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- [00:00]
Mike Bird
Before we get into today's show, I have some urgent news to share with you. Premier Insight's financial year ends on June 30, and it's vital we close a final funding gap of $65,000 by that date. The great news is a generous friend of the ministry has offered to match the first $10,000 given to help jump start giving towards our goal. But we must fully meet the $10,000 for it to be released. That's why I wanted to take a moment before we get into today's podcast to ask for your help. If you would please take a moment today to give your best gift@premierinsight.org ntrite that's premierinsight.org ntrite thank you for understanding how important your gift is today and for giving generously. And now it's time for today's podcast.
- [00:55]
Tom Wright
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Mike Bird
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Tom Wright
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- [01:58]
Mike Bird
Hello, welcome to the Ask Nt Write Anything podcast, the show where we try to answer your questions about Jesus, the Bible and the life of faith. I'm Mike Bird from Ridley College in Melbourne, Australia. And of course, I'm joined by.
- [02:13]
Tom Wright
I'm Tom Wright from the Isle of Harris in Northwest Scotland, a wonderful part.
- [02:19]
Mike Bird
Of the world indeed. And Tom, we've got some good questions this week. The first one comes from Elizabeth Capitaniac. I hope I pronounced that correctly from Geneva in the United States. And Elizabeth asked this Dear Tom, in light of the current political scene in the United States, I've been thinking a lot about how Christians should relate to the governmental powers and and politics they live in. What expectations and standards should Christians have of their political authorities? And specifically when it comes to dealing with situations concerning refugees and immigrants, how would you encourage Christians to be postured towards those people and how that relates to their own political ideologies how should Christians engage with other Christians who have different political views, religious relating to the care of immigrants and refugees? Well, Tom, nothing controversial there when it comes to immigration, but immigration policy is controversial both in the United Kingdom and in the usa. So, Tom, I mean, what do you have to say to Elizabeth?
- [03:35]
Tom Wright
Well, the first thing to say, Elizabeth, thank you very much. These are very pertinent questions. And I think for many Christians in the Western world, it's only really in the last decade or two that these questions have been brought together with questions of faith. I think many of us grew up with our faith in a box over here and our politics in a box over there. And sometimes there was some transference, but it was really kind of uneasy. And there are good reasons for that. But in the book that Mike and I wrote a couple of years ago, Jesus and the Powers Then, we've explored a lot of the basic issues there, and I don't think we have time to go into all of that now. But just to recap very quickly, in the Bible, it's clear that God the Creator wants his world to be ruled through or run through or looked after by wise human beings. Wise, humble human beings. That's a big ask, a big ask, because wisdom is not easy to come by. And folly is always nudging at our elbow saying, come this way instead. So making sure we're thinking about how to make wise decisions, that's really important. But also the idea of humility is really significant because this is God's world, not ours. But as soon as humans are put in charge of something, there is a huge standing temptation to twist that in chargeness for one's own ends. And again and again and again we've seen this. Whether it's somebody being made the secretary of the golf club or whether it's somebody being made emperor of some huge country, there is always the temptation to use this power, power for one's own ends rather than for the good of all the people that one is supposed to be relating to. Now, in the middle of that, therefore, the church has a responsibility to say God wants human authorities to be running his world. The place I always go to on this is John chapter 19, where Jesus says to Pontius Pilate, you could have no authority over me unless it was given you from above. And then he adds, so the one who handed me over to you has the greater sin. In other words, on the one hand, Jesus recognizes that even Pontius Pilate, who's a third rate governor of a pagan empire, that even Pontius Pilate has a God given authority over him, the word incarnate. But then on the other hand, there is this question of accountability, that when you are given a responsibility for something, God himself will hold you to account. There's an awful lot in the Bible about God holding rulers to account. How is that going to happen? Well, in various ways, sometimes God it seems, allows rulers to overreach themselves and then their schemes fall by their own weight. Sometimes in the Psalms the psalmist says, into the pit that they dug for others, let them fall themselves. The wicked, powerful, arrogant people. They go about trying to make things horrible for themselves. Well, they better fall into their own pitch. In other words, we're not going to do that necessarily, but they will fall. But other times it's somebody's responsibility to hold those powers to account. Now in our world, the newspapers, the news media have regularly assumed that responsibility. That's become very contentious now. And sometimes emperors and presidents try to silence news media that they think are opposed to their particular policies, or they accuse them of just being fake news or whatever it may be. And the answer is that the church itself, in the power of the Spirit, has the responsibility, according to John 16, to hold the world to account. When the Spirit comes, says Jesus, he will hold the world to account on account of sin and righteousness and judgment. How will the Spirit do that? Maybe by a thousand different ways, but certainly the Spirit is given to the church to enable the church to speak truth to power. The problem we've got in our own day is that we're so out of practice at doing that that many Christians think that's wrong anyway and that we should just escape the whole political system, which can't be done. We're going to have some sort of social and cultural system, whether we like it or not. But we've got out of the way of wise critique and we have to get back into it. So all of that is the rubric that Mike and I in our book Jesus and the Powers have tried to set up. And there's much more in that book as well about all this stuff. But then when it comes to the questions of immigration, those are hugely complex for several interlocking reasons. One of them, which I think we've ignored very often, is that the so called Western world, the world of northwest Europe, the world of America, and then with Australia, New Zealand, South Africa certainly, and some other parts, but particularly those we have had for the last two or 300 years, what's called the Enlightenment, where we have developed our technological skills, our science Our learning, our culture, et cetera. And we have become not only the enlightened ones, but the well off ones. We've gone around the rest of the world making our empires and acquiring wealth and status and prestige. And sooner or later there was going to be a day of reckoning when the rest of the world think, think of somebody growing up in a country like, I don't know, Somalia or somewhere or South Sudan and hearing tell that there are countries where you can be free, where the roads are well paved, where there's electricity, where there's food for everyone, et cetera, et cetera. Oh, please, could I and my family have even a little bit of that? You can understand that many people feel it's payback time you came and colonized us. And now we actually want to share some of the results of that. So all that is sort of going on behind the mass migrations that are taking place in our time of people streaming towards the countries that are affluent and apparently better off. We know that the affluent countries have got all sorts of problems, but people looking from the outside only see life would be better there. They may or may not be right, but that's the perception. So naturally, for us to say, no, no, no, we're all right, we're building a big wall to keep you lot out. Goodbye, go away. That seems to be pretty heartless, to be honest. Granted two or three hundred years of the way that the world history has gone at the same time. When, as in the case of my country, when a country is geographically very small. I mean, you could fit the country of England three or four times into the state of North Carolina alone. When you've got a country that's very small and has a large immigration going on the whole time, some people coming legally and many people coming illegally, we simply can't cope with that. We weren't ready for it. Our social services aren't up for it, it floods our education system. And there are many people in my country who have the best will in the world and say, we realize these people are hurting, we want to help them, but it's very difficult because with our tax money, et cetera, the government hasn't got the resources to cope with yet another half million coming in here, yet another half million coming in here. At the same time, Jesus himself was an asylum seeker. Jesus himself with his mother Mary and with Joseph, they had to flee into Egypt for safety. And only when it was relatively safe did they come back again to their own homeland. And so right from the start of the gospel Story. We have this sense of Jesus leading the way into exile, Jesus leading the way into the seeking of asylum. And so it doesn't sound too good, as they say these days. The optics are not good of saying, oh, therefore we're not going to bother about you lot. We don't need any more immigrants. Thank you very much. Actually, a country like America got great by having people from all over the world coming. And they used to say, well, that's what the Statue of Liberty was all about. Come here and we together will make a whole new country. And there's room for everyone. Now, of course, there may be limits, there may be problems. There are problems. And countries that are large enough, like America or Canada, they still have to operate some kind of immigration policy. The problem has come, I think, from the implicit xenophobia of so many, including tragically many Christians from the white or Caucasian background, who actually have always wanted to keep other people, people who look differently or sounded differently or behaved differently, to keep them at arm's length. The time for that has passed. We've got to think more wisely, more humanely. But globally, we need a much, much better coordinated strategy than we've had, than we've needed to have for how to deal with this as a global problem and not simply try to pick off different bits of local situations. Now this is just for starters. I'm not a politician, but this what I'm observing day by day, week by week in our world, in my country. But the underlying principle of God wanting his world to be organized by wise, humble humans and of the Church's responsibility to hold those humans to account, to speak truth to power against the day when God will eventually put all things right. That's the basis now let's work forward from there.
- [13:41]
Mike Bird
You know, Tom, speaking of the day when God puts all things to right, that day seems to be a little bit far off than maybe what Paul was expecting. And that leads to our second question from Joshua Armstrong in Konkayan, Thailand. And he asked this. He says, hello, thank you for reading these two questions, which is in part one, would Paul have been puzzled or unaffected by the Lord's 2000 year delay? And secondly, where Paul to have been made aware of the enormous scale of the universe, how would he have incorporated into his theology, especially his eschatology? Thank you and God bless you. Well, that's two big questions from Joshua. If Paul knew about the big Bang, how big the universe was, and that even after 2000 years were still here, what do you think Paul would make of that? Would he be surprised by that? Would he think that we live in a different universe than the one he thought? What are your thoughts on that?
- [14:47]
Tom Wright
Tom I think that Paul was aware, like all early Christians, because Jesus had said so, that Jerusalem would be destroyed within a generation of Jesus own time. That's a major theme in Matthew, Mark and Luke. It's hinted at elsewhere and I think it's hinted at in for instance, the Thessalonian correspondence in Paul and also in 1 Corinthians 7, when he talks about the appointed time being constrained and various other bits. I think the primary thing that's in his mind is it's his job to establish Jew plus Gentile churches on Gentile soil ahead of the destruction of Jerusalem. That theme has been largely ignored by many modern Christians, particularly modern liberal Christians, who have wanted to say, oh well, Jesus and Paul thought the world was to end. It didn't. So they were wrong. So they were probably wrong about a lot of other stuff as well. That's been a major theme of much liberal theology the last 150 or so years and I think it's simply misconceived. Now Jesus I think hints at the coming time when all things are going to be resolved and put right. The great coming paling or rebirth he speaks of in Matthew 18 or the time when, which Peter refers to in Acts, when God is going to put everything right at last. They take for granted the fact that one day God the Creator will put everything right. Paul says so in Romans 8, 1 Corinthians 15. The book of Revelation talks about the new heavens and new earth. But when they are giving a specific this generation date, I think again and again it's referring to the destruction of Jerusalem. And I think you can chase that through. And I've followed it up and so have many other writers. So I don't think Paul would be alarmed or surprised. It's very noticeable that when we go to the writings of the second and third and fourth generation, the Apostolic Fathers, so called, or Justin martyr in the 2nd century, or Irenaeus and Tertullian at the end of the second and the start of the third century, there's no sense that oh my goodness, the world didn't end. Now what are we supposed to do? Everything's different. Tertullian is still talking cheerfully about the coming great day when we will all celebrate the renewal of God's world. And there's no sense of failure or trauma or anything that it didn't in fact end after one generation. So I don't think there's any reason to suppose that Paul would have been startled or worried if he was told that actually the world's going on for another couple of thousand years. And the line that you then find in two Peter becomes relevant. That one day is with the Lord is a thousand years, and vice versa, a line that goes back to the Psalms. So this is how it is. God's in charge of time. It's up to him. Jesus himself said even about the destruction of Jerusalem of that day and hour. Ah, nobody knows, not even the Son, but only the Father, how much more of the coming consummation of all things. So that on the one hand, as to the size and scale of the universe, when you read a psalm Like Psalm 8, when I consider the heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars that you've ordained. Now, maybe if we'd asked Paul, how far away do you think those are? He might have guessed wildly and come up with something quite wrong in terms of our modern scientific knowledge. But if you look at ancient astronomers, at people like Ptolemy, then you discover that they knew perfectly well that the Earth was, in terms of the vastness of the universe, just one tiny speck out of this enormous world in which there were so many other things. So the idea that it's only a modern discovery of modern telescopes and so on, which has enabled us to say, actually the sun is however many million miles away and Mars is however many billion miles away, et cetera, that's quite wrong. People have known for a very long time that the universe is vast. And I think that even though some may have theorized differently from others, I don't think that's a problem, and I don't think Paul would have worried about it for a moment.
- [19:03]
Mike Bird
Yeah, I mean, the only thing I would add to that tomorrow is that the problem of delay was not unique to Christianity. It was inherited from the Jewish tradition. Whole books of the Bible are dedicated to the theme of how long, oh, Lord, how long? I think, you know, particularly the book of Habakkuk is very much, you know, when is God going to come and deliver us? And this is a theme that's picked up time and time again. So, yeah, the idea of delay is not something that the first Christians were unique in wrestling with. And when it comes to cosmology, I'm always impressed with what we find in. I think it's 1 Kings 8 where Solomon says, you know, heaven and earth cannot contain you. How much less this temple I built. I think some of the ancients knew they were living in a very big space, a very big universe. And whether they thought the stars were, you know, several miles or 7 trillion miles away, they knew they lived in a big theater of God's grandeur. And God himself was bigger than all that combined.
- [20:10]
Tom Wright
Absolutely. Absolutely.
- [20:12]
Mike Bird
Well, we're going to take a break and then we're gonna come back with another question about are we lucky if we've grown up with the right type of Christianity? Is having a good gospel faith simply about the circumstances you were bor to. So don't go too far. We'll be back looking at that. Great question.
- [20:37]
I just wanted to quickly remind you that Premier Insight has been offered a $10,000 matching grant that will double your gift today. And right now, that's an incredible blessing to us as we're needing $65,000 before the end of the financial year on June 30th. This show depends on the generosity of friends like you. So I'm asking you to give your very best gift right now to meet the $65,000 need, knowing your gift will be doubled. You can give now@premierinsight.org ntright that's premierinsight.org ntrite thank you.
- [21:18]
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- [21:56]
Tom Wright
I think you're on mute.
- [21:58]
Mike Bird
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. And Tom, we have a third and final question now. This is important to me. This is from Sam Sperling in Melbourne, Australia. I mean, that's where I am. I'm in Melbourne. Sam has got a good question for you, Tom. He wants to ask about why does there seem to be a distribution of clarity in God? You know, whether having the right view of God is Merely a view of happenstance or lucky circumstances. This is what Sam asks. I have had friends and family who only encountered very politicized or distorted versions of Christianity so warped that it completely turned them off. Meanwhile, I had the good fortune of seeing a much more beautiful and authentic expression of the Gospel. The usual explanation is that God is fair and judges each of us based on the light we've been given. But that still leaves the question of religious luck. Why did I luck out with a healthier understanding while people I care about got something so damaging it drove them away? How do we reconcile God's justice and love with what feels like an arbitrary distribution of clarity or distortion in the faith we inherit? Especially when we look at history and see entire eras or regions where the Gospel was presented in deeply flawed ways, while others have a more faithful tradition that they have received? Tom, why is it, as Sam asked, that some people seem to have been born into or inherited a religious tradition that's got more clarity or more authenticity? And why some people seem to have been sold a half truncated gospel that's led to a half truncated Christianity which they've eventually rejected? What's your answer to Sam's question?
- [24:27]
Tom Wright
It's a great question, but actually I suspect there's a complete continuum. I mean, when I look at my own background and upbringing, I'm hugely grateful that I was born into a Christian family, that we were churchgoers, we read the Bible, we weren't particularly party people. We weren't either Anglo Catholics or evangelicals or whatever. We were what in the 50s was just mainstream ordinary Anglican Christians doing the stuff and so on. And I'm really grateful for that. At the same time, as I look back at European Christianity and British Christianity and I don't know much about modern church history, but I know enough to realize that that whole tradition had taken various wrong turns, little ones here and there, but they kind of accumulate. And that each generation actually has to go through the question of amazing what in the trade we call Semper reformanda always being reforming and that if at any point we think, well, my tradition is fine, I don't need to worry, then watch out, because there is probably something which is getting out of kilter here or there. So there is no perfect thing on the one hand as opposed to imperfect at the same time. I'm very reminded of Jesus parable about the laborers in the vineyard, that the master went out and called people to work in his vineyard. Then he went out a bit later and called some others, and then some others later. And just with one hour to go of the day, he went out and called some more, and at the end of the day they all got paid the same. And it seems to me that parable speaks very powerfully to the question we've been asked that actually what counts is not, oh, I knew this from the very beginning, or I was in a church which got this and this and this. All right, I once heard a sermon on that passage and it went like this. What did they all share? What was in common between the ones who'd worked the whole day and the ones who just worked one hour? And the answer is, they all came when they were called, they went where they were sent and they did what they were told. In other words, it isn't about comparing like with unlike and saying, oh, how come you got those bits and we got these bits? It's about simply the mystery by which God calls people. Because human vocation is a strange thing. I have friends who grew up in a Hindu context and who are wonderfully converted from that and who found that a huge struggle. And it took them ages to get out of that whole way of looking at things and to come fully into the Christian way. And I know others from other backgrounds and so on, and the complexities of human life are so extraordinary. But here's the thing which comes back to people like me who grew up in a Christian home, Jesus word that much is expected of those to whom much is given. And that when God is going to call somebody to particular tasks that may well involve some quite serious and difficult work, sometimes God gives them particular seemingly advantages to start with in order that they can then work from those forwards. And with that comes a great responsibility that woe betide if you're given those privileges, if you then go to sleep on them or distort them or twist them for your own advantage. So in the great economy of God, we are not told why some people get called this way and others get called that way. We are all encouraged to the humility which says, God seems to be knocking on my door right now. I guess I need to do business with him. I need to say, lord, have mercy on me, a sinner. Now what is it you have for me to do? And you know that line at the end of John 21, Jesus and Peter have gone for a walk along the beach, it seems, and then the beloved disciple is following them. Peter looks over his shoulder and says, lord, what about this man? And Jesus says, if it's my will that he remain until I come. What is that to you, you follow me. And that is a hugely important line at the end of John's Gospel. And it's an important line for all of us. Yes, they are different position. Yes, they may well have other tasks. Yes, I may have called this person in a quite different way from how it was with you, but your task is to follow me. And when we do that, these questions, though they may remain puzzling, cease to be, as it were, threatening and we are able simply to respond hopefully in humble faith.
- [29:10]
Mike Bird
Yeah, that's a great way to put it, Tom. I mean, I guess the danger is we can have the temptation of thinking, you know, thank you, Lord, that I was not born into that crazy, weird church over there. And I'm, I'm in the, I'm in a proper righteous church where everything is going well and wonderful. You know, we, and you all know people who have, you know, been in churches that were problematic, perhaps even abusive, and maybe they were a little bit worse for where coming out of it. And in many ways we just simply have to say, well, there's but for the grace of God go I. Because, you know, I've had, you know, we've all had our own share of bad church experiences. We've all seen some Christian leaders who weren't really up to the task or who weren't really shepherding the flock. Maybe they were fleecing them. But, you know, at the end of the day, you've simply got to do business with the, with the faith as you've received it and find the way that God has set out for you and end. It's tragic that some people want to walk away from the faith, from having a bad church experience. But yeah, I don't think comparison is always going to be the solution to that by saying, oh, well, maybe if I was born in a, if that person was in a slightly better church, that things would have gone better because you can go to a good church but still have a truncated spirituality.
- [30:31]
Tom Wright
Yeah, yeah, that's absolutely right. Or indeed go to a very inadequate church and nevertheless find that the Holy Spirit is speaking to you. I mean, God is the God of surprises. God moves in many, many mysterious ways and he keeps us guessing and he keeps others around us guessing as well. And our task is simply to be faithful to what we've been called to. And of course, insofar as we have the chance, which most of us don't, most of the time, to work for the good health and the further reformation of all the churches in whichever way they're being called to reform for and.
- [31:10]
Mike Bird
That'S probably a good word to end our program on for today. So thank you to everyone who sent us their questions. We're keen to get more. You can go to askntright.com to send us your questions. And maybe, just maybe, they'll find their way onto the show. And you'll hear from Tom himself answering those lingering thoughts, doubts, questions that you've been harboring for a long time. Don't forget, we've got some great other sister programs in the your network shows like Unbelievable. You can also check out as well. But that's it from me, Mike Bird.
- [31:48]
Tom Wright
And also from from Tom Wright in Harris in northern Scotland.
- [31:54]
Mike Bird
And we look forward to seeing you on the next episode of Ask NT Wright. Anything until then. Take care and God bless. Sam.