Should A Wife Take Her Husband's Surname?

At our church evening meeting yesterday we had, amongst other things, a Q and A session on what the Bible says the roles of men and women in marriage should be, led by Sean and Liz. Do listen to that when it goes up on the website later this week. It was quality stuff.

One of the questions went something like this: Is there a verse in the Bible which specifically demands a woman to take on the family name of her husband?

Sean asked me if I knew of any verses, so I got thinking and here's my two pennies worth.

Like Sean said, as far as I am aware, there's no verse in the Bible that commands a woman take on the name of her husband, but then at over 31,000 verses I'm not such an authority on the Bible that I would want to be categorical!

However, the world of the bible was clearly patrilineal, not matrilineal and so it was assumed that the father's name would be preserved and the mother's lost.

The pattern is given that the woman takes on the identity of her husband. He doesn't go to be with her, she goes to be with him. Even in times of great upheaval that principle didn't change.

The reason is not because the woman is somehow less than the man, but because, as Sean rightly said last night, marriage is a symbol of the story of Christ and the church. Christ doesn't get taken under the Church's wing, the Church comes under Christ's. A good Old Testament picture of this is the way Boaz and Ruth get it together.

Christ does not inherit the name of the Church, rather the Church inherits the name of Christ.

I don't feel at liberty to say that a Christian woman must take on the name of her husband, but given the weight of the Biblical precedent, I think there would need to be exceptional circumstances at play, before a bucking of the trend is considered.

What Would Be Your Definition of the Bible In One Sentence?

How would you answer the following question in one sentence?

What is the bible?

In my time I have heard things like:

It's God's Word
It's a hand book for life.
Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth

The first one is true, but it uses in house language that can lead to confusion. Moreover, Muslims use the same title for the Qur'an.

The second two, whilst not wrong in themselves, leave you with the notion that it's all about you - something the Pharisees would enjoy reading.

So what do we say? Is there a definition that is exclusively Christian that doesn't tie us up in knots of clauses and sub clauses?

Here's my starter for 10:

The Bible is God the Father's testimony about the excellence of his Son, given to us through the Holy Spirit.

From Genesis 1 to Revelation 22, it's all about Jesus.

Any comments or advances?

PS Thanks Dave for putting me onto this. :-)

April Top Reads

Whilst scooting to and from Paris this week, I read a helpful little book called God's Big Picture by Vaughan Roberts. It's only 166 pages and not only is the print big, but lots of those pages are taken up with diagrams, and bible study question and answer spaces. So a distracted reader like me could really feel they were making good progress!

It seeks to plot the storyline of the Bible all the way through from Gen 1 - Rev 22.

Whilst the information in the book was not new to me, I did find Roberts' charts, diagrams and memory hooks most helpful and they certainly helped to clarify and solidify my own understanding of the whole! Those who have to listen to me preach or lead the Biblical thinking forums will be grateful to Roberts for this.

Also, the Pyrenees may be off and enquiries are being made instead for a possible trip to South Sudan.

To get myself in the mood, I've started reading the whopping 680-page-tiny-print-and-very-few-pictures Scramble for Africa by Thomas Pakenham.

It's like a ripping yarn adventure book for grown ups, but it really did happen. Truth is stranger than fiction.

Once Again, It's Not About You First.

Jesus told many parables.

If you're like me, you're so quick to assume that he's teaching us about what we have to do, that like me, you don't listen properly.

Let's take an example. Have a look at the first 90secs of this video:

Jesus said that the kingdom of God is like one who finds buried treasure or a pearl of great price. When they find it, they are overjoyed and sell everything they have in order to get it.

If you're like me, you immediately jump to the conclusion that the parable is about you and that when we hear the Gospel, we have to do lots of good biblically moral things to prove we mean business with God. In other words, this parable is a call to ultimate discipleship.

Good. Thank you. Right next parable please...

But wait, let's ponder a little further to see what the spiritually impetuous eye misses...

The parable talks first of the Father, who seeing in eternity past a pearl of great price, a treasure, in the church, rejoiced and gave everything he had for it, even his very own son.

It talks second about Jesus, who also willingly gave everything he had, even his very own life to gain this same treasure, that the Father and Son might together enjoy this treasure in the fellowship of the Spirit.

One of the clues that it's about the Father and the Son first is the location of the treasure and the pearl. The pearl is under water and the treasure is under ground. Both of these are symbols of death - the ultimate loss. The Trinity experiences death (death meaning cut off from fellowship with the Trinity not non-existence as we mistakenly think) in order to obtain this treasure, this pearl.

Only then, does the church come into view. The Church, the physical presence of Christ on the earth, inhabited by the Holy Spirit of God and caught up into the divine community of the Trinity. Likewise, she now cannot help but joyfully give up her life for the completion of this great treasure.

It's less a moral command to the Church and more a natural overflow. Those who are in Christ (the Church) and therefore full of the Spirit of Christ, cannot help but be like Christ. The branch cannot but bear fruit.

In short: The Father loves, the Son follows the Father and the Church follows the Son just like the Son follows the Father.

So what's the application of this parable?

Be in awe of the self-giving Trinitarian God and in symmetry follow Jesus to death. That's all.

Every other application is not worthy of you, and more seriously, it degrades the work of the Father, Son and Spirit.

Easter Meditation: Hope, But Not As We Know It.

It's funny how in our more optimistic moments, both as individuals and as a race, we long for love, glory and freedom, yea even, immortality, but in our heart of hearts, we don't see how it's possible to have them all together.

What's more, if we have any hope of gaining any of those things, we can only conceive of obtaining them in a win-lose context.

What I mean is this: if I win, then you have to lose, or if you win, I have to lose. In this world it is always about winners and losers, never winners and winners. The rich get rich off the mistreatment of the poor. Glory for one means anonymity for another. Love for one, means rejection for another. Freedom for one means restrictions for another. Life for one, means death for another.

And what little we win in this win-lose life,

we lose in the end if we have not Christ.

The final duel in the matrix is a classic example of the limits of our most altruistic win-lose brand of thinking:

As an aside, the Matrix trilogy has lots of religious imagery, including Christian imagery. It even has has echoes of the gospel as mentioned before, but it's essentially Taoist in philosophy and therefore satanic in origin. I do like the way Neo becomes Agent Smith and in so doing, destroys him. In the same way, Jesus became sin and in so doing destroyed its power.

Neo saves the people, but he loses his own life in the process. From life inside the cage of this world, the highest moral good we can conceive is the win-lose kind - benefitting others at cost to ourselves - allowing others to win whilst we lose. Remembrance Sunday - when we remember those who paid the ultimate price to preserve the freedoms we enjoy, is perhaps the best real world example of this.

Jesus breaks in from outside the cage of this world and announces himself as a win-win saviour. Yes, he became on the cross, for three hours, the most sinful man who ever lived, and yes, in that 3hr window he soaked up the wrath of God for human rebellion and the curse that rebellion brought on the whole creation, but when it was all over, when the divine fury was spent, he went back to being the beloved Son. He passed through death to life.

At the resurrection, the Holy Spirit declared the Father's approval of the Son by raising him from the dead. In this sense, Jesus is justified - declared righteous. None of that sin, laid on him at the cross, stuck. None of the devil's accusations and temptations stuck.

Many a soldier has died only to lose his dream of a better life to another. Jesus is not like that. He died, but because he was perfect, he has been raised, and will rightfully enjoy the thing for which he died. That dear friends, is the kind of hope the world does not know.

Unlike anyone else in history, Jesus gets to enjoy the fruits his ultimate suffering - a people who love and obey him and a renewed world (the Kingdom of God) in which to enjoy their company.

All those who give their lives to him, will enjoy that same win-win delight, after passing through death. Christian hope is not for a place in the sun in this win-lose life, but for a place with the Son in the win-win next.

There's a place for you if you want it. Dare you take hold of a hope like this?

Easter Meditation: Jesus Ain't No Rambo In Hell

Have you ever come across Rambo Jesus, like the one in this bit of drivel?

Of course, we can all watch that clip and laugh at how ridiculous it is, but when we aren't saturated in the words of the Bible, we can fall into the worldly kind of assumption that the real battles between good and evil go on somewhere else in an unseen spiritual realm.

You're that kind of Rambo-Jesus Christian if you think that after Jesus physically died, he then had to endure a second battle: going down into Hell for round 2, being beaten up by Satan and his cronies, before eventually getting his head together and wrestling his way out smack-down style. There are two dangerous and related assumptions in this view:

• Salvation was not won at the cross but at the cross + huge cosmic battles in the unseen realm.
• That the primary reason Jesus suffered was to ransom us from the power of Satan.

The first statement is untrue, because Jesus said so. His declaration from the cross: It is finished means exactly what it says... It's finished. Nothing left to do. Had it not been finished, he could not then have said Father, into your hands I commend my Spirit. The curtain of the temple was torn in two as he died, not some time after he had supposedly Rambo-ed out of Hell. The only reason Satan had power over humans was because humans rebelled against God, as soon as Jesus had dealt with the offence of that rebellion, Satan's power was gone and he was ridiculed - at the cross.

The second statement is untrue because Satan is not the human race's biggest problem, the wrath of God is. Jesus did not suffer to release us from Satan's clutches, but to release us from the awful prospect of the judgment of God falling on our heads for not obeying him. The cross is primarily a work of God for God.

The Father, Son and Spirit have all been monstrously offended by human rebellion, but rather than wiping out all of creation, they, all three, go to work to make amends. At the cross, the community of God lovingly and justly deal with human wickedness between themselves.

The outcome of this is that they can now freely declare armistice and show mercy and kindness to all who come humbly to them...

It was ALL finished at the cross.

And as the Jews rested on the Sabbath after Jesus died, so too Jesus the ultimate law keeper, rested from his travail.

Like a seed planted in the ground waiting to sprout and multiply, so Jesus was laid in the tomb in peace waiting for resurrection morning, the first day of the Jewish working week, when he would begin gathering to himself a people who love him and then one day to renew the whole universe.

A Tale of Two Gardens

Consider the contrast between two different kinds of human: Adam and Christ.

Adam was placed in a perfect garden, Eden. There was no need to weed or work hard to make sure it produced an abundant harvest. Every animal submitted to his authority and he had the company of a foxy chick with whom he could enjoy it all and spread the love!

So when the Lord God said Just keep your hands off this particular tree. You'd be forgiven for thinking that was a simple thing to do. However, it proved an impossible task for Adam, who had the whole world open to him, yet driven by desire, chose to focus on the one thing he had been denied. We have lived under the fallout of that ever since.

Fast forward a few thousand years to another garden, Gethsemane. Here is another man, Jesus Christ:

(As an aside, I love the way the film writers echo the sentiments of the Psalms here for truly, the Psalms speak prophetically of Jesus, first.)

Surrounded by darkness, anxious in his flesh, misunderstood by his friends, persecuted by his enemies and tempted by the devil. In short, the whole world caving in on Jesus and yet he himself does not cave in.

Consider the contrasts between the two men:

Adam is in comfort. Jesus is in distress.

Adam has no right to disobey. Jesus has no need to suffer.

Adam clasps at being like God. Jesus, though being in very nature God, does not claim that recognition for himself.

Adam is driven by selfish desire. Jesus is driven by self-giving love.

Adam caves and plunges the universe into darkness. Jesus conquers and begins the recreation of the universe.

Jesus came to create a (re)new(ed) humanity, not improve a decaying and dying one. A humanity born of the Spirit of God, not the decision (or unforeseen misadventure for that matter) of any man and woman.

He became like us, so that we could become like him.

That's why those who love Jesus aren't looking for the restoration of the old order - Eden, or the creation of utopia (man's efforts to overcome the curse), those goals are too small. No, we look for the revelation of an altogether New Earth - the home of true perfection and peace. The home of God and their people.

Will you be there?