Wilderness Part 2

Yes, I’m still on about the Wilderness and about Luke 4. There was just way too much to put into one blog entry.

There is a lot of Christian-bashing goes on out there in media-land. A lot of people who think that Christians are all crazy and deluded (and some of them probably are). Have a look at any discussion forum where the issue of Christianity is raised or discussed in the press or on YouTube or Facebook – anywhere – and people will be ridiculing it and finding flaw. The Bible gives them lots of material to throw at us in order to ridicule us when taken out of context. They can laugh at Leviticus, poke fun at Paul and rant about Romans. If you take passages out of their context and fling them around, they do sometimes seem quite ridiculous, out of step with modern-day thinking and ideas. Worse, they can seem oppressive and contrary to what we consider to be decent values now.



In Luke 4, the devil quotes the Bible at Jesus. It is when he was leading Jesus around trying to test him after forty days in the wilderness and he says ‘If you are the Son of God...throw yourself down from here for it is written “He will command his angels concerning you to guard you carefully...”. Now, at that point, that must have been just a little bit tempting. There he is, the devil, goading Jesus and – of course – Jesus could have done anything. Scripture has been quoted at him and it must have been tempting not to think ‘you know what, I am the Son of God and I’ll show you’. Of course, he didn’t. But what he did teach us was a valuable lesson in how to interpret and read scripture. Don't just accept it when someone quotes a passage at you, put it in context.

What Jesus did was put the quote that the devil had hurled at him back into its context: ‘It is said: ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test’’. He does not allow the devil to use Scripture that has been selected and used wrongly to tempt him into action.

As a former lawyer, I am – boringly enough – quite interested in interpretation of laws and rules. Jesus looks to the most important principles here in interpreting scripture. Later on, Jesus revealed what the key principles are when he answered the question ‘Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?’

“Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind’. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbour as yourself’. All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments’.

Well, that bit of advice that Jesus gave tells us a great deal about how to interpret the various rules and guidelines contained in the Bible. The Bible is a huge book, more like a library of books, and you can probably find passages in there to support more or less any argument if you look hard enough. But it is no good taking small passages or groups of words together and quoting them to prove that you have a point. It only works if you apply the key principles first; loving God and loving each other. So, when people are using passages to justify homophobia or sexism or prejudices, perhaps they should ask themselves whether they are applying the commandment on which all the Laws hang. These principles must be the ones that can guide us through the wilderness.

The Wilderness - Part I

A picture of the City of London - where they make big piles of money! It may not look like the wilderness, but I would argue that maybe it is.

I was talking to a student yesterday who was telling me how she was certain that there was no God. She happened to be looking at a poster about philosophy that I have on display which explains that philosophy asks the Big Questions and one of them says 'What if God does exist?' and also 'What if he doesn't?'.

"That's a very interesting question" she looked at me, very slightly worried.

"I have never thought - what if I am wrong, what if God does exist".

(That was just before her Mum came and picked her up in a brand new Mercedes Benz. ("Oh Lord, won't you buy me...")). Yep, that is a pretty big question for people who have taken the path, as most of my family have, that God does not exist. For them, their life is about material acquisition and ensuring their own comfort. It is probably fair to say that most people in society think that way. That may be rather simplistic as it is also about other things, some very noble and many quite beautiful but to my mind, without God, they are missing the point. Being emerged in materialism and secular values is, to me, the Wilderness. And that is where we all live.

Last night, I was discussing Luke 4. Several things struck about this, the first thing was the contemporary battle that we all face: The devil leads Jesus up to a high place and shows him all the kingdoms of the world 'I will give you all their authority and splendour...If you worship me, it will all be yours'. I thought that summed up so much about contemporary life. We are bombarded, all the time, with images of stuff - desirable things: shoes, clothes, ipods, ipads, cars, houses, holidays, glamour, fame, wealth, riches. Now, clearly, the intention of the people who are spending millions on promoting their goods to us is that they create in us a desire to have them. That is how retail and marketing work.

I came home, one day, having been to John Lewis - the department store full of 'desirable' things; I looked around my house and felt a deep sense of dissatisfaction that my living room was nowhere near as beautiful as the ones they had displayed in the shop. My husband reminded me that, of course, that is exactly what they want you to feel! They have gone out of their way to create a dissatisfaction with your lot and therefore a desire to have more or newer or shinier 'stuff'. We look at it and we are tempted by it. Then, if I imagine someone saying to me - you could have all of this, all of this and more. You can have it all....Well, that is what these adverts and our culture sells us all the time. If you make these material goods your priority, you could spend your life in pursuit of them and, as the devil said to Jesus, it will all be yours.



When I worked in the City earning lots of money, I was surrounded by people to whom money was extremely important. Consumer satisfaction is a transitory state, it changes all the time. So everyone would be comparing their latest versions of whatever cars, bags, shoes they had just acquired. The obsession with money and stuff is certainly not exclusive to the City, however. If I ask most of my students what they want to do when they are older, the vast majority will say that they want to make lots of money and be rich.

Of course, as we know, when Jesus was faced with temptation like that he answered 'It is written: 'Worship the Lord your God and serve him only'. Jesus was quite clear on this subject, he warns elsewhere that you cannot serve both God and money. He warns us to 'Watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; life does not consist in an abundance of possessions!' I don't think he means that you can't have any money but that you must not be worshipping it or falling into greed. This is difficult because the people around us are, of course, absorbed by our material culture and I am certainly not immune to it! You and I may find ourselves standing there with the devil (we'll come back to him later), going 'hmmm, yes, I would quite like all that stuff please'. This is our daily battle in the wealthy West: to follow Jesus' example and worship God, not all those lovely things in the shops. Even the really good stuff.

So, here we all are, out in the Wilderness, facing our tests. Question is, what are we going to do in response?