The Bible is full of horrifying and lurid images of what divine judgement will be like. So Psalm 21, for example, begins innocuously enough. If, like me, you are a Psalm skimmer-overer, you will have skimmed this one many times without noticing it properly, lying as it does in the rainshadow of the majestic Psalm 22 and the world-famous Psalm 23 (“The Lord is my Shepherd”). The Psalmist writes:

To the choirmaster. A Psalm of David.

O Lord, in your strength the king rejoices,
  and in your salvation how greatly he exults!
You have given him his heart's desire
  and have not withheld the request of his lips. Selah

(Ps 21:1-2)

Yep, yep. We know where this one is going. Jesus is the great king, to him be all glory and honour and power; this Psalm (like all Psalms) is really about him—great King David's greater Son. So we could be forgiven for zoning out a bit at this point, pulling out the guitar and composing another quickly forgettable chorus.

But on maybe the third reading through, I noticed these words:

Your hand will find out all your enemies;
  your right hand will find out those who hate you.
You will make them as a blazing oven
  when you appear.
The Lord will swallow them up in his wrath,
  and fire will consume them.
You will destroy their descendants from the earth,
  and their offspring from among the children of man.
Though they plan evil against you,
  though they devise mischief, they will not succeed.
For you will put them to flight;
  you will aim at their faces with your bows.

(Ps 21:8-12)

Here are three dreadful images in the space of five verses: the enemies of God are thrown into a blazing oven (one); they are swallowed up by the fire of the Lord's wrath (one and a half, because, let's say, the oven, the fire and the wrath of God are all really the same idea); their children are destroyed (two); and someone—God himself—is aiming at their faces with a bow (do you think he will miss? Anyway, three.)

Now to apply this whole Psalm in general terms to the Lord Jesus, who is the eternal king who sits on David's throne, is not wrong. If you were skimming the Psalm and reached this conclusion, or if you went to church and the preacher said it, you would have heard a most basic and fundamental truth. But the distinctive three images of judgement put this Psalm into a terrifying class of its own.

Notice that the harshest language is reserved not for smug religious insiders. If it were, we might even possibly feel a bit more comfortable about these anticipations of hell, because at least we could point the finger at the hypocritical religious first of all.

But no, in this Psalm as in so many others, the judgement talk is aimed fair and square at the enemies of God. It's like a gun in the face, you might say, if you were bringing the Psalm up to date and making it relevant. It holds out for those enemies a horrible end of burning fire. Even that suffering could be handled, maybe, if the enemies knew that their children would survive. But the next generation's hope is extinguished as well. So the person who suffers burning inside the oven knows that what he is going through serves no purpose that could possibly give him even the tiniest drop of comfort.

If we believe that this is true about the people around us who don't know God, it gives our speaking and preaching about God's salvation a terrible urgency. And there is, indirectly, a warning to us not to drift into complacency, as Israel did in the wilderness.

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I find myself drawn back to 1 Corinthians 4 like a moth to flame. I'm like a small child watching the scary parts of the movie from behind his mother's skirts, afraid to look, but unable to look away.

The opening always draws me in, even though I know what's coming: “This is how one should regard us, as servants of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God“ (v. 1).

What is he saying? Is he lifting himself or putting himself down? Perhaps both. And then comes the bit I love best: “But with me it is a very small thing that I should be judged by you or by any human court. In fact, I do not even judge myself.“ (v. 3).

He almost sounds like a judgement-free product of the 60s: I don't care what you think of me; I am who I am, man! Don't bother judging me, because I won't be listening. I don't even judge myself.

It's so admirable and desirable, which is probably why the Boomers all went for it. Imagine it: really being free of the oppression of other people's opinion—free, even, of the condemning voice in your own head. Being radically unaccountable to anyone, even yourself. Being able to say exactly what you're thinking without caring who disagrees—expressing what you're feeling without fear of censure—doing what you'd really like to do, without the Man coming down on you.

But then, without any foreboding music to warn me, I'm snapped out of my reverie by something truly frightening:

... I am not aware of anything against myself, but I am not thereby acquitted. It is the Lord who judges me. Therefore do not pronounce judgment before the time, before the Lord comes, who will bring to light the things now hidden in darkness and will disclose the purposes of the heart. Then each one will receive his commendation from God. (vv. 4-5)

Paul doesn't care how others judge him not because there is no such thing as judgement (as the 60s stupidly assumed), but because there is one Judge, and his verdict, delivered at the time of his own choosing, is the only one that matters. His judgement is final and total, encompassing all evidence, seen and unseen, even down to the intentions of the heart. This judgement renders every other opinion otiose (‘otiose’ being an otiose word that means ‘serving no purpose’).

If all this doesn't cause you to tremble, you're either perfectly faithful in all you say, do and think in the service of Christ (unlikely!), or you're not really paying attention.

It certainly causes me to be tremble, having written something in the region of a million words of Christian teaching over the past 20 years, not to mention the things I've “hidden in darkness” and the “purposes” of my heart!

But along with the trembling, there is the most curious and wonderful freedom and comfort—because if he alone is my judge, what do I care of the opinion of men? It is the Lord and Judge of the universe I serve—whose commendation I crave. Let others do or say what they may.

And if he is also my redeemer, whose crucified and risen Son is my intercessor, then in the midst of his searching judgement, there will also be forgiveness, salvation and glory.

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I've heard it said that, in terms of relating the gospel to culture, the mistake that traditionalists make is that they give the right answers to the wrong questions; they're answering questions that no-one is asking anymore. They're tackling issues and fighting fights that belong to a previous generation.

If that is true, then there is another counter-balancing group of people who are giving the wrong answers to the right questions. They're answering the questions that people are actually asking today. They're seeking solutions that connect with real and current problems. However, the problem is that the answers and solutions they provide involve complete capitulation to the current mood of the culture. People are uncertain about ‘true truth’, so we need to make sure that we're not too dogmatic about absolute truth. We need to find ways to include gay and lesbian people in our churches, and so we affirm those lifestyles without making a call to repentance. We're answering the questions people today are asking, but our strategy is just to blend in.

On this paradigm, you would think that the way to go would be to concentrate on giving the right answers to the right questions—that is, work hard at carefully analyzing the questions that people are asking and the issues they are facing, and then provide them with sensitive, biblically faithful answers and solutions. Such truthful and confronting answers to questions that people are asking ought to show that only the gospel deals with these issues in a satisfying way.

That is certainly the right way to go, but it is only part of the solution.

In addition to giving people truthful answers to the questions they're asking, we also need to help people ask the right questions. No-one of a particular generation or culture may be asking “How can I be sure I will go to heaven when I die?”, but that is a question we want to encourage people to ask. It may be true that no-one is asking “How can I receive forgiveness from God my Creator?”, but the solution is not to ignore that question and focus on the issues that are of immediate concern to people; rather, it is to show them from the Scriptures that this is the question they need to be asking.

As we wrestle with the difficult task of bringing the gospel to our culture, we can't fall into the trap of allowing culture to be king. We can't just be satisfied with resolving to give clear, biblical answers to the questions people have; we also have to be showing people the questions they ought to be asking.

One of the keys to doing this is methodical and sequential exegetical preaching of God's word. Topical preaching can be an excellent way to scratch where people are itching, but only the book-by-book exposition of Scripture creates the itches that people need.

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At the end of my previous piece about empiricism and ethics, I suggested that there were a number of implications that needed to be drawn out—the most important of which, for my money, involving the way we present the truth of the gospel (both inside and outside of Christian circles).

Because we live in a world that hails empiricism as the only true authority, we are constantly tempted to pepper our preaching with statistics about how well biblical truth works in an attempt to bolster our message. For example, we might cite research that suggests that Christians enjoy longer, happier marriages, or that people of faith generally live healthier lives. The problem is that our search for respectability leads us to a very dangerous place because it asks people to believe on the basis of an authority apart from the Scriptures. Our search for respectability undermines the appropriate foundation. Should I believe in Jesus because he will (at least, with a greater statistical likelihood) make my marriage happier, or because he is the Son of God who died and rose again as the Saviour and Lord of the world?

The problem is actually compounded when we begin to compare the appeal of our gospel with the promises Christ made to his followers. If the gospel is the promise of a better life, how do Jesus' words fit in, or, for that matter, the apostle Paul's?

“If anyone would come after me, let him ​deny himself and ​take up his cross and follow me.” (Mark 8:34)

“‘A servant is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted me, ​they will also persecute you.” (John 15:20)

“... ​through many tribulations we must enter the kingdom of God” (Acts 14:22).

“Indeed, all who desire to ​live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted ...” (2 Tim 3:12)

The problem is we enter into the statistical battle because we are determined to make Christianity look good on the world's terms. But following Jesus isn't good for our comfort—if by ‘comfort’, we mean no conflict or general happiness. Knowing Jesus does bring many benefits (peace with God, joy in righteousness and hope, a clear conscience as we learn godliness) and even temporal benefits—

“Truly, I say to you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or lands, for my sake and for the gospel, who will not receive a hundredfold now in this time, houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands, with persecutions, and in the age to come eternal life. (Mark 10:29-30)

—but they are benefits that can only be understood from within a framework of faith. If all Christianity does is make your life feel better, quite frankly, your life feels quite good now, so why bother changing?

What do we need to do? I suspect we need to work out how to begin engaging the non-Christian world on its own terms, but without giving ground to their ungodly presuppositions. It's not wrong in and of itself to talk about the effects of Christianity on life in this world. (In fact, we must talk about these things.) But we need to keep showing how the promises of God in Christ reshape our whole picture of what is good in the world. So next time you go to quote statistics in your preaching (either from the pulpit or across the back fence), ask yourself what presuppositions are being slipped into the conversation. And think about how to keep delivering a truly Christian world view, not just one that might be convenient for your neighbour. After all, Jesus called on people to repent and call him Lord; that is not about convenience or comfort.

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I believe in stranger evangelism.

Over the course of 2009, my own denomination in this part of the world is mounting a concerted campaign to make meaningful, relational connections with everyone in our area, and thus help them to come into a relationship with God through his word. For me personally, this has involved (often tough) deliberate decisions to do less internal church-based activities so that I can slow down and hang around chatting with parents at our local school, talking to the neighbours in our street, and considering how we can connect meaningfully with the huge numbers of ‘unreached’ people who live within a few kilometres of our church building. It's been a joy for us to start to get to know people in our area—to have barbeques with neighbouring families, to share with them the joys and challenges of life and parenthood, and so on. I trust and pray that, when we eventually give them a copy of Luke's gospel and offer to talk about it with them, this evangelistic effort will be understood as a natural outflow of the friendships we've developed.

Yet I still believe in stranger evangelism.

It's not just because of the positive experiences I've had with what is affectionately known as ‘cold turkey’ evangelism. I recall times when I've walked into a city or campus (or our church car park), feeling scared and more than a little overwhelmed, aiming to approach people I've never met before to ask them if they want to talk about Jesus. Some people want to talk for hours; others reject me straight away. Some people have obviously thought me quite weird; others have tried to convert me to their own religion. Others have wanted to know more and have come along to Christian events. Some have been ready to take a real step of commitment to Jesus Christ. No matter what the reaction, though, I've seen the message of Jesus' death and resurrection make a real impact, time and time again in these ‘strangers’.

But that's not why I believe in stranger evangelism. There is a more fundamental reason than that.

I believe in stranger evangelism simply because all evangelism is stranger evangelism. If you understand ‘evangelism’ to mean something like ‘speaking the message of Jesus' life, death and resurrection and its implications to those who do not yet trust and obey him’, then, in God's view, the recipients of your evangelism are all (at least, to start with) strangers. First of all, they are strangers to God. The Bible calls them enemies (Rom 5:10), children of God's anger (Eph 2:3), alienated and hostile in their minds (Col 1:21). Therefore, they are also strangers to God's people, alienated from God's family (Eph 2:19), “outsiders” (Col 4:5) who don't know us or understand our motivations or behaviour (1 Pet 3:16, 4:3-5).

Of course, that doesn't make us superior to them; that is exactly the position we were all in before we were reconciled graciously to God through Jesus. Nevertheless, any evangelism that we now undertake is stranger evangelism, because all people who don't yet trust and obey the gospel message are strangers. They are strangers to God, and strangers to us who bring the message.

Why does this matter? If you are a believer in Jesus Christ, then no matter how closely you love and care for your unbelieving family, friends and neighbours—no matter how much affinity your feel for them—no matter how many common interests you have—they are, in the final analysis, strangers.

Of course, on the level of basic human relationships, people will be more likely to listen to you if you've shown a genuine concern for them as human beings. This is why I also believe in ‘relationship evangelism’ and making meaningful connections with those around us. But unless you keep in mind that they are fundamentally strangers, your evangelism will be deficient. You will not tell them the ‘strange’ truths they don't want to hear—that without Jesus Christ, they are sinners, rejecting God and facing his fury—in need of atonement and a radical change of life towards the Lord of heaven and earth. In fact, evangelism that fails to speak the hard truths of our estrangement from God risks simply confirming people in their estrangement. The most loving thing you can do for somebody who is estranged from God is to treat them as a stranger—to remind them of their estrangement and urge them to be reconciled to God.

That's why I believe in stranger evangelism.

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Here are some tips this week on how to think about leading a fruitful discussion. These were eventually published as part of the Growth Groups leaders course—a set of 10 sessions designed to train new leaders in how to run a small group.

Creative Bible study discussions

A major part of most small group activity is the Bible reading and discussion. There are all sorts of ways this can be done—using pre-prepared studies, writing your own studies, or simply reading a passage and getting people to comment on it. In a DIY church, such a Bible discussion is likely to be an important part of the church's teaching strategy.

Leading a Bible study discussion is like guiding a hike. It requires:

• Leader preparation
• Group member preparation
• Getting it started
• Keeping it going
• Winding it up

These are the main strategies in leading a discussion.

1. Leader preparation: plan thoroughly, but be flexible

The leader of a hiking party must prepare thoroughly, working out the final destination and how to get there, but adjusting the plan as the trek unfolds.

The discussion leader needs clear teaching goals and a discussion package that takes the group on the journey toward the goals. But we need flexibility in using our plan. A certain subtlety and finesse is essential because you don't know what will come up. Rather than bulldozing on through your set questions like a quiz, deal with topics as they arise. The group then knows you are responding to their input. They are genuinely involved in setting the agenda.

2. Group member preparation: establish the ground rules

To make the most of the hike, each member of the party needs to prepare. Getting out the maps, knowing the track, anticipating points of interest and possible obstacles will all add value to the excursion.

The discussion and learning process will be much more efficient if each member does some preparation before the study. Discuss this ground rule upfront, best of all, as a condition of joining the group. The type of preparation will depend on the maturity and educational background of the group.

An important hint: don't use preparation questions to start your discussion. The tendency is for the group to read their answers, which can be deadly dull.

3. Getting it started

You are more likely to get to the top of the mountain if your level of enthusiasm is high at base camp. If the climbers are dragging their heels from the first step, it's going to be uphill all the way, so to speak.

Your launching question gets the group moving, and then you guide them up the hill. The launching question has to open up the discussion. It should create healthy tension by raising a topic that is relevant both to the passage and the group, and by throwing up many possible answers. The group then becomes caught up in the discussion in an endeavour to relieve the tension—not unlike the unfolding plot of a good story.

4. Keeping it going

Starting is one thing; trudging on through the late afternoon to reach camp for the night is a whole new challenge. What strategies keep the group working on the text and reaching conclusions?

• More questions

  The role of the leader is to ask questions, not answer them. Even when the group asks questions, the leader ought not answer them, but ask another question instead. The principle is: don't tell them what they can work out for themselves. When you give answers, you relieve tension: the adrenalin stops and so does discussion. Try asking other guiding or probing questions, like these:

  • Extending: What can you add to that? Could you explain that more fully?
  • Clarifying: What do you mean by that? Could you re-phrase that statement?
  • Justifying: What reason can you give for that? Would you explain that from the passage?
  • Re-directing: What do others think? Mary, what do you think?
  • Reflecting: What I think you're saying is ... Is that right?
  
  
• Welcome pauses

  Don't be afraid of silence. Pauses are essential to give time to think, to formulate responses and to maintain the tension. As leaders, we tend to be vacuum-fillers and blurt out anything to end the silence, usually because we are insecure about how the discussion is going.

• Value every contribution, but not equally.

  Every input to the discussion is valuable, both to the individual because it required thought, and to the group because they have to think to respond. And showing genuine interest in every contribution is a key to getting high participation.

  A number of points follow from this:

  • We can't always be thinking about our next comment or question.
  • Our body language should indicate interest through leaning forward and making eye contact.
  • We should use the actual words and expressions of members to show that we have taken their ideas on board.
  • We need to be enthusiastic about their input to the discussion.

  It's a process of using the group input to build the discussion and unravel the issues. But discrimination is needed: each contribution does not have the same value when it comes to determining right answers.

• Keep interacting with the text of the Bible.

  There may be all kinds of interesting diversions and sidetracks on a bushwalk, but to get to the destination, you need to follow the map.

  In a Bible study, there is tendency to get absorbed in ideas and generalities rather than wrestling with the meaning of the Bible. We would rather speculate on all kinds of topics that interest us instead of doing the harder work of Bible reading.

• Encourage the group to ask questions.

  A good reason for hiking in a party is the value and enjoyment of interaction (as well as keeping each other on course). It is a great moment in discussion groups when the leader slips into the background and the group goes solo. Everyone starts interacting in an excited effort to get to the bottom of what they are discussing. The leader has not lost control, but conversation is flying all over the room and the group has developed its own momentum.

5. Winding it up

Getting to the destination together with everyone still on board, is a good result. There are a number of less satisfactory endings to an expedition: everyone wandering around in the bush for a few days, everyone ending up in the wrong town, or the group leaving one or two behind. These are variations on a theme: it's called getting lost.

Winding up the discussion is the art of not getting lost. Here are some tips:

• Summarize what truths the group has agreed upon thus far.
• Draw out the applications and pray.
• Also identify where the group has not agreed or where unanswered questions remain. This can provide fuel for further enquiry. Giving permission to hold and express different views, and postpone conclusions, is a prerequisite for growth.

With these steps, the group discussion is summarized with integrity, the group is confronted with clear conclusions from the passage and the sense of enquiry is not totally evaporated.

Read the full article online.

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Psalm 19 is famous and rightly so:

The heavens declare the glory of God,
    and the sky above proclaims his handiwork.
Day to day pours out speech,
    and night to night reveals knowledge.

(vv. 1-2)

The psalm, originally a song (the heading [not supplied by editors, for once] says “To the Choirmaster: A Psalm of David ”), was turned into words on a page. Courtesy of all sorts of musicians down the centuries, it has been turned back into songs. This one with words by Isaac Watts surely deserves a better tune; if you're a musician, why not write one, or maybe use this one.

The psalm is easy to remember because it deals first with how God reveals himself in creation, and second how God reveals himself in his perfect word:

The law of the Lord is perfect,
   reviving the soul;
the testimony of the Lord is sure,
   making wise the simple;
the precepts of the Lord are right,
    rejoicing the heart;
the commandment of the Lord is pure,
    enlightening the eyes;

(vv. 7-8)

But have you noticed how there is a sudden shift in the last three verses?

Who can discern his errors?
    Declare me innocent from hidden faults.
Keep back your servant also from presumptuous sins;
    let them not have dominion over me!
Then I shall be blameless,
    and innocent of great transgression.

Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart
    be acceptable in your sight,
    O Lord, my rock and my redeemer.

(vv. 12-14)

From declaring the glories of God in creation and in the law, the entire focus of the psalm moves inwards, and stays firmly fixed there until the last line. Why? Why does the psalmist move from considering the wonder and grace of God to what looks suspiciously (to modern minds) like navel-gazing—a contemplation of “hidden faults” and “presumptuous sins”, followed by a plea that the Lord will make both words and inward thoughts acceptable? Is there even a suggestion that there is something deficient in the psalmist's words in the first half of the psalm?

Hardly. The most natural response in the world, upon contemplating the glory of God in creation and in his word, is to think of our own sin. He is perfect, holy and good. We are not. The psalmist realizes this and responds accordingly (You see another example in Romans 1:20-21 where Paul moves from the awareness of God revealed in creation to the reality of universal human sinfulness, which deliberately blots out the knowledge of God that creation gives.)

God is great and glorious. Scripture, in particular, reveals his perfections, even at those times when, because of sin, we are blind to what we see in his world. Because God made us in his image, knowledge of God should give us perfect knowledge of ourselves—great and glorious reflections of God's greater and more glorious self.

But instead what we see is what Scripture reveals. We are not perfect, and we don't reflect God's image. Scripture—in particular, the perfect “law of the Lord”—simply shows to us more and more of our own sinfulness, desperate corruption and rejection of God's rule. To think about the glory of God is to be shown what we are really like—wicked transgressors of the perfect, right law of God and his commandment. “[T]he commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes”—true. “[T]he rules of the Lord are true, and righteous altogether”—indeed. “[B]y them is your servant warned; in keeping them there is great reward”—that is surely so. But the more I know of God's pure law and true rules, the more I understand his righteous character, the more I see that the law warns me even as it offers “great reward”, the more I am filled with fear over my own sin, which is judged by these perfect commandments. The contemplation of the glory of God in his law leads naturally to the acknowledgement that I am a sinner.

Incidentally, we see this movement in Romans as well. Just as Paul's contemplation of creation leads him to reflect on universal human sinfulness in Romans 1, so Paul's contemplation of the law in 3:10-20 leads him to declare that that “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Rom 3:23). Seeing God and his will for us revealed in creation and in Scripture leads us to an awareness of how unlike him we are, even as we realize that we were made to be like him.

No wonder Isaiah, when confronted with the glory of God, cried out, “Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts! ”(Isaiah 6:5). No wonder Peter, when confronted by Jesus, said, “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord” (Luke 5:8).

Seeing God more and more clearly in creation and in his word is a wonderful yet dreadful experience. For as we do, we see more clearly the glorious image we've fallen short of. Do you want to know what you are really like? Start with God. But, like the psalmist, be prepared to be shown things that cause despair. But recognize too that there is comfort, for once the psalmist has realized what he is like, he is able (and we are able) to pray for rescue: “Declare me innocent from hidden faults”, he asks. He addresses his request to “my rock and my redeemer” for the Lord himself will rescue guilty sinners. He is the one who declares us innocent as well, if we ask Jesus our rock and redeemer to make us what God designed us to be.

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The discussion following my last post on church meandered around to the question of how Scripture should shape our congregational meetings. This question has often been cast as a debate between the Normative Principle and the Regulative Principle. Putting it very simply, the Normative Principle says “You're allowed to do this thing in church so long as Scripture doesn't forbid it”, whereas the Regulative Principle says “Only do this thing in church if Scripture gives clear warrant to do so”.

Both are aiming for something good. The Regulatives don't want Scripture to be silenced. They want to take its authority seriously, and let its voice have an active role in shaping congregational life. They don't want Scripture to be a dusty set of standing orders that only functions to rule out certain things.

The Normatives want to give greater weight to the freedom God has given us to work out the details. They don't want the particulars of first-century church life to constrict the outworking of church life in other times and places. They want godly flexibility within clear scriptural boundaries.

The dispute arose at the time of the Reformation, and was classically argued out between Richard Hooker (for the Normatives) and the more radical puritans (Thomas Cartright et al., for the Regulatives). The issue at the time was how far one should go in reforming the accumulated Roman Catholic dross of centuries. Given that some things definitely had to go (the Mass, the mediatorial priests, the supreme authority of the Pope, and so on), how far should the razor be permitted to cut? Putting it simply (and I hope not simplistically), Hooker argued that if something was ancient, and approved of by reasonable men, then unless Scripture forbade it, the practice should remain. Cartwright and others argued that this approach did not give Scripture ‘enough say’, and that practices and forms should only survive the axe if Scripture gave them clear warrant.

There's no room here to go into the intricacies of the historical argument and the consequences that flowed from it, but I have to say that the terms of the dispute have always struck me as odd in light of 1 Corinthians 12-14, and 14:26 in particular: “What then, brothers? When you come together, each one has a hymn, a lesson, a revelation, a tongue, or an interpretation. Let all things be done for building.”

According to Paul, as he addresses the somewhat chaotic Corinthians, the central principle that should guide whether something is done or not in church is edification. And so if I was a Normative guy, I would regard 1 Corinthians 14:26 as a ‘No’ to any practice (no matter how well-established and regarded) if it had ceased to be edifying (that is, useful for building people in to the congregation, and building them up as members). And if I was a Regulative sort of person, I would regard the same verse as a clear scriptural ‘Yes’ for any practice that was edifying, whether or not I could find an example of it in the New Testament.

Perhaps we should call it the Constructive Principle: do that which builds; don't do that which does not build. The question then becomes, “What is it that builds?”

[A PS to head off the inevitable comments: I'm not saying that ‘edification’ is the sole purpose or rationale for our congregational meetings, as if they are entirely utilitarian affairs. But it is the central New Testament principle for ordering our gatherings. Also see 1 Peter 4:10-11.]

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Okay, so I wanted to write about statistics, and I’m hopelessly unoriginal (I’m sure some people will be able to suggest a better title). This is one of those posts that started out as a rant inspired by one of my pet peeves, but hopefully it ends with some helpful reflections. We shall see!

Part I—The rant

I am heartily sick of reading ethical arguments based on statistics. For the purposes of this little grumble, I will provide a hypothetical example, but I’m sure you could come up with hundreds of real examples in the next five minutes by googling half a dozen newspapers around the world. (Aside: for those with an interest in the matter, after pondering for some time whether the verb ‘to google’ warranted a capital, I discovered this fascinating article on Wikipedia that restored my faith in the absolute absurdity of human nature. Geeks of the world unite!)

Government set to legislate on chocolate frog dilemma

The Oztian government released a new white paper this morning on chocolate frog consumption by middle-aged men.

“There’s no doubt we have a serious issue”, commented the Department of Health spokesman, Arnold Gerfrumption. “Chocolate frog consumption has been on the increase in the last decade. From being virtually unknown in the late 90s, chocofrogtion is now a common problem for many families. The figures suggest that 74 per cent of men between the ages of 35 and 55 are consuming three chocolate frogs or more a day. It’s a real problem, and the statistics tell us it’s time to act. The government will seriously consider legislation to limit the supply of chocolate frogs in the coming months”

Pat Eatemup, communications director for the action group, Freedom to Consume has lambasted the report saying it is based on faulty assumptions and faulty research methods.

Now, in any online paper in the world that allows comments, what will occur? Within hours there will be 37 (I don’t why, but it’s always 37) comments of the “I’m-a-40-year-old-male-with-a-gammy-leg-and-I-consume-frogs-responsibly-once-or-twice-a-week.-Who-made-up-these-statistcs?-Someone-should-tell-the-government-to-deal-with-real-problems” variety.

Part II—Some ‘calm’ reflection

Spoiled for targets, the humble critic searches in vain for the logical equivalent of a machine gun, but decides instead to bring in the sniper. (I.e. we’re going to look at the problems one at a time). Let’s start with our friendly armchair commentator. Statistics are statistics. They tell you about general trends in particular populations (if they have been well collected and analyzed). Your personal experience has nothing whatsoever to do with the validity or otherwise of the numbers. The 74 per cent number tells you automatically that 26 per cent of people don’t have a problem. All that the personal experience of our responsible frog-consuming friend tells anyone is that he isn’t a part of the 74 per cent. It has no bearing on whether or not the 74 per cent is an accurate figure. Can someone please teach everyone in early high school this basic fact of life? Please???

But that’s not the end of the problems because our commentator’s response was motivated, at least in part, by the faulty logic of the government position. Statements like “the statistics tell us it’s time to act” contain the heart of the problem. Statistics never tell us it’s time to act. Take this statistic: 74 per cent of middle-aged men think that elephants should be painted pink so they could be spotted more easily if they escaped from the zoo. Would any government spokesman get up and respond by saying the statistics tell us it’s time to act? The problem is again a faulty understanding of the nature of statistics. Statistics are not by their nature prescriptive, they are always descriptive. That is, they can tell you about the way things are but they do not tell you the way things ought to be. Just because 74 per cent of middle-aged men think elephants should be painted pink doesn’t mean that we should paint them pink. Similarly, the fact that 74 per cent of middle-aged men consume three or more chocolate frogs a day doesn’t tell you whether that’s a problem, or what you should do about it if it is.

The fundamental problem is, as always, sin. Where did that come from, I hear you ask. I thought the problem was faulty logic. Yes, but faulty logic is related to sin. Let me explain what I mean. As a society, we have removed God and his revelation about his creation from our thinking about everything. But this is a massive problem for a number of reasons. First, in the presence of God, I am asked to do what is right because God has made known what is right in his universe. But since the rise of scientism, we all now know that there is no God. If there is no God, then what should we do? Well, the real answer to that question is whatever we like. (The real atheist needs to accept the fruits of their thinking, but hardly ever does.) But that answer doesn’t go down too well because even the complete unbeliever still knows there is right and wrong (cf. Rom 1:32). So in the absence of any authority, people create their own authority. (After all, “because I said so” has met with very mixed success, even amongst the two-year-olds of the world!) Since, according to a scientific world, there is only one authority—‘what is’ (Empiricism)—all moral arguments now begin by quoting statistics. To summarize, because of sin (the rejection of the authority of God), we have turned to faulty logic (we pretend that ‘what is’ tells us ‘what should be’).

But here you have a second problem, which is closely related to the first. Without God, you have no vantage point from which to evaluate the statistics. A healthy doctrine of sin is vitally important when assessing statistics because only a healthy doctrine of sin tells you that the way things are is not necessarily good. What does the Bible say? My thinking, my acting, the structures of society in which I live and even the very fabric of creation, which is groaning because it has been subjected to frustration by God (Rom 8:20), are out of whack. One of the key conclusions is that any observation about ‘what is’ (and we’ve already seen that this is the only thing that statistics can give us—an appreciation of what actually is) cannot, by definition, tell you about what should be. Why? Because what is might be a terrible distortion of what should be.

For example, death is one of the few certainties in life. Does that mean death ought to be? And does the fact that it is a reality for everyone tell us anything about whether it’s acceptable to visit death on someone else? If death is the end point for everyone, what’s the problem with hastening someone else’s death? If you respond to that last question by saying, “How can you even ask such a question?” then I’m glad, but it also shows that the real issue isn’t about logic or reason. There is no logical reason that you shouldn’t ask the question. After all, death just is. The bottom line? Statistics are a false authority—a sleight of hand used by people who want us to accept their intuition about what is right and wrong.

Without God, we turn to statistics to tell us what to do. But statistics only tell us about what is. Yet in a broken, sinful world, ‘what is’ is sometimes the polar opposite of what should be. This truth has all sorts of implications, which I will come to in a future post. But for now, one conclusion is enough. Statistics are no basis for a system of government! (Or for deciding questions of morality.)

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Last year Cathy and I had the opportunity to go and see Australian Idol filmed live. (To tell you the truth, I'm not into the whole thing, but she is.) But whether you're into it or not, I have to admit that it was kind of fun. We didn't just go as part of the crowd, but as VIPs. We have a friend who works for one of the corporate sponsors of the series, and she got us the tickets. When we arrived, there were two lines to gain access to the studio—the long line for the plebs and the short line for the corporate sponsors. So while hundreds of people stood lined up behind the barricades, we ambled leisurely along the red carpet and were ushered straight to our seats while everyone else was kept standing outside. It's funny how the human heart works: we weren't special—there was no particular reason for us to be there, except we had a friend; but I could really get used to being treated like that. It's fun to feel important.

This heady moment of star-like significance came back to me this week as I was reading through Ephesians with a friend. We've been meeting on and off for a while now, working our way through Paul's letter. This week, we came to the first half of chapter 3. It's incredible how many times you can read something and not notice the blatantly obvious. But there it was, as plain as the nose on your face.

(In passing, can I point out that unless this is making a particular comment about the run-of-the-mill nature of your nose, it's a largely false statement; the nose on my face is not plain to me at all. I've just spent several seconds going cross-eyed and I still can't see it very well! Meanwhile, back at the ranch ...)

I noticed for the first time in my life the little description of Jesus in Ephesians 3:12. It talks about Jesus “in whom we have boldness and access with confidence through our faith in him”. Interestingly, it's not the first time in Ephesians that Paul has spoken of access. The same word is used in Ephesians 2:18 to describe the access of Jews and Gentiles together to the one Father—an access that, I am told repeatedly in Ephesians 2-3, is totally alien for me as a Gentile. I don't belong in the presence of God, but God has granted me access.

Every day of my life I have access to the throne room of God through the incomparable death of Jesus, but I treat that as commonplace. And yet I feel strangely puffed up by walking into an episode of Australian Idol ahead of the crowd. There is no doubting the perversity of the human heart. Can I encourage you to stop today and contemplate the goodness of God in granting you access into the presence of the Father? And don't just appreciate it; use it. God in his kindness commands us to bring everything to him in prayer. You'd be an idiot not to! So if, like me, you're sometimes an idiot, repent and remember the grace of God in Jesus, and talk to your Father today.

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