Sex And The City, Marriage, Faithfulness and God

Back in Singapore with sacks of goodies from a homevisit to Spain, the hostess was eager to share the spoils over a Sex And The City marathon. "Myself, I prefer your countryman Pedro Almodóvar", I said hopefully, not being one for chick flicks. But the gender-bias tilted in favour of SATC, and so it was and an opportunity to hang out with great folk and excellent food.

Leftover Anchovies and Roasted Red Peppers on Toasted Bread

Hence: a handsome hunk of idiazábal cheese and quince for the ride, roasted eggplant and red and green peppers in good olive oil, jambon thinly sliced, tortilla de patatas flipped by a nice German girl, macademia nut jam - crazily good with toasted baguette and roasted zucchini and thick cuts of cheese, plump anchovies on grilled red peppers, and roasted macademia nuts to munch while polishing off the cava.

At 2am, someone accidentally popped an eighth of the Taittinger over the carpet ("I didn't shake it I swear!") and later, in the wee hours, air-kissed goodbyes actually came naturally. :-(

As entertainment, SATC didn't turn out so bad: hilarious situations and witty lines. Rampant product placement made sure the fourth wall stayed solidly in place.

The pulpit bans on the series (and movie) have less to do with the fashion-hell hair and clothes (especially Miranda's) than with the variations on the apparently risqué themes of flirting, foreplay, nudity, sex and sex aids.

The frank portrayal of women as sexual beings might have had been a bit of an eye-opener back in the Victorian 90s (21st century or 20th). But what seemed to have really drawn fans to SATC and pushed its eponymous movie to a US$55.7 million (or money enough to buy one-fifth of the core investment banking section of Lehman's and a few nice suits) high on its opening weekend in the US wasn't just the sex (surely more explicit and creative interpretations of the act can be found online) but sex as a vehicle in whose highly polished windows we see reflections of reality, the fundamental concerns of ordinary women. And men.

Because they assumed their value as people and their security were to be found glowing post-coitally in another's arms, the daily struggles of the four single female protagonists revolved around the complexities of both satisfying their desires as well as finding Mr. Right/Prince Charming/Dream Hunk/True Love/Jackpot (as in "People go to casinos for the same reason they go on blind dates - hoping to hit the jackpot. But mostly, you just wind up broke or alone in a bar." - Carrie). They sought "relationships and not just sex", eager to keep at bay their fear of ending up old maids who died alone and were found only a week later after half their faces had been eaten by their cats.

SATC articulated but offered nothing more than a little mud-wrestling with these complexities:

Finding Mr. Right/Prince Charming/Dream Hunk/True Love/Jackpot
Can you date outside your "class"? What about older women with younger men? Or older women with even older saggy-bottomed men? Does dating divorced men mean dating their families? Can dating fuck buddies work out? Choosing between the nice sensitive stable guy and the wild exciting one. Should size matter or "funky tasting spunk"? Can women hope to change their men? Is it ok to dump bad kissers? How neurotic is too neurotic? Is a relationship a relationship without the "zsa zsa zsu" (that special something that gives you butterflies in the stomach)?

Figuring out if Mr. Right thinks they are Right too
Why hasn't he called? Maybe he just isn't that into me? Why did he introduce me as a "friend" not as his "girlfriend"? Why won't he let me leave my stuff at his place? Does he really prefer a sweeter younger thing?

How to attract and keep Mr. Right
This had a lot to do with dating superstitions and relationship games, all in the fear of missing the bus: When is it ok to sleep with the guy ("A guy can just as easily dump you if you fuck him on the first date as he can if you wait until the tenth." – Samantha)? Are there some things in relationships that should not be said? Is it better to "fake it" than be alone? Do you have to play games to make a relationship work? Is it ok to use another man to make Mr. Right jealous? Can you make a mistake and end up missing your fate (eg, screwing up everything by having a lousy date, thereby dooming the entire prospective relationship)? The Carrie – Mr. Big theme loomed large herezzz.

The actual desirability of desires
When their relationships failed and the going got hard, the girls questioned the desirability of their desire for emotionally stable, faithful, monogamous relationships. Did they really want to get married or were they programmed to want to wed? They tried man-replacements like shopping, drinking, puppies and, erm, éclairs to laugh out loud results.

Yet, when things looked bright with potential husbands on the horizon, they struggled with the reluctant desire to be rescued by a man and the simultaneous fear that they'd lose their own hard-won identity in the process. If relationships were inevitably a series of compromises, when would the art of compromise become compromising to one's self?

And then, the commitment thing: what if they committed to one person and something someone better came along? Plus prior to signing on the dotted line, surely one ought to first test the goods to ensure acceptable sexual performance?

The show honestly concluded that all this resulted in was a series of unstable relationships built on fakery and showmanship: "Practically all the relationships I know are based on a foundation of lies and mutually accepted delusion." – Samantha.

Hence, a cynical view of relationships (usually expressed by goodtime girl Sam):
"You call this a relationship?" - Maria
"Well, it's tedious and the sex is dwindling, so from what I've heard, yes." - Samantha

There were attempts to convince themselves that as long as they loved themselves, everything was a-ok: "The most exciting, challenging and significant relationship of all is the one you have with yourself. And if you find someone to love the you you love, well, that's just fabulous." – Carrie

But inevitably, as much as they tried to flee from it, the bottomline remained: the girls were just looking for one special person to share their lives with; "real relationships" not just "lovers" based on "genuine emotions" not just "carnal passions".

All this bizarre behaviour makes for great late-night laughs, but perhaps we are entertained most by painful truths. (As if evidence of the high entertainment value of passion-related crime were needed: one Supreme Court judge specialising in commercial law once confessed that he'd often pleaded to cover the MRT cases - murder, rape and theft, the attractive juicy crimes of passion (don't ask how theft is a crime of passion).)

In the sight of God...
There is no doubt that marriage in some form and the urge to merge have been present in all cultures at all times. This is of no surprise since God created man to do just that. It is not society that has programmed us this way but the Creator who has designed us thus.

And the mystery of finding the right partner (though not quite one of the main goals of life) is solved by reference to God's purpose for designing us to desire emotional and sexual union with another.

In his comprehensive study (and perhaps, despite the complaints of some newly-weds, not quite comprehensive enough!) of Genesis 1 - 2 in Marriage: Sex in the Service of God, Christopher Ash demonstrates that the procreational good of sexual union is set in the context of the task of exercising responsible dominion over the rest of creation (Genesis 1, Genesis 5:1-3, Genesis 9:1-7). Man is blessed by God to be fruitful and multiply so as to rule over the world. Marriage was instituted not for companionship nor to assuage loneliness but for work. For man is set in the Garden of Eden not for sensual enjoyment but to work it and to take care of it. And so the purpose of the man-woman match is not their mutual delight, wonderful as God has created that to be, but that woman is just the helper the man needs for his work (Genesis 2).

Therefore, the SATC girls' error was to make marriage or relationship the end goal of life, not realising that marriage per se is essentially meaningless, though being savvy enough to note that in this fallen world, really a quite painful commitment. Without bearing God's purpose for marriage in mind, a couple, even a Christian couple, working at the project of coupledom for its own sake and mainly in terms of the relational benefit of the couple themselves face the problems of destructive selfishness. When they look primarily to their marriage partners to promote and be the major instrument to provide their own self-actualisation, they become a pair of parasites trying to feed off each other (says the good Mr. Ash in Chapter 7). Church, prayer, the Christian life and even God become nothing more than a means to the idolatrous end of strengthening their relationship with one another.

Post-Fall however, it is naive to argue that marriage continues to serve perfectly the task of humankind ruling God's world on his behalf. The fall of man catastrophically altered the conditions under which the mandate given to Adam is to be obeyed.

Chris Ash's Marriage as well as his much slimmer Married for God deal with what marriage means in the interim. Suffice to say that the creation mandate language of multiplication is now transferred in Bible narrative to the people of God. Instead of a longing that there should be a multiplication simply of humanity, now there must be a multiplication within the people of God, in order that they may work, proclaiming and heralding the kingdom, to order God's world aright.

If this is the post-Second Adam mission, then marriage is no longer essential to the fulfilment of the purpose for which mankind was created. Hence Paul's note in 1 Corinthians 7 that one can choose to stay single for the sake of the mission. But if one chooses to marry, then the Right one would be one able to lead/assist in that mission.

Imho, Paul appears, in Ephesians 5, to articulate another previously hidden purpose of marriage - a foreshadowing of the union between Christ and the church. Therefore, just as the Old Testamental sacrifices became obsolete when Christ the real sacrifice came along, so human marriage will become a thing of the old world (which might explain Jesus' words in eg. Matthew 22:23-30, Luke 20:27-36) when the marriage between the Lamb and his people is consummated on the Last Day. Chris Ash doesn't talk about this in either of his books I think. Will investigate further.

Real macarons from Bilbao. None of that dainty Frog stuff.

Chris does however speak of Ephesians 5 as the template for faithfulness in marriage. And how to ensure the faithfulness of one's partner and, if one is humble enough to remember the extent of one's own sinfulness, one's self? Human responsibility ((1) to ensure satisfactory results to due diligence and (2) not to pull an Adam & Eve but to trust in God's word and follow his ways) aside, these uncertainties are resolved like any other uncertainty in life: by trust in God... to be in control and to work for the good of those who love him whatever happens. (Unfortunately too often we forget that God is also in control during the swimmingly good and seemingly certain times as well.)

Gratuitous photo of Teriyaki Foie Gras

Because this was discussed over a dinner of teriyaki foie gras, Sun with Moon salad, beef sukiyaki, miso gindara, garlic rice and tofu cheesecake at Sun With Moon.

Sun with Moon Japanese Dining and Cafe
#03-15/16/17, 501 Orchard Road, Wheelock Place
Singapore 238880

Cheese, Music, Marriage, and God and the Church

Long-standing love affairs.

As the blame-passing scab-picking garden-variety of psychotherapy will have you know, the seeds of dysfunction were sowed in childhood, with the thin foil and red tabs of The Laughing Cow. By 13, cheese was so much part of my life, so spinach to Popeye, that "Je mange du fromage avec du pain" was de rigueur in any self-description. The hardcore hard-rind stuff came mostly in England, home to the Wensleydale-chomping Wallace and with him, a whole nation of nibblers who must have, through centuries of communal nibbling (and thousands of cups of tea), created the Cheddar Gorge. Countryside-living was inevitably dairy-related: a shortcut to a particular pub for weekly smoky chats on philosophy meant sneaking through a muddy paddock, running if chased by the resident bull. Sunny summer days meant cows, expressing their great satisfaction with the sweet grass, interrupting lectures. And there was always a crumb of curdled and fermented milk to be had about town. Cheese, like good farmhouse artisanal mould, was unhindered in its blue-green veining through the creamy curds of my life: one summer, lost in a storm on Ben Nevis, it was a little package of Scottish mature cheddar and highland oatcakes that (as they often say in British stories about adventures of sorts) kept my spirits up. And back in Singapore, Monsieur Gérard Poulard's early incursions suggested that a long-term stay here might just have the right kind of stink about it after all.

Two fromageries opened in Singapore in the last few months: a little walk-in cupboard at Jones the Grocer's and another simply called La Fromagerie along Mohamed Sultan. ("Chi-chi cheese-shopping" someone sniffed. But unlike some overpriced frivolities (I'm talkin' about you, S$20 Persian candy floss), much cheese is honest-to-goodness stuff, like hot crusty bread and cold beer. Plus, since Ramadan's just over, dried figs and dates, with which Muslims usually break their fast, still abound. The possibilities (BVM surprise guest-appearance on grilled cheese sandwich excepted)!) But they are only a small whiff of the great heaven that is Neal's Yard Dairy, stockist of 200 cheeses piled high to the sky, exuding promises of casomorphine opiates.

Perhaps, I said to someone, cheese is my raisin cake. Or perhaps strawberries are my raisin cake. But I came to strawberries later in life than cheese. You are going all postmodern on me, he said. I am going to leave you now, very quietly, and shut the door behind me. And I will make no sudden movements. I might even throw you some Babybel once I am safely outside.

Or perhaps, music is my raisin cake, came the realisation, as Wang Jian sawed through the third movement of Elgar's Cello Concerto in E Minor. An indiscriminate love that knows no bounds: Gregorian plainchant, polyphonic counterpointy Baroque, coquettish Classical, OTT opera, hep-hoppin' jazz, moshpit metal, eccentric 80s, SNAG soft-rock, blingbling hiphop, college indie, bouncy Bollywood, cheesy Chinese...I love them all from the bottom of my pencilcase. I can live without cheese and strawberries, but if I never hear even soppy songs with my ears again, I promise you that I shall never breathe again, breathe again, that I shall never breathe again.

Soppy songs. It is the season for weddings again.

Floating on the top of the breaking curl that was the series on Hosea, boosted by the talks imported by kind friends from this year's London's Men's Convention (fetchingly titled "liars, evil brutes, lazy gluttons"?), weddings have never looked more beautiful.

Weddings: the smile of sunshine, the white satin train of the bride's gown, the fragrance of bouquets, the smell of cologne and new suits, the back-patting, the teary farewells, the walk-in, the giving-away of the bride, the cameras, the sermon on love, the solemnisation, what God has brought together let no man put asunder, the unveiling, the kiss, the signing of the marriage register, the hand-in-hand walk-out as husband and wife, the thrown rice and popped confetti, the photos for the family album, the hearty hugs and grinned best wishes, the happy whispers of how great the new couple look together.

But. Far more than the entertainment value afforded by the perfect execution of meticulous plans and aesthetically-pleasing couples set in dreamily-romantic mis-en-scenes, the tear-inducing heart-bursting beauty of weddings lies in that of which they are but mere shadows: God and his people, Christ and the church.

The tender love exhibited by the wedding couple that makes the rheumy hearts of many an old aunt flutter is but a puny birthday candle to the great hot furnace that is God's love for his people and Christ's love for the church.

We think that a wedding is one of the most lovely, most romantic things in the world. But, step right up step right up! Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, Plato might have said had he known, you have all been obsessed with mere shadows! What's that? A heart full of love you say, sir? Filled your days with endless wonder did he eh, lady? Well! You haven't seen anything yet.

The story, good folk, the real story is that of the divine husband and his adulterous wife; a wife so stupid, so greedy, so lewd, that even though married to the perfect husband, she abandoned him to strut her stuff openly before lascivious male eyes. Lacking even the remnant of decorum of whores, who allow themselves to be approached by customers, in a frenzy of desperate lust, she pursued her would-be lovers.

So Hosea indicted Israel, who'd chased after the Baals in crazed delusion that they had been responsible for her prosperity and abundance. What inexcusable stupidity. She, of all people, ought to have been familiar with her true husband. Centuries of Israelite history, written down in God's word and repeated by prophet after prophet, should have taught her that God alone was her creator and her sustainer. No one apart from him was able to give and take away life and all the trappings of existence.

Through Hosea, Yahweh contrasted her thirst for spiritual adultery, for the Baals, with her treatment of him:"But me she forgot." She had courted their favour and adorned herself for mute idols, but neglected and slighted her real benefactor and true lover.

The LORD swore that her betrayal of his love would not succeed. Israel's misuse of God's gifts to her would prompt him to withdraw them. At the time of the harvest, the crop and wine would fail. Her vines and fig-trees would be laid barren. Her people would starve and die.

But God did not intend to send Israel away as a bad job, or win custody of the children and then look for a much better mother for them. Instead, amazingly, he wished to allure rotten old Israel once more, to rekindle the romance they'd enjoyed in their honeymoon years, to draw her back into union with himself. The image was not just of renewal or renovation of the old marriage but a completely new betrothal, with Israel starting out again as a fresh-faced virgin bride. And unlike the complete mess of the old marriage, the new marriage would last forever, secured by steadfast love and mutual faithfulness. And it'd be God who would impart to Israel the qualities that will ensure a marriage for all eternity.

The institution of marriage is not a convenient metaphor co-opted to describe the relationship between God and his people. Rather, God instituted marriage for the very purpose of demonstrating to dimwitted humans some faint shadow of the mindblowing relationship Christ would have with his church (Ephesians 5:32).

So human marriage is not a useless Victorian social construct to be thrown out with yesterday's kitschy fridge magnets but an institution weaved into our human fabric to be a meaningful display of the love relationship between Christ and his body. We preserve marriages not because of shared family values nor so that the children won't grow up splashing out money on psychiatrists' couches nor so as to give Dr James Dobson a point of pontification, as if marriages were valuable in and of themselves; we preserve marriages because Creator made them so that when a man and a woman come together in matrimony, they do, by his design and in a way we cannot fully comprehend, truly become one flesh.

And if God designed marriage, then he alone knows how best they are meant to work. And they work best in imitation of Christ's loving relationship with the church (Ephesians 5).

Extremely elegant equations. Our math teacher (who ever-despaired of us brutally hacking our way to the correct answer) would have applauded.

Yet if our relationship with God is not an armslength schoolteacher-badstudent one, but one even more intimate than a marriage, then raisin cakes are no laughing matter. Sins, trivial though they seem, aren't just about cheekily breaking a window and running away or copying someone else's homework; they are about having our lives and our decisions revolve around things other than the one whom they should rightfully revolve around: God, in place of God; they are acts of adultery, they constitute the vomitous betrayal of a relationship, the cuckolding of the perfect husband, the tearing away at an entity that has since been constituted organically as one flesh.

Whoredom, Raymond C Ortlund Jr
Marriage: Sex in the Service of God, Christopher Ash

Jones the Grocer
Dempsey Hill
Block 9 Dempsey Road #01-12

La Fromagerie
5 Mohamed Sultan Road
Singapore 239014
Tel: 6732 6269

Trip-Hop for a Trip, Bad Boys Stay Sharp To The Bottom of the Glass and The Wandering Stars of Luke 11:33 - 12:3

Warning: Boring conference calls cause inane doodling and the making of packing lists*

Tasked with providing the mix tape for our dive trip, and under duress to avoid all things "noisy" (goodbye pierced punk derivatives, nice knowing you indie striped cardigans), dug out an old stash of trip-hop.

(Massive Attack? Your bass looks phat in that.
Tricky: what are they - Stomp cast-offs? I love you man, but too industrial for this gig.
Thievery Corporation? Wait over there and we'll have a look at you. Unless of course, you've got you some lovely downtempo bossa nova and a pinch of dub, then you can go right in.
Woocha Zero 7. Bring on the Salt Water Sound.
Hey, aren't there any ambient popsicles around here?
Non, not you, Hotel Costes.
Oh, sorry to trip over you, Brian Eno. Didn't notice you there.)

Revisiting nostalgia. Music from a previous life of post-clubbing lounging; of post-midnight English urbanity; of the camaraderie of university halls; of dismantling smoke detectors in rooms; of Marmite toast and sipping gin and tonic from teacups and bantering Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, swathed in a swirls of smoke; and, when everyone else had fallen asleep on couches and beds and carpets, of being wide-awake and gobsmacked by the wonderment of Portishead's sonic noir, whisky abandoned in a dirty snifter, spellbound till the dark magic dissipated with the dawning light.

Wandering stars, for whom it is reserved, the blackness of darkness, forever. (Portishead, Dummy: Wandering Star, also Jude 13. There is no magic at all in this Wandering Star youtube snippet. "Etoiles vagabondes" indeed. Heh.)

A lifetime ago, a description embraced with fatalistic identification. Now, total anathema.

However.

Because the season for terrible-tasting heart-shaped chocolates was upon us, we were discussing the reasonableness of a S$100,000 diamond ring if amortised over 70 years of marriage and the cheesiness of the plots of romantic sitcoms: usually, girl who loves a bad boy; a bad boy who pretends to love the girl but actually uses and abuses her; and a good boy who waits in the wings, nursing true but unrequited love. In a feel-good show, the girl gets clued in and rides into the sunset with the good boy. (In an arty show, the ending is postmodernishly vague and the fate of the three characters, unknown.)

A dozen eyes rolled at the blatant unrealism of it all: surely, if she'd known she wouldn't have gone with him!

Yet, whole branches of criminal and family law and psychology are fed by the fact that human beings (and not just those in Stockholm), when faced with a choice between the obviously harmful and the patently beneficial, will sometimes, illogically, choose to remain in an abusive relationship.

Similarly, despite overwhelming and conclusive historical and internally corroborative evidence, when faced with the choice to remain in God's judgement and the assurance of eternal death or to trust in Jesus' death to save us from God's wrath, many people baulk at the latter and choose to remain on course for eternal misery. The silly reason for this demonstrative lack of the self-preservative instinct?

people loved the darkness rather than the light because their deeds were evil. For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his deeds should be exposed. (John 3:19-20)

But the mere perambulation into the light is hardly effective. If the eyes are unhealthy, the body will still be full of darkness. (Luke 11:33 - 12:3). Woe to us who call on the Lord's name but do not rightly perceive Jesus, who is the light, and do not allow the truth of his words permeate our lives, and still look back with illogical nostalgia upon our pagan days of yore, like the Israelites complaining against God in the desert; living lives that are Christ-flavoured not Christ-centred; attaching ourselves him, because, for at least a little while, it is interesting to attach oneself to a celebrity:

Now I want to remind you, although you once fully knew it, that Jesus, who saved a people out of the land of Egypt, afterward destroyed those who did not believe. And the angels who did not stay within their own position of authority, but left their proper dwelling, he has kept in eternal chains under gloomy darkness until the judgement of the great day - just as Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding cities, which likewise indulged in sexual immorality and pursued unnatural desire, serve as an example by undergoing a punishment of eternal fire.

Yet in like manner these [false teachers]...blaspheme all that they do not understand, and they are destroyed by all that they, like unreasoning animals, understand instinctively. Woe to them! For they walked in the way of Cain and abandoned themselves for the sake of gain to Balaam's error and perished in Korah's rebellion. These are blemishes on your love feasts, as they feast with you without fear, looking after themselves; waterless clouds, swept along by winds; fruitless trees in late autumn, twice dead, uprooted; wild waves of the sea, casting up the foam of their own shame; wandering stars, for whom the gloom of utter darkness has been reserved forever.

It was also about these that Enoch, the seventh from Adam, prophesied, saying, "Behold, the Lord came with ten thousands of his holy ones, to execute judgement on all and to convict all the ungodly of all their deeds of ungodliness that they have committed in such an ungodly way, and of all the harsh things that ungodly sinners have spoken against him." These are grumblers, malcontents, following their own sinful desires; they are loud-mouthed boasters, showing favouritism to gain advantage.

But you must remember, beloved, the predictions of the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ. They said to you, "In the last time there will be scoffers, following their own ungodly passions." It is these who cause divisions, worldly people, devoid of the Spirit. But you, beloved, build yourselves up in your most holy faith; pray in the Holy Spirit; keep yourselves in the love of God, waiting for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ that leads to eternal life. And have mercy on those who doubt; save others by snatching them out of the fire; to others show mercy with fear, hating even the garment stained by the flesh.

Now to him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you blameless before the presence of his glory with great joy, to the only God, our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion, and authority, before all time and now and forever. Amen. (Jude 1:5-25)

_________________________________________________________________________

* in case of a complete washout, we will also have in our backpacks: Immanuel Kant, David Hume, Alasdair MacIntyre, Iris Murdoch, Mary Midgley, JC Ryle and...err...David Sedaris and TS Eliot. Best.
** ironically, Zouk generously handed me two acoustic Faithless angpows tonight: the "Greatest Hits" DVD and "To All New Arrivals". "God is a DJ"? Hmm.

Serial Cereal-eating, God's Love and Christian Love (Part II)

It's been a mad few weeks with parties and dinners and birthdays and weddings and CLOBS and DGs and makeup Bible studies and friends' performances and friends' recitals and writing talks together and planning camps and restaurant openings and deal closings and housewarmings and new babies to visit and late-night discussions (accompanied by pen-twirling and spreadsheets on laptops) over coffee and wine that descend into series of non sequiturs:
"30's too much."
"Coconuts."
"A coleman?"
"We can have crocker. With the baby's basketball."
"I only have a tennis one."
"No good. We want big for ice."
"We're having a party on New Year's Eve."
"How can a birthday party be evangelistic if the very essence of a birthday celebration is ME, ME, ME?"
"Coconuts." (Very persistent, that one.)

And past midnight one...err...day, there was serial cereal-eating going on: there was Trix, unashamedly, proudly even, choked enriched with refined sugar, artificial colours and flavours; there was Strawberry & Almond Crunch from Marks & Spencer; there were good old Milo pops out of the box. Then there was singing, in a poorthing Mexican accent, to the tune of "On Top of Spaghetti":

On top of my Bible, all covered with crumbs
I lost my poor cocoa ball when somebody bumped

He rolled off the table, and onto the floor
And then my poor cocoa ball, he roll out the door.

And as yet another Milo pop made a hasty getaway, there appeared a bowl for effective containment and some cold milk for drowning potential escapees.

Cereal-fuelled and awash with chocolate milk, there were brains bouncing off the walls and a great number of flowcharts drawn and some handwaving and loads of Scripture-sifting through the night, until some lacklustre grey light, trying to pass off as dawn, made a shamefaced appearance in the sky.

"The sun!" she exclaimed optimistically, even as the birds chirped hesitantly, suspiciously; the tentative scattered applause of an audience unsure if an unfamiliar piece had ended and there was fresh bit about to start, or if it was just more of the same. For breakfast, because we were out of breakfast cereal, there was meringue with the last of the Northern Hemisphere's raspberries.

(Beloved, John the Apostle might have said, this is how you may know you are Singaporean: that you eat breakfast cereal for dessert and dessert for breakfast.)

But enough with ribbing poor old John. For all his apparent garrulousness, his letters are still the word of God.

Love and the Kingdom of God
John tells us that even though we do not earn admission into the kingdom of God by our acts of love towards our neighbours, there is an unbreakable connection between the existence of love in a Christian and his entrance into the kingdom. God's sheep follow his voice and his commandments, and love of neighbour is the second part of God's great double commandment of loving the LORD our God with all our heart and with all our soul and with all our mind and with all our strength (Mark 12:28-34). Love is the characteristic mark of those who are already in the kingdom (John 13:34-35, 1 John 2:3-6, 3:10b - 18, 4:7-21).

As in Part I, I don't suppose it is possible for any one post to be able to encompass the absolute enormity of the concept of love. However, since D.A. Carson has had a pretty decent go in "Love in Hard Places", most of what follows is quoted at length from it, with some rearrangement, editing and interjection:
Evangelical Clichés
Love is niceness
The sentimental view of love, when applied to a deity, renders God with all the awesome holiness of a cuddly toy and all the moral integrity of a marshmallow.

Applied to Christians, the sentimental view breeds expectations of transcendental niceness. This view says that whatever else Christians should be, they should be nice, where "niceness" usually means smiling a lot and never ever hinting that anyone may be wrong about anything (hey, that isn't nice). In the local church, it means abandoning church discipline (it isn't nice to be judgemental), and in many contexts it means restoring adulterers (for instance) to pastoral office at the mere whimper of broken repentance. After all, isn't the church about forgiveness? Aren't we supposed to love one another? Aren't we just called to be really nice people?

Similarly with respect to doctrine: the word/law kills, while the Spirit gives life, and everyone knows, of course, that the Spirit is Mr. Nice. So let us love one another and refrain from becoming upright and uptight about this divisive thing called "doctrine" and this other thing called "truth".

Our surrounding culture's sophomoric reduction of love, even Christian love, into niceness is far from biblical, for the Bible speaks firstly of the overarching responsibility of the Christian to speak the truth in all circumstances and the need to deal seriously with error and sin by, in some instances, church discipline. Scripture also speaks of a diversity of ways in which one ought to express Christian love and a diversity of contexts that demand something a great deal more profound than sentimental niceness.

It is not easy to think clearly with exegetical evenhandedness when you are being told, by outsiders or even other Christians, that you are not nice, that you are not displaying Christian love, that infact, you are a hypocrite because you have politely pointed out that the God someone worships is not the true God that the Bible presents. All of us know with shame that the church has generated its share of hypocrites, don't we? So hearing the scorn, not knowing quite how to answer, we are tempted to hunker down in our holes and resolve to be a little nicer - to smile a bit more, to crinkle the eyes and to hold that tongue even on matters of the gospel.

But we must remember that our ways are not to be the ways of the world, and our behaviour, not what is right in the eyes of the world or pleasing to them but in the eyes of God and pleasing to him.

Loving someone doesn't mean you need to like him
It is sometimes objected that love cannot be commanded: one falls in love, or one surges with love, or love grows cold but the affections cannot be commanded. Which is why some defend the false view of agapic love (discussed previously). That gives people scope for willing the good of the scoundrel whom they emotionally detest - a nice dodge. Love your neighbour but hate his guts. But we have already seen that such a view of agapic love is erroneous. In any case, it is dismissed by Paul's warning in 1 Corinthians 13 that even the kind of willed philanthropy and self-sacrifice that causes one to cast one's body to the flames can be loveless. Such a compartmentalised view of love cannot prevail. We are not allowed off the hook so easily.

(At this stage, the MumblyOne pointed out that we need not necessarily hang out and attempt to enjoy each other's sinful reformed nature, but we still fellowship in love and stand alongside our brothers who are in need, in the knowledge that we will be spending eternity together. And God cuts away our petty dislikes for the furtherance of his kingdom.)

Our failure to respond wholly to the double commandment is a function not of some alleged inherent incapacity of the affections but our sinful weakness, a function of the Fall. Just as the law functions, in part to expose our lostness, our moral inability and culpability and thus to multiply our explicit transgressions, so also here these two great commands expose our lostness, our moral inability and culpability and thus multiply our explicit transgressions.

Why love?
From 1 John, we know that we find assurance of our status as children of God by the fact that we do, in practice, love our brothers. But this is not so much a reason to love as a consequence, an effect, of loving. So why do we love? Because God first loved us (1 John 4:19) and he demonstrated this by sending his Son to die in our place, that we might have eternal life.

As a young Christian, I struggled to see the nexus between God's love and our love. Why should God's love translate into love for him and for others? Was the command some sort of emotional blackmail, like how many Asian parents wave about their acts of sacrificial love to lay claim to their right to filial piety from their children? Or the sort of guilt trip laid on by politicians who say,"Look how much I did for you: I built this nation from nothing, I upgraded your housing estate, but you were ungrateful enough not to love me by voting for me at the elections"?

The parable of the debtor was most educational:

...the kingdom of heaven is like a king who wanted to settle accounts with his servants. As he began the settlement, a man who owed him ten thousand talents was brought to him. Since he was not able to pay, the master ordered that he and his wife and his children and all that he had be sold to repay the debt.

"The servant fell on his knees before him. 'Be patient with me,' he begged, 'and I will pay back everything.' The servant's master took pity on him, canceled the debt and let him go.

"But when that servant went out, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred denarii. He grabbed him and began to choke him. 'Pay back what you owe me!' he demanded.

"His fellow servant fell to his knees and begged him, 'Be patient with me, and I will pay you back.'

"But he refused. Instead, he went off and had the man thrown into prison until he could pay the debt. When the other servants saw what had happened, they were greatly distressed and went and told their master everything that had happened.

"Then the master called the servant in. 'You wicked servant,' he said, 'I canceled all that debt of yours because you begged me to. Shouldn't you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had on you?' In anger his master turned him over to the jailers to be tortured, until he should pay back all he owed.

"This is how my heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother from your heart." (Matthew 18:23-35)

And so Jesus instructs his disciples to pray "Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors" (Matthew 6:13), for if we grasp the enormity of the forgiveness and mercy that is shown by God to us in the giving of his Son for us, if we are so filled with this extraordinarily bighearted display of love, then it cannot help but overflow into our other relationships. Why love? Because we cannot help ourselves but love, and it is unthinkable that we nurse our little petty grudges against our brothers and perpetuate silly quarrels with our sisters. (Unthinkable, but our sinful selves sometimes have no qualms in indulging in such things.)

If we have established that our love as Christians is certainly derivative of God's own love, what should be the nature of a Christian's love for God and for brother and neighbour?

A Christian's Love for God: No Exact Reciprocation
Naturally, there cannot be an exact parallel between speaking of God's love and speaking of a Christian's love, for the simple reason that there are, to put it mildly, rather significant differences between God and his image-bearers. Our creatureliness and our fallenness necessarily means that our love can neither reciprocate his exactly nor emulate it entirely.

God's love for us is the love of Creator for creature; ours is the love of creature for the Creator. In some instances, the descriptions of his love for us are clearly redemptive, the love of a holy but a redeeming God for sinners; our love for him is never redemptive, but the response of hearts grateful for being loved. Our love is properly centered on him, with heart and soul and strength and mind, because he alone is God. When his love is fastened on us, it is most certainly not because we are God, but because he is God - that kind of God.

Christian's Love for Neighbour: Attempt at Emulation
Of our love for other Christians, a redeemed fallen man's love for a fellow redeemed fallen man, the Bible expressly urges emulation of the different facets of God's love.

(1) God's Intra-Trinitarian Love
Christians are to love each other (1 Thessalonions 5:15; Galatians 6:10) because they are indeed truly and organically one, like the Trinity is one. So God's intra-Trinitarian love is to be mirrored in the peculiar love that binds Christian to Christian. "I have made you known to them," Jesus tells his Father,"and will continue to make you known in order that the love you have for me may be in them and that I myself may be in them" (John 17:26).

Unity, however, is not an intrinsic good. There is good unity, and there is bad unity. Bad unity occurs in Genesis 11 when rebellious humankind unites to build a tower to heaven to defy God. Good unity occurs around the throne of God, which is surrounded by people bought by the blood of the Lamb of God, people drawn "from every tribe and language and people and nation" (Revelation 5:9). Good unity is found among the disciples of Jesus, those for whom he prays in John 17:23:"May they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me".

If this intra-church inter-Christian love commanded by God is to manifest in unity amongst Christians, the echo and extension of God's intra-Trinitarian love and unity, then this unity is to be a gospel unity and those who deny the fundamentals of the gospel are to be regarded as outside of the locus of this fold.

And however flawed the church is, the unity for which Jesus prayed for is real, deep and partially-realised on this side of the consummation. And we do see this in our experience, don't we? Despite substantial differences, we see genuine believers reach across cultural, linguistic, organisational, denominational, racial and economic barriers, and by their love they promote the gospel of Jesus Christ.

(2) God's Providential Love
As sons of God (Matthew 5:9), we are to love our enemies in imitation of our Father who shows universal and undifferentiated love in his providential provision for the righteous and the unrighteous alike. God evenhandedly sends his sun and rain upon both the just and the unjust (Matthew 5:45b).

If God himself is so generous and gracious, should we not act similarly?

However, just as we cannot absolutize passages that speak of God's providential love and thereby domesticate or eliminate other ways the Bible has of speaking of God's love (for there is also God's wrath and God's judgement upon his enemies), so also one cannot responsibly absolutize this moral demand on Jesus' followers and eliminate other thing we should be imitating in God, for instance, in hating his enemies and being holy because he is holy (Leviticus 11:44-45, 1 Peter 1:15).

(3) God's Salvific Love
God's yearning love to see men and women saved is to be repeated in us: the God who loved the world now commands us to preach the gospel to every creature, driven by the same love to implore a dying world,"Be reconciled to God!"

And we are given another reason to love our enemies: Romans 12 urges us to love our enemies by appealing to God's mercies in redemption. After all, in redemption, God has given us the supreme example of loving enemies:"God demonstrates his own love for us in this: while we were still sinners, Christ died for us" (Romans 5:8). Similarly, the ethical appeal in 1 Peter 3:9 - 12 finds itself under the explosion of praise in 1 Peter 1:3: it was in God's great mercy that he gave us new birth and thus empowered us to live in a certain way.

We have been called to follow Jesus and if Jesus suffered reproach and hate, then his followers must surely expect the same, since a disciple is not above his master (John 15:18 - 16:4). 1 Peter says that Christians are called to a life in which we do not repay evil with evil, insult with insult, but rather with blessing. Paul tells the Philippians: it has been granted to you on behalf of Christ not only to believe on him, but also to suffer for him (Philippians 1:29).

(It flies in the face of our inbuilt selfishness to bless those who persecute us and seems terribly unfair and unjust. Surely there must be justice. Surely those who defy God and blaspheme his name and hate his people should be treated harshly. But we are not to respond in kind, even when such response might be just, because at the end of the day, God himself will exact justice. We are to "leave room" for God's wrath (Romans 12:19). All sins are sins against God himself so the forgiveness and punishment of sins are God's prerogative and he will exercise this prerogative in due time.)

The demonstration of Christian love within the body and the demonstration of Christian love for those who are on the outside combine to drive us toward evangelism. Jesus said,"to let the world know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me". It is Christ's love that compels the ambassadors of the new covenant to exercise their ministry of reconciliation, imploring men and women on Christ's behalf,"Be reconciled to God" (2 Corinthians 5:14, 20). Christ's love for us reminds us that we did not deserve this wonderful salvation. Because we have been objects of Christ's seeking and redeeming love, so we become the mediators of that love to others.

(4) God's Choosing/Selective Love
God's sovereign love for the elect is reflected not only in Christian love within the community of faith, but also in Christian marriages: as Christ loved the church and gave himself for her, so the Christian husband is to love his wife and give himself for her (Ephesians 5:25) - and that, too is a restrictive and selective love, even as it is sacrificial and seeks the other's good.

If the love of Christ for the church is the standard of the husband's love for his wife, the least that this standard means is that the love must be self-sacrificial and for her good, for that is the way Christ loved the church. Always, therefore, the Christian husband must be thinking of expressing his love for his wife not only in terms of the characteristics found in 1 Corinthians 13, but with these two immensely practical tests: in what ways am I diligently seeking her good? And how is this pursuit of her good costing me something, promipting me to sacrifice something, as an expression of my love for her - in exactly the same way that the Saviour sought the church's good at the cost of his life?

The PatientOne thought that in the case of a life partner, liking the person would probably help with the lifetime commitment to love them. But regardless of whether the husband's heart still pounds within his chest upon setting his eyes on his wife, God's love for his people never allows them to forget that when he set his love on them, they were enemies (eg. Romans 5:8-11), for we are all by nature "objects of wrath" (Ephesians 2:3). So the husband is to love sacrificially his wife whether or not she is likeable or even deserving of his love.

(5) God's Conditional Love
If in some contexts God's love is made conditional on obedience, in some contexts ours is too: as we rear our children, exercise discipline in the church, deal with evil in a fallen and broken world. Indeed, just as the Bible's diverse ways of talking about God's love cannot responsibly be deployed to eradicate other things of which the Bible speaks (God's wrath, his judgement, his jealousy, his perfect holiness, his justice, his mercy), so the Bible's diverse ways of talking about the Christian's love cannot responsibly be deployed to eradicate or domesticate the fullness and complexity of what the Bible says about our dealings with sin, injustice, war, brokenness and judgement in this life and in the life to come.

Sticky!

If one of the dangers of this discussion has been to focus on and differentiate between the myriad ways the Bible has of talking about the love Christians should display, then the corrective is to focus on the motive for loving: a very important reality - the reality of God's love. "We love," John writes,"because he first loved us" (1 John 4:19). Love is so inherent in God's nature that love is a ncessary mark of every person who is born of God:"Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love" (1 John 4:7-8). If we grasp something of the spectacular way in which God has shown his love for us in the giving of his only Son to die for us, if we understand the enormous richness of this love in our lives, that is to say, if we have knowledge leading to salvation, it cannot but spill over into all our relationships whether with our spouse, our friends, our churchmates or our enemies. There is an unbreakable and inevitable connection between entrance into the kingdom of God and our love for others.

But we know too well that in this world, in this life, despite all the pleasure and healing it could bring, Christian love will always be a matter of loving in hard places. But none of it as hard as what God himself did:"God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us...For if, when we were God's enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life!" (Romans 5:8,10).

The commandment to love our neighbours, even our enemies, surfaces in diverse and colourful ways in the New Testament. All of these diverse forms of expression are deeply challenging, greatly burdensome in time and energy, and might sometimes be hurtful and painful, but we know that none is naïve.

And we can be sure, as David Jackman says in "The Message of John's Letters", that his commands are no more burdensome than wings are to a bird. They are the means by which we live in freedom and fulfilment, as God intended us to do. We would hardly be commanded to love God and our neighbour if love were not a function of God's will and if we were unable to do so or if this was not God's optimal design for humans. But this does not mean that it is easy to fulfil God's commandment and God's design.

A Christian does not go on habitually practicing sin (1 John 3:9) but he certainly sins (1 John 1:8) and he is not happy to remain in any state of sin. And he thanks God that God has provided forgiveness in the person of Jesus Christ our advocate (1 John 2:1).

One day, the hard places will be gone. But the love will remain, unalloyed, immensely rich, reflecting in small but glorious ways the immeasurable love we have received. There, we will be able to love and be love perfectly.

The Haze, God's Love and Christian Love (Part I)

Hari Raya High Jinks

On Hari Raya, there was a lovely fryup breakfast that turned into brunch that sauntered into lunch that, with some self-control, stopped just short of a midafternoon snack. There were endless pots of tea, listening to the Bible being taught faithfully and loads of nattering (and sneezing) and Bible-flipping. Then while speeding to the other side of the island for a meetup and iced chocolate and pastries and groceries, there was more chatting and plans for the pooling of DG resources and a passenger's wise advice that when one comes of a certain age, one ought actually, even though one has no interest in such things, to start thinking personally and seriously about singleness and marriage. Then after the sun had set, wellfed by a rare homecooked dinner and comfortably ensconced in someone's home with a steaming cup of chai each, there was writing 1 John studies together and reading out witty bits of John Stott's commentary and waving books about and digressions and pacing about and a diagnosis of ADD and a Bible that expressed its opinion of John's literary style when our heads were turned.

Will update when we're past this mad week!

Sunday Night Samuel, Biblical Criticism and Reading Biblical Narrative

I think we're quite done with wedding dinners this month, he said. Before the wedding madness starts again in July, let's skip onedotzero and have a quiet night at home.

So the quiet night was: steak pies in the oven while Artur Rubinstein's necromantic hands wrung the poetic depth out of Chopin's normally anaemic waltzes (it's whingy old Fryderyk. Therefore, not the dancey kind, Pole-dancey or otherwise) and crashed through the nocturnes. Later, cold bottles of Chimay, courtesy of some Trappist monks, fuelled an attempted demonstration of how Vladimir Horowitz might have cheekily decimated a fragile timid poofy audience with his own outrageous interpretation (and also an attempted demonstration of how the same fragile timid poofy audience might have swooned in nervous shock in their plush red velvet seats). And later still, a wedge of brie de meaux, bitty crispbreads and a good readaloud of 1 and 2 Samuel.

Riverting stuff. Loved the dry humour. Can't wait to start the 1 Samuel studies!

The question is, how does one study the Old Testament, especially Old Testament biblical narrative?

Biblical Criticism
To reveal himself to mankind, God spoke in a human language. Had he initiated contact in the language of the angels we would have been none the wiser. He chose, rather, to reveal himself a language understood by humans, and he did so to a particular people, in particular times and circumstances in their own language, in their own dialects and slang.

So if we are to understand those messages, we must somehow seek to put ourselves back into the situation of the original recipients of the Word. We must discover exactly what the original authors of the Scriptures meant by their words. The generic term for techniques used to study the meaning of Bible passages is "biblical criticism" ("criticism" not that the reader sits in judgement over the Word but that he seeks to understand it).

Historical Criticism
In ancient times (as the reallyratherlongdeadhuman author of Samuel is fond of saying), when people drove manual cars, historical criticism was the preferred method of understanding the Bible. Historical criticism sought to investigate the origins of the Bible, the sources of the documents and determine the authorship, date, and place of composition of the text.

Gordon Wenham noted in his 1998 Griffith Thomas lecture*:

To understand the message of the Bible it is absolutely essential to have some understanding of the social setting in which its books were written. Otherwise we shall import our own twentieth-century models, impose them on the text and come up with quite a misleading interpretation. For example, Genesis 2:24 makes a very significant comment about the nature of marriage: 'For this reason a man leaves his father and mother and cleaves to his wife, and they become one flesh.' But what exactly does it mean? A Westerner reading this passage might well conclude that it is endorsing our practice of setting up home independently of our parents, often indeed a long way from them. Indeed I remember reading a book by a missionary in Nigeria who criticized Nigerian men for continuing to live near their parents after they married. This he said was unbiblical and harmful to the marriage relationship! In fact what the Nigerians did was precisely what the Israelites did!! On marriage it was the woman who moved, not the man. The man stayed put, because he would succeed to his father's job and land, and the new wife moved in with him. In a literal physical sense the ancient Israelite man did not leave his family at all. So what is Genesis 2:24 really saying? Something far more profound than telling you where to live when you marry: it is talking about priorities and commitments. Before marriage a man's first obligations are to his parents. In the Ten Commandments, 'honour your father and mother' comes immediately after our obligations to God and before 'Thou shalt not kill'. In the ancient world filial duty was regarded as the supreme obligation. But according to Genesis 2:24 marriage changes this. Now a man's first duty is to care for his wife, and secondarily to care for his parents. 'He leaves his father and mother and cleaves to his wife.' Read in the context of OT society, rather than modern ideas, we see that Genesis 2:24 is a statement that revolutionizes the status of married women. Wives are not mere appendages or chattels of their husbands, rather the welfare of his wife must be a man's first concern.

Perhaps I may give another illustration of the necessity of understanding the social setting of the Bible if we are to grasp its intentions correctly. Leviticus 19:9-10 says, 'When you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not reap the field to its very border....' The motive of this law is then explained: 'You shall leave them for the poor and the sojourner [i.e. the immigrant].' But J. V. Taylor in his book Enough is Enough expounded this text as proof of the Bible's ecological concern, that we should not exploit the earth to its limits. And in a lecture I heard him say he was outraged at visiting an agricultural show where combine harvesters which boasted of their ability to reap right up to the edge of the field were on display. How unbiblical, he said! But he had failed to grasp the purpose of the law and the difference between our society and theirs. The law is designed to help the poor of ancient Israel, who were scattered throughout the land and could indeed easily go into the countryside and glean in the fields of their well-to-do neighbours (see the book of Ruth). But the poor of our society are in the cities, far from the fields. To leave the edges of our fields unreaped would not help them in the least. We must devise quite different welfare measures in our society to help our poor. So I believe historical criticism has a most important role to play in delineating the nature of biblical society. Without such sociological study we are liable to make terrible mistakes in interpreting and applying Scripture today.

Form Criticism
Form criticism seeks to analyse Biblical texts by first by identifying a text's genre or conventional literary form, such as parables, proverbs, epistles, or love poems by identifying the typical features of texts such, especially their conventional forms or structures. It goes on to seek the sociological setting for each text's genre; its Sitz im Leben (situation in life).

The advantage of form criticism is that it has made us aware of the conventions that guided the biblical authors. It enables us to appreciate why they arranged material in the way they did, for example in the laws, the psalms, and the epistles. Through form criticism we can be more clear about the writers' intentions: why they included certain details and omitted others. And this knowledge should keep us from misinterpreting and misapplying biblical texts today.*

Source Criticism
Source criticism is concerned with elucidating the sources used by the biblical writers. For example, the book of Kings often refers to the royal annals of Judah and Israel, suggesting that if one wants further details about the events recorded these annals should be consulted. And for a historian concerned to reconstruct the exact course of Old Testament history, source criticism is clearly very important if he wants to come as close as possible to the earliest account of events.*

Redaction Criticism
What the editors do, whether they be Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, or the compiler of Kings, is also of great concern to Bible readers. By comparing their work with their source we can discover what their special interests are. We can see what they have left out, what they have added from another source, what aspects of the original they have played up, what they have played down. In this way we gain a much clearer insight into the editor's theological viewpoint and the message he is trying to convey. And this investigation, what is termed redaction criticism, has proved extremely fruitful for more clearly understanding the text.*

[Taken to silly extremes however, form, source and redaction criticism have gotten people's knickers in a twist. Documentary Hypothesis, in which the Pentateuch was thought to be a conflation of various sources – J, E, D and P, is a good example. You see, says Documentary Hypothesis, there were several sources of information out there and someone did a bit of a cut-and-paste job with them. Unfortunately for us, the final editor of the Pentateuch was so uncommonly daft that he didn't realise different sources were contradictory (eg. say, Genesis 1 and Genesis 2), and included them both! Side by side! (He also appeared to have had a singular lack of chums courteous enough to point this out to him.)

David Cline's seminal "New Directions in Pooh Studies: Überlieferungs- und religionsgeschichtliche Studien zum Pu-Buch" masterfully applies Documentary Hypothesis to the Pooh corpus to demonstrate that the text indicates the interweaving of various sources and thus the fallacy of unitary authorship of that corpus must be abandoned. Likewise, Mark Shea shares his thoughts on how "The Lord of the Rings" could not have been written by one so-called "author" named "Tolkien". ;-)]

Biblical Semantics
Linguistical studies have transformed our approach to determining the precise meaning of words in Scripture. Far too often, sermons are based on sloppy etymologies or words or phrases taken out of context, but linguistics has shown that this is quite mistaken. So quite central terms in the Bible's theological vocabulary, e.g. faith, soul, redemption, justification, may have been misunderstood by amateurs who fail to understand how language works. Modern linguistics has taught us to examine the context in which words are used rather than their etymology to determine their meaning. It has taught us to study language synchronically before studying it diachronically. In practice this means we must examine the usage of a word in a particular book of the Bible before examining its usage and meaning elsewhere. Just because a word means one thing in one writer, it does not necessarily follow that another writer uses it in exactly the same way. And once we recognise this principle we may well be on the way to resolving the apparent contradictions between different parts of Scripture, for example between Paul and James.*

New Literary Criticism
Finally, we have the new literary criticism, which focuses on the structure and plot development of stories and characterisation so that characters in the story come alive as real people not as mere names on the page.

For example, literary critics insist that repetition within a story often offers very valuable clues to the attitudes of the people involved. We must examine closely who says what, and what phrases they use: eg. after God has promised Sarah a child, she laughs in disbelief. The RSV says,"After I have grown old, and my husband is old, shall I have pleasure?" And it is remarkable that such brazen unbelief should be treated so mildly by God. Think of Isaiah's rebuke of King Ahaz when he refused to believe his message (Isaiah 7:13). But Sarah apparently gets away with it. Why?

A careful examination of the phraseology here gives the answer. The narrator first of all gives an objective, almost clinical, account of Sarah's situation:"Abraham and Sarah were old, well on in years. Sarah had stopped having periods". But Sarah describes herself more colourfully:"After I am worn out, shall I have pleasure? And my husband is old too".

From her language we see her real state of mind. It is not blind unbelief, rather it is the hopelessness of a woman exhausted by life who has been disappointed so often that she dare not believe things will change. And this could be why God in his mercy treats her so gently.

In some ways this new-style literary criticism is a reversion to the older exegetical methods used before the nineteenth century. Reading the older commentaries, eg. of Calvin or the mediaeval rabbis, one sometimes comes across interpretations like this. But this new-style criticism is a great advance over these old works. Their insights rested on the imagination of the commentator, and one is therefore never really quite sure whether Calvin's interpretation would have met with the biblical writers' approval. But the new literary criticism is based much more closely on hints contained within the text itself, so I dare to hope it is indeed enabling us to recover the original writers' understanding.*

An example of how literary criticism is used in relation to Old Testament narrative is provided by Iain Provan, V. Phillips Long and Tremper Longman III in "A Biblical History of Israel":

Biblical narratives may be characterized under three rubrics: scenic, subtle, succinct...

OT narratives are scenic — not in the sense of detailed descriptions of the physical setting or scene, but, rather, scenic in the way that a stage play involves scenes. Like a stage play, the OT narratives do more showing than telling. The reader is seldom explicitly told by the narrator how this or that character, or this or that action, is to be evaluated (though this does occasionally occur). Instead, the reader is shown the characters acting and speaking and is thereby drawn into the story and challenged to reach evaluative judgments on his or her own. In other words, the reader comes to know and understand the characters in the narrative in much the same way as in real life, by watching what they do and by listening to what they say. The scenic character of OT narrative leads quite naturally to a second dominant trait.

OT narratives are subtle. As implied already, OT narrators are generally reticent to make their points directly, preferring to do so more subtly. To this end, they employ an array of more indirect means in developing the narrative's characterizations and in focusing reader attention on those aspects of the narrative that contain its persuasive power. Mention of physical details, for instance, is seldom if ever random. If we read that Esau was hairy, Ehud left-handed, Eglon fat, and Eli portly and dim-sighted, we should anticipate (though not insist) that such details in some way serve the characterizations or actions of the story. Sometimes the words or deeds of one character serve as indirect commentary on those of another character. When Jonathan, for instance, remarks that "nothing can hinder the LORD from saving by many or by few" (1 Sam. 14:6), this casts Saul's excuse in the preceding chapter — "the people were slipping away" (13:11) — into a different light than a first reading might have done. Even small changes in the narrator's commentary on events may have far-reaching implications, not just literarily but historically as well. Immediately following King David's charge to his successor, Solomon, in 1 Kings 2:1-10, the narrator registers David's death (v. 11) and remarks (v. 12) that Solomon's "kingdom was firmly established" (made emphatic by Hebrew me)od), and this without Solomon having yet done anything. There follows an account of Solomon's eradication of Joab and Shimei (vv. 13-46), persons deemed dangerous by his father, and the account concludes with another narratorial comment (similar but not identical to v. 12): "So the kingdom was establised in the hand of Solomon" (v. 46). Gone is the adverb me)od, rendered "firmly" in v. 12. Added is the phrase "in the hand of Solomon," which is better rendered in this context as "by the hand of Solomon". Without coming right out and saying it, the narrator hints that Solomon's initial efforts to secure his kingdom by his own hand have accomplished little or nothing. His early days tell "a fairly sordid story of power-politics". No wonder, then, that Solomon confesses, in the next chapter, to feeling like a "little child" who does not "know how to go out or come in" (3:7). Ironically, it will be news of the death not only of David but especially of Joab that will trigger the return of Hadad the Edomite (1 Kgs. 11:21), the first adversary raised up by Yahweh (1 Kgs. 11:14) when it becomes necessary to "chasten" the apostate Solomon with "floggings inflicted by men" (2 Sam 7:14; NIV). If such subtleties often go unnoticed by modern literary readers, how much more so do they escape historians, but they can prove essential to proper reading and reconstruction.

OT narratives are succinct. Perhaps in part because of the constraints of writing in a scenic, or episodic, mode, biblical narrators tend to be economical in their craft. They accomplish the greatest degree of definition and colour with the fewest brushstrokes. Biblical stories, although written, are "geared toward the ear, and meant to be listened to at a sitting. In a 'live' setting the storyteller negotiates each phrase with his audience. A nuance, an allusion hangs on nearly every word". The very succinctness of the biblical narratives invites close attention to detail, and all the more so because the biblical narrators were masters in drawing special attention to key elements in their texts. They use all manner of repetitions to great advantage — words and word stems (i.e. Leitworte), motifs, similar situations (sometimes called "type scenes" or "stock situations"), and the like. The effect of repetition is often to underscore a central theme or concern in a narrative, as, for instance, in the repetition of the phrase "listen to the voice/sound" in 1 Samuel 15. As the chapter opens, Saul is exhorted to "listen" to the Lord's "voice" (v. 1) and destroy all the Amalekites (man and beasts): later he claims to have done so (v. 13); Samuel responds by asking about the "voice" of the sheep and cattle to which he is "listening" (v. 14); Samuel and Saul debate whether Saul has or has not "listened to the voice" of the Lord (vv. 19-20); when Saul seeks to excuse his failure to listen by claiming to have spared livestock only in order to sacrifice to the Lord, Samuel responds that "listening to the voice" of the Lord is vastly more important than sacrifice (v. 22); and Saul begrudgingly concedes that he has "listened to the voice" of the people (v. 24). While the attentive reader can surely judge from the general flow of the passage that Saul's (dis)obedience is a central theme, attention to the literary fabric of the passage underscores and enriches this insight.

Our brief description of the scenic, subtle, and succinct character of biblical narratives only begins to scratch the surface. Beyond these basics, readers—even those (or perhaps especially those) whose interests are in historical questions—will profit greatly from immersing themselves in...works...by Alter, Longman, and Sternberg. The key point is that biblical accounts must be appreciated first as narratives before they can be used as historical sources—just as they cannot be dismissed as historical sources simply because of their narrative form.

If this how Old Testament narrative is to be read, and it is the text that should shape the Bible study or the sermon, then it suggests exciting ways of leading Bible studies or preaching sermons on these texts (more on that here)!

Limitations of Biblical Criticism
However, before we all run off with the newest-fangled theory on how to read the Bible, we must remember that a perfect critical theory is not the end point. We as Christians are not so much interested in say, source criticism, for the sources that lie behind Scripture but in the text of Scripture itself.

And again, historicity is not everything. It of course matters whether Jesus lived, died, and rose again. But there was a Jewish scholar, Pinchas Lapide, who believed in these facts without being a Christian. And I suppose that if the Turin shroud had proved to be genuine, it would not have persuaded many unbelievers that Jesus was indeed resurrected. It is most heartening when archaeologists find evidence corroborating the historical record of the Bible, whether it be the names of the patriarchs, the ashes of towns sacked by Joshua, the pool of Bethesda or the house of Peter in Capemaum. All these discoveries confirm our faith in the historical reliability of the Bible. But the Bible is more than a human history book. Throughout, it claims to be offering a divine interpretation of public historical events, an interpretation that is beyond the scope of human verification. Take for example the book of Kings. It ends with recording the sacking of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar and Jehoiachin's release from prison. These are events that are beyond dispute because they are also mentioned in contemporary Babylonian records. However these events are not recorded in Kings just because the writer wanted to mention them as important events. He has included them because they reveal God's attitude to Israel, that he was angry with them for breaking the covenant, that he was fulfilling the warnings made much earlier by Moses. Now who can check whether this interpretation is correct? Obviously no one. We cannot telephone God to check if that was his attitude or not. We simply have to accept or reject the view of the book of Kings. We have no means of checking his view. It is beyond the possibility of human verification. But that does not make it unimportant or insignificant: clearly it was the main theological point being made in Kings that Israel and Judah were punished for their sins. So let us keep the issue of historicity in perspective. As Christians we shall wish to maintain that where the Bible is relating historical events they really happened, but let us bear in mind that it is not so important that they occurred so much as what they teach us about God and his purposes and how we should respond.*

Critical issues can easily divert us from the purpose of Scripture. Like the Jews we should be searching the Scriptures to find eternal life. Or as Paul said, "Whatever was written in former times was written for our instruction, that we might have hope" (Romans 15:4). The purpose of the Scriptures is not simply to stimulate us academically, or to provide a living for professional biblical scholars. It is to lead us to God. Biblical criticism offers us indispensable aids to the interpretation and understanding of the Bible. But often instead of being the handmaid of Scripture it has become its master. I suppose that in the last 200 years there have been more than a hundred scholarly books discussing the criticism of Deuteronomy, its date, authorship, sources and so on. But very few have focused on its theology, or the meaning of its teaching and laws for today. And there is a similar imbalance in some biblical courses too - plenty on critical theory, and little on theology and its application. Yet what is the chief concern of Deuteronomy? "Hear O Israel: the LORD our God is one LORD, and you shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might".*

When the academic study of Scripture diverts our attention from loving God with all our heart, soul and strength, I think we should pause and take stock. We should ask ourselves whether we are using it as it was intended. The Bible is both a divine book and a human book. Because it is a human book we cannot understand it unless we employ all the types of biblical criticism to the full. But because it is also a divine book we must recognise that these tools are insufficient by themselves for us to grasp and apply its message. To do that we must have a humble mind and heart and the guidance of the Spirit.*

*"The Place of Biblical Criticism in Theological Study", Gordon J. Wenham, Themelios 14.3 (April 1989): 84-89.

Marriage Is Not God's Answer to Loneliness

Emo (Badly Drawn) Boy
Back of a pub receipt with a barmaid's pencil stub

For Emo Boy, who wears his loneliness like a badge; the modern day Prometheus, condemned to having his beating bleeding heart ripped out at every gig. For the sweet StickyDateToffeePudding Girl with no date. And for all the other lonely hearts out there, the tender graphic novelists, those wasting away from the bitter coldcoffeetaste of unrequited crushes, those pining to find and be found by their soulmates...

Aiyah, not like that one lah.

Marriage Is Not God's Answer to Loneliness
Christopher Ash

In one of my favorite cartoons (given me by a fellow minister) a group of cavemen stand on the top of a cliff. One has just been hurled over the edge. As he falls, the leader turns to the group and asks,"Now, is there anyone else here who feels their needs are not being met?" As pastors, we are under insidious pressure to show people how their needs can be met. Perhaps nowhere more so than in the expectations which are promoted of sex and marriage.

We live in a society where sexual relationships (whether married or not) are held up as the place supremely where needs are met; here, we are told, is self-fulfillment, self-realization, contentment, and joy. How many films portray a sociable and contented bachelor or spinster? (And how old-fashioned and fuddy-duddy those words sound!) Either the lead character is in what we call a "relationship" (by which revealing shorthand we mean a sexual relationship) or the drama consists in his or her getting "into" one. If it’s a feel-good movie, they end up in the relationship. They don't often ride off into the sunset in a happy group of unmarried friends!

We pastors encourage this whenever we preach from Genesis 2:18 that God's purpose for marriage is to remedy human loneliness. I write as one who has been guilty of this misreading myself in the past. But I am sure it is a misreading, for two reasons.

First, from the flow of Genesis 2. When we begin a marriage reading at Genesis 2:18 and read,"It is not good that the man should be alone", we naturally interpret it within our cultural framework. So one Christian writer says of this verse,"It's simply said that Adam had a personal need, and this was basis enough for God to fill the void" (my italics). One children’s story bible we used with our children put these words into Abraham's mouth for Genesis 24, after Sarah has died and when he wants Isaac to find a wife:"I must make sure that Isaac has a wife to love him. I don't want him to be on his own when I die." A sweet thought, but far removed from the text or sentiments of Genesis 24. Similarly, on this kind of reading of Genesis 2:18, poor old Adam was lonely. A pet or a farm animal (v. 19ff.) cannot be the companion he needs.

But we forget the context. Adam has just been placed in God's garden with a very responsible job to do: he is "to work it and keep it" (v. 15). He is the gardener (cf., Psalm 8). And in this context God looks at him and says it is not good for him to be alone. He needs a helper (not specifically a companion). Why does he need a helper? Not because he is lonely, but because the job is too big for him on his own. Which is a pointer that the reason God invented marriage is that we might the better serve Him in His world. Marriage is not an introspective religion of coupledom in which each gazes endlessly into the other's eyes and each expects to be all to the other. Rather it is an outward-looking union dedicated to serving God together. When contemporary Protestants buy in to the contemporary idolatry of "relationship", we act as though marriage were a discipleship-free zone. But it is not. There is a world to be cared for, people to be loved and brought into the loving fellowship of the people of God.

Which leads to my second reason. In the rest of Scripture, God makes it clear that His remedy for human loneliness is fellowship, not (necessarily) marriage. Fellowship with the Father and the Son, and with our brothers and sisters in Christ, this is God's remedy for loneliness. It is a remedy gloriously open to all, including all those for whom marriage is not a possibility—those too young for marriage, the widowed, the divorced, those struggling with homosexual temptation, those who cannot find a marriage partner.

Many passages in Scripture speak of love and the fulfillment of human longings; yet very few speak of marriage in this context. For example, in 1 John 4:7-21, we read in wonderful depth about the love of God for His people, the love of His people for God, the love of His people for one another; but marriage and sex are nowhere in sight. In 1 Thessalonians 2:6-8, Paul speaks with great warmth about the sharing of his life with the believers; but again, sex and marriage are nowhere in sight. 1 Corinthians 13, so popular for marriage services, is actually about the love that ought to (but in Corinth does not) mark a fellowship of believers. John 13-16 are all about fellowship love, but again sex and marriage are nowhere in sight. Nowhere in the Psalms are the longings of the human heart related to sexual love (except perhaps Psalm 45, although this focuses more on the joy of a family).

So, as pastors let us keep the challenge of discipleship and the privilege of serving Christ uppermost when we teach about sex and marriage. Those of us who are called to marriage are called to serve God in our marriages and not to expect our needs to be met. Too many who have expected their needs to be met have found themselves falling off the proverbial cliff into disillusion.

This article was originally published in Kairos Insight. Christopher Ash was then the Minister of All Saints Church in Little Shelford, England. He is now the Director of the Cornhill Training Course in London and will be speaking at the Project Timothy Bible Conference in Singapore, come July.