanaian Christianity.

Many of us who profess to be Christians simply do not walk the talk. We know our Christian doctrines alright, we understand them, but we simply will not live them out. Perhaps we feel that life is too real for us to keep clinging to the admonitions of the faith, which we are not sure will work in life proper. We give and take bribes before work is done and we also lazy about in the office because the companies we are working for “is not my father’s property,” as we like to say in the local parlance. We sleep with our fiancées and fiancés before reaching the church’s altar, and excuse ourselves saying “who in Ghana is not doing it these days. Even the Pastors know that most of the couples they bless in marriages at the altar are not virgins.” We lie chronically on our fancy and smart cell phones about our geographic locations, to our friends, business colleagues and family. Despite all these things, we pay church tithes religiously because presumably our blessings are inextricably linked to the monetary tithe rather than the impure lives we are living. We claim that God exists yet live as if he doesn’t or, even if he exists, he is not looking. We love to go our own way and make it look like it is God’s way. All this has contributed to an overwhelming spiritual darkness and restlessness in this country, from the pulpit to the home, from the market centre to the boardroom, from the internet café to the seats in trotros and taxis. It is a sorry state of affairs.

 

Poor Work Ethic

Chances are that you have worked with or seen a Christian who comes to work and puts in just a little effort but complains about not being recognized or promoted, as if he had been doing extraordinary work all this while. Some may even attribute this to their enemies and wicked spiritual forces. Again, chances are that you know a Christian who goes to work late and leaves early, although it is against the rules of his workplace. Do I need to talk about customer service? The Christian receptionist puts on a look that almost says the customer is disturbing her. It is so hard to even put your trust in the Christian employee. The employer is ill at ease not to closely monitor his Christian employee at work because this employee is likely to do the work anyhow in the absence of close supervision. We would rather pray in the open office space for people to see us than work hard and dutifully as if we were working for God. We easily get angry at customers and work colleagues. The Christian Manager or Director is known in his workplace for his rudeness and lack of respect for human dignity. Work which can be done in minutes or hours takes days and weeks if not months, when the Ghanaian Christian is on the job. Yet he proudly reminds office colleagues that he has to leave early today because a powerful man of God will be gracing a church program. Making up lies to cover up incompetence has become a skill. We intentionally delay working on people’s requests so that they will be forced to pay bribes. Having done this, we go to church and take part of this bribe and give it as an offering to the house of God.

Some might argue that this is a general Ghanaian work culture and therefore singling out Christians is unfair. But you see, in a country where Christians are in the majority this cannot be unfair. More so, Christians ought to be singled out because we are presenting a curious dilemma to the Ghanaian society and the rest of the watching world. We have shouted for years about how powerful Jesus Christ is and how his death on the cross saves us from the guilt of sin, but the country has been waiting unfairly long to see if the death and power of Jesus Christ is also able to save us from the power of sin which causes us to do the unethical and immoral things that we keep doing. The world has the right to know the answer to their question, “How are you Christians able to claim to be following a person as pure as Jesus Christ and yet live such impure lives?” I bow in shame and admit that I cannot answer this question. It is simply baffling. But one thing we can be sure of is that many of the people in the workplace who profess to be Christians do attend Church on Sunday mornings as well as other weekday and weeknight programs at their churches faithfully. Church programs have become more cherished than actually living like Christ.

 

Indecency

The level of decency regarding Christian women’s dressing in particular has deteriorated so much today that it seems our preachers find it a fruitless effort to talk against it. From the professing Christian actress or songstress to the professional Christian business woman to the Christian girl on the university campus, the story is the same.  Our women today do not only wear revealing clothes to lectures, work, and social functions, but they also wear them to church – to the midst of their fellow saints. The sense of shame is gone. Try to complain about it and you would be hushed with the popular refrain “God looks at the Heart and not at outward appearance.” It is not uncommon to hear a Ghanaian Christian make a statement like, “A woman may dress in an indecent way but you never know, her heart may be pure before God.” And this is usually intended to serve as a knockout punch for any moral judgement from an onlooker who has been irritated by a particular woman’s indecent dressing. 1 Samuel 16:7 is where the cliché “God looks at the Heart and not at outward appearance” was coined from. From the verse 1 through to the verse 7 we are told this story: God has rejected Saul as king of Israel and asks Samuel to go and anoint one of Jesse’s sons to be king. When Samuel gets to the place where he is to do the anointing, he sees Eliab, one of Jesse’s sons and says to himself, “This man … is surely the one He [God] has chosen.” 1 Sam 16:6. But God responds to Samuel saying, “Pay no attention to how tall and handsome he is. I have rejected him, because I do not judge as people judge. They look at the outward appearance, but I look at the heart.” vs 7.

The context is clear – Samuel ought not to use the person’s physique or nice features to determine God’s choice. This verse has however been conveniently extended today to mean that God is really not all concerned about or interested in how a Christian dresses. “All God is concerned about is how pure your heart is,” so the thinking goes, as if the heart has nothing to do with how a person lives his/her life. Those with this mindset think that we can do anything we want and for so long as our minds tell us that we still love God, everything is must be fine. But Jesus demolishes this thinking when he says, “To have a good fruit you must have a healthy tree; if you have a poor tree, you will have bad fruit. A tree is known by the kind of fruit it bears. … A good person brings good things out of a treasure of good things; a bad person brings bad things out of a treasure of bad things,” Matt 12:33-34. The point is simple. We live out what our hearts are full of and Proverbs 4:3 tells us to guard our hearts. Our lives are shaped by the way we think in our hearts. If we are hypocrites at heart, our lives will manifest this trait in the form of a double life. In the same way, if we are indecent at heart, it will show on the outside in our dressing, speech etc. If you have a godly heart it will also show.

Once when Jesus condemned the hypocrisy of the Pharisees of his day, he said, “Blind Pharisee! Clean what is inside the cup first, and then the outside will be clean too.” Mat 23:26. Some Christians are so uncomfortable with this truth – that a pure heart does not live an impure life – but it is blindness to think that a person’s heart can be pure when this person’s life shows consistent impurity. Inconsistency is always a sign of error and the more we try to disprove the truth of God’s Word the more it will prove that we are in the wrong.

The indecency we see among Ghanaian Christians today in the church and in the work place and on the streets is only the outward expression of what has taken place in their hearts – we have become irreverent at heart and left the path of righteousness. We do not fear God anymore. How one lives reflects what he/she really believes deep in the heart. This is why Jesus starts the healing of our disease of sinfulness from the heart. When the heart is changed, the way we dress and the rest of our character will be affected. It will all begin to reflect God’s character of holiness. Jesus cures by giving new hearts that have holy desires and passions. Until we give ourselves fully to Jesus, the flesh will dominate us, even our sense of fashion and choice of dress.

A false Dichotomy 

Whenever a Christian separates his religious life from his secular life it is practically impossible to live a consistent and credible Christian life. The distinction leaves him with no hope of integrating all the complicated but wonderful aspects of human existence into his faith. Indeed this separation is likely to produce the situation where he is often plagued with the question of whether he is in the Spirit or in the flesh. The Ghanaian Christian needs to have a holistic worldview where he sees every aspect of life through the lens of Jesus Christ. Our flesh, spirit, and mind are all inseparably combined by God to make us what we are as human beings and he wants us to bring all of these in a life of submission to him. This is why the greatest commandment tells us to love the Lord with all our hearts, all our souls, all our minds and all our strength.

The Christian has only one life to live, and it is a full-time Christian life. We are best placed to impact Ghana for Jesus Christ if we immerse our Christianity right into the political, academic and business life, rather than hiving off our piety away in our numerous and often noisy church programs. Ghana is not feeling the spiritual, economic and moral influence of the followers of Jesus Christ because we are failing to live holistic lives. If we remain in Christ even in the political halls of power, in the company boardrooms and offices, in academic halls of learning, in the shopping centres and market places, in our marriages and friendships, then we will really bear much fruit, just like Christ promised. On the other hand, if we try to be “smarter” than Jesus Christ and live without him, then just as he also promised, we can do nothing. We must not live part-time Christian lives because Jesus Christ is not a part-time Saviour.

 

Prophetic Confusion

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Elijah fed by the Ravens

Any observant Ghanaian, Christian or not will notice a fad which seems to have caught Ghanaian Christianity – an infatuation with the “prophetic”. Today, we have “prophetic encounters”, “prophetic conferences” and all the what not. The favourite title of the modern man of God is now “Prophet”. It seems that everything that a lot of churches do today is prophetic. But has anybody actually stopped to ask themselves what the Bible says about prophets and their vocation, and what qualifies whatever they are doing to be prophetic?

Prophets in the Old Testament

The Jewish Bible (the Tanakh), from which we gain our Old Testament has 3 divisions – the Torah (Genesis-Deuteronomy), the Neviim (the Prophets) and the Ketuvim (the writings aka Job, Psalms, Songs of Songs etc). When Jesus said in Mt 5:17 that “Do not think that I come to destroy the Law or the Prophets”, he was referring to these 2 sections – the Torah and the Neviim.

The Neviim was further divided into the Former Prophets (Joshua, Judges, Samuel and Kings) and the Latter Prophets (Isaiah, Jeremiah,Ezekiel and the other prophets) for one very clear reason – the former were those whose work was before the Babylonian destruction of Jerusalem and exile, and the latter was those who were active during and after the Babylonian exile. One could say then that this division was pre-exilic and post-exilic.

Pre-exilic Prophets

In the books of the Former Prophets, we find prophets like Nathan, Samuel, Elijah and Elisha and their work. Anyone who pays serious attention to their work will find one thing clear throughout – they were concerned for the people’s relationship with God, ensuring that they will not depart from God’s commands. And when the people did, they made every effort to draw their attention to this. The one thing that the people of Israel prided themselves in was God’s special relationship with his chosen nation Israel, and a true prophet was therefore considered to be one whose ministry drew or kept the people’s mind on God and his will for the nation as encapsulated in the Torah.

And it was expected that if the leader of the nation at any point in time is doing what pleases God, he will lead the nation as a whole to do the right then and therefore God will continue to bless the nation and not take his favour away from it. This is why there seems to be a very close relationship (and not necessarily a happy one) between most pre-exilic prophets and the kings of Israel – between Nathan/Samuel and David, Elijah and Ahab, Elisha and Jehu etc. There are instances where their ministry involves helping individuals who may have one need or the other (including Elijah and the widow of Zarepath in 1 Ki 17:7-16), but their main task is to be the watchman of the people of Israel, and that was evidently clear in their ministries. Elijah and the incident of the priests of Baal is a clear example.

Post-Exilic Prophets

The prophets who lived close to the conquering of Judah by the Nebuchadnezzar carried on the same function as their forbearers – warning the nation of Israel of the coming destruction due to their hard heartedness and disobedience of God, which was bound to make God abandon them to their own fate. For example, God tells Jeremiah to go to the temple built by Solomon, and tell them not to think because they have the temple, it means they can do all they want. Of course, they didn’t listen (Jer 7). Interestingly by then false prophets had also come in their midst, who were doing what most false prophets do.

“From the least to the greatest, all are greedy for gain; prophets and priests alike, all practice deceit. They dress the wound of my people as though it were not serious.‘Peace, peace,’ they say,when there is no peace” (Jer 6:13-15).

After the destruction did come, Jeremiah, Isaiah, Ezekiel and the rest later on spoke words of comfort from God that he will return to them and save them (mostly echoing what Moses said in Exodus 30). But this return always was predicated by they themselves returning to serve God more faithfully. Throughout all this, we see a clear focus of their ministry on God’s plan for Israel, and by extension for the world through Israel. And just like the previous focus of God’s will being achieved through good kings, they prophecy again of a Messiah through whom God’s return will be truly felt not only by the chosen nation, but by the Gentiles as well. This Messiah will conquer the enemy, rebuild and cleanse the temple so that God will return to it in glory like he did before in 2 instances i.e. when the Tabernacle was first built and when Solomon dedicate his temple. Lastly God will then bring resurrection and judgment to the world including Jews, and reward those who had been faithful to God.

Prophets in the New Testament

Its 500 years after the destruction of Jerusalem, the beginning 70 years of which been spent in servitude to the kings of Babylon. Since the return from exile, a new temple had been built and yet God’s “Shekinah” hadn’t descended on it like before. Though they lived in their own country, Greece and after them Rome were now their bosses, and there was no sign of the resurrection event or of God’s judgment. Messianic expectations were very high, as people waited for God to do the rest of things the prophets had spoken of.

We see the first mention of a prophet in Lk 2, where an eighty-fourish year old woman called Anna is named as a prophet having received baby Jesus at the temple (v 36-38). Previously a certain righteous and devout Simeon who had been “waiting for the consolation of Israel” (v 25-33) is also given a chance to see the baby, and they all thank God for the same thing – the redemption of the people of Israel has finally come in the person of baby Jesus.

We see in the Gospels the life of John the Baptist, who is considered a prophet by the people, not because he was saying “peace peace”, but was rather preaching quite unpleasant things about what the future held for them – “John said to the crowds coming out to be baptized by him, ‘You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath?’”(Lk 3:7). And quite similar to the rocky relationship between the previous prophets and the leaders of the nation Israel, we find Herod arrests him because of the things John says about him and ultimately John the baptist is executed.

Jesus’s life as a prophet was no more comfortable to the establishment than his cousin John. Jesus went about healing, teaching, feeding and many more. But the point that many readers of the Gospels fail to see about Jesus prophetic ministry is how close Jesus’s ministry was to the other prophets who came before him. The reason why Jesus performed miracles, fed thousands and healed many was to point them to one thing – the kingdom of God and its fulfillment which would come through Jesus himself. In this way, he was not different at all from the other prophets – pointing to God’s will for the world through his nation Israel, but focusing that hope on himself.

After Jesus’ death and resurrection, we see his disciples taking up the task of being a witness to the announcement of God’s kingdom and of the reign of Jesus, saying that by defeating death, Jesus is King of the world. Again, we see opposition to this announcement, from their hometown Judea all the way to Rome. This opposition is not just from the ordinary Joe walking about, but from the leaders themselves. See the obvious pattern of what prophetic life and ministry leads to? Not praise, but condemnation.

We see an example of someone called a prophet in the New Testament in the person of Agabus (Ac 21:10-14). Agabus predicts Paul’s arrest if he goes to Jerusalem, which happens as expected. What most people fail to realize about this event is that this will seriously affect Paul’s ability to continue carrying out his God given mission of announcing the kingdom of God to the Gentiles. This is not Paul going on a normal business trip to probably buy some raw materials to expand his tentmaking business (as he was a tentmaker by vocation), this was a trip related to his work for the kingdom of God, and he responds that he was“ ready not only to be bound, but also to die in Jerusalem for the name of the Lord Jesus” (v 13).

So What’s Gone Wrong

There are multiple other angles to explore on the subject of prophetic vocation and work, but I’ll pause here and come to what prevails today. And I can’t help but be appalled by what is going on today amongst Christians in Ghana. We are busy jumping from one “prophetic nonesense” to the next. We gather people who will tell us “peace, peace” when in fact our house is seriously burning. We prefer those who will twist the word of God to give us a jolt of personal motivation to pursue our selfish goals, whiles we totally ignore the corporate and cosmic dimensions of the kingdom of God. We live in a nation with supposedly 70% christian population, but with corruption up to our jaws. The gap between the rich and the poor is growing by the second, and yet we are busy collecting more money to enrich the clergy and pursue more magnificent infrastructure projects which the poor amongst us will never have access to. We have become a people driven only by individualistic pursuits, looking in the bible for phrases and verses that will give us a boost in the pursuit of personal success. We are the beginning and end of our world, and the political structures pay less and less attention to us because we’ve lost all moral authority to challenge the establishment. Our messages is no longer met with the hostility that prophetic ministries truly elucidate. Sin is no longer something shameful to us, but something we glory in and give nice names. We no longer desire truth that will push us to open our eyes to Jesus’s mission to the world and how we may participate in it, and rather only gather to hear sweet things from our preachers.

“For the time will come when people will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear.” (2 Tim 4:3)

If prophecy is not making us uncomfortable in our comfort zones; if it’s not encouraging us to be strong whiles we pursue Jesus and his will for the world through his new Israel – his church; if prophecy is not showing us as a people together what to do in preparing for God’s future, but is only here to speak to our personal desires for self-fulfillment; if prophecy is not leading us to be a changed people, who place the other’s needs above ours; if prophecy is not leading us to show in our own selves, to take up in our own bodies and as churches the announcement that Jesus is indeed running the world – that the poor are friends with the rich, the friendless find friends, the rejected find a new faithful family all through the active work (not just talk) of Christians, please don’t call it prophecy. Any other name will suffice.

Your God is Too Small – A New Creation

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I’ve heard this statement “Your God is too small” used in certain Christian circles to denote a certain lack of faith in God’s ability to do supposedly mighty things for a person. I find that quite an interesting statement, but even more so very applicable to my current post (and a few others to come with it soon). So I’ll appropriate that title, but for a different purpose and we’ll see why as we go along.

 

In recent times I’ve downloaded and installed a new version of a certain Android bible (YouVersion), which comes with the latest NIV (2011) version. Suffice it to say that the name of that app itself is subject to questioning, but I digress. Interestingly I came across one of the all-time favorite passages of Christendom – 2 Cor 5:17. The 1984 version of the NIV (which is the widely known version) puts it this way).

“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come”

And yet the modern translation says this

“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come; The old has gone, the new is here!”

Now for those who are about to charge the writers of NIV 2011 with changing the word of God, heresy, blasphemy, unfaithfulness to scripture and many other such accusations, I will gladly ask you to find out how Bibles are translated, and how versions of Bibles are updated over time. And for those who judge every other bible by the standard of the King James Version, you will find that “God does not speak King James”, as my friend Kwame Antwi-Boasiako puts it. Such a discourse will take another post altogether, one which someday will be put together.

But indeed I smiled when I saw this. Here was one of those passages which had been one of the foremost evangelistic tools of Protestantism, being shown in a different but extremely important perspective. Not that the previous translation was incompatible with Jesus’s sayings or Paul’s teachings, but because the now corrected construction points to one of the points that is missing in Christendom today. And I will illustrate why with this short scenario.

We read a passage at church the other day, and I asked a question about that passage, answers to which showed` the problem. Jesus was speaking to his disciples, and he made this statement to them.

“I tell you the truth, some who are standing here will not taste death before they see the kingdom of God” (Luke 9:27).

The question then logically arose how it is possible that Peter, Andrew et al will not die before the kingdom of God comes. Are they still alive today? Did Jesus Christ mean what he was saying or was he smoking something we haven’t heard of yet? Or was there some “spiritual” meaning to what he said?

Try as my brothers at church did, many gave all sorts of theories, from the absurd to the plausible but unlikely. And I know that if I asked many contemporary Christians the same question, I will get the same kind of answers from them. But everyone excluded the 1 possibility:

THAT THE KINGDOM OF GOD HAD ALREADY BEGUN

No, there is no “spiritual” meaning to it; neither was Jesus smoking the pot when he said this. Peter doesn’t need to be alive and waiting 2000 years and more to be part of the kingdom of God. The kingdom of God was inaugurated by Jesus’s presence on this earth, and he said this so many times it is surprising that so many people (including myself for a long time) haven’t noticed (Matt 12:28; Lk 4:18-21; Lk 17:20-21).

Jesus’s breaking into this world signified that God has begun changing the world and that man and women are being called into his kingdom to work with him against the kingdoms of this world. Jesus came to lay claim to the whole world as his, and to point out to the world that God had anointed him king of this world, and that everyone needed to submit to him to be a part of his kingdom (Col 1:15-20). And he showed us how – not in overthrowing the world with violence and guns (whether automatic, semi-automatic or non-automatic), but with deeds that speak of the character of their king. The point about the kingdom of God that many Christians miss is that it CANNOT work using the methods of the world, or else it will be defeated by the corrupting influence of the world. It must work with the methods of its king, who lays his life down for others, who calls the leaders to be servants, who is good news to the poor, who challenges the status quo and its comfort zones (including the religious elite), who feeds the flock before feeding himself (and not fleecing them rather – as is the dominant case both politically and religiously).

So therefore the newer translation of 1 Corinthians 5:17 makes a lot of sense to me. For if Jesus’s breaking into this world signifies a changed world then indeed when a person is in Christ, he is not just a new creation, but CREATION HAS BECOME NEW TO HIM. They now live by a new set of rules, serves a different king and belong to a different people. The world is no longer the same to them, because of the following below.

  1. He answers to a new king
  2. He belongs to a new people
  3. He is a new person.

The order is important. The gospel was always about the kingship of Jesus and not about salvation from sin, though it included it. If you doubt it, take the time to read and digest properly all the sermons preached by both Paul and Peter in the book of Acts (2:14-36; 10:34-43; 13:16-40; 17:22-31). To help you navigate this course better, you can look up New Testament scholars like Scott McKnight’s “The King Jesus Gospel”, or NT Wright’s “How God became King”.

Secondly, the gospel called us to be included amongst the people of God by repentance and baptism, and to live with those people who by the Spirit of God in them are fulfilling their King’s purpose and mission. And as we work with these people and we obey our king and his Spirit’s leading, we are further transformed both as a people, and as individuals.

But today the gospel has been turned upside down. Everything is now centered on the number 3 person in the order above. Everything is about how Jesus will solve “my problems”, how he will “make me rich and prosperous”. The number 1 thing that enabled sin to enter the world today – the sin of not submitting to God, but putting ourselves in the center of everything – is the same thing that our gospel has become about. Me.

And when I meet Christians who think Jesus is all about a “personal relationship”, the phrase that comes into my head most often is the title of this post – your God is too small. Your God isn’t the Jewish Messiah – king of this world, who demands that mankind abandon the ways of this world in pursuit of him, who requires that mankind learn to live in peace and in submission and servitude to one another for the purpose of his kingdom, who requires a change in the deepest of hearts of each individual person. No, your god is a genie in a bottle, and when you feel low or your next bout of narcissism shows up, you rub the bottle with some “prayers and tongues, with plenty ‘overcoming’ faith”, say what you want him to do for you, and go about your business, paying no heed to the kingdom of God, which is indeed amongst us, but hidden from our eyes.

This discourse is not over yet, and in my next post we will take a historical look at how the gospel of Jesus changed (or our God became smaller) through the course of history through a better look at the popular Christian creeds.