16th September, 2009

NILS VON KALM

Is it really true that, when people travel to what we call the developing world such as much of Africa, they see God's Spirit move in powerful and miraculous ways which we don't often see in the affluent West?

We live in a time which is the most materialistic in the history of humanity. In our culture, intellect rules. If you're smart you will go places; if your IQ is not up there you will most likely be consigned to life as a struggling labourer, constantly battling to make ends meet, and having to live out your days in the service of the born-to-rule elite, those clever people who were smart enough to be doctors and lawyers and are now living it up in a great big office. That's the subtle (and sometimes not so subtle) message we have drummed into us every day.

This type of thinking can be traced back to the days of the Enlightenment. The period of the Enlightenment, also known as the Age of Reason, covered most of the 18th century. It was an age which “was characterised by the desire for a superior, more rational view of everything.” It was also a time when “respect for science and reason replaced the Christian faith as the cornerstone of Western culture.” Human reason was seen as the way to find ultimate truth, and the way to build a just and humane society. Enlightenment thinking struck at the very heart of Christian faith and the need for belief in a superior Being.

As Bruce Shelley points out, “for 1,200 years Augustine's ideas had ruled Christendom. Man was an enslaved sinner, who needed above all else the supernatural grace of God...but now intellectuals were saying something else: Man is no sinner. He is a reasonable creature. He needs the grace of God less than common sense.”

Enlightenment thinking is acknowledged to have been heavily influenced by the work of Rene Descrates (1596 - 1650). Descartes believed that, when thinking about life, “we can no longer start with faith as a presupposition. We must doubt everything, until we can be sure we truly know something.” It was from this thinking that he coined the famous term, 'I think therefore I am'. As such, human reason had become the main judge of what is right and true.

So what does the Enlightenment have to do with whether or not God is at work in rich Western society? Well, it has to do with the way we view life, with what we see as important. What is often not realised about the Enlightenment is that it has its roots in Christian theology. The idea of a just and humane society arose principally out of most of the previous 1,500 years of the influence of Christianity on the Western world. As N.T. Wright points out, “the Enlightenment loses its apparent moral force by claiming too much (that it will solve all the problems of cultural plurality) and by denying the very ground (that of western Christian tradition) on which it stands.”

The problem with the obsession of being intelligent ('I think therefore I am') is that we believe we can reason our way out of having to rely on anything outside of ourselves. And so the inevitable result is that we don't recognise the miraculous when it might be right in front of us. We conjure up all sorts of other explanations for it - 'it was a coincidence'; 'it was just nature'; or 'that could happen anywhere.'

But as my wife pointed out to me recently (knowing full well how I subtly try to let on to people how intelligent I am), when you die people won't remember how smart you were (unless you happen to be Einstein!); they will remember your character. You can have an IQ of 160 or of 80, and with either level you can still be a person of compassion. You can still be a person who is loving; you can still be a person who sacrifices his or her comforts for the good of others.

I recently saw a clip from the movie Romero, about the El Salvadoran bishop who was assassinated while saying Mass in his church in 1980. The clip I saw showed Romero going back to his church after it had been taken over by the military. He walked in with a colleague and said he was there to take back the sacraments. The military leader who was standing guard mocked him and turned around and laid into the altar and the crucifix with a volley of shots from his automatic weapon. Romero is then told in no uncertain terms to get out. The bishop walks out, stands there for a moment, sees the peasant people who have been looking to him for leadership, then walks back in to his church, past the military officers and proceeds to pick up what is left of the sacraments off the floor. He is then shoved out of the way by the military leader and pushed out again. This time he gets into his car with his colleague and drives off. A minute later, the car has turned around and is back. Romero gets out and with his colleague starts to walk into the church. Some of his flock who are looking on are suddenly inspired by his courage and follow him in one by one, until very quickly the whole congregation is inside their church. Romero then proceeds to tell them that despite their suffering, despite how they are being treated, they are made in the image of God and the Jesus who suffered is in each of them.

What courage! What inspiration! What leadership and what sacrifice! These are the things that are important in life, not how many university degrees you may have. This is the miracle of God's Spirit at work in a shy man who never wanted that sort of publicity.

Jesus said a prophet is not honoured in his home town. The Pharisees demanded that Jesus give them a sign just after He had fed 5,000 people with five loaves of bread and two fish. The issue is not whether or not God is at work in the West. The issue, as it always is, lies with us. We are asleep in the light. I see God at work in the compassion of those who work tirelessly behind the scenes to help those afflicted by the bushfires; I see God at work in the image of the fireman feeding Sam the koala a bottle of water. Why has that image stuck with us? Why, now that dear little Sam has passed on, was there recently a public debate about whether or not he should be stuffed and given the same legendary status as Phar Lap? He's just a koala isn't he? It is because the image of Sam being bottle fed during the bushfires evokes in us a yearning for something more. It is a reminder that in the middle of disaster there is compassion. This image of Sam drinking from the bottle of water is perhaps the enduring image of the tragedy that was Black Saturday. It is the image of a compassionate God working in the midst of the most horrific pain and suffering.

These are the miracles that happen in the West today. It is indeed a miracle that when disaster strikes and people lose everything, often our first instinct is to help. The amount of clothing that was given to bushfire victims was overwhelming. Following the tsunami, some aid agencies had to actually request that people stop giving money, such had been the public response. God is indeed at work. Each of us retains the image of God, and when we respond as God would, we see the kingdom of God at work. We catch a glimpse of what it looks like if God were running the show.

Rikk Watts makes the important point that nowhere in the Bible do we see God's actions described as miracles. Watts prefers to call them the mighty deeds of Yahweh, because they are not miracles in the sense that they are out of the ordinary. God's mighty deeds are in fact the world being put to rights. This is the way it was always meant to be. When we see these mighty deeds take place, it is like a peeling back of the curtain to catch a glimpse of what things will be like when heaven and earth come together in the new creation, when we will have resurrected bodies and the making new of all things will be complete. So when we see acts of kindness and compassion like we did in the bushfires, this is the kingdom of God at work. This compassion and sacrificial love is what it will be like when Jesus returns and justice and mercy have finally overcome.

Part of our problem in the West is that we have been made to believe that a miracle is something of a lightning bolt experience. We have been so entertained that we have come to believe that a miracle must be something spectacular. But the miracles, or the mighty deeds of Yahweh, acted out in Jesus, were always done for a purpose. And notice that when people refused to believe, we are told explicitly that he didn't do any 'miracles' in that town because of their lack of faith. And that was in Jesus' home town no less.

But if we have eyes to see, miracles still happen. Consider the miracle of someone recovering from addiction. It is more often than not a long and painful process. It may take years for the recovering person to regain some sense of sanity and control in their lives. But when you look at what that person used to be compared to who they are now, they are indeed nothing less than a walking miracle. Their recovery may not have been a lightning bolt experience where the urge to use or drink of whatever the addiction is, is there one day and gone the next. However it is no less a miracle for a person who has made a train wreck of their lives for years on end to be transformed over more years such that they are now unrecognisable from the pathetic person they used to be.

The fact is that the lightning bolt experience is the exception rather than the rule. The Spirit does indeed work in mysterious ways. For the person who has had to attend 12 Step meetings for years to beat an addiction, they are now able to help others along the same journey of recovery. And the beautiful thing is that they are really the only ones who can help their fellow addicts on the road to recovery, because, as helpful as others may be, it is only a recovering addict who can really understand how the mind of an addict works, and can therefore help them to move forwards towards life and health. The recovering addict would not be able to do this if they experienced a sudden healing and therefore didn't have to spend years attending 12 Step meetings. Part of their own recovery is in the helping of others.

This is just one example of how God is at work in the West. When we get ourselves involved in the pain and suffering of others, we see miracles aplenty. When we open ourselves to the Suffering Servant and respond in costly and risky compassion, we soon realise that we cannot do this work apart from the Spirit of God. And it is that very Spirit who opens our eyes to see the world as He sees it and who allows us to see God at work in the gutters and the back alleys of life, His miracles to perform.

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