The Frog and the Prince

A big thank you to The Brothers Grimm and to Abi & Sophie for sharing this story with me at bedtime last night.

Gold ball meets girl. Girl loves ball. Girl loses ball. Frog offers to get ball if girl promises to love him and marry him. Frog gets ball. Girl breaks her promise. King makes girl keep her promise. Girl kisses Frog. Frog turns into hansome prince. Girl kisses him again. (Cue girlish giggles ... "they're in lurve!") THE END.

The King frowned. 'If you make a promise you must keep it,' he said sternly... she could almost hear the voice of her father saying, 'A promise is a promise,' so she moved towards the frog, closed her eyes and waited for the kiss.

Malachi would love this story. What a tale for our society - when the Princess keeps her promise and kisses the frog they all live happily ever after.

I, like all Frogs, love that story. In fact I might read it to the children on Sunday morning.

Idolatry exposed - the Emperor's new clothes

It is only when idolatry is exposed to the light of day that we see it for what it is - pathetic, hopeless and ultimately meaningless. This time it wasn't the Emperor who was wearing no clothes but most of the Cronulla Sharks team.

The thing that is most striking about this sad event in a hotel room is just that, it is so sad. The media loves this kind of sallacious gossip. After all it combines it's three greatest loves: sex, celebrities and sport. However, if there is anything good that come out of this it is the unmasking of sex as an idol. Sex has been robbed of its power. It's like a bucket of cold water.

To quote again from Christopher Ash:

"The essence of idolatry is subjectivism. An idol is an object of worship that is no object, for it owes its existence to the subjective imagination of its worshipper, who is also its creator."

No one comes out well from this story. In our world obsessed by sex, stories like this strike a different chord. We are constantly bombarded by the message that sex outside of marriage brings fulfilment and happiness. The message is SO loud and SO powerful that most Christians feel they are fighting a rear-guard action. We try to hold to a Biblical morality but deep down we envy everyone else.

This story is a wake up call. We are not the ones trying to pretend were satisfied. Immoral Sex only has the power we give to it. Have the courage to expose the hollow nature of this idolatry. To stand up and say, "they've all got no clothes on!"

Prayer is generally a good thing

The highlight (for me) of the SMBC biennial preaching conference has been John Woodbridge's lectures on the Church History of Revivals.

His historical analysis has been astute - he has read primary texts widely and yet is able to see patterns and trends.

One of the major themes has been prayer. God does great things when his people pray, and pray believing that he is able and willing to answer their prayers. Amazing that. It is almost as if there is a connection between God's people praying and God answering their prayers!

My guess is that prayerlessness is the first sign of practical atheism - we pray (short) prayers in church services ('cos thats what you do) and we say grace before our meals, but we do not pray as if we really believed that God is able to revive his church and transform our city.

Married to Jesus?

I've been reading Marriage - sex in the service of God by Christopher Ash. (So have Duncan and James BTW so please feel free to ask them about it! )

There is some great stuff in it but one aspect made me think about marriage as an analogy for Christian faith. After all both the OT & NT frequently make this analogy themselves - marriage is supposed to be a picture of the covenant love that God has with his people, that Christ has with his church.

"The distinction between marriage perceived as a status following an event and marriage perceived as relational process is of great pastoral importance. The marriage 'one flesh' union is an ethical imperative (we ought to grow in it), but it is first a divine gift (Guroian 1987:88). There is a parallel here to the New Testament ethical calling to the Christian to 'become what you are'; the status and security of being adopted into the family of God is the foundation upon which the ethical life of the Christian is built. This safeguards grace as the principle that infuses all Christian living. It is the same in marriage: we enter a state in which security has been pledged without conditions, and in this safe state we live out the calling to which we are called, to build a relationship of growing sacrificial love. But when we focus on the gradually deepening (or evaporating) relational intimacy as the locus of marriage, paradoxically a terrible insecurity is engendered. This is how it is with an extramarital affair; it all rests on the current condition of an ever-fluctuating relationship. Graham Greene conjures up this insecurity in "The End of the Affair" as his 'hero' ruminates about the way that passionate desire when the lovers were together can go hand in hand with fear when they were apart. He speaks of loving her obsessively, 'And yet I could feel no trust: in the act of love I could be arrogant, but alone I had only to look in the mirror to see doubt. . .' (Greene 1951:2.08). Sceptics speak mockingly of 'living in an institution' and of a mere 'piece of paper', but those who engage in sexual relations outside this institution often yearn for the security it brings. To live outside is to live by works, to be constantly on best behaviour, to be only as good as the last time. To live inside is to live in grace, responding freely to unconditional pledged love, not to have failure and personal inadequacies drive us to paralysing despair."

(Marriage - sex in the service of God, Christopher Ash, Regent College Publishing, 2003, p 74-75)

I'm sure you can see the link that Ash is making. He is moving in the other direction - he has marriage in his sights and uses divine covenant love as a starting point - but I'm interested in moving the other way. Our relationship with Jesus develops in the context of a change of status. The moment we believe we are justified by faith. Our status is now righteous in Christ. That security enables our relationship with him to flourish and thrive. So, as we saw in Romans, Justification Sola Fide is not 'cheap grace'; it is not an excuse to carry on sinning, rather it creates the right conditions in the garden for true faith and godliness to grow.