Scorched Earth Christians

So, I think I started this blog off with the wrong tone. You see, the thing is, I'm really not supposed to be Elijah. Calling fire from heaven wouldn't really be all that convincing to a modern audience anyway – they'd be looking for the hidden pyrotechnics, or suggesting that the water was switched for petrol (sounding British is fun). Don't get me wrong – I still believe my God lives, and that one day there will be incontrovertible proof of that. However, the question arises of how to prove that assertion.

To start with, as I said, fire from heaven doesn't really cut it for proof these days. If God sent literal fire, I'm sure people would explain it away as a freak asteroid, or the rays of Venus diffracting through pockets of swamp gas (yes, that was a Men In Black reference). In the more figurative sense, I have a sneaking suspicion that sermons of hellfire and brimstone create more sceptics than converts.

What, then, would really show God's existence in an obvious way? I'd say the answer is love, and beyond that, grace – an unmerited act of favour, driven by love. The impression I get is that modern Christians are most known for what they're against (or at least what many of the more vocal of them are against): homosexuality, abortion, evolution, “fornication and tomfoolery”, and the list goes on ... . What if, instead of being known for being against things, Christians were known as people who loved people, people who gave of themselves for others, the people who, if you lost your job and had a family to support, would invite you into their home, and support your family until you were back on your feet, even if they ended up eating Kraft Dinner themselves to make ends meet. What if, instead of picketing funerals with hate and noise, Fred Phelps went to the families of each fallen soldier and offered himself to serve – to mow the lawn of the father whose son will never do it for him again, or visit the grandmother who lives alone, and has lost her only granddaughter (I dunno, maybe those specific examples would be more creepy than not, but I think you get my idea). I likely wouldn't know anything about Mr. Phelps, but the people whose lives he'd touched would know a bit more about God.

I think this model of the loving Church is what God intended for us anyway, and that the implementaion of that vision has, in many cases, failed to meet the specification (though there are individuals and organizations who certainly show God's love in real ways) is one of the greatest tragedies in the world right now. Is anyone else doing better? Well, not really, but that's not the point (there are plenty of non-Christian people doing great sacrificial things – I'm not saying there aren't, just that there should be more Christians that are). Can that specification actually be implemented? I think so. A couple years back, it was really popular to preach on the Acts 2 Church – I heard more sermons on it than I cared for, but looking at it again, there's really a point there:

They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. Everyone was filled with awe, and many wonders and miraculous signs were done by the apostles. All the believers were together and had everything in common. Selling their possessions and goods, they gave to anyone as he had need. Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved. Acts 2:42-47 (NIV)

So, to my original statement – that I'm not meant to be Elijah. I think instead my role (and I would hazard to say that of most of the rest of the Church) is to be an altar stone. There is certainly a place and a need for the prophetic voice calling down fire from heaven, but I think that what is more needed is altar stones, scorched earth Christians, the people of God utterly consumed in showing God, in his power, grace, and love to the world.

The Answer is not 42

In Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, there is an alien computer which, using a program that runs for thousands of years, calculates that the answer to “life, the universe, and everything” is 42. I disagree, but there are many who would not. It is a common belief that the fundamental questions of life, the universe, etc. can be reduced down to science, to self-existant natural laws, to ideas, to numbers – in essence, to 42.

I am reminded of a Biblical account of the prophet Elijah (you can find it in I Kings 18:16-39 in your favourite translation). The nation of Israel had turned from their God, and started following the Caananite god Baal. Elijah challenged the prophets of Baal, in front of all the people, to test which deity was real – the sign would be fire from heaven. The four hundred and fifty followers of Baal chanted, wailed, prayed, incanted and pleaded with their god for an entire day, yet no fire came. Then, in the evening, Elijah built an altar, had the watching people thoroughly douse it with water, and prayed a two sentance prayer. God then sent fire, which consumed the sacrifice Elijah had put on the altar, all the water, and even the very stones the altar was made of. On that day, all the people knew that this was the proven, incontrovertable truth: that Baal didn't exist, Elijah's God lived, and that Elijah's God was God. On this day, though people may mentally dance around and speak scientific incantations thick with mathematical signs and Greek letters to attempt to displace that God, and replace him with the empty idea of 42, the same is true – Elijah's God (and mine) still lives, and God still reigns.