Which Character Do You Play?

1 Comment

Recently I listened to N D Wilson talking about ‘story’. Some of his comments were extremely thought-provoking. Watch for instance his short film Notes from the Tilt-a-Whirl. He portrays God as a great storyteller or playwright and we are living and acting as characters in His world play. What follows are not my ideas, but Wilson’s ideas which I am thinking about and musing on.

What kind of character are you? We all like to think of ourselves as heroes of the story, which we often think of as our story, but is that really the part we are playing? Who are you? Would you like the character you are playing? So often when reading great literature, watching good films, or even reading biographies of good men and women, we think of ourselves as playing the parts of heroes. We put ourselves in Corrie Ten Boom’s shoes. We imagine ourselves as an Atticus Finch standing up for the downtrodden and oppressed, or maybe a Dietrich Bonhoeffer who was involved in an assassination attempt on Adolf Hitler.

But what part do we actually play? Imagine that you were watching a great movie on the madness of our covid times. Perhaps a tale of the small town or community you live in and how it responds to the pressure and stress of this worldwide issue. Would you like the character you play? Would you feel sympathy? Embarassment? Frustration? Disgust?

How would the average viewer see you? Would you be the leader who means well, but whose cowardice paralyses him from standing up against unrighteousness? Would you be a man whose principles are as malleable as plasticine which responds to the pressure from the forces that surround it? Would you be the businessman who knows what is right, but because of financial pressure bows to the evil and nonsensical laws that ban unvaccinated people from your premises? Are you a pastor who has segregated your church when your Lord never drives anyone away? Are you the woman who uses the apartheid vaccine certificates because a haircut is more important than standing against unrighteous partiality?

Well the truth is, we are in a story. We are in the great play of world history which began with creation and climaxed with Christ’s death resurrection and ascension, and is following a protracted denouement to his universal reign and inheritance of all the nations. You are in the play. Your actions now testify to the kind of character you are playing. Good characters grow and develop. They consciously submit to Christ’s lordship and live out the implications of that in the cameo role God has given them. Consider how your character can grow in boldness and righteousness in the time and situation God has placed you.

Encouragingly, there are individuals who are standing up against the divisive unrighteousness that our government is promoting. These are the characters who we would be cheering for if we were watching this on the big screen. For instance, take a look at Tried and Tested, and electrical safety testing, maintenance & repair business servicing the Wellington region. Support these types of people. Take your business away from those who discriminate. Let’s move from cheering the good guys from the safety of our sofas to practising righteousness and supporting the good guys in practical ways.

To Obey or Not Obey?

2 Comments

The chickens are coming home to roost. The church has experienced weeks of ‘online church’, we face (pun intended) the possibility of forced masking in worship as well as vaccine passports for worship services. Look at the Bill of Rights. Our liberties have been stripped from us. Our right to refuse medical treatment is under threat, our right to freedom of thought, conscience, privacy and religion is imperiled. Our right to peaceful assembly is gone. As are the rights to freedom of association, movement and freedom from discrimination.

The time for decisions is here. The trouble is, our collective Christian minds are creaky and stiff from disuse. Our body, feminine, soft and nurturing in form, but lacking the complementary male strength and roughness of virtues such as courage due to a matriarchal dominance of the church (often in spite of male leaders), is frozen in a semi-recumbent position. What will we do? Well, the women of both sexes will bleat on their social media platforms about doing the right thing and rail at any Christians who awaken enough from slumber to question whether we are in fact in the beginnings of a living totalitarian nightmare. “Obey the Government! Romans 13!” exclaim these newly minted experts in theology who, with their theological position, could no doubt justify yellow stars with the word Jude written in fancy lettering vaccine passports.

Since our minds are seized shut from lack of use and no call of action will get us to actually do anything, we’ll resort to one of our favourite feel-good pastimes. We’ll sing. But we’ll avoid the old hymns of the faith. It’s a bit hard to sing “Stand up for Jesus” when that might require backbone. We’ll no doubt sing lustily some inane and trite modern evangelopop. How about “Who the Son sets free, Oh, is free indeed”? But we’ll do it from our living rooms wearing a mask hoping the State will set us free once the population has been compliant enough and buckled under the State’s loving#kindness.

Read More