pursuing faithfulness to the Word of God and fullness of the Spirit of God
Archive for June, 2008
Healing Criteria
Jun 30th
Unashamed Workman posted some interesting thoughts on criteria for determining whether a healing is "authentic". He cites two lists of criteria. The first is from the noted skeptic James Randi:
James Randi’s Criteria
1. The disease must not be normally self-terminating.
2. The recovery must be complete.
3. The recovery must take place in the absence of any medical treatment that might normally be expected to affect the disease.
4. There must be adequate medical opinion that the disease was present before the application of whatever means were used to bring about the miracle.
5. There must be adequate medical opinion that the disease is not present after the application of whatever means were used to bring about the miracle.
These criteria are actually more related to the report of the healing than the healing itself. For example, a person may genuinely be healed by God without any medical professionals present to make points 4 and 5 possible. And God is of course completely free to heal someone without points 1 and 3 being met.
So while these points are not sufficient to determine whether an authentic healing has taken place, they are useful to consider when reporting a healing (in particular I mean reporting a healing outside of the circle of those people who know the person involved). Integrity is important, and to declare that a miraculous healing has taken place when several of the above criteria are not met can actually result in cynicism from those who hear rather than the desired effect of raising their faith.
Professor of Theology Richard Mayhue boldly declares that the Bible goes further and offers his own set of much stricter criteria:
Richard Mayhue’s Criteria
1. The healing must be instantaneous.
2. The healing must be of a disease that neither the medical community nor the human body can heal, such as AIDS – either instantly or absolutely.
3. The healing must be total.
4. The healing must be completely convincing, even to skeptics.
5. The healing must be done in public with no elaborate services involved.
6. The healing must be of an organic disease.
I have to say I have no idea where he gets most of these from. Point 1 is true as a general rule in the Bible, but there are exceptions. As for point 2, again I cannot see why God cannot heal a disease that does not meat this criteria. Point 3 I broadly agree with but noting the obvious caveat that all people healed in the Bible went on to die (and presumably were not immune from sickness the rest of their lives).
As for point 4, this simply is not possible. Has he underestimated the power of unbelief? We need look no further than the example of Jesus’ resurrection to see that some people will ignore the evidence if it does not suit what they want to believe. Point 5 is another tenuous one. Not all healings in the Bible were performed in public, and while there may not have been "elaborate services", a number of them involved unconventional methods. And point 6 is also perplexing. Is healing of a mental problem (e.g. depression, eating disorders) not "real" enough?
So I think Mayhue sets the bar too high to consider something an "authentic healing". And yet I do have some sympathy for his position, as it seems to me far too common for Christians to make exaggerated and even downright false claims about healing these days. Let us be full of faith in the God who heals, full of compassion for those who are sick, and full of integrity in the claims we make about healing.
Book Review – Bind Us Together (John Fleming)
Jun 28th
The full title of this book is "Bind us Together … to be the church Jesus really wants", and is subtitled "The restoration movement and its message for the church". It grabbed my attention for two reasons. First, it offers a history of the Restoration movement in the UK, something that few other books have done (Andrew Walker’s "Restoring the Kingdom" being the most notable exception. And second, the author is from Southampton, where I live, so I was able to visit him to buy my copy and talk about it with him. John Fleming is a member of New Community Church in Southampton, a church which had its roots in the restoration movement in the seventies.
The book is broken into three main sections. The first offers a history of restoration in the UK, and although briefer than Andrew Walker’s book, it is perhaps broader, mentioning a wider variety of new church groups that have come out of this movement. He talks about the original desire not to create a new denomination but that restoration would become a focal point for unity amongst believers.
He traces the differences of opinion between restoration and "renewal" (mainly to do with ecclesiology) and quite perceptively draws out the key emphases of the early movement as well as those issues that became contentious.
After reviewing the various new church "streams" that have emerged from restorationism, a fairly lengthy chapter tells the personal story of the author, in particular focusing on three churches he was part of. The first was George Tarleton’s church "the Cong" in Chilford. The second was Kendal Avenue Pentecostal in Southampton. The main focus though is on the third – Community Church, also in Southampton. This section will be of particular interest to all those who like myself know this church and have lived in Southampton.
He goes on to examine the decline of many restorationist groups, due to disillusionment in some cases, and the vision becoming blurred in others. He notes that the emerging church takes a very different approach to ecclesiology, favouring being ‘experimental’ as opposed to the belief that churches can be built according to a New Testament "pattern". He notes that many restorationist churches have embraced the idea of "cell church" but are actually becoming more "program based" in practice.
Part 2 of the book is entitled "What is the church?" In it he examines the Alpha course teaching on the church, before embarking on a tour of the Bible, starting in the Old Testament, moving on to Jesus, and then the book of Acts. In many ways, this section is almost like a second book. In places it felt like little more than a retelling of the story of Acts, but he did try to develop a model for church leadership based on the example of the early church.
The third part of the book is called "the way ahead". Fleming asks "how is the church doing"? In particular his concern is that the New Testament teaches that there should not be many churches in a locality, but that there is just one church in a locality. Clearly we are a long way from this ideal. Even "churches together" initiatives are often little more than Christians "holding hands over the fences", without any real desire to see those fences come down.
While he is generally very complementary about restorationist groups of churches such as newfrontiers, he is disappointed at their lack of vision to work with other local churches. For example, they would rather plant a new church into an area, than send people to join an existing church there. Much of the latter stages of the book could be described almost as John Fleming thinking out loud about the challenges associated with Christians joining together with all other believers in their locality to be the "church together", not just "churches together".
As an appendix to the book there is an essay from 1971 by George Tarleton entitled "glory in the church", setting forth a restorationist vision of what the church should be.
It is hard to evaluate a book with three distinct parts. Section one is a great read for anyone interested in the story of the UK restorationist movement. Section two is useful perhaps as an introductory level overview of the Bible teaching and story of the development of the church. And section three is provocative in that the challenge for local churches to join together that is rarely heard amongst evangelicals, who tend to be pragmatic rather than idealistic with regards to ecumenism. The book is written in an informal, almost conversational style, and perhaps would have benefited from the second section being condensed considerably (or published separately). But despite having read over a dozen books on the church in the last year, this one managed to find some ground that had not been covered by the more prominent authors on ecclesiology.
It is not necessarily that easy to get hold of a copy. I can give you the author’s email address if you ask in the comments.
Thoughts on the Environment
Jun 21st
It’s been a while since I posted here last. As you can imagine with four children now life has become rather busy for me. Also I have been working a bit on a software project in the last month. But I thought I would write some thoughts on the issue of how I think about "the environment". It is obviously a topic we are hearing more and more about, and is fast becoming one of our society’s favourite benchmark’s of morality.
On Global Warming
It seems that the consensus is that global warming is real and man-made, although every now and then I come up against skeptics (some more believable than others). To be honest, I’m not sure I really need to know. Most of the "good for the environment" things you can do have merits of their own irrespective of whether the planet is in immanent peril or not.
On "Carbon Emissions"
I’ve been cycling to work for the last year, which has a few benefits. First, it is much cheaper than owning two cars (I reckon we save around £70 per month by having just one car). Second, it is good for my health (except for the increased risks of getting squashed by a car). And third, it is a better environmental option.
As for long-distance journeys, this hasn’t been much of an issue for our family. We very rarely travel abroad, and most years our summer holiday is little more than 50 miles away. This year we’re camping just 25 miles down the road.
I occasionally ponder whether we could manage without a car at all. The main issues are to do with church. Public transport either to church on a Sunday morning or to cell groups around town in the evenings is simply not an option. I would also have to stop playing in the band at church.
On Energy Efficiency
I fitted our house with energy efficient light-bulbs, which I guess goes some way to offsetting the fact that the children like the light in the hall to be left on all night. As for other items in the house, when I buy something new, I am trying to be a little more conscious of its energy efficiency that I might have been before. However, I am not sure how environmental it is to replace something simply because it is not energy efficient. Surely the old television or refrigerator going to a landfill site is just as unhelpful for the environment.
On Recycling & Waste
Like most people these days, we are trying to recycle what we can, yet there always seems to be a remarkable amount of stuff generated that needs throwing away. My wife has bought some washable nappies that has cut down a lot on our waste. There are of course services like freecycle, that can take things that still work off your hands, but even so, junk that no-one wants or is broken beyond repair just keeps accumulating.
One of my pet peeves is the amount of stuff we buy or get posted that could just as easily have been received in electronic form. I try to get all my bills and bank statements sent by email, yet still some companies insist on sending me mountains of paperwork. I am also looking forward to the time when music, movies and software are all bought digitally instead of the need for a huge collection of plastic disks and cases. As for books, maybe one day there will be a viable way to buy and read books electronically (Amazon Kindle anybody?), but so far my attempts at reading books on a computer usually end up with me having sore eyes and a headache. I have also migrated my home studio recording equipment to a software-based solution (as much as possible).
I try to make a habit of using things until they have genuinely reached their end of life (and often beyond). Clothes, electrical items, bicycles, furniture should not be replaced until they are no longer fit for purpose. Where that line is drawn is of course a matter for debate, but it seems to me both financially and environmentally irresponsible for a Christian to be just buying newer and better all the time simply because they can.
On Eschatology
OK, its time to get a bit theological. Conventional wisdom at the moment claims that Christians don’t care about the environment because of their eschatology – Jesus is coming back and he’ll clean up the mess for us. Maybe there is a little of that, but I’m not sure for two reasons.
First, the reason many Christians don’t talk a lot about "the environment" is because we have a different name for it. We call it "Creation", and can be found singing about how wonderful it is almost every week at church. In fact a healthy doctrine of seeing our world as God’s creation entrusted to us as responsible stewards should be all the impetus we need to cause us to work against those things that destroy our environment.
Second, I think the reason so many Christians care so little about environmental issues is nothing to do with their eschatology but rather because of syncretism. We have made it possible to mix Christianity with secular materialistic consumerism.
Concluding Thoughts
Hopefully I have not come across as proud or self-righteous in this post. So far, the "green" things I have been doing are little more than token gestures. There are a whole host of things I could do to be more environmentally conscious. And of course, the environment is not the only issue I want to be more concerned about. There are issues of poverty, human trafficking, abortion, fair trade, church planting, and evangelism, and as a Christian I want to be in tune with what God’s priorities are.
I do want to let myself be provoked on this issue though. Perhaps the main reason Christians react against an environmentalist message is that it often comes bundled with a variety of anti-Christian sentiments. But that need not be the case. Try subscribing to the Simple Pastor blog and reading Phil Whitall’s thoughtful comments on a variety of subjects including the environment. There are also a number of interesting books on this topic from an evangelical perspective coming out at the moment. Apparently Doug Moo is going to be writing a book on Creation theology, with special reference to environmental issues, which is definitely one to watch out for.
Anyway, feel free to add in the comments what you make of this issue. Are you doing anything differently to be more environmentally conscious? Or do you see it as a distraction from the "main thing"?
