So Great a Salvation #5: The Cross and the Defeated Enemy

I wrote this week’s ‘Word for the Week’, a weekly email service provided by the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity.

When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins, having cancelled the charge of our legal indebtedness, which stood against us and condemned us; he has taken it away, nailing it to the cross. And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross.

Colossians 2:13-15

Global warming. Terrorist threats. Nuclear weapons. Covid-19...

It’s not too difficult to draw up a list of reasons to be fearful. And that’s before we add in anxieties related to relationships, work, money, and childrearing. Small wonder that many have spoken of living in a ‘culture of fear’ – with the overwhelming sense that we are confronted by powerful forces that threaten our everyday existence.

Fear itself goes back to the garden of Eden, where it’s a mark that we are out of joint with our Creator. But, to those who live in the shadow of fears, there is good news.

As it happens, the good news also begins in Genesis 3, with God’s promise of the serpent’s crushing defeat by the seed of the woman. The fulfilment of that promise unfolds in the rest of the biblical drama, coming to its unexpected peak in the death of Christ. To bystanders it would have looked like the worst-possible, most-shameful defeat. But for Paul, it was the place where ‘having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross’.

Notice that Jesus defeats the enemy not only in his resurrection and ascension (those obvious markers of victory) but first and foremost at the cross – precisely at the place where it looks like the powers of darkness and death have triumphed.

But why was the cross necessary? Because, says Paul, of the record of debt ‘which stood against us and condemned us’. The victory Jesus brings comes only at the expense of the death he dies. His Devil-defeating, death-dealing, deliverance-bringing work on the cross is carried out on our behalf.

This paradox of victory through suffering carries over into the Christian life. As Paul writes, ‘the God of peace will soon crush Satan underneath your feet’ (Romans 16:20), but there is a gap between the ‘It is finished’ of the cross and that final day. We’re not merely waiting around for that victory to come; we live into it now, as those who have been made ‘alive with Christ’ – but we do so only in the shadow of the cross.

In this way, the cross also points forward – to the worship of people from all nations, singing the triumph of the slain Lamb, victorious and enthroned, all enemies put down, all fears finally put to rest, that God may be all in all.

The End of the World is Nigh?

I wrote this week’s ‘Connecting with Culture’, a weekly email from the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity.

Would you rather be turned into a zombie, or watch everyone you love get turned into one? Would you rather share supplies with someone and risk running out, or hoard your supplies and be alone?

Those were just two of several ‘would you rather’ questions posed about the apocalypse in what BuzzFeed last week designated ‘DisasterWeek’. Also featured were polls on ‘design a luxury bunker and we’ll tell you if you would survive the apocalypse’ and ‘what actor should be your survival partner when the world ends?’

It’s not too difficult to detect behind the humour an anxiety that things feel worse now than they’ve ever been. Yes, we’re aware that history is littered with doomsday warnings, but there’s something about the speed at which current events are moving which heightens concern. Our fears are increasingly shaped and intensified by the threat of global disaster – climate change, nuclear threats, cyber attacks, terrorism, pandemics – all reinforced by nonstop media.

In popular culture, we see end-time angst most pointedly in films, TV programmes, and games which portray the apocalypse or life in its dystopian aftermath. Sometimes the end is brought about by our own stupidity, and sometimes it’s imposed by outside forces like monsters or zombies, asteroids or aliens. Such cultural products expose human anxieties and reveal our yearnings for a better, more secure hope. Indeed, while the threat of the end is inevitable, hope that the final destruction of humanity is avoidable – or in some sense survivable – runs through virtually all apocalyptic tales.

We are hope-shaped creatures, in need not just of a sense of hopefulness, but a hope-filled story, one which leads somewhere.

For Christians, hope is not an optimistic belief in our capacity to meet every eventuality. Rather, hope derives its shape from trust in the God who has acted in Jesus Christ, who is working out his plan of redemption, and who will one day inaugurate a world free from ‘the old order of things’. Christians believe not in the end of the world, but in the beginning of a renewed world.

That hope frees us up to live expectantly and confidently, though realistically and wisely, in ways that seek to transform the here and now of our bit of the world, in line with what will be – not out of fear, but as a response to God’s gracious promise.

Not the End of the World

I contributed today’s ‘Connecting with Culture’, a weekly email service provided by the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity. The day of posting being 21 December 2012, I felt compelled to reflect on the hullabaloo surrounding the coming to the end of the Maya Long Count calendar.

In the words of an old quip, if you’re unsure what to make of the rumblings about ancient Maya prophecies coming to pass today, 21 December 2012, don’t worry – it’s not the end of the world.

During its classical period (AD 250-900), Maya civilisation saw remarkable achievements in architecture, writing, maths, and astronomy, including the creation of a complex system of calendars. One such, the Long Count calendar, which roots the Maya people back in creation itself, reaches the end of a 1,872,000-day-long cycle on 21 December 2012. But the calendar doesn’t end at this point. Instead, like the mileometer on a car that’s gone round the clock, the count rolls over to zero the next day.

Some have spoken of the day being a ‘hinge point’ for the emergence of a new, more enlightened age, when we ‘reconnect with our cosmic heart’. Others have predicted doomsday scenarios involving UFOs, black holes, sun flares, the reversal of the Earth’s magnetic field, and giant tsunamis. Russia and China have reported panic buying of candles and matches, and the US has seen an increase in sales of survival shelters.

Everyday fears are increasingly shaped and intensified by the threat of global disaster – climate change, nuclear attacks, earthquakes, hurricanes, floods, droughts, pandemics – all reinforced by the media. In popular culture, we see it most pointedly in films which portray the apocalypse or life in its dystopian aftermath. Such movies, like Roland Emmerich’s 2012 (inspired by the assumed ending of the Maya calendar), expose human anxieties and reveal the yearnings for a better, more secure hope. Indeed, while the threat of the end is inevitable, hope that the final destruction of humanity is avoidable runs through virtually all apocalyptic films.

For Christians, hope is not an optimistic belief in our capacity to meet every eventuality. Rather, hope derives its shape from trust in the God who has acted in Jesus Christ, who is working out his plan of redemption, and who will one day inaugurate a world free from ‘the old order of things’. Christians believe not in the end of the world, but in the beginning of a renewed world.

That hope frees us up to live expectantly and confidently, though realistically, in ways that seek to transform the here and now in line with what will be – not as an act of self-assertion, but as a response to God’s gracious promise.

Links

2012 – Official Movie Site.

Mayan doomsday prophecy ‘a big misunderstanding’, BBC (20 December 2012).

Adam Gabbatt, ‘Nasa explains why the end of the world is not coming on December 21’, The Guardian (13 December 2012).

NASA, Beyond 2012: Why the World Won’t End (13 November 2012).

The Bible in Transmission (Summer 2010) – The Growth of Surveillance and its Impact on Society

The latest issue of The Bible in Transmission, published by the Bible Society arrived a few weeks back. This theme for this one is ‘The Growth of Surveillance and its Impact on Society’, with the following contributions:

Chris Sunderland
Editorial

David Landrum
From Big Brother to the Big Society?
Considers the reasons for the growth of surveillance in the UK and its consequences. Christians have a responsibility to offer a vision for our society and stimulate debate about civil liberty issues.

Pearl Luxon
Safeguarding Children and the Surveillance Society
In our churches we need to develop healthy environments and informed vigilance to provide safer places for children. This includes the use of strict standards of monitoring to help reduce risk.

Eric Stoddart
The Risk of ‘Risk’
We live in a culture of fear. Any healthy society has an inevitable level of risk. We must learn to fear rightly and respond properly to risk, fostering courage and resilience and giving voice to those who bear the most risk.

Toivo Pilli
Christians Under Surveillance During Communism
Describes the Estonian experience of life under surveillance and the ethical and religious trials Christians faced during communist rule.

David Lyon
God’s Eye: Surveillance and Watchfulness in the Twenty-First Century
Outlines the characteristics of today’s surveillance society. Surveillance capacities may be said to have God-like features. However, God’s all-seeing knowledge of us is very different to the ‘eye in the sky’ of contemporary surveillance.

Jason Pridmore
Engaging Contemporary Consumer Surveillance Practices: A Biblical Perspective
Considers how a surveillance society shapes us as human beings. Fear and suspicion replaces trust and deep interpersonal relationships. Our sense of belonging and self-identity is undermined.

James Catford
News from Bible Society