A slightly wandering train of thought on a plane

I was flying back to England after a wonderful time on Paros, and loving reading this book. 

It’s going slowly. First, I left it in Athens when we went to England. 

Second, I kept trying to read it but found that I was with great people to talk to so did that instead - thank you Team Paros and JJ Wyatt, Ellie Maffett and Will Woolnough in particular.

Third, I found it necessary to have the occasional siesta to keep me going through the late-night card games, the beach evangelism and the volleyball-for-the-gospel. 

It is however quite brilliant. Thank you Tim Vickers for giving it to me.

I’ve just read this section, which comes as part of a chapter exposing the myth that the ancient pagan world was joyous and vigorous, at one with the cosmos and at peace with itself, whilst Christianity was essentially a great big kill-joy, diseased with ‘bloodless antisensualism’, exerting an ‘icy and withering embrace’ on a vibrant pagan culture.

During the Paros beach mission we enjoyed a brilliant series of Bible studies in Mark. This means that fresh in my mind are lots of Markian gospel emphasies. 

So the gospel is good news? The main reason why it is good news of course is that the gospel tells of God’s free gift of life and forgiveness for sinful people - people whose hearts are desperately sick and beyond cure, apart from the Christ who came for such sick people. People who know they are dogs, worthy only of the crumbs under the table. (One of the highlights of studying Mark is having the eye-opening moment that the disciples only experienced after the resurrection, but we are privy to rather earlier: have you still not understood about the bread? Have a read of chapters 5-8 if you’ve no idea what I’m on about). 

The free gift is a cure for the sinfully sick, it’s food for the hungry-for-God, it’s forgiveness for the helplessly sinful rebel; sight for the blind-to-the-Christ is guaranteed, proved and inaugurated by the actually-resurrected King who had suffered and died in our place, drinking for us the cup of wrath that was rightly ours to drink, making possible the ripping of the excluding curtain and opening the way directly into the Holy of Holies.

As I write this I’ve got Chris Martin singing in my ears (thank you Ted & Rachel Watts) of how ‘life goes on, it gets so heavy...in the night the stormy night she closed her eyes, in the night the stormy night away she flies, and dreamed of para- para- paradise’.

The good news that Chris Martin probably hasn’t accepted (he’s definitely heard it) is just so good. We don’t have to dream of it. We don’t have to run away from the storms. We don’t have to escape a world of disappointment and shattered hopes. Jesus came into exactly that world bringing good news, which is ours by repenting of our rebellion and believing the True King. 

No need for fake saints to stand for us. 

No need for the false hope of impressing God with our virtuous lives - who can honestly kid themselves that they are such?

No need to invent rules to make us clean.

No need to fear that following Jesus makes us miss out on the good things - there is nothing we could give up or miss out on in this life that will not be far-outweighed by the glory to come.

All the time there’s this free offer of direct friendship, sonship and blessing, all tied up in the simple act of listening to Jesus, the Son who is loved by the Father and who has all authority to forgive, welcome and bless. And all the time people go on with their self-delusion that they’ll be ok on their own, or that there’s no possibility of any other way to be ok, or that the good news is so ridiculously good and free that it can’t be something for them. And so they turn to the beach to satisfy, or to the saints to mediate grace, or to science to explain their otherwise meaningless existence - though it’s still ultimately meaningless - or to a discredited communism to build the impossible utopia so cruelly promised. 

We’ve been told good news, we’ve believed the doctor’s diagnosis, we know we’re terminally ill, facing wrath and hell, but that the doctor is good and infallibly cures all who come to him knowing they need him, and we’ve begun a life that is anchored in the first resurrection, knowing that no amount of suffering and dying between now and the second resurrection - a resurrection that will be made visible by the Father’s glory and all his holy angels - is too great to make it not worth enduring.

So it’s good news. Not mere information or a mere worldview, but a cosmic declaration of and from and about an eternally good and glorious and gracious and great King, Jesus the Son of Man who suffered and died and rose again.

We live in a world where, like in those early pagan centuries, the vast majority of people are trapped in a dark, joyless, despondency. The gospel of Jesus doesn't stifle light and goodness and freedom and creativity: it reveals all of that. Atheist Delusions was such a brilliant read because it reminded me that the goodness of the good news is good indeed: better than this pagan world thinks, and better even than most Christians know - and that despite protestations to the contrary, modern secularism offers nothing good in its place.