← Ask NT Wright Anything
Ask NT Wright Anything
Does Tom Wright consider belief in the bodily resurrection of Jesus essential to Christian faith?
00:45:06
Loading summary
Transcript32 lines
- [00:00]
Logos Sponsor
Ask NT Write Anything is sponsored by Logos. Start going deeper in the Bible with a free trial@logos.com NT this episode is.
- [00:11]
Peloton Sponsor
Brought to you by Peloton Everyone has a reason to change. Growing old, heartbreak, a fresh start. Whatever it may be, Peloton is here to get you through life's biggest moments with workouts that challenge and motivation that keeps you coming back. Peloton's Tread an all Access membership helps you set your targets, track your progress and get stronger, making your fitness goals a reality. Find your push, Find your power peloton visit1peloton.com.
- [00:40]
Lowes Sponsor
Spring into deals with fresh savings at Lowes right now get four stay green or premium two cubic foot mulch bags for just $10 plus get up to 35% off. Select major appliances and save $50 on every $500 you spend on select LG appliances. Shop in store or online today. Lowes we help you Save valid through 430. Selection varies while supplies last. See associate@lowe's.com for more details of qualifying items. Excludes Alaska and Hawaii.
- [01:19]
Logos Sponsor
The Ask nt.
- [01:20]
Mike Bird
Write Anything Podcast hello and welcome once more to the Ask nt Write Anything podcast, the show where we try to answer your questions about the Christian faith Bible and what it means to live for God. I'm Mike Bird from Ridley College and as always, I'm joined by Tom Wright.
- [01:41]
N.T. Wright
From Oxford in England.
- [01:43]
Mike Bird
Tom, this week we have got some great questions. We've got church membership. We've got the nature of worship. We've even got a question on what does surprised by hope mean in Gaza. These are some big things to explore. So let's kick off. Let's get straight into it with a question from Derek Wilson in Dallas. He asked this Our church has a formal membership process. However, I have noticed a trend over the past few years towards questioning the idea of church membership. Many churches in our part of the world are moving away from formal membership and and focusing on facilitating regular attenders. Does formal church membership stand on solid biblical grounds? Tom I can tell you I've heard the same question as well. I've had people tell me, what's the Greek word for annual general meeting? Or what's the Greek word for the treasurer's report? Okay, and I hear that that's just a lot of extraneous stuff and we don't need it anymore. Tom, what are your thoughts on formal church membership?
- [02:57]
N.T. Wright
Yeah, I guess different churches have different kinds of formal membership. Certainly the average Anglican parish church where I live will have what is called an electoral roll, which is a strange Phrase, I never heard it when I was growing up until I was, I think, in my 20s, and somebody started mentioning, are you on the electoral roll? And again, I wanna say, like your friend, what's the Greek for electoral roll? And I'm thinking, did Paul in Corinth have an electoral roll of who was who? I want to start actually with a famous quote from Archbishop William Temple who said that the church is the only society in the world that exists for the benefit of its non members. And it seems to me that's a vital thing to be able to say, to remind ourselves that whatever membership or similar arrangements you have, the whole point of the church is to bring the kingdom of God into the wider world. The church exists for the tasks of witnessing to God's saving sovereign lordship over the world in whatever sphere it happens to meet. So formal church membership is not an end in itself. It's part of making sure that we are working together in doing that, rather than just being a loose, vague collocation of people who happen to drift together some Sundays, but other times we may be out of town or lying in bed on a Sunday morning and it doesn't really matter, etc. Etc. Now, of course, officially formal church membership in the New Testament is basically baptism. When people get baptized, then that means we know who you are, we know that you are part of the whole body of Christ. There are problems about that, that sometimes the church has baptized all sorts of people without really stopping to think what's going on. And those people drift along thinking, well, I guess I'm okay, because, and I have to say Paul ran into that problem in Corinth too. In 1 Corinthians 10 we see him addressing precisely that and we could spend some time exploring that. But it seems to me that it's in response to that that some churches, especially some free churches, have made quite a lot of the formality of church membership. We're not just having you drifting around, we want to know who you are. And this is partly about being respons, being grown up, that if you want to be part of this fellowship, then you're responsible along with us for the maintenance of the building, for the heating system, for making sure that our ministries to the unemployed or the homeless or whatever in the area are being carried out properly. And it's a way of making sure we know who's in the prayer network, who is part of the team. Now, most churches, I think, have different kind of layers of that. There are some people who will be working right in the middle of it maybe salaried, maybe not, but who will be very much part of a core group, Sometimes that is formalized, sometimes it just kind of happens. But my sense is, unless there is some sort of formality at some level, then things can often get muddled and mistaken impressions can be given as to who's in charge of this or who's supposed to be doing that. Now, part of this is about organizations growing up. When a church begins, when new churches planted, there may be only half a dozen people there, and then in a month or two, there may be more, a few dozen. And it's all very free and easy to begin with, but at some point you do have to decide who is going to make sure that the lights get turned off at the end of Sunday night and all that sort of thing. So there's got to be some kinds of formality, the larger that a particular fellowship gets. But I don't think it stands on solid biblical grounds to say that we have to have a particular form with voting rights and different groupings and so on. I think this is part of the practical wisdom of different Christians in different circumstances. Quite apart from anything else. It's one thing if you're a Christian in the Western world, if you're a Christian in certain parts of the largely Muslim world or say you're a Christian in China, then being a member of a church may have all sorts of different echoes, ramifications, possibilities and problems and dangers of which we in the modern west know very little. So I would say remind yourself again and again, whatever formal membership you have, it is to serve the mission of the church to those who are outside. Don't worry so much about the formal membership of who's inside. Worry about how we can best be structured to serve the world outside with the good news of the kingdom.
- [07:55]
Mike Bird
Thanks, Tom. That's great. Because my youngest daughter is about to go to a church membership class because she's looking at becoming a member. And it's good to have stuff like. Like this because people need to understand the rationale of why to be a member in their church. And it's. It's simply a means to an end the end so that you can. You can serve with your own church in all the appropriate way with checks and balances and everything like that.
- [08:21]
N.T. Wright
And responsibilities.
- [08:22]
Mike Bird
Yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly. Well, let's move on. Let's get into a bit of controversy here, Tom, because about 20 years ago. Let me back up. This is a question from Craig Beard, who points out that nearly 20 years ago, NT Wright was quoted saying, I have friends who I am quite sure are Christians who do not believe in the bodily resurrection. At the time his statement caused a bit of a stir and more recently one of my sons who has read and appreciated Anti Wright's books brought it to my attention and expressed concern about it. My question is, does nt rights still stand by what he said then or has he changed his view over time? So Tom, do you need to believe in a physical bodily resurrection as you've argued in resurrection of the Son of God in order to be a Christian?
- [09:19]
N.T. Wright
Thanks Mike, and thank you to Craig for this question. And like all quotations taken out of context, in order to understand it, you have to go back into the context. And I think that the context came originally from a book which I wrote 25 years ago with my late lamented friend Marcus Borg, an American theologian and writer who he and I studied the same time in Oxford. We didn't actually know each other then, but we had the same teacher. And when we did meet we had a lot in common and we became good friends and I'm still in touch with his widow and so on. Maggie and I stayed with them and they with us. And so I got to know Mark quite well. Now Mark had come from a very fundamentalist Lutheran background where you had to believe this and this and this and this and this, and he'd found it all completely deadening and didn't do anything for him and so on, and then he gave it all up. But then in early middle life, through a series of extraordinary spiritual experiences, he came back into faith and Jesus became enormously important to him and his prayer life took off again. But because he'd been kind of bullied as a young person by a kind of do you've got to believe this, that and the other, he had got into the position where anything like bodily resurrection that was simply unspiritual. He was basically some kind of a Christian Platonist. And there have been many, many Christian Platonists who just don't think that the body matters that much. And Mark and I, one time when we were writing this book together, we were talking about prayer and Mark told me quite humbly and quietly about his practice when he said he suffered from insomnia from time to time. And I said, so what do you do if you can't sleep? And he said, I pray my own version of the Jesus prayer with the rhythm of my breathing. I lie there and I'm praying, Lord Jesus Christ, you are the light of the world. Fill my mind with your Light and my heart with your love. And I'll never forget that. The thought of him praying that, Lord Jesus Christ, you are the light of the world, fill my mind with your light and my heart with your love. Now, someone who prays like that and someone who is earnestly acclaiming Jesus as the light of the world and seeking to make Jesus truth and life, his own truth and life, I want to say, this man is a Christian, so why didn't he believe in the bodily resurrection? I want to say he's a muddled Christian, and I suspect that Marcus would probably have said the same about me. Tom, you're muddled because you think that the body actually matters. And I would say, well, yeah, that's because I think the whole Judeo Christian worldview is about God loving bodies and resurrecting bodies and doing new creation. But where Marcus was coming from, personally, pastorally, theologically, that was a bridge he was never going to cross. I have known other people cross that br. So I have in my mind a category of muddled Christian. And I don't want that to sound patronizing because I know when people come from difficult backgrounds, often there are things they just can't get their heads around. Marcus would say, I believe Jesus Christ rose from the dead. And he would then say, I just don't think this involved his body. And so I would say, we need to talk about the meaning of the word resurrection in the first century. And he and I would go around the tracks having that conversation. And it was out of convers like that that I wrote my big book, the Resurrection of the Son of God. So I want to say normal Christian life involves believing that God raised Jesus bodily from the dead. But there are many people who are earnestly seeking Jesus and acclaiming him as the light of the world or as their Lord, for whom that penny hasn't dropped yet. So I was not prepared to say that Marcus Borg, praying like that, was not a Christian. But I would say, and did say, and I would tease him about it, that I think he was a muddled Christian and that I would love and hope and pray that he would come through that muddle. I don't think Marcus ever did. Does that mean in the great last assize that God will say this to him or that to him? That's God's business. But someone praying that prayer, I was not prepared to say, this man is in no sense a Christian.
- [13:57]
Mike Bird
Yeah. I remember the obituary that F.F. bruce wrote for Rudolph Bultman. Bruce was a very famous evangelical scholar of the mid to late 20th century wrote a lot of great commentaries and Rudolph Boltman was a, you know, was the very definition of German liberal Protestant theology. And, and Boltmann didn't have much time for the resurrection either. But if you look at the, the eulogy that F.F. bruce wrote of Rudolph Portman and they, because they'd been at two European conferences together and they, they knew each other, even FF Bruce believed that there was a real faith in, in Rudolph Bortman that was worth commending. So, yeah, I mean, it's the issue, like, how much do you need to get right in your theology to be saved? And, you know, where do you get excluded? And how much, how much, how muddled can your faith be before it's become derivative or it's a somewhat different gospel or different faith? I guess that's what some of the questions that people are worried about. But maybe the answer itself is not often as precise as we would like it to be, even for those of us who do believe in a bodily resurrection of Jesus.
- [15:15]
N.T. Wright
I think that's right. If you've got the reference mic for that obituary by Bruce on Bultman, I'd love to see it sometime. But that's exactly right. Paul says if you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. Those are the promises. Now, if somebody confesses that Jesus is Lord but wants to say that when Paul says God raised him from the dead, what that meant was a purely spiritual thing. I would say that's a classic 20th century muddle invoking Platonism accidentally. Many, many people have been struggling to follow Jesus with that muddle in their heads. Are they therefore not real followers of Jesus when you get to know them? Maybe you want to say, like I would say of Mark Borg, that this man is really invoking the living Lord Jesus. Just that there's a bit of a huge intellectual muddle way back somewhere.
- [16:15]
Mike Bird
Yeah, I remember there was a debate also about the New Zealand biblical scholar Murray Harris. He wrote a book on the residential resurrection, raised a mortal, and he had to be investigated by his own institution because they were worried he may have gone a bridge too far, you might say, when it comes to explaining the resurrection. So a number of scholars can, you know, maybe say things are a bit confusing or raise a lot of questions about what they are saying and they're not saying.
- [16:42]
N.T. Wright
And that's a risk we all take. And unless we are simply going to repeat word for word what truly orthodox people have said before us and I don't believe that's the task. Each generation has to be thinking afresh. And that is always a risk which we all face. But there's a difference here, which you highlighted between is this person in some meaningful sense a Christian? And is this person somebody who you would trust with teaching in the church? Now, if I as a bishop had been approached by somebody with Marcus Borg's views and say, would you ordain me? I would say actually, no, because this is part of the core teaching of the church and you may have all sorts of opinions, but until we've sorted this one out, we're not going to get you ordained. And interestingly, William Temple, who I quoted in answer to a previous question, when he was a young man, he was basically a Platonist. He wasn't sure at all about the bodily resurrection, and he delayed ordination till he'd thought that one through and reached the conclusion that Jesus really was bodily raised from the dead. That was a major point. He knew it was wrong to get ordained if he hadn't got clear on that. So that there is a major distinction then between somebody who we say they probably are Christian and somebody who we say we entrust this person with a teaching role in the church.
- [18:03]
Mike Bird
Okay, interesting stuff. Well, we're going to take a break there, but hang on because we've still got some great questions coming up about worship and where is God in Gaza? This episode is brought to you by Logos.
- [18:24]
Logos User
I have been using Logos for years. Whether I'm preparing a lecture for class, working on my latest book, or doing some sermon preparation, I never do it without Logos because it gives me an instant digital research assistant right in my very hands. Whether I want to check out various Bible translations, the Dead Sea Scrolls in English or Hebrew, or look at various Christian writings like the Apocrypha, or if I simply want a platform to read theological books and commentaries, Logos is the number one place to do it. It is the necessary digital tool for doing Bible study and sermon preparation today. I don't know how you can do this without Logos, so make sure you go check out their new offering where you've got plans starting at $9.99 per month. So visit logos.comnt to get started for free with an exclusive extended free trial. That's logos.com NT start your adventure in the world of digital Bible resources today.
- [19:39]
Logos Sponsor
When you think about super successful businesses that are selling through the roof like Heinz or Mattel, you think about a great product, a cool brand and brilliant marketing. But there's a secret. The business behind the business, making selling simple for them and buying simple for their customers. For millions of businesses, that business is Shopify. Upgrade your business and get the same checkout as Heinz and Mattel. Sign up for your $1 per month trial period at shopify.com promo all lowercase go to shopify.com promo to upgrade your selling today. Shopify.com promo.
- [20:17]
Mike Bird
I think you're on mute.
- [20:18]
LinkedIn User
Workday starting to sound the same.
- [20:21]
N.T. Wright
I think you're on mute.
- [20:23]
LinkedIn User
Find something that sounds better for your career on LinkedIn with LinkedIn job collections, you can browse curated collections by relevant industries and benefits like Flexpto or Hybrid Workplaces so you can find the right job for you. Get started@LinkedIn.com jobs finding where you fit. LinkedIn knows how.
- [20:50]
Logos User
Welcome back.
- [20:51]
Mike Bird
We're glad you're with us on the Ask nt Write Anything podcast. We've now got a question from Gail Cassande from the Bordeaux in France, and this is a good question, Tom. I really like this one. He says, what does it mean that we are made to worship God? If worship means the formal celebrations expressed through praying and singing, it seems odd to me that the God who chose to reveal himself in the humble person of Jesus would require eternal flattery from humanity. Does God require humans to praise him? In this sense, I am fine with the idea of worship as a spontaneous response to God's grace. But is it love if it is demanded by God? Thanks a lot for your insights. Much appreciated. God bless you. Now let me add to that, Tom. I don't know whether you've seen the TV show Big Bang Theory, but Sheldon Cooper and his girlfriend or wife Amy share their their view about God. They say they have no problems of the idea about a deity, but one who needs attendance or worship baffled them. I think our our good friend here is asking the same question. Does God need or demand our worship? Is God vain? Does he need perpetual flattery, like some despot who needs to be surrounded by a court of sycophants? What's going on here?
- [22:24]
N.T. Wright
Tom I think this question arises from a kind of typical European or North American deism of a distant God who we don't know very much about, but who seems to be demanding, as they say, attention or flattery or whatever, and the sort of sense of just what's going on here, if that's where you start. Yes, I get that. But when I think of people that I know in new young churches today singing the kind of worship songs they sing, in many cases, these are people whose lives have been in a real mess, who have come to faith and who have found God working in their lives to do extraordinary new things, to heal them of past hurts, to open up new perspectives, vistas of truth, to give them the capacity to love one another in new ways. And when they come into church, you can see it on their faces, because something has happened in their lives and they know who's done it. And it is the God revealed in Jesus and active by the Spirit who's done it. And they just want to come and say thank you. And just as in some human situations, when somebody does something amazingly generous which transforms your situation, it would be extraordinary to think that you would say, oh, well, they don't want my flattery, so I don't need to write a letter, or I don't need to go and say thank you. Of course, out of sheer gratitude, you want to go and say, that was just wonderful. Thank you so much. How can I thank you? And the person would say, you don't need to repay me. I'm just glad that it worked out for you, or whatever. That's the kind of relationship that many people, many people that I know have with God. Now, those of us who've been Christians all our lives, it's easy for us to get stale and to forget that that stuff really does happen, that people's lives do get turned around, and that when that happens, there's no question, do I want to worship God, or should I? Or is God demanding flattery? It's not flattery. It's sheer gratitude, overflowing. And that's at the heart of it. Now, if then somebody who has been regularly going to church and praying prayers and singing hymns, if they don't feel that gratitude, then there may be a question coming back at them. Which God are you actually worshiping? And this question from Gael Kozendai talks about God revealing himself in the humble person of Jesus. Yes, absolutely. But when we see what God achieved through humbling himself in the person of Jesus and submitting to death for our sake, as we've quoted in a previous session, the Son of God loved me and gave himself for me. When you say that, what you're faced with is, as my teacher used to say, a debt of love which only love can repay, and that means worship, that should overflow with worship. When I think of that, one of the examples that comes to my mind from a different sphere is if I go to a great concert, I'm lucky to live just down the street from a couple of concert halls, one small one Large. And when I go to a string quartet, concert or symphony or a great oratorio, when the music reaches its peak and then comes to an end, applause is not something I have to say. Oh, do they really want me to applaud? Do they need that kind of flattery? It's completely spontaneous. It's because the music has taken me somewhere. It's done something to me. And the applause is the gratitude, the outpouring of delight at what's just happened. And I think that's what's at the heart of worship. And now there is something else going on here as well. Peter Schaeffer, the playwright, says in his play Equus, without worship, you shrink. As simple as that. In other words, when you really understand what human beings are, it appears that we are made. It's interesting that a playwright would pick this up. We are made to be worshipping creatures. The only question is, who or what are you going to worship? As Bob Dylan said, you've got to serve somebody. It may be the devil or it may be the Lord. And then the golden rule at the heart of the biblical picture of God and the human call to worship God is that you become like what you worship. And you're not in a vacuum if you're not worshiping the God in whose image you're made, you're worshiping some idol or other, maybe without even realizing it, and you're being shaped by that idol. So that which you worship is that which then shapes you. So there is a moral responsibility coming back at you. But initially, it always ought to be about delight and gratitude.
- [27:15]
Mike Bird
That's a good way to put it. I love what you said about, you know, like, worship is inevitable and you become what you worship. I mean, that's something I share with my kids. You know, why do we go to church? Why do we worship God? Because if you don't worship God, you will find something else to worship, and it will be. It'll be, you know, incomparably wrong and less. And it will transform you into that thing you worship. And so I think that's exactly right. I think you've answered Gail's question very well. But, Tom, now I think we come to the main event. This. This is a question, and I think this has got to be easily one of the top three questions we've had on the new season of Ask Anti. Right. Anything so far. So this is from Lydia El Sayega. I hope I've pronounced that right. Who's in Atlanta? And let me share with you Lydia's Question, she says. First of all, thank you for this podcast and for sharing the work of NT Right, which has been transformative in shaping my understanding of Jesus's resurrection and hope. I'm hoping you can speak to something extremely painful for me and for many people around the world for context. I am a Palestinian American Christian from Gaza and I have been overwhelmed by the last year and a half of brutal genocide. While my grandmother and other friends hang on for survival or calm. Along with all hospitals, most schools, most mosques, most homes, all the churches and Christian sites have been attacked, taking the lives of at least 3% of Christians in Gaza. All the homes of people in my family have been destroyed. What's incredibly disheartening on top of this is that Christians around the world, especially in the States and even in my own community, justify their killing and destruction un and unabashedly supported and are painfully silent or inattentive to what's happening. There are very few Christians raising their voices on behalf of Palestinians, especially in the West. I look for Jesus in the church and I rarely find him, but I do see him in Gaza under the rubble with every child and adult. The work of N.T. wright and other scholars has taught me to seek heaven coming to earth, Earth and the wonderful truth that I can participate in Jesus's work in bringing it. On the other hand, what I've seen is Gaza is worse than anything I've ever imagined hell would be. If the Lake of Fire is imagery or metaphor in the Bible, it is quite literal in Gaza. I think of the killing of Shaban al dalu or the first tent massacre on the 27th of May, 2024. The Kingdom of God feels incredibly far away right. Right now, so it feels wishful to ask, but how do you think followers of Jesus can participate in bringing heaven to Gaza even as hell is being created there? Wow, Tom, that is one of the most heavy and heartfelt questions I think we've had. I think in this season of the program, maybe in all the seasons. But Tom, what do you. What do you say to Lydia?
- [30:33]
N.T. Wright
Yeah, yeah, I'm grateful to Lydia for bringing to very clear articulation a question that hits me every day when I watch the news on the television or read about what's going on in the newspapers. And I'm very much aware that all we see on the television or on the newspapers is only one tiny little fraction of the extraordinary stuff that is actually happening on the ground. I think we are all aware, or if we're not, we should be, that these questions go back A very long way. They go back to the Shoah, the Holocaust in the Second World War, with the extraordinary destruction of 6 million Jews by the policies of Adolf Hitler. But that itself was on the back of a much longer history of European antisemitism, going back through many countries, including Hungary, including the Czechoslovakia, including particularly Russia, where antisemitism was simply part of Western culture. And it reached a kind of a peak in the 1930s and 40s in Germany, but it had echoes in many other places as well. We shouldn't fool ourselves about that. And the church again and again and again colluded with that. Now, ever since those of us who grew up in the 50s and 60s realized all that, then many of us have found our initial impulse to be to say, this was absolutely terrible what happened to the Jewish people. Thank goodness that we managed to find a way as a global community of finding a homeland for them, and let's hope they can live there in peace. So that was where we all started, or many of us started. It was only when I went and lived in the Middle east myself in 1989 that I realized for the first time what the cost of that was. My next door neighbor when I was living in Jerusalem in 1989 was Naeem Atiq, who was a Palestinian Arab Christian, who was the archdeacon in charge of the Arabic speaking congregation in St. George's Cathedral. And he was a lovely. He is a lovely guy. As a theologian, a published theologian, who's written a lot about the Palestinian question. I learned an enormous amount from him and from many other people that I talked to. And I began to realize that those of us who come as outsiders to the Middle east, there is no way that we can have a simplistic solution, because everybody has a different story, everybody sees a different angle. And that doesn't mean that there are no rights and wrongs about it, but it does mean that when then we saw the attack by Hamas on the Jewish communities in southwestern Israel in October, 18 months, whenever it was ago that precipitated all this, our hearts absolutely, absolutely were horrified because that seemed to be carrying the weight of all that anti Judaism for many centuries, while at the same time recognizing that the fact was that Gaza had become like an enormous refugee camp in itself, like the refugee camps in the west bank as well, and that people had been living there for two generations in refugee camps or in conditions that approximated thereto. And because then that overflowed into terrorism, et cetera, trying to find a way to get back at what was perceived as oppression Therefore, all sorts of further measures were taken which have made things worse, et cetera, et cetera. So I know that wherever you break into this circle of discussion and debate, people are going to say, oh, but you're forgetting that. And, oh, but you've ignored this, or, oh, you're being anti this or pro that or whatever. And I'm a typical Brit on this. I'm trying desperately to hear every voice that I can and grieving. And that's, I think, the very heart of my answer to this brilliant question is that we are called to lament. Lament is. We've talked about this on this program before. Lament is a central feature of biblical religion. And lament is what happens. You can see it in the lamentations of Jeremiah or in the book of Job, or in many of the Psalms. When we look at a situation in the world and we say, we don't have a solution for this, but we hold it up before God and we say, lord, this is not how your world was meant to be. Lord, have mercy upon us. And there are many situations in ordinary human life which call forth that from us or should do. And there are many, many situations. The fires in Los Angeles which have been raging in recent weeks. Many, many, many perfectly innocent, vulnerable homes. Men, women, children, animals completely wiped out. And the only possible response is lament, Lord, this is not the way the world should be. And then out of lament, there can grow. Please, God will grow. Ministries of help, ministries of healing. So the question, where is God in the middle of that? Where is God in the middle of that? Reminds me of the question raised by Elie Wiesel in his extraordinary book Night, which is partly. It's a memoir of being in a Nazi concentration camp where the crowd of Jews is watching as a young Jewish boy is being hanged publicly. And this boy is so light because he's been so emaciated that he can't. He isn't heavy enough to die. And he's struggling. And somebody shouts out, where is God? Where is God? And the answer is, there he is, hanging on the end of that rope. And there is a sense then of God coming into the middle of the picture and taking the suffering of the world upon himself. That is. I hesitate really to say that, because I have never had to suffer like that. I've never had to be close to suffering like that. But ultimately, the Christian gospel is about that sort of thing. And so when one person gives to another person in Gaza a cup of cold water, when one person comes with an aid convoy, when one person drives a truck bringing food to those who are, or water to those who are desperately hungry and thirsty. There we are seeing the tiny small shoots of hope growing through the desert. That's not much comfort at the moment. And then the other thing which is in parallel with that is that the churches should no longer be silent. And they have often been silent. And this question comes from America particularly, where. Where for all sorts of understandable historical reasons, there has been massive support for the state of Israel, particularly, I would say, in the popular level dispensationalism, which has so distorted much popular level American Christianity, with the idea that what happened with the Jewish people going back to the Middle east in the 1940s, this was the fulfillment of prophecy, therefore it's restarted the eschatological timetable, therefore we've got to support it. Whatever I want to say, that is simply rubbish. It always was rubbish. It's based on a series of totally misunderstood biblical texts. And it's sustained an ideology which then from America, because it doesn't really exist anywhere else other than America except a few places here and there, that ideology has sustained American foreign policy towards the Middle east, which has generated and then sustained all sorts of things that have been going on. And in my country we have a lot of Christians who are protesting about the plight of the Palestinians. One of my own children has become deeply affected by this and writes to me and talks to me on the phone and sends me books about it. So there are plenty of people who are aware of it. But we feel politically helpless because this is coming across so heavily from both the present Israeli government, despite, I have to say, a lot of protests within Israel itself. There are lots of people within Israel who look at the Palestinian problem and say we should not be doing this. But equally then the cry as well, so are you just supporting the terrorists? So we've somehow got to find ways through and out the other side. I have often thought that what the Middle east needs is something like what South Africa had under Desmond Tutu, a commission for truth and reconciliation. I fear that that may be asking for the moon. But maybe there's churches we should be praying for that maybe Christian leaders in the Middle east should, should be trying to get together to work with people in government to say, please, can we read the Psalms together? Please can we read the Gospels together, Please can we look at ways in which this terror can actually stop recycling itself in generation after generation. So at the heart of it is lament. Within the lament is individuals or groups who can bring a small measure of healing and comfort. But the question of where is God? Is that God is as he is in Jesus there dying in the place of the sinners, dying on the rubbish heap outside Jerusalem, dying and sharing and bearing the pain of the world. And I think it's a sense of living with Good Friday and Holy Saturday not knowing how long they are going to go on for. That is a terrible thing to say and I feel awful as a Western Christian saying it because we, we don't seem to be suffering in the same way except by extension in our prayers for you and for that whole dire situation. I know that what I've said will probably start hares running or people change the metaphor going down this or that rabbit hole, but this is, I think, how we can approach this biblically.
- [40:46]
Mike Bird
Yeah. If I can add my 2 cents, I would say, look, you don't have to support Hamas. You don't have to support the anti Semitic antics that you get in universities. I mean, there's been a lot of anti Semitism in Australia with dogs being graffitied and plans to do a mass bombing. You don't have to support that in order to feel sympathy or want mercy for the people in Gaza. And people have got to stop listening to one side of the news cycle. Well, I'm, I'm on the, the pro Palestinian side or I'm on the pro Israel side. You've got to get out of those echo chambers. And one of the things I would encourage people to do is to certainly Christians is to listen to Palestinian Christians. You can read biographies by them. People like Michael Shakur, Mitri Raheb. In fact, here, Tom, one of your former PhD students, John Anthony Dunn, great student, great guy. He has a podcast called the Two Cities Podcast. They did a whole series interviewing Palestinian Christians and this was before the current conflict. I would definitely get, get people to go and listen to that series because look, even if you don't agree with them, even if you're unsure or a bit wary, it will open your horizons. And we should all be praying for the peace of Israel and mercy in Gaza. I think we should all be able to agree on that. But anyway, that is all we have time for this week. Remember, we want to hear your question. So send them to askntright.com we're sitting here waiting to answer. We've had some fantastic ones this week and we look forward to a great many more. Remember also you can follow Premiere on various places like Instagram, Twitter, Facebook. It's a great way to connect with Premier and all of its great ministries and offerings. Otherwise, I've been your co host, Mike.
- [42:51]
N.T. Wright
Bird, and and I've been with Tom Wright from Oxford.
- [42:55]
Mike Bird
And we'll see you on the next episode of Ask N.T. wright.
- [42:58]
N.T. Wright
Anything.