I WAS THINKING 17

WHY MAKE CHRISTIANITY SO HARD?

Jesus did say "My yoke is easy" but when originally jammed on my neck I found it cumbrous and anything but velvet lined. True, that was a while ago, and I have lived long enough to learn, and enjoy, what Jesus meant. But my impression is that an awful lot of folk don't want it easy. Making it hard brings them credit. They remind me of Isaiah 46:1, 'Bel bows down, Nebo stoops'!

New Testament people seemed such successful Christians, real five-minute-mile-marathon-super-athletes. I was a panting pedestrian compared to them. Their language, "joy unspeakable and full of glory", and "God who gives us the victory", contrasted with my apologies at the end of every day, pleading that God would overlook my shortcomings and help me to remember the rules better tomorrow. I made the rules myself, and wrote them kneeling in prayer.

The Anglican Prayer Book speaks of miserable sinners, but I was then more the miserable saint type with a pose of perpetual penitence. At least, I thought, I do confess my frailties, which is quite humble, quite a virtue! Of course I never doubted that God loved me, just as I never doubted at 7 years old that my Irish mother loved me, but she still chased me down the street with a stick.

Jesus said "Come unto me and I will give you rest". The word 'rest' filtered through my church experience as an achievement to be attained at some indefinite future. Rest would only follow labour, after I kept up with the religious programme dumped on me. Worse, I was never sure I had done all I should. Had I unknowingly slipped up somewhere? Actually more often than not I knew very well I had, and felt God could not count on me or make me one of His blue-eyed boys, as if He ever had one at all! Saved by believing, sanctified by straining.

I wished the Bible mentioned people struggling like me to keep on the right side of the Lord. It did not oblige me with such examples, but I had friends like that who believed God's smile was reserved for rare souls, people who had reached the higher Christian standards. I visualised the Christian life as mountaineering, always with one more peak up ahead.

There was the example of Paul the apostle. I sympathised with his heart-cry: "What a wretched man I am! Who shall deliver me from this body of death?" But he immediately swept his conscience clean: "Thanks be to God- through Jesus Christ our Lord. There is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus." Romans 7:24/25. He never expressed any depression over weaknesses, no bewailing his poor spirituality, no remorse, no mortification, no self-deprecation. He showed every sign of assurance that God really went along with him. How did he do that?

One Bible phrase did occur to me, 'afflict your souls'. It justified me every night at prayer time. It is found it in Scripture, but only in the AV of Leviticus. The NIV doesn't say "afflict" but 'deny yourselves'. The actual Hebrew says 'humble yourselves, deny yourselves, fast', and when we ask what we should fast from, the answer is – from work! "You must not do any work … it is a Sabbath of rest'. No workaholics! The Old Testament 'types and shadows' carry the same message. Leviticus 16.25 lays it down that priests approaching God must wear linen, for coolness and bathe first. That is to avoid perspiration. Sweat is evidence of hard work and God doesn't want it to be hard work to come to Him. Strenuous effort and hard searching only give us something to boast about, and it doesn't look good about God as if He is sullen, indifferent, playing hide and seek with us as if He didn't want us to find Him. That is not the Bible God. It is the God only of mystics waiting and straining to hear Him. The Lord did not say "Labour pleases me" His favourites are not masochists wearing hair-shirts. The Word is "Call upon Him while He may be found". The Bible is the world's happiest book. It took me time to adjust my perspectives to take in the whole Bible landscape. Ultra-holiness culture clung. It would take a chapter to outline it. But I gradually wriggled out of my religious straight jacket. Did that jacket reflect a God of freedom and deliverance whose disposition is pure joy? I played in a classical music orchestra but resigned because I didn't believe God approved of my taking part in public concerts. I even stayed away from a Gospel service because the pastor wanted the orchestra I led to play a hymn tune on their own, no singing. Well, the Pharisees tithed table condiments. I have found that life holds more realistic challenges, pride, jealousy, envy, adultery, covetousness and also the call to greater virtues such as loving our neighbour which was not meant to be a performance too wearing. Old Testament religion had its observances but was quite leisurely, no churches, no services, no Bibles to read, worship only at the Temple, doing nothing in the Sabbath and only a 'Sabbath day's journey' of about 1000 yards. They tithed and ate their tithe at the Temple two or three times a year! But all took the Sabbath, the day of rest, and turned it into an oppressive legal obligation. We still do that kind of thing. Christianity becomes something to carry instead of wings to carry us. Soar like the eagles?

A lady recently came to me distressed. She had witnessed to people but without success. Her pastor had said that bearing fruit meant soul winning, and without such 'fruit' they would appear empty handed and shamed before the Lord in heaven. It laid a heavy burden on this good soul. It was inventive theology.

Prayer is specially looked upon as a way to please God. Is that what it is? A labour? How do we know we have prayed enough to please God? The more the prayer the more we please Him? In the two hundred references to prayer in the New Testament not one suggests it. We are exhorted to pray, but God's attitude towards us is not set out as proportionate to the time we spend on our knees.

Expressions can mislead us. They say "prayer is power" meaning prayer time is power, the longer the prayer the more the power, two hours twice the power of one hour. Depending on praying enough to have power means we never know we have power. We need a sign. Only the Holy Spirit is power, and He gives a sign. We can't manipulate Him to double His presence by praying twice as long.

By waiting in prayer can we gain more of God? It is said so. But again when do we know we have we prayed enough? How long must we wait to get more? How much more of God do we get? It makes it hard to be the sort of Christian we imagine we should be. My reading of Scripture shows we should grow in grace and in knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ, but I don't find 'waiting in prayer' suggested as the Scriptural means.

What is God like? Does He need a clamour at His gate to notice us? Is Christianity that hard? Is the Lord too preoccupied with a heavenly agenda to attend to us?

I miss my wife because she was always there to turn to anytime. To speak to her I did not need to make a performance of it as if I was hailing a passing ship. God is just as present as any wife, our great ever-present Comforter. Prayer doesn't need to prefaced by appeals to Him to come and hear us. Of course He hears us. He can't NOT hear us, for He is not deaf or occupied miles away. The pagan prophets of Baal had to cry out "Hear us, O Baal!" from morning to night. Elijah's prayer was totally different, brief, assured. He knew God was listening. The fire fell at once. We don't need to cry like the Psalmists, in the age before the Spirit was given, "Awake or Lord!"

We turn to God without any preamble, a very present help. He is the 'There God,' as Ezekiel said. Run to Him and He runs faster to us, like the father ran to the Prodigal. God came to Jacob, challenged and wrestled with him. Jacob did not go searching for God. The Bible God needs no finding, no chasing. He is the God who does the finding. "Adam, where are you ?" We can't claim the credit when we know Him – He found us.

God doesn't arrange for the Christian life to be hard. It is not a system for gaining credits. Circumstances impose hardships upon us, not God. He is not an inflictor of trouble, but a deliverer. The devil slips the insinuation into Christian teaching that God sends trials. He certainly allows us to be tried, but God is not in the business of planning trouble. "In the world you will have tribulation, but fear not for I have overcome the world."

God may ask us to take the Gospel and face danger, to accept a commission that necessarily involves hardship, because the circumstances are like that. Then let a man deny Himself and take up his cross. But to make difficulties or load ourselves to breaking point with endeavour and religious duties is gratuitous and lures nobody into the Kingdom. Some sing "Let me burn out for thee, dear Lord". Too many pastors are going down with burn outs. Reinhard Bonnke says "God does not want ash heaps". Reinhard also said that God doesn't want us to be horses, that includes pastors.

The Lord knows our frame, that we are dust. He filled the world and life with good things and 'no good thing will He withhold from them that love Him'. Is God happy when we refuse His good things, and make righteousness so sorely unattractive? Eternal life means quality lifestyle, companionship with God, the source of all goodness.

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IT'S NOT FUNNY?

We know what Jesus said, but how did He say it? He predicted disaster for the cities of Korazin, Bethsaida and Capernaum, "Woe unto thee … ". We read it in church as just print, tonelessly, though He could have been weeping, as He did over Jerusalem. His 'woes' have been represented as fierce, thundering, but that is not the Jesus I know.

In the same chapter, Matthew 11, is His great call "Come unto me all you that are weary and burdened." His voice must have been appealing but mixed with defiance and anger for the religious leaders who He said laid burdens upon men's back they could not carry. When Jesus spoke in his home synagogue, Nazareth, they 'were amazed at the gracious words that came from his lips." He fulfilled the Scriptures, Psalm 45:2 "You are the most excellent of men and your lips have been anointed with grace".

During 1943 in Swansea I heard the matchless Dr. W.E. Sangster preach for the first time. I remember his sermon well mostly because of his strangely effective and inimitable way of speaking, and also his warm grace.

Shakespeare said 'Brevity is the soul of wit". Jesus talked like that. He did not bury his meanings in a heap of words. A psychologist said that the Sermon on the Mount compacted everything a dozen psychologists said in a lifetime. If some of Christ's remarks don't make us smile, it is because we read them so sanctimoniously. He told a story of a man who was forgiven a debt of 10,000 talents, a sum greater than anybody ever imagined, £ millions, impossible, and then the man threatened to strangle somebody who owed him only £1 or two. He meant the contrast to be ludicrous – laughable if you like. Did He really tell it with a solemn face?

Charles Spurgeon, the 'Prince of Preachers', in his 'Lectures to My Students' reproduced a newspaper cartoon depicting him preaching with the caption "Brimstone!" and alongside a chinless clergyman as "Treacle!" Spurgeon, criticised for his humour, said he kept back most of it that went through his head when preaching. Humourless preaching – but not Jesus' preaching, is probably why a Victorian poet said "O Galilean, the world has grown grey with thy breath".

The greatest preacher of all was Jesus. His times were passionate. Religion was full of fury as in the east today. Jesus did not meet the age dispassionately. His words were warm arms embracing the multitudes. In contrast, the modern pulpit has adopted the manner of the doctor's bed-side manner. Faith is recommended today as casually as a prescription for aspirin. Could that be how Paul preached in Ephesus, English-style, cool, calm and collected? If so, how did it move anybody's heart? We read that on the great day of the feast (Tabernacles) "Jesus stood and said in a loud voice 'If any man thirst let him come to me and drink!'" He did not just mention it asking a friend to pass it on.

How we would treasure recordings of Christ! But we should know Him well enough for His words to throb in our ears. An actor took a West End theatre and recited the whole of Mark's Gospel every night for a month to capture an echo of Christ's wonderful voice. Every night every seat was booked. Peter calling for repentance on the day of Pentecost was not apologetic, and brought a 3000 response. George Whitfield crossing the Atlantic preached to five ships at once, but God's voice at Sinai shook the mountain. The Psalmist says the voice of the Lord 'breaks the cedars of Lebanon and makes the hinds to calve".

Jesus never bored anybody, never trotted out the same clichιs Sunday by Sunday. Police sent to arrest Him could not, and came back explaining "No man ever spoke like this man." That's how to preach properly, if only we could! He was everybody's man, holding thousands spellbound. To a twelve year old He spoke so tenderly, 'Little girl, wake up!" and she returned to life. His vibrancy shook death and demons slunk away.

How come we have His words today? Because they were unforgettable. Bible critics believe a collection of His sayings they call "Q" was the source from which Matthew, Mark and Luke drew. Maybe, maybe, but I find it incredible. Is that all, 30 or 40 years later, one collection? Thousands heard Him. Some would make notes, but He was unforgettable. Jesus said ""If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples, Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free". John 8:13. They had to continue in His words and so His words had to be remembered, as He uttered them, because it was His words that mattered. They would pass His words and their impressions on to their children, cherished as words of life. Some would make notes. Jesus used memorable phrases and pithy expressions often linked with startling healings. He was such a confident and happy man. What He said could never be forgotten.

Did people laugh when He spoke? Today we are surfeited with television comics and their attempts to be funny, often just silly. Christ stripped His message of mere verbiage, and spoke in concentrated form, sentences as sharp as arrows, compounded of wisdom. "The words of the Lord are flawless, like silver refined, purified seven times." Ps.12:6. Our own speech should be 'seasoned with salt'. Why is a sermon considered the most boring thing that you ever hear? You listen for an hour or two, look at your watch and find it was only 10 minutes. It wasn't like that with Jesus. He knew how to do hold attention. He was the world's greatest raconteur and knew how to be persuasive and compelling. As a story writer, Christ's story of the Prodigal son leaves me envious of such genius. In those days without printing or recordings, the story teller could get a crowd anywhere in the street like probably Homer in Greece. But Jesus' stories had eternity in view.

Some church homilies are so predictable and so arid in imagination they are a pain in the neck. Jesus didn't hesitate to use the ludicrous as humour. He spoke of cutting off your hand or plucking your eye out. As if anybody would take it literally! It was His shock device for commanding attention. We all use that kind of thing. "I'll eat my hat …", or "It's raining cats and dogs", or "I could have died laughing". Jesus described a man with a plank in his eye getting a speck out of another fellow's optic. A man with a plank in his eye! That is a verbal cartoon.

I heard a preacher rationalising Jesus' illustration that it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom. He told us there was a small gate in the wall of Jerusalem for nightfall, and a camel could be squeezed through there. Actually there never was such a gate! Then another sermon spoke of the camel as a camel-hair rope threaded through a steel needle! Any concoction rather than credit Jesus with obvious humour – 'hyperbole' as the educated say. People would remember that.

God made kittens, so how can anybody say He has no sense of humour? I was handed a Gospel tract and read "eternity is no laughing matter". True, for the Christless, but for those who cling to Him, eternity is joy that only laughter can express. I love my God as He loves me, merrily. I feel his kisses on the breeze, and so I carve his name on trees. Why not? Ten thousand years misunderstood, He needs my laughter in the wood, a lot!

Laughter is always close to tears. Edith Wharton said: "In any really good subject, one has only to dig deep enough to come to tears". How many dig deep enough in the Bible? Ring Lardner said "How can you write if you can't cry?" But how can we preach if we can't cry? Jesus did.

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THE WILL OF GOD

It is commonly said that God has a plan for every life. Yes, in a way, but that is not quite what the Bible says. He guides but has not pre-planned exactly what we should do all the time. We are not draughts on a draughts board with no rights, no will, no self-determination. Nor is He a drill sergeant-major and we are not on God's parade ground.

Some believe God has a detailed and daily course mapped out for them, but live in daily anxiety worrying whether their self-will has omitted some scruple. They spend much time in prayer and seeking God's will. Where is that commanded in Scripture and where are the Scripture role models? Assumptions are made that seem right, without checking by the word. God does, and must reveal His will. If He wants us to know it He doesn't mutter or whisper. What He wants us to do will be perfectly clear, unless we muddle it with out own intentions.

Our daily prayer is that His will shall be done on earth as in heaven. How is it done there? Angels obey Him but still have lives of their own. God has left us here to become what He wants us to be. He uses circumstance as His tools, picking up everything as material grist for His mill.

God does not leave us to look after ourselves, though He gave us independence. 'It is not in man that walks to direct his own steps". We walk, we go and He makes sure we are not heading for disaster. He can't guide till we go. A ship cannot be steered until it is under weigh and it does not steer itself. God has given us intelligence, acumen, wisdom to apply to our lives and to His work. Do what lies before us and the guarantee is "whatsoever he doeth shall prosper." He blesses our plans. We go and God goes with us. People are praying endlessly "O Lord let us see you move, we pray." God is waiting for us to move. The call is His. The initiative is ours.

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GEORGE CANTY PUBLICATIONS

JOHN'S GOSPEL. George Canty has made this Gospel his special interest for many years. He knows what the commentators and scholars say, and has insights of His own. He is at present giving two one-hour public studies per month on Saturday mornings in the Renewal Christian Centre, Solihull.

CANTY'S CHRONICLES. George Canty has clear Pentecostal memories from 1924, and has kept diaries of developments. He knew international pioneer leaders, and has himself travelled widely gaining information and impressions. Pastor David Carr asked him a series of questions about events of several decades. What he had to say about them is available in a box of three CD recordings, priced at £13. Possibly no-one else alive can cover the scope of events from the earliest days with such vivid recall.

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Lode Lane, Solihull. W. Mid. B91 2JR. UK