www.MyTruth.com

As I started reading Tony Payne's “The Facebook of Truth” I found myself somewhat irreverently beginning to say, “Here we go, another detailed article bemoaning postmodernisn and how we are all going to hell in a handbasket ...”. I am glad I stayed on until the end to see the simple proclamation of the gospel upheld as the true solution!

Nonetheless, the teacher's conclusion in Eccelsiastes 12:12 comes to mind. As a somewhat bookish type myself, I have struggled significantly to relate on a level of personal conversation with real issues of the heart. It is far easier to read articles and books about other people's battles, or abstract “big picture” disputes, and think up great ways for them to be solved.

Two words sprang to mind as I was reading the article, in terms of how to bring the gospel to the world: “relationship” and “conversation”. I see the drive within The Briefing writers to bring the truth in terms of preaching, which is great. However, hard on the heels of this needs to be the drive for Christians to relate meaningfully and converse over this truth. The argument to “preach the truth and everything else will follow” to me seems to suffer the general weakness of modernity, and a somewhat Deistic approach, where one sets Joe Christian off with the truth and he will somehow work out the rest for himself.

Can I put forward a call for discipleship to be held in as high a regard as preaching and theological study? One effect of postmodernism and our desire for “freedom” and “choice” is that we don't always make the “logical” connections between the truth and what we should do about it. Such logic has been discarded with other “modernist” ideas. Discipleship is needed to bridge this gap, so that we can hold each other to account and help each other with the minutiae of our lives.

Here I am ranting into thin air on a website, it seems the opposite of what I am trying to say. But I hope, under the Holy Spirit, that it is helpful to someone.

As a final note, part of the above is motivated by my own struggle with depression and trying to make sense of “ministry”. My ministry passion for now is to be in relationship and conversation with as many people as possible, where I may hopefully share the truth of the Gospel that has changed my life.

Simon Webb of Farmborough Heghts, AUS (10/11/2007)

Sorry to be overly negative, but I am just astounded that The Briefing would happily publish ... especially as the first thing printed in the whole issue, such a one dimensional, naive, formulaic, worldly view of women, of men and of marriage as in the “Wives and lovers” CHN (Nov '07). It was cringe-worthy, patronising and embarassing.

From a usually supportive subscriber.

Belinda Hopper of Buderim, AUS (11/11/2007)

Ian has put out the challenge for a response to his CHN on faith-based judgements and the use of the word faith. Here's my attempt at a reply.

Ian Carmichael's search for the synonyms of faith demonstrates the problems we have when we choose to give in to those who deliberately choose to misunderstand or re-interpret vocabulary. We end up following the trend to reduce the vocabulary to a minimum number of words that then have to be interpreted by their context or inflection. Love is an example. The word love now means anything from sacrifice to coveting. Or we have to use a greater number of words to explain what we mean.Ian's own examples for trust demonstrate the second. If this is progress, I think the cost is too high.

Such is the depreciation of language that even a word such as trust is losing the meaning that Ian wants to assign it as a substitute for faith. The advertising in the present Australian Federal election is an example of the way “trust” has lost its power and integrity. I wonder what such an audience would make of Paul's recommendation of a trustworthy saying in 1 Timothy 1:15. Trust can have different levels of meaning, just as faith does, and so we might just end up with the same confusion in the understanding of the general society around us.

A credal statement from a local Christian group I know has recently been revised and the word “belief” has been replaced by the words “deep conviction”. Somehow, to me, the idea of a deep conviction has more to do with individual feelings than a life-changing response of mind, heart and spirit in confession, submission and praise to the gracious revelation of an omnipotent and holy God.

Then there is the confusion that we create when we try to clarify terms. My six-year old daughter and I recently had another of our deep, theological discussions about how Jesus is God's son and we are God's children. It began with her question, “How can Jesus be God's one and only Son, when you're a son of God?” The source of the confusion was Colin Buchanan's substitution of the words “one and only Son” for the older reference to the “only-begotten Son” in his rendition of the song Jesus is the Saviour based on John 3:16. Soon after this discussion, I heard a minister use the same expression, once again with the intention of making the meaning clear. However, the term only begotten Son explains the uniqueness of Christ in a way that one and only Son does not. Yes, we might have to explain what it means to describe Christ as God's only begotten Son, but I had to do that anyway in explaining to my daughter the difference between Jesus and those who are God's children by adoption.

I think it's good that we use contemporary language in our Christian meetings, for example, but I don't think we need to be afraid of using traditional Biblical language. It is through natural and unapologetic use that sporting terms become familiar to those who are a new audience. Cricket, for example, might change the length of the matches and the clothes the players wear, but they still have silly mid-offs, short legs and googlies. (Although I notice that just this year, Channel 9 have begun a series of explanations of cricket terms in the tea break of the test matches.)

Words still have great power to communicate. They are key to relationships; key to revealing the truth; key to sharing the message about Jesus—the living Word—Jesus the sower of God's Word. We want to be understood, but in modifying our language in an effort to ensure we're understood, we can run the risk of unintentionally modifying the meaning. This is one of the challenges of Post-modernism. There are no easy solutions, but allowing others to hijack words without challenge may only contribute to the opposition. This requires much more thought.

PS The Nicene Creed helps us to understand the meaning of begotten in the phrase, “begotten not made”. The preceding phrases also help: God from God, Light from light, Very God from Very God, of one substance with the Father. Begotten tells us that Jesus is part of the Godhead, he is not part of the creation. Begotten tells us that Jesus enjoys the closest intimacy of relationship with the Father; they are the same unique “substance” . Begotten tells us that the relationship begins with the Father, not the Son. (The eternal submission that is causing such controversy at the present time.) You know all this, of course, and I don't need to explain the false teaching that led to the need for these truths to be so clearly stated and codified. It's interesting that in the old Bible version, the term appears in John's gospel, the Johannine letters and Hebrews—all of which address the same sort of false teaching through the affirmation of Jesus' divinity and reality as the God/Man—the Word become flesh.

The KJV uses the word begat in the genealogies. I think that rather than just a synonym for procreation, this term refers to that same idea of shared substance, relationship and order reflected in a fleshly way. I think its omission from the NIV is partly that it has fallen out of general usage anyway, and that its use for the Trinitarian relationship and earthly relationships could be confusing. This is really from my own thinking. I'll go and check out The New Bible Dictionary now.

Philip Cooney of Wentworth Falls, AUS (21/11/2007)

I am concerned that your CHN article ‘Wives and Lovers’ could mislead some well-intentioned wives and encourage some NOT so well-intentioned husbands. Although I know the main intention of the article was to give wives a gentle nudge to serve their husbands by making a bit of an effort to look nice (which I agree with), I think the statement that “it's almost biblical in its exhortation for wives to be working hard at keeping their husbands faithful” could be quite unhelpful to some individuals. Although the writer said that wives are not responsible for husbands straying and that husbands need to work at staying faithful too, the implication is that wives are at least partly responsible for their husband's sexual purity. But I think the Bible says that we are each responsible for our own sinfulness, without exception.

Suggesting that wives are in some way responsible to keep their husbands faithful places a very heavy burden around their necks. Wives can feel forced to be obsessive about their weight and physical appearance. They can live with a deep fear that as they age, their beauty will inexorably fade and their husbands will be faced with ever greater temptations. However, the Bible exhorts women NOT to focus on external appearance, as the other women in our beauty-worshipping culture do, but to put our efforts into inner beauty. “Your beauty should not come from outward adornment, such as elaborate hairstyles and the wearing of fine gold jewellery and fine clothes. Rather, it should be that of your inner self, the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is of great worth in God's sight” (1 Peter 3: 3-4). And in Proverbs 31, there is no description of the physical attractiveness of the wife of noble character, I assume because her appearance just wasn't important.

And if their husbands ARE unfaithful to them, are the wives partly to blame, even in some small way? Was it because they were just too plain, or not sexually responsive enough, to keep their husband happy? Of course not. Both men and women are called to be faithful to their spouses regardless, unconditionally. So husbands, if you have a sexual sin problem, don't blame your wives. It is actually characteristic of men who abuse their wives to blame their wives for their abusive behaviour. Even if your wife was a supermodel, you would probably still have your problem. Every woman I know whose husband has left her has, without exception, been MORE (not less) attractive than the average woman. Those who sin, sin because of the evil desires within their own heart. Even though it is a fact in Psychological research that men, as a general group in the population, have a weakness for young, attractive women, Christian men have to learn to value what God values, and that's what's on the inside.

“Charm is deceptive and beauty fleeting, but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised” (Pr 31: 30)

Lee Bevitt of Roseville, AUS (29/11/2007)