← Ask NT Wright Anything
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- [00:01]
Announcer
Have you ever had a burning question about the Bible, theology or the Christian faith, one you wish you could ask a world renowned scholar? Now's your chance on Ask NT Wright Anything. Professor Tom Wright tackles your biggest faith questions and we want to hear yours. Submit your question today@premierinsight.org NTW and you might hear it answered in an upcoming episode. It's that easy. Visit premierinsight.org ntwnow and be part of the conversation.
- [00:30]
Mike Bird
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- [00:38]
Tom Wright
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Mike Bird
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Tom Wright
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- [00:47]
Mike Bird
Sales going cha ching. So if you're into growing your business, get a commerce platform that's ready to sell wherever your customers are. Visit shopify.com to upgrade your selling today. The Ask nt Write Anything Podcast hello and welcome to the Ask nt Write Anything podcast. I'm your co host Mike Bird from Melbourne, Australia, and I'm joined by I'm.
- [01:23]
Tom Wright
Tom Wright here in Oxford in England.
- [01:25]
Mike Bird
Tom, it's great to be with you again and we have some great questions to deal with. To begin with, we have Reese Owen from Edinburgh, a city we're both very familiar with, Tom and Reese says hi Tom, when we say that God loves us, what do we mean? Do we mean that God acts in ways which are loving towards us, or that he has feelings of love for us, or both? Is this an unhelpful distinction to try and draw? And how does God communicate this? Through the Bible? And relatedly, does God love each of us individually or does he love humans in general? I want to believe that both are true, but the Bible often seems to be saying that God loves Israel or the world, or humans who are faithful to him, which seems to leave open the possibility that any given human, or perhaps some given humans, are not particularly valuable on their own. I don't believe this is true, and I don't want it to be true. But sometimes it doesn't seem glaringly obvious that God is communicating a personal love for each one of us in the Bible, Would you be able to shed some light on this? And another related question he's got what would it mean for God to have feelings of love for us? Given that it doesn't mean that he loves the things we do, we are capable of doing evil and acting on untrue beliefs. And and in the Bible, God conquering all human evil is celebrated, such as Psalm 91. In what sense does God love those human beings Who. Who are doing evil. And Reese says he'd appreciate your thoughts on this issue. Well, Tom, there's quite a lot there on God's love. Does God have a universal love, or is there a particular love for special people, or does God have favorites? Does he love Anglicans more than Methodists, the British more than Australians? What can you tell us about the love of God, Tom?
- [03:19]
Tom Wright
Oh, let's not get into British and Australians, but yes, fair question. And thanks, Rhys, for a complicated question. Two things I want to say right off the top. One is that when we're talking about God having feelings, we have to be beware of pushing anthropomorphic ideas onto God. Now, obviously, if you look at the Bible and see Jesus in Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, Jesus gets angry with some situations, he weeps in other situations, he teases people. And all of this in documents, those four gospels which indicate that Jesus is the personal embodiment of Israel's God. And at one point it says when the rich young ruler comes to ask Jesus a question, Jesus looked at him and loved him. Which is. It's fascinating that, that, that seems to be a surge of something which was visible on Jesus face. Like, this is a good man. We want the best for him. Of course, that man goes away disappointed because he can't meet the challenge which Jesus sets him, and so on. So we have to be careful then, about attributing feelings of love as though they're just like our feelings and attributing those to God the Father, even though we do then see the. The extraordinary outpouring of love in Jesus. Now, of course, that's the first thing. The second thing to say is that anyone who has children and grandchildren, as I do, we know the difference between loving them individually and collectively. I love my family as a whole. When I see the photographs of them together, it does my heart good. But I love each one individually, and they're quite different characters. So I think the love that I have for them is. Is a feeling of gratitude that they are who they are. And yet the specialness about this one, which is quite different from the specialness about that one, and so on. At the same time, if my children or my grandchildren do things or say things which I think are either foolish or wrong or misguided or dangerous or whatever, perish the thought that such a thing should happen. But just supposing in theory that were to happen, then the fact that I love them, that doesn't stop just because I see them or hear that they've been doing Something or saying something which I would either disapprove of or think is a dangerous and unwise thing to be getting into, that wouldn't stop me loving them for a moment. So the question of God's love for us, I don't think that changes at all. Even when that love is expressed in, if you like, grief. I mean, grief is a form of love. When you love somebody and they die, you grieve over them. Because grief is the form that love takes when that horrible thing called death happens. And actually, when anything that points toward death, including sin, happens, grief is a form of love. And so I think when we think of God loving us, that doesn't mean that God doesn't grieve over us. In the Noah story in Genesis, it says God saw the wickedness of humans and it grieved him to his heart. Does that mean that he stopped loving them? No, it's precisely because he loved them. So then, out of all that, I want to say part of what we mean when we talk about God loving human beings is that this God made human beings in his own image in order that they be part of his creational purpose for the world. He wanted to reflect his love and stewardship and wisdom into the world through these human beings. God was looking forward, if you like, to sharing his rule of the world with these human creatures. He didn't just want them to sit there and vaguely behave themselves. He had a purpose for them. And when that purpose is thwarted because they say, actually, no, we're going to do it our own way, then God's love turns into grief. But it wants to pull back to a love and a fresh affirmation and so on and so on. But then there's another thing which has to be said here. When we in the Jewish or Christian tradition talk about God loving us, we should remind ourselves that this is a very unusual idea in terms of the wider world of God talk. In the ancient Greek or Roman world or the ancient Egyptian world, the gods did not love human beings. They maybe used them for their purposes here or there, or played with them or pretended to fall in love with them or whatever, but it wasn't the kind of thing that we find in, say, Deuteronomy or the Psalms or Isaiah, still less the Gospels and Paul. So that when the New Testament goes out into the world of Greece and Rome and says, we're telling you about a God who has loved the world and has loved us and loves you and you and you and you and me and so on, this is an extraordinary phenomenon. And it isn't that, oh well, we always knew that God loved us, and now we're just having some extra nuance. This is a whole new idea. And so we shouldn't be surprised that it then comes out in a wide variety of different ways in the New Testament. But at the heart of it, yes, God loves the whole human family. God made them. God wants to be reflected in them and through them. And yes, each one is different. And just as I, as a parent and a grandparent, love my children and grandchildren in ways that is special to them, that is unique to them. So I believe it is with God. But that love, as I say, doesn't mean that one can't be grieved. And one is often grieved and God is often grieved. And so I think that's how to hold it together. But within this larger picture that the idea of God so loved the world, you can imagine a Greek philosopher or a Roman general or centurion saying, what are we talking about? You know, the gods do their own thing, they play around at this or that, and God loves us. What's that about? And so this is the central message of the New Testament, which we then have to inhabit and discover again and again who we are called to be and what it might mean to honor God rather than grieving him. So that's where I would start anyway, though it's a great big floppy question and there's all sorts of ways we could go within it.
- [09:53]
Mike Bird
I like the way you put it in relation to Greco Roman religion, for which the gods are more like powers in the world, you know, and they can be somewhat fickle and they can be agitated easily, but they're not really known for their lovingness. A friend of mine was a missionary in Thailand and she said, starting with John 3:16 is the worst place to go if you're talking to a Buddhist, because when you say God so loved the world, they're like, what kind of. What kind of God loves things? Like, things that. Things are yucky and like, love is ephemeral. When they think of love, they think of kind of like, you know, teenagers kind of like, you know, being infatuated with each another or, or with like, soap opera sort of love? Yeah, you know, they, they would say that's the reverse of what God should be. And yet that's one of the defining characteristics of the God of the Old and New Testament, the God who abounds in love for generations. Although I should just add one more thing. Catholic comedian Jim Gaffigan has got a very good line on this. He says, if you ask your parents if they have a favorite child that they love the most, and if they say they don't have a favorite child, it means you're not it.
- [11:09]
Tom Wright
Yes, there's all sorts of ways we could go with that. But, I mean, for me, one of the central statements in the New Testament is from Galatians chapter 2, where Paul says that the Son of God loved me and gave himself for me. That kind of grabs me by the chest or the throat every time, and it kind of brings everything into focus. And Paul doesn't mean that. Well, Peter or James or John. He doesn't love you in the same way. Of course he does. But making it personal reminds me, oh, my goodness, this is part of the definition of who I am. You know Descartes famous saying, cogito ergo sum, I think, therefore I am. And the spoof modernist one, which is Tesco, ergo sum. I shop, therefore I am. We have a supermarket chain called Tesco's. But actually, the real New Testament thing is amor ergo sum. I am loved, therefore I am. There's a kind of sigh of relief about that.
- [12:09]
Mike Bird
That's a. That's a good point for us to finish. Although one day I'd love for us to talk about the translation of Galatians 2:19 to 20. That'd be a lot of fun. I think we need to move on to our next question. That comes from Stephanie Dwyer in South Africa. And Stephanie, and this is a good question about the church, she asks, do you have any biblical counsel on how to be a good church member of a church community? Given all churches are broken and flawed, I worry sometimes that I'm helping promote a false gospel and keeping people away from the churches who actually teach the truth. Given the more liberal ideas my church and Anglican church is embracing, I also worry that in disagreeing with church leaders, I am going against what the Bible says about listening to your pastor. Though I've been told that I'm not causing trouble, so it's fine.
- [13:00]
Tom Wright
I want to address Stephanie right off the top and say, yes, all churches are broken and flawed. That doesn't mean that we shouldn't constantly be working towards healing, reconciliation, getting back on track, etc. The idea that there might somewhere be one perfect church which gets it all right, and then if you're in any of the others, you should leave them and join this one perfect church. Well, you know, looking at church history, that doesn't seem to have worked out that Way I do believe in the imperative towards unity. Jesus prayed that all his followers would be one, as he and the Father are one. Paul in Ephesians 4 talks about the many, many different ministries which God gives to his chur. But these are all to serve the unity of the body till we all become together in one heart and mind. And when we think of the early Christian communities, that was so important because as soon as they started to fragment, they were vulnerable. Vulnerable to new ideas which were leading them off in silly directions, or vulnerable to internal factions, as we see in bits of the New Testament, like the Corinthian correspondence, for instance. So working towards unity is really, really important, but within one of the things we've been trying to learn, certainly in the Anglican Communion over the last generation or so, I'm not sure we are learning it, but we're trying is how to hold together unity and difference. And actually, this is the ecclesial version of what many Western democratic countries are trying to struggle with at the moment. I've just been reading James Davison Hunter's splendid new book, Democracy and Solidarity is wrestling with the American question of the slogan e pluribus unum out of the many one, and how you can work at both the pluribus bit and the Unum bit without collapsing the one into the other. And the church ought to be doing this itself. And the key question to ask is, how do you tell the difference between the differences that make a difference and the differences that don't make a difference? And this is much harder than it might appear at first sight. But we all know that there are some things over which Christians really shouldn't divide. For instance, can you be a Christian if you've got red hair or if you're bald like me or whatever? There you are, Mike. That's both of us in trouble here. But almost all Christians throughout all ages would say, don't be silly. The color of your hair has nothing to do with it. But are there other things about you which might mean that you have to give that up? Or whatever? People have disagreed about such things, but mostly people would say, that's not a deal breaker. God wants people of all sorts. Although, as we know, often the church has divided along ethnic lines, and that's a major problem. That was not so in the early church, where people of all sorts and conditions and colors and high and low and rich and poor were together in the church in Antioch or Corinth or Ephesus. So we ought to know that there are some things which shouldn't divide the church. But then when we read the New Testament, especially the Corinthian correspondence, there are clearly some things which do divide the church. In 1 Corinthians 5, Paul is faced with a situation where there's church members committing incest. And some in the church are saying, what a splendid thing this is. This shows that we are free from all constraints. We are not part of the old world. We are living the freedom that we have in Christ. And Paul says, absolutely not. He doesn't say, well, some of us think incest's okay, and some of us think it isn't, so do not condemn each other. Let's just live with that difference. No, he says, anyone who is doing this is excluding themselves from the family of Christ because the people who follow Jesus are to be, as I've often said, small working models of new creation. And the new creation is the renewal of God's good, original creation. And the church is supposed to be modeling that newness of life in a way which 1 Corinthians 5 says, people who do that simply are not doing so. We ought to know from Scripture that there are some things which we some differences we can and should live with and should celebrate and other differences that we shouldn't live with. And if we tried to do that, we would be colluding with folly and wickedness, and Paul would say, sin, and the church will fragment and dissipate itself in all sorts of ways. The question then is, who says, and how do you know? So this question from Stephanie, clearly she is articulate and is able to confront or work with or challenge the church leadership or the people that she's working with in the Sunday School and so on about particular issues. Those are hugely important discussions and debates. And unfortunately, the culture is pulling us in different ways on several of these debates in the whole of Western society, in Britain, in America, in South Africa, Australia, and no doubt many, many other places as well, where some people absolutely are determined that we must follow a particular cultural agenda at the moment. And other people are equally determined that to do so would be an abrogation of our Christian vocation. So those are discussions which have to be had. Now at certain points. Some people might well find in the middle of that that they have to say, if this church is now committed to teaching A, B, C and D, which I believe is simply not compatible with the New Testament, then with great sorrow and grief, I would have to say, I can no longer be part of this. I can no longer share in the teaching ministry of this church, because otherwise I become complicit in teaching what is not only wrong, but damaging and dehumanizing. But this debate could go in a number of different directions, but it has to be had. So normally I would say as a good Anglican, this would be the normal line. Stick in and work from inside and do what you can to see if you can change the culture in helpful and healthy directions, while recognizing that your perceptions as well may need to be tweaked or nudged this way or that, and that the people who are opposing you may have a good point here and there which you need to hear. I go around this sort of loop myself a great deal on many issues and have done throughout my adult life. But in general, I would say if you can stick in and work with the system and try for reform within the system, that's the way to go. Because unity matters. When the church disunites, then the powers of the world smile to themselves and think, well, we don't need to worry about them. When the Church gets together and acts together. I have a wonderful example of this from 25 years ago when the so called millennium happened and the great project was to try see if we could have a big push to remit major debt in the two thirds world and major unpayable compound interest debt. And the churches around the world, not least in Britain, all got together and they actually agreed that this was something they should campaign for and the politicians were forced to listen. When the Church acts together, the powers of the world take note. When the church becomes fissiporous and breaks up into little competing warring groups, as I say, the principalities and powers take no notice. So unity matters. But unity cannot be at the expense. As Paul knew perfectly well in the Corinthian correspondence and elsewhere, unity can never be at the expense of ultimate truth. The question then coming back to it is who says which of these things are part of the ultimate truth, which are differences that do make a difference and who says which are the ones that don't make a difference? We need Romans 14 and 15 perhaps more now than ever before, which are about here are these different communities in Rome. Some people are suspicious of other people because those ones over there, they're not keeping the food laws, they're eating any meat or they're not worried about what they eat and drink. And then it's coming the other way and saying oh, these people have got their silly old scruples. Why are they still bothered about that? Didn't they know Jesus abolished all that? And Paul says, for goodness sake, don't let food divide the church. Respect one another. These are conscious decisions. Now, at certain points, Paul says this isn't a matter of conscience. This is a matter of living as you should in Christ. Romans 12. But then the discussion we have to have is, how do you tell that difference between the things that really are red lines and the things where we say in Christ? We welcome one another as having different opinions, but we can live together with that. We need to know which is which and what to do when we find ourselves against those red lines.
- [22:23]
Mike Bird
Well, Stephanie, we hope that question has encouraged you in your own context there, in how you can know about the differences that matter and the differences that don't. That's probably a good time to take a break, but a quick reminder that we love to get your questions. And if you've got a question for Tomorrow, go to askntiorite.com where you can send us your questions. But we'll be back in a minute with a great question about drawing near to God.
- [22:54]
Announcer
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- [23:49]
Mike Bird
And we're back with a question from Richard Beaman in Winnsboro in the United States. He's got a good, good question. It's a simple one. And that's how do you personally draw near to God? Now, Tom, when I think about this, my mind goes to a verse in James. I think if you draw near to God, he'll draw near to you. So that's the first thing that comes to my mind. What comes to your mind with that question when it comes to personally drawing near to God?
- [24:20]
Tom Wright
Yes. For me, drawing near to God is the daily discipline of scripture reading and prayer. And for me, through most of my adult life, the weekly or sometimes more discipline of coming to the table of the Lord, to the breaking of bread and the pouring of wine and the Older theologians used to talk about the means of grace, which is an interesting phrase. They used to talk about attending on the means of grace. In other words, God has, as it were, promised to meet with his people in certain ways and places. Now, God can meet with us anywhere, anytime, in the midst of all kinds of stuff. But if we want to draw near to God, then there are the regular places where, if you like, God is to be found, where God regularly shows up. And among those places are Scripture and prayer and sacrament. And I would add a fourth on the basis of Matthew 25, when we are caring for the poor and the disadvantaged, and the least of these, my brothers and sisters, as Jesus says there. And often people who have tried to pray and find that difficult when they go and minister to people, when they're working in a soup kitchen or whatever it is, then they find that, oh, we are drawing near to God here. They're recognizing Jesus in the faces of those in need, not in a patronizing sense at all. Because if it really is Jesus you're recognizing, then you won't be patronizing towards him. He will be loving towards you. So those are, as it were, the normal means. And it seems to me anyone who wants to take Christian faith seriously should be regularly going round that circle of the things which Christians normally do. But different people have different personalities. And in the Gospels, Jesus affirms the fourfold love of God, that we love God with our heart and mind and soul and strength. And by soul, I think he means the kind of personal intuition, me being me, inside me, as it were. But now some people find that the intellectual discipline of trying to think who God is and having the eye drawn up to worship God because of who he is, that that is a wonderful way to draw near to God. Other people find that that turns them completely off, just like some people are turned off certain lessons at school. And often such people need to come by a very different route, which, as I say, might be help in dire need in the name of Jesus and so on. Heart, mind, soul and strength. We need all four. I've said it before, and I'll say it again. Some Christians major on one of those four and probably need to mature by moving through the other three. Some churches major on one of them. Maybe the heart, some churches you go to is very uplifting and very full of delight and joy and so on. But there maybe isn't very much mind, and maybe it's not getting down to the innermost soul. And maybe it doesn't issue in strength of going and Loving people. Now, I know many churches that are trying to do all four, but it seems to me we have to discern where we are. And then if we're, as it were, not getting through, maybe we need to go round the other three and on and on and on. But that verse that Mike quoted is absolutely right. Draw near to God and he will draw near to you. I think we have another question, either sure if we've already met it or not. What happens when you try to draw near to God and he seems still distant? And that's a whole other pastoral question. And sometimes there are things which block our access to God. Sometimes these are quite deep. I remember my wife and myself once counseling a student who was really keen to have an experience of God, like her friends seemed to have in their Christian lives. It just wasn't happening for her. And we worked with her over a number of meetings and prayed with her, and it became clear that there were quite other things going on in her life. Deep resentments, deep angers for things that had been done to her or said to her or situations she'd been forced into. And because she hadn't yet dealt with those, there was, as it were, a steel door barring her way then to be open to the love of God. And those are questions which we couldn't possibly address on a podcast or even on an email. They're things which have to be addressed pastorally by somebody sitting with you, weeping with you, praying with you, getting to know you personally. So how do I personally draw near to God? Day by day? Bible reading and prayer, week by week, Eucharist, sacramental worship, and then doing what I can, when I can, to help those in the name of Jesus who need the sort of help that I can give. So that would be my personal answer. But there are variations on those themes depending on who we are and where we are and what sort of church we belong to.
- [29:39]
Mike Bird
Yeah, I find that it can be different for different people. I've got some friends who love the Ignatian spiritual Exercises. I've got others who, you know, think going through a nice nature walk is their thing. For others, it could be listening to something like a bit of, you know, Bach. And then there's other people who really feel near to God reading their Greek New Testament. So it's. It's amazing the diverse way people feel close to God. And I guess that's maybe because we're all very different. We've all got different ways of feeling close to God or different ways in which we feel God's pleasure in us.
- [30:16]
Tom Wright
Yes, yes, absolutely. And that line, I feel God's pleasure. I think that's an allusion to that splendid line in the movie Chariots of Fire. Eric Liddell says, God made me fast and when I run, I feel his pleasure. There are things which God has made us for and there are moments when we just say, yes, this is who I'm supposed to be. And that, as Mike says, will vary, vary from person to person and time to time, actually.
- [30:44]
Mike Bird
Yeah, well, when it comes to seeking God's pleasure, we've also got a question about seeking God's purpose for our life in marriage. And that can be a little bit complicated because, you know, when you get married there's a lot of decisions to be made, often with your, you know, spouse to be. But you've also got extended family. And we've got a great question here from Kwaku Bimpong from London who asked this one, recognizing the need for pastoral care. Is it godly for two Christians to get married without the blessing of their Christian parents? Yeah, I mean, I haven't dealt with this one too often in my life, Tom, but have you ever come across this where a couple are getting married and one or both sets of parents are adamantly opposed to the, to the arrangement and the betrothal?
- [31:37]
Tom Wright
Yeah, this is a toughie. I've got some close friends who, when they got married, one of the sets of parents was completely opposed to it and for all sorts of good reasons they decided to go ahead and it's been a very happy and long lasting marriage. And there were all sorts of pastoral, domestic, cultural reasons why that one set of parents was a Guinness. This is something one again, couldn't give a blanket, one size fits all answer to. If I had a couple come to me, say, we believe God is calling us to get married, but my parents don't want it and his or her parents don't want it, then I would really want to sit down and work with them because that's a major thing to get over. Within our atomized Western world, it's easy for or a young couple who are seriously in love to think, well, we're in love, we want to do this. So really it doesn't matter. Doesn't the Bible say we should leave your father and mother and cleave to your spouse and the two become one? And the answer is, yeah, the Bible does say that. But when you get married, you bring all kinds of stuff into the marriage from not only parents, but family, grandparents, both genetically and psychologically and the memories, good memories and bad memories, and they can really mess up, up the marriage itself if there is a sense of unwillingness. And one can imagine a terrible situation where after a month or six months or a year or five years, one member of the couple looks at the other and says, well, my parents always did tell me not to marry you, and now I see why you don't want to leave the possibility of that kind of thing lying around. It might be that eventually, prayerfully and will, with a certain measure of grief, one has to say, despite what they're thinking, we should go ahead. But that's a big risk. And I would say one would then need. And if I was the vicar of the parish where this couple were coming to, saying, we want to get married, but they don't like it, and they don't like it, I would want to say, please, can I have some quality time with this other couple, with that other couple, find out what the real objection is. Because it might well be a cultural. That people like us shouldn't marry people like that, which might be ethnic or might be social class or might be one thing or another, who knows? Or they might be able to see that their beloved child is about to walk into a situation which would be much harder than that child realizes. And that might be very wise. Or it might be something which would need to be worked around. So without that one on one pastoral visit or one on two in the case of the pastor with a couple, it would be hard to navigate that. So I can see cases in which it would be right to go ahead, but with serious prayer and serious advice about the pitfalls that might lie ahead. But I would want to do it through pastoral contact with the Christian parents. I mean, the way the question is set up without the blessing of their Christian parents implies that those parents on both sides are Christians. So that a pastor should be able to work with them, pray with them, and discuss with them and see where the objections are coming from. So it's a tricky one, but pastoral care is needed. But I would say there may well be situations when it would be right to go ahead, but there will always be situations where it's right to take very careful soundings before just saying, oh, well, they're a different generation. They don't understand. We're just going to go ahead that way. Danger lies ways.
- [35:29]
Mike Bird
Yeah, I think you're right, Tom. You should always listen to the counsel of your parents. If they're. If they're good parents, if they're wise, and they do usually tend to love you. But yeah, even parents can be blindsided by their own prejudices. It's, it's one thing to say, you know, don't rush into a marriage with a guy you met online and who recently got out of prison, something like that. You, you know, I would counsel my kids, but, you know, saying, oh, you can't, can't marry, you know, this woman because, you know, I wanted you to marry a lawyer or a doctor. I mean, I think you can do so much better. I mean, there's some, it depends on what the issue is. And all parents are different, but I think, I think that's wide and sagacious advice for people. Tom well, anyway, I think that is enough for today. We've covered, we've covered quite a lot. We've covered the, the unity of the church, drawing near to God, getting married and some really great stuff there. But we want to hear more questions from people. So please go to ask NTWRIGHT.com, send us your questions. And if you're dying for more content, remember there's a whole back catalog of episodes you can listen to. There's great stuff we've been having going on for the last few years. You can get that on Apple podcasts and all the great, great places. So it's goodbye from me, Mike Bird.
- [36:52]
Tom Wright
And goodbye from me, Tom Wright.
- [36:54]
Mike Bird
We'll see you in the future for another episode of Ask NT Wright. Anything until then. God bless you and take care.