Bows and Arrows

RADICAL PROBLEMS DEMAND RADICAL SOLUTIONS

“You shall call his name Jesus because he shall save his people from their sins” Matthew 1:21

I remember Basil Fawlty saying in one of his many “Fawlty Towers” moments of crisis, banging his head on the reception counter concluding ”No! it's not a dream” and continuing in panic mode. Similarly I look back at a short period of my childhood (somewhere between 8&10 years old) and as a present I received from my father (my mother had left home) a real bow and a real set of arrows with metal points. It was obviously something I'd asked for. It seems now to me incredulous that an adult would give his child a potential murder weapon and that child would then go to the school fields with his mates to play with said weapon! I remember very little else except (unless I have selectively forgotten) there were no human accidents and I also unintentionally scraped the belly of a seagull flying overhead!

MISSING THE MARK

When it was said of Jesus that his name meant that he would “save his people from their sins” the greek word for “sin” is harmartia. The word comes from the Greek verb hamartanein. It was originally an archery term used to describe the missing of a target.

The image that comes to my mind is of every individual person with their own bow and innumerable arrows constantly aiming at targets set by: Themselves; The perceived expectations of others; and (their idea of) God.

Consequently, given we all “miss the mark”, a common denominator we all share is that we all experience guilt and shame - Religious or Atheist; Rich or Poor; Strong or Weak, Christian, Buddhist, Jew, Muslim, Left wing, Right wing, Supporter of Israel, supporter of Palestine, Russian or Ukrainian, Clever or Uneducated, theologically Conservative or theologically Liberal, supporter of Gay marriage or those Anti-gay marriage - all have missed their marks - all experience a sense of guilt.

The first chapter of ”Guilt And Grace” by Paul Tournier clearly explains, from his experience as a Psychologist, the many ways these painful mis-takes play out in our daily lives in most obvious and also the most subtle ways - not to mention the sins of omission which could be many things and more to those of a sensitive conscience. Not to mention also those moral shortcomings of which we are unconscious but to the objective observer, most definitely exist. Another image of an iceberg comes to my mind - our conscious little peccadilloes undergirded by a vast hidden mass of self abhorrence,and of accumulated solidified guilt.

The religious, due to their high ideals are more prone to this dis-ease. Many of our religiously observed tasks are, if we are honest, kept not because we want to, but rather because the doing of them is far preferred than the pain of guilt for not doing them.

OUR ATTEMPTS TO SOLVE RECTIFY THE PROBLEM

And so we continue, in spite of such understanding, to fire our arrows, desperately trying to win the approval of our sensitised conscience. The higher the moral demands the more the sting of guilt and shame bites us. We will do anything to extricate ourselves. “Everybody is missing the target aren't they?" we argue. “We are all the product of an evil world - we can't escape it” - yes - but you and I know that we have time and time again succumbed to that evil when we need not have done so. We do not need the Bible to tell us that ”all have sinned”. We only need to look at our world and see its guilt and subterfuges reflected in our own human experience.

EASY TARGETS

One of the major strategies we use to divert our attention from the pain of our guilt is to take some time off from missing our own targets and shoot our arrows at those who have missed their targets - a collective hypocrisy can happen where some poor figure in society becomes the scapegoat for our own personal shortcomings.

Firing arrows, missing targets and shooting at others - the daily activity of every human being striving to alleviate the experience of guilt which affects our relationships with our fellow human, our true self and also our relationship with God.

OUR GREATEST NEED

What perhaps we do not realise is that from God's point of view guilt and the resulting separation is the most desperate need we have… it is the most fundamental need we have - a need which is different in kind from those we normally stress such as poverty, sickness, loss and other painful experiences common to us all. Different in kind but nevertheless necessarily connected. Certainly from a Christian point of view it is seen to be the fundamental need of us all to be “saved from our sins” - to be delivered from our ”mark missing”. The cure is a good indicator of the seriousness of our condition. Therefore the radical extent which drove God through humanity to servanthood to the Cross - all this “for our sins” indicates the primacy of the problem of guilt from the divine viewpoint.

So far this could be seen as a typical evangelistic preamble to coerce the unconverted to “sign on the dotted line” but I'm not doing that. The relevance to what can be said of personal guilt and its solution can be upheld without any recourse to our eternal destiny. This is indeed a trap the believer can make - secure in their future security they continue to live a sub Christian lifestyle laden with unresolved guilt - and what pain we bring when we fall into this trap!. The psychological damage and life threatening consequences of unresolved guilt alone are sufficient to alert us to the importance of seeking a solution. I've just finished reading Salman Rushdie's book “Shame” which is so called to illustrate graphically how shame results in destructiveness and violence.

THE (DIS)SOLUTION

So along comes God having emptied himself not just to become human but to take on the form of a bond slave (GK: doulos) - an unpaid servant with no other motive than the blessing of those they serve. He comes into the field of battle - the fight against the persistent need to win approval and the attempt to avoid the blame-pain by firing at one another. Into this he comes at the appointed time, “born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those under the law”. We are informed that Jesus hit the mark in every way (Matt 5:17) - Most importantly Jesus then proceeds the work of a solution. What does he do? Make us more proficient at law keeping or to keep the analogy make us better archers so we can hit the mark in the future? No - he proceeds to remove our targets - if the targets are removed we can no longer miss the mark because there is no mark to hit! As Paul radically puts it regarding the believerto the horror of all religionists, Jesus “having forgiven you all trespasses, having wiped out the handwriting of requirements that was against us … has taken it (the target) out of the way” … “for where there is no law there is no transgression.” (Romans 4:15) To understand how radical the solution is would be to set up a real life situation in the present. Let's take an obvious crime such as stealing. Our prisons are overcrowded - what if we removed from the law the stipulation that stealing is no longer a punishable offence? The result would be that all people who were labelled with the punitive description of “thieves” could no longer be so described. Consequently, since the law no longer exists, those imprisoned would be set free. The government's crime figures would be reduced considerably! How about all punishable crimes to be treated in the same way? - the prisons would be empty! “Crazy!” I hear you say - yes but from a spiritual perspective, this is exactly what the Apostle Paul is saying. We are all criminals imprisoned and crippled by our failure to hit these self, other and more importantly, God ordained targets. The tenseness of this performance related lifestyle predisposes us to further failure, guilt and self reproach. So Jesus steps in and removes the target. But we love our targets! “Leave our targets alone” (“crucify him!”) comes our frenzied cry (Why? Dear Reader, I'll let you provide the answer) as we collectively point our arrows in the direction of the Target Remover and in this case, ironically, do not fail to hit the target. Nevertheless, in his death and resurrection the targets have been removed and he comes to each one of us and says “Give me your bow and hand over your arrows” “But we have our targets to hit” we reply. “What targets?” he asks ”They have all been taken away” “But I have issues with Fred - he has upset me. I need this particular arrow which has his name on it” “All or nothing” Jesus says as with loving persuasion he patiently implores us to hand over our weapons and step out of the prison of Self re-crim(e)-ination and it's ugly sister “Unforgiveness”. Appropriately, CS Lewis says: “fallen man is not simply an imperfect creature who needs improvement: he is a rebel who must lay down his arms.” Mere Christianity.

Perhaps all churches should leave a sign outside the door “No targets. Leave your bows and arrows at the door”!

No wonder there are so many hymns and songs that celebrate the Amazing Grace of God who “sets us free from the law of sin and death”

Reader, if for you this is hard to embrace, let me suggest you for one moment to use your imagination and think “What would it be like for me if it were true? What would it be like if all my sins, past present and future, were so removed as though their punitive value was as truly non-existent as the law itself is non-existent? What if, as Paul said, “I am dead to the law” applies to you? (You cannot be more disconnected and unresponsive than “dead” to something) How would that affect you, your view of yourself, others and God? I often find that the imagination of our heart can be so powerfully used by God to bring the Good News home to us where our natural mind often calculates, struggles and fails.

A FINAL THOUGHT.

Another present I received as a child was from my oldest brother. It was the most beautiful silver plastic motorised plane which you flew in circular fashion with control lines. You don't see them much nowadays. But as a child on the school fields you'd see many a young person holding two lines (kitewise) which led to a model plane, controlling the plane around in a circular fashion. The plane was powered by a fuel driven motorised propeller - another health and safety problem I shall not go into! The thing is I loved this silver plane so much I kept it in its box on top of the cupboard to keep it safe. I would often take it down and look at it with awe from all angles. I'd take it out of the box and polish it. I would read the instructions regularly on how to fly it. However - I never flew it! As an aside, I do remember eventually taking it to the fields and one of the older more experienced lads flew it for me and after one circle it broke into pieces on the ground. But I never flew it myself!

So with Jesus - he came to “take away our sins” by removing our targets. We worship him, study about him, talk about him but, as with my silver plane, never “use” him for the purpose he came for - to remove the contagiously social and religious guilt that drags us down. Consequently we do not live out the purpose for what Jesus came to do - to fly, not with a control line, but as with eagle’s wings (Isaiah 40) high on the thermals, free in the atmosphere of God’s great unconditional love with no strings attached!

The choice is ours personally moment by moment. Are we in our spiritual pride (hint answer to question above ;) going to keep our bows and arrows and reinstate our imaginary targets? Or are we going to let Jesus be “Jesus” the Great Liberator?

To run and work the law demands
But gives me neither feet nor hands
But better news the gospel brings
It bids me fly and gives me wings!

The choice is ours. The choice is yours.