Don't polarise at Pentecost!

Not many things annoy me (apart from those plastic seals under milk or sauce bottle lids with a tag so small only a child can grasp it and a seal so strong that only an Olympic weight lifter can move it). But my real bugbear is the habit of polarising ideas or viewpoints.

One allows for competition in sport – there can only be one winner of a race or a game. But you see it in adversarial politics when everything one party stands for is good and everything the other one stands for is rubbish. You see it in the adversarial nature of some court cases in which QCs treat victims of crime as if they were the criminals. And you see it among Christians getting vitriolic towards people who question their pet beliefs or views.

We know what we’re comfortable with and we don’t like to face the possibility that we might have to change our views. So we attack or belittle those who challenge them.

The apostle James wrote, “With the tongue we praise our Lord and Father, and with it we curse people who are made in God’s likeness…This should not be” (3:9-10). And that applies in all aspects of human interaction, not just in religious debate. Discuss, yes; abuse, ridicule, dehumanise, ostracise, no. “Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt,” said Paul (Colossians 4:6) – and by seasoned he meant make it tasteful.

Polarisation or fossilisation of beliefs or ideas, and slapping down people who want to explore them further, is a handicap to discipleship, and a weight dragging down spiritual and church growth. American writer and speaker John Ortberg has said “overconfidence can be a problem. It may sound strange but some people would be better believers if they had a little more doubt”.¹

This is the Pentecost season, when we celebrate the coming of the Holy Spirit to launch the Christian church on its Christ-given mission. Pentecost (or at least the Christian doctrine of the Holy Spirit) often provokes mystification, and as a result polarisation. We can just about conceive of the Father or Creator; we can almost visualise Jesus on earth, born, teaching, dying. But the Spirit – coming as a wind, a fire, making people speak in unlearned languages – what is that all about?

Use the right brain



Imagine!



Think for a moment of what we know of the human brain. The way its billions of neurons and trillions of synapses interact makes us the people we are, and because of those interactions we are all different in personality and understanding. The brain is immensely complex but one generalisation is helpful. It is that the left hemisphere of the brain (which controls the right side of the body) is also the main seat of language, ideas, analysis and concepts. The right side of the brain is more involved in meanings, imagination, creativity, intuition and feelings.

An emotionally and spiritually healthy human being should have both sides of their brain in relative harmony. We should be able to analyse issues and understand words but also intuit meanings and body language. In practice, each of us tends to veer more to the left or the right. At the extremes, people on the autism spectrum are heavily left-brained; people who are illogically impulsive are heavily right-brained. Part of the discipleship task, part of growing in maturity, is recover a balance.

However, our culture is predominantly left-brained, while the Hebrew culture of the Bible was predominantly right-brained. The former chief rabbi, Jonathan Sacks, helpfully explains this in his book The great partnership on science and religion². He points out that middle-eastern languages are written from right to left and engage the right brain, while western languages are the opposite.

That’s perhaps why in the west we analyse theological ideas while the Bible tells human stories and is almost devoid of any “systematic” theology. And why therefore we tend to focus on the word and ideas which we can either accept or reject (as in science), while the Bible focuses on the Spirit, the meanings, experiences and images which we need to mull over (as in art) and which may have multi-layers of meaning.

It may also be one of several reasons behind the frustrating inability of western countries to understand governments and cultures of the east. We assume that they think as we do, and cannot understand why they do not welcome western trading standards and democratic systems.

So when the Holy Spirit came to the apostles he was experienced as a wind because he is a breath of spiritual fresh air, renewing those parts the precepts of logic cannot reach. He came on the day when the Jews celebrated the giving of the law to Moses because God is breathing – blowing – new life into his people and establishing a new law and covenant. He came on a day which was also a harvest festival because his arrival is the culmination of the previous three years of the disciples’ life with Jesus, showing what all that was about, just as harvest is the culmination of a year of agricultural preparation, showing what the toil of ploughing, sowing and cultivating was for.

The Spirit is God as he is to be experienced, not as he is to be analysed. That’s why, as Jesus said, the Spirit blows where he wants (John 3:8) and we can’t work out what he’s about. But the Spirit is also the author and inspirer of the word (1 Timothy 3:16), the one who speaks to admonish or encourage through prophets.

Micah was an 8th century BC prophet speaking to the erring northern kingdom of Israel. The Spirit of God gave him insight into the social and spiritual situation which he articulated to the people. So he says “I am filled with power, with the Spirit of the Lord, and with justice and might, to declare to Jacob his transgression, to Israel his sin” (3:8). He discerned something unarticulated by the Spirit, and he put it onto words to address a specific situation. No conflict. No polarisation. Both-and. And with it a call to change their selfish ways.  

An excessive emphasis on the left-brained word can lead to a dry and dusty formalism. An excessive emphasis on the right-brained Spirit can lead to flights of fancy not always closely connected with the teaching of Jesus and the apostles and more often confirming with what a person fancies. We need both. We need to use both sides of our brain. In the whole of life.

Be prepared for change

Change means leaping out of the comfort zone

Without the Spirit, the word is dead. Without the word, the Spirit is disabled. We need both. They’re never to be separated. And they always precipitate change.

Just think what an upheaval that first Pentecost was. For three years the disciples had had their lives turned upside down by the teaching of Jesus which challenged so much of what they’d been taught. Just as they were looking forward to a new era, Jesus was killed and their new world fell apart. Some like Peter tried to pick up their old life, and went fishing. Then suddenly Jesus was there again. Only he wasn’t, not in the same way. They endured six weeks of utter confusion.

One day they saw Jesus graphically leaving them for good. What next? What was going on?

And then the Holy Spirit filled them in a fresh way, and their lives and future changed again. They’d experienced more changes of belief and viewpoint and practice in three years than most of us do in a lifetime.

The spiritual writer Henri Nouwen once wrote that “Essential for mature religion is the constant willingness to shift gears, to integrate new insights and to revise our positions.”³

The call to change is made even more dramatically in what is known as the Gentile Pentecost. In Acts 11 we meet Peter after the event when he’s gone back to his base in Jerusalem. He’s had an amazing time in Caesarea on the coast. He’s seen God working in people’s lives in a way he never imagined could be possible. He must be full of it. And what’s he met with? The grim faces of people locked in their polarised world.

Not joyful celebration but stern accusation. “You went into the house of uncircumcised men and ate with them.” The news – the gossip – had beaten him back to the capital. Controversy always spreads quickly – and it usually gets garbled or taken out of context, and polarised in the process. Good news is tucked away on an inside page or left for the “And finally” upbeat (or off-beat) last item on the TV news bulletin.

Remember, Jesus was a Jew. The first Christians were Jews. They saw their new faith in Jesus the Messiah as the fulfilment of their Jewishness. The church was a denomination of Judaism. Jews would not mix socially with non-Jews for fear of becoming ritually contaminated. To eat with them risked consuming food that wasn’t kosher or prepared in the so-called proper way. You did what? What were you thinking of Peter? How dare you – and you a leader!

And so Peter patiently explains what has already been recorded at greater length in chapter 10. The repetition indicates how important and significant Luke, the author of Acts and a Gentile himself, saw this in the context of the whole story of the early church.

Peter explains his vision and the message God was clearly giving him. He wasn’t to regard any of God’s creatures unclean or inferior, least of all human beings from another cultural, racial and religious background. All are equally made in God’s image and all equally deserving of time, attention and respect. All are loved and cared for by God and embraced freely in his plan of salvation.

The right-brain visions given to both Peter and Cornelius must have been extremely powerful because neither man was in any doubt. So when Peter saw the evidence of God at work as the Holy Spirit transformed his Gentile hearers, he said “who was I to think that I could oppose God?” So he baptised them.

Notice that he didn’t also circumcise them. He confirmed their Christian faith, he did not impose his religious culture. He abandoned his natural left-brained desire to polarise. Here was something totally new. And so it seemed to the Jewish Christians in Jerusalem when they listened to Peter: “So God has granted even the Gentiles repentance unto life.” We can’t blame them for being so surprised. This was a huge culture shock. A massive transformation.

But it didn’t last. The old polarisation crept back in. Left brain logic took over from right brain intuition. Judaism was a protected religion. The church as a branch of Judaism was secure. Outside it, it was vulnerable to arbitrary persecution. In the next chapter of Acts James was murdered on the orders of King Herod, who saw that it pleased the Jews.

Many Christians decided not to rock the boat, to keep their heads down. So we find Peter later refusing to eat with Gentiles (Galatians 2:11-16). We find the whole church debating how to handle Paul’s ministry to the Gentiles in Acts 15. Old habits die hard. It takes a long time to change opinions.

Now read this, from a commentary on Acts published way back in 1901. “If Peter required a divine vision to open his eyes, it is not surprising that it should take some years for the hidden principle to be fully understood and accepted by the Jewish church. Nor is this slowness peculiar to the apostolic age. It is almost more inconceivable how in the 17th century a good protestant English captain could be praying and reading the Bible on deck, while beneath the hatches he was carrying a cargo of negro slaves to work on American plantations. Nor must the church today throw stones. In foreign missions it is still difficult in practice to recognise the equality of the converting and converted races: while in America there are practically two churches, one for the coloured and one for the white people, it is hard to believe that the principle that God is no respecter of persons has been fully realised as yet.”⁴

Obviously we’ve moved on from those days but if that author was writing today, I wonder what examples he would give of contemporary polarisations that the Spirit might want to challenge. Might he, I wonder highlight attitudes towards people with gender identity issues who wish to follow Christ?

Or people with severe learning difficulties who make uncontrollable noises in church services or the odiferous man who sits in my church most days during the week given a rather obvious wide berth by others? Or those on the autism spectrum who are stand-offish, blunt, unable to cope with spontaneity or understand humour? Or people with the hidden illnesses of a mental or neurological origin who feel unvalued, and are unable to take initiatives to join the ranks of that terrible current mantra, “hard working families”?

The fruit of the Spirit, wrote Paul, is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self control. Actions which speak louder than, and either reinforce or give the lie to, words. No polarisation there. Just a breath of fresh conciliatory air much needed in our increasingly polarised society. Spirit and word combining to show, and not just tell, the Good News of Jesus, of which we still have much to discover.

Think and talk

1. Look up the Bible passages in the text and meditate on them. Especially read Acts 11 and consider how huge the changes of attitude were.
2. Consider ways in which our speech and conversation dehumanises or belittles people. Why do we do it?
3. Think of how you, and people around you, over-stress left or right brain thinking. How might you work to restore a better balance?
4.  Polarisation on many issues is endemic in western society. How might we forge a more conciliatory way of debate without sinking into lowest-common-denominator compromise?

References

1. John Ortburg, Faith and doubt, Zondervan 2008; quoted in an extract in Christianity, January 2009.
2.  Jonathan Sacks, The great partnership, Hodder & Stoughton 2011; especially pp. 40ff.
3.  Henri Nouwen, Seeds of hope, Darton, Longman & Todd 1989, p. 46.
4.  Richard Rackham, The Acts of the Apostles, Methuen & Co 1901 pp. 163f

There is more about brain function and Christian thinking in my forthcoming book The Judas Trap, to be published by Instant Apostle in October 2016.

 

(c) Derek Williams 2016. Material from these posts can be reproduced for private or small group use.