When We Judge Others We Condemn Ourselves

Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.

There are a number of places in the Gospels which tell of Jesus healing someone in desperate need, only for those in positions of religious authority to condemn him for it. One example is told by Matthew:

Then a demon-oppressed man who was blind and mute was brought to Jesus, and he healed him, so that the man spoke and saw.  And all the people were amazed, and said, “Can this be the Son of David?”  But when the Pharisees heard it, they said, “It is only by Beelzebul, the prince of demons, that this man casts out demons.”

Jesus responds that "the mouth speaks what the heart is full of." People whose hearts are full of evil will see evil, even in what is good.

Which brings us to our next Beatitude: blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God. It is only as our hearts are purified from the filth which enshrouds them that we begin to see the pure wholesome light of God.

Jesus tells us not to judge others; doing so is a sign that our hearts are not pure. There is a passage in St Paul's letter to the church in Rome which begins by talking about people who are far from God whose lifestyles end up in a mess. That bit is often quoted by religious types, but they somehow forget about the punchline:

Therefore you have no excuse, whoever you are, when you judge others; for in passing judgement on another you condemn yourself, because you, the judge, are doing the very same things.

Those self-appointed judges struggle with this: how can they be accused of "degrading passions" and a "debased mind"? The truth is that in passing judgement on others they show themselves to have impure and degraded hearts, fully deserving of all the rigours of God's judgement.

If they had pure hearts they would see God present and at work wherever they looked, for God is everywhere. They would see children of God, who he loves and longs to save, and would do everything they could to show these children God's loving grace, not heartless judgement.

If only we had pure hearts, what difference could we make with Jesus?

But how can our hearts be purified? By us praying lots and reading the Bible? Well, it can't hurt ... but remember that the Pharisees did a lot of that. By asking God to change our hearts through his Holy Spirit within us? Probably better, and it does fit in with the words of the ancient prophet Ezekiel:

A new heart I will give you, and a new spirit I will put within you; and I will remove from your body the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.

But we are called to more than that. God will do the bulk of the work, of course, but we must do our part as well: we need to actively look for Jesus in the people and situations around us, and join in with whatever he is doing. We must freely share God's grace and God's love.

We must let people know the good news that God wants to include everyone in his family, however unlikely that may seem in human terms. It is as we see Jesus in those who our neighbours scorn, especially those despised by our religious neighbours, that we know we are making progress.

Everybody has a choice, of course, and can turn away from God as easily as they can turn to him. May your choices in the coming weeks always turn you toward the light of God  and may you and yours know the blessings of his wonderful grace.

Justice & Mercy: Back To Back

Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy.

Justice and mercy, for Jesus, are like two sides of a single coin. Those who hunger and thirst after justice want the rules to be followed, especially those that protect the poor. Those who are merciful want them relaxed, particularly as they apply to those in desperate need.

If you view Jesus’ words as about rules rather than people this beatitude seems to be a contradiction of the previous one. But if you understand Jesus as speaking hope to people whose hope is lost, it becomes clear that these beatitudes are to be seen as standing back-to-back supporting one another, together revealing good news for the poor.

Like many of the terms used in these beatitudes, ‘mercy’ is a complex concept. It is about compassion and it is about letting people off who have broken an agreement and it is about not demanding that someone repays a debt if they cannot afford it and it is about forgiving someone who has wronged you.

Most fundamentally, mercy it is about giving someone a break with whom you are in some sort of relationship. It is about not holding things against people who matter to us, but instead showing the sort of love Paul speaks about in his letter to the Corinthian church:

Love is patient, love is kind;
Love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude.
It does not insist on its own way;
It is not irritable or resentful;
It does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth.
It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

That’s the basic idea of ‘mercy’, but Luke's Gospel tells us that Jesus ramps this up to also apply to enemies: "Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you." Consider also the ‘Who is my neighbour?’ question answered in the Parable of the Good Samaritan as “The one who shows mercy”. For mercy triumphs over judgement, as James puts it!

Mercy is about attitude, especially our attitude toward people who are different. If someone is in need, it should be irrelevant what their colour, creed, or culture is like: “Do to others as you would have them do to you.” We are to be merciful as our Father is merciful; helping according to need not according to status, enmity, ingratitude or inability to repay.

As James, a leader of the early church, puts it in his letter, this really matters: “For judgement will be shown without mercy to anyone who has shown no mercy.” We have been warned.

But remember that "mercy triumphs over judgement". May you know and show God's mercy this week.

Judgement & Exclusion

There's rather a lot about judgement in Matthew's account of Jesus' life. In part this makes sense as the people he was writing to were attempting to come to terms with the destruction of their Temple in Jerusalem and the suffering which accompanied it.

So this is introduced in a series of stories and parables highlighting the faithlessness of the religious leaders in Jesus' day and the judgement which would surely follow after they persecuted first Jesus and then his followers for so many years.

Finally, the end of chapter 23 and the bulk of 24 addresses the consequence of this, bringing together the terrible suffering during the siege of Jerusalem, the destruction of the Temple, and the hope of Jesus' eventual return into one terrible apocalyptic warning. We're bad at apocalyptic today so we tend to get lost in this passage but it most likely made sense, even brought a sense of comfort and meaning, to its early readers.

Then in chapter 25 the scope widens and we get three quick parables about judgement more generally, which are potentially easier to follow and apply today. These parables, known traditionally as The Parable of the Wise and Foolish Virgins, The Parable of the Talents and The Parable of the Sheep and the Goats are all parables of judgement.

Interestingly, given the traditional  Protestant religious focus on 'Salvation by faith not works', all three parables are most immediately about actions. Equally interestingly, given the traditional religious focus on avoiding 'sin' - refraining from doing forbidden things - all three are about people's failure (or not) to do what they should have done; no-one is criticised for doing something wrong, just for failing to do something right.

In the first, ten young women are chosen to accompany a bridegroom to his wedding feast. Five of the ten are prepared and ready when he comes, so they are welcomed into the feast in places of honour. The other five were not ready when he came and they are excluded: the bridegroom says he does not know them.

In the second parable a wealthy man goes on a journey so he gives his servants portions of his immense wealth to use while he is away. This is a tremendous opportunity which two of the servants use, whilst the third buries the wealth away and tries to go on with his life. When their master returns those who used the opportunity are praised and "given charge of many things"; the servant who deliberately failed to use the opportunity, however, is sharply criticised and thrown outside "into the darkness".

The final parable has Jesus returning in glory to judge people from all the nations. When he judges he does so on the basis of how they have treated those in need around them. He says the way we have treated the neediest is the way we treat him, and he separates people on this basis into those facing eternal life and those facing punishment.

Literally the word translated 'punishment' in that final parable means 'pruning' or cutting away, so again the implication is that judgement is about separation: separating those included in God's Kingdom from those who are excluded from it.

The basis for that separation is either what we do or, maybe more likely, on the underlying attitude: an attitude of expectancy which leads us to make sure we are ready and prepared; an attitude of trust which leads us to make use of opportunities God gives us; and especially an attitude of compassion for those we see in need.

And, in the end, inclusion means life and exclusion means death. How we live matters.

Seventy Disciples Or Seventy-Two?

Last Sunday at St John's we tried to get the congregation seeing (and feeling) a Bible passage from the inside, as it were, by getting them all to take part. The results were remarkable and illustrated just how much power there is in Scripture if you take the time to go deeper than the abstract religious stuff. But that's not my point today.

The passage we used was from Luke's Gospel, in the New Living Translation, and began:

The Lord now chose seventy-two other disciples and sent them ahead in pairs to all the towns and places he planned to visit.

Straightforward enough, one might think, except that we've been seeing this passage quite a lot during our Partnership for Missional Church initiative, but usually in the New Revised Standard Version where it begins:

After this the Lord appointed seventy others and sent them on ahead of him in pairs to every town and place where he himself intended to go.

Spot the difference.

On Sunday nobody mentioned this - they were too busy being struck by the contrasting experiences of welcome, exclusion and judgement which come later in the passage - but it certainly struck me as being odd: how can two modern translations of the Bible differ on something so simple? So I did some research.

The short answer seems to be that the original written by Luke probably said seventy-two, but that seventy makes more sense.

Translators don't have access to Luke's original, of course, so they have to work from copies of copies. The people who made these copies were incredibly accurate, but over centuries changes and 'corrections' did creep in. The earliest copies we have of this passage say 'seventy-two', but later on someone seems to have 'corrected' that to 'seventy' and copies of this 'corrected' version went on to be very influential in early English Bible translations.

So now we have a situation where translations which prioritise faithfulness to the original, such as the NLT, say there were seventy-two disciples sent out, whereas those which prioritise faithfulness to tradition, such as the NRSV, say there were seventy.

Problem solved? Not really: it just moves the question on to why anybody ever thought 'seventy' was a correction in the first place? Which takes us to the book of Genesis.

In chapter 10 of Genesis you get a passage known as the 'Table of Nations', where Noah is presented as the father of all the different races and people groups in the world. In the earliest Hebrew versions of this we have found there are seventy names in this list. However, in the main Greek version, called the Septuagint and translated two or three centuries before Luke was born, there are two extra names, making seventy-two. If I tell you that Luke's Gospel, like the rest of the New Testament, was written in Greek and tended to quote from the Septuagint rather than the Hebrew Scriptures, you can probably see where this is going.

The odds are that Luke was trying to make a point in this story about the disciples who were sent out representing all of the races of mankind, not just one or two. This sort of inclusiveness is an important theme in Luke's writing. So he uses a number which his readers would have recognised as referencing the Old Testament list of all the peoples of the world: seventy-two.

But later translators of the Old Testament used the Hebrew as their primary source so they ended up with just seventy races in the Table of Nations list - breaking the connection. Therefore they 'corrected' Luke to restore the likely point of the number in the first place.

So which number is best today? To be honest, hardly anybody in churches today knows their Old Testament well enough to recognise the point of either, so it doesn't really make a lot of difference.

Today we tend to think that numbers are all about counting, so we are more inclined to ask something along the lines of "how many were there really?" This would have seemed a very odd question back then, but does tend to bother us today.

The short answer, of course, is that we don't know. A longer answer might be that if Jesus was wanting to make the point he would have used the number from the Hebrew Scriptures: seventy. But for Luke the correct translation of that into Greek - meaning for meaning - would then be seventy-two. So working on pure likelihoods: seventy is probably the correct count of disciples, seventy-two is probably the correct literal translation of Luke, and seventy with a footnote back to Genesis 10 would probably be the truest meaning-for-meaning translation: I don't think any of them do that!

So, is there a less technical point to all this Bible geekiness? Actually I can think of three:

1. The mission of the church includes everybody, irrespective of race, gender or all the other things that normally divide us;
2. Have sympathy with Bible translators: it is a far more difficult job than we imagine;
3. If you're given to quoting the Bible at people, always do so with extreme humility: there's a lot more to Scripture than we can possibly grasp, and our understanding is bound to be less than God's. The flip side of this is that if someone quotes Scripture at you, especially if they do so in a judgemental way, treat their words with caution: their understanding is also far less than God's, and if they are being judgemental then they don't even understand the very basics of Scriptural teaching:

"Therefore you have no excuse, whoever you are, when you judge others; for in passing judgement on another you condemn yourself"

On which (slightly judgemental) note I wish you grace and peace in the days ahead, and every blessing for you and yours.

Two Models Of Church

Both models exist; too often the first makes more noise:-

Are you there?
Can you hear me?
I am thinking of you

Are you hurt?
Are you lonely?
Hope my words get through

Did you know nobody's perfect?
We all fall down
See into the heart of you now

When you are lost
I will find you
Through the dark
I can see you
And you are loved
You are worthy
You can't hide
All the beauty
I can see you ...

Let me put my cards on the table
I've been where you are
I'll never see the stain of a label
Or a scar
You need to know that i wont reject you
Let's unbreak your heart
You are not the voices that shame you

I'm coming out
So call your friends and gather round
It's time to judge and pin me down
I'm in the box you put me in
It's dark and I can't see a thing
No air, I need to breathe ...

You label and name
Because you're afraid
Because it makes you feel safe
But here is the sting:
It don't mean a thing.
So everybody sing

Define me, de­fine me, somebody find me
Tell me what I am­ you know you love it
Define me, de­file me, somebody bind me
Make me what I am/ you want
You'll never break me down

Oh my god ain't it fun to judge, ain't it fun to judge, ain't it fun to judge?

Oh my god now I'm covered in mud, now I'm covered in mud, ain't it fun to judge?

Oh my god now you want my blood, now you want my blood, ain't it fun to judge?

Oh my god now I'm covered in mud and you want my blood, ain't it fun to judge?

Actually, I suspect most churches have a mixture of both approaches in their congregations. That's probably fair enough: churchgoers are, by and large, human too, and tolerance works both ways. Up to a point.

But where I do get angry is when leaders - formal or informal - bring the worst out of others. When someone stirs up prejudice and hatred, spreading the poison from their own soul to their neighbours. It's evil and it's anti-Christian.

The job of the church is to follow Jesus, to treat people as he did. Simple as that.

The lyrics above are from the band Bad Pollyanna, off their excellent Broken Toys album.

Advent Hope

"£25m Pay Deal Criticised" - BG group, headquartered here in Reading, are hiring a new CEO, Helge Lund, who wants £25 million for his first year. He may or may not get all of it, but the reality remains that the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. The reason is simple: the rich have the power to decide where the money goes and so they take it; the poor don't have power so they struggle to feed their families. It seems to me that there should be a reckoning for this, an accounting, a judgement if you like.

"Kassig Had ‘Calling’ To Help Syrians" - Peter Kassig was kidnapped and killed by the IS/ISIS/ISIL and a video of his death posted. What western media rarely mentions is that around 14 Syrians were also murdered on the video, an omission that seems to me to play into the hands of the IS propagandists. Nevertheless, what we have in Syria and Western Iraq is a situation where men (mostly) of violence are slaughtering people of goodwill and good intent. Surely that demands a reckoning, an accounting, a judgement.

"Rotherham: Tip Of The Iceberg" - At least 1,400 vulnerable children abused by a paedophile ring. Why the 'tip of the iceberg'? One reason is that there are now investigations into other paedophile rings operating in other towns and cities across the UK. The other is that police chiefs are now saying what the NSPCC have been saying for years: that all of these paedophile rings are only the tip of the iceberg of child abuse in this country - the vast majority of abuse takes place in or around the home, carried out by family members or family friends.There has to be a reckoning, an accounting, a judgement, and it must come soon: every day more children and young people are suffering.

What is God doing about all this?

Which brings us to Advent. Advent is not just looking back to the first Christmas, celebrating Emmanuel, God with us, and wondering about all that God was doing. Advent is also about looking forward in hope. In the church calendar, last Sunday was the Feast of Christ the King; for the next few Sundays we look forward to the return of King Jesus to earth to reign in power over a new Kingdom of justice and peace. Sounds easy?

Back in the days of the Old Testament prophet Isaiah he wrote warnings about the consequences of the injustice, greed and violence racking his nation. Many of his passages have a thick dark thread of warning, interwoven with a fine gold thread about God intervening personally to sort things out. The warnings in due course came true, back in 587BC when the Babylonians destroyed Jerusalem and exiled many of its people. Injustice piled on injustice, with greed, violence, poisonous politics and exploitative religion, had built up a toxic brew which eventually boiled over in death, destruction and horror. You can read about it in the Old Testament book of Lamentations.

It was several centuries before the fine gold thread took effect ... and then it was in a totally unexpected way. A baby in a manger, what is that about? The everyday miracle of a new birth, new life, imbued with the once-in-history miracle of the incarnation: God as humanity; the infinite creator of the universe as a tiny baby in its mother's arms. A wonder.

But still injustice, greed and violence continue. The Gospel writers, like Isaiah before, warn again of the consequences. Again, a thick dark thread of warning mixed with the fine golden thread of hope. There will be violence and destruction but, at an unknown time and in an unknown way, there will be change. The Temple in Jerusalem was destroyed - again - in AD70, "not one stone left on another", but Jesus, crucified by men of violence, has been raised to be king. Soon, we don't when, he will return.

Injustice, greed and violence remain - see the headlines above. They regularly boil over in a reckoning of death, destruction and horror, but that changes nothing in the long term. A new approach is needed; a new kind of reckoning. Instead of a judgement of death and destruction, the world needs a judgement of redemption and transformation. Not a reckoning of retribution, but a reckoning of renewal: a totting up, a drawing of the line, a fresh start. The point is what comes after, not judgement in itself.

We get a pointer from the apostle Paul's first letter to the young church in Corinth. Talking about Jesus' return, Paul tells them that all we have done which is wrong, which falls short, which is unworthy of Jesus, all that will be burnt up when Jesus comes, destroyed, blown away, no more. Cleansed. On the other hand, he tells us later, all that we do which is good, wholesome, worthy of Jesus' name, that will last forever. Not just a good thing for today, but Jesus will carry it over into his reign, his kingdom. Anything good we do this week will be a part of Jesus' Kingdom throughout eternity.

The point is that we are not to be afraid of making mistakes, we need to reach out and do whatever good we can.

Jesus' parable of the talents makes the same point: God has given the gift of life to us; he wants us to use it. Not to hide away in fear, in case we make a mistake, but to use it to make a difference, to make this world a better place, and so to work toward the world to come.

Because Jesus' reign and Jesus' Kingdom are not just about when Jesus returns in glory. The Advent Hope is so much more than that. Jesus' Kingdom will come fully when Jesus returns, but even now it is breaking through where Jesus' followers are at work. Even now Jesus reigns where his people do the unexpected, take risks: when we help those who would not help us, when we are kind to those who show only enmity, when we go further, look deeper, do more. That is where Jesus' Kingdom is visible, calling people to respond.

This is what the Lord's Prayer means when we say "your Kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven". It must never just be just words, it is to be said as a commitment: we will do all we can to help God's Kingdom break through where we are. Because the Advent Hope is not just an idea, it is actions and attitudes and a brave heart in difficult situations. It is trusting God to use all that we do for good.

And it is also saying, "Do hurry up, Lord, we're doing our best, but we still need you down here now!" Come, Lord Jesus, come.

Homosexuality & The Bible

 

After Christian songwriter Vicky Beeching proclaimed in an interview in The Independent, on Thursday, "I'm gay. God loves me just the way I am", there was the expected kerfuffle in conservative Evangelical circles. Channel 4 News interviewed Beeching and US hardliner Scott Lively together, highlighting the problems.

The way Beeching (like many others) has been treated over the years is clear abuse and religious belief is no excuse for that - although do note that such abuse happens at least as much outside churches as inside, even in the US.

One common thread is the claim that the Bible condemns homosexuality. Clearly many who make this claim neither know nor care what the Bible says, but hopefully there are some who do care. So maybe a little clarification would be helpful.

There are three main passages that tend to be quoted about homosexuality, although only one, in Romans, is relevant to females:-

The first, rather depressingly, is from the ancient book of Leviticus:

Do not have sexual relations with a man as one does with a woman; that is detestable.

I say 'rather depressingly' because Leviticus is right at the heart of the Torah, the Jewish Law. If there is one thing that a conservative evangelical ought to know it is that Jesus died to set us free from the Jewish Law, to live instead under God's grace.

Some evangelical traditions undermine that by saying that the Torah contains ceremonial laws, which are not binding on Christians, like circumcision, and moral laws which are. This is pure human tradition and directly contradicts both Jesus - who said that Torah is not to be reduced, not by so much as one jot or one tittle as the old translation puts it (Matthew 5:18) - and Paul - who wrote that those who rely on the Law must do everything written in the Law or be under a curse (Galatians 3:10). There is a choice for 'Biblical Christians': either try to follow the rules of the Jewish Law, and be condemned by it, or live in the freedom of God's grace, without putting millstones around people's necks or heavy burdens on their shoulders.

Vicky Beeching mentions Sodom and Gomorrah in her interview, but the Bible is explicit, in the book of the prophet Ezekiel, that the sin of Sodom was social injustice:

Now this was the sin of your sister Sodom: she and her daughters were arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy.

The second often quoted 'passage' is rather a series of passages: Paul's lists. Typical is the following from his first letter to the Corinthian church (in the ESV translation):

Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practise homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.

There is actually a translation issue here in that 'men who practise homosexuality' attempts to translate two different slang terms of uncertain meaning: roughly 'male bedders'  and 'softies'. Merging two list items into one is poor translation anyway, but anyone using this passage should be aware that the one of the terms was apparently invented by Paul, without clarification, and the other was used in different ways in Greek writings - including softies as young men who have not had an older male lover - and a general reference to male homosexuality is as much assumption as scripture.
[The above paragraph was edited 17/08/14, after some more research]

However, the main point is that these are very general lists, not just about sex. In particular they should be taken in conjunction with Jesus' warning about lust being equivalent to adultery, and anger to murder. Take the lists as a whole and we are all included; none of us are entitled to entry into the kingdom of God ... we all depend on God's grace not our own worthiness. So anyone using these lists to condemn someone else, for sexuality say, is condemning themselves. As Jesus said, “Do not judge, and you will not be judged. Do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven."

Which brings us to the final passage, for now, in many ways the biggie - also the only one which mentions female homosexuality - from Paul's letter to the Romans:

For this reason God gave them up to dishonourable passions. For their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature; and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error.

I must admit I do find this one irritating. It is well known that context is important, and the verses above are a small part of quite a long, structured passage, whose conclusion is:

Therefore you have no excuse, O man, every one of you who judges. For in passing judgement on another you condemn yourself, because you, the judge, practise the very same things. ... Because of your hard and impenitent heart you are storing up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath when God's righteous judgement will be revealed.

The Bible is absolutely clear: passing judgement on other people for their sexuality is to condemn oneself, not them. We can twist and turn and make excuses, but the point is clear. It is not homosexuality which condemns but legalism and judging others. Live in the freedom of God's grace for yourself, and allow others to do the same.

Finally, a thought from journalist Jonny Freeman, on Huffington Post:

If you're reading this and you believe you're gay, and you have a faith, do not feel ashamed. Life's for living, embrace who you are. The acceptance is growing, and one day, at last, it won't be such a big talking point.

Amen to that.

That Farmer Again

Jesus told another parable about a farmer being apparently downright perverse. In this case it was a farmer who refused to let his wheat field be weeded, in case any wheat plants were pulled up by mistake. Yet surely if you allow weeds to grow amongst wheat they will steal the nutrients and crowd the wheat out, so what on earth is he playing at?

Jesus then told them this story:
The kingdom of heaven is like what happened when a farmer scattered good seed in a field. But while everyone was sleeping, an enemy came and scattered weed seeds in the field and then left. When the plants came up and began to ripen, the farmer’s servants could see the weeds. The servants came and asked, “Sir, didn’t you scatter good seed in your field? Where did these weeds come from?”
“An enemy did this,” he replied. His servants then asked, “Do you want us to go out and pull up the weeds?”
“No!” he answered. “You might also pull up the wheat. Leave the weeds alone until harvest time. Then I’ll tell my workers to gather the weeds and tie them up and burn them. But I’ll have them store the wheat in my barn.”

'Weeds' is a remarkably unhelpful translation here; it is very likely that the Greek word zizanion refers to darnel ryegrass, Lolium temulentum. This is also known as poison ryegrass, because it is commonly infected with poisonous symbiotic fungi, Neotyphodium. There is a factsheet on darnel ryegrass on the BioNET-EAFRINET website which advises:

Lolium temulentum is a weed of wheat farmlands. Even a few grains of this plant will adversely affect crop quality. Its seeds are poisonous to people and livestock. It is very difficult to separate the seeds of L. temulentum from those of wheat and other small grain crops as they are similar in size and weight. L. temulentum can be a host to a variety of crop pests and diseases.

If prevention is no longer possible, it is best to treat the weed infestations when they are small to prevent them from establishing (early detection and rapid response). Controlling the weed before it seeds will reduce future problems.

Although they then add:

Hand weeding can control this species although this is difficult to undertake early because of the resemblance between this weed and the infested wheat crops.

So maybe the farmer isn't being quite so daft after all; he just needs to make sure he gets his timing right.

The parable isn't about grasses though, it's about people. In particular it is about telling the difference between those people who are beneficial and those who are poisonous. It is not always easy to tell the difference.

Religious groups have a nasty habit of trying to make the distinction based on their own prejudices, traditions and rules - mostly equating to "are they like us" - but God waits for people to show their true colours. Sometimes this means getting the timing right - see the Bible story of Zaccheus - sometimes it means being able to see below the surface - see the story of Simon the Pharisee - and sometimes it is about not excluding people because of superficial matters - see the story of the Ethiopian eunuch.

The promise is that at 'the end of the age' there will be a cleansing. Those who prove themselves to be poisonous will be removed, along with all causes of harm, and those who prove to be wholesome will be welcomed into God's Kingdom, to 'shine like the sun' in a renewed world where there will be no more crying and no more pain, but God himself will comfort them.

The Wolf Will Reside With The Lamb by Loulou13

There Will Be A Judgement

An accounting for all that a person has and hasn't done. A time, I believe, when each will come face to face with the consequences of their actions, and inaction. Not just in a cerebral, abstract way, but actually feeling the joys and pains they have caused. For terrorists and child-abusers it is hard to see how this could be borne.

Churches often obsess about sexual preferences and social control, bringing the idea of 'sin' into disrepute. Yet there are actions and activities which are clearly evil and for which judgement and an accounting is all too necessary. In recent weeks such actions have been seen in Boston, London and Paris. Less seen are the shadowy figures behind the scenes who fill vulnerable young men with hatred, priming them to cause harm. Seen but often ignored are the media, and the troublemakers, who blame many for the actions of a few, creating a climate of hatred where those who are different live in fear. Evil has consequences and needs to be dealt with.

A distinctively Christian view of judgement emphasises that grace, an opportunity to change, is available to all. We all face the accounting, but we all have the opportunity to turn away from what has been wrong and turn to God, through Jesus, who can make all things right. Jesus once said that we are to be perfect, just as God is perfect. This can be seen as a threat, or an impossible demand, but it can also be seen as a promise. Good will last forever, whilst evil is to be eternally destroyed, and we can become part of the good. Or we can refuse to change and be lost forever, what the Bible calls the 'second death'.

Forgiveness is important but it is taking the opportunity for change which is key to life.

I do think it's important that if God is going to sort out the world, to remake things the way they were supposed to be, then terrorism and abuse, along with the attitudes that lie behind them, have to be dealt with. There is a great deal in this world which is beautiful and good, but there is also much that is ugly and evil. It needs sorting out ... sooner rather than later.

I am told that at one of Caversham's churches yesterday the minister used the killing of Drummer Lee Rigby as an excuse to attack all Muslims: to encourage prejudice, fear and hatred amongst that congregation. There will be a judgement.

Jimmy Carr & Financial Advisors

I wonder if one of the great divides in modern society is between those who believe that paying taxes is an unreasonable burden to be avoided by any means possible, and those for whom taxes are their contribution to the society in which they live and work.

For example, according to Stephen Pollard, writing in The Express:

Let me be blunt: only a fool would pay more tax than he has to. The Government sets the rules and the rest of us follow them. Who would choose to hand over more money than the law requires?

Whereas Channel 4 News reports tweets by comedians Frankie Boyle:

It's ok to avoid tax providing every time you do a joke about a town being shit you add "Partly down to me I'm afraid" under your breath"

and John Robins (in response to someone asking ""why is everyone acting as though @JimmyCarr has killed a baby?!"):

Because babies die in underfunded hospitals

Jimmy Carr's initial response to his outing as part of the K2 tax avoidance scheme is reported by the Mirror to have been very much in the 'only a fool' tradition:

I pay what I have to and not a penny more.

By the following day Carr had changed his approach, as reported in Metro:

'I met with a financial adviser and he said to me "Do you want to pay less tax? It's totally legal." I said "Yes."
'I now realise I've made a terrible error of judgement.'

Hopefully this was a change of heart arising from spending time thinking things through, although cynicism suggests that he may simply have reflected that a comedian with no credibility is unlikely to have any use for tax avoidance schemes, legal, ethical, or otherwise.

But what about the financial advisor? Presumably s/he thought they were just doing their job by coming up with wildly unethical ways for their clients to avoid paying their taxes to the government - I guess it 'justifies' the money being paid instead to the advisor. So maybe the advisor feels duty bound to suggest such schemes and the client, knowing little about financial matters - that's why they are paying a financial advisor after all -  just thinks "saving a bit of cash, fair enough" and agrees.

As Cliff D'Arcy puts it in the Daily Mail:

Indeed, the tax system is seen as a 'game of cat and mouse' by tax advisers, who get paid very well to find new loopholes as and when HMRC closes old ones.

But D'Arcy puts this 'game' into context for the rest of us:

It's reckoned that aggressive tax-avoidance plans such as K2 could be costing the UK as much as £4.5billion a year in lost taxes. That's enough to reduce the basic rate of income tax from 20 per cent to 18.5 per cent overnight.

Many years ago, when I earned rather more money than I do now, I had a financial advisor used to visit. Once we'd got past the initial gimmicks she was well-informed and useful: with good advice about how to balance long and short-term savings, for example, and making sure credit cards are paid off in full each month. Nothing terribly special, perhaps, but I learnt a lot which came in handy later when my income dropped fairly drastically. So maybe financial advisors come in two sorts also: those who see their job as being to help their clients ethically and with integrity, and those who just want to get clients and make money.

The difference, incidentally, between ways of reducing tax paid that I consider ethical and those which I do not lies in their contribution to wider society. For example, in the UK an ISA is a way of encouraging individuals to save by reducing the tax paid on interest earned in qualifying savings schemes. They were deliberately set up by the UK government because such savings are seen as being good for the nation as a whole, and they are simple and straightforward in operation. K2, and other avoidance schemes, are none of those.

I started by considering two sides of a great divide on paying tax: those who want to pay their way, and those who want to avoid responsibility. Actually I think there is a third group, probably much larger than either: those who will follow the crowd. Nobody really likes paying tax, but tax is a vital foundation of a functioning society. So either people think it through, coming down on one side or the other of my divide, or they just drift. If Jimmy Carr's 'terrible error of judgement' has the effect of encouraging people to drift towards paying their way in society that would be a useful start.

You Who Pass Judgement

Crazy Judge by prthugp

It's probably the worst placed chapter boundary in the entire Bible: the one between chapters 1 and 2 of Paul's letter to the Romans. Of course, chapters and verses weren't part of the original Bible, they were added later for convenience. Convenient they undoubtedly are - I don't know the Bible off by heart, and I don't know anyone who does, so finding references without chapter and verse would be near impossible - but they also sometimes change or obscure the original meaning. Particularly as preachers and writers of Bible-study notes tend to lazily split their teaching by chapter rather than by content.

The problem in Romans is that Paul is using a clever rhetorical trick to make a point, and the chapter boundary cuts off the punchline from the lead-in. It's a trick used long before by the prophet Amos (cf Amos chapters 1 and 2): Amos starts by criticising Israel's neighbours, saying how wicked they are and how God will punish them. Then, when he has all his Israelite hearers nodding along, he turns on them, telling them that they are even worse, so shouldn't God punish them even more.

In the second half of Romans 1, Paul has what looks like the most amazing rant against 'all the godlessness and wickedness of people': "they are without excuse," he thunders. Then you get the chapter boundary. If you stop there you are left with a picture of a wrathful God judging a wicked humanity, whilst the self-righteous churchgoers look on. But that's not the end of the passage, it's missing the turnaround, the main point:

You, therefore, have no excuse, you who pass judgement on someone else, for at whatever point you judge another you are condemning yourself, because you who pass judgement do the same things.

How is that unclear? How is that anything but a reflection of Jesus' "Do not judge, and you will not be judged. Do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven"? How on earth do churchgoers find any basis here for being judgemental about other people's lifestyles? Yet they do! As I've written before: too many people read the Bible with their eyes tightly shut.

The main point, then, of this passage is to tell its readers not to be judgemental.

But I reckon that there is another, secondary, point. Drastically summarising Romans 1:18 to 2:4 it looks to me like an argument with a simple beginning, a middle and an end. Thus my summary would be that the passage is saying that there are people who are far from God, because of this their lifestyles are a mess, particularly their relationships, therefore do not judge them because you are the same.

If there are people whose lives are a mess because they are far from God, then how helpful is it to tell them how messed up they are, or even to tell them to follow your rules? Surely if the cause of the problem is that they are far from God, then the solution is for them to come closer to God. And if we are 'just like them' - ie too far from God ourselves - then us pretending to have it all sorted and telling them what to do is a fake.

We need to walk together, helping one another, stumbling our joint way toward God, toward His love and His mercy. That's how lives can be changed, and that's how the world can start to be changed. It is a messed up world, especially in its relationships, because we are all too far from God. Let's work on it together: humbly, respectfully and with love.