Resurgam

About 6 years ago I walked into Brecon library and there upon the "returns" trolley I spotted a very large paperback entitled "The Resurrection of the Son of God" by N.T Wright. I began the book with little hope of ever reading it through but quickly found myself engaged and very soon it became as absorbing as any page-turner I have ever read. It has been said of  Tom Wright that he has never written an uninteresting sentence and this book is testimony to that fact. Since that time I have read much of what Wright has written and while there are many points which find either difficult and often just don't agree with, yet there is so much in his enthusiastic scholarship which is both fresh and convincing that it has been a pleasure to listen and engage with his worldview.

I am in no way qualified to comment on some of the finer points of exegesis and theology which others (and I) have found difficulty with in Wright's writings but there is more to enthusiastically embrace than to shelve as dubious.

The resurrection of the Son of God is among the least controversial of his books as well as being the most eye-opening. Those who are not inclined to read through the vast amount of historical evidence that he presents will be well served by reading his more popular "Surprised by Hope" (written as Tom Wright) which contains most of the major conclusions of the larger work.

My overwhelming reaction to reading this book is to question, "Why have I never seen this before?" and "Why has such an important event as the resurrection been so neglected in the general teaching and preaching of the church?" Undoubtedly the major emphasis should and must be on the centrality of the Cross with all it has to say not only about personal salvation but also as the climax of the history of the world and in particular of Israel the people of God. But the resurrection is also climactic as the moment when God's kingdom is inaugurated and the promise of a future New Creation is sealed.

I am amazed to realise that the shift in emphasis away from the importance of the resurrection is a comparatively recent thing. It was common for gravestones prior to the mid 1800's to bear the single Latin word "Resurgam" which means, "I shall rise again". After all resurrection is the great future event which is promised to believers and it naturally predicates a physical body in a physical environment. So Wright's insistence that there is life after life after death is not just a smart aphorism. The fact that Revelation 21 describes the descent of the city of God to a renewed earth and the presence of God Himself dwelling with mankind is just so amazingly appropriate in the light of the whole overarching story of God's dealings with His Creation and mankind.

To be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord. Heaven is a reality but it is an interim and not the final destination. For when we read the New Testament carefully we realise that the return of the Lord which signals the resurrection of the blessed and the transformation of those who remain (1 Cor 15) will not be to join Him in heaven but to accompany Him to earth now in transformed physical bodies. "For our citizenship is in heaven, from which we also eagerly wait for the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ,  who will transform our lowly body that it may be conformed to His glorious body, according to the working by which He is able even to subdue all things to Himself." Philippians 3:20-21

We look around this world marred by sin and yet we often glimpse the wonder and glory of the Creator who saw the unmarred earth and declared it good. Just imagine what a wonder it will be to gaze upon the glory of the renewed heavens and earth "the home of righteousness" and the eternal dwelling place of God with His people.

Morse and Brahms

Watching a recent episode of Endeavour with the excellent Shaun Evans playing the young Inspector Morse) the haunting choral background music stirred echoes in in my mind. It sounded familiar but I could not place it and that really annoyed me to the point that I couldn't rest until I'd solved the mystery. It was choral, it was sad and it sounded German. Beethoven? No, I couldn't think of anything? Mendelsohn then - no. Eventually I got to Brahms Ein Deutches Requiem but a skim through on You Tube didn't immediately find it. I knew it had to be German because the first line contained the word "Alles". Eventually I found it. It was the Geman Requim after all - "Denn alles Fleisch ist wie Gras" from Isaiah 40 and other texts. here's a translation of the chorus

For all flesh is as grass,
and the glory of man
like flowers.
The grass withers
and the flower falls.

Therefore be patient, dear brothers,
for the coming of the Lord.
Behold, the husbandman waits
for the delicious fruits of the earth
and is patient for it, until he receives
the morning rain and evening rain.

But the word of the Lord endures for eternity.

The redeemed of the Lord will come again,
and come to Zion with a shout;
eternal joy shall be upon her head;
They shall take joy and gladness,
and sorrow and sighing must depart.

 

I was overjoyed - I hadn't heard this music for so long. But to discover the words that Brahms set to music was also a joy because while the chorus begins on an appropriately sorrowful note it is balanced by the other texts. The powerful declaration that the word of the Lord endures for eternity is followed by the joyful Isaiah 51:11

Therefore the redeemed of the Lord shall return, and come with singing unto Zion; and everlasting joy shall be upon their head: they shall obtain gladness and joy; and sorrow and mourning shall flee away.

And so sorrow is turned to joy at the glorious day of resurrection. Thank you Brahms, thank you Endeavour but above all Thank You God.

Easter Monday 2014

Busy but rewarding weekend the highlight of which was being at a baptismal service in the grounds of Derwen Fawr, the Swansea Bible College and now home to Liberty Church. Ten people young and older were baptised on confession of their faith. Many different backgrounds - some with dramatic testimonies of being set free from all sorts of addictions and circumstances and others who had simply grown in their faith to the point where they wanted to be baptised in obedience and as a testimony to their commitment. I was particularly moved by one young man who simply read a portion of Ecclesiastes 2 as a testimony of how he had come to faith.

Whatever my eyes desired I did not keep from them.
I did not withhold my heart from any pleasure,
For my heart rejoiced in all my labour;
And this was my reward from all my labour.
¹¹ Then I looked on all the works that my hands had done
And on the labour in which I had toiled;
And indeed all was vanity and grasping for the wind.
There was no profit under the sun.

It reminded me powerfully of the months before I finally acknowledged my need of God and the salvation that He has offered freely through the death of His dear Son. That was some 35 years ago now but it is good to be reminded because the temptation to get my priorities wrong is still a powerful one - a temptation to which I have often given in along the way.

Thoughts after a Funeral

Recently I attended two funerals in successive weeks. An older friend whom I love dearly was at both of them. After the second one he turned to me and said, " We don't want any more of these for a while. Two in as many weeks, once they start ........!" and he shook his head. I know what he meant, nobody enjoys going to funerals. Many attend out of a sense of duty but even those who go because they want to honour the departed usually go reluctantly.
Funerals seem to me to be important, not only because we attend to give thanks for a life lived, but also because they should (even momentarily) remind us of our own mortality. We hear the words of the psalmist -

Our days are like the grass;
we flourish like a flower of the field;
when the wind goes over it, it is gone
and its place will know it no more.
 
and we instinctively try to forget them as soon as possible.

However, the Resurrection of Jesus Christ transforms the Christian's view of death. Two quotes that spring to mind here -

George MacDonald in an Unspoken Sermon on the Temptation of Christ -

"Without the bread he will die, as men say; but he will not find that he dies. He will only find that the tent which hid the stars from him is gone, and that he can see the heavens; or rather, the earthly house will melt away from around him, and he will find that he has a palace-home about him, another and loftier word of God clothing upon him."

And C.S. Lewis -

“It may be hard for an egg to turn into a bird: it would be a jolly sight harder for it to learn to fly while remaining an egg. We are like eggs at present. And you cannot go on indefinitely being just an ordinary, decent egg. We must be hatched or go bad.”

I suppose that it would prove to be puzzling and maybe even contentious but I cannot think of a better or more simple epitaph than "Hatched"

Grado, Mahler and Veni Creator Spiritus

Last week I finally got around to sending for some replacements for my Grado SR80 earphones. Some months ago I noticed that the spongy material on the ear pieces had degraded to the point where they were not just leaving black rings around my ears but also a kind of black dusting down the front of my shirts.
I had thought to invest in some expensive replacements but heyI'm 65 and the frequency range of my hearing must be deteriorating by now - so after an online search I found some replacement "doughnuts". which duly arrived at the end of last week. The reorganisation of my workroom also meant that I hadn't got my Sony CD player back in action until quite recently either and this coincidence of events prompted me to play something - but what?

During my late teens and early twenties I had been introduced to Mahler's first and fourth symphonies. I was intrigued by the contrasts between the beauty of so much of his music and the cacophony (or so it seemed) of some of the more raucous passages. However I was coming around to a genuine appreciation of the man's genius. I was 24 when I was persuaded by a good friend to accompany him to some concerts in London, On Sunday 10 September 1972 at 5:00PM we, with hundreds of others, stood in the Royal Albert Hall, having queued for several (enjoyable) hours to hear a prom concert. How can I be so precise? Well mainly because I still have a programme and also because the BBC have provided an archive of prom concert programmes from as far back as 1890. Here's the entry -

Gustav Mahler Symphony No. 2 in C minor 'Resurrection'

Elgar Howarth associate conductor
Sheila Armstrong soprano
Anna Reynolds mezzo-soprano

Philharmonia Chorus (1964-77, New Philharmonia Chorus)
Munich Philharmonic
Rudolf Kempe conductor

I believe that the work is 80 to 90 minutes long. I could not have told you how long it lasted (nor could I since) because time was totally suspended and I could have stood there for hours. This was the concert at which I really began to appreciate Mahler's genius. A live performance of the 3rd symphony at the Festival Hall on my way to a work-related course followed soon after and I was a convert.

But it was not the second symphony that I turned to last night. Back in July last year after a gap of a few years, I had listened again to Mahler's 8th symphony, "The Symphony of a Thousand", being performed at the proms. The opening movement - Mahler's setting of the ancient hymn "Veni Creator Spiritus" is one of the most spectacular and moving pieced of music ever written. It is also a piece of music that has been in my mind for months now. So I dug out my recording by the Berlin Philharmonic conducted by Claudio Abbado and hit play.

WOW! What an experience! After recovering from the full-on opening I sat enraptured for the 24 minutes of that first movement, hearing intricacies and nuances that I had never before noticed. This is music that has layer upon layer of wonderful counterpoint, harmony, dissonance. It's by turns angelic, brash, daring. It has more climaxes than it seems possible to fit into 24 minutes. It seems almost impossible that soloists and choir can sing such high notes. But above all it's glorious.

The soaring double fugue "Accende lumen sensibus infunde amorem cordibus" (Kindle our sense from above, and make our hearts o'erflow with love) is just thrilling and when the chorus and orchestra finally burst into "Deo Patri sit Gloria" (Now to the Father and the Son, who rose from death, be glory given, with Thou, O Holy Comforter, henceforth by all in earth and heaven.) I always feel that this must be the absolute climax - what can top this? And then just to confound all expectations the "Amen" soars to the highest heaven before the final triumphal E flat major chord. I will confess freely that the finale never fails to move me to tears.

Just a couple of technicalities. I am a huge Solti fan and still rate his recording with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra highly but I have to say that this Abbado recording is brilliantly produced and the sound is amazing. The Grado's did me proud - clarity and loads of punch.

Thank you Grado, Sony, Abbado, BSO. Thank you Mahler for over 40 years of delight and pleasure and thanks be to the God who inspires such glorious words which inspire such glorious music.

(In case anyone should think otherwise, I love the rest of the symphony too although somehow, this first movement seems almost to stand alone)

An Inconsolable Longing

Tim Keller paraphrasing a quote from C S Lewis 'The Weight of Glory'

"The inconsolable secret within each one of us, the secret that hurts so much that you take your revenge on it by calling it names like nostalgia, or romanticism or adolescence – that is our lifelong longing to be reunited with something in the universe from which we all feel now cut off; the longing to be on the inside of some door that we have always seen from the outside.  That inconsolable longing, that secret, is no mere neurotic fantasy but it's the truest index of our real situation. The sense that in this universe we are strangers; the longing to be acknowledged, to meet with some response, to bridge some chasm that yawns between us and reality is part of our inconsolable secret. 

It's a longing to please God, to be a real ingredient in the divine happiness, to be loved by God – not just pitied – but delighted in as an artist delights in his work. Acceptance by God, acknowledged by Him, welcomed into the heart of things – then the door on which we have been knocking all our lives will open at last." 

For the full text of C S Lewis' original sermon  look here. 

http://ericredmond.wordpress.com/2010/09/29/the-weight-of-glory-by-c-s-lewis/

Flash

Sent from my iPhone

The View from the Bridge

I must confess to being an involuntary river-gazer! I can never resist peering over the parapet of any bridge that I walk over - and I don't appear to being the only one.  I can't tell why others do it but I know that one of the reasons apart from fish spotting is just the fascination that rivers have for me. Whether it's a slow moving canal or a roaring torrent I can't resist - although the sight of a good flow in sunshine is perfect.

I grew up in the Mid Wales town of Brecon which had three river bridges. the main one on the Usk, a small one nearby over the Honddu where it joins the Usk and one over the Tarell. At certain times of the year it was common knowledge that to see certain well know locals staring over the bridges was a sure sign that salmon were either in the river or expected very shortly. I recall one occasion when I was working near the Tarell bridge there was great interest being shown in a pool just above the bridge. Curiosity getting the better of me I walked up to the bridge to see what was so interesting. The river was low and two large salmon were lying practically motionless in the pool awaiting the arrival of some fresh water before being able to make their way upstream. It was soon obvious that the temptation was far too great for one local character and after a brief exhortation to all present to keep a sharp look-out (by this time there must have been about ten people on the bridge) a gaff hook was magically produced from an inside pocket and quickly lashed to a stick cut out of the hedge. In what seemed no time at all the two salmon were lying on the bank and the next minute had vanished into a bag on the back of a bike which also promptly disappeared. The whole thing was so slick that the assembled company broke out into spontaneous applause and cheers.

But more vividly I also recall a morning in late summer standing on the Usk bridge. Mist had formed over the river overnight but the sun was beginning to burn it away. Looking upstream the scene was brilliant, not a hint of mist. Downstream looking East the mist hung over the river in curtains and the rising sun behind the curtain gave the mist a backlit ethereal glow.

Thinking about that today it's a kind of metaphor for the present. Upstream, in the past are 64 years and 364 days of my life, for tomorrow is my 65th birthday. Downstream the future is shrouded in mist but though the detail is unclear yet there is a growing light which guarantees that ultimately the sun will break through in all its glory. In one respect this birthday is no different to any other, neither is tomorrow any different to any other day - I am always on this bridge. However, if I'm honest as I grow older I do gaze a lot more upstream than I used to. There are more times when the traffic on the bridge and others on it seem less absorbing than the view upstream - but that is only temporary. For here, now in the present there is so much to rejoice in and to give thanks for. Like God's people of old, here I raise my Ebenezer stone - hitherto hath the Lord helped me - and look downstream with the confidence that the future is in safe hands - thank God they're not mine. So the song from the bridge today is simply this -

Pardon for sin

And a peace that endureth

Thine own dear presence

To cheer and to guide

Strength for today

And bright hope for tomorrow

Blessings all mine

With ten thousand beside

Great is Thy faithfulness

Morning by morning new mercies I see

All I have needed They hand hath provided

Great is Thy faithfulness Lord unto me

Must Ought Would - will they survive?

Technically called auxilliary verbs the three words "must, ought and should" express in decreasing emphasis the existence of a moral imperative or obligation. In a moral univese they have meaning but as the world is becoming increasingly relativistic and even amoral; the words are gradually losing their proper meaning - although they continue to be used.

"Must" implies a necessity or compulsion to fulfil some imperative. I must treat ny mother kindly implies that I feel more than an obligation to do so.

"Ought" is slightly weaker than must but still expresses some obligation or duty (desirable or otherwise). I ought to visit my mother.

"Should" used in one of its senses also expresses a sense of obligation to some kind of moral code.

However, once we remove any notion of a moral necessity outside of ourselves (amorality) or acknowledge only ourselves to be the arbiter of morality (relativism) then these words lose much of their meaning.

The strange thing is that even those who firmly believe in an amoral /relativistic universe still use these words as though they had some meaning for them. They are swift to cast a suspicious eye on anyone who would use these words to express some imperative, necessity or obligation  - seeing that person as someone trying to gain control over them. What makes you think that we ought or should help the poor and infirm? What hidden agenda do you have here? Are you attempting to gain some kind of control over me by implying that whatever moral code you live by is somehow superior to mine? Are you attempting to induce some sort of guilty feeling in me?

But even stranger is the fact that even those who are most resistant to any kind of moral standard outside of themselves not only continue to use the words but seem unable to live without them. Most strange of all is the continued existence of guilt. Guilt about what exactly - if, as modern man would claim, the universe is amoral? And yet guilt continues to make men miserable and angry, even to the point of despair and suicide. How can it be that those who reject any kind of absolute moral standard are still prone to feelings of guilt?

Few have managed to live without some notion of a higher external moral standard. Those who have usually have a deterministic view of man - i.e. that man is no more than a collection of natural elements. Those who have often end up either totally devoid of any genuinely loving impulse or in the madhouse.

The paradox (in this case good news) is that those who confess that they are created in the image of God and as such have fallen short of His absolute moral standard, confessing the reality of conscience and the guilt of sin, find in that same holy and righteous God a loving and forgiving disposition - a disposition made possible and demonstrated by His willingness to enter His own fallen creation in the person of His Son and take upon Himself our sin and die in the place of those who had rejected His moral authority and alienated themselves from His love.

Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. 1 John 4:10

 For when we were still without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly. For scarcely for a righteous man will one die; yet perhaps for a good man someone would even dare to die.  But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.  Much more then, having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from wrath through Him. For if when we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life.  And not only that, but we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received the reconciliation. Romans 5:6-11

An Appreciation

As I write dawn is breaking. It is an icy cold morning and from my window I see an almost full moon shining on the snow lying all around. I was woken at 6.30 by a lorry driver announcing the imminent delivery of  the heating oil we ordered some weeks ago. He opened his cab door and the light and warmth spilled out onto the frozen pavement loudly accompanied by the sound of a brass band playing "Joy to the World". Ten minutes later our oil tank was replenished with sufficient oil for most of the remaining winter months and two grateful householders put the coffee on.

On a number of occasions recently it has occurred to me how privileged we are today compared even to 65 years ago (the extent of my memory). I can get out from under my warm duvet to a warm house in the morning and go warm to bed. I can step into a hot shower and start my day refreshed and comfortable. Recently there has been a BBC TV series called "Edwardian Farm" in which 3 people live and work in the conditions that pertained at the turn of the 20th century. In rural Wales in the 1950's many things had hardly moved on. Horsepower had been replaced by the ubiquitous grey Fergie tractor but life in the farmhouse continued very much as it had been 40 years earlier. Running water and mains electricity were just beginning to appear depending on how close to the main villages and urban area you lived. But that's a subject for another place and time. This is simply an appreciation of today.

I am also conscious of how privileged I am in relation to others around about me and this year more than any other in my life I have a growing awareness of the needs of others and the need to be of practical help and use. With God's help I pray that this will become a greater part of my life as I have more time in these coming months and years.

I am grateful that this year I did not have to travel over the past two weeks. I am grateful for family and warmth and a home and all of the mod cons that I take for granted so easily. I am grateful for the ready availability of food and warm clothing. I am grateful for friends and books and the ability to see and the blessing of hearing and music. And who am I grateful to? I'm grateful to the God who gave me life and who has provided for me every day of my life. I am grateful to Him for His coming into this world 2,000 years ago and for making it possible to find peace and redemption through His love. For all your blessings I give You thanks and for the greatest gift of all - your Son, my Saviour, Jesus Christ I praise and worship you with a grateful heart.

Joy to the World , the Lord is come!

Let earth receive her King;

Let every heart prepare Him room,

And Heaven and nature sing,

Merry Christmas to anyone who happens to read this blog. May you know and enjoy the peace of the Prince of Peace and the fountain of all true joy.

And with that the sun rises in a brilliantly blue cloudless sky.

Darkness and Light, Despair and Hope

This Christmas my thoughts have turned constantly to the theme of light. Regarded as mysterious and even mystical over past centuries even science has found it to be somewhat odd. We are told that it is an electromagnetic radiation of a dual nature. It behaves like a wave propagated like ripples in a pond or as a stream of particles (photons). Both can be demonstrated to be true. The universe's sources of light are the great incandescent stars of the galaxy and the earth's major source is the sun. But I'm not so much interested in its physical properties as its importance to us as the medium by which we see. I often treat my eyesight as a given with little thought to the privilege of being able to see and appreciate the wonders and beauty of the world around me. Without light there would be no sight as we know it - just darkness which is not the opposite of light but the absence of light.

And what is true in the physical realm is also true in the spiritual realm. All of us are gifted with a sense of the spiritual and we see and understand spiritual truth by the light inherent within us. Most religions have some notion of increasing enlightenment usually by many years of study and meditation.

Christianity is no different in one respect only and that is that it emphasises the need for enlightenment. It differs from every other religion in its identification of the source of spiritual light and the the way of communication of enlightenment. In the prologue to his gospel John tells us that the incarnation, the coming of Jesus into His creation is the coming of  "the true light which gives light to every man" into this world. Long before his coming the Psalmist sang, "For with you is the fountain of life. In your light we see light." and "The entrance of Your word brings light". John echoes this when he tells us "In Him (the Word, Jesus) was life and the life was he light of men."

Christmas is all about the coming of light into this dark world. The prophets foretold it in those terms. They saw a world in darkness. "For behold darkness shall cover the earth and deep darkness the people." But it is against this dark background that the prophet continues "But the Lord shall arise upon you and His glory shall be seen upon you and the Gentiles shall come to your light and kings to the brightness of your rising." In view of this Isaiah can exhort us to "Arise, shine for your light has come and the glory of the Lord is risen upon you."

Tragically John has to tell us that the vast majority of his contemporaries rejected Jesus. "The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend (overcome) it." He also tells us why so many rejected Him "And this is the condemnation, that the light has come into the world but men loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil." In his prologue John puts it like this "He was in the world, and the world was made through him, and the world did not know him. He came unto his own but his own did not receive him." If this were the end of the matter then it would be an unmitigated tragedy. Thankfully the next word is "But" - one of the most wonderful conjunctions in the English language and of the scriptures, for here as in so many other places it turns despair into hope. "But as many as received him, to them he gave the right to become children of God, to those who believe in His name: who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God."

The latter clauses highlight the other great difference between Christianity and other religions. Not only is the source of light unique but the method or means of communication of enlightenment unique. St. Paul, in a magnificent passage in 2 Corinthians speaks of the blindness which make us strangers to the light and tells us in 4:6 "For it is the God, who commanded light to shine out of darkness, who has shone in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ." Christians are often mocked as those who have "seen the light". That is true for they have seen the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. Not only so but now they have also been "called out of darkness into his marvellous light". In the light of His glory and grace we see truth - we are enlightened and we worship. For ultimately that is what truth brings us to this Christmas - to worship a God of love and grace who was willing to enter his creation to bring light and hope and peace and the prospect of glory into this benighted world. Willing to come knowing that he would be rejected and despised and ultimately put to death so that we might be redeemed. But it is through His death and resurrection - yet another festival of light against a dark background - that we find salvation and redemption and freedom and hope.

The angel told the shepherds amidst a burst of glory and light "For unto you is born this day in the city of David, a Saviour who is Christ the Lord."  Emmanuel - God with us, the hope and the Light of the world.

Romanticising the Past

I watched part two of Ian Hislop's "The Age of the Do-Gooders" last evening. In many ways I am a Hislop fan - I admire his self - deprecating wit and cynicism and he is an erudite and able presenter. Last night dealt mainly with the lot of children in the not so distant past - Lord Shaftsbury the campaigning peer whose persistence brought about (among many other things) legislation for child employment, Mary Carpenter the educator, Charles Kingsley the clergyman whose book "The Water Babies" instantly pricked the Victorian conscience and relieved the lot of boy chimney sweeps, Dr. Barnado the famous founder of the schools for destitute children and W T Stead whose journalism put the spotlight on child prostitution. It soon becomes apparent that Hislop will not airbrush out the failings of these Victorian do-gooders nor should he. The best of men and women are flawed. Neither is it a surprise that there is a touch of scepticism when he traces the motive behind Shaftsbury's campaigning spirit to a thoroughgoing evangelicalism - that is to be expected in this post-modern day and age. The thing that is so shocking is how soon we have romanticised the past. I guess that we are all guilty of it even within the context of our own lifetimes. Unless we have been truly badly treated in our childhood we are all tempted to put on the rose-tinted glasses when we think of our childhood. I guess that many of our impressions of immediate past centuries are strongly influenced by the romantic literature of the period forgetting that much of that literature was produced by the middle or upper class. Our appetite for period drama - Lark Rise to Candleford, Cranforth and Downton Abbey to name but a few recent efforts - has conspired to give us a very skewed notion of the recent past.

The programme faithfully documented the conditions prevailing at the time and brought home the true horror of the exploitation of children in the terrifying and dangerous conditions of the mines and the mills, the destitution of children left to wander the streets and fend for themselves and the stark reality of child prostitution. On the one hand it makes you realise that things have hardly changed - there are plenty of countries where child labour is exploited, children are left destitute to fend for themselves and where child prostitution is still common. But beyond that it makes you realise that mankind has not changed. These horrors did not start on the Victorian age - they have been part of the history of mankind since the dawn of time. Neither have they ceased in Britain. Children are still exploited and paedophilia is not a modern disease - it is as old as time itself but with a new notoriety enhanced by the internet. It is ironic that Hislop gently mocks the notion of original sin and the basic depravity of man in a programme which simply illustrates the depths to which this country had sunk within its immediate past and not, as we are tempted to think, a long time ago in a galaxy, far, far away....

Endings and Beginnings

For three years now I have been travelling weekly some 180 miles each way to work. I am not complaining about the work or the people I work with or the place at which I work. Rather I feel blessed to have had work offered to me at a difficult economic time. For two of the three years I worked almost full time - maybe nearer to 2/3 time - but this year it's been nearer 1/2. However, the travelling and constant staying way from home has taken its toll and the biggest part of me is glad that it's finally drawing to a close. I find it harder to get in the car on a Monday morning and point its nose North. The journey I make is from South Wales to North East Wales and the South / North Wales road infrastructure is pretty poor. I am faced with a Motorway M4 / M50 / M6 / M56 / M53 (which route is notorious for delays and heavy traffic for most of its Northern section) or alternatively a choice of two very beautiful scenic routes either through Mid Wales or via Shropshire. The North South journey is a no-brainer - Shropshire beats the pants off the bottleneck that is Newtown any day - coming up is a different matter. (It's ironic that the Welsh assembly Government have approved a Newtown bypass in the coming year). It is interesting that Shropshire suffers most from the seasonal agricultural traffic. The Shropshire farmers all seem to have the biggest towing trailers that money can buy and the year proceeds through hay, combine harvesters, potatoes, apples and on a Monday morning the livestock trip from the Leominster / Ludlow area to markets.

So I have learned to be patient and equipped with a well packed ipod. Alongside music I have listened to university courses on The New Testament Gospels and Epistles, Tolkien. C.S. Lewis and also a couple of audio thrillers - The Scarecrow and Nine Dragons by Michael Connelly. Then there is BBC Radio 4 which I enjoy. Recently I have listened with great delight to a load of sermon material by Tim Keller which has been a blessing as I've travelled.

The Shropshire route also has the advantage of a good fish and chip shop en route and in the summer a couple of delightful country coffee shops which help to break up the journey. The rural routes also have the advantage of passing through my home town of Brecon where my brother still lives and where I occasionally call. It's always good to see him.

So now it's all coming to an end. For all its blessings I will not miss the travelling. I cannot deny that I will miss the work and the people that I have worked with. But I also look forward to being at home. Home where the best wife in the world has patiently put up with my wanderings for something like 8 out of the past 10 years. Lot's of things to catch up on - painting , decorating - the list of DIY stuff goes on and on. I think this will be the third time I've finished work but if I've learned something it's simply this - it's great just to be at home. There's nothing to beat it! Pity that we often have to find that out by being away from it so much.

So this is also a new beginning and that also brings its own challenges and excitement. God has been good to me in so many ways and I give thanks to Him for so many blessings. I wonder what he has in store for me in the time ahead. The time I have and the paths I tread are in His hands - what a relief to know and lean on that!

The advent of Advent

This Sunday is the first in Advent, marking the start of the church's celebration of the Christmas season. I am no great follower of the traditions of the church but as a Christian I do love this season. Quoting from Tolkien (see the last blog) "The Birth of Christ is the eucatastrophe of Man's history. The Resurrection is the eucatastrophe of the story of the Incarnation. This story begins and ends in joy." So this is truly a joyous celebration. The event which the Old Testament prophets had all looked forward to, the event which God had promised way back at the dawn of history finally happened. Isaiah foresaw the time of it's occurence as a time of darkness in this world. "For behold, darkness shall cover the earth and gross darkness the people...." How true that prophecy was to prove. God's people under the heel of the Romans following centuries of Greek influences - pagans had taken over the world. Even the worship of God had been corrupted and the religious leaders had lost touch with the nature of the God that they paid lip-service to. But into that darkness came light. "Arise, shine for your light has come and the glory of the Lord is risen upon you. For behold, darkness shall cover the earth and deep darkness the people. But the Lord shall arise upon you and His glory shall be seen upon you. The gentiles shall come to your light and kings to the brightness of your rising."

Advent heralds the coming of the light, the dawn of glory. The great story begins in joy with the incarnation - the eucatastrophe, the sudden joyous upturn in the history of Mankind - the pivotal moment in history when God came down into His creation. What story can compare with this?

Tolkien - The Epilogue to "On Fairy Stories"

Among Tolkien's published work there is very little that he wrote directly concerning his Christian beliefs. However, in the epilogue of his essay "On Fairy Stories" as he considers the element of consolation or joy which he sees as the final and essential ingredient for a good fantasy he cannot resist following this through to speak about the gospel. In a famous conversation with C.S. Lewis, who was at that time an atheist, he pointed out that the gospel - the good news - was in fact historical truth and its overarching story (meta-narrative in modern parlance) was the realisation of all that is best in myth and fantasy. His words are far better than mine.

"It is presumptuous of me to touch upon such a theme; but if by grace what I say has in any respect any validity, it is, of course, only one facet of a truth incalculably rich: finite only because the capacity of Man for whom this was done is finite.


I would venture to say that approaching the Christian Story from this direction, it has long been my feeling (a joyous feeling) that God redeemed the corrupt making-creatures, men, in a way fitting to this aspect, as to others, of their strange nature. The Gospels contain a fairystory, or a story of a larger kind which embraces all the essence of fairy-stories. They contain many marvels—peculiarly artistic, beautiful, and moving: “mythical” in their perfect, selfcontained significance; and among the marvels is the greatest and most complete conceivable eucatastrophe. But this story has entered History and the primary world; the desire and aspiration of sub-creation has been raised to the fulfillment of Creation. The Birth of Christ is the eucatastrophe of Man's history. The Resurrection is the eucatastrophe of the story of the Incarnation. This story begins and ends in joy. It has pre-eminently the “inner consistency of reality.” There is no tale ever told that men would rather find was true, and none which so many sceptical men have accepted as true on its own merits. For the Art of it has the supremely convincing tone of Primary Art, that is, of Creation. To reject it leads either to sadness or to wrath.


It is not difficult to imagine the peculiar excitement and joy that one would feel, if any specially beautiful fairy-story were found to be “primarily” true, its narrative to be history, without thereby necessarily losing the mythical or allegorical significance that it had possessed. It is not difficult, for one is not called upon to try and conceive anything of a quality unknown. The joy would have exactly the same quality, if not the same degree, as the joy which the “turn” in a fairy-story gives: such joy has the very taste of primary truth. (Otherwise its name would not be joy.) It looks forward (or backward: the direction in this regard is unimportant) to the Great Eucatastrophe. The Christian joy, the Gloria, is of the same kind; but it is preeminently (infinitely, if our capacity were not finite) high and joyous.


But this story is supreme; and it is true. Art has been verified. God is the Lord, of angels, and of men—and of elves. Legend and History have met and fused. But in God's kingdom the presence of the greatest does not depress the small. Redeemed Man is still man. Story, fantasy, still go on, and should go on. The Evangelium has not abrogated legends; it has hallowed them, especially the “happy ending.” The Christian has still to work, with mind as well as body, to suffer, hope, and die; but he may now perceive that all his bents and faculties have a purpose, which can be redeemed. So great is the bounty with which he has been treated that he may now, perhaps, fairly dare to guess that in Fantasy he may actually assist in the effoliation and multiple enrichment of creation. All tales may come true; and yet, at the last, redeemed, they may be as like and as unlike the forms that we give them as Man, finally redeemed, will be like and unlike the fallen that we know."

I for one find this not only moving, but enlightening, encouraging and true.

Flash

Tolkien - Consolation

The final aspect that Tolkien reckoned to be vital to good fantasy is Consolation which embraces the aspect of joy. It's really the endlessly satisfying theme of the happy ending, or better - those moments in a fantasy story when it takes a sudden and unexpected joyous turn at a moment of the most desperate circumstances in the story. Tolkien invented a new word for this - eucatastophe. The word catastophe comes form the Greek kata which means down or against and strophe - which comes form the verb 'turn' i.e a down turn - a sudden calamity. Adding the eu (meaning 'good') to the beginning of catastophe reverses its sense in that it is a sudden good, joyous turn of events. But I'd best let Tolkien speak for himself because he regarded this aspect of fantasy as critially important (for fairy tale read fantasy in the following)

"Since we do not appear to possess a word that expresses this opposite—I will call it Eucatastrophe. The eucatastrophic tale is the true form of fairy-tale, and its highest function. The consolation of fairy-stories, the joy of the happy ending: or more correctly of the good catastrophe, the sudden joyous “turn” (for there is no true end to any fairy-tale): this joy, which is one of the things which fairy-stories can produce supremely well, is not essentially “escapist,” nor “fugitive.” In its fairy-tale—or otherworld—setting, it is a sudden and miraculous grace: never to be counted on to recur. It does not deny the existence of dyscatastrophe, of sorrow and failure: the possibility of these is necessary to the joy of deliverance; it denies (in the face of much evidence, if you will) universal final defeat and in so far is evangelium (gospel, good news), giving a fleeting glimpse of Joy, Joy beyond the walls of the world, poignant as grief."


"It is the mark of a good fairy-story, of the higher or more complete kind, that however wild its events, however fantastic or terrible the adventures, it can give to child or man that hears it, when the “turn” comes, a catch of the breath, a beat and lifting of the heart, near to (or indeed accompanied by) tears, as keen as that given by any form of literary art, and having a peculiar quality."


"This ”joy” which I have selected as the mark of the true fairy-story (or romance), or as the seal upon it, merits more consideration.


Probably every writer making a secondary world, a fantasy, every sub-creator, wishes in some measure to be a real maker, or hopes that he is drawing on reality: hopes that the peculiar quality of this secondary world (if not all the details) are derived from Reality, or are flowing into it. If he indeed achieves a quality that can fairly be described by the dictionary definition: “inner consistency of reality,” it is difficult to conceive how this can be, if the work does not in some way partake of reality. The peculiar quality of the ”joy” in successful Fantasy can thus be explained as sudden glimpse of the underlying reality or truth. It is not only a “consolation” for the sorrow of this world, but a satisfaction, and an answer to that question, “Is it true?” The answer to this question that I gave at first was (quite rightly): “If you have built your little world well, yes: it is true in that world.” That is enough for the artist (or the artist part of the artist). But in the “eucatastrophe” we see in a brief vision that the answer may be greater—it may be a far-off gleam or echo of evangelium in the real world. The use of this word gives a hint of my epilogue. It is a serious and dangerous matter.

My final post on this subject will look at the epilogue that Tolkien refers to here

Flash

Tolkien - Escape

The second element of Fantasy that Tolkien recognised is escape. He had this to say

"I have claimed that Escape is one of the main functions of fairy-stories, and since I do not disapprove of them, it is plain that I do not accept the tone of scorn or pity with which 'Escape' is now so often used. Why should a man be scorned if, finding himself in prison, he tries to get out and go home? Or if he cannot do so, he thinks and talks about other topics than jailers and prison-walls?" — J.R.R. Tolkien

Tolkien views escape, not in the bad sense of the word as it is often applied - that is escapism as though a temporary but foolish escape from reality only to be dumped back in it again some hours later, but escape in the sense that we are temporaily transported to another world to return to the real world refreshed and somehow the better for our experience. It may be a world of knights and dragons, of Cavaliers and Roundheads, of Centurions and Silurans, of White Witches and fauns and lamposts in the snow, of elves and goblins and dwarves. We come back to our own reality refreshed and in some mysterious way strengthened by the experience. One important aspect of Tolkien's thinking is that this world - that is the phyical reality of all about us - is not everything. He was of course a Christian and as such his world view would have included the belief that this world and our life in it is not is not the sum of reality. Christians believe that this world is imperfect through the fallenness of the human race but that this will not always be so. Christian's are described as strangers and sojourners in this world and as those who are looking forward to the restoration of perfection of both this world and themselves (more of this again).
 
Flash

Tolkien - Recovery

Towards the end of his essay "On Fairy Stories" Tolkien considered three ways in which a successful fantasy story benefits its readers - those who come to it and are enchanted by it - they were recovery, escape and consolation. I was reminded of this as I read through LOTR agin just recently. I was amazed at just how moving the story is on so many levels and I was particularly reminded of what Tolkien wrote about recovery.

What does he mean by recovery? Well, very simply, we get used to the wonder of the world in which we live - it becomes trite - and he believed that fantasy helps us to recover that sense of wonder. There is a sense in which we all need to recover the wonder of this world. For example, I live in a beautiful part of the world and when I walk around our home I am surrounded by beauty which I hardly notice. Thanks to my wife's efforts there are truly beautiful flowers everywhere and all sorts of other wonders. Even in my room I am surrounded by marvels. And yet, I am used to these things and most of the time I hardly see them! The phrase "used to them" seems quite telling. It's almost as though I had in some way seen them, used them and then forgotten them. Tolkien has a great way of putting it - he says

"This triteness is really the penalty of “appropriation”. The things that are trite, or (in a bad sense) familiar, are the things that we have appropriated, legally or mentally. We say we know them. They have become like the things which once attracted us by their glitter, or their colour, or their shape, and we laid hands on them, and then locked them in our hoard, acquired them, and acquiring ceased to look at them."

"Recovery (which includes return and renewal of health) is a re-gaining—regaining of a clear view. I do not say “seeing things as they are” and involve myself with the philosophers, though I might venture to say “seeing things as we are (or were) meant to see them”—as things apart from ouselves. We need, in any case, to clean our windows; so that the things seen clearly may be freed from the drab blur of triteness or familiarity—from possessiveness."

 "Creative fantasy, because it is mainly trying to do something else (make something new), may open your hoard and let all the locked things fly away like cage-birds. The gems all turn into flowers or flames, and you will be warned that all you had (or knew) was dangerous and potent, not really effectively chained, free and wild; no more yours than they were you."

He tells how "It was in fairy-stories that I first divined the potency of the words, and the wonder of the things, such as stone, and wood, and iron; tree and grass; house and fire; bread and wine."

Now while I have great admiration for the films, ultimately Peter Jackson took on an impossible task for while they contain much that is good, they cannot convey the brilliant poetic writing of Tolkien. LOTR is primarily a book, and a film, though it quotes dialogue directly, cannot express the the full content of the background and the world which Tolkien creates when he writes - not even the wonders of cgi can do that!! It is his words which express his stated aim.

Coming to LOTR I guess that the description of trees and forest whether of Mirkwood, the Old Forest, Ents, Treebeard, people like Fatty Bolger, Farmer Maggot, Barley Butterbur, Nob, Tom Bombadill, Aragorn, Gwahir etc places like The Black Gate, Mordor, Gondor, Helm's Deep, Lothlorien, Rivendell, - all of these aspects of his story give us a fresh perspective on places and people in this world. Just the description of Farmer Maggot's mushrooms does it for me (you'll have to read the book). The enchantment of stars, stone, rock, Shadowfax - you name it - all leave their mark in some way or another. Tolkien is a master at embuing common things (particularly natural things) with rich enchantment. But care is required - we soon appropriate things and add them to our hoard. It is a good exercise in any case to attempt each day to spend a little time taking out a little piece of our hoard and letting one or two locked things fly away.

Another verse of the poem Mythopoea always hits me

He sees no stars who does not see them first
of living silver made that sudden burst
to flame like flowers beneath an ancient song,
whose very echo after-music long
has since pursued. There is no firmament,
only a void, unless a jewelled tent
myth-woven and elf-patterned; and no earth,
unless the mother's womb whence all have birth.


We all need to recover something of the wonder of the world in which we live and the life which we have been given. Fantasy can help us recover that wonder but ultimately (as Tolkien also admits) it is a sense of true humility and simplicity which is the key to living with our eyes wide open.

Tolkien - Subcreation

Having recently re-read LOTR I was reminded of the small "Tree and Leaf" book in which, among other things is Tolkien's article nbased on a lecture he gave on the subject "On Fairy Stories". In it he describes what he sees as the warrant for fantasy writing and what its essence is. Some of what he had to say may explains something of the huge appeal of LOTR. LOTR is like Marmite (or Vegemite for down-under readers) - you either love it or hate it. There are many people who dislike / hate / dismiss LOTR - as many as those who a) love the story as a story with all the elements of good and evil and heroism and failure etc. but also b) sense that this story has an influence on them - not just emotional but spritual (in the sense that it has effect on their spirits).


Tolkien was a devout Catholic ChristianHe believed in a benevolent Creator and Creation - he believed in the Biblical accounts of Creation and the decisive coming of the Creator into His Creation - birth, death and resurrection.

As a believer in a Creator and a belief that man was created in the image of His Maker and given dominion over the earth before the Fall, he believed that one of the divinely bestowed attributes that man had retained after the Fall was the ability to be a sub-creator. In the poem Mythopoeia he says

The heart of Man is not compound of lies,
but draws some wisdom from the only Wise,
and still recalls him. Though now long estranged,
Man is not wholly lost nor wholly changed.
Dis-graced he may be, yet is not dethroned,
and keeps the rags of lordship once he owned,
his world-dominion by creative act:
not his to worship the great Artefact.


Man, Sub-creator, the refracted light
through whom is splintered from a single White
to many hues, and endlessly combined
in living shapes that move from mind to mind.


Though all the crannies of the world we filled
with Elves and Goblins, though we dared to build
Gods and their houses out of dark and light,
and sowed the seed of dragons, 'twas our right
(used or misused). The right has not decayed.
We make still by the law in which we're made.


That is the viewpoint from which he wrote LOTR. before he even began this undertaking he had written almost the whole history of Middle Earth up to and including the events of LOTR incuding a creation myth etc. That is why LOTR is so incredibly authentic. It is a story to immerse yourself in - and indeed Tolkien's aim was just that. He wanted to write a story which took place in a time and place that was completely different but credible because it was consistently different. Yes, it's fantasy but it's fantasy within a world that has a history and a rich history at that. He saw himself as a subcreator as described in the second stanza above - refracted light - one of many hues splintered from a single white. He distinguished between the primary world - the world in which we live - and a secondary world - the world of the story and considered the degree to which the reader became immersed and involved (enchantment) in the story the important thing. The key to that is the believability of the the secondary world.

Earendil

"There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tor high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach." (LOTR The Return of the King)


I had almost forgotten reading this passage until recently in London I walked with my wife past St. Martin in the Fields and saw the sculpture in honour of Oscar Wilde. The inscription on the sculpture was "We are all in the gutter but some of us are looking at the stars" - a quote from one of Wilde's plays. My mind went back to Tolkien's words which I had recorded on my phone and which I proceeded to read to my wife at a nearby cafe. I am still struck by that passage from Tolkien. It occurs as Sam and Frodo make their way across the bleak, forsaken land of Mordor inching their way to Orodruin and the Cracks of Doom. Sam has almost abandoned hope of any future when he looked up and saw the star - and hope was renewed.
We all have those times when the world seems bleak and barren and dark are all in desperate need of a glimpse of eternal, piercing beauty to put our lives and aspirations into context. I thank God that at those times we can look up and glimpse eternal glory. The words of Paul in Second Corinthians come to mind. "For God, who said, "Let light shine out of darkness" has shone in our hearts to give the light of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ." We look up and we see Jesus, the bright Morning Star and our hearts are pierced by wonder and beauty and glory and as the old chorus says, "the things of the world become strangely dim in the light of His glory and grace."

Above all it gives us the assurance that ultimately evil cannot triumph - good will prevail. There will be "new heavens and a new earth, the home of righteousness" and by God's grace it will also be our eternal home.

Truth 101 - some thoughts

Huge subject - but some reading and thinking lately has brought a little clarity to my understanding of the current post-modern view of truth and also some of the serious objections to it.

The current secular view is that there is no such thing as absolute truth and that all truth is relative and subjective. "This is my truth, tell me yours" as the Manic Street Preachers said. We are told therefore that we must never impose our personal view of truth on others. Neither can we claim that our view of truth (or for that matter any view of truth) is the only one. Christianity is frequently a target for this kind of argument.

It seems that the guy who contributed most to this post-modern view of truth is the Frenchman Michel Foucault, a philosopher who followed in the line of the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche who was famed for his "God is dead." statement. Foucault says that "Truth is a thing of this world. It is produced only by multiple forms of constraint and that includes the multiple effects of power." In other words one person's claim to have truth is a means to gaining power over others or restricting their freedom in some way.

As I understand it Nietzsche was famous for being suspicious of everything but in particular the motives for actions based on moral belief or "truth". To cite a modern example - why should the US think it has a moral right to enforce a democratic system like it's own on other nations of the world? To claim that the US democratic system is somehow the best model in all circumstances is a truth claim that to many people is obviously flawed and to make that claim inevitably leads to suspicion about the motive behind that belief. Ultimately this looks like a power play, a means of exercising control over others.

But that example is on a large scale. On an individual scale my desire to convince someone else of the truth of my beliefs would be subjected to the suspicion that I was doing so in order to gain some power over over them or to limit them in some way or even just to justify myself. Now there is a sense in which this suspicion is justified. After all Jesus levelled this argument at the Pharisees of his day. This party had good beginnings, they stood against the influence of the Greek conquerors and their pantheism and way of life in order to maintain the purity of their religion and God-given law. But by the time of Jesus they had become the rigid, holier-than-thou party that we meet in the gospels, always claiming the moral high ground. But they were also known for imposing their views on others but Jesus saw through their proselytising and exposed it for what it was - a power play to gain control over others and to justify their own world view - and even get power over God.

I suppose that from this suspicious viewpoint grew Nietzsche's hatred of all religious systems (particularly Christianity whose emphasis on humility and dependence on grace he saw as promoting weakness and whose hierarchy he saw as the ultimate power-players) and many others have followed in his footsteps. Currently secular thought is  dominated by Foucault's view that no belief system can be trusted, that no claim to absolute universal truth can stand.

But if the claims of these men were true then we have lost all our ground for battling injustice, intolerance and oppression. In fact we have no basis for making any moral statement whatsoever. It seems that G.K. Chesterton was right when he pointed out that "The new rebel is a sceptic and will not trust anything and therefore can never be a revolutionary. For all denunciation implies a moral doctrine of some kind.... by rebelling against everything he has lost the right to rebel against anything."

At any rate isn't it the case that if Nietzsche and Foucault etc. are right shouldn't we treat their view of reality with equal suspicion? Why should we subscribe to their view of truth? Why should we put our faith in their relativistic world view. After all we exhibit faith in what we believe to be true every moment of our lives.

The same argument applies to the evolutionary biologists who claim that all thought is purely the result of the reactions of one chemical with another in the brain and that what used to be regarded as universal self evident morality is a mirage. Well the same argument applies to their claims to truth. Why should we listen to their explanations if all they have to say is the product of random chemical reactions in their brains?

In fact to claim that there is no such thing as absolute truth is in itself a truth claim and one which could be seen as the ultimate truth claim - in the sense that it seeks to impose its constraints on everyone it seeks to gain power over. So why should we believe it?

In any case it seems to me that though we may stick to the view that all truth is relative, we certainly don't live as if that's true and it may be the case that we could say that we can't live as if that's true. Men have tried to live as amoral beings, shunning all obligation to any kind of right or wrong and have ended as lunatics or in guilt-ridden despair. We continue to battle for justice, for human rights, against oppression and what we generalise as "inhuman behaviour". From whence does the moral standard of acceptable human behaviour come if there is no such thing as absolute truth we might well ask?


There have been plenty of claims to absolute, universal truth over the centuries and in many cases it hasn't required a great deal of effort to see through them. So what makes Jesus claim to the truth so different. Well for one thing He actually claimed to be the truth, "I am the way, the truth and the life." Thomas Aquinas commented, "Without the way there is no going, without the truth there is no knowing, without the life there is no living." What a claim this is! To be the embodiment of absolute truth!

And in opposition to the philosophies of Nietzsche, Freud, Foucault and most modern secular thought which say that all truth claims lead are power plays which lead to constraint and loss of freedom, Jesus claimed that while that may be true for many truth claims, perhaps even for the majority of truth claims, understanding the truth that is Jesus Himself will not constrain us but set us free. Wow, this is a claim worthy of further thought and investigation.  Flash