I am not out to review this book, however. I just want to examine one part of a late might conversation between Charlie, and his unexpected new friend Jasper Jones. Jasper is an older, tougher boy with a broken home and a bad reputation in the country town of Corrigan, where they both live. Due to unusual and disturbing events, he turns to Charlie to be his ally and confidant.

The topic of the conversation is life, and in particular the rejection, that Jasper and Charlie both share, of a religious understanding of life. I’m interested in this conversation for a number of reasons. Firstly, I think novels are often sermons of a kind, exploring, through their characters and stories, different spiritual stances one might take in life, and, frequently, commending one, while perhaps also criticising others. This conversation in Jasper Jones seemed to me to be a very obvious example of this feature of novels.

Secondly, this novel was written in Australia and published in 2009, and it seems to me that this conversation does express a prominent and influential contemporary Australian spiritual stance. Silvey has his characters think and talk like many Australians might. I’d like to see what sense this viewpoint makes, and examine it a little.

Thirdly, I think that when you do examine the talk about life and religion in this conversation, it is pretty weak as a persuasive commendation of their views. Granted, these are the words and arguments of young teenaged boys, who basically agree with each about everything discusssed and who are drinking together late at night, and so we might not expect too much rigour of thought. Still, I do suspect that part of the reason this conversation is included in the novel is so that Silvey might have these spiritual opinions expressed, to commend them, as much as anything. Silvey certainly does not seem to have them expressed in order to be questioned or tested, but rather to show you who his characters, his protagonists are and from what springs their actions arise. I’d like to pick at the case against religion expressed here, because I think fails really to make a case.

So how does the conversation go? It begins with the perennial observation about how big the world is and how small human beings are.

Now the consciousness of how vast the universe is and how small we are is an ancient one. It is true that our ideas of exactly how big and old the universe is have expanded massively in the last few hundred years. We now have a heliocentric solar system, an earth of great geological age, and the Big Bang model of cosmology. However, the ancients did not think that the universe was small. They were in no doubt that the world was big and they weren’t. Take Psalm 8:3-4, addressed to God

³ When I consider your heavens,
the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars,
which you have set in place,
⁴ what is mankind that you are mindful of them,
human beings that you care for them?

The sense of human insignificance in a vast cosmos is not new. The question is, what conclusions might you draw from the fact of such vastness? Jaspar Jones draws two:

The first inference is that it is stupid to think you can claim a piece of earth as your own, and draw lines and territories. That inference would be a fascinating starting point for a foray into political theory, but Jasper leaves it undeveloped, and introduces a second thesis, namely that it is foolish to think a big person (God) watches your conduct and cares about it.

Now I want to slow down here and think about whether it really follows from the sense of human insignificance in a vast cosmos that there is no God who cares about who were are and what we do. Jasper’s train of thought seems to go as follows:

Realising that the universe is stupendously large and old and I am incredibly tiny and shortlived in an immensity of space and time makes me feel like a speck of dust, like nothing.

Therefore, I conclude: I am a speck of dust, nothing

Therefore: there is no creator God who watches and cares about how I  live my life.

The first conclusion assumes the truth of something like: If I feel like a speck of dust, like nothing, then I must be a speck of dust, and nothing.

But this does not seem true, for it seems at least possible that I could in some circumstances feel insignificant, feel like nothing, but not be insignificant, not be nothing. I could be unaware of a significance I have even though I am so tiny and seemingly shortlived. The boy who believes he has been orphaned and is alone and unloved in the world might feel like nothing, but when his parents find him and he discovers he was loved and missed and sought  all along, he realises that he may have been nothing to passersby, but he was never nothing at all, for he was always something to his parents.

Looking at the immensity of time and space we might reasonably feel that we are nothing to the distant stars and galaxies and the generations of the far past and future. But, we may still be something to a God who made us. God might not signal that to us by placing us at the physical centre of a relatively small universe, but there may be other ways in which God shows his love for us, and the significance we have to him. Jasper Jones draws conclusions beyond what is warranted by his observations. He has not made a case here.

Christianity doesn’t imagine that human beings are at the physical centre of a cosy cosmos. Rather it marvels that God (the true centre) would invest such a mean and small creature as human beings with the honour of real significance in his vast world. The Bible tells us that we are significant because we made ‘in his image’. Part of what is meant is that we are set over the other forms of life on the earth, with powers and responsibilities to God that they do not share. Psalm 8 again:

⁴ what is mankind that you are mindful of them,
human beings that you care for them?

⁵ You have made them a little lower than the angels
and crowned them with glory and honor.
⁶ You made them rulers over the works of your hands;
you put everything under their feet:
⁷ all flocks and herds,
and the animals of the wild,
⁸ the birds in the sky,
and the fish in the sea,
all that swim the paths of the seas.

The singular powers of human beings, largely connected (on a biological level) to the capacities of our particular brains, is another striking fact about our situation to lay beside our smallness and ephemerality. We may be undistinguished in terms of size, power and duration on a cosmic scale, but, being living, conscious intelligences we are still a rather distinguished and remarkable feature of the cosmos.

However, as Christianity sees it, the biggest indication of our significance to God comes from the fact the he himself has taken up our human nature in the person of Jesus. He shared in our humanity to break the power of death, which he did in his resurrection. The incarnation and subsequent career of Jesus is the greatest reason why Christians think that there is a God who cares about who we are, and with Christmas just gone it seems timely to point that out.

Jasper expresses frustration that people continue to believe that human beings are somehow important in the universe. He concurs with Charlie’s comment that people try to answer the big questions using only a part of the data available and forget about modern knowledge of cosmology.

But in many ways it is Jaspar and Charlie that want to make cosmology, the sheer scale of the universe, the crucial and deciding fact in assessing human significance. But why should physical cosmology have that much bearing on the question of whether there is a God who cares? I don’t see Jasper’s logic.

Besides, Jasper does not actually think that he is without significance – at the climax of this part of the conversation he strongly asserts ‘I matter’, and he gives a reason; ‘because I got a good heart’.

And this bring us away from Charlie and Jasper’s rejection of a religious outlook and over to his positive spiritual stance and ethic of life. I’m keen to probe this as well, but I’ll have to come back to it later.

• How do you decide what rich is?
• How rich do you think you are?

Read 1 Timothy 6:17-19

• Can Christians be rich?
• What traps are rich Christians warned about?
• How could you tell if riches had made you arrogant?
• How could you tell if you had your hope in wealth?
• What are rich Christians to do and to be?
• What good examples of this have you seen?
• What progress have you been able to make in being generous and willing to share?
• In what ways would you like to do better at this?
• What incentives are there in this passage to ‘be rich in good deeds’?

See also Luke 12:33, Proverbs 19:17 and Proverbs 22:9

The mission of Redeemer City to City (RCTC) to help gospel leaders build movements in cities. They seek to impart to local leaders the Redeemer Gospel DNA, which is a vision for effective gospel-shaped ministry in an urban environment.

The foundation of this DNA is the conviction that the gospel changes everything – i.e. the gospel brings change in all spheres – personal, social and cultural. The hope and prayer of RCTC is that this Gospel DNA might spread widely and see hearts, churches and eventually whole cities renewed as a Christian movement grows and takes hold in each city.

The Conference aimed to expose church leaders and potential church planters to this Redeemer Gospel DNA through sessions on its elements, namely:

1/ Gospel Theology – emphasising a redemptive historical way of reading the Bible, and the gospel as a multifaceted reality which may be briefly outlined using the headings incarnation, atonement, resurrection.

2/ Gospel Renewal – emphasising a presentation of the gospel as one of three ways to live. The gospel is neither religion nor irreligion, but grace for sinners. This grace produces personal change and heart renewal, not through fear and pride, but through gratitude and new affections.

3/ Gospel Contextualisation – we must express gospel truth in a way that is coherent and persuasive to our target culture – with the gospel we must first enter the culture, then challenge the culture and lastly console the culture of those we seek to evangelise.

4/ Gospel Preaching – the gospel is news to be told, from the Scriptures, about Christ, that he might be trusted and adored, by both Christians and non-Christians.

5/ Church, Culture and Mission – If Christians hope to see the culture influenced by the gospel, Christians will have to live counter-culturally (separation from neighbour), for the common good (solidarity with neighbour). The city is the most effective place to grow this influence on the culture.

6/ City Vision – God loves cities and cities have a special place in his plans for humanity. Cities are forges for culture and thus help fulfill our God-given cultural mandate. They are strategic for ministry, for ‘as goes the city, so goes the culture’. Never truer. City ministries must be city positive. Christians should live in, love and serve the city.

7/ Integrative Ministry – ministry must go forward on four fronts: Connecting people to God (evangelism and personal conversion); connecting people to each other (formation of deep Christian community); connecting people to the city (social justice and mercy); connecting people to the culture (integrating faith and work for cultural renewal by Christians).

8/ Movement Dynamics – It takes a gospel movement to reach and renew a city. A movement is bigger than any one leader or organisation, but is an organic thing where independent groups align around a shared, compelling vision of the future presented in digestible big ideas, to which movement participants make a sacrificial commitment.

Stephen Um and Tuck Bartholemew were the presenters from RCTC. Tim Keller has a book forthcoming called Centre Church, in which he gives his own exposition of the Redeemer Gospel DNA. If you want to make sense of the concise, perhaps cryptic summaries above, you might like to read it when it comes out.

I was personally familiar with the Redeemer approach before the conference, through reading and hearing (usually via MP3) from Tim Keller and others at Redeemer, so this conference was not brand new to me. I think we do some of these things consciously already, e.g. 1/. I think we are working consciously at a staff level on 2/-5/. I think that points 6/ and 7/ contain some things that we might debate, and I think that the detail about gospel movement ecosystems presented under 8/ is worth comparing with Perth today.

In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace that he lavished on us….    Ephesians 1:7-8

In Paul’s letter to the infant church in Ephesus, he begins by describing the amazing  kaleidoscope of ‘spiritual blessings’ that have been poured out on all those who have put their trust in Jesus.   In this verse he touches on forgiveness.

Redemption, forgiveness and blood.  Paul puts together three things that the bible regards as inseparable.  The death of Jesus on the cross achieved at least these things -  the purchase of our freedom, the payment of our debt.  We were not merely orphans awaiting adoption (v5) but we were in addition, debtors to God and slaves to sin.  But in the Cross of Christ this is magnificently reversed.  Jesus’ death pays our debt; Jesus’ death frees us from slavery. The penalty that was ours fell on Jesus and the debt that we owed, he paid.

How long does it take for you to feel the need for forgiveness?

The Bible is full of people who need forgiveness.  Adam and Eve.  King David.  The Apostle Peter.  Adam and Eve’s first response to their sin was to hide and then to blame others.  If they asked for forgiveness at all, it’s not recorded.  David apparently didn’t feel the need for forgiveness until a third party exposed him.  Peter seems to have repented as soon as he heard the rooster crow.  The Bible is full of such needy people and my guess is, our need is the same.

Sometimes we have sinned with such deliberateness and calculation that we know we need to be forgiven even before we have sinned.  Sometimes we know it as the word slips from our mouth or the thought rises in our he)art, and we repent instantly.  Sometimes we are completely oblivious of the wrong we have done.  Sometimes we are reminded on an annual basis that there is much that remains unforgiven.  No doubt Christmastime is stressful for many because there can be no peace in the family until someone says ‘sorry’, and someone else says, ‘I forgive you’.

But in the death of Jesus, forgiveness is made available ‘in accordance with the riches of God’s grace’ – out of God’s kindness and mercy.  Not because we deserve it,  but because God’s nature is to love in this expensive, inexplicable way.  As we enter the season of Advent, we recall with thanks, wonder and praise that the child born to Mary is our champion who will win forgiveness for his people at the cost of his own life.

your friend in Christ, Kanishka

• What experience have you had encountering teaching in churches that departs from the faith as we find it in the Bible?
• What motives do you think might underlie these departures?

Read 1 Timothy 6: 2b-10

• What corruptions of the heart does Paul mention in these verses? (In the sermon I had conceit and the desire to be rich, but you might see others too.)
• What are the results of these corruptions?
• Paul makes much of the love of money here. Is the love of money really all that bad?
• In what ways are you aware of the desire to be rich active in your own heart?
• How persuasive to you is what Paul says against this desire?

Read 1 Timothy 6:11-15

• Does Paul imagine Timothy is immune to the corruptions of the heart he has mentioned above?
• What does Paul exhort Timothy to do?
• How might Timothy go about following this exhortation?
• Paul makes much of God here. Why might Paul be keen to present God to Timothy as the powerful, immortal, majestic creator and ruler? What does that add to the exhortations?
• To what extent are you conscious of living your life in the sight of the God who gives life to all and dwells in unapproachable light?
• How can you live more conscious of and consistent with the character and being of God as he’s described here?

• What is respect? Can it be faked?
• What would a world without respect be like?
• When is it hard to give respect?
• How easy do you imagine it would be for the slaves in the churches at Ephesus to respect their masters?

Read 1 Timothy 6:1-2

• Which two kinds of masters that a Christian slave might have are addressed here?
• What reasons are given for a Christian slave to respect an unbelieving master?
• How good a reason is this, do you think?
• What reasons are given for  Christian slave to respect a believing master?
• How might the way Paul talks transform the way a slave thinks about the slaving he or she does? (See the notes below)

Notes:

1. The correct translation of the last part of verse 6 is tricky to decide. I feel that the translation of the ESV, NRSV, HCSB, NIV footnote, viz, ”Those who have believing masters must not be disrespectful on the ground that they are brothers; rather they must serve all the better since those who benefit by their good service are believers and beloved.” (ESV) is the better option, rather than the NIV body text, “Those who have believing masters should not show them disrespect just because they are fellow believers. Instead, they should serve them even better because their masters are dear to them as fellow believers and are devoted to the welfare of their slaves.”
2. The language of ‘benefit’ is more usually associated with what a benefactor gives to the one he or she supports. The slave is here cast as a benefactor, offering a gift.

• What relevance might these verses have for us, even though we are not slaves?
• When have you struggled to respect someone who exercises power over you?
• How might the reasons Paul gives to respect masters help you to respect people placed over you?